Sarah Palin Book Signing Interviews

Check out this video of Sarah Palin fans waiting outside a Columbus, Ohio Borders for her book signing last week.

It makes one wonder how this country ever elected someone like Barack Obama.

Favorite quotes from her supporters:

• "Um, fairness?  Realness?" - on what specific policies Sarah Palin stands for
• "The way the country's goin', I wonder if we're gonna have an election in 2012."
• "I don't even think he's an American citizen." - from a "birther"
• "When you're right, you don't have a compromise.  Compromise is for people that are wrong."
• "We do need to have profiling.  I mean, the politically correctness has got to get out now.  I mean, we're Americans, and she sticks up for the American people.  Not for other people.  We're first, other people last."
• "To be honest witchu, I don't know anything about her foreign policy."
• "Limit spending and ... cap and trade, and all that."
• "Well, his Marxism, Leninism, socialism..." - on what Barack Obama intends to institute in America, according to his books
• "The state that she did govern was right across the street from Russia."

Chilling.  Breathtaking.  Depressing.

Comments?  I welcome any and all.

Monsoon

Monsoon's Forecast Update / Shoe-Flinging Analysis

Since I heard about this on Sunday and saw the video today, it has still not gotten old, and will never get old. Surely by now you’ve heard that our outgoing President, George W. Bush, had to bob and weave like Floyd Mayweather to avoid two shoes being chucked at him—with impressive aim and velocity—by an Iraqi reporter at a news conference in the Prime Minister’s office during Dubya’s surprise visit on Sunday. It was unquestionably the most eloquent use of footwear to make a political statement since Nikita Khrushchev banged his shoe on the table at the UN in 1960. (And surely you’ve also heard by now that one of the most vehement shows of disrespect in the Muslim world is to show the bottom of one’s shoe to another—or, more directly, throw it at him or her—because it’s akin to saying, “You scum-sucking pig! You son of a motherless goat!”*)

Here is the video, taken from Brazilian television (I cannot explain why, but the Portuguese somehow makes it that much funnier). FYI: search YouTube for clips that include slow motion and alternate angles, if you care to analyze the footage—pun intended—like it’s the Zapruder film and search for a second shoe-lobber. I’m quite content to watch this clip, though.

Anywho, I have a forecast update for you—potential for some hazardous driving conditions and winter weather over the coming days. Stay tuned, as always, for updates, as things can change quickly with a storm like this.

Tuesday 12/16: It’s difficult to believe given today’s very mild temperatures in the mid 60s, but by Tuesday morning’s commute, the temperature will only be in the upper 30s; it will drop to freezing by the time school lets out Tuesday. What this means for us is that it will be cold enough—both in terms of surface temperatures and the air aloft—to precipitate in a wintry fashion and create travel troubles.

Rain in the morning, mixing with freezing rain by late morning; changing over to snow by 1 or 2 in the afternoon. Snow continues intermittently, making travel a bit dicey; snow intensifies later and overnight into Wednesday morning, bringing a total accumulation of snow and ice to 2 to 4 inches. (Philly suburbs get less accumulation but more icing; Lehigh Valley and northern Berks could see as much as six inches of snow, depending on when the changeover takes place.)

Cancellations / delays: The snow and ice in particular make Tuesday evening’s commute potentially dodgy, so be careful. Tuesday AM delay 15%; cancellation 10%; early dismissal 35%.

Wednesday 12/17: Snow ends mid-morning, possibly mixing with sleet. High 38, low 29.

Cancellations / delays: Wednesday AM is the most treacherous; depending on snow totals, we could see some cancellations. Wednesday AM delay 85%; cancellation 45%.

(Remember that the cancellation and delay potentials are evaluated separately, as distinct events, and you should not look for percentages to add up in any particular way. For example, when I say there is an 85% chance of delay on Wednesday, there is no converse percentage implied. Can a statistics teacher out there help me explain this more clearly? I’m not even sure what the hell I mean.)

Thursday 12/18: Cloudy and milder with rain possible on and off. High 42, low 34.

Friday 12/19: Overcast and windy with a shower or two; snow may develop later on. High 44, low 31.

Saturday 12/20: Partly cloudy and colder. High 38, low 27.

Sunday 12/21: Overcast with a few breaks of sunshine; some snow showers are possible. High 35, low 21.

Monday 12/22: Sunny, clear, windy and cold. High 33, low 18.

Tuesday 12/23: Sunny, clear, breezy and colder. High 28, low 16.

Wednesday 12/24: Partly to mostly cloudy with snow possible late. High 34, low 22.

Thursday 12/25: Cloudy and cold with no precipitation around today (though given the cold temperatures, some snowfall from the preceding week or so could still be on the ground, technically making it a “white Christmas”). High 33, low 21.

Friday 12/26: Overcast with snow developing; could accumulate. High 34, low 26.

Next weekend: Very cold and snowy with highs struggling to get out of the 30s.

Beyond: A bit milder the last few days of 2008 and into 2009, it appears.

Monsoon

*Be the first to email me with the source of this reference (and another accurate quotation from the same source) and you will win a priceless gift: prominent mention in this vaunted space in my next posting, along with my deepest admiration.

Monsoon Martin's Election Night 2008 Comment

Barack Obama was elected the 44^th President of the United States tonight.

At 11pm, when the cable-news talking heads could finally retire their touch-screen floating maps and tentative conjectures, the projection was made. And I cried.

I, hard-hearted cynic, longtime sufferer of political malaise, was swept up in the moment.

It wasn’t just the euphoria that accompanies the triumph of a candidate one has supported, argued for, defended strongly, written about, donated to. This felt different.

The term “historic” is maddeningly overused by those who seek to endow the mundane present with the swelling significance of the past. It’s only as these events recede into history that we can take true measure of their impact, their place.

And yet, the election of a Black man as President feels like a watershed, a defining moment. A break with the sordid inequalities that predated our country’s birth and persisted long thereafter; an evolution into the best of what we always imagined this country could be.

Barack Obama’s election tonight and his inauguration will not solve all of our problems. Far from it. He faces a maelstrom of challenges—political, economic, foreign and domestic.

But he does so with the support of (it now appears) more than 50% of the voting electorate, and a groundswell of grass-roots engagement nearly unprecedented in modern politics. And even though I don’t agree with his every stance, his every utterance, I have the feeling he will do the extraordinary as President: he’ll listen.

Bradley Effect, Schmadley Effect: tens of millions of people of all backgrounds cast their ballots for an African American candidate today because they believed he was the best person for the job. That says a lot about us, to us—and to the rest of the world.

Congratulations, Senators Obama and Biden.

January 20^th, 2009 is no longer only Bush’s last day—it’s also now Obama’s first.

Monsoon

Monsoon's "Obama Bucks" Campaign Racism Update

Habari mori,

What better way to start off your Monday than with a little old-fashioned, vintage, unadulterated, and almost unbelievable conservative racism? (Big-ups to Tim for letting me know about this story!)

It comes in the form of a little cartoon that appeared in the October newsletter of the Chaffey County Republican Women, Federated (a volunteer group in San Bernardino, California that is not directly affiliated with the state Republican party). It reads “Obama Bucks” and depicts Barack Obama as a donkey on a fictional food stamp. Obama’s ass-likeness is surrounded by—I shit you not—watermelon, ribs, Kool-Aid, and a bucket of fried chicken.

Diane Fedele, President of the Chaffey County Republican Women, Federated, (you can reach her by email here) insisted that when she created the newsletter and included the picture, she was just trying to make a connection to Barack Obama’s statement that McCain’s campaign is trying to scare people away from voting for Obama because he “doesn’t look like all those other presidents on the dollar bills.” Fedele insists that she just saw food arrayed around him and didn’t notice what it was, denying there was any intent to invoke longstanding African American stereotypes.

“It never connected,” she said. “It was just food to me. It didn’t mean anything else.” As Sigmund Freud didn’t say, “Sometimes a bucket of fried chicken is just a bucket of fried chicken.” And sometimes, it’s goddamned racist.

“I absolutely apologize to anyone who was offended,” she said in her non-apology apology. “That clearly wasn’t my attempt.” “Clearly”? Really??

 The whole matter is complicated by the fact that the image was evidently created by a liberal blogger to satirize the bigoted attacks on Obama by small-government hating ultraconservatives. The image was apparently taken literally—as satire too often is—and forwarded among those fine citizens in the right-wing Nobama set. Eventually, good old Diane Fedele got ahold of the picture, plopped it in her little volunteer newsletter, and the rest is pure, racist gold.

Only 15 more days until the election…it’s almost over!

Monsoon

Monsoon "The Plumber" Martin's Final Presidential Debate Analysis

As entertaining and engaging as this third and final debate was on Wednesday night, I have to admit that I was “flipping” back and forth between MSNBC’s coverage and the Phillies-Dodgers game—and “flipping out” when the Phillies won the pennant with an impressive Game 5 victory. (The last time the Phils were in the World Series, I was in college; the last time they won the World Series, I was jumping up and down in my footy pajamas on the shag carpet in my parents’ living room.)

But now that I’ve had a proper frolic with the debate transcript and watched key clips online, I feel I can present an informed bit of analysis here.

Barack Obama went into the debate with a commanding lead in national polls (and those in swing states) ranging from six to sixteen points, so he’s essentially settled on a strategy of “running out the clock” and avoiding any mistakes—heaven knows, there are segments of the electorate that are still uncomfortable with the notion of voting for a Black man and are just looking for an excuse to switch allegiances.

The most striking contrast in the Hofstra debate, once again, was demeanor—and based on polling following the debate (58% of debate watchers in one poll rated Obama the winner, compared with 31% who felt McCain had the better showing), this is what most Americans responded to. John McCain projected agitation, bitterness, sarcasm, and frustration when Barack Obama would not wallow in the smear-sty with him. His eye-rolls, mock surprise, and furious scribblings on his notepad while Obama was speaking revealed a candidate who does not seem to be in control of his impulses and emotions.

On the other hand, Barack Obama was the epitome of cool. When McCain tried to goad him into the muck, when he made sneering comments and interrupted testily, Obama’s response bespoke a level, steady, and perpetually unflustered bearing. In this frighteningly uncertain economic climate, Americans are looking for—to use John McCain’s boating cliché, which I derisively referred to as a gardening metaphor in my previous post—a steady hand on the tiller. Based upon their appearances, their personal histories, and especially the foil of barking, sputtering rage provided by John McCain in the three presidential debates, Barack Obama is that steady hand.

While John McCain rudely and impertinently interrupted either moderater Bob Schieffer or Obama no fewer than twenty times throughout the debate, Barack Obama smiled indulgently (though this smile seemed a bit strained at times) at McCain’s attacks and paroxysms, then calmly but insistently offered his rejoinders.

There were some telling statements, exchanges, and recurring themes throughout the debate that may explain why many observers lauded Barack Obama’s performance—and yet, a feistier, more aggressive performance and a few zingers also led some to claim victory of Senator McCain. Not surprisingly, I beg to differ. Lemme splain.

John McCain was—like his Wasilla Chatty Cathy doll running mate—a one-note Johnny in repeating ideas, even when they had been successfully rebutted, and even when he sounded ridiculous doing so. Three examples of many: he described the American people as “angry” at least five times, clearly trying to tap into a wellspring of bitterness that might be directed at Obama; he thrice described his VP mate Sarah Palin as a “reformer” despite the fact that she was just found by an independent panel to have abused her power as governor in the Troopergate scandal; and he mentioned Joe the Plumber at least 17 times (that I was able to count) in insisting that Barack Obama was going to raise taxes and effectively make it impossible for small business owners to stay afloat—continuing along this line even after Obama had debunked McCain’s tenuous claims. McCain insisted that under Obama’s plan, “we’re going to take Joe’s money, give it to Senator Obama, and let him spread the wealth around. … [it’s] class warfare.” Surely most Americans realize that it’s not “class warfare” to provide tax relief for the working and middle classes while shifting some of the tax burden to the upper classes; it’s common fairness.

Another example of McCain repeating long-since-deflated stump soundbites was when he said, “We have to stop sending $700 billion a year to countries that don’t like us very much.” In fact, according to various sources (including the excellent fackcheck.org), the U.S. spends less than half that amount importing foreign oil—the majority of it from “friendly” countries like Canada.

He also reheated that little chicken nugget about the “$3 million for an overhead projector in a planetarium in his hometown” that Obama supposedly earmarked. Never mind that it was to overhaul the digital projection system at a science museum, part of a community revitalization effort undertaken with bipartisan support; Obama didn’t even dignify it with a response (though in this case, maybe he should have set the record straight). The lies, like the universe, are inscrutable, innumerable, and infinite in their scope.

Obama actually responded to the “spending freeze” proposed by McCain, describing it as a “hatchet” when a scalpel is needed: “Now, Senator McCain talks a lot about earmarks. That’s one of the centerpieces of his campaign. Earmarks account for 0.5% of the total Federal budget. There’s no doubt that the system needs reform and there are a lot of screwy things that we end up spending money on, and they need to be eliminated. But it’s not going to solve the problem.”

One of Barack Obama’s best “zingers” was tucked away in his response to a question about the economy, when he said that “the fundamentals of the economy were weak even before this latest crisis.” It successfully tied John McCain to the failed economic management policies of George W. Bush, and it alluded to McCain’s ridiculous assertions that “the fundamentals of the economy are strong” even as the markets began their historic collapse.

Speaking of “zingers,” John McCain seemed to get one in about a third of the way through the debate. When Obama noted that “Senator McCain voted for four out of five of President Bush’s budgets,” McCain retorted, “Senator Obama, I am not President Bush. If you wanted to run against President Bush, you should have run four years ago. I’m going to give a new direction to this economy in this country.”

True enough: he is not President Bush, and in fact engaged in a bitter primary fight against Bush in 2000. He’s clashed with the administration on torture. But facts are facts, as Barack Obama noted: “So the fact of the matter is that if I occasionally have mistaken your policies for George Bush’s policies, it’s because on the core economic issues that matter to the American people, on tax policy, on energy policy, on spending priorities, you have been a vigorous supporter of President Bush.” I’d call that exchange a tie.

The real (bull)shit hit the fan, though, when Schieffer asked the candidates if they were willing “to sit at this table and say to each other’s face what your campaigns and the people in your campaigns have said about each other?” In daring John McCain to confront Barack Obama with the most dearly-held smears involving Fannie Mae and William Ayers, Schieffer gave McCain the chance to either score significant points with his lunatic fringe base—which has been clamoring for him to do just that—or bitterly disappoint his wing-nuttiest supporters.

First, McCain blamed Obama for the skanky campaign McCain had been running: if only you had agreed to the “town hall” debates I proposed, we could have had 10 of them already, and we could have avoided all this ugliness. I would ask: who is running the negative ads, Senator McCain? You, ass.

Then he repeated a bit of outrageously manufactured outrage ( see this clip ) that he first disgorged in a television interview earlier in the week. “A man I admire and respect—I’ve written about him—Congressman John Lewis, an American hero, made allegations that Sarah Palin and I were somehow associated with the worst chapter in American history, segregation, deaths of children in church bombings, George Wallace. That, to me, was so hurtful.”

Congressman Lewis released a statement reacting to the fact that supporters of McCain and Palin were shouting such epithets as “terrorist,” “kill him!” “off with his head,” and “traitor” at rallies, and neither candidate condemned or repudiated these frothing fascists—in fact continuing to make statements that might incite such remarks. In his statement, Congressman Lewis said, in part, “What I am seeing reminds me too much of another destructive period in American history. Sen. McCain and Gov. Palin are sowing the seeds of hatred and division, and there is no need for this hostility in our political discourse.” Unassailably true. He went on to discuss the climate created by the likes of George Wallace—who “never threw a bomb” but nonetheless incited others to violence. Congressman Lewis later said his comments were a little over the top, and Obama’s campaign had nothing to do with the release of his original statement. It’s disingenuous and cheap for John McCain to simper with false outrage at this alleged wound.

McCain, for his part, insisted that he’s always repudiated inappropriate outbursts (he hasn’t), accused Obama of being permissive with similar outbursts at his appearances (he isn’t, so far as I’ve seen, sniping “we don’t need that” when his supporters began to boo at his mention of Senator McCain’s name last week), and issued the following backhanded endorsement of his own base: “Let me just say categorically I’m proud of the people that come to our rallies. Whenever you get a large rally of 10,000, 15,000, 20,000 people, you’re going to have some fringe people. You know that. And I’ve—and we’ve always said that that’s not appropriate.”

McCain also whimpered that Obama’s campaign had been running “attack ads” on his health care plan, on his position on immigration, and on stem cell research. Senator McCain, these are not attack ads. These are issue ads. They deal with legitimate policy and platform differences, which should be the basis for the electorate’s decision-making process. “Attack ads” are personal: assailing a candidate’s morality, his or her patriotism, his or her ethics. Swift Boat Veterans for Truth: those were attack ads. The pamphlets distributed by the Bush campaign in 2000 alleging that you’d fathered an illegitimate Black baby: those were attack ads. Willie Horton in 1988 was an attack ad, maybe the consummate one. And the ads seeking to connect Barack Obama with voter registration fraud in ACORN, with a domestic terrorist named William Ayers, with criminals: these are attack ads. (Obama noted that 100% of McCain’s ads were negative, which is true of the last few weeks, but a bit less so when examining the whole campaign.)

[I have to share a picture that depicts John McCain reacting in an almost unhingedly goofy way to walking the wrong direction offstage at the debate's conclusion.  I like to think he is actually retching and kecking because of the lies he's just told and the nasty, untethered turn his campaign has taken.  It has quickly become one of my favorite pictures in the whole wide world.]

Barack Obama’s response to these unsubstantiated smears and false outrage was to go on the offensive in an impressive way, seizing control of the debate’s tone. “Senator McCain’s own campaign said publicly last week that, if we keep on talking about the economic issues, we lose, so we need to change the subject.” In one sentence, he painted the McCain campaign as wildly desperate and cravenly unscrupulous. He also brought up the William Ayers issue, forcing John McCain to wield it, then masterfully and unequivocally undercut its relevance: “Mr. Ayers is not involved in my campaign. He has never been involved in this campaign. And he will not advise me in the White House. So that’s Mr. Ayers.” He went on to dismiss ACORN, which “had nothing to do with us,” and which in fact is a non-story. He finished by talking about who he does associate with, insisting that these will be the people who have inspired him and who will shape his policies in the White House. When McCain interrupted, as he did often, reasserting his incorrect or incomplete information, Obama responded with a firm but unruffled “that’s absolutely not true” or “that’s just not so.” He laid the ethical smackdown: “And I think that the fact that this [Ayers issue] has become such an important part of your campaign, Senator McCain, says more about your campaign than it says about me.” Boo-ya!

Obama’s most powerful statement along this line of discussion punctuated the Lewis matter and disabled McCain’s attacks: “The important point here is, though, the American people have become so cynical about our politics, because all they see is a tit-for-tat and back-and-forth. And what they want is the ability to just focus on some really big challenges that we face right now, and that’s what I have been trying to focus on this entire campaign.” He later reiterated a call to “disagree without being disagreeable,” no doubt calling many viewers’ attention to the sighing, mugging, histrionics of the disgruntled candidate to his left.

A few of John McCain’s statements went beyond mere condescension into outright belligerence, and in at least once case, racism. On NAFTA, he said, “By the way, when Senator Obama said he would unilaterally renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement, the Canadians said, ‘Yes, and we’ll sell our oil to China.’ You don’t tell countries you’re going to unilaterally renegotiate agreements with them.” This was punctuated by a Cheshire Cat grin and stageworthy eye roll for full effect.

Another time, when discussing the need to become independent of foreign energy sources, McCain said, “Well you know, I admire so much Senator Obama’s eloquence. And you really have to pay attention to words. He said, we will ‘look at offshore drilling.’ Did you get that? ‘Look at.’ We can offshore drill now.” First of all, whether he intended it or not—and I’m loath to give McCain the benefit of the doubt, even in this case—calling Obama “eloquent” recalls the racist, paternalistic praise historically directed toward African Americans who speak “well,” using standard English, as “articulate.” Secondly, it’s just another example of McCain’s fearmongering: this smooth-talking Black dude is using euphemistic language to bilk you all.

More fearmongering, this time turning Obama’s health care plan into a nightmare of socialized medicine, bureaucratic gridlock, and six-month waits for surgery: “Senator Obama wants to set up health care bureaucracies, take over the health care of America through—as he said, his object is a single-payer system.”

Senator McCain also spent some time hammering away at base-pleasing ideas like curtailing government intrusion: “Hey, Joe, you’re rich, congratulations. Because what Joe wanted to do way buy the business that he’s been working for 10-12 hours a day, seven days a week, and you said that you wanted to spread the wealth, but—in other words, take Joe’s money and then you decide what to do with it,” he sputtered. “Now, Joe, you’re rich, congratulations,” he repeated inanely.

When Bob Schieffer brought up Roe v. Wade and the abortion issue, I was disappointed because I see this as a “wedge” culture war issue that has—at least in the past 25 years or so—been a distraction from more pressing national affairs in politics. But their exchanges revealed a whole lot about each candidate.

Obama hewed to his platform in declaring, “But what I ultimately believe is that women in consultation with their families, their doctors, their religious advisers, are in the best position to make this decision.” McCain, likewise, spoke of a “culture of life” and declared himself “proudly pro-life.” After McCain tried to stymie Obama by bringing up a couple of “present” votes in the Illinois legislature, Obama explained them away easily.

“With respect to partial-birth abortion, I am completely supportive of a ban on late-term abortions, partial-birth or otherwise, as long as there’s an exception for the mother’s health and life, and this [bill for which Obama voted ‘present’] did not contain that exception.” He went on to say that he hopes the divergent viewpoints on abortion can be “reconciled.”

Senator McCain, rather than joining his opponent in exploring this spirit of reconciliation, attacked Obama for being well-spoken: “Just again, the example of the eloquence of Senator Obama. He’s health for the mother. You know, that’s been stretched by the pro-abortion movement in America to mean almost anything. That’s the extreme pro-abortion position: quote, ‘health.’” John McCain’s statement is breathtaking in its utter disregard for women’s health and right to choose. That’s right, Senator McCain, when you start guaranteeing exceptions for the “health” or “safety” of the mother, who knows what kind of guaranteed rights these women will want next.

The final topic of the night was education: Obama is for early childhood education initiatives like Head Start, offer teachers “higher pay” and “give them more professional development and support in exchange for higher standards and accountability.” I find this a little alarming because it seems to open the door for merit pay and testing, but he’s spoken against these two trends in the past, so I remain hopeful that Barack Obama will be an education-friendly President.

But McCain is even more alarming in his educational priorities (he’s for vouchers, hard) and his disdain for Head Start: “By the third grade many times children who were in the Head Start program aren’t any better off than the others.” In fact, a number of studies have been done over the past 40 years or so since Head Start was introduced, and the results have been mixed: in some cases, little discernible benefit can be found when comparing students who attended Head Start with those who did not. But: these studies are notoriously difficult to place methodological controls on, making their results less valid in measuring benefits and less reliable in predicting future benefits. In addition, there have been more than a few studies that suggest the benefits of Head Start participation are very real, in both the short- and long-term: vocabulary, phonemic awareness, self-esteem, healthful living, community awareness, and critical thinking have been shown to benefit in many children from Head Start programs. With a cavalier wave of the hand, John McCain made the chronically underfunded and underappreciated program seem like an utter failure and complete waste of resources.

It was in Barack Obama’s closing statement that I think he connected best with the independent and moderate Democrat voters he needs to win this election: “We need fundamental change in this country, and that’s what I’d like to bring. … But it’s not going to be easy. It’s not going to be quick. It is going to be requiring all of us—Democrats, Republicans, independents—to come together and to renew a spirit of sacrifice and service and responsibility. I’m absolutely convinced we can do it. I would ask for your vote, and I promise you that if you give me the extraordinary honor of serving as your President, I will work every single day, tirelessly, on your behalf and on the behalf of the future of our children.”

In eighteen days, we’ll see if the electorate will give him that chance.

Monsoon

Monsoon Martin's "Town Hall" Presidential Debate Analysis for 7 October 2008

My friends,

[a phrase I’m hereby retiring because it’s a gratingly ingratiating verbal tic of John McCain’s]

I haven’t written about the presidential election for some weeks (since the “Moose Shootin’ Mama” post, which just about depleted my life-force). Over all, I have to say I’m just goddamned sick of it all: the plans, the surrogates, the smears, the ads, the interviews, the debates, the pundits, the polls. What else is there really to learn about either of these candidates? I am flabbergasted at the notion that there are undecided voters left at all. I’d just like to see the election take place tomorrow and end this foolishness already.

All that said, I’ve watched all three debates thus far and will watch the fourth, as my political junkie-hood cannot remain unfed for long.

I don’t have much to say about the first two debates, especially given that so much has already been written and discussed about them. In the initial presidential debate, I thought Barack Obama acquitted himself very well, and that John McCain came off as a seething, petulant pee-pee-pants when challenged on his falsehoods; I also found it troubling that he seemed unable (or unwilling) to look his opponent in the eye when the ineffectual moderator Jim Lehrer tried to get the two to interact.

The Biden-Palin vice-presidential debate was such a farce that I can scarcely comment. It was like watching an infomercial for Mary Kay Cosmetics and C-SPAN coverage of a Senate debate on split-screen coverage. Sarah Palin’s relentlessly, manically folksy verbal tics (“bless their hearts,” “you betcha,” “Joe Six-Pack,” “shout-out,” ad nauseam) and the fact that she—brazenly, admittedly—refused to actually answer most of the questions asked of her just proved that she is incapable of leadership or nimble thought. Listening to her parrot the party line that had been drilled into her—and in that jarring, customer-service-clerk-at-a-Wasilla-Wal-Mart voice—was almost literally too much for me to stand.

I found tonight’s debate a little more interesting, though, and despite the fact that it was not all that “town-hall-y” at all, I’ll share some thoughts.

Barack Obama scored some points right away by noting that AIG executives (my former employer, again making me proud) had spent $440,000 on an extravagant junket after the company was “bailed out” by the US government, and calling for these executives to be fired. John McCain’s response was to try and ply the slimy trade of tying Obama to Fannie Mae (or was it Freddie Mac? Who can tell the difference?) in terms of fundraising and lobbying.

It was here—early on—that I feel Barack Obama asserted his control over the debate, and may have established himself as the winner. He answered the question that had been posed by an audience member, and then said, “And I’ve just got to correct Senator McCain’s history, not surprisingly.” He answered the F.M. charge (see? easier) effortlessly by alluding to McCain’s record of deregulation, then said, “But you’re not interested in hearing a couple of politicians pointing fingers at one another; you want to hear how the economic realities are going to affect your lives.”

[A note about quotations: these are based upon my fevered jottings during the debate—I haven’t examined a transcript—and are accurate in spirit if not in precise wording.]

What Barack Obama was able to do there was to make John McCain look desperate—like a candidate who would say anything to get elected, even distort the truth. Then he placed himself (but not McCain) above the political fray, positioning himself as the one candidate who wants to move beyond dirty politics and personal attacks. It was an absolute masterstroke.

The other aspect of Obama’s debating prowess I felt was especially strong tonight was his anticipation of McCain’s rebuttal arguments and casual decimation thereof.

John McCain seemed halting and awkward during the debate, and I think he continued to come off as erratic and inauthentic, which is painfully apparent to American voters. Maybe at one time, and in some situations, he was truly a “maverick”; but now, he seems unmoored and at the whim of political efficacy. As Gertrude Stein once observed about Los Angeles (but I think applies here in describing the candidate): “There’s no there there.”

McCain mentioned some sort of “pork barrel” earmark that Barack Obama apparently secured for his home district—a $3 million overhead projector for a planetarium in Chicago. I don’t know the full story here, but I think most people realize that politicians are elected to serve the best interests of their constituents—and they’ve learned not to trust McCain’s every word, so I’d wonder if this would truly fall under the umbrella of “wasteful” spending. The grizzly bear study McCain referenced in the first debate, for example, has come back to (sorry for the pun, but you’re welcome for the image) bite him in the ass: it turns out McCain voted for the study his own damn self. Finally, I just wonder if this is really going to resonate with the American people?

When asked what sacrifices each candidate would ask the American people to make in addressing the country’s problems, Barack Obama had a brilliant response: he said he wouldn’t tell the American people to “go shopping,” as GWB did after 9/11, but would instead ask the American people to look for ways to conserve energy and to seek volunteering opportunities, expanding programs like the Peace Corps.

Throughout the debate, I noticed that Obama stepped on the red lights—he exceeded time limits and the agreed-upon debate rules to get his points across. I applaud his tactics in taking control of the debate; unlike Sarah Palin, who undermined the rules and refused to respond to the questions at all, Obama used his overages to expound upon his ideas and debunk the allegations slung by McCain.

A few notes about McCain's gaffes/falsehoods: he again (falsely) claimed that he "suspended" his campaign to address the financial crisis, and referred to Barack Obama as "that one," as in, "you'd never know who voted for it--that one," about an energy bill.  "And you know he voted against it?  Me," he added with a shit-eating grin.  I'm not going to say "that one" was racist, but it at the very least revealed an irritable and dismissive temperament.

John McCain said that trying to define Obama’s tax plan is like trying to “nail Jell-O to the wall” in that Obama’s proposals keep changing. Here we go with the charming idioms again. (Note to self: try nailing actual Jell-O to an actual wall. I don’t think it would be as impossible as the idiom suggests, particularly if it is nice and firm.) McCain keeps insisting that Obama will raise taxes on all kinds of people (including 50% of small businesses) despite the inconvenience that the facts belie this notion. It’s the politics of fear: the big government, big spending liberal will take money out of your pockets. Meanwhile, the runaway spending of the Bush administration (defense contractors, mercenaries, in Iraq, the war itself, the bailouts, and on and on) has saddled the nation with its largest-ever deficit. McCain says, “Let’s not raise anybody’s taxes,” when any sane person knows it’s just not possible to do that and pay the country’s bills. Obama’s rejoinder—“The Straight Talk Express lost a wheel on that one”—had me cheering. In point of fact, Barack Obama’s tax plan calls for cuts to be enacted for 95% of Americans.

In terms of rhetorical strength, Obama effectively tainted McCain with the tang of the Bush administration’s policies, successfully linking the two at least three separate times.

Let me go back to John McCain’s demeanor for a moment. While Obama is answering questions, McCain is wandering around the stage, fidgeting, and even once or twice gesturing to someone offstage, doddering around distractingly. When McCain is speaking, Obama sits quietly. The contrast is striking.

Random observation: both McCain and Obama are left-handed. (The next President would be the eighth lefty—though the number is disputed—to hold the office, and the first since Bill Clinton.) Disclosure: I am left-handed, and once owned a pin that read, “Kiss Me, I’m Left-Handed.” I wore it to school at least once when I was in elementary school. True story: no one did.

McCain just said, “our wonderful Ronald Reagan.” I find that troubling and creepy and weird.

A significant contrast between the two candidates—and one that I think needs to be examined more closely by Americans who have a knee-jerk aversion to “liberal” policies—is the role of government in our lives. It emerged during a discussion of the candidates’ health care plans. According to John McCain (and Palin, in her debate), the government is a wasteful, soul-sucking, inept behemoth that intrudes into people’s lives. Barack Obama (rightly, I think) looks at government as an instrument of the people’s will: it is set up (on the local, state, and national levels) to carry out needed projects, to protect its citizens, to assist them in myriad ways, and to expand their opportunities. It’s admittedly imperfect, and sometimes bureaucratic to the point of gridlock, but it’s necessary, it would seem. Barack Obama said, “It is important for government to crack down on insurance companies that are cheating their customers.” John McCain wants to shrink government—he even said he’d look to eliminate some agencies and initiatives when addressing his first budget.

Obama said that John McCain “believes in deregulation in every circumstance.” Well-stated, and I think it’s proving difficult for him to shake this reputation. If the polls are any indication, McCain’s bungling of the financial crisis—and his shaky record on the economy, dating back to the Keating Five scandal—has not gone unnoticed by potential voters. McCain alleged that Obama will levy fines against individuals and small businesses that do not insure their children and workers, respectively. Obama answered, but as Brokaw went on to the next question, McCain sneered, “Are we going to hear the size of the fine?” He sounded aggressive, huffy, and foolish.

On to foreign policy: McCain said that “America is the greatest force for good in the history of the world” (ask the indigenous peoples of this land, Africans, Mexicans, and the Vietnamese about this, to name just a portion of those who would dispute this claim) and “we are peacekeepers and peacemakers” (peace through war: it’s 1984) the world over. McCain snidely asserted that Obama is not ready to be commander-in-chief: “We don’t have time for on-the-job training, my friend.” He also insists that a “cool hand on the tiller” is needed in deploying troops for humanitarian purposes (and later wraps up by saying we need a “steady hand on the tiller”), using a gardening metaphor that he’s trotted out many times before. I’m left shaking my head: old temper-tantrum McCain is the steady hand on the tiller?!

Obama answered McCain’s charges of inexperience on foreign policy in a brilliant way: “Senator McCain is fond of saying that I don’t understand. It’s true. There are some things I don’t understand: I don’t understand how we ended up invading a country that had nothing to do with 9/11, while Osama Bin Laden and Al Qaeda are setting up base camps and safe havens to train terrorists to attack us. That was Sen. McCain's judgment and it was the wrong judgment.”

Senator McCain made a reference to his hero, Teddy Roosevelt, who actually said, “Speak softly and carry a big stick, and you will go far,” quoting an African adage to describe his foreign policy. Tonight, McCain said, “Walk softly … talk softly and carry a big stick. Senator Obama likes to talk loudly.” Huh? Not only did he botch the most famous quote uttered by his hero, but his assertion that Obama speaks “loudly” (Obama allegedly had announced that we were going to invade Pakistan, which he never said) is ridiculous when compared with the bellicose foreign policy of Bush (“bring it on,” anyone?) supported by McCain. Jeez.

A telling exchange: Obama said, “Just a quick follow-up…” and McCain barked, “If we’re gonna have follow-ups, then I’ve gotta have one too…” and there was crosstalk while Brokaw sought to reassure the pouty septuagenarian that he would, indeed, have his own follow-up. What a crotchety prick.

Obama used a mixed metaphor: “Senator McCain says I am green behind the ears…” It’s just “green” (inexperienced) or “wet behind the ears” (i.e., just born, with amniotic fluid still clinging to the fold between the ear and neck). “Green behind the ears” sounds like the first symptom of scurvy.

Obama called McCain on his “Bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran,” sung to the tune of “Barbara Ann,” at a rally to illustrate McCain’s “speaking loudly” about foreign policy matters. McCain responded that “I hate to get into this” at all but explained that he’d simply been “joking” with a veteran friend of his when he sang that. Joking about going to war: classy. I think on this one, he just sank himself deeper into his own pit of hawkish bullshit.

I’m losing patience and nearly consciousness by this point, given that I’ve been watching and reading their speeches, their debates, their position papers for what seems like several years now. It’s all flowing together into one great big river of red-white-and-blue verbal vomit. I’m ready for Barack Obama to stop campaigning and start governing.

Speaking of which, McCain just repeated a line from the previous debate and from countless speeches: “When I look into Vladimir Putin’s eyes, I see three letters, K, G, and B.” In answering a question about avoiding a renewed Cold War with Russia, isn’t he actually advocating a Cold War? Almost pining away for the Cold War by invoking the KGB?

The final question is a great one: “What don’t you know, and how will you learn it?” apparently from some hippie in New Hampshire. The question had potential, but unfortunately each candidate dodged it (“What I do know is…”) and ended with his stump speech. McCain, after referencing his prisoner-of-war ordeal and military service, said he wants another chance to serve his country.

Over all, I don’t think McCain did anything to reverse the downward spiral of his poll numbers; Obama continued to look unflappable and “presidential.” And I am going to bed, more desperate than ever for this blasted election to happen already (27 days and counting!).

As always, I welcome your own observations and comments…

Monsoon

Monsoon Martin's Sarah "Moose Shootin' Mama" Palin Election Update

The latest news about Republican Vice-Presidential candidate Sarah Palin—aside from the McCain campaign’s continued refusal to make her available for press conferences, as well as her suddenly uncooperative stance regarding the Alaska attorney general’s investigation into the scandal that’s become known as Troopergate—is that she’s got a new campaign song. (It seems the 80s girl-rockers Heart nixed the McCain campaign’s use of “Barracuda”—after Sarah’s nickname—when introducing her at events.)

Palin’s people have chosen a song written by Pat Garrett, local sheepskin merchant and country-western singer/songwriter who lives in Strausstown (in northern Berks County—again, the pride I feel here is almost vomitous) called “Moose Shootin’ Mama.”

I’m going to let that song title—and the fact that it was chosen as the theme song for a major party’s Vice-Presidential candidate—sink in for a moment while before I go on, because when I first read about this, I almost felt I could not continue. You may even want to get up, take a brisk walk, have a snack (no—you might want to head into this post on an empty stomach), and prepare yourself emotionally for the details.

“Moose Shootin’ Mama” will be played at rallies and appearances (and maybe even when she takes the stage for next Thursday’s VP debate, a la the tune accompanying a boxer as he makes his way to the ring) between now and the election—when hopefully it will be consigned to the scrapheap of election-season oddities and Sarah Palin fades back into Alaskan obscurity.

Pat Garrett, who has an amphitheater in Strausstown featuring country music performances, and makes area appearances (including the Pat Garrett Country Jubilee Dinner Show at Riveredge in November, a surefire barnburner), has written “topical” songs in the past, including “The Saddam Stomp” (sample lyrics: “We’re the USA, / and we’re on the way, / it’s gonna be a romp, / you’re gonna get stomped, / a-hey-hey”) and “The Monica Lewinsky Polka” (sample lyrics: “Hey Monica! / Oh Monica! / Put on your blue dress / and get under my desk / mm-hmm!”), among other songs.

[Alright, I made up the lyrics for the Monica song; I haven’t heard it and wasn’t able to find it. But I’m guessing they’re at about that intellectual level, anyway. The Saddam lyrics are all too real, as are the ones below.]

As much as I wish I could go back to the time before I read an article about this song, before I actually heard the thing—several times, because I needed to report it to you fine people—before I heard of Pat Garrett, and indeed, before I had ever heard of Sarah Palin…sadly, it cannot be. The bell cannot be unrung. The cows are out of the barn. Whatever. It’s all over.

Here are the lyrics for “Moose Shootin’ Mama” in their entirety. I swear they are real:

Well she’s a moose shootin’ mama
And she’ll help keep our country free
She’s a moose shootin’ mama
She’ll make a great VP

When she looks you in the eye
You know that girl just don’t lie
She’s a moose shootin’ mama
Yes, Sarah is the girl for me

She’ll help the prez keep our taxes down
And clean up Washington
Get them pork-barrel boys on the run
Man, this is gonna be fun

And it’s drill, baby, drill
Cause we’re paying way too much
Maybe what this country needs is a woman’s touch

It would be almost redundant to bother with a full-on explication of these lyrics, which manage to both praise and condescend paternalistically to the first female Republican Vice-Presidential nominee in history. Equally as redundant would be a point-by-point panning of the pungent awfulness of the song, riddled as it is with tired clichés and forced rhymes. But I can’t help myself: “drill, baby, drill”?! Breathe, Monsoon, breathe.

If you’re a glutton for punishment, check out the video of Pat Garrett’s interview and performance of “Moose Shootin’ Mama” on Fox 29’s “Good Day Philadelphia” or a video which features the song playing across a backdrop of Palin photos.

In other Palin news, I wanted to direct you to a webpage called “The Truth About Sarah Palin,” which has anecdotes, some alarming (and—be warned—kind of disturbing) pictures, as well as a fully annotated list of reasons (from legitimate, reliable sources) one should think twice before voting for a McCain/Palin ticket; it includes such breathtaking revelations as “She promotes aerial hunting of wolves and bears [from airplanes]” who “offered a bounty of $150 for each front leg of freshly killed wolves,” and “As mayor of Wasilla, she made rape victims pay for their own forensic evidence kits.” Damning stuff.

Finally, I have been reading and hearing about folks across this vast country who have “fallen for” Sarah Palin—they watched her speech, they see her interviews, and they’re drawn to her in ways (and for reasons) even they can’t fully explain. They’re turning up at rallies screaming like 11-year-old girls at a Jonas Brothers concert, and putting McCain/Palin signs in their yards. Setting aside theories sexist (they quite simply think she’s hot) and conspiratorial (the Republican Party embedded digital mind-control signals in the broadcasted speech), I think it’s important for Democrats—and all of us interested in electoral politics—to find out why.

I know Sarah Palin’s popularity is waning after the “bump” of her speech (and the fact that she was a shiny new object on the national stage)—her “favorable ratings” went down 10 points net in just a few days, perhaps due to the persistent lying of the McCain campaign, and perhaps because some Americans, instead of taking the campaign’s word that she’s “good people,” have stuck their heads up the butcher’s ass and seen the real bull’s … asshole? Head? The bull’s head is a t-bone? (Damn, how does that go?) Anyway, she’s still far more popular than seems reasonable to me, and she could (in my deepest, darkest nightmares, I must admit) tip the election.

And so I ask you this, my dear readers: Why? I’m looking for theories from Obama supporters, undecideds, and the indifferent. I’m also (and especially) looking for any Palin supporters reading this to email me with their reasons. Call up your Aunt Linda, who once supported Hillary Clinton but now supports the McCain/Palin ticket, and ask her: Why? I seriously need to know. Tell me. Make me understand. I’m not kidding. Spill it.

Thank you.

Monsoon

Monsoon Martin's Open Letter to White People re: Barack Obama

National polls conducted since the end of the Republican National Convention have shown John McCain with a lead over Barack Obama as high as four percentage points, but that’s not even the aspect of the poll I found most alarming. Recent polling indicates that “whites” support McCain over Obama at a rate of 55-60% to 35-40% consistently—nearly 20 percentage points in most polls.

Now, I don’t trust polls, particularly in this election that features millions of newly registered voters, comprised of Democrats over Republicans at a rate of 2 to 1; and in which (mostly) young voters who have only cell phones are not being reached by traditional polling methods. But the resurgence of the McCain campaign since adding the Barracuda to the ticket is undeniable—there are (overwhelmingly white) people across this land who have been taken in by Sarah Palin’s “jus’ folks” persona and plainspoken convictions. (I have spent more than a little time over the past two weeks dissecting and directing vitriol toward Alaska Governor and Vice-Presidential candidate Sarah Palin—some have commented that my visceral reaction to her ascendancy has been “obsessive” and even “worrisome”—so I won’t belabor that point. At least not right now. Just prior to the election, I will present my list of reasons why not to vote for John McCain, for the undecided or McCain-leaning voters in my audience.)

And finally, I’m getting a little hinked out about the potential for the so-called Wilder Effect. This refers to the 1989 gubernatorial election in Virginia in which Democrat Douglas Wilder (African American) ran against Republican Marshall Coleman (white): polling in the days before the election indicated that Wilder would win the office comfortably, by at least a 9% margin; he actually won by a half-percent, a result so close it had to be verified by recount. It seems—as the theory runs, supported by post-election polling and studies—some white folks had told pollsters they would vote for Wilder, had walked into the polling place intending to vote for Wilder, but once the curtain closed, they just could not bring themselves to pull the lever for a Black man.

The fact that racism still exists in this country in many forms is as undeniable as the fact that many white people supported and continue to support the candidacy of Barack Obama—not despite or because of his racial heritage, but with indifference to it. But consider this: while current national polling reveals 5% of whites admit they would not vote for Obama because he is Black, exit polling after the Democratic Pennsylvania primary indicated that more than one in six white voters who chose a candidate other than Obama did so because of his race.

All of these factors have me and some other progressives contemplating the unthinkable fewer than 50 days before the election: that John McCain could actually end up winning the goddamned thing. And so, I need to have a chat with the white people who will decide this election—Hispanics are supporting Obama at a rate of 66% or higher, while African-Americans are going for the Democratic ticket at greater than 90% in most polls. Yes, white folks, it wasn’t enough to colonize this land and control its inhabitants, its corporate holdings, its commerce, and its government, its judiciary, for 400 years; now you’re going to be the key factor in deciding whether this nation, whose past is so stained with the wretched heritage of bigotry, will elect its first Black president. Whites, Caucasians, ofays, crackers, honkys: I’m talking to you.

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Dear White People,

It has come to my attention that despite Barack Obama’s historic campaign, despite the millions of people from all walks of life who support him, and despite the fact that Republicans have sent this great country shimmying down the shitpipe over the past seven-plus years, a nearly two-to-one majority of you say you will not be voting for the Democratic ticket in November.

I know some of you are scared. You’ve been worked up into a lather by right-wing talk show hosts, pundits, email chains, and your screwy Uncle Jed, who have all told you of the horrors that will be visited upon the American populace if Barack Obama should be allowed to take the Oath of Office.

My melanin-challenged friends, I need you to take a long, brutally honest look inside yourselves—down “in places you don’t talk about at parties” (Col. Nathan Jessup, USMC, in A Few Good Men)—and figure out just what’s stopping you from supporting Senator Obama. I have strong doubts that it’s because you feel passionate about the candidacy of John McCain, one of the least-compelling candidates I can recall.

It’s OK. Your old pal Monsoon is here to help you deal with the fallout from this potentially unpleasant journey of soul-searching. The reason I’ve contacted you, White America, is to reassure you about some key points that may have found their way into your subconscious “Why I don’t want to vote for that Obama guy” litany—either through your email inbox, impromptu discussions at the grocery store, or even through years of internalized messages about race and racism in America.

• One of the most persistent and pervasive rumors—10% of respondents in most polls report that they believe this is true—is that Barack Hussein Obama is a radical Muslim who took his oath of office as Senator from Illinois on a Koran instead of a Bible. As President, his “geographical allegiance” would be to Mecca—where adherents of Islam direct their prayers—rather than to the country he has been elected to lead. In fact, the rumors suggest, he is only seeking the presidency in the hope of waging global jihad from inside the White House. (Pundits on Fox News and CNN have even referred to him as “Osama” in an unforgivably Freudian slip.) Not that it should really matter in a country that prides itself on being a “melting pot” of diversity, tolerance, and freedom of worship, but Barack Obama has repeatedly stated he’s a Christian, and there is no credible evidence that he attended an Indonesian madrassa (radical Muslim school) as a youth. Do any of you recall the shitstorm that rained down on him for the incendiary comments of his pastor and longtime spiritual mentor, Jeremiah Wright? I think that pretty much seals it.

• Another tack in the “smearing” of Obama’s spiritual values goes something like this: Actually, he’s not a Muslim or a Christian; he’s an atheist who will infest the world with his godlessness and trample on the rights of Christians. Well, now this is damning, quite literally. In a country where 85%-90% of its citizens believe in God—and 60%-70% believe in angels—it is understandable that folks would want a President who shares their religious values. But it’s a crying shame, too, that Americans can’t look beyond this sort of thing and realize that a lack of religious conviction does not necessarily preclude an individual from exhibiting values like charity, empathy, and fairness. In fact, look at the example of born-again Christian George W. Bush, who has said repeatedly that God “speaks through” him and directs his decisions, particularly those that shore up U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Anyhoo, Barack Obama is an avowed Christian. End of story.

• Barack Obama, according to some widely distributed email chains, is the antichrist. He is the “King of South” (referencing Daniel)—since he is “from” Kenya, which is south of Jerusalem—who shall “shall do as he pleases, exalting himself and making himself greater than any god; he shall utter dreadful blasphemies against the God of gods.” The antichrist is described in John as a man who will have incredible charisma, who will gain the backing of millions of followers through his promises of bringing peace and instilling hope, and who will ultimately establish dominion over the entire world, turning God’s creation into a reeking hell, according to the emails. The Book of Revelation describes the fact that the antichrist will be a Muslim man in his 40s who will rule for 42 months (almost a full Presidential term). He will come mounted on a white female horse (and Obama’s mother had six African husbands—nice misogynistic conflation of a female horse with Obama’s mama, Ann Dunham, who seems to have actually been married just twice, and only once to an African man). Obama “hails from” Chicago, whose zip code is 60606 (see those three sixes?).  In point of fact, the book of Revelation does mention a beast, “[a]nd there was given unto him a mouth speaking great things and blasphemies; and power was given unto him to continue forty and two months.” But there’s nothing about the “beast” (no mention of antichrist in the New Testament) being and in his 40s of Muslim descent, and nothing about a horse. In addition—oh, screw it. If you truly believe that Barack Obama is the antichrist, then you need more help than I can give you, or indeed than the finest psychiatric facilities can provide. Besides, everyone knows that the real antichrist is the incomparable überstar of stage, screen, and song, David Hasselhoff.

• Another popular argument insists that Barack Obama will favor Blacks over whites in his policy-making. (He’s even been “endorsed” by Louis Farrakhan, for god’s sakes.) If this were true, couldn’t it also be said that a white President, simply by virtue of his skin color, would ignore Black issues? (Kanye West’s observation that “George Bush doesn’t care about Black people” after the criminally negligent Katrina response notwithstanding, you see the point I’m trying to make.) In point of fact, Barack Obama has been assailed by many in his own community for failing to address issues like civil rights and poverty aggressively enough. The Rev. Jesse Jackson even commented into a “hot mike” that he’d like to “cut [Obama’s] nuts off” for making speeches insisting that Black fathers take responsibility for their children, a fairly conservative viewpoint. To be sure, Barack Obama’s diverse racial heritage makes him uniquely attuned to issues of race—his platform includes promises to strengthen civil rights laws and end racial profiling—but he’s not going to establish a D.C. (“Dark Country,” as Richard Pryor memorably fantasized about the District of Columbia) once elected. Barack Obama has been described as the first “postracial” candidate: he has garnered support for his policies and his abilities, not typically because of, or in spite of, his race. (Even his “race speech” in Philadelphia, perhaps his most famous address, focused on transcending rather than celebrating racial differences.) So: he’s not going to institute mandatory break-dancing lessons on the South Lawn or commission Ludacris to write a new hip-hop National Song "Starz and Stripez (Fo' Yo' Ass)" to replace “The Star-Spangled Banner.” Play dates, scrapbooking bees, and Mary Kay cosmetics demonstrations will continue unabated. Banana Republic will remain open for business and fully stocked with khaki. John Tesh concerts will, unfathomably, go on as scheduled. Your Netflix queue will not be disrupted. Take a deeeeeep breath. There.

• In a related line of thinking, sky-is-falling types suggest that Michelle Obama hates her country, will wield too much power in influencing her husband, flaunts her support of terrorism by fist-bumping her husband, and will invite militant Black Power groups like the Panthers to stay in the Lincoln Bedroom. It has been alleged (in footnoted diatribes, increasing their apparent legitimacy) that in her Princeton thesis she wrote that America was founded on “crime and hatred” and that white people are “ineradicably racist.” But thorough checks of her thesis have revealed that neither of these phrases appear anywhere in the thesis. Some think that, like her husband, she will “elevate black over white,” but no evidence exists to suggest this would come to pass. Surely, as I said above, she will advocate for some of the issues—welfare reform, poverty, affordable housing, crime—that disproportionately affect the Black community. But as she would be the first African American First Lady, it would be a squandered opportunity not to address these problems. Finally, regarding Michelle Obama, there’s the matter of her comment in February that “For the first time in my adult life, I am proud of my country, because it feels like hope is making a comeback.” Okay, bad choice of words there, admittedly. But she was celebrating the fact that people of all races had come together behind her husband, a step many would have deemed highly unlikely prior to this historic election season.

• Some pundits and even ordinary folks like to paint Obama as an ivory-tower elitist because of his Harvard Education and the fact that his manner seems erudite and even aloof at times. He thinks he’s smarter than everyone else, the argument goes, and he has trouble relating to ordinary folks. (Some of you call him “arrogant” or “uppity,” an observation that has its roots in a time of more overt and limiting racism when Blacks had to stay “in their place.” Surely his affect is not more arrogant than that of Bill Clinton, yet few people have dwelt on his “uppity” manner.) First, to address the elitism: one does not work successfully as a community organizer in the most impoverished sections of Chicago, as Obama did, by being an out-of-touch elitist. Second, Barack Obama will not make you feel stupid—unless you are. Has it occurred to you that our President should be smarter than we are? He’s faced with entrenched, complex problems in every area of his governance—foreign policy, the domestic economy, healthcare, environmental stewardship, and more—so I’d just as soon see a guy with an egghead in the White House. (Not to beat a lame duck, but we’ve just suffered through seven and a half years of being led by a guy who graduated Yale with a C average, with seemingly no natural curiosity, who has led more with his “gut” than with his brain. And look how well that’s turned out.) Finally: the very notion that John McCain, who owns nine houses (so many that he’s lost count) and whose wife, Cindy, is worth at least $100 million, would call Barack Obama an elitist is absurd on its face.

• It has also been circulated that Obama refuses to say the Pledge of Allegiance and won’t wear a flag pin, and is therefore unpatriotic. He’s in the “blame America first” crowd and will not exhibit the love of country needed to govern correctly. Oh, here we go again with the slippery definitions. Specifically, what is patriotism? If wrapping yourself in the flag and a horrific national tragedy as you send thousands of inadequately equipped young people to die in (and mercilessly bomb) a sovereign nation, then cut veterans’ benefits, is patriotic, then President Bush surely is. If patriotism is standing by idly as more than 2,000 citizens on the Gulf Coast perish due to the ineptness of a grossly underfunded agency headed by one of your cronies, then let’s have a big “God Bless America” for W. again. If it’s patriotic to offer your buddies in big business tax breaks for outsourcing American jobs, moving plants abroad, and polluting the environment, then by all means, let’s hear it for G-Dub. I, on the other hand, prefer to define patriotism in the following way: a true patriot will be eternally vigilant in evaluating and criticizing his government; a true patriot loves his country too much to see it hijacked by the religious right and neo-conservative war-hawks. And finally: the pictures that purport to show Obama refusing to put his hand on his heart during the Pledge were actually snapped during the Anthem, and he’s singing. As for the flag pin, I can’t fathom a more trivial matter with which to concern ourselves during this dire time in America.

• I have heard that his tax plan will raise taxes on all of us to pay for his social programs, driving us into a recession; his economic plan will harm American businesses, hamstring the free market, and cost American jobs. Hello? The economic climate now—under a Republican administration—is not looking too rosy. For a supposed “conservative,” G.W. Bush has played fast and loose with the national treasury in funding a war of aggression against a nation that posed no threat to the United States, subsidized companies doing business in Iraq, bailed out two mortgage giants and now the world’s largest insurer (AIG), etc. Obama’s tax plan would actually provide tax relief for 150 million working families and shift the burden onto the super-rich. He would also seek to hold companies accountable for unethical practices, tax windfall profits, protect workers’ rights to organize, raise the minimum wage, crack down on predatory lending (including credit cards), reform bankruptcy laws to favor consumers, and seek to maintain and create jobs in the U.S. by eliminating tax breaks for companies that shift their operations overseas or outsource. And he’d introduce much-needed regulatory controls to curb speculation in the market.

• According to critics, Barack Obama is a peacenik who wants to talk to our enemies without preconditions and will be hesitant to use military force. First of all, listen to the man’s speeches: to my personal dismay, he has said that he actually wants to increase troop levels in Afghanistan while leaving Iraq; would attack Iran if necessary; and would consider any unilateral act of aggression against Israel an act against the United States, potentially answering that violence with military might. So while he’s certainly not in the category of a Richard Perle in terms of his hawkishness, he’s not nearly the effete, slow-to-act caricature that’s been painted in some quarters. And finally, just what in happy hell is wrong with talking to our “enemies”—I mean, really giving diplomacy a shot, unlike the charade that ensued in the first months of 2003 before the U.S. invasion of Iraq—before things get really out of hand? It’s not as if sitting and talking is going to make the U.S. look weak; it’s going to make us look prudent and deliberate, two qualities that have been sorely lacking in this country’s foreign policy.

• On a related note, some folks are bothered by the fact that Barack Obama’s candidacy has been embraced by people of all backgrounds living around the world. If people in the Middle East and throughout Europe love him, the “thinking” goes, that means he is going to collude with them in taking down the American system and way of life. Oh, here’s a doozy. His popularity is now a liability? In a recent television ad, John McCain’s campaign even tried to link Obama’s popularity in the U.S. and abroad to “famous just for being famous” figures like Britney Spears and Paris Hilton. (How would McCain now explain the crowds who have been flocking to see—and have been forming a cult of personality around—his running mate, Sarah Palin?) You see, I thought it was good to be popular, as long as it’s for the right reasons. Barack Obama’s popularity stems, it seems to me, from a few key characteristics: his elocution, his relative youth, his promise of change, and the fact that his candidacy represents promise and possibility to those, here and abroad, who viewed America as hopelessly racist in its domestic policies and determinedly exceptionalist in its foreign policies.

• Speaking of his youth, many worry that he lacks adequate experience to be Commander-in-Chief; he’s only worked as a community organizer, taught Constitutional Law at the University of Chicago law school, was elected state senator, and now U.S. Senator. Well—and forgive me from dwelling on the current administration, but I’ve got some emotional brush to clear in purging myself of accumulated anger—we had an experienced guy and he didn’t work out too well. George W. Bush skirted Vietnam, ran some oil companies and then a baseball team into the ground, helped his daddy get elected, spent about five years as Governor of Texas, and then was appointed President of the United States by the Supreme Court in 2000. And what “experience” can really prepare one to be President? It’s the qualities of judgment and wisdom and a sensible, far-sighted approach to governance we can use to ascertain if a person will make a good leader. Barack Obama, in my view, has these qualities.

• While we’re on the subject: some denigrate his speeches as too “smooth” and polished. My friends, I think we could stand a President who is thoughtful and articulate after seven and a half years of cringing at the non-sequiturs of a nannering ninny. We’ve had a President for two terms now who reminded us of a guy we’d like to go bowling with. Now we need somebody who can actually process thoughts into intelligible words and sentences—never mind that he can’t bowl to save his life (rolling a 37 in Altoona back in a March campaign stop). Heck, maybe he’ll even tear out the White House’s bowling alley and install a basketball court when he wins. (Oh—sorry, white folks. Didn’t mean to scare you there.)

• To some, his lack of bowling prowess—his style was derided in some quarters as “dainty”—proves that he’s out of touch with the common man. Seriously? To me it just proves that he’s fallible. And do you really want a guy to be hitting the lanes for two, three hours each night to hone his skills? Shouldn’t he be reading, studying policy memos, deciding the fate of the free world—shit like that?

• He’s not going to take your guns, as NRA alarmists posit—you’ll still be able to shoot animals and intruders to your heart’s content. But he may take steps that will eventually remove some handguns and assault weapons off the streets of our most dangerous cities and towns—and that’s incontestably a good thing.

• He admitted to using cocaine, marijuana, and drinking alcohol to excess while in high school. Well, la-de-freakin-da. You just described more than half of teenagers nationwide, according to polls, at least with the weed and booze. And at least he admitted it. Jeez. And another thing: Barack Obama is a longtime smoker who has reportedly kicked the habit while on the campaign trail. Now that’s impressive self-discipline.

• It is often alleged that Obama is the “most liberal congressman in the entire U.S. Senate” – according to a study done by the National Review – but (again, to my dismay) this is patently false. His support for the Bush wiretapping bill and his unequivocal support for Israel are just two of many examples that bear this out. And since his days as a community organizer and perhaps even before, Barack Obama has displayed an almost obsessive commitment to building consensus. Indeed, his campaign has drawn record numbers of independents and even Republicans to support him, and there is little reason to speculate that he’ll morph into the spineless, godless liberal bogeyman of Ann Coulter’s worst nightmares.

• And finally, rest easy: Barack Obama will not use his gigantic lips to transport half of the citizens of Cuba to the United States to be granted political asylum. What—what??! Yes, my friends, according to an article in the Reading Eagle that was picked up by some national outlets, this was the brilliant statement made by Adam LaDuca, a senior at Kutztown University—ah, I fairly swell with pride that it’s in Berks County—on his weblog: he has “a pair of lips so large he could float half of Cuba to the shores of Miami (and probably would).” In his defense, LaDuca insulated himself from charges of bigotry with the following caveat: “And man, if sayin’ someone has large lips is a racial slur, then we’re ALL in trouble.” (As we all know, prefacing an utterance with a clarification of its intent is always the most effective way to deflect the truth, a la: “I don’t mean to be racist, but why do Black people talk so damned funny?” or “I’m not a sexist or anything, but why doesn’t Hillary Clinton just go home, put on an apron, and bake me some cookies?”) Anyhoo, LaDuca—who, by the way, in a delicious bit of synergy, was the executive director of the Pennsylvania Federation of College Republicans—was forced to resign his post. LaDuca, you may remember, held an “Affirmative Action Bake Sale” when he was president of the College Republicans at Kutztown—at which whites were charged more for cookies than Blacks. What. A. Guy.

Well, white people, I hope you’ve found this a worthwhile enterprise, and that I’ve succeeded in helping you purge some of the ugly misconceptions surrounding the candidacy of the next President of the United States, Barack Obama. (If you felt calm or even inspired when you read that last bit, or even peed a little with joy, then our exercise here has worked. If you felt panic or loathing, or even threw up a little in your mouth, then we’ve still got work to do.) Feel free to send this to your fellow Caucasians across the political spectrum if you think my message will help in their decision-making processes.

Please contact me if I can be of further assistance.

Sincerely,

Monsoon

Update on 2008-09-22 03:18 by Monsoon Martin

An AP/Yahoo! poll suggests that Obama's ofay problem may be even more significant than I posited above.  Though I disagree with the methodology of the study and therefore question both the reliability and validity of its findings, there are some potentially alarming indications here.  One such finding was, "Statistical models derived from the poll suggest that Obama's support would be as much as 6 percentage points higher if there were no white racial prejudice," which could be a game-changer if the election is anywhere near as close as polls suggest.

Monsoon

Monsoon Martin: I Was Wrong About Sarah Palin; She is Magnificent

... NOT!!!

After reading even more about her background, and hearing her convention speech, I find her to be more objectionable and vile than ever before.

I feel like I’m beating a dead pit-bull here with this Sarah Palin nonsense, but she makes it so damned easy to discredit her that I cannot stop.

First of all, if you didn’t see her sneering, Karl Rove-produced speech at the Republican National Convention, or at least read a transcript of it (also available at above link), let me hit the lowlights.

First of all, while watching (and more directly, listening to her grating, flatlining, upper-Midwest voice) I kept being reminded of someone, but I couldn’t place it. Then it hit me like the onset of projectile vomiting brought on by shellfish-related food poisoning at the Minnesota state Sarah Rose Cosmetics American Teen Princess Pageant (“ Don’t ever eat nothin’ that can carry its house around with it. Who knows the last time it’s been cleaned,” according to Annette Atkins).

Sarah Palin is Gladys Leeman, played by Kirstie Alley, in the criminally underrated pageant mockumentary Drop Dead Gorgeous. (If you’ve never seen the film, come on. Do it.) It’s all there: the rounded O’s suggesting a plainspoken innocence that mask the cold, cynical ambition lurking within; the minor beauty queen background (Palin was Miss Wasilla 1984, while Leeman was a former winner of the Mount Rose pageant); their obsessive plans for their daughters’ stardom thwarted by unforeseen and freakishly delicious ironies (Becky Leeman is incinerated when a Mexican-made swan float procured by her cheap, racist dad catches fire—“The swan ate my baby!”; Bristol Palin is either the mother of four-month-old Trig or is currently five months pregnant with an out-of-wedlock offspring, depending which swirling rumors one chooses to believe).

Hell, they even look alike. (Stay with me on this one: Slather a few more coats of makeup on the Kirstie Alley pic, put some glasses on her, and tame the mane a bit, and you’ve got Sarah Palin.)

But the accent and the Drop Dead Gorgeous connection aside, the classlessness, baselessness and irrelevance of what Palin said in her speech would have shocked me if the past eight years of Bush-Cheney and company had not already rendered me incapable of being surprised by the soulless filth of which the far right has become adept.

Palin spent much of her speech talking about her favorite senior citizen, John McCain, and what a swell President he’d make. She also touched on her own background, focusing primarily on her family (and trumpeting the fact that her son and nephew—they’re two different people; the Palins aren’t that backward—are being deployed to Iraq this fall) rather than on her tissue-thin and ethically challenged political experience. When the TelePrompTer lagged a bit, she ad-libbed a lame, sexist joke about the fact that she’s a self-described “hockey mom”: “You know they say the difference between a hockey mom and a pit-bull? Lipstick.”

[Some of you may be thinking: Did he just call a woman “sexist”? Yes, he did. I define sexism as any statement, policy or action that implicitly or explicitly prevents women from receiving equitable consideration in all spheres. Palin’s statement—like many of her policies—qualifies as sexist. I am utterly comfortable calling Clarence Thomas a racist for his views about African Americans, even though he is African American himself. This is, substantively, no different.]

Speaking of pit-bulls in lipstick, on to the real reason Palin was summoned by the McCain campaign, the reason she’d been groomed by the Club for Growth and conservative think tanks as the right’s answer to Hillary Clinton: to mercilessly attack Barack Obama like he was an eight-point caribou.

The segment of her speech played most often is actually the most offensive, so let’s talk about it here. Beyond the fact that it was delivered with a derisive condescension Barack Obama has studiously avoided in his speeches, the substance of her remarks would be dismissed as ridiculous on their face if she were not the Vice-Presidential candidate of the Republican Party, and if so many at the convention and watching on television had not swooned so enthusiastically on cue when she spewed her vitriol. Here’s the passage:

I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a “community organizer,” except that you have actual responsibilities. I might add that in small towns, we don't quite know what to make of a candidate who lavishes praise on working people when they are listening, and then talks about how bitterly they cling to their religion and guns when those people aren't listening. We tend to prefer candidates who don't talk about us one way in Scranton and another way in San Francisco.

She maligned community organizers—those who marshal support for candidates; those who enlist workers in labor unions to ensure protection under the law; those who establish after-school programs, spearhead community policing efforts, develop innovative solutions to generations-old social problems; those who round up sorely needed volunteers to participate in cancer walks, work at soup kitchens, check on the elderly, tend to the infirm. Are these the community organizers on whom she looks with such disdain, such smirking dismissal? Surely the central figure in the religion that informs her policy decisions—initials, J.C.—would have looked far more kindly on the long-suffering, hardworking community organizers than he would on a former beauty queen who ran for mayor of a small Alaskan city to advance her political ambitions.

And the second part of her attack focuses on a comment made by Obama at a fundraiser five months ago and dissected from every possible angle since. I happen to believe that Barack Obama’s comments were misunderstood: folks who are hurting economically will “cling to” those bulwarks in their lives that provide them with stability. For many in rural or small-town America, they turn to the traditions that sustain them and their communities—like religion, like hunting, etc.—to get them through. But for the sake of argument let’s say he said the wrong thing; he clarified his remarks and it seems to be a non-issue at this point.

Bottom line: get some new material. The man just gave a historic speech filled with direct challenges to John McCain and the Republican Party on the issues, and Palin’s speech neither touched on the important issues raised in Obama’s acceptance speech nor provided any concrete plans to deal with America’s problems.

Sarah Palin’s speech does not deserve to be called a “huge success,” as so many have been quick to label it; the fact that she can play the political game simply makes her speech a cynical failure.

Just in case you’re still undecided about the quality of McCain’s Vice-Presidential pick, I have just a few other delightful nuggets of information that have emerged about Sarah Palin’s background to leave you with:

• When exhorting her fellow worshippers to pray for U.S. servicemembers currently deployed to the Middle East, she said, “Our national leaders are sending them out on a task that is from God” and commented on the war being part of “God’s plan.” First of all, I thought it was Rumsfeld’s crummy plan. Second—and I hate to be a stickler with this religious conviction of hers, but she was speaking in a church—I could not fathom a God in any religion that would orchestrate (remember, it’s His “plan”) and oversee (he’s sent them on a “task”) the deaths of more than 4,000 U.S. troops and well over 100,000 Iraqi civilians, according to most estimates. It’s just unfathomable to me.

• She attempted to pander to the religious right with this statement during her acceptance speech at the convention: “But we are expected to govern with integrity, good will, clear convictions, and ... a servant's heart.”

• Palin raised funds for Pat Buchanan’s Presidential campaign in 1996 and 2000, when she worked for the campaign of this racist, sexist, anti-UN kook.

• In a 2006 questionnaire, she was asked, “Are you offended by the phrase ‘Under God’ in the Pledge of Allegiance? Why or why not?” Her response: “Not on your life. If it was good enough for the founding fathers, its [sic] good enough for me and I’ll fight in defense of our Pledge of Allegiance.” Two things here: first, the Pledge of Allegiance was not written by George Washington, John Jay, Thomas Jefferson, or even Benjamin Franklin. It was written in 1892 by a socialist (!) named Francis Bellamy. Second, the phrase “under God” was not in the original formulation of the pledge, but was added in 1954 during the Red Scare by Eisenhower administration at the urging of the right-wing Catholic organization Knights of Columbus. (Look it up.) So…wrong, wrong, and you missed an apostrophe.

• According to moveon.org, “As mayor, Palin tried to ban books from the library. Palin asked the library how she might go about banning books because some had inappropriate language in them—shocking the librarian, Mary Ellen Baker. According to Time, ‘news reports from the time show that Palin had threatened to fire Baker for not giving full support to the mayor.’”

• And finally, Palin has such close ties to the oil cartels, her inauguration was sponsored by BP, the conglomerate for which her husband works.

As always, I welcome points and counterpoints to my little screed!

Monsoon

Update on 2008-09-09 11:10 by Monsoon Martin

“So Sambo beat the bitch!”

Thus ran Sarah Palin’s almost impossibly racist and sexist appraisal of the 2008 Democratic primary battle between Sentator Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, according to a source quoted by veteran journalist Charlie James in his article on the LA Progressive website.

(Granted, James’ contention is based upon an interview with a waitress named Lucille at the restaurant where Palin allegedly uttered this bon mot to staffers—and anyone else within earshot. Her anonymous, not-for-attribution testimony must be independently verified by either another reporter or by other diners stepping forward to corroborate her story. In terms of strict journalistic ethics, releasing this nugget with thin confirmation was premature. But given what I’ve heard and read of the political and social culture in Alaska and around Palin, it doesn’t seem far-fetched—nor does it seem likely to have been fabricated for the purposes of a political smear.)

My friends, I am something of a connoisseur of unadulterated racism. These days, people’s racism is so often buried under layers of subterfuge and misdirection, or so blunted by political correctness, that a pure morsel of naked bigotry is increasingly rare. Apparently, according to various sources, the casual usage of these kinds of slurs—along with freewheelingly brainless references to the so-called Eskimo people as “Arctic Arabs”—is just a part of the unique cultural landscape of Alaska. (I don’t know about the rest of you, but the more I hear about Alaska through this whole Sarah Palin debacle, the less I want to ever visit there.)

To give you some background on the term “Sambo”: it’s really, really racist. The term has its origins in the slavery era, but the stereotypical “Sambo” archetype didn’t fully crystallize until the late 1800s. I have scanned in a detail from a stereoview (a double image that could be viewed in three dimensions through a stereopticon, or stereo viewer) published in 1901 by C.H. Graves. It’s part of a genre of “comic” stereoviews that featured inept, thieving, or ravenous, watermelon-eating “darkies” and “coons” along with mischievous “pickaninnies” (a slur for Black children). Many such views featured the exaggerated speech patterns, lazy shiftlessness, and inclination to be easily frightened that formed the basis of the minstrel personae and endured well into the 20^th century as “entertainment” icons.

Sambo is a “Dixie”-whistling, childlike jester, a cheerful grin perpetually plastered on his face. It pervaded as a stereotype through the golden age of cartoons (more than a few Warner Brothers cartoons featured Sambo-like characters or “savages”), radio programs, vaudeville performances, and other popular media, well into the 1960s.

In that carnival of tuneless drunken buffoonery known as the Mummers Parade, most brigades wore blackface well into the 1970s—and some still do, though it was banned in 1964; the musical selections have historically been (and largely, still are) dominated by minstrel songs; and many of the comic brigades continue to revel in the loutish, thunderheaded racism of their “themes” (like Mexican Fiesta with revelers dressed up as tacos and burritos, Indian Pow-Wow with participants dressed in long headdresses and ululating like “Injuns,” and an Egyptian Pharaohs tribute with the members in the less-offensive brownface, all from the 2008 installment).

And let’s not forget the enduringly popular children’s book Little Black Sambo about an Indian boy with an epithet for a name who outsmarts some tigers. Whatever.

In resurrecting a shameful vestige of America’s openly racist past, Sarah Palin (allegedly) revealed that we, as a nation, may not be quite as enlightened as we’d like to believe (nothing in the waitress’s eyewitness account mentioned a disapproving comment from any other patron in the restaurant). And if there’s any credence to this claim—right-wingers dismiss this as yet another baseless attack on poor Sarah by the so-called liberal media elite, but clearly it bears further scrutiny—we can safely add “racist” to the already-evident (but helpfully, confirmed) sexism she’s shown in verifiable instances.

Monsoon

... and many thanks to Steph G. for her tip on this story!

Conservative Columnist Peggy Noonan on Palin's Choice as VP: "It's Over"

My friends,

You think I'm a raging, soulless liberal fiend for attacking the nomination of Sarah Palin in this space earlier in the week?  Even the Republicans are admitting that the choice of Sarah Palin as John McCain's running mate is "gimmicky" and "cynical."  A "hot mike" at MSNBC picked up conservative columnist Peggy Noonan and former McCain campaign manager Michael Murphy discussing Governor Palin in what sounded like a postmortem for the Republicans' presidential hopes.

Check out the video here (the juicy parts are audio only); includes a short piece with transcripted selections from the piece.  Unless Palin performs a miracle live onstage during her speech, I'm afraid it's not going to be enough to--sorry to extend the metaphor--resurrect this fledgling campaign.

And here's Peggy Noonan's column at the Wall Street Journal, in which she simultaneously backtracks about what she said on the hot mike (Did I say "over"?  I didn't mean "over" as in over-over, like he can't win now.  I was paraphrasing what party leaders mistakenly think.  Seriously!  It was taken out of context!!  Hello?) and praises Palin as a "real and present danger to the American left, and to the Obama candidacy" (I thought she was a "cynical" choice, Peg.  Now she's a revelation?).  She also dwells on her use of a "barnyard epithet" (she said, "bullshit" into the hot mike, and even apologized right before she did so), when that's the least of her problems.

Enjoy!

Monsoon

Monsoon's Presidential Election Comment for Labor Day 2008

It’s been a long time since I’ve weighed in on the presidential race—mainly because I have become rather bored of it all since the intense, protracted primary battle concluded with an Obama victory.

I am still a strong supporter or Barack Obama for President—and I loved the pick of Joe Biden for Vice-President, despite Biden’s ties to the Washington establishment. And I, along with more than 38 million others, watched his incisive, forthright, and sometimes inspiring acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention on Thursday night. There is much about Obama and his campaign to admire, and during the speech I even felt something like optimism and hope thaw away the edges of my cynical heart. Before I heard a word of his “American Promise,” he had me with the U2 song “City of Blinding Lights” that accompanied his entrance—though he almost lost me when Brooks & Dunn’s “Only in America” twanged obnoxiously from the stadium’s sound system immediately following his speech. (And yet, it didn’t nearly match the race speech in either the breadth or the erudition of its message.)

But damn it all, there have been times since he wrapped up the nomination in June that I’ve been disillusioned and even sick to watch the turn his campaign has taken. It’s called the “run to the center,” and it’s nothing new: a Democratic candidate runs on a progressive platform to appeal to the party’s liberal base, then when he (or she) has the nomination wrapped up, all of those progressive ideals fall prey to equivocation, obfuscation—and sometimes just plain contradiction.

Friends, I had no illusions that Barack Obama was the uncompromisingly liberal candidate this country really needs—and indeed, he bears little resemblance to the liberal bogeyman that has been conjured from the lousiest tax-and-spend, immigrants-run-amok, gay-agenda fears of conservatives. The positions he’s taken on gay marriage (he opposes it, but supports civil unions) and capital punishment (he wants to reform it, but he supports its use in limited cases), for example, have been disappointing in their apparent desire to have it both ways: embracing all positions so as to alienate no one.

But Barack Obama talked an awful lot—and still does—about being a different kind of candidate. He wants to change the way things are done in Washington. He wants to do away with “politics as usual” and govern in a new way: with the full support and participation of ordinary citizens moved to action by his campaign. I believed him, but the “run to the center” got so out of hand at a few points this summer than I almost took down my Obama yard sign:

• He voted—against most of his Democratic colleagues in the Senate—to support warrantless wiretapping, all but ceding Americans’ fourth-amendment rights.

• He expressed enthusiastic support for President Bush’s Faith-Based Initiatives, and promised he would expand these programs. These funding schemes for social services provided by religious organizations were a blown kiss by Bush to the evangelicals who helped elect him twice. Under the program, religious-based programs—which are already tax-exempt—can now conduct their proselytizing and their hiring discrimination with the full support of the Federal government. Obama’s pandering here is useless, since most of the evangelicals who would get all hot and bothered over such an announcement have already written the candidate off for his support—albeit tepid—for civil unions and abortion rights.

• Speaking before AIPAC (American Israeli Public Affairs Committee) in June, Obama said, “We will never compromise when it comes to Israel’s security. … Those who threaten Israel, threaten us.” His even-handed stances of the past, in which he took appropriately nuanced views of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and even engaged in a frankly critical assessment of Israel’s behavior in the region, are long gone.

• Seeking to reassure jingoists and warmongers across the nation that he would not be hesitant to use America’s military might, he outlined a plan to deploy as many as 10,000 more troops to Afghanistan, and to attack Iran if the country threatened the U.S. or its interests. He also backed off his earlier statement in a debate that he would meet with foreign leaders with no preconditions, lest it make him seem like too much of a diplomat and not enough of an ass-kicking hawk.
• Finally (but there was probably more that I missed), he supported the Supreme Court’s reversal of a long-standing gun ban in Washington, D.C., tarnishing his encouraging gun control credentials.

There are four main schools of thought when it comes to Barack Obama, I’ve come to realize:

• From the far right, the racist, and the insane (often, all three defects reside in the same individual), there is the cry that Obama is either a Muslim terrorist who will lead jihad against the U.S. from inside the White House, or an unpatriotic, anti-white atheist who will not recite the Pledge of Allegiance or wear a flag pin and will turn the country into a socialist state. There are also the softer objections to his lack of experience; his “arrogance” and his wife’s “uppity” attitude (thanks to Monsoon's mom for this insight); his effete, seemingly detached manner; and so on. And finally, in the “No-Bama’ category, there are the Hillaryites: mostly middle-aged women who are certain that sexism—not a superior message—was the sole factor in keeping Hillary Clinton from being nominated as either President or Vice-President; despite the fact that their values are represented by Barack Obama, most polls indicate that some 20% of these Hillary supporters are actually considering voting for John McCain.
• From the center and moderate Republicans and Democrats, the feeling that Obama is a gifted orator with sensible ideas who has quite correctly moved his policies to more reasonable positions; he will make necessary changes to address problems with America’s economic woes and foreign-policy challenges without questioning the fundamental assumptions about American exceptionalism and corporate hegemony that underlie them. And these folks tend to look down their noses at those on the left who would criticize Obama for his shortcomings as a progressive candidate, preferring to present a united front of support. In short: he’s a swell guy.
• From the progressive and “liberal” Democrats, there is much of the admiration for Obama as stated immediately above, tempered with some grumblings about his “all-things-to-all-people” tendencies” and his run to the center—but folks in this cohort remain cautiously optimistic that when he reaches the White House, he will listen to the voices of those whose hard work propelled him there and reflect his more firmly progressive stances when he governs.
• From the far left wing—Communists, socialists, anarchists, conspiracy theorists, inveterate cynics, and I’d say the insane probably factor in here as well—we hear that there is very little substantive difference between Obama and McCain: both are agents of the ruling parties, neither of whom will really challenge corporate dominion over our lives, the collusion of government in such dominion, or the war machine. For these angry curmudgeons, the political process is an intractable parade of capitalist dirty tricks that will not be addressed in any meaningful way unless and until there is full revolution, or until a Noam Chomsky-Angela Davis ticket sails into the White House and fires the other two branches of government.

I fall in the third group, with some admitted sympathies toward the fourth. Let’s see how this works out.

A final few comments, if you’ll indulge me, about John McCain and his just-announced Vice-Presidential candidate, Sarah “Barracuda” Palin, Governor of Alaska.

First, I want to direct you to an interesting article from AlterNet that reviews Michael Moore’s new book (Mike’s Election Guide) and takes note of his provocative discussion of John McCain’s “war hero” status.

Second, regarding his Vice-Presidential pick: I’ve never seen a more cravenly desperate, insulting, ill-advised, and cynical appointment in my life. John McCain met Sarah Palin exactly once at a meeting before he rang her up last week and asked her to join his fledgling ticket.

The Religious Right is over the moon about this pick, so it stands to reason that I’d be disgruntled. Let me outline a few reasons I find Sarah Palin objectionable:

• She has very little political experience, as has been noted; the little experience she does have has been marred by scandal—her office is being investigated for improprieties stemming from the firing of a state trooper.
• She is a lifetime member of the NRA who likes to shoot animals and pose with their carcasses, which I find to be vile (see the photo below, in which she and one of her kids celebrate the killing of a caribou; I’ve cropped it to spare you all the graphic details).

• Her children’s names are Track, Bristol, Willow, Piper, and Trig. I mean…really? Really, times five??
• Palin is a devout, born-again evangelical who opposes abortion without reservation—even in cases of rape or incest. What a gal.
• She believes Creationism should be taught alongside the “theory” of evolution in public schools to encourage “healthy debate.”
• She strongly encourages and has worked toward oil and natural gas drilling in pristine areas in Alaska and other sites.
• She opposes same-sex marriages and supported a referendum for an amendment to Alaska’s constitution that would deny health benefits to same-sex couples.
• She supports capital punishment without reservation.

An odd realization struck me as I began researching Sarah Palin after the announcement was made: I hated her before I even knew she existed.

I mean, she’s the embodiment of every single thing I reject, and she’s wrapped up in a seemingly unthreatening package. (If I hear one more pundit describe her as “hot” or “cute” I am going to seriously lose it.)

And finally, speaking of colossally insulting, McCain’s choice is so nakedly designed to woo disaffected Hillary Clinton supporters that it should be seen not as a final “shattering” of the glass ceiling, as Palin said in her introductory speech, but as one of the true mileposts in 21^st-century sexism. (I can’t imagine Hillary supporters suddenly deciding to vote for Sarah Palin just because she’s the first woman to receive a Republican Vice-Presidential nomination. The only things Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin have in common are two X chromosomes.)

The good aspect of all this for us Obama supporters is that her inexperience and notorious bluntness is bound to lead to gaffes, and her utter lack of foreign policy chops means Biden is going to chew her up in the Vice-Presidential debate. I think ultimately the choice, though bold, will backfire wildly on McCain and Barack Obama will comfortably be elected the 44^th President of the United States.

I’ll leave you with two outstanding columns about Palin from the Sunday papers:

Maureen Dowd’s column from the August 31^st New York Times.

Chris Satullo’s column from the August 31^st Philadelphia Inquirer.

As always, I welcome your comments and criticisms. I’m up for a lively political debate on here, if anyone’s game.

Monsoon

Update on 2008-09-02 17:00 by Monsoon Martin

Breaking news from the McCain-Palin campaign that Sarah Palin’s 17-year-old daughter Bristol is five months pregnant sent me into paroxysms of glee—for how often do irony and hypocrisy coalesce into such a thick and satisfying stew? There’s nothing like seeing a paster who’s fought against gay rights and preached about the sin of homosexuality getting busted for trolling the men’s room for anonymous sex (Ted Haggard); the family-values politician who reportedly cheats on his wife repeatedly and actually presents his wife with divorce papers while she’s hospitalized, recovering from surgery (Newt Gingrich). I could go on.

The announcement also sent me to the internet to seek out reactions and opinions as to how this might affect the election, and I stumbled upon some of the most fevered conspiracy theory chatter since the work of the “9/11 was an inside job” crew.

My friends, if the swirling online rumors are to be believed—and that’s a big if—this pregnancy is actually Bristol’s second one. According to wanton online speculation, at age 16 she became pregnant and explained her 4- to 5-month absence from school as an extended bout of mononucleosis. To save the family embarrassment, the theories offer, Sarah Palin pretended to be pregnant—announcing her “pregnancy” only at seven months and seldom “showing” at all, or wearing maternity padding to fool onlookers—and when Bristol delivered Trig in April of this year, the child was claimed to be the offspring of Sarah Palin and her husband.

There’s another, seedier level of internet gossip hell (it’s not pretty, folks) where it is being alleged that not only is Bristol Trig’s mother rather than his sister, but that Trig’s father is actually Sarah’s husband Todd. The result of this Springeresque state of affairs would be, quite incestuously, that Bristol is both Trig’s mother and his half-sister.

To support these conspiracy theories, photos of both Sarah and her daughter Bristol are being scrutinized for “baby bumps” and photoshopping, and DNA tests are being suggested, but no real evidence has yet emerged to support these wild and whirling words.

And so as a result, I will—for the time being—assume that everything is as has been reported in the topsy-turvy McCain-Palin: Trip, son of Sarah and her husband Todd, was born on April 18, 2008; Bristol is now five months into her first-ever pregnancy, and the father of this child is her boyfriend, whom she intends to marry.

Really, that’s juicy enough. Consider:

1. It exposes the fact that John McCain, despite his staff’s protests to the contrary, did not adequately “vet” his Vice-Presidential choice, and given that Palin’s pregnancy and state-trooper scandals are already distracting the public’s attention from the GOP’s convention, he’s lost the gamble. Reportedly, McCain knew about Bristol’s pregnancy when he selected Palin—which means that he’s either lying (in which case he’s dishonest and sloppy) or he’s telling the truth (in which case he’s clueless). Neither scenario is looking particularly rosy for the GOP at the moment.
2. It underscores the ineffectuality of Sarah Palin’s own steely moral convictions, which guide her leadership: she is a strong advocate of abstinence-only education in public schools, and yet her own daughter’s condition as an unwed, teenage mother-to-be stands as a counterpoint to this approach. Abstinence-only education gives teenagers “The only truly safe sex is no sex” without then following it up with “…but if you do engage in sex, be aware of contraception, etc.” There’s no direct indication that Bristol Palin received abstinence-only sex education in her schooling, but the irony is irresistible.  Actually, according to a Chicago Tribune article, "The high school that Bristol Palin attended for part of last year, Wasilla High School, teaches abstinence in health class, its principal said."  Nice!
3. It calls into question the impetus behind Bristol’s decision to carry the child to full term, given her mother’s right-wing Feminists for Life stance that abortion must not even be an option in cases of incest or rape. Again, there’s no direct evidence of this, but the possibility exists that when Bristol brought this news to her parents, Sarah brought pressure to bear on her daughter to keep the child because of her own political stakes.
4. Bristol Palin is, according to her family’s September 1^st statement, five months pregnant, meaning that she conceived sometime around the beginning of April. Sarah Palin delivered Trip, Bristol’s brother, on April 18^th, which means that for a few weeks, Sarah Palin and her daughter Bristol were both pregnant. Jeez. Now we’re getting into some “Maury”-type shit here.
5. If the McCain-Palin ticket wins the election, moving in to Number One Observatory Circle (the Vice-President’s residence) will be Sarah and her husband Todd; children Bristol, Willow, and Piper; and two infants, nine-month-old Trig and Bristol’s newborn. And maybe even Bristol’s boyfriend. Quite a clan. (For those curious, Track, who has enlisted in the Army, is scheduled to be deployed to Iraq sometime this month.)

Some evangelicals have come out in support of Sarah Palin and her family as this scandal emerges, but it’s not difficult to imagine that her inexperience, her scandals, and—let’s face it—her gender will discourage some Republicans and conservatives in general from voting for a McCain-Palin ticket.

Barack Obama, for his part, went classy all the way, reacting the only way he really could to this news: “People’s families are off-limits and people’s children are especially off-limits. This shouldn’t be part of our politics. It has no relevance to Gov. Palin’s performance as a governor or potential performance as a vice president. So I would strongly urge people to back off these kinds of stories.”

Stay tuned…

Monsoon

Monsoon Martin's Pennsylvania Primary Primer - 22 April 2008

My friends,

The day has come to get out and vote in the Democratic primary for the United States presidency. Our state is center stage—Chris Matthews and Keith Olbermann are on MSNBC talking about what may happen in Lancaster County, the Lehigh Valley, the Reading area, and how it would affect the chances of either candidate—in a primary for the first time in my memory.

I’ve written about this election before several times in this space, but let me reiterate here and now that I wholeheartedly endorse Barack Obama for President of the United States.

Below are two lists: the first, a list of reasons to vote for Barack Obama; the second, a list of reasons not to vote for Hillary Clinton. I have tried to be as succinct and straightforward as possible, and have based my comments on things I have heard and read from reliable sources.

Fifteen Reasons to Vote for Barack Obama

1. He was against the criminal, disastrous Iraq war from the start.

2. He wants to overhaul NAFTA and punish companies that outsource, both of which have damaged the base of manufacturing jobs in the U.S.

3. He takes no lobbyist or PAC money; he would be at least less beholden to special interests. I believe he would stand up to corporate bullying and obscene profits in American life.

4. He is not a divisive politician who engages in bickering and backbiting, but a visionary leader who will bring people together.

5. His experience as a community organizer and activist bespeak his connection with the problems of ordinary people and his ability to negotiate in good faith. His election as President, given his diverse background and broad worldview, would immediately raise the dismal status of the U.S. in the eyes of many around the world.

6. His March 18^th speech on race and American life at the National Constitution Center is the most searingly honest and significant discourse on the topic in my lifetime.

7. His favorite TV show was “The Wire” and he would be the first president versed in hip-hop culture; he made a Jay-Z reference in a speech the other day, for god’s sake!

8. He has clear, substantive plans to tackle the problem of global climate change; as today is Earth Day, this should be in the forefront of voters’ minds.

9. He has stated he would create a prison-to-work incentive for former inmates transitioning back into society.

10. His views on education are progressive; he wants to abolish “teach-to-the-test” curricula and opposes vouchers.

11. He opposes death penalty in all but the rarest cases and is a proponent of legislation that makes it easier for innocent death-row inmates to win new trials.

12. He seems to genuinely have a sense of humor; that may seem like an insignificant trait, but I think it’d be pretty damned important if he wins the presidency.

13. He likes (and plays) the sport of basketball instead of being obsessed with tired, wanky pastimes of the rich and powerful like golf.

14. He voted against the use of cluster bombs in civilian areas.

15. As a colleague and I were discussing yesterday, he has the courage to disagree with his constituents on some issues rather than simply telling them what he thinks they want to hear. He will not insult the intelligence of the American people by pandering to the lowest common denominator. This is true leadership.

There are plenty of other compelling reasons to vote for Barack Obama, but these stand out for me as I sit here late on Monday night and contemplate the long-awaited primary battle.

If you’re still thinking of voting for Hillary Clinton—after all, you might say, some of the above are also true of her to some extent, notably numbers 8 and 10—I have compiled a list to try and sway your allegiance a bit. Again, all of these are based upon what I have seen or heard from reliable sources about Hillary Clinton.

Fifteen Reasons Not to Vote for Hillary Clinton

1. She voted for President Bush’s ill-conceived, ill-fated Iraq War, and has compounded the error by repeatedly reauthorizing funds to fight the war and refusing to acknowledge her error in failing to read the National Intelligence Estimate before her initial vote.

2. She voted for the USA PATRIOT Act of 2001 in the hysteria following the 9/11 attacks.

3. She supported Israel’s brutal military assault on civilian targets in Lebanon and Gaza; she has said she would support large-scale U.S. “retaliation” against Iran if it or any of its proxies attacked Israel. And finally, she was the only Democrat to vote for the aggressive Kyl-Lieberman Amendment to authorize unilateral U.S. force against Iran.

4. She opposes the full repeal of the conservative, anti-gay Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA).

5. She co-sponsored legislation that would have made it illegal to burn the flag of the United States, wasting precious congressional time on a symbolic issue around which she was pandering to conservatives.

6. She doesn’t seem to have any core convictions; she seemingly believes she is entitled to the presidency and will do anything to get elected. (Sure, this is an opinion. But it’s based upon what I’ve seen and heard, and it’s my weblog.)

7. She has engaged in unrelentingly dirty campaign tactics, seizing on minor gaffes and unrelated issues to obfuscate her own policy and leadership shortcomings; the day before the Pennsylvania primaries, her campaign released a fearmongering attack ad subtly linking Barack Obama with Osama bin Laden.

8. In an interview on “60 Minutes,” when asked whether Obama is a Muslim, she said he was not, then quickly added, “as far as I know.”

9. She lied shamelessly about the “harrowing” Bosnia plane landing in 1996, then lied to cover it up by claiming that her misstatements were out of fatigue rather than admitting they had been orchestrated to inflate the magnitude of her foreign policy experience while First Lady.

10. She served on the Wal-Mart board of directors and there is no evidence she challenged Wal-Mart’s fierce anti-union tactics; she served as a ruthless corporate attorney at the notorious union-busting Rose Law Firm. As a result of this history (and other factors), her populist rhetoric in the current campaign rings rather hollow.

11. She has been a cheerleader for the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC), which has moved the party away from its progressive roots and toward a more centrist, pro-business platform.

12. She was a member of the College Republicans and in some substantive ways, has never left the party.

13. She supports the death penalty, almost without exception.

14. She unconscionably voted against a resolution against using cluster bombs in civilian areas.

15. She is a war hawk, a polarizing figure here and abroad, and has demonstrated a disturbing tendency to respond with indignation and rage when her motives or policies are questioned.

Thanks for listening…now get out and vote!

Monsoon

Monsoon Martin's Analysis of Barack Obama's Philadelphia Speech, 18 March 2008

Analysis of Barack Obama’s “More Perfect Union” speech at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia, 18 March 2008

Senator Barack Obama’s speech on Tuesday was billed as “historic” before a word of it was even uttered, and has received near-unanimous praise since its delivery. I thought it was a very, very good speech with a lot to admire, but there were a few things that trouble me.

[A couple of notes here: first, I invite you to comment on and argue with my ideas here. Second, I’ve added a couple of new features to the weblog, which I’m still figuring out how to use to its fullest potential. You’ll notice that at the very end of each posting are links that read “Email” and “Print”—these will enable you to (you guessed it) easily email to your friends and print out each posting!]

Being an English teacher, I’ll first approach the speech as a work of literature, evaluating its structure, its pacing, its symbolism and recurring themes. Then I’ll try briefly to foresee how the speech might impact the primary election, and how Americans will respond to it.

First, the speech began with a quote. If one of my students had begun a writing piece with a quote—even one that set up the thematic milieu of his speech, as Obama’s did—he or she would have been docked points. But here, it was effective to begin with “We the people, in order to form a more perfect union,” because his speech then went on to discuss how “the American experiment” continues to work, sometimes falteringly, towards perfection.

Obama stood in front of six gigantic American flags in the National Constitution Center and romanticized the Constitutional Convention of 1787, whose resultant document was “a Constitution that promised its people liberty, and justice, and a union that could be and should be perfected over time.” Though the setting was so ham-handedly patriotic that it could have come out of a Jerry Bruckheimer film, Obama’s words softened the effect, talking as he did about America as a work in progress—citing protest, struggle, civil war and civil disobedience as part of the great history of perfecting this union. He also pointedly mentioned slavery as one of the Constitution’s—and our nation’s—great failings, and its eventual eradication as one of its great triumphs.

“This was one of the tasks we set forth at the beginning of this campaign,” he went on, deftly connecting America’s past struggles—grassroots and governmental—with his own candidacy. “To continue the long march of those who came before us, a march for a more just, more equal, more free, more caring and more prosperous America.” Obama went on to say that he has such faith in the ability of the American people to make change because of his own story, and went on to cite his oft-mentioned upbringing. “It’s a story that hasn’t made me the most conventional candidate. But it is a story that has seared into my genetic makeup the idea that this nation is more than the sum of its parts—that out of many, we are truly one,” he went on, citing the American motto “E pluribus unum.”

He moved then to an appraisal of his own campaign’s success at crossing racial lines and indeed transcending race: “Despite the temptation to view my candidacy through a purely racial lens, we won commanding victories in states with some of the whitest populations in the country.” Obama lamented several times that commentators, pundits, and media figures seemed to be playing too great a role in determining what the American public is regarding as important in the race. “At various stages in the campaign, some commentators have deemed me either ‘too black’ or ‘not black enough.’” In the last few weeks, he said, the primary elections have taken a decidedly “divisive” turn in their obsession with race:

On one end of the spectrum, we've heard the implication that my candidacy is somehow an exercise in affirmative action; that it's based solely on the desire of wide-eyed liberals to purchase racial reconciliation on the cheap. On the other end, we've heard my former pastor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, use incendiary language to express views that have the potential not only to widen the racial divide, but views that denigrate both the greatness and the goodness of our nation; that rightly offend white and black alike.

Now he’s obviously referring to the racially charged comments made by Geraldine Ferraro about a week ago and referenced in one of my recent postings. And “purchase reconciliation on the cheap” is one of many examples in this speech of brilliant turns of phrase. (Remember that Obama writes most of his speeches, and reportedly wrote almost every single word of this one; he’s an accomplished wordsmith in addition to being a spellbinding orator.) He also brought up his former pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, as expected.

The words he chose and forcefulness with which he condemned and dismissed Wright’s statements is where I part company with the candidate a bit. He referred to Wright’s comments as expressing a “profoundly distorted view of this country … a view that sees the conflicts in the Middle East as rooted primarily in the actions of stalwart allies like Israel, instead of emanating from the perverse and hateful ideologies of radical Islam.”

Oh, Barack. Wright’s views about the culpability of American foreign policy being causally responsible for the September 11^th attacks; his suggestion that the CIA played a role, however distant, in fomenting the devastating crack epidemic in the inner cities; his criticisms of prisons and the justice system—these are views that are shared by plenty of intelligent, rational, clear-thinking individuals in this country and around the world. Granted, these are not mainstream views, but denigrating Wright’s views as “profoundly distorted” leave a very bad taste in my mouth as an Obama supporter.

And his simplistic appraisal of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict—essentially, that Israel can do no wrong, and Palestinians’ struggles are motivated solely by radical Islamic jihad or intifada—is alarming to me. (I had mentioned such concerns in my endorsement of Obama back at the beginning of February, and he’s shown me nothing to allay those concerns.) He may have scored a few points in distancing himself from rumors of being a Muslim, and attracted the fawning attention of Zionists, but his flip, absolutist summation of this morally and historically complex situation is unacceptable.

Obama got back on track, though, when he expressed a desire to move past a preoccupation with race and build unity in addressing a set of “monumental” problems: “two wars, a terrorist threat, a failing economy, a chronic health care crisis and potentially devastating climate change; problems that are neither black or white or Latino or Asian, but rather problems that confront us all.” It’s his inclusion of healthcare and economic concerns that gives me hope that Obama will live up to campaign promises to retool NAFTA, punish companies who outsource workers overseas, pursue serial polluters and predatory lenders, and force the reevaluation of a system that elevates profits above people. (Well, he hasn’t said all that explicitly, but I’m hoping he’ll tackle some of these issues.)

After denouncing (or rejecting, or whatever) Wright’s “distorted” views, Obama then stops short of casting aside his former pastor and mentor altogether. After all, he said, “that isn’t all that I know of the man.” Wright is a reflection of the Black community, Barack insisted, and very much a product of the turbulent era in which he grew up. The Black church, he explains, is misunderstood by many outsiders because of its complex admixture of the contemplative and the exuberant, the holy and the secular: “The church contains in full the kindness and cruelty, the fierce intelligence and the shocking ignorance, the struggles and successes, the love and yes, the bitterness and bias that make up the black experience in America.”

It was this passage that made me fall for Barack Obama all over again. Having studied African American culture for many years, I have often lamented that a lot of folks outside the community fail to grasp the complex forms of expression and variegated interactions inside the Black community. Black churches are houses of worship, yes, but many of them are also places of emotional release, of the struggle for social justice, of crass comparisons and exaggerations, of gossip and aid and tough love and mercy. Those who would dismiss Black churches—and by extension, the Black experience—as simple-minded, repetitive, overenthusiastic or inane are missing the richness and depth that has earned my profoundest respect and sustained my sincerest interest for more than 20 years.

“I can no more disown him,” Obama concluded here about Rev. Wright, “than I can disown the black community. He went on to very skillfully connect Rev. Wright’s ideas to the casual racial slurs of a relative:

I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother – a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe.

Who among us does not have at least one stunningly ignorant distant relative who spouts racial slurs or anti-Semitic rants from time to time? Many of us even have a closer relative—a mother, a father, a sister, a brother-in-law—who is otherwise tolerant and sharp, but who once in a while lets a jaw-dropping homophobic phrase or embarrassing anti-Muslim stereotype slip? (I would not have been—nor am I generally—so forgiving or generous in dealing with racist white folks, but hey, he’s trying to run for President, here…) Speechmaking is all about getting the audience to identify with what the speaker is saying and feeling—where he or she is coming from. It’s an act of empathy, which is one of the most difficult things for a human being to do. I think he accomplished it here.

“These people are a part of me,” Obama stated pointedly—the patriots and the scalawags, the tolerant and the racist, the seekingly intelligent and the willfully ignorant. “And they are a part of America, this country that I love.”

Rev. Wright and others in his generation have experienced a great depth and breadth of the frustration and anger of the Black experience in this country—“the complexities of race in this country that we’ve never really worked through.” He cited school segregation, employment and real estate discrimination, and a “lack of economic opportunity” which all helped to “create a cycle of violence, blight and neglect that continue to haunt us.” (Another beautifully turned phrase.) He made several references to the “anger” and “bitterness” of those years and wrapped up his discussion of Wright’s generation by saying of this anger: “[It] is real; it is powerful; and to simply wish it away, to condemn it without understanding its roots, only serves to widen the chasm of misunderstanding that exists between the races.”

(Small criticism: “among the races” would have been better there, given that we’re not just talking about Black and white, but people of multiple ethnicities and backgrounds who have to work out their differences.)

Next, he moved on to white people, and I think this section has the potential to be the most soundbited and most pounced-upon by conservatives and 527 groups. But I thought it was strong and strikingly honest—like nearly all of the rest of his speech—and will work well for him. “Most working- and middle-class white Americans don’t feel that they have been particularly privileged by their race,” he said, and I think it’s quite possible that with that one sentence, he may have turned off the switch of racial animus in working whites all around this country. (Alright, maybe it’s not “off”; maybe if we could imagine the simmering and lingering racism of some whites as mood lighting, he may have dimmed it quite a bit right there.)

And he didn’t dismiss this resentment out of hand as merely inarticulate racism that needs to be discarded and buried; he acknowledged that there are legitimate experiences and sources of these feelings: “Politicians routinely expressed fears of crime for their own electoral ends. Talk show hosts and conservative commentators built entire careers unmasking bogus claims of racism while dismissing legitimate discussions of racial injustice and inequality as mere political correctness or reverse racism.” In one passage, he laid the smackdown on George H.W. Bush and his Willie Horton ad; while exposing the sniveling likes of Bill O’Reilly, Rush Limbaugh, and Glenn Beck for the fearmongering half-wits they really are. Bravo, Barack!

“Contrary to the claims of some of my critics, black and white,” he went on, “I have never been so naïve as to believe that we can get beyond our racial divisions in a single election cycle, or with a single candidacy—particularly a candidacy as imperfect as my own.” But the path before us provides a clear choice—remain stuck in the past or move together into the future. In this sense, it echoes Martin Luther King’s statement that “we must live together as brothers or perish together as fools.”

Obama illustrated the choice in this way:

The profound mistake of Reverend Wright’s sermons is not that he spoke about racism in our society. It’s that he spoke as if our society was static; as if no progress has been made; as if this country – a country that has made it possible for one of his own members to run for the highest office in the land and build a coalition of white and black; Latino and Asian, rich and poor, young and old -- is still irrevocably bound to a tragic past.

“In the end, then, what is called for is nothing more, and nothing less, than what all the world’s great religions demand—that we do unto others as we would have them do unto us. … For we have a choice in this country. We can accept a politics that breeds division, and conflict, and cynicism.”

Here I think he’s quite pointedly rejecting the dirty campaign tactics of Hillary Clinton and refusing to join her in the seamy muck of politics as usual in America.

“We can do that. But if we do, I can tell you that in the next election, we’ll be talking about some other distraction. And then another one. And then another one. And nothing will change.”

What a brilliantly succinct review of American politics over the past 20 years, at the very least.

That is one option. Or, at this moment, in this election, we can come together and say, “Not this time.” This time we want to talk about the crumbling schools that are stealing the future of black children and white children and Asian children and Hispanic children and Native American children. This time we want to reject the cynicism that tells us that these kids can’t learn; that those kids who don’t look like us are somebody else’s problem. The children of America are not those kids, they are our kids, and we will not let them fall behind in a 21st century economy. Not this time.

Obama went on to talk about the importance of addressing three other key issues in addition to education: healthcare, the economy, and ending the war.

The final couple of minutes of his speech, he told a story about a white woman organizing in a predominantly Black South Carolina district for the Obama campaign—a story that nicely illustrated the manner in which people of diverse backgrounds are coming together for real change in this election year, but which ultimately felt shoehorned in and somewhat forced.

But at this point, really, it didn’t matter. He’d already been dazzling, and he regained his stride in his final sentences: “But it is where we start. It is where our union grows stronger. And as so many generations have come to realize over the course of the two hundred and twenty-one years since a band of patriots signed that document in Philadelphia, that is where the perfection begins.”

Over all, I think Obama’s speech is one of the most important—and searingly honest—speeches about race made in my lifetime. And I think it’s going to be received extremely well by most Democrats and supporters of Obama.

But there are elements that are going to be picked apart and harped on. At one point, Obama seems to admit that he was present in the pews when Reverend Wright made some incendiary statements (though not for the ones being circulated in the videos). Some will jump on this as a contradiction of his earlier statements that he hadn’t been present for Wright’s remarks, and if he had been, he would have confronted him about them afterward. In addition, some of his comments about race—a subject that is rarely talked about openly in this country—may rankle some, particularly those he referenced in the speech as thinking that serious discussions about race are simply an instance of political correctness run amok.

The speech in history it reminds me most of is Lincoln’s 1858 “House Divided” speech, in which he urges unity for the sake of saving the union: “A house divided against itself cannot stand.” It’s a paraphrase of Matthew 12:25, and it’s a powerful and evocative phrase that influence many citizens’ views on the matter and led eventually to the Civil War.

Obama’s speech revived his campaign, solidified his frontrunner status, and likely comforted many “superdelegates” whose votes are ultimately going to decide the nomination. He may still not win Pennsylvania, but I think he’ll win the nomination handily.

Monsoon's "Wright Back to the Obama Drama" News Analysis

In the last few days, yet another minor uproar has arisen stemming from comments made by an associate of Senator Barack Obama—this time a series of videos depicting Obama’s pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright of Chicago’s Trinity United Church of Christ, making incendiary statements about US foreign and domestic policies.

On the Huffington Post website, Obama posted a statement in which he categorically denounces and rejects the words of his long-time spiritual adviser, and the man who officiated at his wedding.

To his credit, though, Obama refused to “repudiate” Rev. Wright as a man in an interview with Keith Olbermann on MSNBC, insisting that it is possible to deeply respect a person and disagree with some of the things that person says or does. And though Obama’s opponent in the general election—or rather, 527 groups handling the dirty work for John McCain—will surely seize on the Reverend’s comments as evidence that Obama is insufficiently patriotic, at least maybe those rumors that he’s really a Muslim will be put to rest!

Obama clearly had to distance himself from Reverend Wright’s most inflammatory remarks, given that many of those whose votes he is courting will have knee-jerk responses to the remarks as deeply offensive and borderline treasonous. But I thought I’d take a closer look at Reverend Wright’s remarks in the three principal video clips that are currently circulating and try to consider just how unreasonable or off-base they are.

In the first clip, delivered several days after the September 11, 2001 attacks, Reverend Wright says: “We bombed Hiroshima, we bombed Nagasaki and we nuked far more than the thousands in New York and the Pentagon, and we never batted an eye. We have supported state terrorism against the Palestinians and black South Africans, and now we are indignant because the stuff we have done overseas is now brought right back to our own front yards. America’s chickens are coming home to roost.”

The concluding statement here echoes one made by Malcolm X at the end of his association with the Nation of Islam (in fact, this statement was one of the factors that brought about this break). After the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in November 1963, Malcolm X was asked by a reporter for his reaction to the event. It’s a case of “the chickens coming home to roost,” he replied, adding that “Being an old farm boy myself, chickens coming to roost never did make me sad, they’ve always made me glad.” Later that day, he clarified his statement by explaining that there has long been a climate of hate and brutality in the United States, particularly against Black people. The death of President Kennedy is a natural “result of that way of life and thinking.” The New York Times ran a screaming headline the next day citing his chickens comment, and Malcolm X was further marginalized and vilified by American society.

Two things were wrong with Malcolm’s comments, as far as most Americans were concerned: they suggested that the beloved President somehow deserved to be killed, and their timing right after his death bespoke an alleged insensitivity on Malcolm’s part. What folks missed here is that Malcolm did not seem to have been stating that President Kennedy deserved to die; he was arguing that a sense of karmic retribution had come to pass—that the oppression and abuse of minorities in this country had finally boomeranged to victimize one of the elites. Its timing was problematic, perhaps, but what more opportune time would there have been for Malcolm X to reach large numbers of people with his message—in this hope that they might begin questioning their own responses to President Kennedy’s assassination?

I think similar arguments hold up what scrutinizing Reverend Wright’s comments from September 16^th, 2001. He cites the actions of this government in inflicting or supporting the infliction of pain and death upon untold millions around the world in the last 60 years or so, citing the Japanese atomic bombs and state support for the terrorism of foreign governments. (He might also have mentioned the My Lai massacre, the invasion of Grenada—or the US-backed military coup of Chile’s democratically elected president on September 11, 1973, which installed General Augusto Pinochet, who soon became known for his flagrant human rights abuse and widespread corruption.)

Surely it was not proper for the leaders of this country to think that they could perpetrate such wantonly violent, extreme, and usually unprovoked attacks on other peoples and not deliver the consequences to their own shores, to their own people? “Why do they hate us?” was the familiar refrain after the attacks. “They hate our freedoms,” was the pat answer. But more honestly, they hate our actions—not those of its individual citizens, necessarily, but the actions of the country in which we live and to whose allegiance we pledge each morning. I cannot imagine that he was suggesting the repugnant notion that those who died on September 11, 2001 deserved to die; but the question of whether America, by its actions, its dirty politics, its aggressive foreign policy, may have rightfully earned the animus of folks throughout the world—that’s another, more complicated, question, and one whose answer is too uncomfortable for many Americans to deal with.

As for the “timing” problem, I’ll return to my argument from above: What better time to challenge one’s flock than when they are still grappling with their own grief and indulging the a great national orgy of victimhood and outrage? Surely some minds were changed, some thinking was challenged, by this sermon—though I suspect that now, it is just dismissed out of hand as the anti-American rantings of a leftist preacher caught up in his own argument and the power of his pulpit. That’s unfortunate.

The second clip from a 2003 sermon deals with the reasons African Americans should be critical of their government: “The government gives them the drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes a three-strike law and then wants us to sing ‘God Bless America.’ No, no, no. God damn America, that’s in the Bible for killing innocent people. God damn America for treating our citizens as less than human. God damn America for as long as she acts like she is God and she is supreme.”

Whoa. First he’s referring to some of the more frequently cited reasons for the continued socioeconomic disadvantage of African Americans in relation to whites: the prison-industrial complex and the disparate incarceration of African Americans. Angela Davis has written eloquently on this subject, particularly in her book Are Prisons Obsolete?. In a controversial series in 1996 that appeared in the San Jose Mercury News, Gary Webb wrote extensively about an alleged link among the CIA, Nicaraguan Contras, and crack cocaine; the article implied, but did not establish, that the CIA was at least indirectly responsible for introducing crack cocaine into the inner cities in the early 1980s, devastating those neighborhoods.

You all know I love a good conspiracy theory, and this is as plausible as any, as far as I’m concerned. (In fact, there’s a conspiracy theory within a conspiracy theory here: Gary Webb was found dead of an apparent suicide in his apartment in 2004, but the circumstances surrounding the “suicide” are very suspicious. Is’t possible that the US government not only orchestrated the sale of crack cocaine to the inner cities, but sought to cover it up years later by killing the journalist who exposed them? Yes.)

Though African Americans and Latinos make up only 25 percent of the US population, they constitute 63 percent of the prison population in this country. Much of this disparity is caused by the “three strikes” and other laws, as well as the “drug war.” Blacks are prosecuted much more aggressively for crack or rock cocaine than their white counterparts for power cocaine. So his complaints at the beginning of this statement are legitimate.  (Find a nice summation of grievances about racial bias in the US corrections system here on the website of Human Rights Watch.

But Reverend Wright got himself into some rhetorical trouble when he began vitiating the sacred phrase “God bless America.” Politicians frequently end their speeches with “God bless you, and God bless America!” And of course after the September 11^th attacks, the phrase became as ubiquitous on bumper stickers and t-shirts as “My child is an honor student at…” With all apologies to Irving Berlin, who wrote the song, and Lee Greenwood, who altered it slightly for his star-spangled jingo-fest “God Bless the USA,” I’ve always loathed this phrase. It sums up what people outside this country dislike so much about it—so we think God is on our side, apparently? God wants us to go bomb the living shit out of other people? As if God concerns herself with protecting the citizens of one country at the exclusion of citizens of all other countries.

I’ve noted a couple of instances in recent popular culture that tried to tweak this saying: In the otherwise vapid and dreadful movie Head of State, Chris Rock’s ultra-conservative Republican opponent ends speeches by saying, “God bless America—and no one else!” Nothing could have better captured the xenophobic “we Merkins are special, and all you foreigners suck” attitude of the most knee-jerk and cravenly nationalistic among us. I’ve seen bumper stickers recently as well that read, “God bless the whole world, no exceptions.” It’s an inclusive message—one that emphasizes the fact that the bonds we all share as humans are (or should be) far stronger than the bonds we share because we live within the same geographical entity.

So while I agree with the content of his comments there, even I realize that you can’t go around saying “God damn America” and not expect to have your ass handed to you on a red-white-and-blue platter.

The third clip is more recent and specifically discusses the relative merits of a Hillary Clinton vs. a Barack Obama candidacy: “Barack knows what it means to be black man living in a country and a culture that is controlled by rich white people. Hillary can never know that. Hillary ain’t never been called a nigger.”

Now, aside from the fact that Reverend Wright was surely “preaching to the choir” in making these comments to his mostly-black congregation, I see no problem with the first sentence. The notion that this country is controlled by “rich white people”—is there anyone who doesn’t realize the essential truth of this statement? The second and third sentences give me pause, though. Surely it’s valuable to have someone with Obama’s experiences in the White House—someone who knows what it’s like to be discriminated against, someone who has a diverse background and experiences. But it seems as though Reverend Wright is suggesting that Barack Obama’s experiences of discrimination and bias have been more valuable than what Hillary Clinton has experienced because of her gender.

You all know that I do not like Hillary Clinton—and in fact, I doubt that I’d be able to bring myself to vote for her if she was the Democratic nominee—but she does not deserve the mean-spirited attacks she endured through much of the 90s from the right. (Remember the “vast, right-wing conspiracy” she talked about at the time? It’s real.) She doesn’t deserve to be referred to as disrespectfully as she was back in November by a (female!) McCain supporter who assumed Hillary would be the Democratic nominee and asked McCain at a campaign event, “How do we beat the bitch?” (McCain’s response, without missing a beat or expressing disappointment at her choice of words—he even seemed kind of amused—was, “That’s an excellent question. You might know that there was a poll yesterday, a Rasmussen poll, identified, that shows me three points ahead of Senator Clinton in a head-to-head matchup.” Classy guy.)

So…the verdict on Barack Obama’s pastor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright? Obviously Obama needs to distance himself from Wright’s statements for political reasons, and it would seem that Reverend Wright might begin to choose his own words more carefully. But I hope that when he wins the White House in November, Obama does not forget some of the most though-provoking questions his pastor raised in those controversial clips. By considering issues like America’s role in the world and bias in the US correctional system, Obama can evolve into the true leader this country—and world—so sorely needs.

Monsoon

Monsoon Martin's Weather Update for Wednesday, 12 March 2008

Daylight Saving Time can kiss my dragging arse. And so can the yammering hair helmet on the evening news who keeps telling me to check my frigging smoke alarms when I change my clocks. (OK—I checked ‘em, they’re A-OK, Muffy. Now sod off!) And so can George W. Bush (for this and many other reasons), who signed an idiotic bill in 2005 extending DST from March to November rather than April to October, which was bad enough. And, for that matter, so can Ben Franklin, whose precious ramblings formed the basis for DST in the first place.

And while we’re at it, Hillary Clinton can pucker up and plant a big one on my hindquarters, too, for proving that she will leave no dirty campaign tactic unslung. Barack Obama’s foreign policy adviser Samantha Power was fired for saying in an interview that Clinton is a “monster” who will “tell any lie” and “stop at nothing to win.” Well, I have no such high-profile ties to the Obama campaign, so I will say it now: Hillary Clinton is a monster who will tell any lie and stop at nothing to win. (A note about the picture below: I realize it is a horribly unflattering and almost daemonic picture of the candidate, but please understand that I have never made—nor would I ever make—any pretense of unbiased reporting here on the Monsoon weblog.)

Finally, Hillary Clinton operative and one-time Vice-Presidential candidate Geraldine Ferraro can go to hell (I don’t want her anywhere near my arse) for her unequivocally racist statement, “If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position. And if he was a woman (of any color) he would not be in this position. He happens to be very lucky to be who he is. And the country is caught up in the concept.” This statement has not been repudiated, nor has Ferraro been either denounced or rejected, by the Clinton campaign.

I hope that on April 22^nd Pennsylvania Democrats reject her pandering, her divisive politics, and vote in large numbers for Barack Obama—who won both the Wyoming caucuses and the Mississippi primary with 61% of the vote and still has a lead of more than 100 delegates—as the next President of the United States.

But on to nicer, more palatable topics: spring is only a bit more than a week away, the two-week forecast is relatively dry, and the temperatures are (eventually) going to start edging up in accordance.

Today will be partly to mostly cloudy; becoming rather windy, but nothing like the high, damaging winds of last weekend. High 53, low 30.

Thursday will see some sunshine during the day, but clouds will dominate in the evening and overnight. High 48, low 36.

Friday will be overcast and quite mild with the chance of showers on and off throughout the day. High 56, low 38.

Saturday will be breezy and somewhat colder with rain and drizzle in the afternoon and evening. High 45, low 33.

Sunday is looking sunny to partly cloudy and pleasant with temperatures a bit below normal for late winter. High 42, low 28.

Monday 3/17 will be partly cloudy and nice. High 46, low 33.

Tuesday looks overcast with the slight chance of a sprinkle or two. High 52, low 36.

Wednesday will be partly cloudy and milder still. High 55, low 30.

Thursday and Friday look to be partly to mostly cloudy and colder with highs in the low 40s and lows in the mid 20s.

Next weekend will be more of the same, essentially: highs in the low to mid 40s, lows in the low to mid 20s.

Beyond: the cooler pattern breaks the following week, I think, when highs will be in the 50s and we will have left below-freezing temperatures behind us until December.

Monsoon

Monsoon Martin's Ba-rack, rockin' it! Forecast for Monday, 3 March 2008

“Well, I blew that one.” These were my words to no one in particular on Saturday morning when I awoke to discover that the expected snowfall had amounted to a few, non-accumulating flurries and squalls, and was currently tapering to drizzle. “A good, old-fashioned blown forecast.” I have no defense; I could explain what happened, but since it would sound like justification, I will refrain.

I would like to make a bold prediction (as if my prognosticating skills amount to jack squat about now) about the upcoming Democratic presidential primaries tomorrow. Many of you recall that recently in this space I endorsed Illinois senator Barack Obama for the nomination; click the link below for details.

http://monsoonmartin.squarespace.com/journal/2008/2/8/monsoon-martin-announces-endorsement-in-2008-presidential-ra.html

One additional key factor that supports my feeling that Barack’s a good guy and deserves our support is this: back in January, responding to a reporter’s question, Obama declared his favorite TV show to be “The Wire” (my fave) and his favorite character to be Omar (also my fave, though it may be a tie with Bubs): “He’s this gay gangster who only robs drug dealers, and then gives back. You know, he’s sort of a Robin Hood. And he’s the toughest, baddest guy on this show, but he’s gay, you know. And it’s really interesting. It’s a fascinating character.”

Another indication that Obamamania is unstoppably sweeping the nation is that lovably gruff orthopedic resident Bob Greenleaf, former old-school Lancaster County Republican, has been corrupted by city life (and his awesomely liberal wife Steph) and switched party affiliations! He is now a registered, Obama-supportin’ Democrat. (See actual photo of him completing the actual paperwork below.)

Anyway, the predictions for the March 4^th primaries:

Texas: Obama 48%; Clinton 44%

Ohio: Clinton 49%; Obama 47%

Vermont: Obama 63%; Clinton 34%

Rhode Island: Clinton 51%; Obama 44%

Furthermore, I think Hillary Clinton, who needs not only victories but decisive ones to reinforce the viability of continuing her campaign, will nonetheless prolong the race—thus making the April 22^nd Pennsylvania primary key and bringing about at least one PA debate and lots of appearances by both candidates.

Moving forward with the weather, we’re looking at unseasonable warmth (though today’s temperature will not quite approach the record high for this date of 70 in Reading). I don’t see any winter weather (snow, sleet, freezing rain) but I’m not ready to declare a definitive end to winter weather yet; given the below-normal temperatures that have predominated lately, I think we could have a winter event anytime through the first week of April.

The forecast…

Today will be partly cloudy and mild with light breezes; increasing clouds late. A bit of drizzle can’t be ruled out overnight. High 59, low 41.

Tomorrow will be mostly cloudy with a shower or two and some scattered fog throughout the early part of the day, followed by steadier rain in the evening and overnight, when rain may be heavy at times and localized flooding is possible. A thunderstorm may even move through late at night, and winds will kick up behind the system. High 51, low 42.

Wednesday could see some early showers, but otherwise it’ll turn out partly cloudy, windy, and cooler. High 46, low 25.

On Thursday we’ll see increasing cloudiness with showers late in the evening and into the night. High 46, low 34.

Friday will be partly to mostly cloudy with breezy and seasonably cool conditions. High 44, low 29.

The weekend looks even cooler with brisk winds both days; highs will be in the upper 30s and lows in the mid to upper 20s.

Next week is looking far better than the winter weather “mess” I hinted at in my last forecast. We’ll see warmer temperatures over all, with highs in the upper 40s (perhaps even reaching into the 50s again) and lows only in the mid to upper 40s. Next chance for rain—and only rain—is Wednesday the 12^th and Thursday the 13^th as a warm front moves through, sending temperatures to near 60.

Beyond will be seasonably cooler with highs in the mid to upper 40s and lows in the upper 20s (about normal for this time of the year).

We are the UL-ti-mate! (Ba-rack, rockin’ it!)

Monsoon

Monsoon Martin's "Ba-RACK the Vote" Campaign Statement

Hey again friends...

I just wanted to take a moment here on my weblog to congratulate Barack Obama for yet another win in the Democratic primaries and caucuses last evening (two, actually).

Since I endorsed Obama in my post of February 8th, he has won ten straight primaries and caucuses, most of them decisively: Louisiana, Nebraska, Washington, U.S. Virgin Islands, Maine, D.C., Maryland, Virginia, Wisconsin and Hawaii.  The evidence is overwhelming, therefore, that it was my endorsement that put him over the top--it was the "tipping point" in his campaign, if you will.  You're welcome, Barack!

Notable upcoming primaries include Ohio, Texas, Rhode Island and Vermont on March 4th and Pennsylvania on April 22nd.

Good luck, Barack!

Monsoon

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 The New 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 44^th 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