Not so Subtle

One of the more deplorable things about politics is that most people never change their minds on a subject; once they have made their decision about an issue, it will stand in ther mind no matter what evidence is presented against it. They make fantastic mental leaps in order to assimilate the evidence into whatever idea they already have. I hope that I never become like that.

Today I came across an article from last year that has shifted my opinion on the Israeli question.

http://web.israelinsider.com/views/10767.htm

If you don’t care to read the whole thing, in essence, it states that Nazi propaganda was very widespread throughout the Arab world during the 30’s, and that it has helped shape many of the anti-Semitic views throughout the Muslim world, to this day. I was unaware that Hitler’s words were able to reach such an audience.

Now, this doesn’t mean that I’m ready to sign on and say that we need to bomb Iran in order to save Israel from certain destruction. A great deal of the hatred that Muslims have for Israel come from Israel’s own policies in dealing with the Palestinians, and much of the same could be said for America’s foreign policies. I do not believe that we are in the Middle East to protect Israel, or to bring democracy to the masses: this war is, was, and always will be about oil. But reading the impact that the Nazi message had on many of the people: “God in heaven, Hitler on Earth,” is disturbing enough for me to think that maybe Mr. Bush isn’t entirely wrong when he compares these regimes to Germany in the 30’s.

Scaling back America’s empire abroad would go a long way to improving our image around the world and would slow the growth of terrorist ideologies, but we should never at any point negotiate with any party or nation that has taken Hitler’s words to heart.

The Obamas may have doomed their chances of living in the White House a long time ago.

Today comes a report that Republican strategists have scoured through decades of sermons by Jeremiah Wright, all tape-recorded, and have found something big. The video will likely not be made available until the fall, but apparently it contains footage of Michelle Obama making racist remarks. The only term that they use in quotations is “whitey.”

I don’t want to speculate too much because I haven’t seen the video- though I guarantee it will be leaked before, or soon after the Democratic Convention- I think this has the potential to be more damaging for Obama than any of his other previous problems.

1. Tony Rezko, the Chicago slumlord was the first bump in the road for Obama, which has gone largely ignored by the national media.

2. Jeremiah Wright has been, thus far, the biggest obstacle to Obama’s campaign, and he will continue to be so, even if this video never came up.

3. Cling-gate: the speech in which Obama claimed people in small towns in Pennsylvannia were clinging to religion and guns has heavily damaged his credibility with working class voters, who already weren’t too fond of him.

4. A racist rant by his by-and-large respected wife could be a death knell for the Obama campaign. All of his ability to “transcend race” will go out the window, and we could be in for a very dirty, race-driven general election.

If the video causes a major stir (which it almost certainly will) then a large number of people who have supported Hillary Clinton may side with John Mccain, and earn him a landslide victory in November.

It’s very sad that the Democratic party can’t come up with a candidate to win in 2008, which will be the best opportunity they will EVER have of regaining the White House.

 Yes we Can, but No I Won’t.

First of all, I am a racist fundamentalist who clings to guns and religion and could never vote for a black man and besides, I think he might be a secret Muslim communist sympathizer, who should have left that evil, evil church a long time ago.

Now that that’s out of the way, here are the real reasons why I will not vote for Obama:

1. Bad Fruit from a Bad Tree

The tree I refer to here is not his mixed heritage or unconventional upbringing. The bad tree that has borne Barack Obama is the Democratic Party. For one, the notion that we have to choose the Democrats over the Republicans because they’re the lesser of two evils is flawed and ignorant. If you got your political coverage from somewhere other than the idiot box or major newspapers, you might discover that there are a whole number of political parties, and if, God forbid, you do some research, I’m certain that you’ll find one that reflects your values more than the Democrats and Republicans, no matter what your values are.

The Democrats have failed at every turn to stop the funding for Bush’s war, they have failed to impeach a President and Vice President that have broken the law and the Geneva conventions, and they have failed to convince me that they will truly change the way business is done in Washington. The donkey party has had it’s fair share of scandals, and I’m not talking about oral sex in the Oval office, here. Once they are back in power, we will quickly be reminded that they can be just as corrupt, inept, and smug as the Republican machine. The party is a bad tree, and anyone who comes out of it can only be bad fruit.

2. Realism

The realism here is not what most people complain about in regards to Obama’s ideas. Many of his critics say that he’s naive for promising to end the war in Iraq, to bring more Americans healthcare, and to heal the divisions in Washington. I say that we would be naive to believe him. If you listen carefully to his speeches and read his policy statements, you will find nothing radical in his rhetoric. His promises of bipartisanship are nothing that a hundred slick political anglers haven’t peddled to the American public a thousand times already. Critics will say that he has a radical voting record, that he is by far the most liberal member of the senate. Other than his extremely creepy voting record on abortion, I see nothing radical at all in his proposals. He’s progressive on abortion, gun control, and immigration. But I don’t see Obama being progressive on the issues that really matter.

When you hear him wax on foreign policy, he’s so eloquent compared to Bush that you can easily believe that he will end our destructive imperialist policies. But he promises to do no such thing. Barack Obama has no intentions of ending the permanent state of militarization in this country; Obama has made no promises to address the military industrial complex, which is the single greatest impediment to our own democracy, and to the lives and freedom of people around the world. Obama speaks of managing America’s image and empire in a more responsible fashion, but he never has shown a desire to “end the mentality that got us into war in the first place,” as he has promised so many times.

The realism needs to come from the American people here. Are we going to believe that one charismatic man can solve every foreign policy issue we have, just because his name is Barack Obama? Talking to terrorists and rogue states is not a radical idea, we have been doing so for decades without any serious intention of engaging their interests. Talk is hollow when it is done from a point of unprecedented military leverage. Obama has no grandiose notions like nuclear disarmament or withdrawing the hundreds of thousands of troops that we have stationed all over the globe. No, there is nothing radical about his ideas at all.

3. Arrogance

The issue of character will rear its ugly head again and again during this election. I am not going to claim that Obama has any less character than the lying Clintons or pandering Mccains, but one thing I do take issue with is the fact that his entire candidacy is based on a platform of arrogance.

Talk to any supporter of Barack Obama and try to see if they can find any flaws in him. I’ve tried, and I’ve come up short every time. Obama has done a superb job of convincing us that he is the coolest fucking thing that has ever walked the Earth. The groundswell of his support comes not from people who desire a real change in American ideas and actions, but from people who believe with all their hearts, minds, and souls, that Barack Obama can fix anything. It’s a point that he has hammered home again and again by claiming he feels the most qualified in the realm of foreign policy, when the man has absolutely no experience in the arena. There is no doubt that Obama is a confident man, and people line up behind confidence like sheep line up to get skinned. My problem is that Mr. Obama’s arrogance has become the driving point of this campaign season, and almost everyone down the line has fallen for it, except for the radical conservatives who will despise him no matter what he does or says.

The media loves Barack Obama. The people love Barack Obama. But don’t forget that the person who is most enamored with the Barack Obama phenomenon, is one Barack Obama.

Ralph Nader will not be our next President. But I’d rather back a humble civil servant over an egomaniacal, slick snake-oil salesman any day of the week.

It is an unbearably hot and humid day in West Virginia in 1998. We are building a small flight of stairs for a family living in a mobile home; for hours we have been pounding nails, sawing, measuring, and sweating in the heat. “We” is a group of kids from Chicago on a mission trip to this impoverished state. The family is a single mother and her son, who have lived together her for several years. The stairs need to be built because recently the mother tripped on the makeshift staircase: a pair of cement blocks.

Every hour she comes out and gives us a new container of lemonade, which we accept gratefully and greedily. This lemonade is sweeter, cooler, better than the granulated stuff that we buy at Jewel back home.

We continue to toil in the sun into the afternoon, only being interrupted to shew away a snake which has strayed into the family’s garden. We don’t have snakes where I’m from. But here it’s not uncommon to be bitten when strolling through your yard. Here everything is a little bit different than back home. Us city kids are worn out easily by the labor, and the older youth group leaders take over the majority of the work soon. Inside, the mother is working just as hard, preparing a feast of chicken and dumplings for our entire group. It will be ready by sundown, she says in her friendly drawl.

Finally we finish the project. Four sturdy wooden stairs now lead up from the muddy ground to the door of their trailer. The son, Ben comes out when we are finished and he marvels at them after skipping down the steps in his bare feet. His mother comes out to see, and he nearly shouts:

“We got stairs, mama!”

I feel a slightly embarassing wave of warmth come over me when he says this. Maybe it’s satisfaction at having helped this family in need, maybe guilt over living in a two-story, middle classed mansion compared to their home. What strikes me is how excited Ben is over having stairs. The family has been living on food stamps for years and simple pleasures like a working staircase bring them the kind of joy that only Christmas usually carries along.

The poverty in West Virginia is real, and it is still as much a problem today as it was then. Today they vote for who they’d like to represent the Democratic party, and more than likely, they will choose Hillary Clinton, even though she has no chance of winning the nomination. There are alot of reasons why they will do this, and I don’t know them all. A great number of people will claim that they are stuck in a racist ideology, bred by time, ignorance, imbreeding, and poverty. On the road back to the school where we stayed for the week, there was a broken down stone wall that was spraypainted with an all-too-common message: “The only good Nigger is a dead Nigger.” We held our breath passing by it every day.

Racism is a fact of life in America today, especially in poorer southern states such as West Virginia. But I hope that Barack Obama’s supporters do not think that just because the people of the state chose to vote for Hillary over him means that they are racist. It’s certainly going to be one reason, but it is not the only one. To lump all of West Virginia together as a pack of ignorant redneck racist hicks is no more constructive than the claim that everyone who votes for Obama or Mccain is a sexist pig who loathes her and could never vote for any woman.

West Virginia is a real state with real problems, and no matter what happens with the voting today, I hope that we keep in mind that these are not stereotypes: the people I met in there were among the kindest, most generous, most genuine that I’ve ever met. The legacy is there, but do not belittle the people of this state by labeling them as anything.

Cal State Fullerton has denied a teacher a job for refusing to sign a loyalty oath. The idea was put into place in the late 40’s to keep Communists out of the faculty. The oath states that you will defend the US from all enemies, foreign and domestic. The teacher in question only wanted to add a statement saying that she was a pacifist. She was refused.

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-oath2-2008may02,0,6280956.story

This is shameful for the university and the entire country.

When you allow yourself to sink to these levels, you’re letting those so-called enemies win. America is about freedom of speech and the pursuit of happiness. If my pursuit of happiness doesn’t involve violent clashes with abstract political enemies, then I have every right to say that I will not take part in it.

One of the favorite lines the Administration has used since 9/11 has been that “the terrorists hate our freedom.” If that is true, then we need to be doing everything in our power to preserve that freedom here at home.

We have a sad legacy when it comes to protecting the freedoms of people that are perceived to be threats. With each great global conflict, huge swaths of Americans are persecuted and their rights are violated in the name of security. I’m talking about the blacklisting of socialists during the Cold War, the detention camps for the Japanese during WW2, and now the regular horrors that the American Muslim community is subjected to in the midst of the War on Terror. It wasn’t right then, and it isn’t right now.

If Cal State Fullerton really intends to preserve America and its ideas, it would do well to protect the very freedoms that make it great.

We get drunk and yell about politics on the weekends here. I was drunk enough to advocate the slaughter of the wealthy elite in this country (the kind of people that fix elections.) My roommate said it was unAmerican and barbaric, which it would be. I retorted that the guys in smoking jackets who really run America are evil and deserve it.

He asked if we were evil like the government of Myanmar. I had to say no. The junta leadership is not allowing aid into the country in the wake of a devastating cyclone that has claimed the lives of over 30,000 people and that is a very conservative number at this point. This is petty dictatorship. There is no excuse for this kind of wanton negligence.

Because foreign aid is being blocked, the dead are not being collected. The diseases that will be caused from this could be far more deadly than the storm itself in the long run.

The military leadership of Myanmar is either undeniably wicked, or REALLY has something to hide. Or both, perhaps.

Here is a link where you can donate to Unicef’s fund for the victims:

http://www.google.com/myanmarcyclone/

Pray that it actually gets to people that need it.

It’s the most tired of cliches, but it’s perfect to describe the Democratic race. Somebody had to lose. Yes, there are still a few primaries left, and yes, I have called the game for Obama prematurely before, but now with superdelegates lining up behind him, I don’t see any scenario in which he can lose the nomination. So those fireworks are finally dying down, and it’s time to focus on the next stage.

Or is it?

Obama v. Mccain is going to be intriguing on a number of levels, but I feel the biggest change now will be the focus of the media. Now that we’re officially in general election mode, there will be a much greater focus on George W. Bush and his legacy. He’s been ignored largely because he’s a lame deck President in his last year, and also because of the compelling primary races. But as the focus shifts to the next President, it will inevitably shine back on the Decider.

Oliver Stone is ahead of the curve, as he has a biopic in the works. I’m a pretty big fan of his workand it sounds like an interesting flick. We shall see.

I don’t know the man and while I have called him an expletiving expletive idiot on more than one occasion, I don’t think it’s fair to judge a person when you don’t know them personally. This is the person I’m talking about, not his Presidency. People will be quick to judge him on both accounts; for entering Iraq, or being an alcoholic, for failing during Katrina’s crisis or for being arrogant.

History will have to decide these things, and perhaps it’s best to leave it to historians who will have more perspective than us living in these polarized times.

While I don’t vote based on a candidate’s personal character, I know alot of you out there do. So let’s take a moment and examine the “character” of our 3 presidential hopefuls.

1. John Mccain called his wife a cunt in public. While I’m the last person who can call someone out for having a dirty mouth, I think that’s a bit extreme. He was a sailor, so you have to expect that, but still.

2. Hillary Clinton lies about anything she can.

3. Barack Obama is the most popular because you don’t know him. He’s a new face and we have yet to see his personal flaws, beyond the obligatory arrogance. If knowing that he’s Dick Cheney’s cousin doesn’t bother you, perhaps this will: it turns out that Obama has roots to the British Royal family. If you really want to get creeped out, look up the heraldic symbolism of the British coat of arms.

So there you have it. The establishment presents us with 3 options for the President:

1. The sexist sailor with a temper worse than Albert Belle’s.

2. The woman who is incapable of telling the truth.

3. The guy who has ties to the monarchy.

Awesome.

On the West Coast there is a moratorium on fishing for salmon because the species has been devastated by overfishing.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/05/02/BABT10F7PE.DTL&tsp=1

While I feel badly for the fishermen and their families, this is just a taste of the lifestyle changes that will be coming. Due to our neglect of environmental standards and our free-market-fuck-for-all-philosophy, there’s a very good chance that we will be without marine life in our lifetime.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6108414.stm

That’s right. We have gone that far.

Without taking extreme measures that have will have to ignore economic impacts, we will soon face massive shortages of food, water, and fuels at a global level.

Some people will say that we can’t change our way of life, that it will be too costly for businesses or for the consumer. I say who cares? There will not be a planet to do business on if we continue on this path. If we’re not willing to forfeit economic growth to save our home, then we don’t deserve to live on it, anyway.

I really would love to list a full 365 ways to bury your head in the sand, or up your ass, but I don’t have that much time. Instead, I will explore the 3 most common and politically infamous ways of ignoring reality or lacking any grasp on the way things work here in this country.

1. Be a conservative who supports the free market but wants a border fence. These two ideas are about as incompatible as it gets. Opening up the market means opening up borders to anyone who wants to participate in the global economy; and the global economy depends on the cheap labor that immigrants provide, especially here in the States. The same people who talk about big government interfering with hard-working Americans generally use the same tone of disdain when talking about Mexicans who come up here and take away (white) Americans’ jobs. I’m sorry folks, but you just can’t have it both ways. The free market ensures that labor costs and immigration policies will be linked.

Today thousands of immigrants and their families and friends are marching through Chicago and other cities, because they want to participate in this great American experiment of democratic voting and markets. Are you going to deny them that? Well, you can’t anyway. A border fence cannot stop the flow of immigrants into this country anymore than it can stop the thousands of tons of drugs that come across as well. You’re just going to have to accept the notion that you won’t be fulfilling your life-long dream of being a bus-boy. The Mexicans have just as much of a right to be here as the Jews, Asians, Irish, and Germans that came before them. They’re not going away. Just accept it.

2. Believe that the surge is really working. I myself have fallen into this fallacy. But a temporary decrease in spectacular attacks do not prove that the strategy can work. There is no way that the surge can work. And for the inevitable idiot claims that I am somehow disrespecting the troops by saying this, I have no reason to even answer you, but the fact is that the surge is yet another impossible burden that has been placed on our troops. The reason I was opposed to this war from the beginning is because I support the troops who fight it. End of story.

The reason that the surge cannot work is because, just like the entire Iraqi mission, it is a flawed idea to begin with. Democracy cannot be forced upon people with a gun anymore than political reconciliation can be achieved through massive troop buildups. The violence has lessened since the surge began, but that’s not the question here. Without a permanent, comprehensive solution that is worked out by the IRAQIS there will be no end to this war. To expect the American soldier to keep carrying that burden while the corrupt, inept, illegitimate Iraqi government works towards “peace” is the true meaning of not supporting the troops. And for those of you who claim that we just need to give them more time, let me remind you that 5 years ago today, our President stood on the deck of a naval vessel in front of a giant banner that read “Mission Accomplished.” Don’t believe it for a second; then or now.

3. Believing that Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, or John Mccain will truly change things. The very fact that these 3 candidates have come as far as they have proves that their interests lie with the wealthy elite, not with the average American. For all his talk of campaign finance reform, John Mccain has taken millions from PAC’s and corporations and hasn’t apologized for it. Barack Obama claims that he has stayed away from this dirty money but it’s only a twisting of terms; the truth is that he has taken far more money from corporate America than any other candidate. Hillary Clinton is about as entrenched in the Washington power structure as you can get, and all her talk about health care is hallow as hell; in 1994 she may have really meant it, but since she has taken millions of dollars from the insurance and pharmaceutical industries.

For hundreds of years people have been running on the platform of change and hope, and very very few of them have actually followed through. In order to affect any real change in America, we need to change the way campaigns are funded, and stop voting for a pack of bloated elephants and jackasses.