Category Archives: 2008 Campaign

McCain’s Katrina claims refuted

Senator McCain, during a recent New Orleans press availablility, said that he

“supported every investigation” into the government’s role regarding the hurricane, when in fact he twice voted against an independent commission.”

From “Katrina Kerfuffle,” on FactCheck.org .

Notwithstanding the merits of the the votes in question – it’s hard to have a national discussion about important issues – such as what the lessons learned from Katrina might be – when United States senators lie, are uninformed, or misinformed, about their own voting records.

John McCain, Sunnis and Shiites

Senator John McCain touts his foreign policy experience, yet he doesn’t know the difference between the Sunnis and the Shiites in Iraq and Iran. Sunnis are a majority in the Arab and Muslim world. Most of the Arabs, Turks, Kurds, and Iranians are Sunni. Turks, Kurds, and Iranians are not Arabs. Iraqis are Arabs, and most are Shiite.

Not knowing the difference is kind of like not knowing the difference between Catholics and Protestants in Ireland. Or Baptists, Catholics, Episcopalians, and Mormans in the United States. Or Puerto Ricans, Italians, and Irish Catholics in Brooklyn.

(Note – this blog is generally more about Policy than Politics

. However, the two are inseparable, and people who would make and enforce Policy

, i.e., Presidents of the United States, must understand Politics .)

Huckabee defends Obama, Wright

Governor Mike Huckabee has come to the defense of Senator Obama and Reverend Jeremiah Wright:

“As easy as it is for those of us who are white to look back and say ‘That’s a terrible statement!’ … I grew up in a very segregated South. And I think that you have to cut some slack — and I’m gonna be probably the only conservative in America who’s gonna say something like this, but I’m just tellin’ you — we’ve gotta cut some slack to people who grew up being called names…”

Read the rest on Ben Smith’s Blog at Politico . Thanks to Ghost in the Machine .

While we purposefully try to stay out of partisan tangles – this one seems potentially incendiary, and nearly entirely manufactured. The opinion of one Jewish man with more family in Israel than in the United States: Reverend Wright is welcome at our house any time, and this doesn’t remotely disqualify Senator Obama, in my view, as a presidential candidate.

We’d like a return to a discussion of the issues on their merits: tax policy, energy policy, Iraq, universal health care, and disaster preparedness. Which, as we keep trying to demonstrate, all overlap.

Obama – in Context – A More Perfect Union

We The People, In Order To Form A More Perfect Union

Barack Obama, in Philadelphia, PA, Monday, March 18, 2008, excerpts.

Two hundred and twenty one years ago, in a hall that still stands across the street, a group of men gathered and, with these simple words, launched America’s improbable experiment in democracy. Farmers and scholars; statesmen and patriots who had traveled across an ocean to escape tyranny and persecution finally made real their declaration of independence at a Philadelphia convention that lasted through the spring of 1787.

…

we may not look the same and we may not have come from the same place, but we all want to move in the same direction – towards a better future for our children and our grandchildren.

This belief comes from my unyielding faith in the decency and generosity of the American people. But it also comes from my own American story.

I am the son of a black man from Kenya and a white woman from Kansas. I was raised with the help of a white grandfather who survived a Depression to serve in Patton’s Army during World War II and a white grandmother who worked on a bomber assembly line at Fort Leavenworth while he was overseas. I’ve gone to some of the best schools in America and lived in one of the world’s poorest nations. I am married to a black American who carries within her the blood of slaves and slave-owners — an inheritance we pass on to our two precious daughters. I have brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews, uncles and cousins, of every race and every hue, scattered across three continents, and for as long as I live, I will never forget that in no other country on Earth is my story even possible.

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.

…

I have already condemned, in unequivocal terms, the statements of Reverend Wright that have caused such controversy. For some, nagging questions remain. Did I know him to be an occasionally fierce critic of American domestic and foreign policy? Of course. Did I ever hear him make remarks that could be considered controversial while I sat in church? Yes. Did I strongly disagree with many of his political views? Absolutely – just as I’m sure many of you have heard remarks from your pastors, priests, or rabbis with which you strongly disagreed.

But the remarks that have caused this recent firestorm weren’t simply controversial. They weren’t simply a religious leader’s effort to speak out against perceived injustice. Instead, they expressed a profoundly distorted view of this country – a view that sees white racism as endemic, and that elevates what is wrong with America above all that we know is right with America; 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.

As such, Reverend Wright’s comments were not only wrong but divisive, divisive at a time when we need unity; racially charged at a time when we need to come together to solve a set of monumental problems – two wars, a terrorist threat, a falling 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.

…

There is a young, twenty-three year old white woman named Ashley Baia who organized for our campaign in Florence South Carolina. She had been working to organize a mostly African-American community since the beginning of this campaign, and one day she was at a roundtable discussion where everyone went around telling their story and why they were there.

And Ashley said that when she was nine years old, her mother got cancer. And because she had to miss days of work, she was let go and lost her health care. They had to file for bankruptcy, and that’s when Ashley decided that she had to do something to help her mom.

She knew that food was one of their most expensive costs, and so Ashley convinced her mother that what she really liked and really wanted to eat more than anything else was mustard and relish sandwiches. Because that was the cheapest way to eat.

She did this for a year until her mom got better, and she told everyone at the roundtable that the reason she joined our campaign was so that she could help the millions of other children in the country who want and need to help their parents too.

Now Ashley might have made a different choice. Perhaps somebody told her along the way that the source of her mother’s problems were blacks who were on welfare and too lazy to work, or Hispanics who were coming into the country illegally. But she didn’t. She sought out allies in her fight against injustice.

Anyway, Ashley finishes her story and then goes around the room and asks everyone else why they’re supporting the campaign. They all have different stories and reasons. Many bring up a specific issue. And finally they come to this elderly black man who’s been sitting there quietly the entire time. And Ashley asks him why he’s there. And he does not bring up a specific issue. He does not say health care or the economy. He does not say education or the war. He does not say that he was there because of Barack Obama. He simply says to everyone in the room, “I am here because of Ashley.”

“I’m here because of Ashley.” By itself, that single moment of recognition between that young white girl and that old black man is not enough. It is not enough to give health care to the sick, or jobs to the jobless, or education to our children.

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.

League of Conservation Voters and MoveOn Want to ask the Candidates about Energy and Global Warming

The League of Conservation Voters, LCV, and Move On.Org are asking people to urge TV news reporters to ask the candidates about Global Warming, Climate Change, and Energy. People at LCV and MoveOn have noticed that the candidates were asked about Global Warming six times. They were asked about extra-terrestrials three times.Click here, for the Move On page, here , for the League of Conservation page.

Move On and LCV have also partnered with local groups like Environment New Jersey in this effort (click here)

Popular Logistics endorses this effort. Before reviewing the questions I’d like to ask, I would like to note, for the record, an observation.

The debate Thursday, Jan. 31, 2008, between Senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, sponsored by CNN, the LA Times, and Politico, and broadcast on CNN, like everything broadcast on CNN, provided opportunities for commercials. The advertisers included the coal industry.

Here are the questions I’d like to ask:

Given the urgency of global warming, will you commit to take action on the issue in your first 100 days in office? If yes, what specifically would you do?
Will you commit invest in and deploy clean renewable energy technologies, including solar, wind, geothermal, marine current, cogeneration and conservation?
Will you commit to cutting our use of old fashioned or problemmatic technologies, including coal, oil and nuclear — which are neither clean nor renewable?
Will you push a mandatory cap on emissions that achieves at least a 20 percent reduction by the end of next decade?
Will you call a major international summit on global warming in your first 60 days and work to sign a new international treaty by the end of your first year?

We want to know where all the candidates stand on global warming, climate change, and energy, and what they would do as President.

We also want to know how CNN can be expected to ask tough questions about energy policy, global warming, and climate change when it relies on advertising revenue from an energy industry which by it’s existence, is triggering global warming and climate change? Should the debates be sponsored by non-commercial interests?

"Presidential" – What Does it Mean?

Rule of Law? Rule of Man? Or Law of the Jungle?

You can take the pulse of a society by it’s infrastructure: it’s roads, schools, hospitals, courts, and leadership.

You can measure a society’s wealth. But the wealthy are a privileged class. Even in communist China, there are people who push around resources. They don’t use the term wealthy, at least not yet. But what else would you call it?

Looking at politicians, in office and running for office – ask yourself why are they there? Are they dictators, dupes, or democrats? Are they akin to gangsters taking what they can at gunpoint? Are they helping their friends at the expense of everyone else? Or are they building schools and hospitals (because children of the ghettos can grow up to be doctors, lawyers, scientists, engineers and accountants).

Will they help everyone to a bigger slice of the pie by the ‘trickle-up theory’ making the pie bigger? Or will they help their friends to a bigger slice of the pie by making your slice of the pie smaller? Is this character a ‘yes-man’ or one who would surround himself or herself with yes-men? Does he/she value dissent? How does he/she react to criticism? Does he/she make decisions based on facts or make up the “facts” based on decisions?