What's Your Word?

What word describes how you feel about the election?  Add your word to the word-stream...

Remember Who We Are: A New Progressive Era?

This ad ran in the NYTimes:
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Echoes of the Past

Two NYTimes economics writers discuss the similarities and differences between the current economic crisis in the United States and Great Depression. Check it out here.

Is Barack Obama the End of Black Politics?

As the Democratic convention gets underway today in Denver, and as Barack Obama stands on the cusp of becoming the first African American nominated for the presidency by a major U.S. political party, the NYTimes has raised some important questions about the meaning of Obama's success.

On August 10, they asked a number of prominent black political leaders, "Is Obama the end of black politics?" The article is well worth reading. Here is the heart of the matter:

For black Americans born in the 20th century, the chasms of experience that separate one generation from the next— those who came of age before the movement, those who lived it, those who came along after — have always been hard to traverse. Elijah Cummings, the former chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus and an early Obama supporter, told me a story about watching his father, a South Carolina sharecropper with a fourth-grade education, weep uncontrollably when Cummings was sworn in as a representative in 1996. Afterward, Cummings asked his dad if he had been crying tears of joy. “Oh, you know, I’m happy,” his father replied. “But now I realize, had I been given the opportunity, what I could have been. And I’m about to die.” In any community shadowed by oppression, pride and bitterness can be hard to untangle.

The generational transition that is reordering black politics didn’t start this year. It has been happening, gradually and quietly, for at least a decade, as younger African-Americans, Barack Obama among them, have challenged their elders in traditionally black districts. What this year’s Democratic nomination fight did was to accelerate that transition and thrust it into the open as never before, exposing and intensifying friction that was already there. For a lot of younger African-Americans, the resistance of the civil rights generation to Obama’s candidacy signified the failure of their parents to come to terms, at the dusk of their lives, with the success of their own struggle — to embrace the idea that black politics might now be disappearing into American politics in the same way that the Irish and Italian machines long ago joined the political mainstream.

“I’m the new black politics,” says Cornell Belcher, a 38-year-old pollster who is working for Obama. “The people I work with are the new black politics. We don’t carry around that history. We see the world through post-civil-rights eyes. I don’t mean that disrespectfully, but that’s just the way it is.

The letters to the editor regarding this article, were also very interesting.

And here is the Black Agenda Report's scathing response.

This morning, the Times took on another question that many African American academics and grassroots political leaders have been discussing for some time now. Here is the gist:

Mr. Obama has received overwhelming support from black voters, many of whom believe he will help bridge the nation’s racial divide. But even as they cheer him on, some black scholars, bloggers and others who closely follow the race worry that Mr. Obama’s historic achievements might make it harder to rally support for policies intended to combat racial discrimination, racial inequities and urban poverty.

They fear that growing numbers of white voters and policy makers will decide that eradicating racial discrimination and ensuring equal opportunity have largely been done. [emphasis added]

Both articles raise critical issues that have not yet been aired widely in the national media, but which we all need to consider. Does Obama represent a new approach to the politics of race? a new relationship between African Americans and American democracy? Or, does Obama's success risk overshadowing the very real struggles and persistent inequalities facing a disproportionate number of black Americans? What exactly, if anything, remains to be done to overcome the legacy of white supremacy and racial injustice in American society? Is Obama's success too easily interpreted, or perhaps manipulated, by some whites to "prove" that the struggle for racial justice is now complete and, as such, that there is no longer any social responsibility to act to ameliorate continuing racial disparities. Finally, what do these articles reveal about the relationship between the present and the past?

What do you think? Feel free to share your thoughts in the "comments" section...

50 Years of Madlibs!

I used to love Madlibs as a kid. This 50th anniversary tribute comes from the New York Times:

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While a Magician Works, the Mind Does the Tricks

I've always had a sweet spot for good magic, dating back to when I was a kid. Today's Science Times has an interesting article about the science of magic that folks might want to check out. Here is the set-up to the article:

In a paper published last week in the journal Nature Reviews Neuroscience, a team of brain scientists and prominent magicians described how magic tricks, both simple and spectacular, take advantage of glitches in how the brain constructs a model of the outside world from moment to moment, or what we think of as objective reality.

Here is a cool magic trick by Chris Angel:


And another:


Here is a segment of Larry King Live with Angel:


And, because David Blaine has become such a freak, here is a parody of his street magic:

Obama Pushes Back on Iraq

Recently, there has been a lot of chitter-chatter by the talking heads (and throughout the blogosphere) about Barack Obama's "move to the middle." Many progressives are concerned about the speed with which Obama has moved rightward since clinching the nomination. They cite his capitulation on the FISA fight, his moralistic rhetoric, his promise to reform, then expand, faith-based programs, and his equivocation on withdrawal from Iraq. Others, including Obama, claim this concern is overstated. Now, Obama is pushing back a bit with an Op-Ed piece in today's NYTimes...

July 14, 2008
OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR
My Plan for Iraq

By BARACK OBAMA
Chicago

THE call by Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki for a timetable for the removal of American troops from Iraq presents an enormous opportunity. We should seize this moment to begin the phased redeployment of combat troops that I have long advocated, and that is needed for long-term success in Iraq and the security interests of the United States.

The differences on Iraq in this campaign are deep. Unlike Senator John McCain, I opposed the war in Iraq before it began, and would end it as president. I believed it was a grave mistake to allow ourselves to be distracted from the fight against Al Qaeda and the Taliban by invading a country that posed no imminent threat and had nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks. Since then, more than 4,000 Americans have died and we have spent nearly $1 trillion. Our military is overstretched. Nearly every threat we face — from Afghanistan to Al Qaeda to Iran — has grown.

In the 18 months since President Bush announced the surge, our troops have performed heroically in bringing down the level of violence. New tactics have protected the Iraqi population, and the Sunni tribes have rejected Al Qaeda — greatly weakening its effectiveness.

But the same factors that led me to oppose the surge still hold true. The strain on our military has grown, the situation in Afghanistan has deteriorated and we’ve spent nearly $200 billion more in Iraq than we had budgeted. Iraq’s leaders have failed to invest tens of billions of dollars in oil revenues in rebuilding their own country, and they have not reached the political accommodation that was the stated purpose of the surge.

The good news is that Iraq’s leaders want to take responsibility for their country by negotiating a timetable for the removal of American troops. Meanwhile, Lt. Gen. James Dubik, the American officer in charge of training Iraq’s security forces, estimates that the Iraqi Army and police will be ready to assume responsibility for security in 2009.

Only by redeploying our troops can we press the Iraqis to reach comprehensive political accommodation and achieve a successful transition to Iraqis’ taking responsibility for the security and stability of their country. Instead of seizing the moment and encouraging Iraqis to step up, the Bush administration and Senator McCain are refusing to embrace this transition — despite their previous commitments to respect the will of Iraq’s sovereign government. They call any timetable for the removal of American troops “surrender,” even though we would be turning Iraq over to a sovereign Iraqi government.

But this is not a strategy for success — it is a strategy for staying that runs contrary to the will of the Iraqi people, the American people and the security interests of the United States. That is why, on my first day in office, I would give the military a new mission: ending this war.

As I’ve said many times, we must be as careful getting out of Iraq as we were careless getting in. We can safely redeploy our combat brigades at a pace that would remove them in 16 months. That would be the summer of 2010 — two years from now, and more than seven years after the war began. After this redeployment, a residual force in Iraq would perform limited missions: going after any remnants of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, protecting American service members and, so long as the Iraqis make political progress, training Iraqi security forces. That would not be a precipitous withdrawal.

In carrying out this strategy, we would inevitably need to make tactical adjustments. As I have often said, I would consult with commanders on the ground and the Iraqi government to ensure that our troops were redeployed safely, and our interests protected. We would move them from secure areas first and volatile areas later. We would pursue a diplomatic offensive with every nation in the region on behalf of Iraq’s stability, and commit $2 billion to a new international effort to support Iraq’s refugees.

Ending the war is essential to meeting our broader strategic goals, starting in Afghanistan and Pakistan, where the Taliban is resurgent and Al Qaeda has a safe haven. Iraq is not the central front in the war on terrorism, and it never has been. As Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, recently pointed out, we won’t have sufficient resources to finish the job in Afghanistan until we reduce our commitment to Iraq.

As president, I would pursue a new strategy, and begin by providing at least two additional combat brigades to support our effort in Afghanistan. We need more troops, more helicopters, better intelligence-gathering and more nonmilitary assistance to accomplish the mission there. I would not hold our military, our resources and our foreign policy hostage to a misguided desire to maintain permanent bases in Iraq.

In this campaign, there are honest differences over Iraq, and we should discuss them with the thoroughness they deserve. Unlike Senator McCain, I would make it absolutely clear that we seek no presence in Iraq similar to our permanent bases in South Korea, and would redeploy our troops out of Iraq and focus on the broader security challenges that we face. But for far too long, those responsible for the greatest strategic blunder in the recent history of American foreign policy have ignored useful debate in favor of making false charges about flip-flops and surrender.

It’s not going to work this time. It’s time to end this war.

Barack Obama, a United States senator from Illinois, is the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee.

So, there you have it. Has Senator Obama allayed your concerns, at least on Iraq? What do you think?

UPDATE: Barack Obama delivers a major speech today (July 15) on foreign policy. Everyone really should take the time to watch this:

NYTimes: "Sen. Clinton and the Campaign"

New York Times
May 9, 2008
Editorial
Sen. Clinton and the Campaign

There is a lot of talk that Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton is now fated to lose the Democratic nomination and should pull out of the race. We believe it is her right to stay in the fight and challenge Senator Barack Obama as long as she has the desire and the means to do so. That is the essence of the democratic process.

But we believe just as strongly that Mrs. Clinton will be making a terrible mistake — for herself, her party and for the nation — if she continues to press her candidacy through negative campaigning with disturbing racial undertones. We believe it would also be a terrible mistake if she launches a fight over the disqualified delegations from Florida and Michigan.

The United States needs a clean break from eight catastrophic years of George W. Bush. And so far, Senator John McCain is shaping up as Bush the Sequel — neverending war in Iraq, tax cuts for the rich while the middle class struggles, courts packed with right-wing activists intent on undoing decades of progress in civil rights, civil liberties and other vital areas.

The Democratic Party must field the most effective and vibrant candidate it possibly can. More attack ads and squabbling will not help achieve that goal. If Mr. Obama wins, he will be that much more battered and the party will be harder to unite. Win or lose, Mrs. Clinton’s reputation will suffer more harm than it already has.

She owes more to millions of Americans who have voted for her (and particularly to New Yorkers, who are entitled to expect that if she loses, she will return to the Senate with her influence and integrity intact).

In addition to abandoning the attack ads, Mrs. Clinton must drop her plans to fight to seat the delegations from Florida and Michigan, which defied the Democratic Party and moved up the dates of their primaries. A lot of people voted in Florida anyway, but Mrs. Clinton should not pursue this nuclear option. It would make the Democrats look unable to control their own, just when they want to make a case that they can lead the entire nation.

Both candidates have been vowing in the last two days to unite the party, and Mr. Obama could do more to rein in his anonymous campaign aides and other supporters who spend their days trashing Mrs. Clinton.

The undeclared superdelegates should stop their coy posing. With few exceptions, there is no reason left (other than the hope of making back-room deals) for those whose states have voted to keep their positions private. The rest should state their allegiance as soon as their primaries are held in the next few weeks.

There is a lot that Senators Clinton and Obama need to be talking about in coming weeks, starting with how they will extract the country from President Bush’s disastrous Iraq war. A robust debate about health care and the mortgage crisis would remind all American voters of what is at stake in this year’s election. It would also prepare whoever wins the nomination to be a better debater and campaigner in the fall.

We endorsed Mrs. Clinton, and we know that she has a major contribution to make. But instead of discussing her strong ideas, Mrs. Clinton claimed in an interview with USA Today that she would be the better nominee because a recent poll showed that “Senator Obama’s support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again.” She added: “There’s a pattern emerging here.”

Yes, there is a pattern — a familiar and unpleasant one. It is up to Mrs. Clinton to change it if she hopes to have any shot at winning the nomination or preserving her integrity and her influence if she loses.

Krugman: "Conservatives are Such Jokers"

Recently, President Bush vetoed legislation that would have provided 3.8 million currently uninsured children with health care. Paul Krugman wrote an excellent op-ed in the NYTimes that not only addresses that issue, in particular, but also the more general unwillingness of conservatives to take even minor action to help the disadvantaged, poor or oppressed. In fact, he points out that more often than not, conservatives not only oppose and block such legislation, but also employ a rhetoric that mocks the plight of those who struggle. Not exactly "compassionate conservatism"...

Here is an excerpt:

Of course, minimizing and mocking the suffering of others is a natural strategy for political figures who advocate lower taxes on the rich and less help for the poor and unlucky. But I believe that the lack of empathy shown by Mr. Limbaugh, Mr. Kristol, and, yes, Mr. Bush is genuine, not feigned...

What’s happening, presumably, is that modern movement conservatism attracts a certain personality type. If you identify with the downtrodden, even a little, you don’t belong. If you think ridicule is an appropriate response to other peoples’ woes, you fit right in.

And Republican disillusionment with Mr. Bush does not appear to signal any change in that regard. On the contrary, the leading candidates for the Republican nomination have gone out of their way to condemn “socialism,” which is G.O.P.-speak for any attempt to help the less fortunate.

Another example: every time someone mentions universal healthcare, Republicans laugh and dismiss it as "socialistic," or raise the evil specter of a "government program," as if that simply ends the conversation. Of course, our for profit health care system has left roughly 50 million citizens completely uninsured and tens of millions more with inadequate coverage. The market has not exactly solved this problem... and there certainly is demand. The reality is that conservatives are WILLING TO TOLERATE 50+ million uninsured Americans and millions more underinsured.

The kids fight back in this ad:

On a similar note, today's NYTimes had an article on an audit of the private insurers running the new Medicare prescription drug program. Here is how that piece begins:

Tens of thousands of Medicare recipients have been victims of deceptive sales tactics and had claims improperly denied by private insurers that run the system’s huge new drug benefit program and offer other private insurance options encouraged by the Bush administration, a review of scores of federal audits has found.

Again, understand that while Medicare is a government program, the drug benefit is essentially subcontracted to private insurers, who were supposed to bring the magic of the market to it. Instead, these private interests have cashed in on old people's misery while not delivering the services and benefits they are bound to by law.

This raises a bigger question: Aren't there certain issues/systems, like health care and education, that should not be run by the profit motive? Does it really make sense - health sense, moral and ethical sense - to have doctors making decisions based on the bottom line, rather than the best treatment for your symptoms?

As I often say, there is nothing inherently good or bad about government. The key issue is WHO CONTROLS IT and TO WHAT END IT IS PUT. Currently, our government is dominated by large corporations and wealthy individuals. As such, the policies of the government overwhelmingly represent, protect and extend the interests of wealthy individuals and large corporations over all else. Make the government more democratic by removing the dominance of private wealth over public elections and you'd see different policies that reflected different interests.

Op-Ed: "The War As We Saw It"

A dissenting op-ed, written by several infantrymen and non-commissioned officers in the 82nd Airborne Division, appeared in the NYTimes yesterday (Sunday). It is extremely unusual for servicemen to write an opinion piece like this. The article takes dead aim at the increasingly rosy proclamations about Iraq emanating from the White House in recent weeks as we lead up to the September briefing by Petraus. In short, the authors argue, "To believe that Americans, with an occupying force that long ago outlived its reluctant welcome, can win over a recalcitrant local population and win this counterinsurgency is far-fetched."

Here is a more extensive excerpt:

As responsible infantrymen and noncommissioned officers with the 82nd Airborne Division soon heading back home, we are skeptical of recent press coverage portraying the conflict as increasingly manageable and feel it has neglected the mounting civil, political and social unrest we see every day. (Obviously, these are our personal views and should not be seen as official within our chain of command.)...

In short, we operate in a bewildering context of determined enemies and questionable allies, one where the balance of forces on the ground remains entirely unclear. (In the course of writing this article, this fact became all too clear: one of us, Staff Sergeant Murphy, an Army Ranger and reconnaissance team leader, was shot in the head during a "time-sensitive target acquisition mission" on Aug. 12; he is expected to survive and is being flown to a military hospital in the United States.) While we have the will and the resources to fight in this context, we are effectively hamstrung because realities on the ground require measures we will always refuse — namely, the widespread use of lethal and brutal force....

Political reconciliation in Iraq will occur, but not at our insistence or in ways that meet our benchmarks. It will happen on Iraqi terms when the reality on the battlefield is congruent with that in the political sphere. There will be no magnanimous solutions that please every party the way we expect, and there will be winners and losers. The choice we have left is to decide which side we will take. Trying to please every party in the conflict — as we do now — will only ensure we are hated by all in the long run....

In the end, we need to recognize that our presence may have released Iraqis from the grip of a tyrant, but that it has also robbed them of their self-respect. They will soon realize that the best way to regain dignity is to call us what we are — an army of occupation — and force our withdrawal.

Add these gentlemen's names to the now long list of military people, from generals on down the line to enlisted men and women, who have harshly criticized the Bush Administration's execution of the war in Iraq and who see a bleak future ahead if we do not significantly alter our course. Who do you believe, the military people who are actually fighting and dying, or the neo-cons pushing the same old line from their comfortable armchairs along the sidelines?

For the full essay, see:
"The War As We Saw It"