Hussein or not Hussein?

OK, so Barack Obama’s middle name is Hussein, but we’re not allowed to say it out loud. Is that about right?

If a political opponent uses his middle name in a speech or an article it is assumed, probably correctly, that it is an attempt to paint Barack as a Muslim, which he is not.
So the response from his supporters is that anyone who speaks or writes Barack’s middle name is a racist. Because why? The logical answer to that question is because they think the word Hussein is intrinsically negative. But doesn’t that play into the hands of those trying to make the Senator sound foreign and frightening by calling him Barack Hussein Obama in the first place? Both parties are just so stupid about stuff like this.

Republicans who shout “Hussein” sound petty and small-minded.

Democrats who denounce them sound like the PC-Gestapo.

Everyone knows his middle name by now, or will soon. The smart move would be for the Dems to start calling him Hussein whenever possible, and by May know one will care.

Of course it could be worse. As Jon Stewart said the other night, his name could have been Gaydolf Titler.

Hillary’s tin ear

Senator Clinton should have taken some of the millions she paid political consultants and spent them on acting classes. She just doesn’t seem to understand how to project her real personality, if you are to believe her closest friends. You never read an interview with one of them that fails to note how funny and what a good story teller she is in real life. But man, on the stage, under the spotlight, she is just plain tone deaf.

It’s downright painful when she tries to make a joke, like last night’s reference to the “Saturday Night Live” skit. (At least I think that was what she was trying to do.) And she can never tell when to just let a point go. Sen. Obama’s best moment, in my view, was when he responded to her harping on Louis Farrahkan’s endorsement of him by saying, "I don't see a difference between denouncing and rejecting. There is no formal offer of help to reject. I'm happy to concede the point. I'm happy to reject and denounce." He seemed much the bigger person for it.

I have some sympathy for her. SNL wasn’t far off the mark; the media does seem to fawn over Barack. Part of that feeling comes from the fact that Clinton has lived so much more of her life in the public eye, and blow-hards like Tim Russert can pick over and play gottcha with thousands of things she’s said or done over the last 16 years, while Obama’s limited experience gives the press less to chew on.


Finally, I’m glad this was the last “debate.” This format is so tired. What does anyone really learn? We had 15 minutes on health care reform and I didn’t hear a single new thing from either of them, and I’ve still never heard either of them put a price tag on it or explain how it’s to be paid for.

I love Ralph

Ralph Nader announced his latest campaign for President today on “Meet the Press.” You can say what you want about him, but he’s the only person speaking out about the real foundation of most of our problems – money. Big corporations, interest groups, and rich people set the agenda for everything. They buy and sell Congress, and therefore control legislation and regulation. No one can run for public office without their support. And everyone is afraid to speak out in any way against the system that gives them this power.

Hillary has spent $100 million and it wasn’t enough. Obama is raising $40-50 million a month now! McCain may already be hopelessly behind in the money race.

Ralph pulls no punches, and nobody scares him. He’s a better debater than anyone else running; Tim Russert tried to nail him on costing Gore the 2000 election and Nader crushed the argument.

I don’t understand why more American’s aren’t angry about the buying and selling of our government. I though John Edwards would be a more effective salesman of Nader’s idea – and he was to a point – but we’re not mad enough yet.

More on McCain smear

Even the New Republic found it strange that the Times would even publish such a piece. The New Republic, for God's sake. You can read their take here. Thanks to AY for the tip.

New York Times smears McCain

Here is a link to the New York Times’ 3000 word smear-job on Senator McCain. I’d be angry if it weren’t so typical. Everyone should read it just to see how lame the charges are, but if you don’t feel like it, I’ll summarize for you: an unnamed number of unnamed people “affiliated” with McCain’s organization were concerned that he and a 40-year-old female lobbyist were “too close.” No facts of any kind are offered in supports of these concerns.

This takes up a pretty small portion of the overall story, which is mostly an attempt to make McCain’s effects on behalf of campaign reform and other ethical issues appear to be either self-serving or hypocritical.

The institutional character of the Times is a little like the heart of the audience it serves: very insular and out of touch with most of the country. The story will play well on the upper west side and among Bennington, Bard and Brandeis grads everywhere. This has been a pretty uplifting election so far; I was hoping the spirit of it might have infected the media, as well, but the Times must have gotten its inoculation against decency.

Now I feel better

According to today's New York Times: "The winners of Pakistan’s parliamentary elections said Tuesday that they would take a new approach to fighting Islamic militants by pursuing more dialogue than military confrontation."

Islamic militants are, of course, noted for their devotion to finding peaceful solutions to problems through dialogue.

Michelle Obama: the new Hillary

Think of an Ivy League lawyer with a corporate job that pays more than that of her Ivy League lawyer politician husband. Imagine maybe she thinks that since she’s higher paid, maybe he isn’t so much. She certainly thinks he gets a little too much love from everyone because he’s just so cool, and maybe he needs to be taken down a peg every now and then.

Mrs. Obama ’08 reminds me a lot of Mrs. Clinton ’92 and if she doesn’t reel it in a little that’s what a big hunk of America is going to think, too. Hillary upset a lot of people when she said she wasn’t about to “stay home baking cookies while she stands by her man.” How do you think those same folks are going to feel about Mrs. O’s remark that "For the first time in my adult lifetime I am really proud of my country. And not just because Barack has done well, but because I think people are hungry for change."

Not well, I’ll wager. This is going to come back to bedevil the Obama campaign for quite some time. She could do with a little dose of humility.

Obama: the new politics

I don’t want to start Obama-bashing but his campaign is turning in a way that belies the “new politics” he advocates. He’s in Ohio today and is continuing to turn his attention to John McCain. Today he warned his audience that Senator McCain is talking about “a 100-year war” in Iraq.

McCain has said no such thing. What he did say was that it would not concern him if we were in Iraq for 100 years, as long as they were no casualties, just as we’ve been in Korea for over 50 years without casualties. You can certainly argue that that is a bad idea unto itself, but twisting his words to say something very different than their meaning sounds like the old politics to me.
It also sounds a lot like what the Clintons did to him a couple weeks ago, twisting his remark that the Republicans have been the party of new ideas for the past 25 years into an endorsement of those ideas.

Sen. Obama has brought a much-needed breath of fresh air to the political conversation. Now that the nomination is within his grasp I hope he is not going to abandon the principles that got him this far.

Will the last Republican please turn off the lights?

I remain hopeful that John McCain will be the next President, but if he is, he may be the last Republican to hold that office. You probably saw the census department projections for the U.S. population in 2050, and it doesn’t look good for the GOP.

White people of European decent will be less than half the population. Hispanics will be nearly 30%, and another 20% will be an immigrant from somewhere. Undoubtedly there will be some overlap in those two groups, but probably at least 40% of the population will belong to a group that Republicans policies do not exactly embrace. I don’t know how you could win a national election with those numbers.

The projections also show the total population growing by almost 50% with most of the growth coming from immigration, or high birth rates among recent immigrants. At the same time we’re seen a concentration of income and wealth among a smaller percentage of the population.
The message of lower taxes and less government intervention in our lives has an ever shrinking sympathetic audience, while those naturally disposed to reject these concepts will grow.

Something has to give, no?

Happy Valentine’s Day: Congress must die

The current Presidential campaign has rejuvenated my sense of optimism for the country. All of the remaining five candidates (yes, I’m counting Ron Paul) are smart, articulate, sincere people and each would be a major upgrade from what we’ve lived with the last seven years.

But I keep forgetting it’s about more than the Presidency. Our Congress is truly a collection of whores, egomaniacs and idiots, and the only proof you need is to watch the “hearings” on whether or not Roger Clemens took steroids.

We have a war, a recession, 40 million people with no health care, no energy plan for the 21st century, and countless other problems; meanwhile, these nimrods grill the Rocket for almost five hours over an issue that can never be resolved because there are no witnesses besides the guy who says he did and the guy who says he didn’t.

But each Congressman gets his 5 minutes on the evening news, or if he is really lucky, ESPN, to wag his finger and lecture on the example being set for the youth of America. That’s all that really matters.

You want to set an example for America’s youth? Let these fools take all the steroids they want, and when the better-known among them start dying (like the WWF guys are already) kids will notice and make the right decision.

Yes We Can

I'm sorry, but I'm a little creeped out by this Obama "Yes We Can" video on YouTube. The man can speak, he has a powerful message, and I believe he is sincere, but the marriage of his spoken words to a gospel beat, and the rhapsodized looks on the faces of the heavenly chorus are just a little too much for me. If the technology had been available they'd have made one of these for Mao, or Evita. Chavez and Kim Jung-il are probably working on their own as you read this. And can you imagine if a conservative politician made something like this? They would be condemned as the worst possible kind of demagogue. Reagan was accused as such for using too many sunrises and flags in his ads; this makes those things look like ads for lawn care products.

“Yes we can?” I assume we’re supposed to think: “I have a dream.” Manipulative is really not a strong enough word for it. Haven't we had enough political personality cults in this country? Didn't people vote for GWB over Gore because he was “more likable”? That worked out well.

Making Obama into a religious figure takes rational thought out of the electoral equation and creates a very dangerous atmosphere. If you disagree, ask yourself how you'd like a Mike Huckabee ad starting Jesus as his biggest supporter.

Book: "Father and Son"

Larry Brown writes about the people in whom no one is interested. Call them poor white trash, trailer park people, red necks. Even these terms exalt some of them for whom Wal-Mart is aspirational shopping.

But these are real people with the same emotions and problems and dreams as the rest of us, but they are perched so perilously close to the edge of complete ruin that everyday life situations take on an air of dramatic anticipation that is missing from the stories of the middle class and their betters.

"Father and Son" is one of Brown’s early works and a strong example of his ability to know the people around whom he grew up. The title might refer to any of 4-5 pairs of fathers and sons woven into the story, most prominently half-brothers Glenn and Bobby and their father Virgil. Glenn and Bobby are evil and good, and the book follows, and eventually resolves their relationship.

Brown’s work is not so much plot driven as it is psychologically insightful and stylistically unique. The language is raw but elegant; poetic but plain. It is detailed and yet stripped of ornamentation. The New York Times compared this work to Faulkner.

Brown was born in 1951 and spent 17 years as an Oxford, Mississippi fireman. He never attended college but learned his craft by writing hundreds of short stories and books over 20 years and reading hundreds of rejection letters before an editor saw the power and originality in his work. The movie "Big Bad Love" is based on one of his short stories. He died a few years ago.

I recommend this, and anything else I’ve read by him, to anyone interested in reading an original voice.

Smart Obama move

I see this weekend that Obama has started reminding people that in '94 the Democrats lost the House, Senate, Governorships, and statehouses with Bill Clinton in office, pointing out that he (Obama) is more likely to hold the Democrats together long enough to complete their agenda. This seems like a much more effective strategy to me than trying to paint him as a racist.

Liar of the week

Reutrers reports that Mick Jagger, speaking of Amy Winehouse, said he can’t understand how the younger generation, knowing the dangers of drugs, could still be users.

“When we were experimenting with drugs, little was known about the effects. In our time there were no rehab centers like today. Anyway, I did not know about them.”

Liar of the week

Mitt Romney quit the race today, selfless to the end, saying that continuing his battle with Mr McCain would weaken his party, increasing the chances of a Democrat victory which would mean a "surrender to terror".

Alert the media: I'm wrong again!

I was a little premature writing off Hillary, I guess. That was a pretty impressive performance Tuesday, winning California, New York, New Jersey and others -- and by such big margins. I clearly overestimated the Kennedy effect since she even won Massachusetts by 15 points.

This might be a good time to restate that I started this blog not because I have any real political insights, but to blow off some steam, and it has been good for that.

I hope everyone reads the comments; there are always good ones. Birdman's observation about how current McCain fans (including me) might rethink their position if Rev. Huckabee were his running mate has me thinking a lot about how little the issues are actually a factor for so many people. The Rev. Huck is a very charming guy with a great personal story. He is an American archetype; a very easy guy to like on a personal level, but it's a little scary to think of him picking Supreme Court justices.

Doofus of the week

Pennsylvania Senator Arlen Specter is threatening to force NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell to appear at a Senate hearing to investigate the commissioner having destroyed the video tapes the New England Patriots took serupticiously of other teams, and for which they have been heavilty fined.

“The NFL has a very preferred status in our country with their antitrust exemption,” Specter told the New York Times on Thursday. “The American people are entitled to be sure about the integrity of the game. It’s analogous to the CIA destruction of tapes. Or any time you have records destroyed.”

Appearantly the Iraq war, 40 million Americans without health care, the looming resession and global warming were solved late last week, leaving the Senate time to work on the next set of national and international problems.

I'll miss John Edwards

He was never very close to having my vote, but I appreciated having John Edwards and his populist message in the mix. He was one of the candidates the media marginalized because they won’t spend the money to cover everyone in a thoughtful way, so they called him “angry” and pushed him over into the Paul/Kucinich corner. I think the real question should have been, “Why aren’t we all as angry as Edwards?”

Lord knows I’m not anti-business, but is there any question as to who really sets domestic policy in this country? The drug and insurance lobbyists write our health care legislation and give us the most expensive health care in the world, with results comparable to Poland’s. Our Vice President gathers together leaders of the major oil and energy companies to craft energy policy, then refuses to make public who attended. That’s worked out well if you enjoy paying $3.50 for a gallon of gas.

The media companies pushed through legislation to allow a small number of them to concentrate control of a much larger number of TV stations and newspapers. Wall Street rapes and pillages without restraint while throwing fabulous fund-raising events for our leaders. (Thank you for those innovative sub-prime mortgages, by the way.)

CEO’s loses billions and walk away with tens of millions in bonuses based on profits that were never real in the first place, and who does anything about it? At least Edwards was raising a stink. But now he’s gone and his issues along with him.

Hankster shared the following from The Nation, speculating that Ralph Nader may jump into the battle again in order to give voice to these anti-corporate arguments, which I welcome. Money has captured the political process and real change is not going to happen until someone changes that.