Dumb and Dumber: President Barbie and The Great Sage of the Senate

Alexander Cockburn sizes up the VP debate and declares: "A Start is Born!"

"On present trends, the McCain-Palin ticket is doomed, just as the Republican presidential campaign of another Arizonan senator, Barry Goldwater, was crushed by Lyndon Johnson, in 1964. Yet that defeat was the making of Ronald Reagan, who stole every right-wing Republican heart with his speech for Goldwater in the party convention that year. Two years later, Reagan was governor of California. Twelve years later in 1976, he was challenging an incumbent Republican president, Gerald Ford. In 1980 he won the presidency

More than once, last night, I thought Palin must have been watching re-runs of Reagan’s speeches, though decades of deference to Hollywood tycoons made Reagan far more respectful of Wall Street than the Alaskan governor. Her first national political foray may have only a month to run, but on Thursday night she won herself a long-term political future. Populism comes in many different garments. The bailout, voted through this last week by Obama and Biden and the Democrats, showed the party has lost the capability even of deception, even of the pretence that it is the friend of the working people. (And yes, Palin is the only person on the campaign trail from whose lips I have heard the increasingly unfamiliar term “working class”.) Palin has a lot to learn, but in the years ahead, amid the bankruptcy of the liberal left, her strain of populism will have an eager audience."

As for the "Great Sage," Robert Fisk wonders why Biden would assert: "we kicked Hizballah out of Lebanon."

Stephen Zunes is similarly unimpressed with this one from the Great Sage:
"BIDEN: With regard to Iraq, I gave the president the power [in the October 2002 Iraq War Resolution]. I voted for the power because he said he needed it not to go to war but to keep the United States, the UN in line, to keep sanctions on Iraq and not let them be lifted."

Boy, it it wern't for Sen. Biden, who "would keep the UN in line"?

Another pearl wisdom from the String of Biden:
"Here's what the president [Bush] said when we said no. He insisted on elections on the West Bank, when I said, and others said, and Barack Obama said, "Big mistake. Hamas will win. You'll legitimize them." What happened? Hamas won."

Atta boy, Scranton Joe!! somebodody's got to keep the West Bank free of Democracy!

Hawks Ascendant

Stephen Zunes takes Obama to task for failing to challenge the reckless and irresponsible foreign policies of McCain and the neocons. Zunes lays out point by point, where Obama could have and should have called McCain's bluster. A language of dissent exists, there are alternative visions of America's role in the world and in history out there. Why won't Obama listen, and lend his voice to chorus? Why must he insist on clinging to a sinking ship?

Fri could have been an important moment in making the discursive shift to a new America. But alas, it was yet another missed opportunity- it was yet another moment in which the cultural, intellectual, and political hegemony of the neoconservative vision/nightmare of American power was discursively reproduced.

Rebert Dreyfuss makes many of the same points.

Obama and the financial meltdown

Just a quick thought: Wouldn't Obama be on better ground in criticizing McCain and Phil Grahm for repealing Glass-Steagle if his two top econ advisers wern't Larry Summers and Robert Rubin?

I have always feared the contradictions in Obama's narrative of change could prove fatal. Laying down with the Big Dogs from Wall Street may appear to offer a great deal in the way of resources, but the problem with laying with dogs is that you wake with fleas.

The Re-Birth of a Nation?

The Republicans a have attempted to recast the race as one between a small town (white) "Hockey Mom," and a Big City (black) radical. Obama is now in danger of appearing "disrespectful" to a white woman, and suffering all the consequences that implies.

In 1915, DW Griffith's The Brith of a Nation presented a mythistory of the origins of the Ku Klux Klan as an organization the emerged to protect the honor and virtue of white women threatened by the sexual predations of black men. The film operated according to a cultural logic that appears to be alive and well a century later. There seems to be a strong and deep current of racist sentiment that runs through this political system. This is euphemistically referred to a the "Buba Vote," but this characterization simply scapegoats poor whites and elides any analysis of what is a fundamentally racist power structure owned and operated by economic elites.

Obama should have recognized this fact and spent more time inspiring the marginalized, excluded and oppressed, and less time reassuring the wealthy and powerful. But unfortunately, if he loses, Democrats will draw the wrong lesson from the race and choose to assume that he lost because he did not move fast enough or hard enough to "the center." I don't know how much farther or faster he could have gone. In my view, that was the fatal mistake and Huffington was exactly on point. By compromising on the core principles upon which he had built his brand name, he undermined the whole rationale for his candidacy.

Juan Cole on the only difference between Sarah Palin and Muslim fundamentalist: Lipstick.

Voting from the Gut

UCB Linguist George Lakoff on the perennial Democratic mistake of assuming that elections are about "issues" as opposed to personality and character.

Mad McCain

Truthout 9/10/08

Obama in Denver: Spectacle or Spectacular?

Religious Studies Professor Ira Chernus on the spectacle in Denver. For Chernus the speech fell short of expectations. He believes that Obama toned it down so as to reassure rather than inspire. 

Alexander Cockburn expected less, but thought it was a "strong speech." The critiques of neo-liberal, trickle-down/ pissed-on, economic policy hit the mark, as did his basic theme that "McCain doesn't get it."  

He was less impressed by the foreign policy pronouncements, and the decision to keep President Carter quiet.

Naomi Klein on Obama

The Shock Doctrine author Naomi Klein is interviewed on the task of holding Obama accountable to progressive demands such as ending US involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan, and reversing the growing income inequality in the US  (10 min. video). 

Are anti-war, pro-social justice votes taken for granted?

Obama and... Biden?

Alexander Cockburn on Biden and the state of the race. Cockburn offers his take on how it is that Obama has managed to lose the initiative on virtually every issue. And in politics, as in war, initiative is everything. Once you force your opponent on the defensive, you control the tempo of the contest. When Obama was riding high from his world tour McCain managed to launch an attack from a defensive position and so regain the initiative. The Obama campaign has demonstrated no such capacity.

USF Professor of Politics and Middle East Studies (and formerly a big Obama booster) Stephen Zunes comments on the Biden selection. Zunes sees the selection of a pro-war senator (and a highly influential one at that- the war authorization and its democratic support would not have been possible without Biden) as a betrayal of the anti-war sentiment that got Obama the nomination.

"AIPAC: We like Biden"

American Class Structure

Liberal economist Paul Krugman comments on American class structure here. Its interesting to note that when Obama was on Meet the Press a few weeks ago and was asked who is economic advisers would be he said: Robert "let's deregulate Wall Street" Rubin, and Lawrence "women can't do math" Summers. But he did not mention Paul Krugman, Joe Stiglitz, or Robert Reich (all very mainstream, left-of-center economists). 

I fear that when the Right-Wing propaganda machine really gets going after Labor Day, Obama may regret having chided his "friends on the Left" for not listening to what he has been saying all along, and assuming that he would take adopt stronger positions on the the issues thatthey care about (War and the military industrial complex, social justice and the economy, ecology). I fear that Huffington and others will be proven correct, that it is a flawed electoral strategy to alienate Barack's base in an effort to peel off independents and moderate republicans. When it comes time to pull the lever for a black man, many "Obama Republicans" may find that they are more "Republican" than "Obama"; and many "Reagan Democrats" may find that they are more "Reagan" than "Democrat."  Obama: those people will not show up for you when the chips are down, best to know who your friends are (sort of an elementary point in any "power analysis"). Rather than trying to win over anti-abortion enthusiasts at Saddleback perhaps he should be mobilizing on the South Side of Chicago - speaking to the concerns of that constituency (which are broader than 'not feeding your kids "Pop-eye's" for breakfast' (I'm still waiting for him to come out against the "egg McMuffin meal"). 

I don't think its too late, I think the new campaign commercial that speaks to anxieties over meeting one's mortgage payments (while McCain tries to figure out how many homes his Sugar Mamma wife owns) is a good start. Of course I'd like to see him address the concerns of renters as well as home-owners, but its a good start anyway... He needs to go after McCain hard on his supply side, trickle down/ "pissed on," neo-liberal economic policies which only exacerbate the difficulties of the middle, working, and under classes. Of course this would require a little housecleaning within the Obama camp. I don't suppose that Robert Rubin or Jason Furman are big fans of economic redistribution schemes.

Obama needs to expand the size of the electoral pie. Winning a larger slice of existing voters is not an option. He needs to bring new voters into the system (probably at least 5-10 million) and he can only do this by appealing to their economic concerns.

Obama and oil drilling

Obama says he'd expand oil drilling in the US, and gets heckled by activists in the crowd for committing insufficeint attention to issues affecting African American communities. 

The Nation's Open Letter to Barrack. 

Obama's Mid East tour

While the corporate media fawned over the Obama's tour of the Middle East, Ali Abunimah commented on what Obama missed while he was meeting with Benjamin Netanyahu, Tim Shorrock revealed the "Hawks behind the Dove," Politico pointed out the weirdness of not allowing anyone in his entourage to wear the color green in Israel or Palestine, UCI historian of Islam and the Middle East, Mark LeVine,  pointed out the conceptual and political failings of not distinguishing between the Taliban and al-Qaeda, and the architect of the Soviet Afghan trap, Zbigniew Brezinski warned of the danger of replicating the Russian experience.

A Consumers' Republic

Here Joe Bageant, a RedState Rebel, offers what may be the most brilliant political analysis I've read all season. He explains the Obama phenomenon in terms of the dual, and interrelated, ascendances of the cultural left and the economic right. We've entered into a new "post-partisan" age in which politics are totally devoid of meaning. All that matters is style and branding. We live in a Consumers' Republic. We choose presidents the way we choose cans of soda pop.  

Obama tours Gaza; Calls for an end to the Siege

Just seeing if your payin' attention... 

Palestinians not excited about Obama (NYT)

An anthropological look at the struggle to defend the Iraq-Pakistan border

Here anthropologist William O. Beeman explains the weird rituals of the US-Iran war dance. Towards the end he makes an important point about the political leverage that an Absolute Enemy like Iran/US (in the various cultural contexts) offers. He references the common conspiracy theory that the US GOP will initiate and October Surprise war with Iran to help McCain's (otherwise dismal) chances at the polls. But he also mentions that all candidates stand to gain from the "Iran threat." All of the major candidates (Hillary, Obama, and McCain) have sought to demonstrate their "foreign policy credentials" by demonizing Iran. the threat from an enemy serves to silence dissent, and demobilize the citizenry. Most of all the super-bowl of the clash of civilizations makes sure that our attention remains directed safely away from any analysis of the distribution of class power both within the United States and globally. 

On McCain's effort to defend the Iraq-Pakistan border, watch this.

Constitution? Who needs a Constitution when you have $$$, lots of it!

I don't suppose that Obama was ever required to read the Constitution when he was teaching Constitutional Law, or else he might have noticed Article I, Section 9:

"No bill of attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed." 

(Retroactive immunity is, by definition, "ex post facto"...)

Clinton's Third Term

News Flash: 

Obama appoints Hawks to guard Dove house. Here the NYT lists Obama's FP advisers. Not a single ME expert among his ME advisers, you know how dangerous the opinions of ME experts can be...

The same could be said of his econ policy advisers. Placing Robert Rubin, the founder of Rubinomics, and the architect of financial market deregulation in the 1990s, in a high position is most certainly putting the foxes in charge of the proverbial henhouse. These are after all the corporate thieves who have given us the current global economic meltdown.

If the electorate wanted a third Clinton term, wouldn't they have voted for Clinton? 

Alarm Bells, Empire and Obama

The friend of my enemy is my enemy: if NYT publishes an opinion praising Obama's foreign policy stands as sensible, then I know we're in trouble. (The NYT particularly likes his commitment to retaining the ominously titled "residual force" in Iraq, and his commitment to "surge" American forces in Afghanistan.  (Obama's "plan" is here.)

Here Tom Hayden takes the time to actually learn something about Afghanistan so as to better explain why sending more American forces there is not a good idea. And here Howard Zinn offers a more general critic of war and militarism.  

And here Corey B. Walker, Asst Prof of Africana studies at Brown and the author of the forthcoming The Noble Fight: African American Freemasons and the Struggle for Democracy in America offers a critique of American imperialism in both it Democratic and Republican guises. 

Juan Cole, a man with very deep knowledge of both Iraq and Afghanistan, and who is generally very supportive of the whole Obama enterprise offers what he calls a "friendly critique" of Obama's "plan." But while he calls it a "friendly critique," what he has to say is really quite devastating. It reveals the depth of Obama's ignorance (as well as some political and character flaws), and leads me to wonder,  if you really have no concept or capacity to comprehend social, political, and military developments in places like Iraq and Afghanistan why on god's green earth would you expend massive amounts of US blood and treasure to remake them in "America's image"? And if Obama is not motivated by a idealistic/ neo-conservative/ interventionist ideology (call it idealism with a knife) of spreading American values (whatever those are... ) at gunpoint, but he is rather driven by a realist concern for American power and security, then his strategy is even worse, as it reveals deep ignorance regarding the geopolitical forces at work in those places where he'd like to send American forces, and suggests that he really has no idea how to work carrots and sticks to achieve stated geo-political objectives. The danger here is the JFK/LBJ effect trying to prove your tough by beating up on some foreign country for what are essentially domestic political reasons only to be drawn into a quagmire with devastating consequences for your political brand-name (not to mention domestic policy objectives). its not just bad policy, its bad politics.  

Net Power

Obama's id: "Doh! I knew I shouldn't have let that internet cat out of the bag!"

No War, or else...

Will Obama now turn Right on Iraq? You know 4 right turns takes you in circle, 8 right turns takes you in 2 circles. If you keep turning right you don't actually go anywhere... (Although, in truth, I don't know if shifting your position from unintelligibly  vague to even more unintelligibly vague constitutes a right turn).

Robert Fanita argues that we should probably prepare ourselves for yet another right turn. Tom Hayden lays out some minimum demands for the peace movement to bring to Obama. My question is, minimum demands, or what?? Or we'll "throw our vote away" and vote for Nader? Obama knows we're boxed, we've got nowhere to go. We have no recourse. We are totally powerless, and entirely dependent on his largess. If he decides to throw us a bone, we'll say thank you and take it. If decides to let us starve, we'll argue, "at least he's better than McCain." This is democracy in the "land of the free and the home of the brave." If we could just figure out how to export that to Iraq and Afghanistan we might live a better world.  

in any case, it looks as though Obama's on his way to Iraq to ask the Generals what he should do once he is president. Let me guess they will say that war is going beuatifully. We've turned the corner, we can see the light at the end of the tunnel, all we need is more troops and more time... 

I think going to Iraq is a brilliant idea, but not to ask the generals anything. He should be TELLING  them to pack their bags because they are coming home. Not in 16(ish) months, and not depending on "what the conditions on the ground are."  But immediately because 1) American forces have no right to be there, and 2) we cannot afford this bullshit war. While he is there he should be meeting with regional leaders to discuss how US war reparations and humanitarian assistance to those displaced by the American initiative are to be coordinated. No permanent bases, no residual "anti-terrorism" forces, no Blackwater security contractors to defend ExxonMobil's newly acquired holdings.  But Obama doesn't really care what I think. Perhaps if I was 80, lived in Virginia, went to Church every sunday, and wore an American flag pin on my lapel, he 'd show some interest in my one meaningless vote. But given that I am 30, live in California (a state that is not being contested), have never been to any Church, and have never worn a lapel, let alone a flag pin, I don't count.