‘Burn Baby Burn’ : Fight Censorship During ‘Banned Books Week’

Posted on September 29, 2008 by Thorne Dreyer


September 27 – October 4, 2008. . .

Banned Books Week: Celebrating the Freedom to Read!

See ‘Burn, Baby, Burn: On “Fahrenheit 451” and why good democracy should make you feel bad’ by Josh Rosenblatt, Below.

Banned Books Week is the only national celebration of the freedom to read. It was launched in 1982 in response to a sudden surge in the number of challenges to books in schools, bookstores and libraries. More than a thousand books have been challenged since 1982. The challenges have occurred in every state and in hundreds of communities. People challenge books that they say are too sexual or too violent. They object to profanity and slang, and protest against offensive portrayals of racial or religious groups–or positive portrayals of homosexuals. Their targets range from books that explore the latest problems to classic and beloved works of American literature.

Click on image to enlarge.

According to the American Library Association, more than 400 books were challenged in 2007. The 10 most challenged titles were:

1. And Tango Makes Three by Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell
2. The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier
3. Olive’s Ocean by Kevin Henkes
4. The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman
5. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
6. The Color Purple by Alice Walker
7. TTYL by Lauren Myracle
8. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
9. It’s Perfectly Normal by Robie Harris
10. The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky

(Click here to see why these books were challenged.)

During the last week of September every year, hundreds of libraries and bookstores around the country draw attention to the problem of censorship by mounting displays of challenged books and hosting a variety of events. The 2008 celebration of Banned Books Week will be held from September 27 through October 4.

Banned Books Week is sponsored by the American Library Association, the American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression, the Association of American Publishers, the American Society of Journalists and Authors, and the National Association of College Stores. Banned Books Week is also endorsed by the Center for the Book of the Library of Congress.

Thank you for celebrating Banned Books Week!
Source / Banned Books Week

Burn, Baby, Burn

On ‘Fahrenheit 451’ and why good democracy should make you feel bad
By Josh Rosenblatt / September 26, 2008

Illustration by Kevin Peake / Austin Chronicle

When I was 12 years old, word came down that the Montgomery County School Board had decided to ban a book called Amos Fortune: Free Man from all school libraries. They claimed the biography of an African prince turned slave was too controversial and culturally insensitive to be forced upon (or even made available to) the minds of impressionable children, too accurate a portrayal of the darkest chapter in American history to be taught in American schools. African princes are snatched from their villages, the banners cried, and forced into slavery! The book contains the word “nigger,” they warned. Not once, but many, many times! All across suburban Maryland, you could hear the sighs of parents who until that point had never heard of Amos Fortune: Free Man but who could now sleep soundly knowing their kids wouldn’t be coming around asking them uncomfortable questions about it.

The next day, I went out and bought myself a copy of Amos Fortune: Free Man and, with all the brazenness of early adolescence, took it to school to read during English class. I was convinced that within those pages resided a tale of such decadence, such lasciviousness, such utter degradation and human calamity as to make my hair stand on end, my knees buckle, and my soul curdle. Why else would adults be banning it?

Turns out I had gotten my hopes up for nothing: The Amos Fortune affair, rather than being my introduction to a world of controversy and open defiance, would mark instead the beginning of my realization that adults had no idea what they were talking about. I read every page of that book and discovered nothing even remotely scandalous. There were scenes of violence and racism, of course, but anyone who had made it to the seventh grade knew what slavery was and was cognizant of the fact that those subjected to it had lived lives of unaccountable misery. Nothing new there. So why had they banned Amos Fortune, when I found nothing there to differentiate it from any number of morality tales about the value of hard work and charitable living shoved daily down the throats of American students from Maine to California?

It was then I began to realize that some people will try to ban anything, regardless of its artistic merit, its cultural status, or even its ability to titillate or warp young minds. Some people will try to ban things simply because they think banning things is a good and noble way to spend one’s time … because someone’s got to keep an eye out!

The whole fiasco left me terrified of the fragility of American liberty and ashamed of the prudishness of American culture, a feeling that has never gone away.

A curious (and very partial) list of books that have been banned, challenged, or redacted by government and/or school officials in the United States:

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, The Canterbury Tales, The Diary of Anne Frank, Of Mice and Men, The Life and Works of Renoir, Little House on the Prairie, The Rolling Stone Illustrated History of Rock & Roll, To Kill a Mockingbird, The What’s Happening to My Body? Book for Girls: A Growing Up Guide for Parents and Daughters, The What’s Happening to My Body? Book for Boys: A Growing Up Guide for Parents and Sons, the Bible, Where’s Waldo?

“Books make people unhappy.”

This line comes from François Truffaut’s adaptation of Ray Bradbury’s 1953 sci-fi classic, Fahrenheit 451, about a dystopian future society where reading has been outlawed and books are burned in the streets. Newspaper comic strips are cartoons devoid of words. Human beings rely on impossibly vapid television shows for their senses of identity and purpose (Bradbury has said that his main motivation for writing the book wasn’t concern over censorship but rather fear that television was destroying people’s interest in reading). The written word is dead.

The Captain, played by Cyril Cusack, speaks that line while explaining to the film’s hero, Guy Montag (Oskar Werner), why it’s necessary that they and their fellow firemen burn books. The firemen, after all, are the best line of defense against the reading scourge; without their ability to suss out suspected readers, the America they live in – a land of drugged-up housewives and automaton husbands – would fall prey to critical thought and individuality, resulting in self-absorption, moral relativism, and societal collapse.

The frightening thing, of course, is that the Captain’s observation isn’t entirely wrong. After all, it’s a fool who sees a correlation between happiness and intimate knowledge of the psychological motives behind Raskolnikov’s axing the pawnbroker woman in Crime and Punishment, between happiness and knowing exactly how many hundreds of thousands of Rwandans were hacked to death in 1994, between happiness and the awareness of the perilously slim and shrinking lead Barack Obama has in the current presidential election.

But isn’t that what makes American democracy so fascinating? Any society can advocate the pursuit of happiness, but it takes an especially confident one to allow its citizens the right to pursue the opposite. Despair, worthless empathy, artistic immersion are the dread of others. Unhappiness. True democracy lies in a society resigning itself to the great multiplicity of human emotion and behavior. If anything, liberty should be making us all miserable.

Truffaut, ever the Frenchman, understood this paradox as well as anyone, and with Fahrenheit 451, he created a cinematic world that celebrates the variety of human experience even as it condemns viewers to the unvaried confines of authoritarianism.
Truffaut found just the right housing slabs to film at just the right point in gray, leafless late autumn to capture the pervading sense of lifelessness compulsory to any dystopian movie. And yet, at the same time, Fahrenheit 451 is the first movie the director ever shot in color – glorious Technicolor, to be exact – and he couldn’t resist shooting it as if it were some kind of carnival fun house, a world bursting with colors that both thrill viewers and sicken them with saturation.

Witness the director’s ironic, almost cartoonish use of green-screen backgrounds. It was the most blatant and unapologetically artificial manipulation since Hitchcock (his hero), brazen in its acknowledgement of the pure contrivance that is cinematic storytelling. It’s a technique that pays tribute to the wonder of film while acting as the perfect visual parallel to Bradbury’s condemnation of ersatz broadcast reality and its detrimental effects on the human mind, on human emotion, and on human society.

It’s film honoring film and condemning it at the same time.

A curious (and partial) list of movies that have been banned by government officials, Hollywood Production Code administrators, and/or Catholic League of Decency members in the United States (with explanations):

The Birth of a Nation (racism), The Tin Drum (underage sex), The Last Temptation of Christ (blasphemy), Scarface (violence), Frankenstein (cruelty), The Moon Is Blue (existence of female sexuality), The Outlaw (existence of Jane Russell’s breasts).

Every year, the American Library Association pays tribute to the lunacy of censorship by organizing events all over the country for Banned Books Week. In Chicago, for example, there’s the Read-Out! celebration, where authors and other celebrities recite passages from their favorite banned and challenged books. In Encino, Calif., students at the Valley Beth Shalom Day School will be taken to the school library and invited to explore banned books to see what all the fuss is about (I don’t envy them their inevitable disappointment). Even the virtual world of Second Life is staging an event.

Source / Austin Chronicle

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How Fascism Happens : That Hoary Truism About Learning From History

Posted on September 29, 2008 by Thorne Dreyer

Photo by basetree.

Fascism: When bad things happen to good people
By Paul Fish / The Rag Blog / September 28, 2008

A good and recent read is John Dean’s Conservatives Without Conscience which is really a rather dispassionate and mildly scholarly view of how corrupted core values and mindset can lead anyone, anytime to do things that go against their own “self interests” (to put a non-scaremongering euphemistic phrase in there). The truth is that Dean, who is still a conservative in the old Barry Goldwater sense, wrote this with a focus on the Reagan Revolution crop of neocons.

(Goldwater was viewed as “radical conservative” in his time, but would now be labeled a member of the far-left by the current crop of neocons, so successful has the Neo-Fascist revolution progressed in changing our language. Think “liberal” as a new four-letter word, when this country was, is, and always should be a shining example of a liberal experiment in government — and one for which being a liberal ought to be an honorific, a badge worn proudly.)

About tedious scaremongering itself, as opposed to calm and reasoned planning focused on “today”: I apologize for trotting out a hoary truism (while paraphrasing it) with the concept that to be ignorant of history (either not knowing it or practicing denial) dooms a people to repeat it. In the world of strategic planning, it is always best to understand the core of the opposition because, otherwise, you will never effectively counter its threat.

While not a member of the Jewish culture, and being of the first generation after WWII, I do not have direct experience of the fascist regimes prevailing during that period, nor direct experience from the changes imposed upon the European public over the period leading to military action and the organized ethnic purgings against Jews, Armenians, Poles, gays and general dissidents. I only know what I know from many, many readings of history of my parents’ times.

What I have gathered from those readings is that, for the most part, the step-by-step process that led directly to concentration camps, gas chambers and ovens, was that the citizens of the various European countries involved tended to go along with the step-by-step stripping of their rights, accepting the overthrow of their more democratic forms of government, and accepting racist hateful arguments of threats to their existence. They did so because most were relatively decent people, who could not fathom that “this could happen here.”

The citizens of Germany and Italy became complicit in that overthrow of their liberties and freedom of will because they just could not wrap their heads around the idea that the drip, drip, drip erosion of their freedoms could ultimately lead to where it eventually went. There were plenty enough citizens to stop the brownshirts, to stop the Italian fascistic factions if they had just taken off their blinders of denial and risen up en masse. But they didn’t. It just couldn’t happen here.

So what is happening here?

That there may be hundreds or thousands of people choosing to use aspects of fundamentalist theology to justify committing acts of terrorism is real. Nineteen people acted, rationalized by select sections of their theology, within this country and attacked what they saw as symbols of things they deeply resent about our country. However, most of the reactionary rhetoric used by our current administration and other neocons in general appears to target almost all who share the faith of the attackers, or who derive from Middle Eastern physical types similar to the physical types of the hateful 19.

To generalize like that — and don’t tell me you don’t see it, otherwise why is it an “attack” on Barack Obama to suggest he is Muslim? — is no less racist than the fear mongering about the “great Jewish threat” peddled from Hitler and his brownshirts.

One key factor to what is “fascist” is letting the State (read that: government) dump “unnecessary” liberties and only keep those that are “essential,” as determined by the State. We have allowed the Patriot Act. We have allowed spying on citizens. We allow rendition. We allow habeas corpus to be suspended. We allow “enhanced interrogation.” We allow rewriting of near-history to support us perpetrating hateful actions (read that: outright lying from the neocons) — like invading a country that was no threat to us.

Liberties gone, and Fear as a Tool? Check.

Another key factor to what is “fascist” is that there be a single father-figure leader, but one who has total power (the term “dictator” will do, though having an Imperial Presidency is fairly faithful to the concept). The State, with this dictator as titular head, tells you that it/he is privy to information not available to the masses and, as a direct result, knows much better than the masses what is really at play in the world, knows what is best for the people. How many times over this past eight years have we heard the phrase “We have secret intelligence that shows heightened activities by…” you name it? “Based on this secret intelligence it is imperative that we now…” take this action (go to war, spy on you, torture people that we [through our secret intelligence] know to be enemy operatives — though they must never stand trial in public because our secret intelligence will be revealed, ad infinitum)?

Do we now have a dictator instead of president? Well, okay: “Dictator” seems such a harsh word; “Imperial President” seems so fuzzy and soft. Why not go with some other more euphemistic name — you know, like “Decider”? Dictators decide what action to take and make it happen, and nobody can stop him/her from doing it. Like domestic spying (nothing happens, even though it is a felony at the time it takes place). Like torture (which is a crime, well, just about everywhere more enlightened people rule). Allow oil companies to create our energy policies in closed door sessions ( civil crimes of conflict of interest and flaunting the Public Records Act). Turning the Department of Justice into a one-party kangaroo court. And, as a final nail if it goes through, the Secretary Paulsen presented bailout plan (surely at least partly penned by David Addington), there is the power-grab clause 8a which tells Congress that is has no active part in handling the nation’s purse strings, and tells the Judicial branch it has no power over executive office decisions.

Check all your balances at the door if that clause goes through because, voila! we will have placed the cornerstone brick into the wall of the first American dictator.

Dictator/Decider in place? Check.

Some who say the argument about a new form of fascism taking root here is faulty base part of their argument on this: Under fascism, all of industry belongs to the State. I suggest that the arising neocon/neofascist has created a new flavor of fascism by holding a mirror to that core concept. Whether the State controls all of industry and finance or finance and industry controls the State (the neocon twist) still leaves you with one thing: A Corporate State. Palindromes still end up being the same word, no matter from which end you start your spelling. A corporate state is a corporate state and, so long as the State takes its marching orders and implements decrees from a titular-head decider, it does the duck walk and quacks.

Corporate State? Check.

Finally, and this is no afterward, no afterthought, what about all this neocon chatter over the past 30 years about restoring morality and ethics to a culture gone astray? That neocon Christianity thing? Sorry to say it folks, but that is covered under the tenets of fascism as well as being instrumental in “normalizing” diverse opinions to better reflect the ethos and “morality” of State “virtues.” It is central to controlling the masses (a political end, political tool that has been used throughout the history of humankind since the first time a king or emperor claimed he or she was also a god or tuned into secret divinations from on high, directly or through their personal High Priest). To tell someone that you want half their crop just because you are a king or queen is far, far less compelling than if you tell your people that the rain will stop, mothers will be barren, that they will be visited upon by famine or pestilence or have a one-way ticket to the flaming pits of hell if they don’t.

State Religion? Check.

On the off chance some may feel I’m just making this all up, pulling these tenets of fascism straight out of nether anatomical regions, I have one further reading recommendation, though it is a bit of a tough to slog through: Go a-Googling for “The Doctrine of Fascism” by one Benito Mussolini from 1932. Hitler was not the guy who created fascism; that was good old “let’s restore the Roman Empire” Benito. You are probably safe in skipping past most of section one because it is all vague sky-pie generalities. However, if read from a “here in America” perspective the second section, which spells out in by-the-numbers concepts all the working parts of fascism, it is amazing how close it reads to maybe the Podhoretz, Reagan, Cheney, Rove and Bush playbook, with stark parallels in ways I’ve discussed above as well as many others not mentioned.

Do I share this as some “hair on fire” rant with intent to incite panic? No. Fear? Well, yes: Fear by itself is not a bad thing. It evolved as a survival mechanism across millions of years. Fear is not an end, it is a motivator. Anger? I hope so. Because this “Revolution” that Reagan, Pat Robertson and Norman Podhoretz started is not some intellectual exercise, or some too-cute-by-half term used to describe reinstituting American values our wayward culture lost along the way. It is a revolution.

The crop of neocon believers in this revolution — meaning overthrowing the core tenets of this republic — never, ever agreed with the Constitution as it was originally written and has evolved for the past few hundred years. They descend from a malcontent minority present at the start of this country, and whose ideologies were never added to the country’s founding principles. The authors of this country were too liberal for their tastes. They descend from the nation’s forefathers who wanted Washington to be not the First Citizen President; they wanted him to be our new king. For life. They did not want checks and balances. They wanted, on the one hand, a monarchical central leader, but with feudal Nation States under him. They never wanted a central Constitution at all. So the new neocon verbiage “strict construction” is code language for strict deconstruction in reference to the Constitution and Bill of Rights. They do not like this liberal country, founded by liberals, and run by an uber-liberal document called the Constitution.

They do not want a Bill of Rights but, instead, a Bill of Prohibitions. Otherwise these new revolutionaries would not constantly be arguing for amendments that strip or limit rights.

And, under the administration of Bush the Lesser, half of that Constitution is already gone, already in tatters. We are maybe one last election away from fruition for their revolutionary plan. Unless, of course, a security Red Alert is issued in October, with “secret intelligence” that there is a suitcase nuke loose in our borders, that Martial Law is declared to “protect us” and the elections are suspended until the threat is neutralized. Which it never will be. And Bush the Lesser remains our Decider. Strange to think that it could be that close at hand. And Bush the Lesser has the power, will, and demonstrated willingness of deceit to do it.

No. I do not see the “change” that’s needed as a matter of merely restoring decency or fairness or bi-partisan negotiation or ending one given war. We can not negotiate with those who wish to overthrow the republic. We must use what non-violent tools we have left to throw them out of power, to keep them from completing their converting this country to something our founders would recognize all too well, and which the founders committed tears, sweat and blood to get rid of: A vast anti-liberal tyranny.

All that, and Condi Rice just admitted that strategies for using torture took place in the White House before it was implemented as a policy of The State. And none of them are yet in jail.

I’m just saying.

TheRealFish

[Paul Fish posts to Progressives for Obama.]

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Acts of Contrition : C’mon Fatcats, Tell Us You’re Sorry

Posted on September 29, 2008 by Thorne Dreyer

Of Saints and sinners: ‘Saint Peter Repentant’ 1823-25 , Goya.

Along with the bailout, how about an apology?
By William Greider / September 26, 2008

The arresting image of Treasury Secretary Paulson genuflecting before House Speaker Nancy Pelosi sent gasps and titters through the corridors of power in Washington. Strong leaders do now bow before rivals, especially a woman. This was a droll gesture–Paulson’s way of pleading with the Democratic leader not to blow up the bipartisan deal they had negotiated for the massive bailout of the financial system. “I didn’t know you were Catholic,” Pelosi responded in kind. It was not Democrats, she pointed out, but Paulson’s own Republicans who threatened to sink the grand rescue plan.

The incident reminded me what is missing in this financial storm–any hint of contrition. The spectacle I want to see is powerful and self-important leaders getting down on bended knee and asking the country’s forgiveness.

Henry Paulson could offer apologies for Wall Street and also for the Bush administration’s lackadaisical response to the spreading financial contagion. He is not alone.

The Republican party owes us an apology but so does the Democratic party, because both are directly implicated in creating the conditions that caused the disaster. So is the august Federal Reserve. It dismissed the early bonfires and actively encouraged the money fever that has led to ruin. So are deep ranks of learned economists. So are the corporate think tanks that blessed and promoted the financial gimmicks that made the country vulnerable to what is now unfolding.

That’s before we tick off the names of celebrated billionaires.

I would like to hear someone in authority say they are sorry. Instead, the political dance in both Washington and Wall Street is focused on holding hands in crisis and diverting blame elsewhere. Maybe it was those careless homeowners who didn’t read the fine print in their mortgages. Or sleepy regulators and the creepy lobbyists. Maybe it was the Chinese, who lent us too much money for own good. Maybe it was God punishing his most-favored nation for our sins.

Strong men are not supposed to say they are sorry. It would make them look weak. The public would be rattled to learn that their leaders are fallible. This might deepen the panic. If anyone in power confesses error, then people may no longer defer to their wisdom. The usual sycophants in media and academia are anxiously talking up the “wise men” in charge, urging citizens just to keep the faith.

I have news for “strong men” and their followers. What they do not realize is the country has already gotten way past that point. Trust has been destroyed by these events. People everywhere are both shaken and angered by what they see, then become more angry as they watch politicians and financial titans scramble to evade personal blame or institutional culpability. People may not understand the fine print, but they can tell when they are not being told the whole story.

This may sound premature, but the road to national recovery will require more than bailouts and other economic measures. We need a season or two of truth-telling in high places. The country has been taken for a rough ride and it’s not over. But it can help people to come to terms and help politicians make wiser decisions if the political dialogue takes a radical shift toward honesty. The problem, of course, is nobody wants to go first, especially during a presidential election.

In the current political stew, John McCain and his retrograde managers are trying to create the notion that he is the “white hat” protecting Americans from this horrendous bailout. That’s nonsense and I doubt people will swallow it. On the other hand, Democratic leaders in Congress are standing arm-in-arm with Paulson and other masters of the universe pushing the Wall Street bailout. They pretend to an innocent aura they do not deserve. The brain-dead lame duck president doesn’t count either. Nobody listening; nobody will believe anything he has to say.

This leaves Barack Obama as the one political leader with clean hands and the ability to speak clearly and honestly about how this all happened, how we can repair it. Maybe he can express a blanket apology to the American people on behalf of government and Wall Street, then demonstrate that as president he intends to extract an honest reckoning from all of them.

Here is my fantasy for today: some public-spirited group will create a “reconciliation commission” to encourage an airing out of public confessions and apologies. It would function roughly like the healing processes in countries like South Africa, where people could come forward to admit old crimes. The hearings would not absolve anyone of punishable crimes. But they could help the country and its political institutions come clean. Put the truth before us so everyone can think more clearly about what therapeutic reforms are needed.

Confession is good for sinners, we are told. Forgiveness helps to cleanse and heal old wounds if the confessions are honestly given. To get back our bearings as a nation, we will need lots of both, I predict (and I’m not even Catholic).

[The Nation’s National affairs correspondent William Greider has been a political journalist for more than thirty-five years. A former Rolling Stone and Washington Post editor, he is the author of the national bestsellers One World, Ready or Not, Secrets of the Temple, Who Will Tell The People, The Soul of Capitalism (Simon & Schuster) and–due out in February from Rodale–Come Home, America.]

Source / The Nation

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NUTRITION : Are ‘Organic’ Foods Just a Marketing Ploy?

Posted on September 29, 2008 by Thorne Dreyer

Organic apple. Better, or just more expensive?

Study shows what you eat is more important than whether the food meets the criteria to be called ‘organic’
By Roger Baker / The Rag Blog / September 29, 2008

Are “organic” foods really safer or more nutritious?

They could be in some cases, but in general, there is little scientific evidence that this is so.

The evidence seems to indicate that WHICH types of foods that one eats are a far more important factor than, say, whether you eat foods that meet the USDA criteria for organic, and as officially determined and promoted and certified by the organic food lobby. Here is a MAYO Clinic study affirming this conclusion.

The term “organic” seems to be largely a marketing ploy by corporate chains like Whole Foods to convince people that by eating their higher-priced foods, which do not involve the use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides, one can therefore avoid medical problems which are now scientifically known to be genetic in origin, etc. It is little accident that the isles of organic groceries are filled with countless herbal nostrums and remedies and cures with no proven scientific validity whatsoever, whereas drugs of well-known efficacy such as aspirin are non-existent.

A multi-billion dollar marketing empire has thus arisen based on the unsubstantiated theory that “pure” organic foods are by themselves an important addition to health and longevity. And furthermore that general health and longevity of consumers are determined more by the conditions under which the food plants and animals are grown are more important than which types of foods are chosen for the diet. Another example of corporate marketing and their lobbies dominating science.

The fact is that average human life spans were MUCH shorter BEFORE the advent of chemical fertilizers, genetic engineering, and pesticides in the food chain, and before the advent of scientific medicine.

Thus, whether or not you eat healthy KINDS of foods is probably far more important than the parts per billion of fungicides that may be present in your foods, until it is scientifically proven to the contrary, especially since it is now known that many naturally occurring toxins are also harmful.

That is not to say that the chemical additives are perfectly harmless, but rather that they may be an unimportant factor in relation to other risks when they are evaluated scientifically rather than emotionally.

The nutrient and chemical toxin quantities are usually unmeasured even in those few cases where their benefit and risk is accurately known, thus giving the “organic” label a false importance. The organic food lobby is totally focused on the organic certification to the exclusion of the scientific assessment of risk as a food health factor, because to adopt this official certification is such an important source of corporate profit.

In any case, peak oil will localize food production and minimize fertilizer and pesticide additions, so these will become factors of less concern as food costs rise and food availability tself becomes primary.

Higher priced “health” foods involve billions of dollars of dubious and unproven benefit and should be subjected to the impartial judgment of science rather than pseudo-science and corporate marketing promotions.

It is far better for health and the wallet to focus on the increased consumption of grains and vegetables, reduced meat consumption, and increased exercise than it is to focus on the “organic” label – if one is to survive in optimum health and to avoid the incipient poverty induced by corporate marketing scams.

The Rag Blog

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Some Not So Ancient History: Get Out and Vote

Posted on September 29, 2008 by RagBlog

Why Women Should Vote

This is the story of our Grandmothers and Great-grandmothers; they lived only 90 years ago.


Remember, it was not until 1920 that women were granted the right to go to the polls and vote.


The women were innocent and defenseless, but they were jailed nonetheless for picketing the White House, carrying signs asking for the vote.

And by the end of the night, they were barely alive. Forty prison guards wielding clubs and their warden’s blessing went on a rampage against the 33 women wrongly convicted of ‘obstructing sidewalk traffic.’


(Lucy Burns) They beat Lucy Burns, chained her hands to the cell bars above her head and left her hanging for the night, bleeding and gasping for air.

Dora Lewis

(Dora Lewis) They hurled Dora Lewis into a dark cell, smashed her head against an iron bed and knocked her out cold. Her cellmate, Alice Cosu, thought Lewis was dead and suffered a heart attack. Additional affidavits describe the guards grabbing, dragging, beating, choking, slamming, pinching, twisting and kicking the women.

Thus unfolded the ‘Night of Terror’ on Nov. 15, 1917, when the warden at the Occoquan Workhouse in Virginia ordered his guards to teach a lesson to the suffragists imprisoned there because they dared to picket Woodrow Wilson’s White House for the right to vote. For weeks, the women’s only water came from an open pail. Their food–all of it colorless slop–was infested with worms.

Alice Paul

(Alice Paul) When one of the leaders, Alice Paul, embarked on a hunger strike, they tied her to a chair, forced a tube down her throat and poured liquid into her until she vomited. She was tortured like this for weeks until word was smuggled out to the press. See this also.

So, refresh my memory. Some women won’t vote this year because- -why, exactly? We have carpool duties? We have to get to work? Our vote doesn’t matter? It’s raining?

Mrs. Pauline Adams in the prison garb she wore while serving a sixty-day sentence.

Last week, I went to a sparsely attended screening of HBO’s new movie ‘Iron Jawed Angels.’ It is a graphic depiction of the battle these women waged so that I could pull the curtain at the polling booth and have my say. I am ashamed to say I needed the reminder.

Miss Edith Ainge, of Jamestown , New York.

All these years later, voter registration is still my passion. But the actual act of voting had become less personal for me, more rote. Frankly, voting often felt more like an obligation than a privilege. Sometimes it was inconvenient.

Berthe Arnold, CSU graduate.

My friend Wendy, who is my age and studied women’s history, saw the HBO movie, too. When she stopped by my desk to talk about it, she looked angry. She was–with herself. ‘One thought kept coming back to me as I watched that movie,’ she said. ‘What would those women think of the way I use, or don’t use my right to vote? All of us take it for granted now, not just younger women, but those of us who did seek to learn.’ The right to vote, she said, had become valuable to her ‘all over again.’

HBO released the movie on video and DVD . I wish all history, social studies and government teachers would include the movie in their curriculum I want it shown on Bunco night, too, and anywhere else women gather. I realize this isn’t our usual idea of socializing, but we are not voting in the numbers that we should be, and I think a little shock therapy is in order.

Conferring over ratification [of the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution] at [National Woman ‘ s Party] headquarters, Jackson Pl [ace] [ Washington , D.C. ]. L-R Mrs. Lawrence Lewis, Mrs. Abby Scott Baker, Anita Pollitzer, Alice Paul, Florence Boeckel, Mabel Vernon (standing, right).

It is jarring to watch Woodrow Wilson and his cronies try to persuade a psychiatrist to declare Alice Paul insane so that she could be permanently institutionalized. And it is inspiring to watch the doctor refuse. Alice Paul was strong, he sa id, and brave. That didn’t make her crazy.

The doctor admonished the men: ‘Courage in women is often mistaken for insanity.’

Please, if you are so inclined, pass this on to all the women you know.

We need to get out and vote and use this right that was fought so hard for by these very courageous women. Whether you vote democratic, republican or independent party – remember to vote.

Helena Hill Weed, Norwalk , Conn. Serving 3 day sentence in D.C. prison for carrying banner, “Governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed.”

History is being made.

Source / Rense.com / Posted August 24, 2008

Thanks to Mariann Wizard / The Rag Blog

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Just How Much Is A Billion, Anyway?

Posted on September 28, 2008 by RagBlog


How many zeros in a billion?

The next time you hear a politician use the word ‘billion’ in a casual manner, think about whether you want the ‘politicians’ spending YOUR tax money.

A billion is a difficult number to comprehend, but one advertising agency did a good job of putting that figure into some perspective in one of it’s releases.

A. A billion seconds ago it was 1959.

B. A billion minutes ago Jesus was alive.

C. A billion hours ago our ancestors were living in the Stone Age.

D. A billion days ago no-one walked on the earth on two feet.

E. A billion dollars ago was only 8 hours and 20 minutes, at the rate our government is spending it.

Source / Snopes

Thanks to Diane Stirling-Stevens / The Rag Blog

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Orlando Homeless Win Big Victory in Federal Court

Posted on September 27, 2008 by Thorne Dreyer


City ordinance that limited size of homeless feedings linked to gentrification efforts
By Jay D. Jurie / The Rag Blog / September 27, 2008

ORLANDO — The City of Orlando, in keeping with corporate dominance by theme park and other business interests, has adopted a number of repressive measures promoting a pristine, “family values” image.

Combined with large-scale publicly-funded redevelopment initiatives, these measures have essentially created a downtown police state to facilitate “revitalization” through ethnic cleansing (displacement), the removal of other discordant elements such as youth and the homeless, and gentrification.

Weekly feedings of the homeless by Orlando Food Not Bombs (FNB) in the City’s landmark Lake Eola Park does not fit with this agenda. Over two years ago the City passed an ordinance restricting the size of any single feeding to 25 individuals. Since FNB feedings have typically attracted 30 to 50 members of the homeless population, this belied the claims of the City that it was not singling out any particular organization.

Central Florida Movement for a Democratic Society (MDS) and University of Central Florida Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) have been involved in conjunction with FNB in the feeding program. Members of both MDS and SDS testified at public hearings against the passage of the ordinance, and after it passed defied the ordinance by refusing to move or scale back the feeding program.

On one occasion, an FNB member was arrested for having the audacity to feed an illegal number of the homeless. On another occasion, several FNB members were arrested for disturbing the peace outside a fundraiser for Mayor Buddy Dyer. In both cases the FNB members were acquitted at trial. When the ACLU agreed to take up a suit against the City for the infringement of the First Amendment Rights of FNB, the First Vagabonds Church of God and others involved, joint FNB and MDS member Benny Markeson was one of five individual plaintiffs. With this latest victory–in federal court–it’s homeless team 3, City zip.

Federal Judge Strikes Down Homeless Feeding Ban
By Brandon Hensler / September 16, 2008

ORLANDO, Fla. – The American Civil Liberties Union of Florida won an overwhelming victory today in First Vagabonds Church of God vs. City of Orlando, the highly publicized “homeless feeding” case in Orlando. The 14-page opinion issued by Federal Judge Gregory A. Presnell hinged on the plaintiffs’ right to Free Exercise of Religion and Freedom of Speech.

The lawsuit was filed by the ACLU on October 12, 2006 on behalf of the First Vagabonds Church of God (FVCG), Orlando Food Not Bombs (OFNB) and several individuals. The lawsuit alleged that the City of Orlando’s ordinance on Large Group Feeding violated religious groups’ constitutional rights to free speech, free assembly, free association and freedom of religion. The City’s ordinance required groups and individuals to apply for a permit, only two of which are allowed per year, in order to share food with more than twenty-five people in downtown public parks. Violations were punishable by sixty days in jail and a $500 fine.

“After a two-year battle in court, we are thrilled that the court is vindicating the rights of the First Vagabonds Church of God and Orlando Food Not Bombs, and the homeless persons they serve,” said ACLU senior attorney Glenn Katon, who also heads up the ACLU of Florida’s Nancy and Martin Engels Religious Freedom Project. “Freedom of religion and freedom of speech are the cornerstones of the First Amendment and this ordinance flew in the face of the most basic constitutional rights of people using the parks to share food with the homeless. Now, thanks to a lot of hard work by many, they can.”

The opinion states: “The Court finds that there is no rational basis for this Ordinance. None of the legitimate government interests proffered by the City are served by this Ordinance. Furthermore … the Ordinance does much more than incidentally burden Nichols’ congregation … therefore, the Court finds that the application of this Ordinance violates the First Amendment rights of Nichols and FVCG.”

“If the spirit of God draws number twenty-six to me, how can I tell God, ‘no’,” Pastor Brian Nichols of the FVCG said earlier this year. “How can I choose between God’s will and the City of Orlando’s ordinance?”

The judge’s opinion went on to say: “Rather than address the problem of homelessness in these downtown neighborhoods directly, the City has instead decided to limit the expressive activity which attracts the homeless to these neighborhoods. While the Ordinance may very well accomplish the goal of diminishing the number of homeless in the Thornton Park and Lake Eola neighborhoods, the restriction clearly prevents OFNB from communicating its Constitutionally protected speech at a meaningful location which, from time immemorial, has been the traditional public forum for free speech.

Although some incidental restrictions on First Amendment freedoms must be tolerated, the Court concludes that the restriction here goes too far.”

“This ruling sends a loud and clear signal to the Orlando community – the ACLU is here to stay, and we will be protecting the Constitution in Central Florida,” said Dr. Joyce Hamilton Henry, ACLU of Florida Central Region Director. “We expanded into this part of the state because there are so many real issues that need our attention – and we are already seeing the benefits to our presence here.”

The FVCG and OFNB are Orlando-based organizations that assemble weekly to share food in public parks and to express their religious and political beliefs, respectively.

The FVCG is a homeless church without a building for worship. Pastor Nichols’ religion requires him to share food and help provide life sustaining services with his congregation.

“This has been an emotional legal battle – and we are pleased that in this case the rights of the downtrodden are being vindicated,” said Jackie Dowd, ACLU cooperating attorney. “This was a mean-spirited ordinance. Hopefully it sends a signal to the City of Orlando that we mean business and we won’t tolerate unconstitutional policy in Orlando.”

Attorneys in First Vagabonds Church of God vs. City of Orlando were Glenn Katon, ACLU of Florida senior attorney; and Jacqueline Dowd, ACLU Cooperating Attorney.

A copy of today’s opinion can be downloaded in PDF here.

Source / ACLU of Florida

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Keating Five Ring a Bell? Remember That John McCain?

Posted on September 27, 2008 by Thorne Dreyer

Sen. John McCain at a March 1990 hearing of the Senate Ethics Committee investigating the relationship between a group of senators and banker Charles Keating Jr. Photo by John Duricka / AP.

Past collides with Present: McCain, the Keating Five and the Wall Street debacle
By Rosa Brooks / September 24, 2008

Once upon a time, a politician took campaign contributions and favors from a friendly constituent who happened to run a savings and loan association. The contributions were generous: They came to about $200,000 in today’s dollars, and on top of that there were several free vacations for the politician and his family, along with private jet trips and other perks. The politician voted repeatedly against congressional efforts to tighten regulation of S&Ls, and in 1987, when he learned that his constituent’s S&L was the target of a federal investigation, he met with regulators in an effort to get them to back off.

That politician was John McCain, and his generous friend was Charles Keating, head of Lincoln Savings & Loan. While he was courting McCain and other senators and urging them to oppose tougher regulation of S&Ls, Keating was also investing his depositors’ federally insured savings in risky ventures. When those lost money, Keating tried to hide the losses from regulators by inducing his customers to switch from insured accounts to uninsured (and worthless) bonds issued by Lincoln’s near-bankrupt parent company. In 1989, it went belly up — and more than 20,000 Lincoln customers saw their savings vanish.

Keating went to prison, and McCain’s Senate career almost ended. Together with the rest of the so-called Keating Five — Sens. Alan Cranston (D-Calif.), John Glenn (D-Ohio), Don Riegle (D-Mich.) and Dennis DeConcini (D-Ariz.), all of whom had also accepted large donations from Keating and intervened on his behalf — McCain was investigated by the Senate Ethics Committee and ultimately reprimanded for “poor judgment.”

But the savings and loan crisis mushroomed. Eventually, the government spent about $125 billion in taxpayer dollars to bail out hundreds of failed S&Ls that, like Keating’s, fell victim to a combination of private-sector greed and the “poor judgment” of politicians like McCain.

The $125 billion seems like small change compared to the $700-billion price tag for the Bush administration’s proposed Wall Street bailout. But the root causes of both crises are the same: a lethal mix of deregulation and greed.

Today’s meltdown began when unscrupulous mortgage lenders pushed naive borrowers to sign up for loans they couldn’t afford to pay back. The original lenders didn’t care: They pocketed the upfront fees and quickly sold the loans to others, who sold them to others still. With the government MIA, soon mortgage-backed securities were zipping around the globe. But by the time many ordinary people began to struggle to make their mortgage payments, the numerous “good” loans (held by borrowers able to pay) had gotten hopelessly mixed up with the bad loans. Investors and banks started to panic about being left with the hot potato — securities backed mainly by worthless loans. And so began the downward spiral of a credit crunch, short-selling, stock sell-offs and bankruptcies.

Could all this have been prevented? Sure. It’s not rocket science: A sensible package of regulatory reforms — like those Barack Obama has been pushing since well before the current meltdown began — could have kept this most recent crisis from escalating, just as maintaining reasonable regulatory regimes for S&Ls in the ’80s could have prevented that crisis (McCain learned this the hard way).

But, despite his political near-death experience as a member of the Keating Five, McCain continued to champion deregulation, voting in 2000, for instance, against federal regulation of the kind of financial derivatives at the heart of today’s crisis.

Shades of the Keating Five scandal don’t end there. This week, for instance, news broke that until August, the lobbying firm owned by McCain campaign manager Rick Davis was paid $15,000 a month by Freddie Mac, one of the mortgage giants implicated in the current crisis (now taken over by the government and under investigation by the FBI). Apparently, Freddie Mac’s plan was to gain influence with McCain’s campaign in hopes that he would help shield it from pesky government regulations. And until very recently, Freddie Mac executives probably figured money paid to Davis’ firm was money well spent. “I’m always in favor of less regulation,” McCain told the Wall Street Journal in March.

These days, McCain is singing a different tune.

“There are no atheists in foxholes and no ideologues in financial crises,” Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke said last week, explaining the sudden mass conversion of so many onetime free marketeers into champions of robust government intervention. Fair enough. But as you try to figure out what and who can get us out of this mess, beware of those who now embrace regulation with the fervor of new converts.

Source / Los Angeles Times

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Paul Newman : Dead of Cancer at 83

Posted on September 27, 2008 by Thorne Dreyer

“It was one of my life’s proudest achievements. More than the films, more than the awards — finding out that I was on Nixon’s Enemies List meant that I was doing something right.”

Paul Newman

The ‘Cool’ Progressive Voice of Paul Newman Falls Silent
By R.T. Eby / September 27, 2008

See Video Below.

“What we have here is a failure to communicate.” The iconic line from Cool Hand Luke could just as easily represent the current discourse between Democrats and Republicans. And, while life, truly, is for the living, it is sad to note that as of Saturday one of the major voices for American progressive thinking fell silent for the last time.

However, with the spirited intentions of a New Orleans jazz band following a hearse, it is a time to celebrate the highlights and achievements of a man’s life. “Sometimes God makes perfect people,” fellow Absence of Malice star Sally Field said, “and Paul Newman was one of them.”

The media, across the board, is awash in examples of his legendary films. Excerpts of his interviews and clips of luminaries speaking about him are as plentiful now as the number of channels there are available on a state-of-the-art remote control.

It is the achievements of his life that brings this outpouring of respect; not the least of which were directed by Newman’s political philosophy. As an Associated Press story notes, “He was so famously liberal that he ended up on President (Richard M.) Nixon’s ‘enemies list,’ one of the actor’s proudest achievements, he liked to say.”

Newman was passionately opposed to the Vietnam War and strongly in favor of civil rights.

His legend also stands in the world of racing. He teamed up with Carl Haas starting Newman/Haas Racing in 1983 and joined the CART Series and went on to claim multiple wins and several series championships.

But, it would be remiss, while celebrating his life and achievements, not to mention Newman’s Own, a line of foodstuffs that enabled him and his partner, A.E. Hotchner, to donate more than $175 million, all of the company’s profits, to charities, an astonishing accomplishment for an enterprise which began as a joke.

It was his private life that he held dear and closest to his chest. It is most effectively characterized in a written statement by his daughters, “Our father was a rare symbol of selfless humility, the last to acknowledge what he was doing was special. Intensely private, he quietly succeeded beyond measure in impacting the lives of so many with his generosity.”

Along with his wife, Joanne Woodward, Newman enjoyed a true rarity in Hollywood, a long-term marriage. To show his appreciation for his wife he once quipped to Playboy Magazine, “I have steak at home, why go out for hamburger?”

But it is his persona onscreen that will forever stick in my mind. I remember when I first “discovered” Paul Newman. In a darkened theater back in the days when going to the movies was a real event. I watched him and Robert Redford wise crack their way through Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid.

It was after that performance that I became consumed with learning as much about him as I could and I have been a fan, on every level, ever since.

Source / The Huffington Post

See Legendary actor Paul Newman dies at age 83 / AP.

The Rag Blog / Posted September 27, 2008

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Texas Observer : Esteemed News Mag Names New Editor

Posted on September 27, 2008 by Thorne Dreyer

Bob Moser, formerly of The Nation, takes Observer helm
By Carlton Carl / September 26, 2008

The Texas Observer has named as its editor Bob Moser, writer and editor for The Nation, former editor of North Carolina’s Independent Weekly, and author of Blue Dixie: Awakening the South’s Democratic Majority.

Moser succeeds former executive editor Jake Bernstein, now a reporter for ProPublica, a non-profit investigative news organization in New York, N.Y., at the helm of the biweekly magazine.

Past editors of the Observer, based in Austin and published by the non-profit Texas Democracy Foundation, include such nationally acclaimed journalists as Ronnie Dugger, Willie Morris, Robert Sherrill, Molly Ivins and Geoffrey Rips. The winner of countless awards for its investigative reporting since its founding in 1954, the Observer was named America’s best political magazine by the Utne Reader in 2005.

“For more than fifty years, the Observer has set the standard for hard-hitting, well-crafted alternative journalism in print,” Moser said. “Our challenge now is to set a new standard for alternative journalism in the digital age.” The magazine will be stepping up its online efforts, Moser said, along with recruiting and training new reporters reflective of Texas’ fast-changing culture, politics and demographics.

“There is no place in the country evolving more rapidly, or changing more fundamentally, than Texas,” Moser said. “The Observer will aim to deploy our tough, thorough, hard-nosed reporting to nudge the state in a progressive direction. We’ll be keeping the ascendent Democrats honest, just as we’ve been relentless in exposing the corruption and incompetence of Republican leadership in the state.”

Moser cut his journalistic teeth as editor of North Carolina’s Independent Weekly, a National Magazine Award-winning alternative paper modeled on the original Observer. After leaving The Independent in 2000, Moser was a John S. Knight journalism fellow at Stanford University during the 2000-2001 academic year.

From 2001 to 2004, he was an award-winning senior writer for the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Intelligence Report, reporting on American extremists, particularly the religious right and the anti-immigrant movement. He has freelanced for national publications including Rolling Stone, where he won the 2006 GLAAD Award for best magazine article.

Moser’s first book, Blue Dixie: Awakening the South’s Democratic Majority, was published in August by Times Books. Since 2005, he has been writing and editing for The Nation magazine, where he is finishing a campaign-long series, “Purple America,” on the evolving politics of “red” states including Texas.

The Observer’s top-notch border coverage has been the best in the nation, even revealing for the first time that the border wall cuts through family homes and university lands, but stops just short of golf courses and resort developments. The magazine exposed Tom DeLay’s shenanigans and Governor Perry’s secret database and was first to report that Senator Phil Gramm, GOP presidential nominee John McCain’s chief economic advisor, is largely responsible for the nation’s current economic crisis. And it broke the stories about sexual abuse in Texas Youth Commission facilities, as well as the bogus undercover drug busts in Tulia, Texas, that sent innocent citizens to prison.

Source / Texas Observer

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What Did Bush Tell Gonzales? It Ain’t Pretty…

Posted on September 27, 2008 by Thorne Dreyer

Bush and Gonzales: Who told whom to do what and when? Photo by Joshua Roberts-Pool / Getty Images.
 

Sources say Alberto Gonzales now claims that President Bush personally directed him to John Ashcroft’s hospital room in the infamous wiretap renewal incident—and that in another instance the President asked him to fabricate fictitious notes.

By Murray Waas / September 26, 2008

In March 2004, White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales made a now-famous late-night visit to the hospital room of Attorney General John Ashcroft, seeking to get Ashcroft to sign a certification stating that the Bush administration’s warrantless wiretapping program was legal. According to people familiar with statements recently made by Gonzales to federal investigators, Gonzales is now saying that George Bush personally directed him to make that hospital visit.

The hospital visit is already central to many contemporaneous historical accounts of the Bush presidency. At the time of the visit, Ashcroft had been in intensive care for six days, was heavily medicated, and was recovering from emergency surgery to remove his gall bladder. Deputy Attorney General James B. Comey has said that he believes that Gonzales and White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card, who accompanied Gonzales to Ashcroft’s hospital room, were trying to take advantage of Ashcroft’s grievously ill state—pressing him to sign the certification possibly without even comprehending what he was doing—and in the process authorize a government surveillance program which both Ashcroft and the Justice Department had concluded was of questionable legality.

Gonzales has also told Justice Department investigators that President Bush played a more central and active role than was previously known in devising a strategy to have Congress enable the continuation of the surveillance program when questions about its legality were raised by the Justice Department, as well as devising other ways to circumvent the Justice Department’s legal concerns about the program, according to people who have read Gonzales’s interviews with investigators. The White House declined to comment for this story. An attorney for Gonzales, George J. Terwilliger III, himself a former deputy attorney general, declined to comment as well.

Although this president is famously known for rarely becoming immersed in the details—even on the issues he cares the most about—Gonzales has painted a picture of Bush as being very much involved when it came to his administration’s surveillance program.

In describing Bush as having pressed him to engage in some of the more controversial actions regarding the warrantless surveillance program, Gonzales and his legal team are apparently attempting to lessen his own legal jeopardy. The Justice Department’s inspector general (IG) is investigating whether Gonzales lied to Congress when he was questioned under oath about the surveillance program. And the Justice Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) is separately investigating whether Gonzales and other Justice Department attorneys acted within the law in authorizing and overseeing the surveillance program. Neither the IG nor OPR can bring criminal charges, but if, during the course of their own investigations, they believe they have uncovered evidence of a possible crime, they can seek to make a criminal referral to those who can.

In portraying President Bush as directly involved in making some of the more controversial decisions about his administration’s surveillance program, Gonzales may, intentionally or unintentionally, be drawing greater legal scrutiny to the actions of President Bush and other White House officials. And what began as investigations narrowly focused on Gonzales’s conduct could easily morph into broader investigations leading into the White House, and possibly leading to the appointment of a special prosecutor.

Dan Richman, a former federal prosecutor in Manhattan and professor at Columbia Law School, told me that Gonzales appears to be attempting to walk the thin line of taking himself out of harm’s way while at the same time protecting the president, a strategy that very well could work: “I think he is serving his own purposes and the White House’s purposes,” Richman says.

According to Richman, by invoking Bush’s name and authority, Gonzales and his legal team are making it more difficult for investigators to seek a criminal investigation of his actions, or for other investigators to later bring criminal charges against him: “The clearer it is that Gonzales did what he did at the behest of the president of the United States, the safer that he [Gonzales] is legally,” says Richman. At the same time, by saying that he is advising the president, Gonzales also makes it easier for those at the White House to claim executive privilege if they do indeed become embroiled in the probe.

Moreover, according to one senior Justice Department official, Gonzales, his legal team, and the White House also know that Justice’s IG and OPR are unlikely to press senior White House officials, let alone the president, to answer their questions.

But this legal strategy could also backfire.

One scenario feared by the White House is that the IG or OPR could send a public report to Congress concluding that Gonzales or some other official may have committed a crime. At a minimum, that would make the conduct of Gonzales, or of any other official deemed to be under suspicion, the subject of a criminal investigation.

Read all of it here.

Source / The Atlantic

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Thomas Cleaver :
Debate a Wash; Does Obama Lack Killer Instinct?

Posted on September 27, 2008 by Thorne Dreyer
photo of debate

Debaters: Sen. Barack Obama (D), right, looks at Sen. John McCain as he makes a point Friday during the first US presidential debate, at the University of Mississippi in Oxford, Miss. Obama scored points but did he miss chances for a knockout punch? Photo by Jim Bourg / AP.

Obama ‘had two big chances to plant a large-caliber entry wound right between McCain’s eyes, and didn’t even try’

By Thomas Cleaver | The Rag Blog | September 27, 2008

I was really, seriously impressed with Joe Biden and what he said in his interview with Olbermann. He was focused, on-point, accurate, everything I didn’t expect from him.

I was seriously underwhelmed by Obama and I hatehatehate saying that. I am old enough to have watched the first presidential debate, 48 years ago tonight, and I remember Kennedy looking cool and collected and Nixon covered with flop sweat. I only wish Obama had done the same. He had two big chances to plant a large-caliber entry wound right between McCain’s eyes, and didn’t even try.

First chance: McCain talks about how he’s so in favor of environmental legislation to deal with global warming. Obama mentions – without detail – the energy bill in Congress.

Here’s what Obama could have said:

“Senator McCain, back in June, we brought up the Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act for a vote. It’s a bill presented by your good friend Joe Lieberman. An opportunity to set America on course to develop alternative energy, to establish the cap and trade system you say you favor, to take a big step toward energy independence and dealing with global warming. Your fellow Republicans in the Senate decided to filibuster that bill. We had a bipartisan majority to pass it. We needed 60 votes to cut off that filibuster. The vote was 59-40. There was one member of the Senate not present. You. Your one vote that day could have changed history. But you were afraid of upsetting your far-right base, the people who – like your Vice-Presidential nominee – don’t believe in global warming, as you say you do. Why did you do that, Senator McCain? And why do you lie to us now that you are strong on this issue when you avoided the opportunity to prove it?”

And then McCain gets into his sentimental “I’m a vet” bullshit and brings up the Great Vietnam Myth of the veteran who was spit on (it never happened, no one has ever found a single vet who can say “it happened to me”). McCain then went into talking about how “veterans can depend on me…”

Obama could have replied:

“Senator McCain, if you are such a strong supporter of veterans, why did you work to defeat the 21st Century GI Bill, which would improve benefits for our service members who have fought in Iraq and Afghanistan? Why did you offer amendments that would have wrecked it? And then – when it was clear there was a veto-proof bipartisan majority in support of it – why did you avoid voting on it? Where did you find the temerity to go and speak before veteran’s organizations like the American Legion and the Veterans of Foreign Wars, and claim that you supported the bill you didn’t support and worked to make it better when you worked to kill it? Why did you do that, Senator McCain? Why did you fail to support our troops and then lie to your fellow veterans?”

Trust me, with either one of those two torpedoes amidships, Wet-Start Johnny would have exploded, and America really would have seen “the real McCain.”

Myself, I vote this debate a wash because Obama didn’t take out McCain when he could have. I’m beginning to wonder if he actually has a political killer instinct, because I have yet to see it.

But it’s obvious that Biden is going to kill Palin, and the American people are going to look at that and say “we want her a heartbeat away from the presidency????” So McCain may lose the election as a result of the debate he isn’t in on.

“Submitted for your consideration…”

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