President Obama: The View from Brazil

White House Beer Simulation

Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c

Color of Change and the Daily Show are right in sync

2009-07-30T13:24:00.001-07:00

So You Think You Can Douche

Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c

http://www.colorofchange.org/beck/?id=2473-605038

As you may know, right-wing talk show hosts have been bringing race-based fear mongering into the mainstream, but FOX's Glenn Beck just took it to another level. On Tuesday, Beck said:

This president has exposed himself as a guy over and over and over again who has a deep-seated hatred for white people... this guy is, I believe, a racist.

It's part of a larger argument Beck has been making: that President Obama wants to serve the needs of Black communities at White people's expense. This kind of talk stirs up fear, hate, and it can lead to violence.

I've joined ColorOfChange.org's effort to stop Glenn Beck. ColorOfChange is already putting calls into Beck's advertisers, asking them if they want to be associated with this kind of racist hate and fear-mongering. When the advertisers see that tens of thousands of us are behind that question, I believe they'll move their advertising dollars elsewhere, and his show and platform will be history.

Will you take a stand and be counted, and invite your friends and family to do the same? It takes just a moment:

Glenn Beck is appealing to the worst in America. Of course, some Americans refuse to accept the fact that our president is Black or the idea that he could truly serve all Americans. But the only way these views fade away is if they're not reinforced by mainstream society. Instead, folks like Glenn Beck, Lou Dobbs, and Rush Limbaugh are exploiting racism and race-based fear to bump their ratings, stirring up racial discord in the process.

The dangers of these tactics are real. We saw the same dynamic during the presidential race: By the end, the McCain/Palin campaign was unable to control the violent energy whipped up by their race-baiting. It resulted in an unprecedented number of threats on Obama's life, a rise in the number of hate groups, and an increase in the number of threats and crimes against immigrants and Black people.

FOX has a horrible track record on pushing racist propaganda, but Glenn Beck appears to be taking the network to an even lower standard. He's trying to divide and distract America when we should be coming together and talking about issues that really matter--like health care and the economy.

The good news is that we have the power to stop this. All major media is funded by advertising. And advertisers care more than anything what consumers think. If we want to change what's happening and put an end to folks like Glenn Beck having a platform, we can do it.

It's up to us, and it can start now. Please join me:

http://www.colorofchange.org/beck/?id=2473-605038

Thanks.

Here are some links to more info:

"Beck: Obama has 'exposed himself as a guy' with 'a deep seated hatred for white people'"
http://mediamatters.org/mmtv/200907280008

"Glenn Beck: Obama agenda driven by 'reparations' and desire to 'settle old racial scores'"
http://mediamatters.org/mmtv/200907230040

"MSNBC's Deutsch encourages viewers to demand advertisers on Beck's show spend money elsewhere"
http://mediamatters.org/mmtv/200907290037

"On Television and Radio, Talk of Obama's Citizenship"
http://tinyurl.com/mb467j

The Born Identity

2009-07-29T16:01:00.001-07:00

Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c

The Born Identity

Race baiting 101: CNN's Lou Dobbs should go

2009-07-29T15:52:00.000-07:00

CNN's Lou Dobbs has been using his show to give life to conspiracy theories claiming President Obama wasn't born in the U.S. The question was put to rest long ago, but Dobbs is pretending that this extremist nonsense is a legitimate national conversation.
Dobbs, intentionally or not, is stoking the fires of racial fear and paranoia in the same way that the McCain/Palin campaign did when they cast Obama as "not one of us." Even after being called on it, he refuses to stop.
CNN claims to be "the most trusted name in news," yet it is allowing one of its hosts to give legitimacy to debunked, racist conspiracy theories. Will you join me in calling on CNN to dump Dobbs -- and ask your friends and family to do the same? It takes just a minute:
http://www.colorofchange.org/dobbs/?id=2473-605038
For more than a year, folks on the far right have been claiming that Obama is not a U.S. citizen, that he was born in Kenya, and that as a result he can't be president. The theory has been repeatedly debunked. Not only has the state of Hawaii produced a birth certificate several times, there were also birth announcements in two separate Hawaii papers when Obama was born, placing his birth in Hawaii--for most reasonable people, that would remove any doubt.
Members of Dobbs' own staff have said they're uncomfortable with his insistence on pursuing this story, but Dobbs insists on claiming there must be something to it because "Obama refuses to produce the long-form of his birth certificate." Other news outlets have refused to give the idea any credence. The head of MSNBC, Phil Griffin, had this to say about the claim: "It's racist. It's racist. Just call it for what it is."
Dobbs and race
Lou Dobbs has a history of attacking immigrants by spouting hateful rhetoric and lies. He once claimed that "the invasion of illegal aliens is threatening the health of many Americans" through "deadly imports" of diseases like leprosy and malaria. This kind of rhetoric feeds anti-immigrant hate, which has led to horrors like the beating death of Luis Ramirez in Pennsylvania and the shooting death of 9-year old Brisenia Flores in Arizona earlier this year. Dobb's role in creating this environment has led organizations like the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) to call on CNN to reign in Dobbs in the past.
Now Dobbs is going after Obama by giving voice to the same kind of xenophobic rhetoric, stoking the deep-seated fears of angry right-wing extremists who, as CNN analyst Roland Martin has said, can't accept the fact that their president is Black.
Dobbs may not like Obama. But it's a real problem for him to use his powerful position as a moderator of discussion about the news to validate a dangerous falsehood that's rooted in racism.
Several watchdog groups have demanded action on the part of CNN. The head of the Southern Poverty Law Center wrote CNN last week asking that they fire Dobbs based on his recent actions9. Media Matters and others have launched efforts to hold CNN accountable as well.
CNN has the opportunity to live up to its description of itself as the most trusted cable news network. Or it can start to look like FOX, where the legitimizing of extremist propaganda is part of doing business.
I've joined ColorOfChange.org in calling on Jon Klein, the president of CNN, to take Dobbs off the air. Will you join us, and ask your friends and family to do the same?
http://www.colorofchange.org/dobbs/?id=2473-605038
Thanks.
Here are some links to more info:
Lou Dobbs Show, CNN, 7-23-09
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bvYcFgXCJrE
"Mob scene or campaign rally?" ColorOfChange.org, 10-14-08
http://www.colorofchange.org/united/message.html
"(Still) Challenging Obama's birth certificate," Politics Daily, 11-24-08
http://tinyurl.com/m2xhue
"CNN chief addresses Obama birth controversy," LA Times, 7-25-09
http://tinyurl.com/mk4rfd
"On Television and Radio, Talk of Obama's Citizenship," The New York Times, 7-24-09
http://tinyurl.com/mb467j
"CNN's Immigration Problem," Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting, 4-24-06
http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=2867
"Broken Record," Intelligence Report, Winter 2005
http://www.splcenter.org/intel/intelreport/article.jsp?aid=589
"CNN's Martin: Birthers' "I want my country back" comment means "How is this black guy all of the sudden running the country?" Media Matters, 7-22-09
http://mediamatters.org/mmtv/200907220041
"Major Civil Rights Group Demands CNN Remove Lou Dobbs From The Air," Huffington Post, 7-24-09
http://tinyurl.com/lafpuw
"CNN's Dobbs Problem," Media Matters
http://dobbsconspiracy.com/

President Obama, Professor Gates and the Cambridge Police

2009-07-24T05:18:00.000-07:00

LINK TO ORIGINAL ARTICLE http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/24/opinion/24fri4.html

By NEW YORK TIMES EDITORIAL OBSERVER BRENT STAPLES

The American obsession with people who are said to transcend race began long before Barack Obama moved into the White House — long before he even thought about running for president. Affluent, well-educated black people were being appropriated as symbols of racial progress — and held up as proof that racism no longer mattered — back when Mr. Obama was still a youth in short pants.

White Americans have little experience with this brand of appropriation. In general, their personal and professional triumphs are viewed as the product of individual fortitude and evidence that the founding ideals of the nation are alive and well.

Successful African-Americans — whether they are sports stars, entertainers or politicians — are often accorded a more tortured significance. In addition to being held up as proof that racism has been extinguished, they are often employed as weapons in the age-old campaign to discredit, and even demean, the disadvantaged.

“Don’t talk to us about discrimination,” the argument typically goes. “You made it. If the others got off their behinds and tried, they would, too.” In this rhetoric of race, there is no such thing as social disadvantage, only hard-working, morally upright people who succeed, and lazy, morally defective people who do not.

Black Americans who find this line of argument appealing, along with the celebrity it brings them, typically end up trumpeting exceptionalism, playing down the significance of discrimination, and lecturing black people (nearly always in front of white audiences) to stop whining about racism and get on with it.

Mr. Obama has refused to play this role, even though people have tried to thrust it upon him. He has made clear all along that the election of the first African-American president, while noteworthy in a nation built on the backs of slaves, did not signal a sudden, magical end to discrimination.

He underscored this point again this week when he commented on the arrest in Cambridge, Mass., of the Harvard African-American scholar (and my longtime friend) Henry Louis Gates Jr. and about the tendency of police officers to target blacks and Hispanics for traffic stops.

These remarks could change how the news media sees the president’s views on race. Up to now, he has been consistently and wrongly portrayed as a stern black exceptionalist who takes Negroes to task for not meeting his standard.

He is not happy with this characterization. That was clear in a recent Oval Office interview with the columnist Eugene Robinson of The Washington Post. Mr. Obama complained about the press coverage of his speeches and seemed especially miffed about the portrayal of the one he delivered before the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People this month.

He suggested that the news media had overemphasized his remarks about “personal responsibility” — a venerable theme in the African-American church — while disregarding “the whole other half of the speech,” which included a classic exercise in civil-rights oratory.

The president described disproportionate rates of unemployment, imprisonment and lack of health insurance in minority communities as barriers of the moment. He contrasted them with the clubs and police dogs that black marchers faced in the 1960s and said that solving present-day problems would require comparable determination.

And “make no mistake,” he continued, “the pain of discrimination is still felt in America. By African-American women paid less for doing the same work as colleagues of a different color and a different gender.”This was no exceptionalist rant. Speaking to Mr. Robinson, the president used the first-person plural revealingly when he said: “I do think it is important for the African-American community, in its diversity, to stay true to one core aspect of the African-American experience, which is we know what it’s like to be on the outside.”

During the campaign, Mr. Obama tended to avoid direct engagement with racial issues until circumstances (a tempest over his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright) made further evasion impossible.He reached a similar moment when he was asked to comment on Mr. Gates’s arrest at a White House news conference on Wednesday.

In a remark that became instantly famous, he responded that the police acted “stupidly” in arresting Mr. Gates when no crime had been committed and the professor was standing in his own home. Mr. Obama further noted that disproportionate attention from the police was an unwelcome fact of black life in America.People who have heretofore viewed Mr. Obama as a “postracial” abstraction were no doubt surprised by these remarks. This could be because they were hearing him fully for the first time.

Something in the way he moves...

2009-07-11T09:33:00.000-07:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RbifTbJtgJA

Jon Stewart: "Be like Sarkozy!"

Obama Checks Out a Girl & Oscar Mayer III's Funeral

Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c

PRESIDENT OBAMA IN AFRICA

2009-07-11T08:34:00.000-07:00

Remarks of President Obama to the Ghanaian Parliament -- 'A New Moment of Promise' – Accra International Conference Center, in Accra, the capital of Ghana: 'I am speaking to you at the end of a long trip. I began in Russia, for a Summit between two great powers. I traveled to Italy, for a meeting of the world's leading economies. And I have come here, to Ghana, for a simple reason: the 21st century will be shaped by what happens not just in Rome or Moscow or Washington, but by what happens in Accra as well. ... I do not see the countries and peoples of Africa as a world apart; I see Africa as a fundamental part of our interconnected world – as partners with America on behalf of the future that we want for all our children. That partnership must be grounded in mutual responsibility, and that is what I want to speak with you about today. We must start from the simple premise that Africa's future is up to Africans. I say this knowing full well the tragic past that has sometimes haunted this part of the world. I have the blood of Africa within me, and my family's own story encompasses both the tragedies and triumphs of the larger African story.

'My grandfather was a cook for the British in Kenya, and though he was a respected elder in his village, his employers called him 'boy' for much of his life. He was on the periphery of Kenya's liberation struggles, but he was still imprisoned briefly during repressive times. In his life, colonialism wasn't simply the creation of unnatural borders or unfair terms of trade – it was something experienced personally, day after day, year after year. My father grew up herding goats in a tiny village, an impossible distance away from the American universities where he would come to get an education. He came of age at an extraordinary moment of promise for Africa. The struggles of his own father's generation were giving birth to new nations, beginning right here in Ghana. Africans were educating and asserting themselves in new ways. History was on the move. But despite the progress that has been made – and there has been considerable progress in parts of Africa – we also know that much of that promise has yet to be fulfilled. ...

'To realize that promise, we must first recognize a fundamental truth that you have given life to in Ghana: development depends upon good governance. That is the ingredient which has been missing in far too many places, for far too long. That is the change that can unlock Africa's potential. And that is a responsibility that can only be met by Africans. ... America will not seek to impose any system of government on any other nation – the essential truth of democracy is that each nation determines its own destiny.

'Building on the strong efforts of President Bush, we will carry forward the fight against HIV/AIDS. We will pursue the goal of ending deaths from malaria and tuberculosis, and eradicating polio. We will fight neglected tropical disease. And we won't confront illnesses in isolation – we will invest in public health systems that promote wellness, and focus on the health of mothers and children. ... The people of Africa are ready to claim that future. In my country, African-Americans – including so many recent immigrants – have thrived in every sector of society. We have done so despite a difficult past, and we have drawn strength from our African heritage. ... Fifty-two years ago, the eyes of the world were on Ghana. And a young preacher named Martin Luther King traveled here, to Accra, to watch the Union Jack come down and the Ghanaian flag go up. This was before the march on Washington or the success of the civil rights movement in my country. ...

'And here is what you must know: the world will be what you make of it. You have the power to hold your leaders accountable, and to build institutions that serve the people. You can serve in your communities, and harness your energy and education to create new wealth and build new connections to the world. You can conquer disease, and end conflicts, and make change from the bottom up. You can do that. You can! Because in this moment, history is on the move. But these things can only be done if all of you take responsibility for your future. And it won't be easy. It will take time and effort. There will be suffering and setbacks. But I can promise you this: America will be with you every step of the way -- as a partner, as a friend.

'Opportunity won't come from any other place, though – it must come from the decisions all of you make, the things that you do, and the hope that you hold in your hearts. Ghana, freedom is your inheritance. Now, it is your responsibility to build upon freedom's foundation. And if you do, we will look back years from now to places like Accra and say: This was the time when the promise was realized – this was the moment when prosperity was forged; when pain was overcome; and a new era of progress began. THIS can be the time when we witness the triumph of justice once more. YES, WE CAN. Thank you very much. God bless you. Thank YOU.'

Source: Mike Allen's Politico Playbook Daily Update

And now for some more gentle skewering

2009-06-25T09:43:00.000-07:00

Jon Stewart, still way ahead of the "mainstream media" (including Maureen Dowd)

2009-06-25T09:11:00.001-07:00

Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c

Hard Corps

Jason Jones in Iran

Barack "stands" for a cellphone photo

2009-06-24T06:44:00.001-07:00

Obama kills a fly

2009-06-20T18:24:00.001-07:00

Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c

Obama Kills a Fly

Jason Jones in Iran

Blacks and Jews

2009-06-20T18:12:00.000-07:00

Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c

Blacks and Jews

Jason Jones in Iran

John Hodgman thanks Obama for warming up the crowd

2009-06-20T06:38:00.001-07:00

Obama at the RTCA dinner

2009-06-20T05:54:00.000-07:00

Obama at the White House Correspondents' Dinner (redux)

2009-06-20T05:34:00.000-07:00

There's no pleasing some extremists

2009-06-08T09:45:00.001-07:00

Looking for Comity in the Muslim World

M - Th 11p / 10c

Behind the scenes of Obama's Buchenwald visit

2009-06-08T05:30:00.001-07:00

Obama wasn't the only one in the US delegation with a family connection to the infamous Nazi concentration camp:

– JOSH LIPSKY: 'I WAS STANDING IN MY GRANDFATHER'S PLACE': L.A. Times Sunday front page, 'His own history liberated: Josh Lipsky volunteered to help prepare for President Obama's visit to the concentration camp, where his grandfather had been a prisoner. There he makes a connection with the man he never knew,' By Christi Parsons in Dresden: 'The clock at Buchenwald was stuck at 3:15. The White House advance guy noticed, and put it on the list of things to fix. The 23-year-old laughed at himself when he learned the clock's hands were deliberately frozen, marking the exact time the concentration camp was liberated in 1945. During the week Josh Lipsky spent getting Buchenwald ready for his boss' visit to the camp Friday, the clock would come to mark something other than schedule, precision, his own readiness. He would live a little in that moment trapped in time alongside the grandfather he never knew -- and would know himself better when he left. Lipsky grew up knowing that his grandfather and grandmother had met and fallen in love somewhere in the network of Nazi camps near the Polish border. He also knew that they were separated when his grandfather was sent to Buchenwald. ... When word spread around the White House that Obama would go to Buchenwald, Lipsky asked to go. Though he now works in the visitors' office, helping to arrange official functions, he spent the campaign on the exacting task of advance work and still sometimes volunteers for big projects. ... Lipsky -- who graduated from Columbia University last year, then went out on the campaign trail -- figured he'd just prepare like he prepares for any advance project. On the flight to Germany, he listened for the first time to the oral history that his grandmother, Helena Langer, had recorded for a Holocaust foundation before she died. ... In it, she tells her story, of a young woman who fell in love with the camp cook, the man she would later marry. The cook, Samuel Smulowitz, was 26 when the Nazis took him from his home outside Krakow, Poland, and sent him to a camp near the border with Germany.
'The young Helena was in another labor camp nearby. She was singing a song on the way to her barracks one day, and some SS guards were so angered by the sound that they attacked her with a German shepherd and beat her mercilessly. Too badly injured to work, she was on her way to Auschwitz -- and probably her death -- when her train broke down. She ended up in the infirmary of Samuel's camp. Being a cook was a good thing in the hierarchy of the camp, his grandmother's story goes on. He could move around the camp. He could bring food to the sick. He had access to the infirmary register, and a pen. 'He substituted the name of a dying woman with her name,' Lipsky said. The older woman went to Auschwitz in his grandmother's place. The two were parted when the cook was sent from the camp to Buchenwald, and they nearly lost each other. After liberation in April 1945, Helena followed rumors about Samuel to several German and Polish cities, jumping from trolley to trolley with his picture. At the back of a car in Munich, she finally found her cook. 'I'm here. You don't need to look any further,' he said, according to a family transcript of the grandmother's tape.

'They married, immigrated to the United States, opened a kosher butcher shop in Louisville, Ky., and raised three children. One of them is Miriam Gabriela Lipsky, Josh's mother. What had been lost in the story, though, were the details of Samuel Smulowitz's time at Buchenwald. He died in 1975, 30 years after the clock at Buchenwald stopped moving but a decade before his grandson was born. By the time Lipsky got to the camp last week, its caretakers already knew of his connection from other young staffers already there. Within hours of his arrival, the information began to flow. A guide found a letter from a prisoner, telling of a camp cook in the later years of Buchenwald who used to line his clothing with potatoes and sneak them to the hungriest. The detail about hiding food in the lining mirrored a fragment of information from his grandmother's tapes.

'Later, someone from the camp's foundation came to him with his grandfather's check-in slip, on which the young cook had signed his name -- in a manner bearing a striking resemblance to the way Lipsky writes his own signature. Each extends the leg of the last letter to underline the rest of his name. As he moved about the grounds, Lipsky passed sights that he knew his grandfather had seen -- the nearby woods, the barbed wire, the zoo just outside the fence where Buchenwald guards brought their children to see the animals in one set of cages and the humans in another. But it wasn't until the end of the week that he stood in a long-hidden room in what was certainly his grandfather's domain, the cellar below where the kitchen once stood. ... The door's hinges were rusted over. They had to take them off with a wrench. The guides illuminated the cellar with mine shaft lights, and Lipsky saw walls with peeling paint. Rusted wagons sat among the crude pantries. Lipsky saw a rusted old chute coming down from the kitchen, and moved beneath it. 'He would have stood there under the potato chute,' he said. 'Some SS guard, or maybe another prisoner, would have thrown down a bag of potatoes and he would have had to catch it. That's the moment when I knew I was standing in my grandfather's place.' He said Kaddish, a Jewish mourning prayer.

'When he went back to preparing for the president's visit, he felt that his grandfather was with him. He did the final walk-through of the path the president would follow. On the morning of the visit, he greeted the busload of reporters and moved them to their positions near the gates of the camp. When Obama took his place -- beneath the clock proclaiming the time to be 3:15 -- Lipsky knew the exact number of paces between Obama and the bank of cameras, where he also stood. He listened there, 21 steps from the president. ... After the speech, friends saw Obama pull Lipsky into a hug. Asked about it, Lipsky said he didn't want to disclose the details of the private moment. He packed his bags and flew back to Washington on Saturday. He wanted to see his mother in suburban Maryland right away. He wanted to fill in the gaps of the story for her. He wanted her to know what it meant to him. 'He worked in the kitchen,' he said before he left Germany for home. 'I am his grandson. And I came here working for the president of the United States, and that's a powerful thing for me.'

Source: Mike Allen's Politico Playbook Daily Update

President Obama speaks to the Muslim World from Cairo (full speech)

2009-06-04T06:10:00.000-07:00

Link to transcript (PDF) from CNN

Sotomayor Derangement Syndrome

2009-06-01T08:23:00.001-07:00

http://www.truthout.org/060109J
William Rivers Pitt, Truthout: "They called it Bush Derangement Syndrome for eight years: the condition of being berserk with rage, hatred and fear over the acts and actions - nay, even the very existence - of George W. Bush and his administration. After last November, it became known as Obama Derangement Syndrome; symptoms included an obsession with birth certificates, a sudden ersatz sense of expertise on the intricacies of modern socialism and a general tendency to agree with anyone who disagrees with President Obama no matter how demented that opinion may be. Last week, the malady mutated into a whole new thing - Sotomayor Derangement Syndrome - and boy, but it's a doozy."

Don't ask, don't tell?

2009-05-31T10:58:00.001-07:00

The same view as Jon Stewart's, without the laughs

2009-05-31T06:08:00.001-07:00

Op-Ed Columnist
Who Is to Blame for the Next Attack?
By FRANK RICH
Published: May 31, 2009
Republicans in Congress have no plausible economic, health care or energy policies to counter the president’s. The only card left to play is 9/11.

American Ideologues

2009-05-29T16:57:00.000-07:00

M - Th 11p / 10c

American Idealogues

http://colorofchange.org/rush/?id=2473-605038

Color of Change: Rush Limbaugh attacks Black folks

2009-05-22T13:14:00.001-07:00

You won't believe what Rush Limbaugh just said. He accused President Obama of intentionally trying to wreck the economy, saying that Obama wants to put more people on welfare and food stamps, and implying that he wants to redistribute the country's wealth to Black people.¹

This is not just an ugly attack on President Obama from Rush Limbaugh -- these are words from the man who is being held up as the face of the Republican Party. Virtually no Republican leaders have been willing to denounce his divisive rhetoric, or even disagree with him.² Instead, they say he's an important part of their party, and a friend.

When Republican leaders refuse to denounce this kind of race-baiting from someone they call a leader, the message they send is that they embrace it. It's time to force Republican officials to say where they stand. Please take a moment to help us publicly confront them:

Here's what Rush said about President Obama's economic policies:

"The objective is unemployment. The objective is more food stamp benefits. The objective is more unemployment benefits. The objective is an expanding welfare state. And the objective is to take the nation's wealth and return to it to the nation's quote, "rightful owners." Think reparations. Think forced reparations here if you want to understand what actually is going on."³

It's a direct appeal to racial fear and paranoia, and it's deeply insulting to the President, to Black people, and to anyone who cares about the future of this country. We've seen this kind of thing from Rush before.^4,5 But now, Republican politicians are refusing to denounce what he says, or even disagree with him. When they do, they usually take it back the next day, begging Rush to forgive them.⁶

Colin Powell is perhaps the only prominent Republican who has consistently stood up to Limbaugh and urged other Republicans to turn away from his divisive rhetoric. Powell recently said this: "I think what Rush does as an entertainer diminishes the party and intrudes or inserts into our public life a kind of nastiness that we would be better to do without."⁷

The response from Limbaugh and other Republicans? Rush repeated an old attack on Powell, accusing him of supporting Obama during the election solely based on race.⁸ Meanwhile, Dick Cheney took to the airwaves to attack Powell and make it clear that he stands with Rush Limbaugh when it comes to the future of the Republican Party.⁹

Rush speaks. Republicans in government do the work.

You might think Rush and Cheney merely represent the party's extremes, but that misses the larger context. The Republican Party has made it clear that they don't want Obama to succeed--even if it means further damage to the economy and to the lives of everyday Americans. It's evident in the 'no' votes Republican members of Congress cast against Obama's budget, the refusal of Republican governors to allow stimulus dollars to flow into their states, and their leadership's refusal to denounce the rhetoric coming from Rush and others. Rush has said clearly that he wants Obama to fail, and Republican elected officials have been clear in their actions.

Please join us in demanding that Republican leaders say publicly where they stand. Do they reject Rush Limbaugh's divisive fear-mongering, or do they stand with him? If they refuse to denounce what Rush said, they'll be making it perfectly clear what the Republican Party stands for. And we'll do our best to make sure the media tells the story.

http://colorofchange.org/rush/?id=2473-605038

-- James, Gabriel, William, Dani and the rest of the ColorOfChange.org team
May 22nd, 2009

Help support our work. ColorOfChange.org is powered by YOU--your energy and dollars. We take no money from lobbyists or corporations and our tiny staff ensures your contributions go a long way. You can contribute here:

https://secure.colorofchange.org/contribute/?id=2473-605038

References

1. "Rush Limbaugh: 'The Niggers Are Coming for Their Reparations!'" Jack and Jill Politics, 05-13-09
http://tinyurl.com/oy9x6g

2. "The Man Who Ate the G.O.P." Vanity Fair, May 2009
http://tinyurl.com/dljy8x

3. See reference 1.

4. "Limbaugh on Obama: 'Halfrican American'," Media Matters, 01-24-07
http://mediamatters.org/research/200701240010

5. The Today Show, NBC News, 05-21-07
http://tinyurl.com/okdvhf

6. "Forgive Me Rush, For I have Sinned," Talking Points Memo,
http://tinyurl.com/cmtxkx

7. "Cheney backs Limbaugh over Powell on GOP future," Associated Press, 05-10-09
http://tinyurl.com/oloatk

8. See reference 7.

9. See reference 7.

Nature wants to kill you

2009-05-20T08:38:00.000-07:00

M - Th 11p / 10c

Little Crop of Horrors

Gitmo Baywatch

2009-05-20T08:06:00.001-07:00

Guantanamo Baywatch - The Final Season

M - Th 11p / 10c

Arizona State snubs Obama

2009-05-19T12:29:00.001-07:00

Arizona State Snubs Obama

M - Th 11p / 10c

Moral Kombat

2009-05-19T12:13:00.001-07:00

M - Th 11p / 10c

Moral Kombat

He's making us think!

2009-05-19T11:55:00.000-07:00

M - Th 11p / 10c

Fetalmania

source: http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-langguth3-2009may03,0,4295574.story

2016 Summer Olympics as Obama Farewell Bash?

2009-05-12T07:04:00.001-07:00

– 'W.H. lobbies for Olympics in Chicago,' by POLITICO's Kenneth P. Vogel: 'The Obama White House is playing an unprecedented role in the bid to bring the 2016 Summer Olympics to Chicago, with top adviser Valerie Jarrett spearheading an effort that draws on the international symbolism of his presidency. ... [T]he emerging effort by the White House is unusually pointed in its attempt to wrap the campaign around the president and his appealing image abroad - a strategy veteran Olympics watchers say is paying dividends and could result in an enormous hometown farewell party if Obama wins a second term. 'Without Obama in the White House, I would say there would be no chance whatsoever for the U.S. winning,' said Canadian IOC member Dick Pound. 'The United States is the only country in this race that has had an absolutely extraordinary transformational experience with the election of Obama, which weighs very heavily in its favor.' ... Obama ... has recorded two separate videos supporting the bid since his election as president, one for presentation to the General Assembly of the European Olympic Committee in Istanbul less than three weeks after defeating Republican John McCain, and a second that was shown to IOC members during a tour of Chicago last month.'

Source: Mike Allen's Politico Playbook Daily Update

And of course, the stand-up-in-chief himself

2009-05-10T11:55:00.000-07:00

Wanda Sykes roasts Obama - brilliant

2009-05-10T11:46:00.001-07:00

Old news in Brazil

2009-05-06T10:26:00.001-07:00

U.S. has a 45-year history of torture

The difference between American involvement in South American atrocities in 1964 and ‘enhanced interrogation’ now is that some modern-day officials appear proud of themselves.

By A.J. Langguth
May 3, 2009

As President Obama grapples with accusations of torture by U.S. agents, I suggest he consult the former Senate majority leader, Tom Daschle.

I first contacted Daschle in 1975, when he was an aide to Sen. James Abourezk of South Dakota, who was leading a somewhat lonely campaign against CIA abuses.

At the time, I was researching a book on the United States’ role in the spread of military dictatorships throughout Latin America. Daschle arranged for me to inspect the senator’s files, and I spent an evening reading accounts of U.S. complicity in torture. The stories came from Iran, Taiwan, Greece and, for the preceding 10 years, from Brazil and the rest of the continent’s Southern Cone.

Despite my past reporting from South Vietnam, I had been naive enough to be at first surprised and then appalled by the degree to which our country had helped to overthrow elected governments in Latin America.

Our interference, which went on for decades, was not limited to one political party. The meddling in Brazil began in earnest during the early 1960s under a Democratic administration. At that time, Washington’s alarm over Cuba was much like the more recent panic after 9/11. The Kennedy White House was determined to prevent another communist regime in the hemisphere, and Robert Kennedy, as attorney general, was taking a strong interest in several anti-communist approaches, including the Office of Public Safety.

When OPS was launched under President Eisenhower, its mission sounded benign enough — to increase the professionalism of the police of Asia, Africa and, particularly, Latin America. But its genial director, Byron Engle, was a CIA agent, and his program was part of a wider effort to identify receptive recruits among local populations.

Although Engle wanted to avoid having his unit exposed as a CIA front, in the public mind the separation was quickly blurred. Dan Mitrione, for example, a police advisor murdered by Uruguay’s left-wing Tupamaros for his role in torture in that country, was widely assumed to be a CIA agent.

When Brazil seemed to tilt leftward after President Joao Goulart assumed power in 1961, the Kennedy administration grew increasingly troubled. Robert Kennedy traveled to Brazil to tell Goulart he should dismiss two of his Cabinet members, and the office of Lincoln Gordon, John Kennedy’s ambassador to Brazil, became the hub for CIA efforts to destabilize Goulart’s government.

On March 31, 1964, encouraged by U.S. military attache Vernon Walters, Brazilian Gen. Humberto Castelo Branco rose up against Goulart. Rather than set off a civil war, Goulart chose exile in Montevideo.

Ambassador Gordon returned to a jubilant Washington, where he ran into Robert Kennedy, who was still grieving for his brother, assassinated the previous November. “Well, he got what was coming to him,” Kennedy said of Goulart. “Too bad he didn’t follow the advice we gave him when we were down there.”

The Brazilian people did not deserve what they got. The military cracked down harshly on labor unions, newspapers and student associations. The newly efficient police, drawing on training provided by the U.S., began routinely torturing political prisoners and even opened a torture school on the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro to teach police sergeants how to inflict the maximum pain without killing their victims.

One torture victim was Fernando Gabeira, a young reporter for Jornal do Brasil who was recruited by a resistance movement and later arrested for his role in the 1969 kidnapping of Charles Burke Elbrick, the U.S. ambassador. (Elbrick was released after four days.) In custody, Gabeira later told me, he was tortured with electric shocks to his testicles; a fellow prisoner had his testicles nailed to a table. Still others were beaten bloody or waterboarded. When Gabeira’s captors said anything at all, they sometimes boasted about having been trained in the United States.

During the first seven years after Castelo Branco’s coup, the OPS trained 100,000 Brazilian police, including 600 who were brought to the United States. Their instruction varied. Some OPS lecturers denounced torture as inhumane and ineffectual. Others conveyed a different message. Le Van An, a student from the South Vietnamese police, later described what his instructors told him: “Despite the fact that brutal interrogation is strongly criticized by moralists,” they said, “its importance must not be denied if we want to have order and security in daily life.”

Brazil’s political prisoners never doubted that Americans were involved in the torture that proliferated in their country. On their release, they reported that they frequently had heard English-speaking men around them, foreigners who left the room while the actual torture took place. As the years passed, those torture victims say, the men with American accents became less careful and sometimes stayed on during interrogations.

One student dissident, Angela Camargo Seixas, described to me how she was beaten and had electric wires inserted into her vagina after her arrest. During her interrogations, she found that her hatred was directed less toward her countrymen than toward the North Americans. She vowed never to forgive the United States for training and equipping the Brazilian police.

Flavio Tavares Freitas, a journalist and Christian nationalist, shared that sense of outrage. When he had wires jammed in his ears, between his teeth and into his anus, he saw that the small gray generator producing the shocks had on its side the red, white and blue shield of the USAID.

Still another student leader, Jean Marc Von der Weid, told of having his penis wrapped in wires and connected to a battery-operated field telephone. Von der Weid, who had been in Brazil’s marine reserve, said he recognized the telephone as one supplied by the United States through its military assistance program.

Victims often said that their one moment of hope came when a medical doctor appeared in their cell. Now surely the torment would end. Then they found that he was only there to guarantee that they could survive another round of shocks.

CIA Director Richard Helms once tried to rebut accusations against his agency by asserting that the nation must take it on faith that the CIA was made up of “honorable men.” That was before Sen. Frank Church’s 1975 Senate hearings brought to light CIA behavior that was deeply dishonorable.

Before Brazil restored civilian government in 1985, Abourezk had managed to shut down a Texas training base notorious for teaching subversive techniques, including the making of bombs. When OPS came under attack during another flurry of bad publicity, the CIA did not fight to save it, and its funding was cut off.

Looking back, what has changed since 1975? A Brazilian truth and reconciliation commission was convened, and it documented 339 cases of government-sanctioned political assassinations. In 2002, a former labor leader and political prisoner, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, was elected president of Brazil. He’s serving his second term.

Fernando Gabeira went home to publish a book about kidnapping the American ambassador and his ordeal in prison. The book became a bestseller throughout Brazil, and Gabeira was elected to the national legislature. In an election last October, he came within 1.4 percentage points of becoming the mayor of Rio de Janeiro.

But in our country, there’s been a disheartening development: In 1975, U.S. officials still felt they had to deny condoning torture. Now many of them seem to be defending torture, even boasting about it.

A.J. Langguth is the author of “Hidden Terrors: The Truth About U.S. Police Operations in Latin America.”

The Mellow Doctrine

2009-05-04T07:30:00.000-07:00

By ROGER COHEN

Published: May 4, 2009

Foes of the United States have been disarmed by Barack Obama’s no-drama diplomacy. It is neither idealistic nor classic realpolitik.

Amazing what happens when you cast aside the testosterone.
I know bristling Dick Cheney believes America’s enemies now perceive “a weak president,” as do sundry Republican senators, but the truth is that foes of the United States have been disarmed by Barack Obama’s no-drama diplomacy.
Call it the mellow doctrine. Neither idealistic nor classic realpolitik, it involves finding strength through unconventional means: acknowledgment of the limits of American power; frankness about U.S. failings; careful listening; fear reduction; adroit deployment of the wide appeal of brand Barack Hussein Obama; and jujitsu engagement.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/04/opinion/04iht-edcohen.html

Voices Reflect Rising Sense of Racial Optimism

2009-05-03T10:17:00.000-07:00

By SUSAN SAULNY

Published: May 3, 2009

More Americans indicated that they were feeling optimistic about race relations, yet no one claimed that racial prejudice has disappeared.

In Tampa, Fla., Milton Patrick, 33, an auditor who is black, went to a baseball game this spring for the first time at the invitation of his white colleagues. In Karen Jackson’s multiracial Los Angeles office, where race, politics and religion were once taboo subjects, Ms. Jackson, a black woman, said people were engaging her in friendly and meaningful discussions. And in Brooklyn, Shel Harris, a black man, said he dropped his “skeptical, more on guard” attitude toward whites after working alongside so many on the Obama campaign.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/03/us/politics/03race.html

Youth and the Myth of Post-Racial Society

2009-04-27T18:08:00.000-07:00

http://www.truthout.org/042709A
Henry A. Giroux, Truthout: "With the election of Barack Obama, it has been argued that not only will the social state be renewed in the spirit and legacy of the New Deal, but that the punishing racial state and its vast complex of disciplinary institutions will, if not come to an end, at least be significantly reformed. From this perspective, Obama's presidency not only represents a post-racial victory, but also signals a new space of post-racial harmony. While 'post-racial' may mean less overt racism, the idea that we have moved into a post-racial period in American history is not merely premature - it is an act of willful denial and ignorance."

Scene from Obama's first official trip to Europe

2009-04-22T11:56:00.000-07:00

Here's one interpretation: "Remember they are not supposed to shake hands, but the two brothers couldn't resist the historic moment. The black royal cop never imagined in his wildest dream that he would usher a black American president into the British corridors of power. Nice."

A Black President Doesn't Mean Racism Is Gone in America

2009-04-21T15:10:00.000-07:00

http://www.truthout.org/042109B
Peter Phillips, Truthout: "Racial inequality remains problematic in the US. People of color continue to experience disproportionately high rates of poverty, unemployment, police profiling, repressive incarceration and school segregation. According to a new civil rights report, 'Reviving the Goal of an Integrated Society: A 21st Century Challenge,' by Gary Orfield, schools in the US are currently 44 percent nonwhite, and minorities are rapidly emerging as the majority of public school students. Latinos and blacks are the two largest minority groups. However, black and Latino students attend schools more segregated today than during the civil rights era."

Obama Calls for Thaw in U.S. Relations With Cuba

2009-04-17T18:13:00.000-07:00

Pool photo by Marianna Kambon/Summit of the Americas

Obama: "¿Como estás?"

By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG and ALEXEI BARRIONUEVO - New York Times

Published: April 18, 2009

President Obama’s overture to Cuba at a gathering of Western Hemisphere leaders in Trinidad capped a dizzying series of diplomatic developments this week.

Read all about it here

More: At summit, Obama offers partnership, humour

Obama: Latin America on equal footing with U.S.

2009-04-16T06:58:00.000-07:00

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- President Barack Obama on Thursday embarks on a trip to Latin America, where the leader of the world's lone superpower said he seeks to engage in talks with the region's leaders as equals.

President Obama declines to criticize any Latin American leaders before heading to the region for a summit.

"Times have changed," Obama told CNN en Español on Wednesday.

Referring to his planned meeting in Trinidad and Tobago with Brazil's president, he said, "My relationship with President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva is one of two leaders who both have big countries, that we are trying to solve problems and create opportunities for our people, and we should be partners.

"There's no senior partner or junior partner."

Obama and Lula da Silva are among the leaders scheduled to attend the Summit of the Americas this week.

Obama lauded Mexican President Felipe Calderon, with whom he will meet Thursday in Mexico City, as having done "an outstanding and heroic job in dealing with what is a big problem right now along the borders with the drug cartels."

Asked if the United States is partly to blame for the violence along the border, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said, "There certainly is a relationship. You can't deny it."

Don't Miss

In Mexico City on Thursday, she said, "What we're working to do is to work to stop the flow of guns and cash into Mexico that are helping fuel these cartels, but also we're working at the border to make sure that the spillover violence doesn't occur in our own cities and communities." Watch what Napolitano says about the U.S.-Mexico drug link »

Obama vowed Wednesday that the United States can be counted on to help.

"We are going to be dealing not only with drug interdiction coming north but also working on helping to curb the flow of cash and guns going south," he said.

The president also described himself as "a strong proponent of comprehensive immigration reform," saying he has met with the Congressional Hispanic Caucus "to try to shape an agenda that can move through Congress."

Napolitano said the U.S. must ensure it is enforcing immigration laws on employers who "consistently go into that illegal labor market in order to exploit it."

E-verify, an electronic employment eligibility verification system, must be an integral part of immigration enforcement, she said.

Obama is to travel later in the week to the summit in Trinidad and Tobago for meetings with Latin American leaders.

He refused to criticize the leaders of Bolivia, Ecuador and Venezuela, who have taken measures to change their constitutions to extend their holds on power.

"I think it's important for the United States not to tell other countries how to structure their democratic practices and what should be contained in their constitutions," he said. "It's up to the people of those countries to make a decision about how they want to structure their affairs."

Obama offered no criticism when asked how he plans to interact with Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, a fierce U.S. critic who once described President Bush as the "devil." "Look, he's the leader of his country, and he'll be one of many people that I will have an opportunity to meet," Obama said.

He said he believes the United States has a leadership role to play in the region, but he qualified that role this way: "We also recognize that other countries have important contributions and insights."

He added, "We want to listen and learn as well as talk, and that approach, I think, of mutual respect and finding common interests, is one that ultimately will serve everybody."

On Cuba, Obama -- who this week eased restrictions on travel and sending money to the island -- offered a prod and a carrot to Havana.

"What we're looking for is some signal that there are going to be changes in how Cuba operates that assures that political prisoners are released, that people can speak their minds freely, that they can travel, that they can write and attend church and do the things that people throughout the hemisphere can do and take for granted," he said.

"And if there is some sense of movement on those fronts in Cuba, then I think we can see a further thawing of relations and further changes."

Obama sought to distance his administration from his predecessor's, noting he plans to close the detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where "some of the practices of 'enhanced interrogation' techniques, I think, ran counter to American values and American traditions."

He said his team has spoken with the Spanish government about a Spanish judge's call for an investigation into the role of Bush officials in the detention of five Spaniards at Guantanamo.

But he did not dwell on his Bush's legacy. "I'm a strong believer that it is important to look forward and not backward and to remind ourselves that we do have very real security threats out there," he said.

Though the U.S. image abroad may have suffered in recent years, Obama said, "There's a reason why there are consistently so many immigrants to our country from Latin America."

View source article

Faith the Nation

2009-04-12T08:40:00.000-07:00

M - Th 11p / 10c

Faith the Nation

Obama on Lula: "I love this guy"

2009-04-02T08:28:00.001-07:00

Brazil's Lula prays more for Obama than he does for himself

2009-03-25T18:42:00.001-07:00

By Fareed Zakaria, a foreign affairs analyst who is host of "Fareed Zakaria: GPS" on CNN at 1 and 5 p.m. ET Sundays.

Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva says his country should be part of the U.N. Security Council.

NEW YORK (CNN) -- Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva says emerging industrialized nations like Brazil, China and India should have a greater say in world affairs.

In an interview to air Sunday on CNN's "Fareed Zakaria GPS," Lula da Silva also said the United Nations Security Council should include emerging nations as permanent members.

"The geography of 2009 is different from the geography of 1948 when the U.N. was created," Lula da Silva said. "And because of this we want more continents to participate in the U.N. Security Council. ... Brazil should have a seat ... the African continent should have one or two members in the U.N. Security Council. There's opposition from Italy that doesn't want Germany to come in. There is China that doesn't want the Japanese to participate.

"I think this is foolish."

Lula da Silva also expressed his admiration for Barack Obama, saying he told the new U.S. president at a recent White House meeting that he prays more for the American leader than for himself "because although I face many problems, he has much more delicate problems than I."

Lula da Silva said there's a reason Obama was elected.

"The high hopes, the high expectations around him are tremendous," Lula da Silva said. "And I believe that God didn't put him there for nothing. It's because something important will happen in this country."

Lula da Silva said he did not speak with Obama about the "absurd" trade embargo the United States imposed on Cuba in 1962.

"The only thing that I believe as a citizen, as the president of my country is that there is no reason -- not from a sociological viewpoint, a military viewpoint, a political viewpoint, an electoral viewpoint, and much less from an economic viewpoint -- to maintain such a blockade," he said.

But Lula da Silva said Obama "should make a gesture" toward Cuba as a first step toward normalizing relations with the communist island.

Speaking about another U.S. trouble spot in Latin America, Lula da Silva said he told Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez recently "that it was necessary that he become closer to President Obama, because now there is an opportunity to establish new ties of friendship with the U.S."

Chavez famously implied at a U.N. speech in September 2006 that then-President George W. Bush was the devil.

Lula da Silva, who calls himself a socialist and once worked as a factory lathe operator, talked about his humble upbringing.

"When I'm sitting in the G-20 meetings with all of those presidents or heads of state, I know I am the only one that definitely went through a lot of misery and hunger," he said. "I lived in houses that were flooded by water, inside my house, 1½ meters high. Sometimes I had to fight over space with rats and cockroaches, and waste would come in when it flooded.

Don't Miss

"I know what unemployment means, because I was unemployed for 1½ years. And I know the drama that the worker -- an unemployed worker -- faces."

Lula da Silva praised the values of democracy, a system that allowed a former factory worker and union leader to become president of a large nation. He took office in January 2003 and was re-elected in October 2006 for a term that will end January 1, 2011.

Once in a while, he said, while sitting at a meeting with other world leaders, "I feel like an outsider. I ask myself, what am I doing here?

"But it was democracy that led me to this position. It was the people that led me to this position. So I feel I am on equal terms with all of them. I don't feel that I'm less than anyone. And 10 years ago as I would watch these people on television, I could never have imagined that I would get close to them, never.

"And suddenly here I am. I am now in the same group as them, talking with them on equal terms, sometimes learning, sometimes teaching. And this is something that is pleasurable in politics. And it is also the great thing about democracy."

Source article

Brazilian-style Veep

2009-03-22T08:01:00.000-07:00

When things get rough in Brazil, people start cracking jokes. Biden could be Brazilian:

VICE PRESIDENT BIDEN KILLS AT GRIDIRON: 'Axelrod really wanted me to do this on teleprompter -- but I told him I'm much better when I wing it. ... I know these evenings run long, so I'm going to be brief. Talk about the audacity of hope. ... President Obama does send his greetings, though. He can't be here tonight -- because he's busy getting ready for Easter. (Whisper) He thinks it's about him. ...

'I know that no president has missed his first Gridiron since Grover Cleveland. Of course, President Cleveland really did have better things to do on a Saturday night. When he was in the White House -- he was married to a 21 year old woman. ... I understand these are dark days for the newspaper business, but I hate it when people say that newspapers are obsolete. That's totally untrue. I know from firsthand experience. I recently got a puppy, and you can't housebreak a puppy on the Internet.

'Now let's see: we have a Republican speaker who was born in Austria, and tonight's Democratic speaker was born in Canada. Folks, this is Lou Dobbs' worst nightmare. ... We are now two months into the Obama-Biden administration and the President and I have become extremely close. To give you an idea of how close we are, he told me that next year -- maybe, just maybe -- he's going to give me his blackberry email address. ... But the Obama Administration really is a good team. I am the experienced veteran. Rahm can be an enforcer. And Tim Geithner is always there when you need to borrow money. And no questions asked.

'You know, I never realized just how much power Dick Cheney had until my first day on the job. I walked into my office, and you know how the outgoing president always leaves the incoming president a note in his desk? I opened my drawer and Dick Cheney had left me Barack Obama's birth certificate. ... I now realize that we have to be extra careful when we enunciate new policy ideas to make sure they don't look like they're personally motivated. For example, the other day there were a whole bunch of stories about the President's hair going gray; the next day there's a story about a Vice President who's trying to grow new hair, and then the day after that, the two of us come out in favor of stem cell research. That looked bad.

'I'd like to address some of the things I said: Like when I said that 'JOBS' is a three-letter word. I did say that. But I didn't mean it literally. It's like how, right now, most people think AIG is a four-letter word. ... Or when I announced our stimulus package website, I was asked how you get to it: All I said was I didn't know the website number. What I really meant to say was, 'Ted Stevens didn't tell me what tube the website is in.'

Source: Mike Allen's Politico Daily Playbook Update

It should have been Jon Stewart!

2009-03-17T04:57:00.000-07:00

FIRST TIME A SITTING PRESIDENT HAS GONE ON A LATE-NIGHT TALK SHOW, per NBC: The president stops by Jay Leno on Thursday, during his California trip. 'Obama will be making his first sit-down talk show appearance in studio in front of a live audience since becoming elected ... Among other topics, President Obama will be sitting down to talk about his economic plan. President Obama made his first 'Tonight Show' appearance on December 1, 2006.'

Source: Mike Allen's Politico Playbook Daily Update

Has it been a year already?

2009-03-17T04:55:00.000-07:00

TOMORROW IS THE FIRST ANNIVERSARY OF THE PRESIDENT'S RACE SPEECH IN PHILLY -- The National Constitution Center, the site of the speech, announced it will mark the anniversary 'by launching a virtual exhibit online. The interactive website and supplemental educational materials will provide users with a deeper understanding of this important speech. The interactive webpage [launches tomorrow] will ... contain full video of President Obama's speech, A More Perfect Union, with a chapter index and a scrolling transcript to make it easy for users to follow along. The page will also feature quotes from media personalities and historians about the significance of the seminal speech, including audio of historian Harold Holzer comparing Lincoln's historic Cooper Union speech and Obama's Race Speech at the Constitution Center; press materials; and an image gallery of photographs from the event and of the Center's signed copy of the speech.'

Source: Mike Allen's Politico Playbook Daily Update

There was almost nothing about this on the usual English-language news websites today so here goes...

2009-03-14T16:36:00.000-07:00

Obama-Lula meeting sign of Brazilian ascendancy: US

WASHINGTON (AFP) – The weekend summit between presidents Barack Obama of the United States and Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva of Brazil underscores Brazil's "ascendancy in the world," a top US diplomat said Friday.

The two leaders will meet at the White House Saturday to discuss growing ties promoting alternative energy like biofuels and economic development, as well as tackling climate change and fighting malaria and AIDS in Africa.

"This, from our point of view, is a great opportunity for the United States to build on an important relationship that we have with Brazil," Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs Thomas Shannon told reporters.

In promoting biofuels, the two countries have "built a relationship around alternative energy sources dedicated to using energy as an important component of social and economic development," Shannon said.

Their work to fight climate change and protect the environment will "open a space for the United States and Brazil to cooperate more broadly, not only throughout Latin America, especially Central America and the Caribbean, but also in Africa and other parts of the developed world."

The two countries have also worked together "to address health care concerns, whether it be fighting malaria in Africa or fighting HIV-AIDS in Africa," and Washington hopes to "deepen that commitment," Shannon said.

The relationship is not only bilateral and regional but also has "a strong global partnership component to it. It is a recognition of Brazil's ascendancy in the world," he said.

"And we think that we are at a point in which this relationship, which has had so much potential, will be able to have that potential realized in ... the coming months and years."

"And we think that this opportunity for President Obama and President Lula to meet on Saturday is going to be an important and dramatic step forward," Shannon added.

Daily Show Full Episodes
Important Things With Demetri Martin

President Barack Obama: Toward a Better Day

2009-03-08T12:05:00.000-07:00

http://www.truthout.org/030809Y
President Barack Obama, in his weekly address to the nation Saturday, said: "Yesterday, we learned that the economy lost another 651,000 jobs in the month of February, which brings the total number of jobs lost in this recession to 4.4 million. The unemployment rate has now surpassed 8 percent, the highest rate in a quarter century. These aren't just statistics, but hardships experienced personally by millions of Americans who no longer know how they'll pay their bills, or make their mortgage, or raise their families."

VIDEO
http://www.truthout.org/video/030809Y
President Barack Obama used his weekly address to detail his plans to fix our ailing economy, noting that reforming health care is necessary to ensure our long term fiscal health. While ending this crisis will not be quick or easy, the President's plans will take the swift, bold, and responsible actions needed for the United States to emerge stronger and more prosperous than before.
For full transcript, see this page.

The Dow Knows All

2009-03-08T06:39:00.001-07:00

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

The Dow Knows All

Political Humor
Joke of the Day

At last, the voice of reason.

Words of wisdom from Bob Herbert

2009-03-07T08:06:00.000-08:00

Miracles Take Time

By BOB HERBERT

Published: March 7, 2009

The renegade clowns who ruined this economy, the Republican right in alliance with big business and some feckless Democrats, have no basis for waging war against efforts to get us out of their mess.

I particularly like this line:
"Freaking out over earmarks is like watching a neighborhood that is being consumed by flames and complaining that there is crabgrass on some of the lawns."

Message from Moveon.org

2009-03-06T15:58:00.001-08:00

Want to see what change looks like? Real change?
Well, here it is. Last week, President Obama unveiled his budget—his blueprint for America—and it's ambitious, amazing, and unapologetically progressive. As Paul Krugman said, it will set America on a "fundamentally new course."¹
President Obama called his budget "a threat to the status quo," and trust me, the status quo noticed. Oil companies, big banks and insurance companies are already mobilizing to stop it.²
Unfortunately, most folks don't realize how far-reaching and progressive the plan is—that's where we all come in.
Here are 10 really incredible things about Obama's plan. Check them out and then send them on to your friends and family so that millions of people will have the information they need to fight to make this vision a reality.

10 things you should know about Obama's plan (but probably don't)

The plan:

Makes a $634 billion down payment on fixing health care that will go a long way toward paying for a more efficient, more affordable health care system that covers every single American.³
Reduces taxes for 95% of working Americans. And if your family makes less than $250,000, your taxes won't go up one dime.⁴
Invests more than $100 billion in clean energy technology, creating millions of green jobs that can never be outsourced.⁵
Brings our troops home from Iraq on a firm timetable, finally bringing the war to a close—and freeing up almost ten billion dollars a month for domestic priorities.⁶
Reverses growing income inequality. The plan lets the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans expire and focuses on strengthening the middle class.⁷
Closes multi-billion-dollar tax loopholes for big oil companies. ⁸
Increases grants to help families pay for college—the largest increase ever.⁹
Halves the deficit by 2013. President Obama inherited a legacy of huge deficits and an economy in shambles, but his plan brings the deficit under control as soon as the economy begins to recover.¹⁰
Dramatically increases funding for the SEC and the CFTC—the agencies that police Wall Street.¹¹
Tells it straight. For years, budgets have used accounting tricks to hide the real costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Bush tax cuts, and too many other programs. Obama's budget gets rid of the smokescreens and lays out what America's priorities are, what they cost, and how we're going to pay for them.¹²

This is the change we voted for. President Obama has done his part, now we need to do ours.
Can you pass this on to your personal network and then click here to let us know how many people you told, so we can track our impact together:

http://pol.moveon.org/budget10/?id=15687-5165740-r3HT5ox&t=1

Thanks for all you do.

–Daniel, Tanya, Peter, Justin and the rest of the team
P.S. Turns out there are way more than 10 amazing things in Obama's budget and we couldn't resist sharing just a few more.

Stops unnecessary government subsidies to big banks, health insurance companies and big agribusinesses.^13,14,15
Expands access to early childhood education and improves schools by investing in programs that make sure every child has a qualified, strong teacher.¹⁶
Negotiates for better prescription drug prices using Medicaid's tremendous bargaining power.¹⁷
Expands access to family planning for low-income women.¹⁸
Caps the pollution that causes global warming, and makes polluters pay to support clean energy innovation.¹⁹

Sources: 1. "Climate of Change," The New York Times, February 27, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/27/opinion/27krugman.html?em
2. "Obama Calls His Budget Sweeping, Needed Change," The New York Times, February 28, 2009
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=51201&id=15687-5165740-r3HT5ox&t=2
3. "Obama Offers Broad Plan to Revamp Health Care," The New York Times, February 26, 2009
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=51202&id=15687-5165740-r3HT5ox&t=3
4. "Obama Expects Fight Over $3.55 Trillion Budget Plan," Bloomberg News, February 28, 2009
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=51203&id=15687-5165740-r3HT5ox&t=4
5. "Energy Budget Is Sunlight After Eight Years of Darkness," Center for American Progress, February 26, 2009
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=51204&id=15687-5165740-r3HT5ox&t=5
6. "The Economic Cost of War in Iraq and Afghanistan," The New York Times, March 1, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/01/weekinreview/01glanz.html
7. "Tax Cuts," The New York Times, February 26, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/27/washington/27web-tax.html
8. "Energy Budget Is Sunlight After Eight Years of Darkness," Center for American Progress, February 26, 2009
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=51204&id=15687-5165740-r3HT5ox&t=6
9. "Student Loans," The New York Times, February 26, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/27/washington/27web-edu.html

10. "Obama unveils budget blueprint," CNN, February 26, 2009
http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/02/26/budget/
11. "Obama budget would boost SEC, CFTC, FBI," Reuters, February 26, 2009
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=51205&id=15687-5165740-r3HT5ox&t=7
12. "Obama's budget," Los Angeles Times, February 27, 2009
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=51206&id=15687-5165740-r3HT5ox&t=8
13. "Student Loans," The New York Times, February 26, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/27/washington/27web-edu.html

14. "Health Insurance Stocks Dive on Medicare Advantage Cuts," The Wall Street Journal, February 26, 2009
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=51207&id=15687-5165740-r3HT5ox&t=9
15. "Agriculture," The New York Times, February 26, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/27/washington/27web-agri.html
16. "Investing Wisely in Our Children," Center for American Progress, February 26, 2009
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=51208&id=15687-5165740-r3HT5ox&t=10
17. "Obama Offers Broad Plan to Revamp Health Care," The New York Times, February 26, 2009
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=51202&id=15687-5165740-r3HT5ox&t=11
18. "Obama Offers Broad Plan to Revamp Health Care," The New York Times, February 26, 2009
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=51202&id=15687-5165740-r3HT5ox&t=12
19. "Setting 'Green' Goals," The New York Times, February 26, 2009
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=51209&id=15687-5165740-r3HT5ox&t=13

Blacks, Whites Hear Obama Differently

2009-03-03T06:26:00.000-08:00

By Nia-Malika Henderson - Politico

On his pre-inaugural visit to Ben’s Chili Bowl, a landmark for Washington’s African-American community, President Barack Obama was asked by a cashier if he wanted his change back.

“Nah, we straight,” Obama replied.

The phrase was so subtle some listeners missed it. The reporter on pool duty quoted Obama as saying, “No, we’re straight.”

But many other listeners did not miss it. A video of the exchange became an Internet hit, and there was a clear moment of recognition among many blacks, who got a kick out of their Harvard-educated president sounding, as one commenter wrote on a hip-hop site, “mad cool.”

On matters of racial identity, many observers in the African-American community say he benefits from what's known as “dog-whistle politics." His language, mannerisms and symbols resonate deeply with his black supporters, even as the references largely sail over the heads of white audiences.

This is part of the reason that as a candidate, Obama won intense support among African-Americans while never being branded, in the fashion of a Jesse Jackson, as a candidate defined by race.

In January remarks about the economy, Obama made a reference to “American dreams that are being deferred,” a phrase black audiences understood without a citation as black poet Langston Hughes’. First lady Michelle Obama often cites her upbringing in the “South Side of Chicago.” On Election Night, the winner promised that “we as a people will get there,” an echo of Martin Luther King Jr. made more powerful by not expressly invoking King’s name.

Or a year ago in South Carolina, when he tried to swat down the persistent rumors that he is Muslim. “They try to bamboozle you, hoodwink you,” Obama said that night, in what many listeners heard as an unmistakable reference to activist Malcolm X, as portrayed in Spike Lee’s movie.

“All of us knew that he was referencing Malcolm X, and when he said it, the reaction was instantaneous,” said William Jelani Cobb, a professor at Spelman College who specializes in black history and politics.

Dog-whistle politics was hardly invented by Obama. One of its most deft practitioners lately was President George W. Bush. He regularly borrowed the language of evangelical Christianity and the anti-abortion movement to signal he was simpatico with their beliefs, even as he often avoided obvious displays of support that might turn off middle-of-the-road voters.

“The code words matter, how you dress matters, how you speak matters; it’s all subliminal messaging, and all politicians use it,” said Michael Fauntroy, an assistant professor of public policy at George Mason University, who specializes in race and American politics. “Ronald Reagan used to talk about making America the shining city on a hill, which is about America as divinely inspired, and it has a deep vein in the evangelical conservative movement. It goes on all the time, and there are so many circumstances when only the target people get the message.”

But Fauntroy said the stakes were higher for Obama, who had to “deracialize himself.”

John McWhorter, a linguist at the conservative Manhattan Institute, said that he believes that in Obama’s case coded messaging, which can be a matter of words, sound or grammar or all of them, is partly conscious because “he knows it arouses black audiences.”

“Black English, especially the cadence, is becoming America’s youth lingua franca, especially since the mainstreaming of hip-hop. Its sound conveys warmth, authenticity and a touch of seductive danger not only to blacks but many whites, especially ones below about 50,” McWhorter said. “Obama’s tapping into that cadence helped win him the election. Imagine John Kerry or Hillary Clinton saying, ‘Yes, we can!’ It would have sounded phony — only in what I call a ‘black-cent’ can it sound prophetic and arousing.”

Ari Fleischer, former press secretary for George W. Bush, said that dog-whistle politics at its best is not really about politics at all.

“The connection that Barack Obama has to the black community and the connection George Bush has to the evangelical community began long before they began running for president. It was a natural and deep connection, politics aside,” Fleischer said. “When they became candidates, it was a powerful, strong bond that created a base for both people. ... But genuine speech with conviction has tremendous power, and there always is a tendency for the base to hear the deeper message and say, ‘That was sweet. He’s talking to me.’”

Bush used phrases lifted from church hymns and the Bible to signal an affinity for like-minded Christians. The phrase “culture of life,” became part of the political lexicon when Bush used it weeks before the 2000 election — it was a less political, more evangelical version of “pro-life.”

Bush also recognized that he had to tread carefully with his evangelism — keeping his most loyal voters satisfied, even if following through on policy initiatives might be difficult.

As for Obama, an aide declined to talk about whether it was a matter of strategy.

Beyond speech, blacks have picked up certain of Obama’s mannerisms, particularly his walk, that signal authenticity. Bush had his cowboy strut, and Obama has a swagger — a rhythmic lope that says cool and confident and undeniably black. It was most noticeable on his first post-election trip to the White House, some said.

“The swagger was out of control, dragging the left foot, it was like, ‘Barack, you have got to calm down,’” said Melissa Harris-Lacewell, a Princeton University professor who teaches courses in politics and black studies. “The swagger thing just got worse and worse during the campaign. ... I am sure David Axelrod told him to stop swaggering. ... I can’t imagine that anyone is telling him to do that.”

“In those circumstances, it is his blackness kind of squishing out of the edges. It’s not the same thing as deploying it like Bush did, but it has the same effect ... solidifying his base of black folks,” she said.

Yet the question remains as to how far style or even swagger can take Obama among black people, without matching policies seen as beneficial to the black community.

“The swagger goes a long way for Barack, a long way,” Harris-Lacewell said, adding that the black support will mean a boost in polls. “Black people were strong supporters of Clinton because of race. ... If it works for someone who is just symbolically for the black president, it will be very powerful for the actual black president.”

Notably, Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele has used phrases recently like “bling bling” to describe the stimulus package and “off the hook” to describe the new RNC outreach plans, at a time when he is trying to step up the party’s appeal to African-American voters.

Beyond stylistic gestures, Obama has made several overtures to the black press since winning in November. His first print interview as president-elect was given to Ebony and his first print interview as president was given to Black Enterprise. And at his first press conference, journalists from the black press were given prime seating — yet weren’t called on for questions.

Strategy or not, Obama’s efforts will likely continue, some said, and so far have helped.

“I think that the combination of his style and his swagger and his connection to the various currents of culture make him seem like a man who is much younger than he is,” Cobb said. “But the genius with Obama is that he is fluent in it, so it doesn’t come off as a deliberate kind of doling out of references or points. It winds up to being to his benefit politically.”

View source article (with video)

War, What Is it Good For?

2009-03-03T04:44:00.000-08:00

NY Times Op-Ed Columnist

Wars, Endless Wars

By BOB HERBERT

Published: March 3, 2009

The nation as we’ve known it is fading before our very eyes, but we’re still pouring billions of dollars into wars in Afghanistan and Iraq with missions we are still unable to define.

Franklin Delano Obama

2009-03-02T07:02:00.000-08:00

By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF, NY Times Op-Ed Columnist

Published: March 1, 2009

If President Obama can move the country toward universal health coverage, even gradually, he has a chance to join the pantheon of truly great presidents.

Click here to read the article

Obama's Catch-22

2009-03-01T05:28:00.000-08:00

Barry Blitt

There are several excellent columns in the Sunday NY Times today, but this one in particular is well worth posting (scroll down for links to the others):

The Ecstasy and the Agony

By FRANK RICH

BARACK OBAMA must savor the moment while he can. It may never get better than this.

As he stood before Congress on Tuesday night, the new president was armed with new job approval percentages in the 60s. After his speech, the numbers hit the stratosphere: CBS News found that support for his economic plans spiked from 63 percent to 80. Had more viewers hung on for the Republican response from Bobby Jindal, the unintentionally farcical governor of Louisiana, Obama might have aced a near-perfect score.

His address was riveting because it delivered on the vision he had promised a battered populace during the campaign: Government must step in boldly when free markets run amok and when national crises fester unaddressed for decades. For all the echoes of F.D.R.’s first fireside chat, he also evoked his own memorably adult speech on race. Once again he walked us through a lucid step-by-step mini-lecture on “how we arrived” at an impasse that’s threatening America’s ability to move forward.

Obama’s race speech may have saved his campaign. His first Congressional address won’t rescue the economy. But it brings him to a significant early crossroads in his presidency — one full of perils as well as great opportunities. To get the full political picture, look beyond Obama’s popularity in last week’s polls to the two groups of Americans whose approval numbers are in the toilet. There is good news for Obama in these findings, but there’s also a stark indication of the unchecked populist rage that could still overrun his ambitious plans.

The first group in national disfavor is the G.O.P. In the latest New York Times/CBS News survey, 63 percent said that Congressional Republicans opposed the stimulus package mostly for political reasons; only 17 percent felt that the Republicans should stick with their own policies rather than cooperate with Obama and the Democrats. The second group of national villains is corporate recipients of taxpayer money: only 39 percent approve of a further bailout for banks, and only 22 percent want more money going to Detroit’s Big Three.

The good news for Obama is that he needn’t worry about the Republicans. They’re committing suicide. The morning-after conservative rationalization of Jindal’s flop was that his adenoidal delivery, not his words, did him in, and that media coaching could banish his resemblance to Kenneth the Page of “30 Rock.” That’s denial. For Jindal no less than Obama, form followed content.

The Louisiana governor, alternately smug and jejune, articulated precisely the ideology — those G.O.P. “policies” in the Times/CBS poll — that Americans reject: the conviction that government is useless and has no role in an emergency. Given that the most mismanaged federal operation in modern memory was inflicted by a Republican White House on Jindal’s own state, you’d think he’d change the subject altogether.

But like all zealots, Jindal is oblivious to how nonzealots see him. Pleading “principle,” he has actually turned down some $100 million in stimulus money for Louisiana. And, as he proudly explained on “Meet the Press” last weekend, he can’t wait to be judged on “the results” of his heroic frugality.

Good luck with that. He’s rejecting aid for a state that ranks fourth in children living below the poverty line and 46th in high school graduation rates, while struggling with a projected budget shortfall of more than $1.7 billion.

If you’re baffled why the G.O.P. would thrust Jindal into prime time, the answer is desperation. Eager to update its image without changing its antediluvian (or antebellum) substance, the party is trying to lock down its white country-club blowhards. The only other nonwhite face on tap, alas, is the unguided missile Michael Steele, its new national chairman. Steele has of late been busy promising to revive his party with an “off-the-hook” hip-hop P.R. campaign, presumably with the perennially tan House leader John Boehner leading the posse.

At least the G.O.P.’s newfound racial sensitivity saved it from choosing the white Southern governor often bracketed with Jindal as a rising “star,” Mark Sanford of South Carolina. That would have been an even bigger fiasco, for Sanford is from the same state as Ty’Sheoma Bethea, the junior high school student who sat in Michelle Obama’s box on Tuesday night and whose impassioned letter to Congress was quoted by the president.

In her plea, the teenager begged for aid to her substandard rural school. Without basic tools, she poignantly wrote, she and her peers cannot “prove to the world” that they too might succeed at becoming “lawyers, doctors, congressmen like yourself and one day president.”

Her school is in Dillon, where the Federal Reserve chairman, Ben Bernanke, grew up. The school’s auditorium, now condemned, was the site of Bernanke’s high school graduation. Dillon is now so destitute that Bernanke’s middle-class childhood home was just auctioned off in a foreclosure sale. Unemployment is at 14.2 percent.

Governor Sanford’s response to such hardship — his state over all has the nation’s third-highest unemployment rate — was not merely a threat to turn down federal funds but a trip to Washington to actively lobby against the stimulus bill. He accused the three Republican senators who voted for it of sabotaging “the future of our civilization.” In his mind the future of civilization has little to do with the future of students like Ty’Sheoma Bethea.

What such G.O.P. “stars” as Sanford and Jindal have in common, besides their callous neo-Hoover ideology, are their phony efforts to portray themselves as populist heroes. Their role model is W., that brush-clearing “rancher” by way of Andover, Yale and Harvard. Listening to Jindal talk Tuesday night about his immigrant father’s inability to pay for an obstetrician, you’d never guess that at the time his father was an engineer and his mother an L.S.U. doctoral candidate in nuclear physics. Sanford’s first political ad in 2002 told of how growing up on his “family’s farm” taught him “about hard work and responsibility.” That “farm,” the Charlotte Observer reported, was a historic plantation appraised at $1.5 million in the early 1980s. From that hardscrabble background, he struggled on to an internship at Goldman Sachs.

G.O.P. pseudopopulism ran riot last week as right-wing troops rallied around their latest Joe the Plumber: Rick Santelli, the ranting CNBC foe of Obama’s mortgage rescue program. Ann Coulter proposed a Santelli run for president, and Twitterers organized national “tea parties” to fuel his taxpayers’ revolt. Even with a boost from NBC, whose networks seized a promotional opening by incessantly recycling the Santelli “controversy,” the bonfire fizzled. It did so because — as last week’s polls also revealed — the mortgage bailout, with a 60-plus percent approval rating, is nearly as popular as Obama.

The Santelli revolution’s flameout was just another confirmation that hard-core Republican radicals are now the G.O.P.’s problem, not the president’s. Rahm Emanuel has it right when he says the administration must try bipartisanship, but it doesn’t have to succeed. Voters give Obama credit for trying, and he can even claim success with many Republican governors, from Schwarzenegger to Crist. Now he can move on and let his childish adversaries fight among themselves, with Rush Limbaugh as the arbitrating babysitter. (Last week he gave Jindal a thumb’s up.)

But that good news for Obama is countered by the bad. The genuine populist rage in the country — aimed at greedy C.E.O.’s, not at the busted homeowners mocked as “losers” by Santelli — cannot be ignored or finessed. Though Obama was crystal clear on Tuesday that there can be “no real recovery unless we clean up the credit crisis,” it was telling that he got fuzzy when he came to what he might do about it. He waited two days to drop that shoe in his budget: a potential $750 billion in banking “asset purchases” on top of the previous $700 billion bailout.

Therein lies the Catch-22 that could bring the recovery down. As Obama said, we can’t move forward without a functioning financial system. But voters of both parties will demand that their congressmen reject another costly rescue of it. Americans still don’t understand why many Wall Street malefactors remain in place or why the administration’s dithering banking policy lacks the boldness and clarity of Obama’s rhetoric.

Nor can a further bailout be easily sold by a Treasury secretary, Timothy Geithner, whose lax oversight of the guilty banks while at the New York Fed remains a subject of journalistic inquiry. In a damning 5,600-word article from Bloomberg last week, he is portrayed as a second banana, a timid protégé of the old boys who got us into this disaster. Everyone testifies to Geithner’s brilliance, but Jindal, a Rhodes scholar, was similarly hyped. Like the Louisiana governor, the Treasury secretary is a weak public speaker not because he lacks brains or vocal training but because his message doesn’t fly.

Among the highlights of Obama’s triumphant speech was his own populist jeremiad about the “fancy drapes” and private jets of Wall Street. But talk is not action. Two days later, as ABC News reported, the president of taxpayer- supported Bank of America took a private jet to New York to stonewall Andrew Cuomo’s inquest into $3.6 billion of suspect bonuses.

Handing more public money to the reckless banks that invented this culture and stuck us with the wreckage is the new third rail of American politics. If Obama doesn’t forge a better plan, neither his immense popularity nor even political foes as laughable as Jindal can insulate him from getting burned.

Obama tells powerful lobbies: 'Bring it on'

2009-02-28T11:08:00.001-08:00

http://www.truthout.org/022809Y
Charles Babington, The Associated Press: "President Barack Obama challenged the nation's vested interests to a legislative duel Saturday, saying he will fight to change health care, energy and education in dramatic ways that will upset the status quo. 'The system we have now might work for the powerful and well-connected interests that have run Washington for far too long,' Obama said in his weekly radio and video address. 'But I don't. I work for the American people.'"

Doomed to Repeat History in Afghanistan?

2009-02-28T08:23:00.001-08:00

http://www.truthout.org/022809Z
Joe Galloway, McClatchy Newspapers: "If the new American team has some new ideas about how to succeed in Afghanistan, now would be the time to lay them out. Nothing that Alexander the Great, Queen Victoria or Leonid Brezhnev tried in their attempts to subdue the quarrelsome Afghan tribes worked, and nothing we've tried in the last eight years has, either. While we're waiting for a new strategy, perhaps we should break out some old Kipling: 'When wounded and left on Afghanistan's plain.' 'And the women come out to cut up your remains ....' Etc., etc."

See also: Lessons from Soviet Withdrawal (hat-tip Marc Herold)

Chef to Obamas: Way to Go!

2009-02-27T08:17:00.001-08:00

By Marian Burros

In November Alice Waters sent a letter to the President-Elect and Mrs. Obama, offering her services and those of Ruth Reichl, editor-in-chief of Gourmet and Danny Meyer, owner of several highly regarded restaurants in New York, to become their kitchen cabinet and help them select a new White House chef who would embrace “environmentalism, health and conservation.”

Some people in the food community thought it was brilliant; others thought it was cheeky.

Fast forward to February.

Michelle Obama is way ahead of the would-be advisers. Without hiring a new executive chef or taking up Ms. Waters on her offer, the Obamas have made the local/sustainable food community so happy that the Chefs Collaborative is letting them know how much they approve of their early efforts to help Americans change the way they eat.

So far 300 members of the 3,000 member organization, a group committed to sourcing and cooking with local and sustainable ingredients, have signed a congratulatory letter to the President and First Lady.

Since the letter is not going to be delivered until Earth Day, April 22, the organization will have plenty of time to gather more signatories, who already include the usual suspects: Dan Barber (Blue Hill), Peter Hoffman (Savoy), Suzanne Goin (Lucques) and Rick Bayless (Tompolobampo, a favorite of the Obamas).

“The purpose of our letter is to applaud what the Obamas have begun to do, encourage them to keep going, and offer our help, expertise and full support,” said Bruce Sherman, chef-owner of North Pond Restaurant in Chicago and chair of the collaborative.

When the letter was first drafted in December, 2008, the chefs could only hope the Obamas were on the same wave length.

Now that Michelle Obama has spoken out on a couple of occasions, including a press conference in the White House kitchen before the Administration’s first official dinner they know she is on their side.

She put in a pitch for the superior flavor of local and sustainable food and for healthy eating, a recurring theme for her during the campaign and since she has come to Washington.

Sam Kass, the chef who cooked local, sustainable and healthy food for the family in Chicago is now an assistant chef in the White House kitchen. And both the executive chef Cristeta Comerford and the pastry chef Bill Yosses, well known to many New Yorkers who enjoyed his work at Bouley, made it clear they, too, cared about sourcing ingredients locally and regionally.

Mrs. Obama had high praise for the chef’s healthy creations, remaking on the creamless “creamed” spinach on the menu that evening and she spoke glowingly of several “creamed” soups Chef Comerford had made that were also without cream.

“We’re thrilled with the chefs the Obamas have working with them in the White House,”said Melissa Kogut, executive director of the collaborative. “We just want to say ‘yea’ and ‘keep up the good work.’”

Obama in the running for Nobel Peace Prize?

2009-02-27T07:35:00.000-08:00

The US president Barack Obama and his French counterpart Nicolas Sarkozy are believed to be among the record 205 nominations received for the 2009 Nobel peace prize.

The awards committee, based on Oslo, Norway, refuses to say who is nominated. It just says that 172 individuals and 33 organisations were on the final count released today.

The previous record was 199 in 2005.

Thousand of people have nomination rights for the coveted prize and sometimes announce their selections.

This year those names include Mr Obama, Mr Sarkozy, American musician Pete Seeger, Macedonian humanitarian Zivko Popovski-Cvetin, Austrian children's charity SOS-Kinderdorf International, Vietnamese religious leader Thich Quang Do, and American Greg Mortenson for his Asian school-building charity.

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The Obamaist Manifesto

2009-02-27T07:22:00.000-08:00

By Charles Krauthammer
Friday, February 27, 2009; A17

Not a great speech, but extremely consequential. If Barack Obama succeeds, his joint address to Congress will be seen as historic -- indeed as the foundational document of Obamaism. As it stands, it constitutes the boldest social democratic manifesto ever issued by a U.S. president.

The first part of the speech, justifying his economic stabilization efforts, was mere housekeeping. The economic crisis is to Obama a technocratic puzzle that needs to be solved because otherwise he loses all popular support.

Unlike most presidents, however, he doesn't covet popular support for its own sake. Some men become president to be someone, others to do something. This is what separates, say, a Bill Clinton from a Ronald Reagan. Obama, who once noted that Reagan altered the trajectory of America as Clinton had not, sees himself a Reagan.

Reagan came to office to do something: shrink government, lower taxes, rebuild American defenses. Obama made clear Tuesday night that he intends to be equally transformative. His three goals: universal health care, universal education, and a new green energy economy highly funded and regulated by government.

(1) Obama wants to be to universal health care what Lyndon Johnson was to Medicare. Obama has publicly abandoned his once-stated preference for a single-payer system as in Canada and Britain. But that is for practical reasons. In America, you can't get there from here directly.

Instead, Obama will create the middle step that will lead ultimately and inevitably to single-payer. The way to do it is to establish a reformed system that retains a private health-insurance sector but offers a new government-run plan (based on benefits open to members of Congress) so relatively attractive that people voluntarily move out of the private sector, thereby starving it. The ultimate result is a system of fully socialized medicine. This will probably not happen until long after Obama leaves office. But he will be rightly recognized as its father.

(2) Beyond cradle-to-grave health care, Obama wants cradle-to-cubicle education. He wants far more government grants, tax credits and other financial guarantees for college education -- another way station to another universal federal entitlement. He lauded the country for establishing free high school education during the Industrial Revolution; he wants to put us on the road to doing the same for college during the Information Age.

(3) Obama wants to be to green energy what John Kennedy was to the moon shot, its visionary and creator. It starts with the establishment of a government-guided, government-funded green energy sector into which the administration will pour billions of dollars from the stimulus package and billions more from budgets to come.

But just picking winners and losers is hardly sufficient for a president who sees himself as world-historical. Hence the carbon cap-and-trade system he proposed Tuesday night that will massively restructure American industry and create a highly regulated energy sector.

These revolutions in health care, education and energy are not just abstract hopes. They have already taken life in Obama's $787 billion stimulus package, a huge expansion of social spending constituting a down payment on Obama's plan for remaking the American social contract.

Obama sees the current economic crisis as an opportunity. He has said so openly. And now we know what opportunity he wants to seize. Just as the Depression created the political and psychological conditions for Franklin Roosevelt's transformation of America from laissez-faireism to the beginnings of the welfare state, the current crisis gives Obama the political space to move the still (relatively) modest American welfare state toward European-style social democracy.

In the European Union, government spending has declined slightly, from 48 percent to 47 percent of GDP during the past 10 years. In the United States, it has shot up from 34 percent to 40 percent. Part of this explosive growth in U.S. government spending reflects the emergency private-sector interventions of a Republican administration. But the clear intent was to make the massive intrusion into the private sector temporary and to retreat as quickly as possible. Obama has radically different ambitions.

The spread between Europe and America in government-controlled GDP has already shrunk from 14 percent to 7 percent. Two terms of Obamaism and the difference will be zero.

Conservatives take a dim view of the regulation-bound, economically sclerotic, socially stagnant, nanny state that is the European Union. Nonetheless, Obama is ascendant and has the personal mandate to take the country where he wishes. He has laid out boldly the Brussels-bound path he wants to take.

Let the debate begin.

A Bold Plan Sweeps Away Reagan Ideas

2009-02-27T07:17:00.000-08:00

By David Leonhardt

The budget that President Obama proposed on Thursday is nothing less than an attempt to end a three-decade era of economic policy dominated by the ideas of Ronald Reagan and his supporters.

The Obama budget — a bold, even radical departure from recent history, wrapped in bureaucratic formality and statistical tables — would sharply raise taxes on the rich, beyond where Bill Clinton had raised them. It would reduce taxes for everyone else, to a lower point than they were under either Mr. Clinton or George W. Bush. And it would lay the groundwork for sweeping changes in health care and education, among other areas.

More than anything else, the proposals seek to reverse the rapid increase in economic inequality over the last 30 years. They do so first by rewriting the tax code and, over the longer term, by trying to solve some big causes of the middle-class income slowdown, like high medical costs and slowing educational gains.

After Mr. Obama spent much of his first five weeks in office responding to the financial crisis, his budget effectively tried to reclaim momentum for the priorities on which he campaigned.

His efforts would add to a budget deficit already swollen by Mr. Bush’s policies and the recession, creating the largest deficit, relative to the size of the economy, since World War II. Erasing that deficit will require some tough choices — about further spending cuts and tax increases — that Mr. Obama avoided this week.

But he nonetheless made choices.

He sought to eliminate some corporate subsidies, for health insurers, banks and agricultural companies, that economists have long criticized. He proposed putting a price on carbon, to slow global warming, and then refunding most of the revenue from that program through broad-based tax cuts. He called for roughly $100 billion a year in tax increases on the wealthy — mostly delayed until 2011, when the recession will presumably have ended — and $50 billion a year in net tax cuts for the nonwealthy.

The history of the United States economy over the last 70 years can be roughly divided into two periods: the decades immediately after World War II, when inequality plummeted, and the past three decades, when global economic forces and government policies caused it to soar. Mr. Obama is setting out to begin a third period that looks more like the first than the second.

That agenda starts with taxes. Over the last three decades, the pretax incomes of the wealthiest households have risen far more than they have for other households, while the tax rates for top earners have fallen more than they have for others, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

As a result, the average post-tax income of the top 1 percent of households has jumped by roughly $1 million since 1979, adjusted for inflation, to $1.4 million. Pay for most families has risen only slightly faster than inflation.

Before becoming Mr. Obama’s top economic adviser, Lawrence H. Summers liked to tell a hypothetical story to distill the trend. The increase in inequality, Mr. Summers would say, meant that each family in the bottom 80 percent of the income distribution was effectively sending a $10,000 check, every year, to the top 1 percent of earners.

Mr. Obama’s budget reflects that sensibility. Budget experts were still sorting through the details on Thursday, but it appeared that various tax cuts and credits aimed at the middle class and the poor would increase the take-home pay of the median household by roughly $800.

The tax increases on the top 1 percent, meanwhile, will most likely cost them $100,000 a year.

“The tax code will become more progressive, with relatively higher rates on the rich and relatively lower rates on the middle class and poor,” said Roberton Williams, a senior fellow at the Tax Policy Center in Washington. “This is reversing the effects of the Bush policies,” he added, and then going even further.

And just as Franklin D. Roosevelt’s tax increases on the wealthy followed a stock market crash, which had already depressed their incomes, Mr. Obama’s proposals — if they become law — would too. The combination has the potential to reverse a significant portion of the inequality trends of the last few decades.

But for the country to repeat the post-World War II pattern, the incomes of most families would also have to begin rising at a faster rate than they have since the 1970s. That outcome remains deeply uncertain. Economists who study economic growth say the American economy is unlikely to grow nearly as fast in coming years as in the 1950s and ’60s.

Mr. Obama would try to lift the incomes of the middle class and poor through two main channels, administration officials said. The first is an overhaul of health care, meant to reduce the insurance premiums now taking a large bite out of many families’ paychecks.

The details remain vague, but the budget begins paying for investments that would eventually allow Medicare officials to refuse to pay for medical treatment that does not show evidence of improving health. If successful, that change would vastly reduce the government’s long-term budget deficit. It is also likely to bring down private health costs, since insurers typically follow Medicare’s lead.

The other channel is education. Over the last three decades, the pay of college graduates has risen significantly faster than the pay of less-educated workers. Mr. Obama aims to move workers into the first category by increasing federal financial aid and simplifying the myriad of aid programs. In recent years, the United States has lost its standing as the country in which the largest share of young adults graduates from college.

“Low- and middle-income kids often don’t aspire to college,” Peter Orszag, director of the Office of Management and Budget, said Thursday. “They hear ‘$40,000 tuition’ and think that’s impossible.”

There are still many outstanding questions about Mr. Obama’s efforts, starting with whether Congress will pass a budget that looks anything like his.

His proposals on health care are likely to meet stiff opposition from some doctors and insurers. Spending more money on financial aid — absent other changes to the education system — may not lift the graduation rate very much. And if the economy remains weak into next year, as many forecasters expect, Congressional Republicans will try to pin the blame on the looming tax increases on the affluent.

Whatever happens, though, it has been a long time since any president has tried to use his budget to shape the government and the economy quite as much as Mr. Obama did on Thursday. On that score, he and President Reagan have something in common.

E-mail: leonhardt@nytimes.com

Nobel-prize winning economist gives Obama budget thumbs up

2009-02-27T05:54:00.000-08:00

Climate of Change

By PAUL KRUGMAN

Published: February 27, 2009

President Obama’s budget represents a huge break from policy trends. If he can get it through Congress, he will set America on a fundamentally new course.

Elections have consequences. President Obama’s new budget represents a huge break, not just with the policies of the past eight years, but with policy trends over the past 30 years. If he can get anything like the plan he announced on Thursday through Congress, he will set America on a fundamentally new course.

The budget will, among other things, come as a huge relief to Democrats who were starting to feel a bit of postpartisan depression. The stimulus bill that Congress passed may have been too weak and too focused on tax cuts. The administration’s refusal to get tough on the banks may be deeply disappointing. But fears that Mr. Obama would sacrifice progressive priorities in his budget plans, and satisfy himself with fiddling around the edges of the tax system, have now been banished.

For this budget allocates $634 billion over the next decade for health reform. That’s not enough to pay for universal coverage, but it’s an impressive start. And Mr. Obama plans to pay for health reform, not just with higher taxes on the affluent, but by putting a halt to the creeping privatization of Medicare, eliminating overpayments to insurance companies.

On another front, it’s also heartening to see that the budget projects $645 billion in revenues from the sale of emission allowances. After years of denial and delay by its predecessor, the Obama administration is signaling that it’s ready to take on climate change.

And these new priorities are laid out in a document whose clarity and plausibility seem almost incredible to those of us who grew accustomed to reading Bush-era budgets, which insulted our intelligence on every page. This is budgeting we can believe in.

Many will ask whether Mr. Obama can actually pull off the deficit reduction he promises. Can he actually reduce the red ink from $1.75 trillion this year to less than a third as much in 2013? Yes, he can.

Right now the deficit is huge thanks to temporary factors (at least we hope they’re temporary): a severe economic slump is depressing revenues and large sums have to be allocated both to fiscal stimulus and to financial rescues.

But if and when the crisis passes, the budget picture should improve dramatically. Bear in mind that from 2005 to 2007, that is, in the three years before the crisis, the federal deficit averaged only $243 billion a year. Now, during those years, revenues were inflated, to some degree, by the housing bubble. But it’s also true that we were spending more than $100 billion a year in Iraq.

So if Mr. Obama gets us out of Iraq (without bogging us down in an equally expensive Afghan quagmire) and manages to engineer a solid economic recovery — two big ifs, to be sure — getting the deficit down to around $500 billion by 2013 shouldn’t be at all difficult.

But won’t the deficit be swollen by interest on the debt run-up over the next few years? Not as much as you might think. Interest rates on long-term government debt are less than 4 percent, so even a trillion dollars of additional debt adds less than $40 billion a year to future deficits. And those interest costs are fully reflected in the budget documents.

So we have good priorities and plausible projections. What’s not to like about this budget? Basically, the long run outlook remains worrying.

According to the Obama administration’s budget projections, the ratio of federal debt to G.D.P., a widely used measure of the government’s financial position, will soar over the next few years, then more or less stabilize. But this stability will be achieved at a debt-to-G.D.P. ratio of around 60 percent. That wouldn’t be an extremely high debt level by international standards, but it would be the deepest in debt America has been since the years immediately following World War II. And it would leave us with considerably reduced room for maneuver if another crisis comes along.

Furthermore, the Obama budget only tells us about the next 10 years. That’s an improvement on Bush-era budgets, which looked only 5 years ahead. But America’s really big fiscal problems lurk over that budget horizon: sooner or later we’re going to have to come to grips with the forces driving up long-run spending — above all, the ever-rising cost of health care.

And even if fundamental health care reform brings costs under control, I at least find it hard to see how the federal government can meet its long-term obligations without some tax increases on the middle class. Whatever politicians may say now, there’s probably a value-added tax in our future.

But I don’t blame Mr. Obama for leaving some big questions unanswered in this budget. There’s only so much long-run thinking the political system can handle in the midst of a severe crisis; he has probably taken on all he can, for now. And this budget looks very, very good.