(Still) Blogging for Obama

“Whatever course you decide upon, there is always someone to tell you that you are wrong. There are always difficulties arising which tempt you to believe that your critics are right. To map out a course of action and follow it to an end requires courage.” -Ralph Waldo Emerson (via Jose Ometeotl)

My ticket to ride.

To say that President Obama is being “damned with faint praise” is to admit that some people’s expectations of him border on the ridiculous, and so his failure to achieve their policy goals or to fix the entire nation in three years make them appear petulant and absurd.

The latest in this line of “disgruntled supporters”, Matt Damon should actually be taking lessons from his Ocean’s Eleven mentor, George Clooney. Instead of deriding the President’s “lack of balls” (no, I’m not going to delve into the psycho-sexual fascination with black men’s genitalia here), he should be acknowledging the president’s inheritance, and the myriad successes he has been able to accomplish despite political opposition and intransigence, from both the “conservadems” and the Republican elected officials who’s stated goals have been recalcitrance, opposition and defeat of each and every initiative THIS president supports.

As we move into the election year, it is important to realize that the Republican candidates for president cannot honestly argue that President Obama hasn’t been successful in leading the country. He has ended the war in Iraq, assassinated Osama bin Laden, decimated Al Qaeda, shepherded the removal of Hosni Mubarak and Mohmar Qaddafi, staved off a national depression, turned the economy around (gaining jobs instead of losing, unemployment dropping) and passed a host of legislation aimed at “promoting the general welfare”. A very abbreviated list:

The Lily Ledbetter Act – equal pay for women

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act

Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act

Credit Card Accountability, Responsibility, and Disclosure (CARD) Act of 2009

Native American Heritage Day Act of 2009

James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, Michael Schwerner, and Roy K. Moore Federal Building, Jackson, Mississippi

Saving the Auto Industry

Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act

That was then. This is now.

Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell Repeal Act of 2010

Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010

James Zadroga 9/11 Health and Compensation Act of 2010

While there are a few areas where I have been disappointed with the actions of the President and his administration, most notably:

PATRIOT Act Extension

FISA Sunsets Extension Act of 2011

PATRIOT Sunsets Extension Act of 2011

I don’t expect that he’ll do exactly what I want him to do on every issue. Unlike Michael Moore and Bill Maher, I don’t think that because I disagree with him sometimes that he’s somehow “more white” or “less black”. I do, however, support the job he has done and his presidency, and I’ll be working and writing just as hard in 2012 as I did in 2008 for his election.

And I expect those who supported him in 2008, whether members of the “Professional Left” or individual citizens to do so as well. I have many friends and acquaintances whose disappointment on signature issues has clouded their vision, undermined their confidence, or blinded them to the successes and the progress on the road to recovery that Barack Obama has managed to accomplish in the last three years.

George Clooney on President Obama

But I’m definitely here to help them see more clearly.

Cross-posted at Latino Rebels on Friday, 23 December 2011.

Why I Unfollowed Bill Maher and Cornel West

There are many people who are unhappy with the President of the United States. There are also many people who are unhappy. When the groaners are standing behind you, it’s hard to tell that the expression on their faces doesn’t change, regardless of what they’re saying. When Bill Maher was howling about President Bush, I was right on his team, tuning in every Friday Night to hear his latest screed. And while I knew his politics were a little more libertarian than mine, it didn’t occur to me that his basic career premise for twenty-plus years has been to gripe at whomsoever is in power.

Then President Obama, after a brief honeymoon, began receiving the same treatment. There was no real acknowledgement of a difference. No space for Obama to begin to fix or address the problems and issues left by the last administration. It was “gimme my pot” and “pull out of Iraq yesterday” and “why aren’t you listening to me?” More crying, whining and demanding without recognition of anything done well. It got boring. If I wanted to listen to that, there’s Fox News.

And Brother West. His “critical friendship” leaves no room for opposition. While I’ve been trying to read Race Matters with the made up words he uses in it (and yes, I know, he’s smart enough to actually make up words when he’s got an idea that hasn’t been languaged yet), his constant drumbeat of “what Brother Barack’s not doing” gives me a headache. It’s unfortunate that these two talented individuals find no space to appreciate what has been accomplished, and instead rely on collecting funds and paychecks by harping on what isn’t happening.

But that’s why I unfollowed (in all senses of the word) both of them. They are a little disingenuous and they made my head hurt.

He Knew the Job Was Dangerous When He Took It

“This wasn’t a Republican invasion of Iraq, this was an American invasion”

-Richard Wolfe, Newsweek

" . . . and I broke the lamp in the Oval Office, too."

The splitting headache of being president of the United States is that you inherit with no ambiguity the failures of your predecessor.  With President Obama, the failures of his predecessor are numerous and obvious.  None, however, weighs more heavily on the conscience of the nation than the destruction of a (dangerous) sovereign nation.  In March of 2003, President Bush ordered the United States Army to lead a coalition of world forces to topple the government of Saddam Hussein, ostensibly to keep weapons of mass destruction out of the hands of people like those who destroyed the World Trade Center in New York City, New York on September 11, 2001.

Candidate Obama on the campaign trail pledged to remove the United States from Iraq in sixteen months, if he were to be elected President.  He argued before the invasion (in 2002) that it was a needless waste of American lives and resources, that it removed the focus from retaliation and revenge on al Qaeda (who perpetrated the attacks), and that it was a “dumb war.”  Unfortunately for him, the realities of our involvement are mounting against the audacity of his original stance, and the tempered pledge of his latter.

He has now announced that the US is leaving Iraq . . . sort of.  In nineteen months, in August of 2010, all combat troops will be removed from Iraq.  Mind you, two combat brigades renamed advisors (I saw a bumper sticker that read, “Iraq is Arabic for Vietnam”) and up to 50,000 troops will remain.  This sounds eerily similar to Candidate McCain’s claim that the United States might remain in Iraq, “up to 100 years.”  Speaking of Senator McCain, he is now supporting the President’s plan to withdraw and redirect combat troops, while the President’s own party is attacking his withdrawal because he’s leaving troops there.  While I’m for holding the executive branch accountable and checking its power, the Dems are beginning to feed on themselves again.

Neither of the extremes on Iraq, 1) we were wrong to go in, so lets get out now, nor 2) we liberated Iraq, and it is a “good war” are correct.  What is true is that we are in a hell of a mess, and the blathering response is not helpful to the President, engaging for the troops, or emblematic of the moral and intellectual leadership that we as a nation have enjoyed in the past.

We have a moral obligation to LEAVE IRAQ in a way that leaves A FUNCTIONING IRAQI GOVERNMENT.  And the “you didn’t do what you said you would” finger in the face whining that both parties are doing is singularly ridiculous in the face of the coffins we’re now allowed to see, the sacrifice our soldiers have been ordered to make, and the gaping holes in our national character we must begin to mend.

The President is doing a very good job cleaning up the messes he inherited.  It’s simply going to take some time.

Today, I can announce that our review is complete, and that the United States will pursue a new strategy to end the war in Iraq through a transition to full Iraqi responsibility.

Remarks of President Barack Obama – Responsibly Ending the War in Iraq

Repudiating Bush

Obama sets firm date to end Iraq war he inherited

On the right track, finally, in Iraq

Obama says most troops will leave Iraq by 2010

Obama’s Iraq Speech Receives Mixed Reviews on Capitol Hill

Democrats voice concerns on Obama’s Iraq drawdown plan

Most support plan to bolster U.S. troops in Afghanistan

But the check cleared!

Among the other legacies left by the Bush Administration, unfinished infrastructure projects round out the list.  But these are not in the United States, mind you.  These are subcontract jobs in Iraq, which the government used to transfer public monies to private hands.

We’re in the midst of a financial turmoil of historic proportions, with elephants trying to stampede and impede the President’s stimulus project, and there are buildings standing unfinished in a country we invaded without cause as monuments to arrogance, greed and failure.

And while the brick and the buildings are still standing there, the government funds, the TAXPAYER contributions, have filled the coffers of those contractors and subcontractors like Cheney’s Haliburton and Blackwater.

The work is left undone, but you can be sure the check cleared.

Thanks again, President Bush.

He kept US safe

In the wake of the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, President Bush and his administration decided to keep the United States safe.

A little late, but a good move nonetheless.

Of course, having failed to do so on September 10 was irrelevant.  The briefing titled, “Bin Laden determined to strike in US” was forgotten or ignored.  So the United States invaded Afghanistan, failed to capture or kill the ringleader of the attacks, partially destroyed a repressive, Islamo-fascist group called the Taliban, and then moved on to invade Iraq under the auspices of being the military backup for the United Nations, an organization so respected by our government that we were the largest debtor nation, owing dues of close to half a billion dollars.  But they’ve kept us safe . . .

What we did find in Afghanistan were informants who turned in other people they knew, some terrorists, most not, to our armed forces in exchange for money.  And those unfortunates were thrown in dark holes called detention centers, which President Bush on his magical history tour claimed “kept us safe.”

He and his people authorized torture in order to “keep us safe.”

They deviated from the moral high ground that our country has always espoused (not necessarily lived up to, but espoused nonetheless) to keep US safe.

But, according to the CIA, some of the people treated to Bush/Cheney hospitality and then released actually didn’t like the United States when they left, so they took up arms against our country.  Imaging that.  People were kidnapped, held, “interrogated”, released, and they had some aggression toward their captors.  That doesn’t sound too safe . . .

Turned in by someone I know to a foreign army for $5000.  Taken away from home, and held without charges or opportunity to confront my accusers for a couple of years.  Released and exported like cattle, dropped off in a country where people hate my captors, and given the opportunity for payback.

I’d be fighting, too.  And those people wouldn’t be safe at all.

Now the same people who supported the camps like Gitmo are claiming that President Obama is doing the wrong thing by shutting it down.  Actually behaving as if we have a Declaration of Independence and a Constitution that reflect the values we hold dear and espouse as a nation is considered unsafe?

The noises they’re making about, “if we’re attacked, it’s his fault,” totally fail to take into account two obvious facts:

1.     There are already people who were held and released back on the front lines attacking us; and

2.     The innocent people who have been held without trial and interrogated now have a pretty good reason to hate us.

From Abu Ghraib to Guantanamo Bay, the lack of moral leadership and the authorization of torture by the Bush Administration recruited terrorists for the “far flung networks of hatred and violence,” that President Obama and his administration are left to deal with, and put some of our troops and intelligence operatives on pretty shaky ground.

But president bush kept us safe . . .

What’s next for Gitmo detainees?

Transcript: Bin Laden determined to strike in US

U.S. uses dues to push reform

Obama orders Gitmo closed.  Now the hard part.

Security experts skeptical on Gitmo detainee report

What’s next for Guantanamo Bay detainees?

Bush: I would have done some things differently

Detainee went from Gitmo to al Qaeda

Blogging History

Eric Holder, the Attorney General-designate of the Obama Administration is drawing a lot of fire from Republicans.  They are trying to bluff and bluster, in order not to appear patsies to the mandate of the President-elect and the Democratic majority in Congress.  One of the “issues” they are going to try to get him on is his role in the Elian Gonzalez case.

Elian Gonzalez was a young Cuban boy who left Cuba with his mother in a boat trying to escape Fidel Castro’s regime.  His mother, though, died on the journey, and he was picked up by the US Coast Guard, and brought to his mother’s family in Florida.  When all this came to light, his father, still in Cuba, asked that he be returned.  After months of very public grandstanding and pleas from entertainment and political figures, the US government raided his mother’s family’s home, and pulled the crying youngster from his mother’s family at gunpoint.  The Senate Republicans want to know “exactly what Mr. Holder’s role in the affair was in his capacity as the Assistant Attorney General.”

I firmly believed then, as I do now, that Elian should have been returned to his father without any qualms, and that the United States government should not have been beholden to a group of wealthy ex-patriots who were trying to prove a political point instead of worrying about what was best for Elian.  That being said, I began to wonder what else I would have blogged about, had blogging been around at the time.

Here’s my list:

1. The fall of apartheid in South Africa

2. The Tienamen Square Uprisings and suppression

3. The Olympics in Los Angeles in 1984

4. The election of Bill Clinton (my first presidential election as a voter)

5. The persecution of President Clinton

6. The real reason he should have been impeached

7. Tupac, Biggie and the real meaning of assassination

At this point, blogging was around, but I wasn’t doing it!

8. Bush v. Gore and the Supreme Court

9. The terrorist attacks on the Twin Towers

10. The invasion of Iraq

11. John Kerry and John Edwards?  Seriously?

12. The recall of Gray Davis in California

13. Barack Obama’s speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention

14. Rodney King, OJ Simpson and Reginald Denny

This list was just off the top of my head, and I was staying in the frame of time I have been walking the earth and aware of the outside world.  Otherwise, I would have blogged about Jefferson and Hemmings, Frederick Douglass, Lincoln’s “Show me the spot!” speech, and Plessy v. Ferguson, too.

Since you’re here, what would you have blogged about?

Happy New Year, Occupied France!

Watching Casablanca, I am often struck and intrigued by the casual interaction of Captain Renault and Major Strasser, the “powers that be” in unoccupied France and their off-hand discussions with “Richard Blane, American,” about invasion and occupation. In today’s terms, Rick’s Café would be located in the Gaza Strip, just inside the boundaries, and Israeli soldiers would be the Gestapo while the bartenders would be pleasantly amusing and paunchy or sexually frustrated Palestinians just trying to make a buck.

The air strike would set off air warning sirens, and the planes leaving for Lisbon would probably make it to Cairo, or Frankfurt, where they escapees would then “Wait. And wait. And wait.” The fictional occupation makes for a great backdrop in the movie, but the real occupation makes for a horrible New Year’s Eve. And unlike the Bush White House, or apparently the incoming Obama Administration, I don’t find either side to be innocent. Yes, this round of violence was set off by the rocket attacks Hamas launched into southern Israel. But the “right of Israel to defend herself” has long since been exceeded. And unlike Yitzak Rabin’s breaking the arms of Arab troops rather than kill them in the Six Day War, there is no mercy and no quarter being given (or sought) from either side.

As I would not expect Iraqi nationalists to be reveling with the American occupation force in Baghdad, I don’t expect the Palestinians to be welcoming of the occupying Israelis. But pursuing the destruction of the Palestinian State, which is what this latest round of air strikes and prepared ground invasions apparently is, with the tacit approval of the United States is like the Dole Company complaining that the natives were getting out of hand because they protested the removal of the native Hawaiian queen. It is a ridiculous claim that is supported by nothing but one-sided speculation irrespective of the “facts on the ground.” Like Casablanca, which used the Nazi invasion of western Europe as a backdrop but dealt only tangentially with the reality, the invasion, occupation, and wholesale slaughter of Palestinians by Israel cannot be called self defense.

And for President-elect Obama, who is correct in asserting that there is only one President at a time, he needs to be a little more realistic – He is that President. And there won’t be any walk off into the mist while the credits role.

No peace in Gaza till Hamas rockets stop

U.N. Secretary General: ‘Not enough has been done in Gaza’

Israel rebuffs calls for 48-hour truce in Gaza

Obama leadership rates high as Bush’s after 9/11

Airstrike kills highest-ranking Hamas leader yet

Iraqis take control of Baghdad’s ‘Green Zone’

Bush blames Hamas for Gaza conflict

A Paradoxical Act of Poetic Justice

Crispus Attucks was told, as he stood at the front of a crowd of unruly citizens harassing British soldiers in Boston Massachusetts, “this ain’t none of your affair.” When the soldiers opened fire, he was the first to die. Barack Obama, as President-elect of the United States of America, while dealing with Israel’s current air strikes against Hamas, is also being told, in musical verse, that he’s “a magic negro.”

Over the course of two hundred nineteen years, many gains have been made in terms of granting full equality to all citizens of the United States. Black folk have attained the right to vote. Women have attained the right to vote. Segregation by race is no longer legal. Japanese American citizens can live wherever they want. People from China are allowed to immigrate to the United States. Slavery has been outlawed. That none of these issues should really have been contested is moot. But the marginalization of numerical minority groups is rooted in the American landscape as surely as the ideals we aspire to. And full equality has yet to be achieved in some areas still.

So while I celebrate President-elect Barack Hussein Obama’s rise to the highest office in the land, I am also cognizant that Jim Clark’s spirit is alive and well today. I am cognizant that I had to send my young black, Chicano, Chilean children to school on November 5^th armed against their second and third grade classmates’ “innocent ignorance” when they commented that “Obama won just because he’s black.” I am cognizant that Rush Limbaugh (who said Colin Powell’s endorsement of Barack Obama was “all about race”), Sean Hannity, Bill O’Reilly and their ilk and followers who may or may not believe that black people are inferior use their rhetoric and their megaphones to continue the oppressive racism of Andrew Jackson and John Wilkes Booth, of George Wallace and Strom Thurmond. Kanye West’s statement that “George Bush Doesn’t Care About Black People,” in the wake of the President’s inaction when the levies broke, and my brother the teacher’s latest experience of being pulled over by the police after the officer watched three other (white) drivers make the same left turn, and the assassination plots and attempts constantly monitored against this President-elect remind me that much as things CHANGE, the more they stay the same.

Crispus Attucks was the first man to die in the struggle for American independence. The paradoxical nature of an enslaved/escaped black man dying for the freedom and creation of a country in which he was considered less than human by the legal framework that defined it should be lost on no one. The same way that the poetic justice of a man whose father was a black Kenyan and whose mother was a white Kansan, who is African American by nationality as well as visage and life experience being elected to lead that same country should be lost on no one.

In speaking with my sister-in-law and her parents on Christmas Eve, I asked, “do you realize what it means, to have him elected to be President of these United States?” Forty years ago, black people were being killed for wanting to register to vote. Forty years ago, one man was shot for encouraging black people to dream of equality. Forty years ago, Barack Obama was seven years old.

As we look forward to the changes President Obama will enact both inside and outside of our country, it is important that we take a look back as well to understand the moment that we are standing in, the moments others have worked for, and the legacy that we are heirs to and guardians of for the next generation.

Happy New Year!

Obama, Rice discuss Gaza strikes

RNC chairman condemns controversial Obama song

You’re Likeable Enough, Gay People

Neo-Nazis charged over Obama ‘assassination plot’

Forced to pass on a front seat to history

blog.i.verse

Twas the night before Christmas

And all through the blog

Laced with insight and pithiness

Words cut through the fog

 

While Barack and Michelle

Played in holiday sun

We typed, read and quoted

To get the job done

 

On blago and cheney

And kennedy, too

There was so much to say

There was so much to do

 

As Tamryn recited

Words meant for Keith

My thoughts drifted back

To soldiers and students laying a wreath

 

For with all of our arguments

About what’s right and what’s wrong

The occupation still lumbers

There’s no fat lady’s song

 

So our work yet continues

Still we read, quote and write

But more in the morning

And for now, a good night.

He Hasn’t Got Any Clothes On

The 43^rd President of the United States, George Walker Bush, is leading a procession of fools.  And like the people lining the parade admiring the Emperor’s New Clothes, we are all staring and staring without saying anything.  When the President is in Iraq, a country he authorized and ordered invaded, and gets shoes thrown at his head, his response is “I don’t know why he did that.”  Really, Mr. President?  How about the invasion of his country by a foreign power?  How about the hundreds of thousands of Iraqi war dead?  How about the failure to stop the looting of Iraq by American companies with ties to your Vice-President?  How about Guantamo?  How about Abu Ghraib?  Are you sure, Mr. President, that you don’t know why he did that?

President Bush and Vice-President Cheney don’t seem to realize that they are “governing” in the age of YouTube and bloggers.  This magical history tour that they are taking, wandering the globe and the teleshpere lying about what they’ve said and done over the last eight years, acknowledging that they’ve approved and condoned torture, re-writing their words, actions, motivations, inactions, invasions, deregulations and evil doings needs to catch up to them quickly.  They don’t seem to realize that the world is moving on without them, in spite of them, in order to correct their violently malicious actions.

And it doesn’t appear that the mainstream media (MSM) is about to be the ones asking hard questions.  CNN’s Candy Crowley let President Bush sit there and say, “so what [if Al-Qaeda] moved to Iraq after we invaded?”  Vice-President Cheney actually lied (again) and said that he never corroborated the connection between Al Qaeda and Iraq publicly in support of the invasion, and that he thought water-boarding was an appropriate form of interrogation, despite the fact that it is torture, and torture is against United States’ and international law. Update:  And Condoleeza Rice is now dancing to the same tune.

Watching the news night after night, I feel like the people on the camera and the people behind the camera have very little to do with what has actually happened in the world in the last eight years.  They are spinning tops, talking heads, not really asking questions to find truth and report it, but merely playing with words coming out of their mouths to continue garnering advertising dollars.  So, I’ll say it:

President Bush, you lied to the United States in the wake of a horrible tragedy on our shores in order to further an economic agenda which depends on disaster and hid under a blanket of moral superiority made of cloth your couldn’t see.  You have lurched from tragedy to tragedy, cloaking yourself in biblical terms without having understood that the message is one of personal responsibility and communal accountability.  You have failed as a leader, and no amount of smiling and snickering in interviews as your presidency draws down will shield you from the war crimes trial you should face, and the judgement your surely will.

Vice-President Cheney, you have over the course of your career been building to the treacherous and murderous pillaging of the planet beginning with Iraq, and continuing with Hurricane Katrina, burrowing through the financial “meltdown” into parts hitherto unknown and best left that way.  You have hidden in a hole, and like Kronos, sought to manipulate others to do your evil works and dastardly deeds, only to reemerge and spew more venom with a smile.

Citizens of the United States, Citizens of the World, don’t fall down the memory hole.  Democracy looks different when viewed close up.  We must remain cognizant, remember what has gone before in order to guard against the amnesia that time inflicts upon the group consciousness.  It is our responsibility, as we enjoy our rights to continually insure that the privileged few never again usurp the collective good.  ”Eternal vigilance is the price of freedom.”

But among the crowds a little child suddenly gasped out, “But he hasn’t got anything on.” And the people began to whisper to one another what the child had said. “He hasn’t got anything on.” “There’s a little child saying he hasn’t got anything on.” Till everyone was saying, “But he hasn’t got anything on.” The Emperor himself had the uncomfortable feeling that what they were whispering was only too true. 

The Emperor Hasn’t Got Any Clothes On.

Iraqi reporter throws shoes at Bush in Baghdad

Bush shoe-thrower elicits editorial reactions

Condoleeza Rice talks success, failures of the last 8 years

How many Iraqis have died since the US invasion in 2003?

Bush on auto bailout, the war in Iraq, shoe-throwing reporter

Cheney: Uncut and Uncompromising

British troops to leave Iraq by July

Obama picks ex-Iowa governor, Colorado Senator for cabinet

Vice-President for Torture