Obama Integrates The Armed Forces

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Thank You, Mr. President, for keeping your promise.

Editor’s Note: I was cleaning out my inbox, and I came across this email from POTUS.  It seems appropo. RM

Reynaldo –

Moments ago, the Senate voted to end “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.”

When that bill reaches my desk, I will sign it, and this discriminatory law will be repealed.

Gay and lesbian service members — brave Americans who enable our freedoms — will no longer have to hide who they are.

The fight for civil rights, a struggle that continues, will no longer include this one.

This victory belongs to you. Without your commitment, the promise I made as a candidate would have remained just that.

Instead, you helped prove again that no one should underestimate this movement. Every phone call to a senator on the fence, every letter to the editor in a local paper, and every message in a congressional inbox makes it clear to those who would stand in the way of justice: We will not quit.

This victory also belongs to Senator Harry Reid, Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and our many allies in Congress who refused to let politics get in the way of what was right.

Like you, they never gave up, and I want them to know how grateful we are for that commitment.

Will you join me in thanking them by adding your name to Organizing for America’s letter?

I will make sure these messages are delivered — you can also add a comment about what the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” means to you.

As Commander in Chief, I fought to repeal “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” because it weakens our national security and military readiness. It violates the fundamental American principles of equality and fairness.

But this victory is also personal.

I will never know what it feels like to be discriminated against because of my sexual orientation.

But I know my story would not be possible without the sacrifice and struggle of those who came before me — many I will never meet, and can never thank.

I know this repeal is a crucial step for civil rights, and that it strengthens our military and national security. I know it is the right thing to do.

But the rightness of our cause does not guarantee success, and today, celebration of this historic step forward is tempered by the defeat of another — the DREAM Act. I am incredibly disappointed that a minority of senators refused to move forward on this important, commonsense reform that most Americans understand is the right thing for our country. On this issue, our work must continue.

Today, I’m proud that we took these fights on.

Please join me in thanking those in Congress who helped make “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” repeal possible:

http://my.barackobama.com/Repealed

Thank you,

Barack

No One But the Enemy…

I’m a UCLA football fan.  I’m a registered Democrat.  Both at the moment are painful.

Watching USC and the Gallant Old Party strut around the field, lying, cheating and winning, pisses me off.  It makes me sad.  But both have one similar quality that I do admire, that I think both my alma mater and my political party leadership need to emulate (and which President Obama does well to his immediate political detriment, but hopefully to the long-term benefit of the nation) is this: long-term strategic planning.

USC has a stock of skill-position players (quarterbacks, runningbacks, receivers, etc.) who are in the wings, waiting for their opportunity. learning their positions and responsibilities in order to jump on the field running and achieve their immediate goals of winning games and their long term goals of creating a successful program.  The GOP has been planning since Nixon opened China their uber-capitalist, non-regulated, (apparent) socially conservative, racially segregated Contract On America.  Whether it is called the Moral Majority, the Contract for America, the Bush Presidencies, the Tea Party or Speaker of the House John Boehner, the step by step dismantling of civil rights under a cloak of traditional values and dismemberment of the social safety net for the poor and underemployed while screaming about budget deficits (money before people), the GOP is implementing their soul-crushing, cash-hoarding razing of America with precision.

Meanwhile, my Bruins are scrambling and struggling without a quarterback (haven’t really had one since Cade McNown left), hiring and firing coaches (watch out Coach Neuheisel – there’s a target on your back), changing offenses, defenses and not getting new players enough learning and training time before throwing them out on the field with older, stronger, smarter men to be pummeled into submission.  And my Democrats are cutting each other into ribbons, pointing fingers, eating their young, whining about what they haven’t accomplished, throwing out babies with bathwater (sorry, Governor Dean, your 50-state strategy was awesome but there’s the door), and trying to hang our collective failure to plan and implement on the most successful Democrat in the last fifteen years, Barack Obama.

Do you see the difference?

They’re planning and implementing thirty year plans (how else do you explain the line of qbs, rbs,and receivers in the National Football League?  or the John Roberts, Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas Supreme Court which handed George Bush the presidency in 2000 based on “irreparable harm”?!) to implement their vision of what semi-pro football and the United States should be.

We’re going from year to year, from campaign to campaign, short-sightedly focused on immediate gains for people and failing to implement anything that lasts through the day after the election.  We’re recruiting one or two good players per year, playing them as freshmen, and then wondering why they don’t perform.  It’s painful to watch.  It’s death by a thousand cuts.

While I hate, hate, hate the Crimson and Gold, I grudgingly admire what they have been able to accomplish.  And while I abhor the stated values and goals of the Republican Party for this country, I have to admit that they have been out-strategizing us for at least a generation (really… they had in 2009 the minority in Congress, and they’ve been beating our asses with NO since then!) because they weren’t playing small ball.  They’ve trotted our John McCain as a presidential candidate, and he unleashed She-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named – sideshow distractions while they pursued their political and economic agenda that we are dealing with now.

“I am your enemy, the first one you’ve ever had who was smarter than you.  There is no teacher but the enemy.  No one but the enemy will tell you what the enemy is going to do.  No one but the enemy will ever teach you how to destroy and conquer.  Only the enemy shows you where you are weak.  Only the enemy tells you where he is strong.  And the rules of the game are what you can do to him and what you can stop him from doing to you.  I am your enemy from now on.  From now on I am your teacher.”

-Mazer Rakam to Andrew Wiggin, Ender’s Game

I See Ghosts

A few weeks ago, Republican Governor Jan Brewer of Arizona signed into law SB1070, which originally required peace officers in Arizona to stop and question people “where reasonable suspicion exists that the person is an alien” about their citizenship status. No definition of reasonable suspicion was given, and the day after the law was signed, an American Citizen of Mexican descent was arrested for failing to have his papers birth certificate on his person. “The legislation would require … force public service employees to report suspected illegal immigrants.” This meant that the police could be sued by citizens who felt they weren’t enforcing the new law to their satisfaction. Subsequently, she signed a second law that withholds funds from schools which offer classes that “… promote resentment of a particular race or class of people, are designed primarily for students of a particular ethnic group or advocate ethnic solidarity instead of the treatment of pupils as individuals.” “The bill was written to target the Chicano, or Mexican American, studies program in the Tucson school system,” said state Supt. of Public Instruction Tom Horne.

A few days ago, Republican (Tea Party) candidate for the United States Senate from Kentucky, Rand Paul stated that while he is against and “abhors anything racist”, there are parts of the 1964 Civil Rights Act that he finds overreaching because they infringe on the “individual liberties” of racists who own restaurants to discriminate the race of their clientele. This is the same man who shouted to his supporters on the eve of his primary victory that he is on his way to Washington to “take our government back!”

In Texas, where Thomas Jefferson has been replaced by Newt Gingrich in high school history textbooks by an avowedly vocal and active conservative Christian block of Republican school-board members, they are now attempting to change the language of the books so that the next generation of students doesn’t learn about the slave trade which was the economic foundation of the United States, but rather they learn about the Atlantic Triangular Trade of which slaves were simply one component. Add to this the Alabama math teacher who tried teaching his geometry class angles by hypothetically assassinating the (first black) current President of the United States, Barack Obama, and these isolated incidents of racism, violence and oppression begin to define an ugly pattern in American civic life.

The problem with being a history teacher is that I see ghosts.

Watching Senator John McCain say the “economy is still strong” in 2008 echoed to me President Hoover’s response to the Great Depression; watching Senator Obama be chastised for youth and inexperience during that same campaign reflected Governor Clinton and Senator Kennedy’s treatment during their campaigns for the presidency; and watching Governor Brewer sign racial profiling into law and codifying ethnic erasure in schools sounds to me like the breaking glass on Kristallnacht (“Crystal Night”). The Night of Broken Glass was an anti-Jewish pogrom in Nazi Germany and Austria from the 9th until the 10th November 1938. (Kristallnacht was part of a broader racial policy of Nazi Germany, including antisemitism and persecution of the Jews and it is viewed by many historians as the beginning of the Final Solution, leading towards the genocide of the Holocaust.)

This comparison, though, was greeted with trepidation by friends of mine. I had invoked “Godwin’s Law“, one argued. I was giving in to “leftwing holocaust hyperbole“, said another. Neither grasped the larger frame of my comparison. Adolf Hitler is the modern boogeyman for the United States, probably because as a nation we were complicit in his atrocities through our actions and inactions, from sending the US Olympic Team to Berlin for the Summer Games in 1936 fleeing Nazi Germany. Be that as it may, the steps taken by Hitler and the Nazi Party that moved them and their nation from defeated and downtrodden to The Third Reich are being echoed today in the United States.

Let us examine these facts:

• The Nazis began their grip on government with a two-pronged strategy: 1-the Jews are bad, and 2-elect

Hitler to lead us back to glory. Today in Arizona “illegals” are bad, though they don’t know what they look like (except they look illegal, i.e. brown and not from “here”), and Rand Paul is going from Kentucky to “take [his] government back!” from the “un-American” President Obama.

• The Nazis began as a third political party, running candidates with staunch conservative, anti-Jewish, pro-Germany propaganda riding a wave of national dissatisfaction. Today in the United States, from the healthcare debate to clean energy to the lies about the tax code and the false tales of cancelled National Days of Prayer, the Tea Party is running candidates (and defeating Republicans) whose full-throated persecution of illegal immigrants takes place in states with Southern borders and more dark immigrants than not, legal and illegal. In Arizona, and California, and Kentucky, persecution of “the Other” is coupled with Sarah Palin‘s uber-nationalist “feel good about us and never apologize” national tour, endorsing candidates (Governor Jan Brewer) who share her views or at least bark at her command (Carly Fiorina). And politicians hoping to ride the wave are going further faster in hopes of grabbing power for themselves (Steve Poizner).

• Finally, the Nazi’s began their Final Solution to “the Jewish problem” with legislation that targeted German Jews specifically. They passed laws against the Jews for years before the death trains rolled, and the non-Jews in Germany complied. Each law, or bundle of legal segregation and oppression, appeared a reasonable reaction to a real or imagined woe of the people. Arizona’s laws, targeting phantom illegal criminals and demonizing inclusive education, are following the Nazi’s goose-steps in perfect time.

Obviously Jan Brewer and Rand Paul and Sarah Palin and the Texas School-board and the Alabama math teacher are not rounding up darkies and shipping them off to Manzanar. However, they are laying tracks toward that racially segregated, oppressive Us v. Them state of constant emergency with their calculated words and deeds just as surely as the Chinese and the Irish did when building the Trans-Continental Railroad. With each law passed, they are reaching out from beyond the grave to drag the United States back in time. And all that stands between the sad history of segregation and oppression, of marginalization and genocide, is the full- throated rebuke of evil from people of conscience, whether that is writing blogs and letters, being informed and informing others, getting out in the streets to organize, or running for the local and national offices which have the power and authority to squelch the hate that fear produces. Pastor Martin Niehmoller, writing in the midst of the Holocaust, put it more simply, “when they came for [someone else]/ I did not speak . . . [and] when they came for me/ there was no one left to speak.”

The problem with being a history teacher is that I see ghosts. In the last several weeks, the backlash against progress and inclusion, against the embodiment of the American Ideals of Liberty, Equality, and Opportunity has been staggering and shocking. But beyond being shocked, the need for Americans of Conscience to speak up and to act, to fight back in the name of the country we cherish and the humanity we struggle to embody is pressing and immediate. Marcus Garvey put into words my thoughts, the firing of my synapses which drove me to speak of Arizona’s laws in Nazi terminology when he too was attempting to rally his people, and so I leave you with his words. They are as pertinent in 2010 as they were when he spoke then in the 1920s, in the same country, fighting the same battle with a different face.

“Up You Mighty [Human] Race! Accomplish What You Will!”

Credit Where It’s Due

I don’t often have very positive things to say about the GOP these days.  But I do today.  The House Republicans put their earmarks where their mouths are and announced that for the next year they won’t use them.  It strains me a little to give them credit, because I haven’t seen them follow through, but I HOPE they do.  As a matter of fact, I hope the Senate Republicans and the House Democrats and the Senate Democrats do, too.  While earmarks make up a miniscule percentage of the federal deficit, and won’t impact it nearly as positively as the Senate Health Care Bill, the discipline necessary to not sneak in extra spending at the last minute without discussion can only lead to positive outcomes.

History for the Soul

1. I know a young lady who turned thirteen this year.  She is black and Mexican American.  She plays softball, has a brilliant smile, an agile mind, and is going to give her father fits when she starts dating. Her skin is a smooth caramel, and her hair is brown.  But if you ask her, she’ll tell you it’s a “shade of blond.”
2. The predominantly white Pi Kappa Alpha Fraternity at the University of California, San Diego honored Black History Month, 2010, by throwing a holiday party which “urged all participants to wear chains, rapper-style urban clothing . . . and speak very loudly” and which would “serve watermelon, chicken, malt liquor, cheap beer and ‘dat Purple Drank’.”
3. Barack Hussein Obama, Jr. is the forty-fourth President of the United States, duly elected in 2008 by an overwhelming majority of the electorate.  While he is arguably the most powerful man in the world, he is also “a light-skinned African American with no Negro dialect unless he want[s] to have one” according to one of his supporters in Congress.
4. The island nation of Haiti is attempting to climb out from underneath the crumbled destruction in the aftermath of a devastating geological disaster in January, 2010.  It is, unfortunately, still shackled and chained by the blood and treasure extorted from it over the last two hundred years by France, making this black country the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere and the poorest country outside of the black continent of Africa.

Black History Month began as an attempt to acknowledge, celebrate, and honor the contributions of black people in the United States.  From John Punch to Ambassador Susan Rice, the toil of black people has been expected and required to lift the nation, but our identity has been denied.  Punch’s white collaborators were given added years for their escape from servitude; he was sentenced to enslavement “for the remainder of his natural life” for his.  We’ve gone from being free labor and sexual threats or victims to unwanted and barely tolerated tenants; to second class citizens; to being let in the front door, kind of.  And “we pay our debt to human guile” because we “too, [are] America”, but the price paid is a portion of the soul.  Granted, the idea that “black is bad” predates the U.S.A. in Western culture.  But as noted and controversial historian Howard Zinn wrote in his tome A People’s History of the United States “[t]here is not a country in world history in which racism has been more important, for so long a time, as the United States.”(p. 32)

Every February, the question is raised whether Black History Month is still necessary.  Over the last several decades, the argument has been made that the War Between the States was fought more about states’ rights versus federal power rather than the maintenance or abolition of slavery.  And more recently, the supposition has been put forth (and seconded) that the election of Barack Obama to the presidency has ushered in a post-racial era, and that Michelle Obama’s residence in the White House means that racism has ceased to exist and affirmative action is superfluous and “reverse racism.”

Kanye West may have been frightened to utter the words, “George Bush doesn’t care about black people” on national television, but he gave voice to the stark realities on the ground in Louisiana during Hurricane Katrina.  His sentiments were supported by the Associated Press’ labeling of white people grabbing food as finders, while black people grabbing food were looters.

White and black (and brown and yellow and red) are not equal players on the American field.  The achievements of all Americans are not celebrated, chronicled or even noticed in the same way.  In negative or positive lights, racism and prejudice and stereotype  and systemic discrimination continue to puncture the words and the spirit of the Declaration of Independence, “all . . . are created equal.”  Why is Tiger Woods being asked to apologize to his mistresses, but Hugh Grant wasn’t asked to apologize to Divine Brown?

In order to keep someone down, you have to place your hand or foot down on them.  You are, in fact, keeping yourself down.  This is the piece that the fraternity members and their party guests miss.  They are the ones who are less than by their mocking and disrespect.  They are the ones who’ve denied the truth three times before the cock crowed in the morning.  The advocates of post-racial America want to escape their uncomfortable feelings, avoid their cultural legacy and inheritance by running beyond the arms of history.  If Barack’s election means we’re past racialism, then they can’t possibly be racist, right?  They are just normal, their point of view is just normal, and those other people just aren’t working hard enough.

The insidious oppression of the psyche which perpetuates itself, which feeds on armed demonstrators at presidential rallies, or birther lawsuits, or European and American colonial usurpation of African and Carribean national substance, or brown celebrities dying their hair blond, makes Black History Month, Latino Heritage Month, Women’s History Month (because that missing word from Jefferson above is “men”), Asian Pacific Islander Month, these celebrations of self and identity NECESSARY.  Every minute.  Hourly.  Daily.  Weekly.  Monthly.  Annually.

It’s necessary until that young lady I know understands that she has brown hair.

And SHE. IS. BEAUTIFUL.

Thank you, President Reagan

“…government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem”

-First Inaugural Address, 1981

Twenty-nine years ago, President Reagan stood up and told American citizens that government is the problem.  One day ago, a disgruntled white man committed an act of domestic terrorism, attacking that government because he was required to pay his share to support our country.  Surprisingly, he has been embraced for his “heroism” by the very same people who continue to scream that Arab Americans shouldn’t board airplanes in the United States.

The TEA Party, Sarah Palin, Mitch McConnell, John Boehner, Newt Gingrich, Ronald Reagan, Bill O’Reilly and every person who publicly rants about big government had their hand on the throttle of that airplane as it aimed itself at federal employees in an eerily reminiscent reprise of the foreign terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001.  The difference between having a heated conversation regarding the role of government and berating the existence of government is huge, and it’s unfortunately a difference that these individuals (and Marco Rubio, Rick Perry, Eric Cantor, Sean Hannity, and Ann Coulter) refuse to acknowledge.

It is easier to scream that government doesn’t work than to discuss/debate/argue about how it should work.  But the anti-government rhetoric that Rush Limbaugh most vocally purports (“I hope [the President] fails.”) is reaching a head, from suicide-plane attacks to advocating lynching government officials, and the right wing is getting further and further from reality, living in the daily stew of hate, rejection, insecurity and violence.

For putting us on the path, I say thank you, Mr. President.

Officials: Texas plane crash targeted feds

Pilot Crashes Into Building in Apparent Anti-IRS Suicide

Limbaugh: ‘I Hope Obama Fails’

Showing Their True Colors

A Bad Taste In My Mouth

President Obama met today with the Dalai Lama, over the strenuous objections of the People’s Republic of China.  Then he put out a weak statement that said in part “The President stated his strong support for the preservation of Tibet’s unique religious, cultural and linguistic identity and the protection of human rights for Tibetans in the People’s Republic of China.”  At once, he asserted the United States’ moral standing by acknowledging the oppression in Tibet, and acquiesced to China’s emerging financial dominance and their role in global affairs on the UN Security Council and beyond.

How does crow taste?

There is no way to directly approach China’s human rights violations or its invasion of Tibet while Guantanamo Bay is still open and we still have armed forces in Iraq.  There isn’t a way to meet with the Dalai Lama and still play nice with the boot on his people’s neck.  This is another place where the moral high ground has been eroded, where the ideals that we espouse have become whispers, where the mountain of debt that we’ve created as a nation is crushing the values upon which we’re built.

Yes, President Bush and Vice-President Cheney left a nation confused and angered, bewildered and bedeviled.  But in these small moments are where Change is supposed to occur.  Acknowledging “Tibetans in the People’s Republic of China” is the have your cake and eat it too approach to diplomacy.  Unfortunately, that cake tastes like oppression, tastes like moral ambiguity, tastes like betrayal.

President Obama, it tastes like Bush.

Obama meets with Dalai Lama despite Chinese objections

Statement from the Press Secretary on the President’s Meeting with His Holiness the XIV Dalai Lama

But sausage tastes sooo good!

There has been a lot of energy expended about what the President has and hasn’t done in regards to healthcare.  Congress’ approval continues to plummet.  The Republicans have been called obstructionist, the Democrats have been called ineffective and weak, and the legislation has been revived more than a few times in the thirteen months of the Obama Administration.  Like the presidential campaign, though, which seemingly kept our attention for almost two years (or four, if you saw Senator Obama’s keynote speech in support of John Kerry) the public fascination with health care reform legislation has made each day longer than twenty-four hours, and this year seem like ten.

I’ve never been to a slaughterhouse (though I highly recommend HBO’s new movie Temple Grandin if you haven’t seen it), and I’ve only seen videos of meat being ground up and pushed into sausage skins.  It’s not a pretty sight.  But when I’m sitting at the table, pushing around my eggs scrambled with cheese and onions, my hashbrowned potatoes, and the sausage links before getting to my short stack of pancakes, I’m not thinking about the grinding and the stuffing.  I’m thinking about the flavor.

And so it is with healthcare.  Now there are sixteen senators (since Feb. 16th – two days) who are publicly calling for a reconciliation vote on a public option.  They’re moving beyond the process to see if anyone wants sausage.  And I am proud to say that both my senators are already on board.

Just as I don’t really concern myself with each and every granule that goes into my sausage, I can’t be involved with every discussion that Senators and Representatives have regarding healthcare, though MSNBC and FOX want me to panic every time someone on the Hill draws a breath and steps to a microphone.  One day, perhaps, I’ll be in the sausage-making business and those conversations will be ones I’m a part of.  Until then, I’ll keep letting the chefs cook and I’ll keep eating the sausage.

Update – since I wrote this at 8:15am, two more Senators have signed the letter supporting the public option.

A worried Congress won’t take risks

Public Option Whip List – Has your senator taken a stand?

Public Option, Medicare Buy-In Could See Senate Floor Fights

The Real Hope

At Coffee Bean this morning, where my wife and I took our Valentine’s Day stroll to get some caffeine and get away from David Gregory’s amazingly ineffective mismanagement of what used to be Meet the Press, my wife got into a conversation with an older gentleman about dogs. After a few minutes, he asked her, “is that an Obama shirt you’re wearing?” Steeling herself for any number of replies, she lifted her chin and replied, “Yes. Yes it is.”
With a conspiratorial grin, he unzipped his jacket to reveal his own Obama ’08 tshirt.
“You don’t see as many, nowadays,” she noted.
“That’s because now is when the real hope begins.”

I’m a Simple Guy

That being said, I’m struggling to understand a couple of political realities…

1. Why do the Democrats, who control both houses of Congress, need sixty votes to pass anything in the Senate?
2. How does a woman who gives speeches insulting the President’s use of a teleprompter do softball interviews with crib notes on her hand?
3. Why are politicians allowed to say things that are factually untrue without any consequence, either from the electorate or “the fourth estate” which is charged with brining us news?
4. How come being the adults in the room means Democrats have to bargain from the middle while Republicans can just whine and say NO?
5. Who the f&$ is Tom Tancredo, and why doesn’t he have to take a literacy test? or a citizenship test? or a history test?
6. When is Don’t Ask Don’t Tell going to be repealed?
7. Who’s the next minority group of citizens that will be legislatively discriminated against?
8. How long after reading Three Cups of Tea and Stones Into Schools will the Commander in Chief apply some of the basic ideas to our wars and struggles in Pakistan and Afghanistan?

Having moved to Twitter over the last several months, my political thoughts have become quick and fluid, and easily expressed in under 140 characters each.  But I’ve been watching Sen. Olympia Snowe, Rep. John Boehner, ex-Gov. Sarah Palin and others running around lying this week, while President Obama and Greg Mortenson and Richard Clarke are running around trying to accomplish, trying to help, trying to get things done.

That “hopey changey thing” that I voted for is working out for me just fine.  Maybe it’s just because I’m such a simple guy.