Boots on the Ground

If you watch the nightly news, you may have forgotten . . . Haiti was hit by an earthquake eight weeks ago.  Our “it bleeds it leads” media has gone from pimping the images of poor black folk wandering the streets of Port au Prince ala Hurricane Katrina to not reporting about the continuing struggle to get aid to the people, to rebuild the structure and infrastructure of the government, to bury the dead with dignity.

The earthquake didn’t go away, the buildings didn’t spring back up when the American media decided it wasn’t sexy to watch people crying and dying anymore.

Oh, wait . . . there are always the looters in Vinha del Mar, Chile.  Since my in-laws live in the north of Chile, and we found out in the wee hours of the morning that they were all accounted for and healthy, we’ve been keeping up with the news via Facebook and email.  Eleven days after the 8.8 earthquake shook the earth off its axis, the nightly news has forgotten.  We haven’t forgotten.  My cousin who’s cousin is still missing hasn’t forgotten.  But I can’t find out what is happening on the tv, or the radio around here.

In the United States, we are a provincial people to be sure. If it didn’t happen in my city, it’s not that important.  If it isn’t happening in Washington, it’s not that important.  If it doesn’t affect us directly, we just don’t care.  That’s not the way it should be, but it seems like that’s the way it is.

I gave money when the quake hit Haiti.  I bought the new We Are the World to give more money.  Tomorrow, there will be Chilenos in my living room figuring out how to organize and get supplies to family, friends and loved ones who’ve been shaken.

Where is the world?  No, that’s not my question.  Where are we, the supposed “last, best hope of mankind”?  Giving money seems to mean that we as Americans can forget about other nation’s problems.  It’s this parochial mentality that has Liz Cheney calling the United States’ Department of Justice the “Department of Jihad”, and people in the United States arguing whether we should take steps to combat global warming.

There needs to be an American mission that forces us to travel and help other people who really don’t have healthcare.  All the money donated doesn’t in fact help citizens of the United States appreciate the ideals embodied in the documents written by the founders or the blessings bestowed upon us by providence.

Instead, we have “missionaries” trying to steal children, and soundbites saying that people looking for food in the wake of unimaginable disasters are looters, showing their arrests as the lead in to the news but not talking about (or showing) what people are doing to recover.

Each of us needs to put boots on the ground.  Maybe then our conversations will be substantive instead of verbal wrangling and games of acquisition and maintenance of privilege.

I Told You So

President Jimmy Carter is stating what I’ve been saying for a while (and was “taken to task” for in the comment section of the last post).  Namely, many of the attacks, both in the “substance” and tone, against President Barack Obama, are thinly veiled expressions of racist disbelief that a black man is POTUS.  And while I was compiling my evidence and articulating a reply, it suddenly dawned on me that I can lead horses (or elephants) to water, but I can’t make them drink.  Understand that this is not simply Republican-bashing.  It is simply a realization that while there are many independents and Democrats (and some Republicans) who disagree with the President’s ideological and practical governance of the United States, the extreme ideas by fearful and ignorant people are gaining traction with the not so ignorant because they hold one thing in common: Fear of a black planet.

There are groups of people angry and scared and confused whose sole similarity with each other is their hatred of the President.  Elderly people who will benefit from changing the manner in which their medical insurance is billed and their prescriptions are screaming at their elected representatives that President Obama is a socialist; people are saying “they want their country back,” but when asked what they means answer, “I don’t know”; Glenn Beck is on “national television” saying that the half-white President has a problem with white people…the President’s birth/legitimacy is still being questioned, by “concerned” almost-citizens and echoed by members of Congress – where were they when Senator McCain was running for the office?  And if you don’t know why that’s relevant, you’ve proven my point.

But alas, people who are in the majority rarely acquiesce that their domination of societal and cultural norms without confrontation and overwhelming evidence (and many times not even then).  Whether that is white people in the United States, men on the planet earth, English speakers, heterosexuals, the non-disabled… the domination doesn’t matter.  From our language to our institutions, the codified methods of discrimination are not rewritten without cataclysm.

Sorry… I got a little carried away.  Maureen Dowd, President Carter, and many others are beginning to speak the truth to power.  How long will it take before the people who disagree with the President’s policies, but don’t ascribe to the fearful racist elements that show themselves in screaming fits at town halls an as mouthpieces for economic predators acknowledge and disavow the people that drown out their legitimate arguments?

Just some final thoughts: Here is the post I was beginning to write. I’m including it more for the articles linked…

Unpacking the Knapsack

In critiquing the critics of the President, I have been accused of: a) playing the race card, b) being racist, c) loving a good stereotype, and d) falling back on hyperbole when I didn’t have any facts to back up my assertions.  Hence, I will attempt for those who, in good faith, misunderstand how race plays a part of the wildly aggressive campaign to delegitimize the presidency of Barack Obama, and in doing so simply acknowledge the symptoms without diagnosing the disease, thereby insuring the nation continues to suffer from the illness.

The ridiculous combination of conspiracies being hurled at President Obama are not new ground.  The level of serious consideration that they’ve gained in Congress, though, are.  From Republican Senators and Congresspeople questioning the President’s birthplace, to the continued lie that is “death panels”

White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack

Of National Lies and Racial America

Boy, Oh, Boy

Carter: Racism plays major role in opposition to Obama

Torture Sucks, Dick!

The United States of America has in its two-hundred-plus year history been forced repeatedly to hew back to its ideals when it gets off track. Whether by a missive written by slaves during the American Revolution including themselves in that “all men that [were] created equal” concept; or the thrashing of Southern secession by Union Troops; or the Seneca Falls Convention and the Iron Angels’ protests for suffrage; or imprisoned Japanese Americans saying NoNo; or Rosa Parks and Martin King sitting and standing for their just deserts; or Cesar Chavez refusing to eat until migrant farm workers had bread; or Barack Obama being elected President of the United States to cleanse the infested wounds of disaster capitalism and war profiteering and economic tsunami that was the Bush/Cheney administration. (and now Attorney General Eric Holder is opening investigations of the torturers who went “beyond their guidelines”)

Like one of the stubborn ghouls in a bad scary movie, the former Vice President just won’t go away.  He’s already pushed a devastating agenda on the United States and by extension, the world.  He’s already authorized assassination from the office of the Vice President.  He’s already waged a “War on Terror” which we should truly call a “War on the Constitution”, as he claimed that the VP is not part of the executive branch of the government, even as he gathered more and more power to the executive branch and refused to be held accountable.  He was the first and loudest to mouth the fictitious claim in public that Saddam Hussein was involved with 9/11, and that the invasion of that country was justified.  And he’s been lying more since he left office, saying that “torture worked and kept us safe” in order to cover his crimes and the crimes of others.

Dick Cheney thinks torture is okay. So does his daughter. Unfortunately, they aren’t brave enough to stand up and simply say that. Instead they hint that its legal, that its okay, that its American to do.  It’s obvious that they believe it, because they won’t stop torturing the American people – they’re on television or in the newspaper daily screeching about how the current administration is making us as a country less safe, and how holding them or the people who worked for them responsible is “bad.”  Simply put, they’re wrong.

Torture is bad.  It’s against the American Way.  And it doesn’t work or keep us safe.

Here . . . I’d get shot

It’s hard to hold on to a scepter when it is lubricated.  No matter how hard you squeeze, it continues to slip from your fingers;  no raising of the voice, entreaties to the beyond, historical references or inherited privilege will keep one’s hand on the rudder or help the power stay at home.

Such are the straights of white men in the United States in 2009.  With the minority population of the United States becoming the majority, the tide of equality and justice is turning.  A multiracial coalition elected a biracial president to preside over the United States of America.  Since power and justice are never willingly shared or granted by the powerful, racial animus has begun to seep (once again) into public discourse in frighteningly obvious and increasingly desperate ways.  Over the course of the last month, we have seen:

1. a white man eject a group of black children from a swimming pool in Philadelphia;
2. a white man accuse a Puerto Rican nominee to the Supreme Court of the United States of being racist (when that’s the reason he was denied the federal bench) because she acknowledges her heritage and the role race and gender have played in her life;
3. a white man go on television and cheerlead that she was not attacked enough for being Puerto Rican, and that affirmative action discriminates against him;
4. white firefighters vindicated by the SCOTUS when the discriminatory test they passed was validated; (a NY judge recently ruled differently in a different case)
5. a white police officer arrest arguably one of the most widely known and accomplished black men in the United States in his own home because he had the temerity to assert his right to be there;
6. nine white men introduce legislation into the Legislature of the United States requiring presidential candidates to provide proof of citizenship before they run in a veiled reference to the ludicrous notion that the first black POTUS isn’t a citizen of the United States;
7. another white man in the same house arguing that if federally funded abortion were available fifty years ago, the President’s white married mother would have had a “free abortion” because of financial incentive (he assumed she was an unwed, single mom);
8. the same white man arguing that the only black man sitting on the Supreme Court of the United States would have been aborted for the same reason;
9. the State of California issue an official apology to American citizens of Chinese descent for discriminatory laws passed over the last century, i.e. The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882

Race is no longer the third rail of American politics.  It can’t be, with a black man as POTUS.  His presence, as demonstrated by the overloud and uncomfortable laughter at his press conference on Wednesday evening by the predominantly white press corps when he stated that if he tried to force his way into [his home] the White House, “I’d get shot,” forces the blind eye to see that we are not (and should not be) a colorblind nation.  We are not post-racial because we have never dealt legitimately on a national level with race.

Just as candidate Obama claimed that in some places, people who had suffered through generations of economic neglect “cling to their guns and religion, to their antipathy of people foreign to them” to explain their plight, so too are these white men clinging to their white privilege and inherited station, to their unspoken benefits and fantastic position, by blaming affirmative action and racial minorities.  From Indian wars to enslaved Africans, from Chinese exclusion laws to statutes forbidding interracial marriage, from the KKK to affirmative action, from Emmett Till to Jeff Sessions, race has been the tiller and the sail of “conservative politics” in the United States.  The maintenance of the status quo has always rested on the back and shoulders of the oppressed and discriminated populations of this country.  And the numbers of white people who continue to cling to this standard is increasingly vocal, even as it is numerically dwindling.  You have only to watch Alexandra Pelosi’s “Right America: Feeling Wronged” to hear and see them.

On a national level, though, it remains okay for representatives from predominantly white districts and regions to spout off their racist affirmations of their own superiority.  On a commercial level, Rush Limbaugh and Pat Buchanan are getting paid dragging their anger and dismay through the dirt to see what clings.  The arrest of Professor Gates and the subsequent anger of the white establishment at President Obama’s characterization of the police officers as acting stupidly are both indications that the work of the (rasicst) founding fathers is not done, and the conversation amongst people of conscience (white, black, brown, red, yellow, etc.) not to mention the daily work of education and preparation must continue.

Perhaps many of us were lulled into comfort by the election of the first African American President of the United States.  Let us then, return to the posture and postulation of Frederick Douglass, “Agitate. Agitate. Agitate.”  Unlike Pat Buchanan, I am clear that this country was built by millions of men and women, black and white and brown and yellow and red.  And it is our responsibility to continue to build it, to reach toward its ultimate potential.  Those confused and scared people who “want their country back”, that white, christian, uncomplicated and racially stratified utopia are living in a fantasy – that country never existed.

Jeff Sessions and Jon Kyl, Pat Buchanan and Rush Limbaugh, Anne Coulter and Sean Hannity, James Crowley and the rest will learn and understand that when the scepter has shattered on the floor.

Pat Buchanan’s White Fertilizer

“. . . no I’m not European, bein’ all I can . . .”

-Snoop Dogg

White men DID NOT build the United States. No matter what Pat Buchanan, Lindsey Graham, Jeff Sessions, or Jon Kyl would like to believe. Yes, they were instrumental in its creation and conception, but there have been a myriad of people from Abigail Adams to Crispus Attucks to Helen Keller to Martin Luther King, Jr. to Cesar Chavez to Dolores Huerta to Gloria Steinem to the Iron Angels to the Massachusetts 54th Infantry to the Windtalkers who have put life and limb on the line for the fulfillment of the promise and potential signaled by the “100% white men”-created Declaration of Independence and Constitution of the United States. It is amazing to note, though, that both of these documents used, according to white man Thomas Jefferson, the founding documents of the Iroquois Confederacy as templates.

The confirmation hearings of Sonia Sotomayor for the Supreme Court of the United States, though, gave these Southern Dixiecrats (oops! now they’re Republicans from the party of Lincoln) a huge microphone from which to spout even more invective toward racial minorities and women who have been the foundations of this nation since before its inception. From Graham’s “do you have a temperament problem” to Session’s open mouth, the Republican members of the confirmation committee walked what they saw as an acceptable line, attacking Sotomayor’s pride in her heritage, work for the Puerto Rican legal defense fund, and everything except her judicial record. That’s Pat, though, took it even further across the line. Both online and on television, this white man actually argued that she wasn’t qualified because she was Latina, that because she acknowledged not only her race but the role that affirmative action played in her education, somehow that makes her inferior. His spouting invective wasn’t simply restrained to the written word . . . he had the temerity, the sheer arrogance, to take his knapsack of white privilege and racial superiority on television for the broadcast world to see.

I do agree with Malcom X, for I would rather have racists stating that they are racist rather than hiding under a veneer of reasonable opposition. The arguments made by Pat Buchanan (and to a more timid extent, the members of the confirmation committee) are lasts grasps at a position of power in the hierarchy of social dominance in the United States. The stranglehold that white men have had on power (106 of the 110 justices on the SCOTUS have been white men; 43 of 44 POTUS have been white men; 413 of 535 members of Congress today are white men) flies in the face of the “rational insecurity” from which Mitch McConnell and others question Sotomayor’s work and philosophy, attack her family and community, and preach their colorblind message which means they are blind to every color but their own. And it has given some of them a false sense of security, a belief in their own superiority which is not only undeserved and a f*&^ing joke, but is offensive in the extreme to say the least.

Unrestrained by elected office, Pat Buchanan has become David Duke in a suit instead of a robe. He is in the running, like Audra Shay, on a platform which seeks to secure the white working class vote by telling them how special they are and how much the darkies are taking away from them, to be king of the klansmen. And he wants the party of Lincoln to follow him. Maybe he’ll pick Sarah Palin as a runningmate, too. Fortunately, thinking Republicans are seeing these racial attacks for what they are, more bullshit from little men seeking to attain or maintain power in a changing world.

Keeping Secrets

I met my wife because of the CIA.  They funneled money and guns to an egomaniacal dictatorial tyrant in a malicious attempt to “democratize” Latin America by force, overriding the actual democratic voice which elected Salvador Allende, and tortured her father before inviting them to live in the United States as political exiles.  But that debt to them being my own personal one, they are a danger not only to foreign governments but to our own.  And the shield that President Obama is attempting to throw over them now is a sad, naked hoarding of power that frankly I’d expect from Dick Cheney. (Update – Dick Cheney ordered the CIA to lie to Congress.)

The “oversight” of national security activities which various members of Congress are responsible for is toothless at the present time because even when they find something out of line, as Speaker Pelosi did in regards to the torture of prisoners at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay, they are legally bound not to tell anyone.  WTF? They are overseeing in a vacuum.  The CIA is not responsible to act on their recommendations, objections, or questions.  The CIA doesn’t even have to tell them the truth, according to CIA Director Leon Panetta.

Tie this to the Patriot Act, which is still in force, and we have a group of independent operators doing what they think is good for the United States of America without any input from our elected (and therefore responsible to us) representatives.  President Obama has threatened to veto the intelligence authorization bill if Democratic Senators attempt to put teeth into the role of oversight.

Keeping secrets is the way that the United States operated in Chile, in Nicaragua, in Iran, in Iraq, in Afghanistan, and the list continues.  The CIA has a director who appears honorable and at least willing to admit that his agency has lied to Congress (and the United States) in the past.  Why is President Obama trying to continue this practice, keeping secrets by keeping Congress bound and gagged?

Balancing Priorities

Public health insurance option.  Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.  Defense of Marriage Act.  The presidential selection in Iran.  Nuclear weapons being tested in North Korea.  The turnover of security in Iraq to Iraqis.  Withdrawal of United States’ troops from Iraq.  Deployment of United States’ troops to Afghanistan.  Global Warming.  Clean Energy.  Sonia Sotomayor.  The United States’ Supreme Court.   Being a present father to Sasha and Malia.  The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.  Pirates in the Ocean.  Pirates on Wall Street.  Main Street.  The housing and mortgages crises.  Michael Jackson’s death.  Sixty Democratic Senators obsessed with their own turf and not the people’s business.  Republicants in both houses with the same problem.  President Hugo Chavez.  The (first) military coup in (Latin America) Honduras (since the Cold War “ended”.) The Israeli occupation.  The Palestinian intifada.  Chinese ownership of American debt.  AIG. Swine Flu.  Importing and exporting but not traveling to Cuba.  Bo.  Vice President Joe Biden.  Vice President emeritus Richard Cheney.  Guantanamo Bay.  The war on terror, aka The Patriot Act.  Islamic fundamentalism.  Right to Life murder.  Unhappy liberals.  Gun control that doesn’t.  Campaign pledges.  24-hour “news” cycles.  Government transparency.  National security.  Leading the Democratic Party.  Cross-over dribble.  Quitting cigarettes.  Date night with Michelle.  Running General Motors.  Leading the free world.  Upholding American values.  What are the President’s priorities?

The last six months have been a whirlwind of activity, elation, disappointment, history, frustration, action, words, spirit, and of life.  It seems eons ago I stood with millions of Americans on the mall in Washington, D.C.  to personally witness the inauguration of President Barack Obama.  Simply typing the words, though, raises gooseflesh on my arms when I recollect the moment with gratitude, pride and hope for the better future of this country that my children will inherit.

I am of two minds about the first six months of his administration.

It seems perfect that when I turn on the television, click on to a website, check my twitter account, glance at a magazine cover, listen to the radio or download the weekly podcast from the President that Barack Obama is the face I see, the voice I hear, leading the country.  While I am amazed that we elected a black man to the presidency, I am not surprised to see him there – striding across the lawn at the white house, sparring with the white house press corps during press conferences, meeting with Chilean President Michelle Bachelet in the East Room, boarding Marine One, leading by example instead of secret fiat – he is supposed to be there, handling the business of leading the country.

On the other hand, the arbitrary back and forth, the spin on both sides of the debates, seem absolutely ordinary and business as usual, and the CHANGE we BELIEVE in seems awfully far away.  The sixty democratic senators seem to think that they’re party affiliation and majority aren’t necessary for the President to enact an agenda to help the people of the United States.  Al Franken is joining the Senate proclaiming his allegiance to Minnesota rather than the Democratic agenda for the United States.  His provincial attitude is reflective of Republican Governor Mark Sanford’s denial of stimulus funds for his state because he was “against raising the federal deficit.”  Both men missed the point.  Their priorities are askew.

The President appears to be balancing his priorities pretty well.  Democratic legislators, though, appear uncomfortable with the national validation of their agenda, with having the support throughout the country (reflected in the number of elected officials) to enact a public option on health care, to close Guantanamo, to pass the stimulus bill, to get clean energy going, to get us out of Iraq more quickly, and the list goes on . . .

We (the Democratic majority and its constituents) need to get behind the President, and start balancing Our priorities.  Healthcare, Education, Equal Rights . . . stop letting the vocal minority frame the debate and distract from the purpose of government and governing . . . “to secure these rights . . . for the governed.”  There need to be more Bernie Madoffs going to jail for ripping people off and taking taxpayer monies . . . let’s start with Henry Paulson.  There needs to be a truth commission on torture and prosecutions from the first black Attorney General.  The guilty should be punished, and the general welfare of the country should be promoted.  I’m not about revenge.  That’s not a priority.  I am about justice and responsibility – that is.

the terror within

Listening to the President this morning, it became clear that he is fighting the war against terrorists on at least three fronts, all inherited from the Bush Administration.  The first is obviously in the biblically important country where some people believe lies the earthly location of the Garden of Eden, between the Tigris and the Euphrates, Iraq.  The second is where many an empire, from Alexander the Great to the Soviet Union have ground to a halt and been defeated by patriots wielding scythes and stones, Afghanistan.

The third is in Washington, D.C., against the proponents of terror and torture led by Colonel Jessup himself, former Vice-President Richard Cheney.  This crowd of malcontents is braying loudly in an attempt to cover its tracks, to avoid responsibility and prosecution, and working to make our country less safe by distracting the mechanisms and machinery of government with unfounded accusations and claims which have and continue to be proven false.

The former Vice-President, notorious for his silence during his time in office, has taken it upon himself to be the voice of unreason, calling for the release of memos that destroy his arguments and refute his claims; making speeches about keeping the country safe when his tenure saw the terrorists attacks of September 11th; and telling anyone who will listen (or give him a microphone) that he did a good job and he’d do it again.

This third front is almost more problematic than the first two.  As commander in chief, President Obama can do as he sees fit in order to wage those campaigns and has pledged to follow his understanding of our American ideals to do so.  This is neither easy nor simple, but it is clear.

On the third front, though, his opponents refuse to a) tell the truth, b) acknowledge their mistakes, c) provide relevant support for their positions, d) argue the fundamental issue of torture.  They don’t even like the word.  They prefer “enhanced interrogation techniques” to hide their actions.  As I said a couple of days ago, this is simply more lubrication for their violation of our national identity and ideals.

This third front is not true philosophical difference.  For those who feel that torture is okay, and that it is necessary to protect our country, that is a conversation.  This third front refuses to engage, acting more like al Qaeda and the guerillas firing on US troops in the hot zones than the loyal opposition.  This machiavellian manipulation of misinformation is how Guantanamo Bay became a torture cell, owned and operated by the United States.  It’s how we as citizens ended up with blood under our fingernails and towels jammed down our throats.

Waterboarding is torture and I feel like Dick Cheney is doing it to me with his speeches, the way he ordered it done to “the terrorists”, the way Jay Bybee covered with his lawyer-speak.

That’s the terror within.

Obama defends plan to close Gitmo

Cheney slams Obama in speech

the human condition

“ . . . this camp is the ash and soot of human shame.”

-Silvia, The Surrender Tree, p. 96

There is a problem with all this conversation about declassification of secrets, about ‘enhanced interrogation’ v. torture, about actionable intelligence and false leads, about enemies, enemy combatants, immunity or prosecution, whether to move forward or to look back, innocent victims and propaganda. Those who argue that the President is wrong to release information are arguing the wrong case. They are trying to justify torture because it “kept us safe.” They are arguing that the ends justify the means. Cain thought so, too.

As a nation, our greatest strength has been the few words penned by a slaveholder when he believed that his humanity was questioned, “all . . . are created equal, and are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights.” This belief founded a nation of justice, not just us. And so the debate out what our government did in our name is about whether we are who we say we are, or are we who President Chavez and Comrade Castro say we are; do we believe in the ideals of freedom and equality or do we believe in “robbin’ old folks and makin’ a dash”?

Are we invested in the human condition, or are we simply interested in the American condition?

As a patriot, I have always believed the former. President Bush, Vice President Cheney, Secretary of State Rice, Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld have expressly stated and acted as the latter.

When we improve the human condition, then we automatically improve the American condition. This is the argument. It is the same argument that Dr. King used, that Sojourner Truth used, that Cesar Chavez used, that Thomas Jefferson used. Whether or not we have always lived up to that investment in the human condition is not up for debate, because we obviously haven’t. But whether we should is always up for debate, because when we stop speaking about it, when we stop arguing about it, when we assume that we’re all working toward an improved human condition, those simply interested in their own condition will steal our soul.

Senator John McCain tweeted that we should, “urge the President to avoid finger pointing and move forward . . .” I would say that holding usurpers responsible for their actions, for the stain on our national honor, for besmirching, “the woman [he] didn’t know he loved . . . until [he] was parted from her company,” is necessary, and is more important than simply “finger pointing.”

There are many petty despots around the world, whose actions serve only themselves and their coteries, who see as weakness an investment in the human condition. President Bush and his administration, through their use of torture and their feeble attempts to cover themselves with mumble-mouthed legalese have placed themselves squarely in those ranks. But I refuse to go with them.

I refuse to not hold them accountable. I do not believe the American condition is that important.

We must reinvest in the human condition.

Torture and the Problem of Constitutional Evil

‘No one is above the law’ Holder says of torture inquiry

Boehner: Memos Outline “Torture Techniques”

Obama waffled on torture

McCain warns the president of a possible ‘witch hunt’

Rice, Cheney OK’d CIA use of waterboarding

Pakistan sends troops to area grabbed by Taliban

Yemen Dispute Slows Closing of Guantanamo

The Art of the Possible

“Living our values doesn’t make us weaker, it makes us safer and it makes us stronger.”

-Barack Hussein Obama, President of the United States

President Barack Obama stood before the joint houses of Congress, the Supreme Court of the United States, the American People, the First Lady of the United States, invited guests like Captain Sully Sullenberger, vanquished foes, resurrected allies and patted himself and us on the back.

The State of the Union in 2009 is dire.  We are embroiled in war abroad, threatened with nuclear proliferation by untrustworthy nations, a global recession which is closing businesses and killing jobs domestically, fiscal mismanagement by habitual thieves, national insecurity, oppositional obstruction, republican obfuscation, democratic hubris, and to top it off, its cold and rainy in Southern California today.

But on Day 36 of the Obama Era, I feel good.  The speech not only detailed our present condition, but also laid out practical solutions for us to begin addressing them.  The President declared an end to the deceptive practice of hiding the economic costs of the US invasion and occupation of Iraq.  He declared unequivocally that the United States no longer engages in torture.  He emphasized his plans to improve healthcare in our country, to actually educate our youth, and to move us away from energy dependence toward energy independence, all while putting Americans back to work, putting more money back in my pocket, and making a couple of jokes as well.

Watching the speech (and yes, I watched the whole thing twice), I was left with a sense of determination, of HOPE, and of watching someone get things done.  And I am amazed at how badly his detractors are reacting to both his persona and his accomplishments.  What accomplishments?  Well let me enumerate them:

1. Ethics Rules for his administration
2. Pay caps for White House Staff
3. Ordered the closure of the detention center at Guantanamo Bay
4. Named special envoy to the Middle East
5. Signed the “Lily Ledbetter” Act
6. Signed the Supplemental Children’s Health Insurance Program into law
7. Cancelled land leases sold by the Bush Administration
8. Executive Order: Extending Gulf Coast Rebuilding
9. American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (stimulus bill)
   1. save 3-4 million jobs
   2. largest tax cut in history
   3. fastest tax cut in history
   4. investment in infrastructure
10. Ordered United States’ armed forces drawdown in Iraq
11. Included the expenditure of war in the federal budget
12. UPDATE: Revealing the cost in lives of the US invasion of Iraq

The President of the United States is leading our country.  His speech and his actions in the first month of his presidency are exhibits in what is possible when necessity marries determination and births twins, resurgence and confidence.  In his words, manner and deeds, he is setting the tone for what we need to do to get out of the messes we’ve gotten ourselves into.

Otto von Bismarck once said, “politics is the art of the possible.”

If this is true, then Barack Obama is creating like Michaelangelo, showing US what’s possible by thinking, listening, planning and executing. There are many imitators, but they haven’t learned the style, don’t have the substance, and frankly . . . they’re painting by numbers.

“As we stand at this crossroads of history, the eyes of all people in all nations are once again upon us — watching to see what we do with this moment; waiting for us to lead,”

Obama’s call to arms and optimism

Obama’s agenda: One of the ‘greatest political dramas’?

Jindal earns bad reviews in national debut

Orszag emerges from behind the scenes as budget is unveiled

Obama and the revival or responsibility

Pentagon allows coverage of war coffins