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CATCHING UP - WITH…

The Ryan Clemency Petition, the Presidential Inauguration, the Rick Warren Selection and Interest Rates…

My apologies to anyone who reads this blog regularly. I was too busy to record any thoughts last week, so I’ll be covering two or three subjects today.

When I last wrote about imprisoned former Illinois Governor George Ryan on December 12, 2008, I was being supportive of Senator Dick Durbin’s appeal to President Bush to grant him clemency and let him get home for Christmas. I’m still supportive of the effort but now I’m disgusted with Ryan’s disingenuous "apology" for past misdeeds. I know he wants to get out of jail. Of course he does. He isn’t a hardened criminal. He was a pharmacist before he went into politics. He lived what might be called a "soft" life. Jail must be hell for him and people like him. But the sudden change of heart has no ring of truth to it. Throughout his trial and as he entered through the gates of the federal penitentiary, he insisted that his conscience was clear - that he didn’t believe that he had committed crimes. Now, in a "private" letter that somehow became public, he is apologizing to the people of Illinois for "letting them down" and to the Willis family who lost six children in an accident involving a truck driver who had pain a bribe to get his commercial license under Ryan’s watch as Illinois Secretary of State. After years of insisting that there was no way he could be held responsible for the death of those children, he now says that they - the surviving Willis parents, "deserved better." Well of course they did - but there was also nothing Ryan could have done or not done that would have changed their fate.

What’s unfolding now is reminiscent of what happens in so many prison story movies. The wrongly
imprisoned man is denied parole for the second or third or fourth time because he shows no remorse and doesn’t admit or apologize for his "crime." If he’d just show remorse, maybe the parole board would give him a break. And different movies play out in different ways. In some, the stubborn innocent swears that he will die in prison before he will admit to a crime he never committed - and if he’s the hero, he gets out of jail anyway. And in other scenarios, the wrongly imprisoned inmate, concluding that the only way he will ever get parole is to "confess" and "apologize" - does exactly that and is granted parole, only later to prove that he was wrongly convicted in the first place.

I’m not saying that George Ryan was wrongly convicted - only that he’s acting like one of those movie characters - the one that will say whatever he thinks he needs to say to help him get out of jail. And now the Willis parents are adding to the "B" movie atmosphere of this whole affair - saying that they want to meet with Ryan in jail, look him in the eye so that they can determine the sincerity of his "apology" and so that they can forgive him!!!

I don’t think Bush will grant Ryan clemency - and for sure he won’t get it from an incoming president. But he would have stood a better chance if he had stayed silent while others petitioned on his behalf. Clemency was never going to be dependent on the merits of his case or on admissions of guilt and expressions of remorse. All that the Ryan "letter of apology" reveals is that the former governor is capable of being disingenuous - something that we all knew anyway. I was sympathetic to his plea before this letter surfaced - but a lot less so today.
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Twenty nine days to inauguration day and every day that we get closer to the grand event, I become more and more convinced that we need a royal family. I’m old enough to remember the coronation of Queen Elizabeth - and from what I remember of the details of that event, it didn’t hold a candle to what’s about to unfold in Washington on January 20th.

There’s no question that the inauguration of a new president is a major event in the life of this country - but does it need to be the super bowl, the academy awards, D-Day, VJ-Day and a royal coronation all wrapped up in a single event? Alerts are being broadcast about the difficulties one might encounter being in Washington on that day as though it is or will be a war zone!! If you’re a mere citizen that is. Not a hotel room to be had. Not a cab to be hailed. Not a public toilet available to relieve your urge to purge. No backpacks, strollers , umbrellas and a host of other items banned from anywhere close to inaugural activities. Very little to indicate that we live in a democracy in which ordinary people have just elected a new government. But everything imaginable to indicate that something akin to the coronation of a King for Life is about to take place.

Since our beginning, the roles of chief executive and national symbol have been combined in one individual - adding to the idea that the President of the United States is some sort of exalted individual with inherited powers above and beyond those of political leaders in other democracies that have a separate individual with the title and responsibilities of a national symbol. The British Parliamentary system comes to mind of course. Prime ministers of England are not thought of or treated as "exalted" figures. There’s no British version of "Hail to the Chief" for British Prime Ministers. When pomp and ceremony is called for , the royal family is available. I know the reason we are not today a loyal member nation of the British empire can be mostly attributed to our founding fathers’ decision to eschew all forms of royalty from our form of government - but maybe, when we broke away from King George lll, we should have created a substitute office to represent us all in ceremonial matters - maybe someone to run on a ticket with presidential and vice presidential candidates as "ceremonial president."

I don’t know about you, but I think the idea of having a ceremonial head of state and getting rid of inauguration pomp and circumstance is a more appropriate way of honoring and celebrating our democracy.

Probably a hell of a lot cheaper too.
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Still on the subject of the inauguration, count me as one who is disappointed at the selection of Rick Warren to give the invocation prayer at the royal event. President Elect Obama is defending the choice as typifying his expressed desire to reach out to all corners of our society - to make room for everyone under the national tent - to respect ideas that we don’t necessarily agree with - to be tolerant of all points of view, particularly religious points of view. Sure - that’s exactly why he chose Warren - to demonstrate what kind of people he wants us all to be. In selecting Rick Warren, he’s "reaching out" to evangelicals. An example if you will of the "change" that he’s been promising.

It’s change all right. A concerted effort to lure votes of evangelicals away from their traditional home and move them over to the Democratic column. It’s purely a political move and I think it’s a bad one. Maybe Obama won a few more evangelicals than a Democratic candidate usually wins in presidential elections - but their votes didn’t make a significant contribution to the final totals. He didn’t need evangelical votes to win and I think that’s a good thing.

Religion and politics are of course intertwined. No one can run for president without professing some sort of religious faith. We’re supposed to have a separation of church and state, but that separation becomes blurred during presidential campaigns. People of strong religious beliefs - and that’s a description that fits evangelicals - will vote for the presidential candidate whose views on certain topics are the closest to theirs - or perhaps are less in opposition to theirs. And if evangelicals become strong enough to swing close elections - that becomes dangerous. Think about it for a minute. How different are evangelical beliefs from those of theocracies - nations that we consider our enemies, run by people who we more or less think of as madmen? Yes, evangelicals have a different faith. They’re Christians - the nut cases are Muslims. But apart from the specifics - both would rather have a theocracy than a democracy - and the nuts have already achieved that.

A smart politician knows that he has to respect the power of evangelical voters, so he doesn’t want to appear to ignore them or not acknowledge their legitimacy and the legitimacy of their beliefs. But if that smart politician wants to steer a course that keeps religious beliefs, particularly extreme religious beliefs from being too decisive a factor in elections, he’s going to avoid the appearance of openly courting their vote strictly on the basis of their religion,. Doing so could have two undesirable outcomes - inadvertently strengthening the political power of the extremists while turning off supporters who don’t share their extreme beliefs.

It’s possible that Obama is accomplishing both of these things with the selection of Rick Warren to give the inaugural invocation. It was bad enough when Obama submitted himself to questioning by Warren in front of an evangelical audience during the presidential campaign - something he wasn’t able to refuse to do unless McCain had joined him in turning down the "invitation" - and there was no way that was going to happen with evangelicals considered part of the Republican "base." But he could have chosen anyone he wanted to for the honor of joining him on the inaugural dais . The best choice would have been someone not considered to be controversial. Not someone who equates abortion with the holocaust. Not someone who believes that natural disasters are the result of "sin." Not someone who doesn’t believe in evolution. Not someone who believes that Christianity is the true religion - and the rest of us are headed straight for hell. He might as well have chosen Jeremiah Wright to offer the inaugural prayer for all the "reaching out" that will be accomplished by choosing Rick Warren. In my view, he’s chosen badly - a big disappointment for one who has been and continues to be a strong supporter of Barack Obama.
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Finally - while I was concentrating on other things, the Fed lowered interest rates last week. Sneaky Feds. Now banks can loan each other money overnight and it’ll only cost a quarter of a percentage point in interest. And, like all of the previous key rate cuts that have been made since it stood at 5.5% in September of 2007, it is doing and will be doing not one damn bit of good. Of course you might get an argument from people who are refinancing or trying to refinance their mortgages at a more attractive rate - but those people have been trying to do that anyway and it isn’t much help getting a lower interest rate on your mortgage if you’ve lost your job and the only security you had other than employment was some interest bearing investment that just got cut down to almost nothing.

I’m no economist but I don’t think I have to have expertise in what many consider to be a voodoo science to conclude that lowering interest rates is NOT the magic bullet that some members of economic royalty consider it to be. The Fed might as well cut the rate to zero - maybe even create reverse interest rates. Banks will PAY overnight borrowers an incentive percentage to induce them to borrow. Yes it sounds crazy - but with the financial world in turmoil and our economy in a tailspin, maybe it will take something just as crazy to snap us out of it.

The Fed members can stroke their beards and look wise and worried all they like, but the billions of bail out money isn’t loosening the purse strings of big banks - except perhaps to pay out bonuses and hold parties - and it isn’t stemming the flow of job losses - which seem to be growing exponentially. At the same time - while the interest rate cuts haven’t loosened those purse strings - while money isn’t flowing to would be start up companies or to small businesses struggling to stay afloat - witness the debacle of Republic Windows - States and Cities struggling to meet their expenses in an era of diminishing revenues, are receiving less and less of those revenues from interest bearing investments.

I don’t have any magic bullet suggestions to make myself. As I said, I’m no economist. I don’t practice voodoo. But my reaction to last week’s rate cut from the Fed is what it would have been had I been bloggoing last week and commented upon it then. Ho hum. Or in the word (singular) of Darth Vador - recently masquerading as vice president Dick Cheney - "SO??"

We’ll come out of this recession - maybe after it becomes a certified depression - but I suspect that only economists will be able to look back and assert that all the Fed rate cuts made a measurable contribution to the recovery. And I suspect that though they’ll say it, they won’t understand it any better than we mere mortals.
posted by Jeff Smith at 12/22/2008 04:26:00 PM

 
THE DEATH OF SIX CHILDREN IN AN AUTOMOBILE ACCIDENT SHOULD PLAY NO PART IN CONSIDERING GEORGE RYAN’S PLEA TO REDUCE HIS JAIL SENTENCE

It may seem a little odd to be lending support to the idea of commuting George Ryan’s jail sentence to time served on the day after the sitting governor of the State of Illinois gets arrested on charges of conspiracy to commit crimes- but that’s just what I’m doing in today’s comments. First a quick word about the Blagojavich arrest. I know that everyone accused of a crime is entitled to be presumed innocent until a judge or jury finds otherwise - but this is one guy who needs to go directly to the psychiatric wing of the nearest jail without pausing to pass go or collect $200. Blago isn’t just a crooked politician. He’s a crooked politician operating with at least six cards less than a full deck. Compared to him, Ryan was a veritable saint. Which isn’t why I support the idea of clemency for our currently incarcerated ex- governor.

Whatever crimes Ryan committed while he was governor and before that secretary of state - he didn’t manage to enrich himself. He’s lost his state pension - and from everything I’ve read, he has no investments other than his house - so when he does get out - at age 75 if his sentence is commuted - and at age 80 if not, he’ll be living on social security. If he manages to stay alive for another five years. So I agree with Senator Dick Durbin that the former governor’s life has been ruined. He has nothing left but to live out whatever years he has left in disgrace. He has an aging wife who needs his help, so what is to be gained by keeping him in jail? He’s no danger to anyone and he didn’t cause grievous harm to anyone while he served as an elected official. Or did he? That’s the question for which those who vehemently oppose any reduction in his sentence have an unequivocal answer - and the leaders of the "throw away the key" crowd with whom I have disagreement, are the Chicago Tribune editorial board and Tribune columnist John Kass.

Although Ryan wasn’t convicted of murder or involuntary manslaughter or any other crime relating to the cause of bodily harm, he has been tried and convicted in the press of causing the death of six children in a horrible crash on a Wisconsin expressway that involved a truck driver who had secured a commercial driving license by paying a bribe while Ryan was Secretary of State. Apparently bribing driving license examiners was a common practice while Ryan held that office. As I recall, it wasn’t unheard of when I got my driver’s license a thousand years ago. I didn’t have to pay anyone but I heard stories of those who did. Although Ryan was never accused of any crime directly related to that fatal crash, it was there in the courtroom throughout his corruption trial. And all over the pages of the Chicago Tribune. And whenever columnist John Kass wrote about the trial, he was sure to include a mention of the death of the six Willis children. Now the Tribune editorial board and John Kass are opposing clemency for Ryan and in both cases - on the editorial page and in the Kass column - the death of those children has again been mentioned as though it was one of the crimes for which Ryan is serving time.

According to news reports, the crash occurred because a piece of the truck that the illegal license holder was driving, was dangling dangerously and was about to fall off. It is alleged that other drivers tried to warn him, but that he didn’t understand what they were saying because he spoke and understood only Spanish. Federal law says that truck drivers have to know English to obtain a commercial driver’s license - but this driver got his license anyway and his lack of English language skill is being blamed as the direct cause of the accident and Ryan was and is blamed indirectly because the non English speaking driver got that license under his watch. For the want of a nail the shoe was lost etc etc. Thus Ryan should be blamed for the death of those kids. Q.E.D. Which at the very least is convoluted reasoning.

For eight months out of the year, I have a crew of gardeners who come and mow my lawn and trim bushes and generally clean up. They arrive in a truck pulling a large trailer and not one of them speaks a word of English. The owner of the landscaping company speaks enough English to get by, but not one of his workers, including the ones who drive his trucks. I have to assume that whoever does the driving has a legitimate driving license - as do the thousands of other non English speaking Hispanics who drive on Illinois roads. And I have to assume that this is O.K. with the Secretary of State of the State of Illinois, because Illinois Rules of the Road publications are available from that office in Spanish. The point is that the accident that resulted in the death of six children had no direct relationship to the legitimacy of the driver’s license of the truck driver involved in the crash. Yet because he had paid a bribe to get the license that he perhaps could have obtained legitimately at one of the motor vehicle facilities where bribes were not being solicited, Ryan was blamed for the deaths.

The Chicago Tribune and columnist Kass are not the only ones objecting to Senator Durbin’s request for a presidential commutation of Ryan’s sentence. A local Republican congressman is against it. So is the Democratic Illinois Attorney General. But they are the only ones that include the death of the Willis children in the body of their written objections - as though those deaths were an issue to be considered when weighing the pros and cons of commuting his sentence to time served. At the moment, I would think the chances of a commutation plea being successful aren’t looking too rosy - if only because one of the people who has voiced support for Durbin’s plea is one Rod Blagojevich!!

In the interest of full disclosure I have to say that I voted for George Ryan - twice. That isn’t to say that I approved of the actions for which he was convicted and sentenced - but I thought of them as being more the old fashioned way of doing business in Illinois rather than some sort of masterminded criminal activity - and I didn’t agree with the prosecution’s assertion that Illinois taxpayers were severely harmed by them. Still, you’d have thought that Blagojevich would have understood what the new rules were and would have run things accordingly - but then as I noted above, this is someone with a brain not connecting on all cylinders.

But my main point in writing these comments is to repeat my objection - voiced here before - to the Chicago Tribune , John Kass and others, convicting George Ryan of being responsible for the death of six children without the benefit of a trial. It is unfair and the accusation is false. And it should not be an issue to be considered by those who will be recommending a yes or no decision to President Bush.
posted by Jeff Smith at 12/10/2008 02:48:00 PM

 
CAN’T WAIT FOR A PRESIDENT OBAMA? LET’S CHANGE THE CONSTITUTION

Anyone who follows Israeli politics knows what a crazy quilt system they have. They have anywhere from 15 to 20 parties involved in national elections and any party getting as much as two percent of the vote can place a representative in the Knesset. Israelis don’t vote for individuals - just for a party. With this nutty system there’s almost never one party that wins a sufficient majority to form a government - so the party that finishes up with the most votes has to put together a coalition - which often includes parties that won the tinniest fraction of the overall vote. You sometimes wonder how they manage to survive as a democracy and are able to change governments relatively smoothly with such a cockamamie system. Can you imagine what our elections would be like if we had to deal with the Israeli system? The election would be held, the votes counted, and no party would emerge with enough votes to be able to declare itself the winner - so whichever party won the most votes would have to go to work to put together the elements of a new government - a task that could take weeks - maybe as long as 77 days - and in the meantime there would be a lame duck government running the country.

Well of course we don’t have that kind of system - but we do have similarities that are - in my humble opinion - just as cockamamie. You’d think that in a rational world - and in a democratic society -that once a national election is over and a winner declared, there’d be a new government ready to take over. The old guard would exit graciously and the new crowd would move in - the two groups nodding to each other politely as they passed by on the White House lawn.. A smooth, seamless transition. So smooth that in a complicated world where crises could erupt at any moment, our involvement or relationship to those crises would be affected not one whit by the change in our government. Except of course that our government would not have been changed - it would only be in the process of being formed in preparation for a change. We would be undergoing an "Israeli moment" - as we are now experiencing in the count down to January 20, 2009.

Barack Obama keeps telling us that we only have one president at a time - but that’s only technically correct. In reality we have two presidents - an old one keeping things running with a caretaker government while a new one puts the new government together and begins to set the policy basics of his administration . I’m not sure what you’d call this intermediate period of time - other than confusing. We could of course call it the "period of punditry." As each member of the new government is selected or as individual selections appear to be imminent - .pundits and panels of pundits fill the airways and newspaper and magazine pages with endless speculation about who will be chosen - why they are qualified or not qualified and what hidden meanings we should glean from various selections. It’s almost like a second round of the election - with confirmation hearings yet to come on the ministerial selections.

Although the Bush administration is in a "winding down" mode, we’re not exactly without leadership. If some critical event occurs that requires an immediate presidential decision, we have someone in office who can make that decision. Nonetheless, this "no man’s land" period of limbo between a national election and the assumption of power by a newly elected president and his cabinet members has to qualify as a routine period of concern. It would be far better if the new president could take over in a much shorter time - say a week after the election has been decided. We could do away with the casting of electoral votes - or have them cast immediately - maybe by e-mail. And if we couldn’t do that, maybe we could pick up on Jeb Bush’s latest idea - and have a "shadow government" in place and ready to take over before any election is even held. A permanent shadow government that’s in place throughout the entire term of the administration in power.

That’s the parliamentary method practiced in England and it works well there. Whenever there’s a change in that government - from Conservative to Labour (yes, that's how they spell it) or - as is likely in their next election - from Labour to Conservative, the voters know in advance who will be filling major governmental posts , because the party not in power maintains a "shadow government." If the Conservatives win the next election, David Cameron will become Prime Minister and other ministerial posts will be filled by Conservative M.P.’s who already hold those posts in the shadow government. There’ll be no speculation about who will be picked for what job and there’ll be no surprises revealed by "vetting." And best of all there’s no need for extended punditry about any of these issues following a national election - for which the British public must be eternally grateful - particularly those who have visited these shores during our presidential election season.

Of course the drawback in Jeb Bush’s idea is the business of primaries. You can’t very well have a shadow government unless you know who your party’s presidential nominee will be - but you could have something like it without calling it a shadow government so that Republicans could speak with one voice on specific issues. That would call for a new way to look at political party structure and perhaps the reintroduction of the "smoke filled rooms" with insiders picking the major players. You’d still have to have primaries. Messy at it is, that’s become the established way of picking presidential candidates . But if the shadow government concept could be established - and if members of the party out of power found it working to their advantage - a strong presidential nominee could emerge before the primary season even began - and we cold be spared the sight of all those presidential wannabes displaying their egos for months on end.

But the change that would be most desirable would be to shorten the time between the known outcome of a presidential election and the swearing in of a new president. The shorter the time, the less vulnerable we would be to fast moving world events. The first inauguration day - that of George Washington, was set for March 4, giving states nearly four months to cast their ballots. With information moving by horseback, it made sense in 1789. The twentieth amendment changed it to January 20- and while we weren’t confined to horses to move information in 1933, perhaps a 77 day interval was appropriate for a slower time in history. But it makes little sense in the twenty first century. Any newly elected president worth his salt already knows who he wants as his cabinet members way before November 4 - and there’s no way that a sitting president needs 77 days to move out of the White House.

On April 1, 1997, the British voting public went to the polls and substituted a Labour majority for the ruling Conservative party. The turnout among eligible voters was 71.3% - the lowest in years. We should have such a "low" turnout. But more instructive to us is what happened after all the votes had been counted. Conservative party Prime Minister John Major resigned and Tony Blair became the new Prime Minister on April 3,1997!! Note the date. Two days after the election. One government out and a new one in. There were no known pundit suicides, no riots in the streets and the London stock exchange opened and closed that day without incident.

We got the basics of our common law from the mother country and in some ways improved on them. But then we put together that darned constitution - something the mother country doesn’t have, making it difficult for us to make rational changes in the way we conduct ourselves when they scream out for change. But we can change if there’s a will. All we need is another amendment to that impediment of a constitution. Who would argue with shortening the time between a presidential election and the swearing in of a new president? So let this humble blog be the first plea for a new amendment changing the time between election and inauguration to one week or less. Congress take note.
posted by Jeff Smith at 12/04/2008 10:10:00 AM

 
FORGIVING LIEBERMAN A HARD NUT TO SWALLOW

I’m sorry but I just can’t get over the idea of Joe Lieberman keeping his chairmanship of the Senate Homeland Security Committee and continuing to caucus with the Senate Democrats - up to three weeks ago his arch enemies, led by someone he said was lacking the skills and experience to become President of the United States.

I know harsh things are said about each other by opponents in party primaries - said by people who are members of the same party, who would never dream of speaking at a rival party’s convention or support a rival party’s candidate for the presidency. So we had Hillary Clinton saying that she and John McCain had lots of experience to offer while Obama had a speech as the core of his resume. And we had Joe Biden accusing Obama of not supporting the troops. The more I hear those kinds of attacks during presidential primaries, the more I pine for the smoke filled rooms with party members choosing candidates behind closed doors. Primaries may be more democratic - small d - but they can also be more destructive and when the primary season ends and candidates are chosen - the two candidates for the office in question have a basket of ammunition to hurl at each other - courtesy of their opponent’s fellow party members. Still, former primary opponents usually band together to support whoever wins their competition - and so we have Vice President Biden and Secretary of State Clinton.

But Joe Lieberman is a whole other kettle of fish. To me, he represents a bar lowered to a level that should never be reached in presidential politics - and I’m deeply disappointed at the way Obama and members of the Democratic Senate caucus have allowed him to slither under it. Lieberman accumulated his seniority status and thus his committee chairmanship, as a member of the Democratic party. Even after his most recent reelection when he ran after losing the Democratic primary - he ran as - and still calls himself - an Independent Democrat. That alone makes it difficult for his former Democratic colleagues to forgive his endorsement of John McCain for president - but had he left it at that, even I, who have lost all respect for the man, would not have condemned him. After all, he’s known McCain for years, considers him a friend and most likely was genuine in his belief that McCain would make a better president than Obama. But he didn’t leave it at that. He spoke at the Republican convention, campaigned vigorously for and with McCain - and attacked Obama just as vigorously. Now he wants to be welcomed back to the Democratic caucus and regrettably, Obama is accommodating him.

Some insist that by saying that he holds no grudge and by urging the Democratic caucus to welcome Lieberman back into the Democratic fold - Obama is demonstrating an aspect of the "change" that he has been promising - the aspect of reaching out to those who oppose him - to be bipartisan in his relations with the House and Senate. I think he is demonstrating something else - something perilously close to a lack of judgment on matters of ethical responsibility and culpability. I’m sure there is a limit to how many times the future president is willing to turn the other cheek in his effort to promote political harmony. But if Lieberman’s behavior doesn’t reach that tolerance limit, you have to wonder what does - or what will.

Examples abound of terrible behavior being tolerated in order to achieve some goal. The most common example is in what is tolerated in sports - football in particular, where a blind eye is often turned to irresponsible behavior off the field as long as game performance contributes to a winning season. But even team owners and coaches who subscribe to the belief that winning is "everything" have their limits in what kind of behavior they’ll accept in return for an exceptional ability to run, throw or catch. And star players have been let go when their behavior reaches an intolerable level - even when their absence diminishes the team’s chances of winning.

What Obama seems to be signaling is that he has a virtually unlimited tolerance level for what most of the people who supported him would view as totally unacceptable behavior. To me this translates into a misguided sense of the worth of political accommodation and its value above ethical considerations. As I’ve said, you have to wonder what it would take for Obama to refrain from holding out the hand of reconciliation. You have to wonder how such an attitude might translate into dealing with the despots of the world. You have to wonder where Obama would draw the line - at what point he would view behavior as unacceptable and conduct himself accordingly.

I watched Keith Olbermann play a tape of a Joe Lieberman post election interview last night in which he denied ever saying that Obama wasn’t ready to be president - followed by a tape of a much earlier interview in which he said exactly that - after which Keith declared him last night’s "Worse Person in the World." I think he has lost all credibility and shouldn’t be running a committee as important as Homeland Security. If Obama needs a critical Senate vote or two to get legislation past potential filibusters, I think he’d be better off looking for it across the aisle - to people like George Voinovich or Olympia Snow. The cost of getting it from Joe Lieberman is just too high.
posted by Jeff Smith at 11/25/2008 01:34:00 PM

 
THE ENDLESS SILLY SEASON - STARRING CARIBOU BARBIE

In most democracies, campaigning for public office ends after votes have been counted and the winners declared. We are one of those democracies - or at least we used to be. But apparently not any more. No one is challenging the declaration of Barack Obama as the 44th President of the United States - and while he has yet to announce his intention to run again in 2012 - the campaign for that election seems to be well under way. And there’s still 64 days before Obama is sworn in for his first term!! And who are the pundits talking about as a possible candidate four years from now? Sarah Palin!! She who started out as a gimmick to try to boost the already doomed to failure candidacy of John McCain, is being spoken of as someone to be taken seriously as the future face of the Republican party. To which all dedicated Democrats are parroting and paraphrasing the departing president - "bring her on!!!"

The rest of the world, while applauding our selection of Barack Obama to lead us for the next four years, must think we are nuts. A nation with a split personality. I prefer to think of it as a joke being perpetuated by television talking heads who are looking for something to replace their lead story of the past two years. I can’t believe that these pundits who continue to interview, talk about and focus their cameras on the lady from Alaska are serious when they talk about her as being a serious future player on the world scene. Not when she continues to write dialogue for Tina Fey. What could the comedy writers add to this for a comedy routine? Sarah in one of her endless post election interviews about herself

"I’m like, OK, God, if there is an open door for me somewhere, this is what I always pray, I’m like, don’t let me miss the open door. And if there is an open door in ‘12 or four years later, and if it is something that is going to be good for my family, for my state, for my nation, an opportunity for me, then I’ll plow through that door."

On the other hand, we’ve already had a leader who went to war because God told him to do so - so maybe the thought of divine door opening isn’t just something for Tina Fey to make us laugh about - but something to give us concern. If a Michelle Bachman could get reelected to Michigan’s sixth congressional district after revealing herself as someone at least two card short of a full deck during her appearance on Hardball with Chris Matthews, you have to believe that anything could happen!!

I mean, what have we come to folks? We’ve just had a chance to breathe a few sighs of relief that the election campaign - otherwise known as "The Silly Season" is finally over - when it begins all over again with a cast of comic book characters. We should be having serious discussions about the problems facing the nation and the world and how Obama will tackle them - and we’re seeing and hearing Sarah Palin on our television screens day and night. And John McCain isn’t making it any better. One minute he’s relaxed and joking with Jay Leno and people who have known him for years are smiling and saying the old McCain is back. The next thing you know, he’s saying how proud he is of his running mate and urging the reelection of Saxby Chamblis to the Senate from Georgia. . That’s the same Saxby Chanblis whose 2002 campaign ads in his race against Max Cleland McCain called "worse than disgraceful."

I know that all is supposed to be fair (or unfair) - in love, war and politics - but at a moment in history when we have made history - when we have shown that we have finally matured as a people - have reached adulthood if you will - we have one of the principals in the just concluded struggle acting like a child, egged on with words of praise from the defeated Republican candidate and with our media presenting her antics to us as though what she is saying and doing should be taken seriously. I know that Democratic strategists - and perhaps even Obama himself - are salivating over the ridiculous possibility that the Republican party will try to resurrect itself using Sarah Palin as its linchpin - but I will be astonished and more than just a little worried about the state of our national sanity if the fascination with Caribou Barbie as a possible future president extends beyond Thanksgiving.

Maybe after November 27 we will have had our fill of turkey and turn our attention to the serious business of repairing the damage done to our country over the last eight years.
posted by Jeff Smith at 11/17/2008 01:50:00 PM

 
POST ELECTION THOUGHTS

On local results and on Nader and Lieberman…..

I had a few more thoughts about the election - but they didn’t fit in with the theme of what I wrote on November 4th and 6th - so I’ll express them here.

First of all, not everyone that I voted for was elected and frankly I didn’t expect them to be elected because we’re talking about the Democratic stranglehold on Cook County, Illinois - a place where political offices are more like businesses - in some cases family businesses!! It’s virtually impossible to oust the entrenched office holders in the county and in the city of Chicago and this election was business as usual. About the only way office holders get removed in this part of the world is when they get indicted and convicted.

I don’t know how it is in the rest of the country but I would imagine that similar conditions exist in other counties and states where one party has been in power for decades. For example, in Cook County, we elect our judges and I have no doubt that 99% of the people who elect them have no idea who they are and what skills they have. The concept is so disingenuous that we have had lawyers change their surnames so that they could appear on the ballot as someone with an ethnic background that would appeal to a large segment of the electorate. And once judges are elected, they run on a "retention ballot" which would require a huge number of voters to vote "no" for them to lose their jobs - something that almost never happens.

We have just had a national election that has resulted in a shift of power to the left and where strongly entrenched incumbents have been ousted by an aroused electorate. But none of this has trickled down to the local level - to the kind of local offices that should be appointed rather than elected - so they continue to be part of the "ownership society" - the "ownership" of local political offices by a single party, able to manipulate the voters to do their bidding, election after election. It gets frustrating voting against these entrenched office holders but I keep doing it, hoping that one day I’ll be joined by more than a token number of fellow protesters.

Less frustrating - actually pleasurable, was the total non-effect of Ralph Nader on the outcome of the presidential election. Unfortunately - and here I’m making a prediction - it won’t convince him to stop his emergence every four years to declare that there’s no difference between the two major presidential candidates and that he is the answer to America’s future. The ego of this man is truly something to behold. We used to have someone in the Chicago area who ran in election after election - for whatever office might be available to run for. His name was Lar "America First" Daly. He would campaign driving around town proclaiming his nonsense from a sound truck, wearing an Uncle Sam suit. He was a nuisance but also a local joke for years. The only difference between him and Nader is that Nader only runs for one office and only does it every four years. Daly didn’t see himself as a clown and neither does Nader - which is why I predict he’ll be back. You can insult the man to his face and point out the illogic of his quadrennial quest in seventeen languages - and he will tell you that you’re the one who doesn’t understand our democracy and our electoral process. With a withering look yet.

Totally frustrating is the possibility that Joe Lieberman will not be dealt with as he should be dealt with - as the sole member of the Lieberman party - motto "Lieberman for Lieberman." I have pretty much approved of the moves Barack Obama has made since he won the election. He’s looked and sounded comfortably presidential. But there’s no way I can agree with his belief that "bygones should be bygones" and that Joe the defector should keep his committee chairmanship and continue to caucus with the Democratic majority.

I know Lieberman was Obama’s mentor when he arrived in the Senate - but he didn’t just endorse a Republican for president - he campaigned for him and for Sarah Palin and attacked Barack Obama. And this after he ran for vice president on the Democratic ticket eight years ago. Forgiveness may be divine but I think Joe would more likely be facing wrath than forgiveness if he was pleading his case to a deity.

I know the Democrats have not yet reached the magical, filibuster proof 60 number in the Senate and that they would like to have as many votes as possible available to them on critical issues where Republicans are likely to disagree - but there has to be a limit to the behavior they will tolerate just to rack up one extra vote - and then only when it suits the Senator from Connecticut to vote with the majority. Remember, this is a man who cares little for the will of voting members of his former party. A more principled man would have bowed to the will of those voting in Connecticut’s 2006 Democratic primary and allowed the winner to run against the Republican candidate. But Joe refused to abide by the will of the voters and - with George W Bush’s blessing - won re-election against the Democratic and Republican candidates with the votes of Republicans. He is a man not to be trusted and the Democrats should be happy to let him go and practice his brand of democratic principles with the Republicans.

I know the Democratic members of the Senate want to be as supportive as possible of the newly elected president and don’t want the relationship to get off on the wrong foot. But forgetting or ignoring the fact that they are a separate and equal branch of government would also be getting off on the wrong foot. The vote on Lieberman’s future with the Democratic caucus is by secret ballot. The senators should vote their conscience - and I hope it will be to add a bedspread to the bed that "Lieberman for Lieberman" Joe has made for himself to lie on.
posted by Jeff Smith at 11/11/2008 03:05:00 PM

 
YES WE DID

In the end, none of the nonsense mattered. Not Jeremiah Wright. Not Bill Ayres. Not Rashid Khalidi. Not the ridiculous notion that he wasn’t born in Hawaii and that his birth certificate was a fake. And I would imagine if his actual
birth announcement in the Honolulu Advertiser had surfaced earlier, that too would have been declared a fake by the right wing crazies.

In the end, the concept of an African American president was no longer fictional. In the end, life imitated art and those other fine presidents who were able to take over the reins of government at moments of crisis - James Earl Jones - Morgan Freeman and Tommy Lister.

In the end, more Americans voted for hope and against fear. And more Americans went to the polls to wipe away the stains of our history of slavery and discrimination. We were presented with the opportunity to say whether we had matured or not - whether we ready to take the next evolutionary step in this ongoing democratic experiment called the United States of America - and millions of us gave the answer that has uplifted our nation and has been greeted with cheers around the world - yes we can. And we did.

And yet it wasn’t perfect. Among the millions who went to the polls - there were some who cast votes that would seem to fly in the face of democracy - and of fairness and decency. It seems that a convicted felon will win reelection to the Senate where he will surely be ousted by his colleagues. What could the people of Alaska have been thinking? Haven’t they had enough of this longest serving, irascible political relic? And what were the people of Minnesota’s sixth congressional district thinking on November 4? How could they reelect Michelle Bachman - the crazy women who went on Hardball with Chris Matthews and accused Barack Obama of being anti-American and suggested that all members of congress should be investigated to see who is pro-American and who is anti-American. And in California, marriage between same sex couple that had been declared legal by the California Supreme Court - suddenly became illegal!!

And of course the right wing hate mongers didn’t even pause in their stride. My wife doesn’t approve when she’s with me in the car - but I am in the habit of punching in the local radio station that carries the right wing syndicated talkers all day long - just to see what garbage they’re peddling to their devoted listeners - and yesterday I punched in a minute or so of Rush Limbaugh - and there he was, voice dripping with derision, sneering at Obama and at some of the themes that he advanced during the campaign. A minute was all I could take - but Chicago Tribune columnist Eric Zorn managed to record the foul mouthed one’s election day program and published this gem from it in today’s column.

The conservative bloviator called Obama a socialist, twice referred to him as a "little squirrel" and warned that he was trying to steal the election. He also passed along reports that two members of the Black Panthers had been seen looking menacing outside a Philadelphia polling place. "Here’s the hope and change" he said. "If you’re going to vote today in Philadelphia, let me tell you what the hope and change is. If you bought into this notion of hope and change, the hope and change is that you don’t get killed. That you don’t get beat up by a Black Panther with a nightstick as you’re trying to vote against change."

As I said on November 4, before any results were known, I suspect that there will be people who will go through the next four or eight years proclaiming that the president isn’t their president. That probably would have happened to a lesser extent if McCain had been elected.

But I have a strong hunch that in the years ahead, hope will prevail over fear and disdain. That enough people will say - to quote the newly elected president - not this time!! Some of the solid "red" states turned a lighter hue in this election - and some changed color completely. Some pundits are predicting that even more will turn "blue" four years from now. The hate mongering talkers of the right kept up their ceaseless chatter throughout the eight years of the Clinton presidency - and still found plenty to deride and sneer at for the eight years when one of "their" presidents was in power. They’re probably all slobbering at the prospect of four or eight years of relentless attacks on Obama. I won’t call it criticism because criticism is not really what these folks do. But I have a hunch that Obama will change the landscape to such a degree that their influence will wane and that more and more radio station owners will decide along with us that enough is enough and that the country needs to move away from a diet of hate and towards something more palatable. Maybe even the companies that sponsor the garbage that these people spout will help to effect a move away from hate and fear and derision and decide to put their advertising dollars to work elsewhere.

It begins anew on January 20, 2009 when the rest of the world will echo what we who voted for Barack Obama will be proclaiming proudly from the rooftops. America is back!!!
posted by Jeff Smith at 11/06/2008 03:32:00 PM

 
PRE-ELECTION THOUGHTS

By the end of today I would imagine that most of us will be heaving sighs of relief - not that the election is finally over and that - unless we have a repeat of Bush v Gore - we have a president elect - but that we will no longer be subjected to the ridiculous campaign advertising that has marked this election as one of the most disgusting in my memory. And not just at the presidential level - to which I will refer shortly - but at county, state and congressional levels. We have some hotly contested congressional races in the Chicago metropolitan area and I have seen advertising on behalf of some candidates that should - in a rational society, result in their immediate removal for contention for anything above the level of dog catcher. Or maybe the level of the person who sweeps up at the dog pound.

What is so sad about nonsensical political advertising is the clear implication that the candidates - or their handlers - think that the public is stupid. What other conclusion could you reach when a television ad clams that the combination of President Bush and a sitting congressman was responsible for all that is currently wrong in the country? Or the claims of a sitting congress person that he or she has the power to affect all kinds of changes - or has already done so. All by himself or herself. Or of an ad by a sitting congressman that his opponent "likes taxes." And what is one to make of ads that claim a candidate is "fighting" for something or other - or will fight for something or other. Maybe that’s why it’s so difficult to accomplish anything in congress or in state legislatures. They’re all so damned busy fighting.

I have reached s point where I scream at the television screen when one of these ads appears. I also switch stations as fast as I can or mute the sound. Were I one of the voters to whom these ads are aimed, they would persuade me to do only one thing - to vote against the candidate who says that he or she has "approved" the ridiculous and insulting message.

Which brings me to the national campaign in which John McCain and his surrogates have accused Barack Obama of being a socialist, a communist, a Marxist and a wealth redistributor. And most recently, the fact that he and Rashid Khalidi both taught at the University of Chicago and that Khaldi is a Palestinian who might naturally support the Palestinian side of the conflict with Israel - and that he attended a farewell dinner and offered up a toast to Khaldi when he was leaving to join the faculty of Columbia University - was being used to smear him as being somehow anti-Israel. And even today, as both sides continue to hold rallies and air commercials - I wouldn’t be surprised is some new accusation is hurled at Obama. Maybe that he’s "anti-plumber" - or "anti-Joe." Here we are - or were - in the closing hours of what many believe is the most important election of our time - and the McCain campaign is centered around Joe the Plumber who isn’t Joe and isn’t a plumber!!

I spoke to my brother who lives in England over the weekend - and while interest in our election is high in the mother country - they have difficulty understanding our method of campaigning and the enormous sums spent to get messages across. Television advertising isn’t allowed in British elections - but then of course their national elections are all the sum of local elections. No one runs for Prime Minister nationally. Whichever party wins the most seats wins the election and both parties pre-select who will be Prime Minster - assuming he wins his parliamentary seat. With only local elections covering relatively small areas and small numbers of constituents, candidates can manage to get their messages to voters without the need for expensive and insulting broadcast advertising. That system wouldn’t work here but we need a better method than the one we’ve got.

If you’ve ever watched "Question Time in the House" on C-Span - you’ve seen Britain’s current Prime Minister argue with David Cameron, who would become Prime Minister if his party wins a majority of parliamentary seats in the next election. No "primaries" to determine who the opposition candidate for the highest office would be. It’s a known quantity. Mr. Cameron is the "shadow" Prime Minister and would assume that office of his party wins. But even if he did win - and here’s why I bring up the subject of how the English conduct their elections - very little would change. There are differences between the Labour (yes, that’s how it’s spelled) and the Conservative party - but not the sort of bitter disagreements that separate our parties. There’s are no religious issues. There are no "evangelicals" that support one party over another. There are no abortion issues with the parties on opposite sides of the issue. There’s no huge argument between the parties about their involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan. The social welfare programs that have been in place for years would continue under a Conservative government - maybe even improve, There are no voters threatening to leave the country if their candidate doesn’t win. There is no high level of suspicion between voters supporting opposing parties. No one’s "patriotism" is questioned. No one is accused of being "un-British." There is not a palpable level of hatred held by members of one party against the candidate of the opposing part.

Would that such was the case here. Much as I am disturbed at the attack advertising that has flooded the airways and filled our mailboxes during this campaign, I am even more disturbed at how bitterly divided we seem to be as individuals when it comes to our political references. You can see that bitterness in the faces and hear it in the voices of voters supporting the two candidates. Sometimes those differences are best revealed by those who make a living laughing at them. - as The Daily Show’s John Oliver did a few nights ago. As a comedy show, The Daily Show wants to evoke laughter and so they show how nonsensical some people can be in their beliefs - and on the surface, it’s funny. But beneath the surface it isn’t funny at all. There is hatred out there - coming from both sides, though I tend to believe there are more people who think the country is finished if Barack Obama wins than those who think John McCain will be a national disaster. We’ve seen it with the derisive use of Obama’s middle name by "warm up" acts at McCain and Palin rallies. We’ve seen it in the hateful e-mails and blog postings accusing Obama of being everything from un-American - or not even American - to being a secret agent of Islamic terrorists.

As much as this election has engendered a heightened interest in our democratic process with perhaps more people voting than in any previous election - it has also brought our differences into sharp focus - and these aren’t differences of nuance but of substance. No matter who wins today, there will be pleas for all Americans to rally round the new president, but I suspect that many of us will go through the next four - maybe eight years - proclaiming that he - whoever it is - isn’t our president. It’s been that way for the past eight years - with the hatred for George Bush reaching a fever pitch. I hope it doesn’t happen with either Obama or McCain in the White House - but it’s a small hope. We are too divided. There are too many small issues that divide us and loom large in our national elections. And we have a long way to go to get over our racial divide. We may indeed be the greatest country on earth but we have a long way to go to reach the America that Obama described in his 2004 Democratic convention speech - not a nation made up of Blue states and Red states - but a truly United States. Starting tonight, we’ll be tested to see how close we can come to being the nation of Obama’s dream. I wish us all luck.
posted by Jeff Smith at 11/04/2008 03:19:00 PM

 
THOUGHTS ON CHICAGO’S MURDER RATE

I live only a matter of 25 or 26 miles from the 7000 block of South Yale on Chicago’s south side, yet in so many ways, it’s as far away as a foreign country. It took the murder of Jennifer Hudson’s mother, brother and nephew to bring it closer - to make me pause and think, as I have dome so many times before, how lucky I am to be living in my suburb north of the city - and how tragic it is that in our great metropolitan area there are neighborhoods that are virtual war zones.

Jennifer Hudson is known the world over because of her academy award performance in Dream Girls - and millions knew her before that break out role because of her appearance on American Idol. It was a horrifying slaughter - a crime that would have been well reported no matter who the victims were. But the story would gave faded after a day or two - faded into the murky backdrop of Chicago’s murder rate - more killings this year than in New York or Los Angeles. There are neighborhoods on Chicago’s south and west sides where kids - just in the act of walking to school or on their way to or from a park or a friend’s house, put their lives on the line. Gang warfare abounds - and flying bullets don’t always reach their intended targets. Not when innocent kids are in the line of fire.

The story of the Hudson murders persists because of Jennifer’s fame. But the story is not that different from murders that are committed on Chicago’s south and west sides almost on a daily basis. The sound of gunfire is so common in some of these areas that people become used to it. It becomes part of the background of their daily lives. So it was that a neighbor of the Hudsons told news reporters that he and others heard the gunshots that most likely were the ones that killed Jennifer Hudson’s mother and brother - but did nothing - didn’t call the police because the sound of gunfire was a common event. What a sad, sad comment.

The Governor of the State of Illinois, the mayor and police chief of Chicago, have all expressed anger and dismay at Chicago’s rampant murder rate - and all three pledge to leave no stone unturned in their efforts to battle violent crime. And I think they’re sincere. I don’t necessarily subscribe to the cynical view that if most of the murders were taking place in an affluent, mostly white suburb, a state of emergency would already have been declared and the streets would be flooded with law enforcement personnel. I think the governor and the mayor and the police chief are doing all they can - but they are fighting an uphill battle against a tide of history that has yet to be stemmed.

In the suburb where I live - on my block and in the surrounding streets, black, white, Asian and Hispanic families live side by side without detectable friction - and in our suburb, violent crime is a rarity - and the most violent - murder - an extreme rarity. The commonality of our neighborhoods and our population isn’t racial or ethnic or religious. It’s our economic status and our basic values. We are middle class. We are home owners. We believe families begin with marriage and we respect the law. I guarantee you that if anyone in my immediate neighborhood heard gunshots in the night, they would dial 911 and they most likely would be out on the street a minute later to see if anyone was in trouble and if they could help.

In contrast, decades after the civil rights revolution, Chicago remains a heavily segregated city - with vast areas populated almost exclusively by people whose commonality is skin color. Large numbers of these populations lead lives insulated from the rest of the Chicago metropolitan area and have done so for decades. And living with violent crime has become a way of life for them with absolutely no sign that it will change in the immediate future. Gangs operate freely - in some cases ruling parts of some neighborhoods like a political party. A violent political party. It’s ironic that at a moment in our history when - in just a few days - an African American is likely to be elected President of the United States - it will make not one bit if difference to the lives of fellow African Americans living in these crime ridden areas of Chicago’s south and west sides.

Chicago’s Mayor Daley places the blame on too many guns in the hands of too many people - but he also says the obvious - that adult African American males need to take responsibility for themselves and their children and to speak up against the violence in their neighborhoods. Well we’ve seen the decent, law abiding folks in these neighborhoods "speak up" against violence. We’ve seen them marching with signs saying "stop the killing" or words to that effect. And we can imagine how impressed the gang bangers are by those marches. Of course there are African American fathers who do accept the responsibility of standing up to violence in these neighborhoods. They’re the ones who do call the police at the sound of gunshots. And they’re the ones who instill a sense of right and wrong in their children. But they, like the governor and the mayor and the police chief, are fighting an uphill battle against conditions that never seem to change.

I know psychologists and psychiatrists and criminologists and a whole bunch of other "ists" have explanations of the hows and the whys of gang formation and the genesis of crime in inner city neighborhoods - but that doesn’t contribute anything to the efforts to reduce the crime rate and to give mothers hope that their children won’t be added to Chicago’s horrifying murder statistics.

A majority of Chicago’s annual murders take place in areas heavily populated by African Americans and the majority of murder victims are African American. From this you can draw one of two conclusions. Either African Americans are naturally violence prone and will continue to commit violent crimes no matter where they live or work or how educated they may be - or there is something about being segregated from mainstream society and being born into and raised in a society so insulated from the mainstream that you don’t even speak the same language as someone living - as I and my neighbors do - 25 or 26 miles way - that makes violent crime a more common occurrence than in the rest of the metropolitan area.

I’m no psychologist or psychiatrist or criminologist, but I opt for the explanation that African Americans are no more and no less prone to violence than any other American - but that the perpetuation of ghetto like neighborhoods decade after decade is bad for the soul and more likely to be plagued by a greater crime rate than other neighborhoods. It needs to end. Great efforts have been made with the removal of high rise public housing that was built to keep African Americans segregated during the era of the first Mayor Daley - the father of Chicago’s current mayor. But as long as we remain the most segregated big city - close to three million population - in the United States, I don’t doubt that we’ll continue to be the murder capital of the nation.
posted by Jeff Smith at 10/30/2008 11:18:00 AM

 
AND THE HATE GOES ON

There must be something about rabid Republicans that closes their minds - not just to facts, not just to reason - but to simple requests to stop annoying others with their fantasies and "truths" from the mouths of the Limbaughs and Savages and their ilk. I’ve said it kindly here on more than one occasion - most recently on October 9 - don’t send me links to nonsense because I don’t click on them and I don’t read the stuff that you glean from nonsense sites and include in your e-mails. But still they keep coming. I’m flattered that some conservatives read me on a regular basis but I wish they would try to understand what it is they are reading.

For example, I don’t know how many people have sent me the petition asking the Senate to rescind their "vote" to extend social security benefits to illegal aliens - even though they’ve never paid into the system. There was no such vote of course and I have sent the explanation of what actually happened in the Senate over two years ago and on which this silly rumor is based - to people asking me to sign on to the petition. I don’t know if this particular "rumor" was started out of ignorance or malice - but given the nature of the current presidential campaign I would suspect the latter.

I have yet to receive links to absolute "proof" that the reason Obama has gone to Hawaii is not to have one last visit with his ailing grandmother who is not expected to live long enough to witness her grandson become the next President of the United States - but to "doctor" his allegedly phony birth certificate to prove that he was actually born in Hawaii and not Kenya or Iran or Indonesia or wherever the crazed ones insist he was born. But I expect they’ll be arriving - as did the false report about a McCain supporter being attacked and having a "B" carved into her face. The right wing nuts bought this ridiculous story and spread it all over the Internet - and of course some of my right wing friends sent it to me with a see what your people are doing?

A small aside on this "your people" business. I have already voted. I voted for Obama/Biden. I also voted for some Illinois Republicans on a lengthy ballot who I think could do a better job than their Democratic opponents. The process is called thinking. Considering the issues and the candidates before blindly stabbing at the screen of the voting machine.

Something has gone wrong with the Republican party. It has lost its way. It is being dominated not just by the fanatics of the religious right but by crazed individuals who believe every crazed thing they hear about Barack Obama. In his endorsement of Obama last Sunday, Colin Powell made it clear that the party he has belonged to and supported for so long, no longer represented his views. And more and more Republicans around the country are publicly "defecting" to the Obama camp. They see the hate filled campaign that has been conducted by McCain - or at least in his name - and they can’t find any way to support it or vote for their candidate. Good for them. Whatever one may think of the Democratic candidate and/or the Democratic party, there has been nothing in any of the Democratic advertising or stump speeches that has questioned the patriotism of John McCain or suggested that there was something suspicious about him. And there has been no record of anyone at any Obama rally shouting the sort of hate filled things that have been shouted at McCain and Palin rallies. During the third debate, when McCain was defending the people who come to his rallies, he actually tried to infer that similar things go on at Obama rallies - but of course there are no recordings to back up such an assertion. They just aren’t there. The hate in this election is all coming from one side.

The question of course is why this kind of campaign? There was some underhanded stuff in the campaign against John Kerry - mostly the swift boat garbage which, along with Watergate, gave us another phrase to use in describing the worst of our political system - indeed of our country. Any scandal is now some kind of "gate" and any underhanded attack on a political candidate is now "swiftboating." There were no rumors of infidelity, drug use or anti-Americanism aimed at Al Gore. Infidelity was used against Bill Clinton - but no one tried to prove that he wasn’t from Hope, Arkansas - and infidelity wasn’t enough to sink him. And you can go back as far as you like and look at the kind of campaigns Republicans ran against their Democratic presidential candidate and you won’t find anything quite like what is being hurled at Barack Obama. For those ultra conservatives in denial who say that say it isn’t so and maintain he’s being attacked because of his policies - I wish they would tell me what policy difference is described in this latest mailing by the RNC with these kind of words - "Terrorists" "Not Who You Think He Is"


I do believe that Barack Obama will be elected president on November 4. I believe that there are enough fair minded people - Democrats, Republicans and Independents whose skin colors are white and black and olive, who will overcome the automatic votes of died-in-the-wool Republicans who would vote for Mortimer Snerd if that name was on the ballot with an "R" after it - and the rabid right wingers who are filled with hate and dread at the very idea that someone like Barack Obama could ascend to the presidency.

I wanted to get these thoughts down as an addendum - a companion piece if you will - to what I wrote two days ago - and try to stay away from writing anything more about politics until after November 4. I have both hope and fear in my heart at what awaits us ten days from now. I think the election willbe a test of who we are as a people and what kind of country and world we want for our children and grandchildren. We’ll either pass or fail that test on November 4. You decide what constitutes success or failure.
posted by Jeff Smith at 10/25/2008 01:22:00 PM

 
THE REPUBLICAN ELECTION CESSPOOL - A FRIGHTENING VISION

I suppose most people aren’t particularly disturbed when they hear about polls that say a majority of us think the country is "going in the wrong direction." That may because most people agree with that sentiment. Maybe that’s why Barack Obama is ahead in the polls that measure how we feel about presidential candidates. But as of this morning - for me at least - those "going in the wrong direction" poll numbers have taken on a frightening new feeling. We are beginning to see more and more of a dark side of a portion of the American populace. I don’t know how large it is - but I think it’s large enough for the rest of us to be afraid. Afraid at the possibility that they may achieve the power they seek.

Over the past two or three weeks, I have become more and more concerned about the tone of the Republican presidential campaign. Both sides distort and exaggerate in their stump speeches and media ads. But only the Republicans have settled on a campaign of personal attack on the character and patriotism of the Democratic candidate. That campaign has attracted a following of mindless, right wing yahoos - and as far as I can see, they are being welcomed by John McCain and Sarah Palin.

Yes I know that there have been at least two occasions when Senator McCain has had to rebuke people at his rallies who have spoken hateful things about Obama into a microphone while their images were being captured on countless cameras. But there was no way McCain could have let those moments pass without stepping in to defend Senator Obama. It would have looked devastating on the evening news - or on You Tube. Even so, his supporters at those rallies booed his defense of Obama’s character and patriotism - and of course his ads and his running mate continue to supply reasons why rally attendees say the things they’ve been saying and will likely continue to do so. But even though he has been forced to chastise some of them, McCain defends his rally audiences as fine, upstanding Americans - along the way never failing to mention the veterans that show up to hear him or Sarah Palin speak - and attributes the cries of hatred and intolerance to a few fringe rowdies. You could almost buy into that defense and explanation if those unacceptable reactions occurred in a vacuum. But the cries of "terrorist" don’t come in response to criticism of Obama’s health care ideas - or "kill him" in response to a comparison of tax plans or "traitor" in response to criticism of his Iraq policy. The most vocal at the McCain/Palin rallies may indeed be rowdies - but they are responding to both candidates’ portrayal of Obama as someone not quite American whose motives are clouded in a smoke screen of unanswered questions.

The depth of the feelings that these expressions of hatred represent was brought home to me in chilling fashion the other day as I watched a news clip of a McCain rally. I don’t recall where he was speaking - but he was greeting the crowd and acknowledging veterans in attendance - presumably identified by wearing souvenir military regalia. Some people carry their military service with them into civilian life and for the rest of their lives. I was in the army for 3 year 77 days and the only thing I kept as a souvenir was my discharge papers. But I digress. The acknowledgment of veterans brought polite applause and moments later, the crowd broke into a chant of USA, USA - and chills ran down my spine.

I remember the saga of the impossible dream when the US hockey team defeated the Russians at the 1980 Olympics to the crowd’s chant of USA, USA - and chills ran up and down my spine at that time too. But they were chills of joy and amazement and exhilaration. We had done the impossible We had beaten the Russian ice hockey colossus and those chants said it all - it was US versus THEM. We were the good guys and they were the "enemy" and our jingoistic chant seemed appropriate. And to the most partisan among us, I suppose the candidate we are supporting for president could be thought of as the "good guy" and the other guy the "enemy." But they are not opponents in the same way we and the Russians were opponents. They are both Americans. Both of them love our country and what it stands for. You can yell "four more years" at a campaign rally if an incumbent is running. You can yell the name of your candidate. You can yell a slogan - "yes we can" or "you betcha betcha betcha." And I suppose, under some circumstances, if a candidate is being critical of a foreign country and asserting that in any kind of conflict, the USA would prevail, you could chant USA in support of that sentiment. But when one side in a presidential race has been demonizing the candidate of the other side - implying that he’s "not like us" and "sees America differently" - those chants of USA, USA sound very much like an "US" versus "THEM" chant - "US" being the American candidate and "Them" being something else. Something not quite American.

Then on Friday, a crazy women who voters elected to congress from Minnesota’s sixth district two years ago, appeared on MSNBC’s "Hardball" - questioning Obama’s patriotism and suggesting that the media investigate all 535 members of congress to determine who is pro-American and who is anti-American!!. She actually said those things. The reaction to this nonsense has been an outpouring of donations to the campaign of her Democratic challenger - not just from Minnesota but from all over the country. And yet, punching in one radio station after another while in my car the other day, I caught Michael Medved in the midst of what was obviously a statement of support of Michele Bachmann’s outrageous attempt to resurrect McCarthyism. What’s wrong with that kind of investigation he wanted to know - and he went on to cite the case of a congressman he once worked for who had engaged in activities that could be considered "anti-American." I didn’t stay long enough to catch the name, but I have to assume that he was talking about former congressman Ron Dellums. And you can read all points of view about him on line if you feel so inclined.

On Sunday General Colin Powell announced his support for Barack Obama in six and a half minutes of reasoned eloquence - and Rush "open mouth" Limbaugh promptly proclaimed that the endorsement was simply because of the color of Obama’s skin. Both Powell and Obama have black skin, though Powell’s is considerably less black than the Senator - despite the influence of Obama’s maternal Caucasian ancestry. But the fact that they both share African-American ancestry was enough for the foul mouth one. In a rational world, this would be a source of rolling in the aisles laughter. In a rational world, a crazed bigot like Limbaugh wouldn’t be allowed access to the airways. I don’t know who else from the world of right wing punditry has joined in this unvarnished display of racism - but I know there is support for it among the mindless on the right because I’ve seen and heard some of it and it’s scary. We know that racism didn’t die with the civil rights laws or with the ascendance of Oprah Winfrey and Tiger Woods - but for some time now it’s been beneath the surface and the chances of it becoming a disruptive force seemed to be slowly fading along with the generations that practiced and revered it. But now it’s back - out in the open with very little attempt to mask it as something other than what it is.

I don’t think it will end with the election of President Obama. We are not the country we once were. That could be an uplifting statement if I was talking about the progress we have made from the horrors of our own version of apartheid to today’s society, when millions of us have selected Barack Obama as our candidate for the presidency and millions of us will vote for him by or on November 4. But I’m talking about the country described by columnist Leonard Pitts in yesterday’s Chicago Tribune. In case you don’t have the time or inclination to read it, let me quote just one paragraph.

Then you look up one day and realize how profoundly that fear has changed your world. People are imprisoned without charges or access to attorneys, and it's routine. People are surveilled, their reading habits studied, their telephone usage logged, and it's commonplace. People, including children, end up on a secret list of those who are not allowed to fly, nobody will tell you why, there is no appeal, and it's ordinary. We swallow lies like candy, nod sagely at babblespeak, and it's unexceptional.

To those on the extreme right, there’s nothing wrong with this "new world" that Pitts described. To the rest of us it’s the reason we have worked for, sent our money to and - for those of us who believe in a deity - pray that Barack Obama will be elected the next President of the United States.
posted by Jeff Smith at 10/22/2008 11:35:00 AM

 
THE THIRD DEBATE AND WHAT IT REVEALED

I’m sure I have lots of company this morning - people sharing my sense of relief that the presidential "debates" are over. Once again, the third and final debate - the one characterized as John McCain’s last chance to pull off some sort of miracle - proved nothing and provided no worthwhile information. It did show the depth of McCain’s desperation as he launched attack after attack at Obama with nonsensical accusations. It also provided some moments of almost uncontrollable laughter courtesy of Senator McCain. That was when he tried to show some sort of dangerous relationship between Obama and the community organization group known as ACORN - a group that he praised to the high heavens when he was the keynote speaker at one of their events two years ago. But look what he said about them in Wednesday night’s debate when he tried to tie phony names on some ACORN voter registration sheets to Obama.

We need to know the full extent of Sen. Obama's relationship with ACORN, who is now on the verge of maybe perpetrating one of the greatest frauds in voter history in this country, maybe destroying the fabric of democracy.

The laughter of course was induced by the idea of $8 an hour workers filling their voter registration sheets with names like Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck and whatever other non existent people’s names to make it look like they really worked hard and registered a lot of people - "destroying the fabric of democracy." Of course if, as has been reported, these people were only being paid $8 an hour, I don’t blame them for padding their actual work with imaginary work. $8 an hour? Come on ACORN - you can do better than that.

But Senator McCain also knows better than that. He knows that there’s no voter fraud. The phony registrants aren’t going to show up to vote. They don’t exist. Unless of course there’s a nefarious plan afoot to have people who are registered voters, first vote as themselves and then come back later as Mickey Mouse or whatever - along with appropriate credentials to prove that they are indeed Disney characters. Destroying the fabric of democracy? If McCain hadn’t already dealt enough near fatal blows to his own candidacy, surely he must have added one with that ridiculous statement - that and the equally astonishing statement responding to Obama saying that he was for a law banning so called "partial birth abortion" provided that it included an exception for the health and life of the mother -

Just again, the example of the eloquence of Sen. Obama. He's health for the mother. You know, that's been stretched by the pro-abortion movement in America to mean almost anything. That's the extreme pro-abortion position, quote, "health."

Yes, that won him all the women who, up to that revealing moment of Senator McCain’s understanding and sensitivity, had been sitting on the fence.

On the other hand, the idea that voters can be persuaded to cast their ballot for a candidate for the presidency based on something he or she may say on one of these televised "debate" still puzzles and irritates me. Some say that Ronald Reagan turned the tide in his favor after his single "there you go again" remark to Jimmy Carter. Certainly he was slightly behind in the polls before the 1980 campaign’s one debate between the two of them. But - amusing as it was - a four word phrase swinging voters from Carter or undecided to Reagan ? Who could have been so persuaded - other than Yahoos of course. Which brings me back to the third McCain Obama debate and another example of McCain’s desperation - invoking the "story" of Joe the Plumber.

We all know by now that he isn’t "Joe" - that he isn’t a licensed plumber, that he’s behind in paying local taxes, that his last year’s salary of approximately $40,000 would earn him a tax reduction under Obama’s proposed tax plan, that the small business he works for clears closer to $100,000 a year than $200,000 and that there’s no way "Joe" had any chance of buying his bosses business - even at a relatively small multiple of that $100,000 net figure. Yet McCain - apparently utilizing the same vetting intensity he and his campaign applied to the selection of Sarah Palin as his running mate - plunged blindly into the phony story of Joe’s ambition and potential woes under an Obama administration and in so doing provided the nation and the world with a glimpse into the working of his mind - which appears to be more and more scatterbrained than reasoned - and to the nature of some of his supporters. Yahoos!! Those dangers to society that Lemuel Gulliver encountered in the land of the Houyhnhnms.

How else would you describe this guy - wallowing in his fifteen minutes of dubious fame, giving press conferences, proclaiming that he abhors social security - thinks it’s "a joke" - thinks it was great that we invaded Iraq "WMD’s or not" - isn’t registered to vote- and thinks Obama tap dances around questions "like Sammy Davis Junior." And today McCain continues to invoke his name and his "story" - oblivious to the fact that he’s made a blunder that, like the personal attacks on Obama, will likely backfire. He’s probably thinking that of he wins the White House - fictional "Joe" would make a fine race relations czar!!

But seriously folks - even though I don’t think the debates are really debates and provide little more than an opportunity for candidates to recycle pieces of their stump speeches to a fairly wide audience - they sometimes give us little insights into the inner being of candidates that might not otherwise have been revealed. Much of what McCain and Obama said on Wednesday they’ve said before in one fashion or another. The "I’m not President Bush" line was new, written I’m sure with the hope that it might match the impact of Reagan’s "There You Go Again." It didn’t, but hailing Joe the Plumber as some sort of American hero gave us an insight into the kind of supporter that McCain is willing to embrace publicly. It’s one thing to hope for everyone’s vote to whom the idea of a Democratic president is an abomination, even if they have white hooded robes or nazi insignia decorated jackets hanging in their closets. But if you want to put your figurative arm around someone and say He’s the kind if American I’m working for, you’d think you’d wan to be sure that the rest if us could view him as someone at least a little bit like us. I don’t know about you, but to me, Joe the Plumber doesn’t come close to fitting that bill.

But - and here’s a magnified view into the workings of Senator McCain’s mind - once the media descended on this poor schlemiel’s house and revealed the not so "ordinary Joe the worker" things about him, instead of letting the fires die out - as they would in a day or two if not stoked by the candidates - he is out on the stump accusing Obama and the Democrats of smearing poor Joe.

Approaching the end of his military and congressional career, it’s almost sad to see this man descend to such depths in his desperate effort to win the office that has eluded him for so many years. The debates do indeed reveal things about candidates that might not otherwise surface. Sometimes I wish they didn’t.
posted by Jeff Smith at 10/18/2008 11:30:00 AM

 
DOCTOR KRAUTHAMMER NEEDS A PSYCHIATRIST

I was going to write something about the so called financial meltdown - but what’s happening in the presidential campaign takes precedence today. It’s gotten that crazy. And that dirty. Besides, after the Dow rallied close to a thousand points to start this week - it’ll be more interesting to comment later.

I was glad to see Senator McCain trying to disabuse the crowd at one of his rallies of the belief that Barack Obama is an Arab - as one supporter asserted before McCain took the mike out of her hands. That’s how bad it’s become because of the attempt to paint Obama as something less than a loyal American because he has had an "association" with one time Weather Underground member Bill Ayers. Some of McCain’s supporters have swallowed this garbage so deeply into their guts that they don’t want to hear McCain back away from it. He’s had to defend Obama from unruly crowds approaching a mob scene more than once in recent days - and some of his supporters have booed his remarks. The negative campaigning - particularly by Sarah Palin - may be backfiring - but it’s already dome the kind if damage that will take time to heal - even after the election has been decided - no matter who wins.

I was also glad to see Frank Rich’s column in the New York Times over the weekend . He made crystal clear what has been going on with the Republican campaign and the despicable attacks against Obama, trying to paint him as a terrorist. Everyone should read it. Even rabid right wingers who still retain the power of reason - assuming they once had it.

But as pleased as I was to read the Frank Rich column, I was equally dismayed to open my redesigned, comic book style Chicago Tribune Monday morning and find Charles Krauthammer’s latest piece of invective. It’s sad because Krauthammer is an intelligent man - he’s won a Pulitzer for Pete’s sake - but his conservative beliefs take over his thought processes when it comes to defending the guilt by association attacks on Obama. Here we are less than three weeks from one of the most important elections of this nation’s history and Krauthammer is dragging out the right wing’s version of Obama’s Axis of Evil - the triumvirate of Bill Ayers, Tony Rezko and Jeremiah Wright - as reasons to attack Obama’s character. Consorting with these fellows tells us what kind of person Obama is - and according to Krauthammer - not the kind who should be elected president.

It is ridiculous beyond reason. If Obama is to be condemned for his tenuous association with Bill Ayers - then we might as well condemn the character of Chicago’s educational and political elite at the same time. Yes Ayers was radical nut in the sixties as a member of the Weather Underground - though he was never convicted of taking part in any violent action. But Obama was a child when all that Vietnam protest activity was going on. The Bill Ayers that Obama met decades later was a fellow resident of Chicago’s politically independent Hyde Park neighborhood , a distinguished professor of Education - and in 1997, a recipient of Chicago’s Citizen of the Year award!! He was a man who sat on a couple of charitable boards of which Obama was also a member. He was a man who allowed his home to be used for a coffee at which time Illinois State Senator Alice Parker who had decided to resign and run for congress, introduced some of her friends and backers to Obama, who she was supporting to succeed her. He was not someone still trying to blow up buildings and statues as expressions of protest - yet Krauthammer and others of his ilk want to associate Obama with the Bill Ayers of the sixties - not the sixty three year old Bill Ayers of today. If having some sort of tenuous relationship with the man that Ayers has become reflects badly on Obama’s character - then, as I said, we’d better start looking into the character of Chicago’s Mayor Daley and work down the ladder of Chicago’s political, charitable and educational elite because, having had and continuing to have some sort of "relationship" with Bill Ayers - they’ve ALL been "palling around with terrorists."

And how about that Tony Rezko? Here was a guy beloved by Illinois politicians of all stripes because he was an equal opportunity fund raiser. He was thick with the current Governor of Illinois. He was an insider at home with the movers and shaker of the Illinois Republican and Democratic parties. Obama was hardly a mover and shaker when he first met Rezko. There was nothing exclusive about their relationship. Obama was just another politician that Rezko supported - but there was no quid pro quo. There isn’t a shred of evidence that Obama ever used his political office to benefit Rezko or any of his business enterprises. There also isn’t a shred of evidence to prove that Obama had any knowledge of any Rezko dealings that were criminal in nature. Yet Obama is being criticized for not being prescient - for not knowing that Rezko would one day be indicted, tried and convicted of criminal activity. And do we really want a president who doesn’t have the ability to apply hindsight in advance? That’s the implication contained in the attacks by Krauthammer and other right wingers. They want to condemn Obama for not knowing what Rezko was doing in all of his business and political activities. They want to condemn him for not having the gift of second sight. I too lacked that ability when I was a supporter of now jailed former Republican Governor George Ryan of Illinois. Does that reveal a flaw in my character that would render me unfit for some high elective office? Would that also apply to anyone who ever knew or associated in any way with the former governor? It gets more ridiculous by the minute.

And finally there’s the Reverend Jeremiah Wright - and you can be sure the attack dogs won’t let the reverend enjoy a peaceful retirement. How, they ask, could Obama remain a member of a church for so many years where the pastor preached anti-Americanism? How indeed? Except that the premise is untrue. Anyone with access to a television set or the Internet has seen and heard snippets from some of Wright’s fiery sermons. They were fiery all right - in the same way that some of the nutty evangelical preachers so beloved of Republicans deliver fiery sermons to their flocks. But not un-American. The guy was a marine and a medical technician in the navy before he went into the preaching business. Hardly the background of an America hater. So when Wright said "Goddamn America" - he wasn’t saying "F You America - I hate your guts." He was saying that in his belief, God damns America for its treatment of its African American citizens. Remember the line was "Goddamn America - it’s in the Bible." Evangelical nuts preach the same sort of craziness. They get up in their pulpits and say such things as the tragedy that befell New Orleans was a punishment from God because of that city’s tolerance of gays. And just the other day at a McCain rally, there was a preacher telling the crowd that people of non Christian faiths around the world were praying for Obama to win and exhorting our God to defeat their God. There’s plenty of nuttiness to go around when it comes to men of the cloth.

But Krauthammer et al want to apply the same narrow standard of character judgment to Obama’s church membership as they do to his association with Ayers and Rezko. As far as Krauthammer is concerned, the snippets of Jeremiah Wright that we saw on television and You Tube for months on end, were the totality of Trinity United Church - and how on earth can we trust a man who continues to belong to such a church? He might as well ask how we could trust the lawyers, doctors, politicians, business people and others whose names are not Barack or Hussein or Obama but who’ve attended that same church year after year. They must all have terribly flawed characters - including one time member Oprah Winfrey. It gets sillier and sillier - this guilt by association nonsense.

But the core of Krauthammer’s column are the two conclusions that he draws from Obama’s association with the evil three. One - he’s a ruthless cynic who used these people. He doesn’t say how Obama used them, but it sure sounds dark and dangerous enough to fill gaps in the minds of non thinkers. Ayers for example. He doesn’t tell us how Obama used Ayers but he does ask how Obama could even shake hands with such an unrepentant terrorist - let alone sit on boards with him . Makes you think, doesn’t it? Soon to follow I assume, are a series of columns asking the same question of Chicago Tribune publisher Scott Smith, Dean of the College of Education of the University of Chicago Victoria J. Chou, Field Museum president John W. McCarter, Jr and others who sat on the Chicago Annenberg Challenge Board along with Ayers. Maybe they never shook his hand and thus weren’t tainted as was Obama. Or maybe Obama was "using" ALL of the people on those boards he sat on. Or maybe they were all using Ayers. It gets complicated when you engage in long distance diagnosis.

The other Krauthammer conclusion about these three evil associations of Obama is that they represent a reflection of his core beliefs. He didn’t see their views as "beyond the pale." For many years, he says, Obama swam easily and without protest in that fetid pond. Isn’t that a neat turn of a phrase?

Thus, using Obama’s "association" with three out of Lord knows how many people he has "associated" with over the years, Psychiatrist Krauthammer has "diagnosed" the man who would be president in the truly scientific fashion of former Senate Majority Leader - Cardiologist Bill Frist’s tape diagnosis of Terry Schiavo. To which I can only say - thanks to whatever Gods may be that this man no longer practices psychiatry on unsuspecting patients. He does enough damage applying his pyschiatric training to his political writings.

Ed Schultz has been saying it on his radio show for months and I have to agree with him - these people are out of material.
posted by Jeff Smith at 10/15/2008 09:48:00 AM