Sioux Rose, race is being used to distract attention from the real issues. Case in point, health care reform. On some of these progressive and liberal sites, if you come out against HR3200 but support single payer, some people not only call you Republican but they also call you "racist" despite the fact that you were only questioning Obama's support of bad policies. If a minority Republican such as Powell or Rice runs on the Republican side, the Republicans will also use race to distract and sellout. Both parties are hurting minorities in the long run by misusing big clout minorities as pawns for allowing more disaster capitalism to be dumped on us all.

I see your point. The minority guy or gal finally gets that shot at the brass ring and then grabs it and fends off the minorities below with brass knuckles. But that is a catch 22 situation. The elite used a similar argument to avoid adopting or taking in children of the poor because they were bound to "come out wrong". Even Frank Loyd Wright, the architect, had sniffy ideas about the "new rich". I taught a few classes of fledgling air traffic controllers and watched the humble, gopher, what can I do for you type students turn into arrogant fucks after they "checked out" (certified as journeyman radar controllers). There seemed to be a weak but significant inverse correlation between arrogance and family economic background. I think, as you do, that any individual can break out of the anecdotal stereotype. However, what I saw as the most determinant factor in the "humanity" of a person was their respect for their parents in general and respect for their mother in particular. Individuals who's mother is highly acquisitive tend to be closet assholes. When they get their shot, they step on anyone to get and keep the gold. This doesn't explain why individuals from the same mother (and almost identical birth day and month but different years) can be so different. Much has been written about Astrology, birth order, nurture, the example or lack of it of the father figure, etc. My contention is that the biggest red flag any individual can pose as a potential predator, regardless of his Gemini charm school or Scorpian wiles, is what his mother was like when she raised him. The mother is, to me, about 80% of the nurture input. It cannot be replaced. If a child is brought up by surrogates then that 80% comes from them, not his mother. I know, this may give a lot of moms who farm their kid's upbringing out for the sake of a career a guilt trip but the female is, biologicaly, the default position of a human being. Males are just a modification like a drone in a behive. I may be male but I can see how destructive the male urge to penetrate everything and dominate has done to the world. We need to recognize that ONLY WOMEN can tame the testosterone madness or hyperassertive attitudes of men AND women.
I know lots of people here will tell me to go to hell and that both sexes are equal, blah, blah. Both sexes ARE NOT EQUAL. Women are superior and should be in charge. I am a man. I'm not gay. I insist that matriarchal societies are the only hope humanity has. And on top of that, I'm a Christian (a REAL Christian -no war- no hate). If that's too big a bite for some people to digest, I can understand that. People that think about things objectively are rare.

Nixon ran as an anti-war candidate, and when he took office, stepped up bombing outside of Vietnam. He also stepped up the "war on drugs". Cumulative homicides in the US due solely to the WOD in the 40 years since may very well be in the 150-200K range. Only 3 US wars had more deaths: against the Native peoples, the "Civil War", and WW2.

About "Read Obama's books"

That is what the right wing is sending around now with this message:

------------------------------
"Everyone of voting age should read these two books.Don't buy them, get them from the library.

From Dreams of My Father:'I ceased to advertise my mother's race at the age of 12 or 13, when I began to suspect that by doing so I was ingratiating myself to whites.'

From Dreams of My Father :'I found a solace in nursing a pervasive sense of grievance and animosity against my mother's race.'

From Dreams of My Father:'There was something about him that made me wary, a little too sure of himself, maybe. And white.'

From Dreams of My Father:'It remained necessary to prove which side you were on, to show your loyalty to the black masses, to strike out and name names.'

From Dreams of My Father:'I never emulate white men and brown men whose fates didn't speak to my own. It was into my father's image, the black man, son of Africa, that I'd packed all the attributes I sought in myself: the attributes of Martin and Malcolm, DuBois and Mandela.'

And FINALLY,

From Audacity of Hope:'I will stand with the Muslims should the political winds shift in an ugly direction.'"

-----------------

Thought some would be interested in what the right wing talking points are these days.

The other day, I read that a new case of "rendition" has surfaced -- the first to be attached specifically to the Obama administration.

The rendered victim is a Lebanese contractor named Raymond Azar.

Amy Goodman interviewed Scott Horton -- a Human Rights attorney and blogger at Harper's Magazine, No Comment -- about the abusive incident. See Democracy Now! on August 13, 2009.

The Obamas had Ken Salazar with them as they paraded through the West's national parks recently.

That can't be a good thing for our national park system. I shudder to think what plans they are cooking up to privatize that land and open it up to resource extractive industries.

Excellent point!

How many U.S. bases will be in Columbia? Five? I looked it up -- the U.S. will have SIX military bases in Columbia.

Not long ago, I went to hear Eduardo Galeano (Open Veins of Latin America) speak at the Ethical Society here in NYC. He HOPES that the U.S. stays out of Latin America. In 1973, following a military coup in his home country of Uruguay, he fled to Argentina. Then, he was forced to flee from Argentina. He ended up living in Spain for a number of years.

If you haven't already read Naomi Klein's book, The Shock Doctrine, the book is relevant to these issues of then, and now.

Yes, we know from recent events that a very small number of the biggest corporations have become propped up and insured against failure by a massive amount of socialism.

Sioux Rose

RV: Amen! Well-said.

Gonzalez I agree has a future as a progressive candidate, especially nationally. (I helped on his mayoral campaign in San Francisco.) I think Nader may give it another go in 2012, he's that energetic, but if he doesn't, Gonzalez will be there with his progressive group around him to pick up the slack.

As of now it's safe to assume that "Land of Lincoln" will most likely not ever be changing to "Land of Obama" on Illinois license plates.

Lincoln understood politics (as it was in his day) better than Obama understands politics as it is in his day.

But again, this doesn't matter anywhere near as much as the average Joe might think, because unlike back then, most of the actual governing and legislating today is coming out of the executive and boardroom offices of large corporations.

"And here's a controversial one, he refused to grant the South secession. In spite of the evils of slavery, didn't they have the right to secede? In a different scenario, if perhaps California wished to secede under Bush so as not to be forced to participate in the genocidal policies of his administration, would people here oppose that?"

You are aware the the slaves are human, yes? And not inanimate property? Those slaves which you so easily ignore have just as much right, ethically, to speak for the south as to whether the south should secede. Your controversial argument ignores the slaves and treats them as inanimate property. Your controversial argument is an argument that only the most racist right wingers make.

Your analogy of the Southern slave states with any prospective modern day secession attempt is extremely poor.

"Except for executing the leaders of the "Sioux Uprising", signing the Pacific Railway Acts of 1862 and 1864, creating of a Federal income tax, pragmatically supporting slavery, instituting a military draft, suspending habeous corpus, and supporting collective punishment against the South (i.e "total war")."

On the one hand, "progressives" like you want a Federal government funded health system, education system, food system. On the other hand, you rant against a federal income tax.

"Clinton was far too moderate for my tastes, yet he was nothing like the screw-up Obama has proven to be".

So true, and laugh out loud, but it's not really funny of course.

Clinton was a right winger who obviously helped set the stage for today's failed economy.

But with respect to the basics of the political process, unlike Obama, at least Clinton sometimes knew what "take your best shot" means, and why you always have to do that in politics. And so, at least Clinton often got something rather than essentially nothing in negotiations with Congress, even when it was a Republican congress. In other words, Clinton was at least slightly more effective with a Republican congress than Obama seems to be on health care with a Democratic congress.

It is becoming increasingly obvious that Obama's health care reform bill will be less valuable than Clinton's was, even though Clinton didn't get anything at all through, laugh out loud (again).

What part of "When you are in the hole and can't get out, at least don't dig the hole deeper while you await assistance" does Obama not understand?

Sioux Rose

PERRY:

Even if it was Phil Grahamm that muscled the legislation, the gutting of the all-important Glass-Steagall Act, a wall placed to effectively guard against banks speculating on Wall ST (as now) occured on Clinton's watch/term.

Clinton opened the doors to a loss of countless good jobs in his approving NAFTA. Citizens were falsely told it would CREATE jobs, not cause a migration of Mexican farmers over our southern border.

Clinton deregulated the FCC so that whereas in the past broadcast corporations had their markets (for ownership and thus control of content/message) limited, now it's turned out that a handful of corporations control newspapers, television, and radio. And we wonder why the nation's populace demonstrates such abject ignorance in the face of the telling issues of our day?

Do NOT give Clinton any free pass. There are many explanations for what drew the budget down under Clinton, and various balloons are part of it.

I don't think ANY president could compete with Bush for malfeasance and ineptitude (unless the only thing that matters are those that profit from predatory, as in Disaster, Capitalism); however, the fact that Obama is just following--in policy--all the same diabolical, tainted trails is NOT good news.

RICH M and a few other astute political analysists in our CD forum have made excellent cases for the lack of any discernible evidence that would indicate true policy differences between the two parties that masquerade as opponents, when ultimately answering to the same sponsors of this ersatz "ownership" society. It's owned all right, by those who came by big money through corrupt means; and now they call the tunes that the DC reps dance/march to. Representative democracy, about as quaint as Gonzales' perception of our Constitution, and/or Bill of Rights. Makes one feel nostalgic for the 60's!

It all depends on who you are, and your category of employment as to whether you benefited during the Clinton years. In addition, the stats are usually "juked," as David Simon states.

Clinton greased the wheels for lot of what is going on today -- he was a free market ideologue. Remember NAFTA, and how it crushed the Mexican economy so that he had to bail them out? Outsourcing was already a serious problem. I remember reading horror stories about what was happening to employees who worked in the IT industry.

The deregulation of the financial industry was signed into law by Bill Clinton, and Glass-Steagall was dismantled during his presidency.

The deregulation of the airwaves took place in 1996, and look where that got us! I worked in radio, and I can tell you where it got me -- jobless!

And, Iraq was bombed consistently during the Clinton adminstration. 5,000 children died every month in Iraq due to the harsh sanctions. Do you remember what Madeleine Albright told Lesley Stahl on 60 Minutes? Look it up!

On June 27, 1993, Bill Clinton ordered a bombardment of Baghdad. The next day he walked into church and said, "I feel quite good about what has transpired, and I think the American people should feel good about it."

Leila Attar, Iraq's best-known female artist, was killed, while she slept, by a stray U.S. missile that hit her home in that 1993 attack. Her husband was also killed.

Bill Clinton ordered new military strikes of Iraq in December of 1998. Peace and prosperity? For whom?

I also seem to recall that one of the first acts of Bill Clinton, after being sworn in as president, was to race back to Arkansas to preside over the execution of a retarded man.

I didn't vote for Bill Clinton, and his nickname, "Slick Willie," in my opinion, fits him perfectly.