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March 21, 2008

Black Intelligentsia: Holla If You Hear Obama

The ball is now in America's court. How will the country rise to Obama's challenge? Can we agree to engage each other respectfully, stand our ground only after careful consideration, and just plain fight fair? Will both sides (yes, there are many more than two but you can't do everything in one post) enter the fray knowing that others have a right to disagree and be proved wrong, if they are indeed wrong? So far, not so much. But a nation doesn't transcend race in a day.

Odd how comedians are free thinking and brave enough to confront serious issues, albeit while sporting a Steve Martinesque arrow-through-the-head get-up. So far, the white boys at the Daily Show (with an assist from its Senior Black Correspondent, Larry Wilmore) win. Granted, the Jew and the black guy overcame their angry stalemate by agreeing, in the end, to dog the white guy, but hey. It's a start. Even sadder? Confederate flag-pandering, non-evolution-believing, bring-the-Constitution-in-line-with-the-Bible Mike Huckabee is displaying more wisdom and humanity than most in what we're hearing so far.

Come on, white folks. You can do better than this: "I don't want to hear that [blacks] are blaming [whites] for [Wright] saying this"? "...they are perpetual victims and they enjoy the victim status and, by proxy, me as a white person is their victimizer. And as long as we perpetuate these divisions, we will never heal.” Y'all were saying that five minutes after Lee bolted from Appomattox. There was another quote from Pennsylvania I can't find now about how blacks should be talking about the present (where things must be great for them) and not what happened 100 years ago (which must have no bearing on present racial ills. But then: see above. There are no racial ills, only an enjoyable victimology because it simply cannot be that I, a beer drinking, laid off Joe, benefit from racism or outrank anybody). Man, it must be exhausting thinking in circles like that, desperate circles that lead ever farther away from you.

But no more exhausting that the lengths blacks continue to go to to evade reconsidering their own sacred cows. So far, they aren't exactly bringing on the deep thinking either: the whites I'm dogging are refusing to admit there is racism now, or any lingering effects from past racism. The blacks I'm after are refusing to admit that, as long as racism exists, we can behave however we choose, especially intellectually. Whatever whites criticize must be defended. I know it hurts, black people. Weirdly, I've experienced more life-affecting racism in the last few years since I've been a big ol' success than I ever did as the ghetto-girl daughter of Jim Crow sharecroppers desperate to move on up. And don't even get me started on gender. Still, that makes a rigorous intellectual and moral focus more important than ever. The 70s are over. Drop the bull horns, and for the love of God stop invoking COINTELPRO (no one's bugging your tired old Third World Students Association meeting) and put your own arguments to the test before convening another kente-cloth laden panel discussion on Tuskegee.

When I began this entry, I'd intended to offer a harsh parsing of some of the black responses I've been reading to Obama and Wright. I've changed my mind and chosen less easy pickings. All but the last post below were written prior to Tuesday's speech but after the controversy broke; let's give the writers a chance to do some reflection. As well, speaking as both an elder and a concerned American, might I suggest that they revisit these offerings with an eye towards spotting the flaws in their logic, their attitude, and their desired outcomes. Demanding that your opponent either accept your argument whole cloth or admit that he's a racist or sell-out will simply no longer suffice. Obama has upped the ante.

So, here are a few posts from young thinkers I admire that provide a good starting place. This one and this, too from Jasmyne Cannick. And this from Bakari Kitwana. This bit, from Kitwana, sums up both arguments: "[Obama's decision to denounce Wright is] a strategy adopted by far too many aspiring presidential candidates and it signals, rather than an ability to think outside the box, the willingness to cave in to Americans old racial politics, a politics steeped in fear, race-baiting, with an end goal of divide and conquer." Now that they've both had time to read the speech—any further thoughts?

In a post I found quite illuminating on the black prophetic tradition, I still note a troubling flaw from Melissa Harris-Lacewell, in The Root: "But we cannot enter that promised land together if white America refuses to acknowledge the prophetic truths of black religiosity. ...We cannot learn from our prophets if we denounce them. Silencing Jeremiah Wright will not makes us forget hundreds of years of racial inequality. Now is the time to listen to each other carefully." I see what whites are supposed to listen to, but blacks make up the 'other' here: to what are we supposed to listen?

In the only post written after the speech, I found this offering most helpful. Also from The Root, it's by WaPo religion reporter Hamil Harris:"But the lingering question out of this whole episode is whether Americans, black and white, can ever be liberated from a mindset in which it is always hard to believe that those who look differently from us can really be a brother or sister."

Amen.

For too long, blacks have "asked" this question of whites, assured that the answer will, must, always be no. But, based on what I'm reading so far, it's time for whites to flip the script and ask blacks the same question. Don't ask whites to do what you have no intention of reciprocating; it takes two to transcend race. It only takes one to unleash a diatribe no one will listen to.

This, brothers and sisters, is where we begin. Not with reparations or the fight against affirmative action or the criminal justice system, or who's right and who's wrong. Do we actually want to co-exist peacefully in mutual respect? If so, how best is that to be achieved?

Obama's not talking about revolution but about a truth and reconciliation process. Black intelligentsia: holla if you hear him.

Update: CNN's Roland Martin withheld judgement on the Wright flap until he could do something odd—read the full text of the 9/11 sermon that started the fire. He also helpfully points out that the "god damn America" line appears nowhere in that sermon although we were given to believe it did. One more thing—with the 'chickens coming home to roost' line, "[h]e was actually quoting Edward Peck, former U.S. Ambassador to Iraq and deputy director of President Reagan’s terrorism task force, who was speaking on FOX News. That’s what he told the congregation." (We'll have to check with Fox to find out whether Peck gave Malcolm X his props or plagiarized him. Either way, shouldn't we know demand that whites denounce and disown Peck for 'associating' with Malcolm?)

Obama and Clinton Camps Spar Over Trust, MI/FL Situation

Sometimes it feels like both campaigns have an endless supply of spin. On a conference call today with reporters, Obama campaign aides pushed a new Gallup polls that shows just 53 percent of Americans think Hillary Clinton is trustworthy. "To head into the general election with over half the electorate not thinking you're trustworthy is a problem," said Obama's surrogates. The campaign insisted that Clinton's campaign tactics only bolster her perceived distrustfulness. They cited her newly released First Lady schedules as evidence: The schedules show Clinton in meetings intended to sell NAFTA, seemingly contradicting current claims that she is a long-time opponent of the trade agreement.

The Clinton campaign had its own conference call a few minutes later and had responses ready. "The Obama campaign is in political hot water," said spokesman Phil Singer, referencing the ongoing controversy over Rev. Wright's sermons, "and is desperate to change the subject." The discussion about trustworthiness and the First Lady schedules is a "full assault on Senator Clinton's character," the Clinton campaign insisted. It pointed to the fact that David Gergen, who moderated one of the NAFTA meetings then-First Lady Clinton attended, has said recently "Hillary Clinton was extremely unenthusiastic about NAFTA. And I think that’s putting it mildly." In response to the Gallup poll, chief strategist Mark Penn took care to point out that in poll after poll, Hillary Clinton is identified as the best potential commander-in-chief in the Democratic field. Clearly voters have some kind of trust in her, Penn argued.

And then there is the issue of Michigan and Florida.

Little progress has been made in Florida to sort out the status of that state's delegation, but just last week it looked like Michigan was heading to a June 3 do-over. But the Obama campaign, citing a variety of questions about the state's preparedness and the integrity of a revote, declined to support the idea. It is most likely a political move: Florida and Michigan do-overs would extend the primary season into summer, valuable time that Obama wants, as the frontrunner, to do battle with John McCain. From Obama's perspective, the faster the nomination is sewn up, the better.

Additionally, Obama could lose both states, giving Clinton momentum, more delegates, and a shot at capturing the popular vote lead.

The Clinton campaign made the point that if Michigan and Florida don't have their current vote totals counted (per the DNC's current stand), and they aren't given a chance to revote (as the Obama campaign appears to prefer), there is going to be an awful lot of angry Democrats in two key battleground states. "The Obama campaign is pursuing a strategy that is good for Senator Obama's nomination chances, but bad for the Democrats in November," said the surrogates on Clinton's conference call. They pointed out that the Obama campaign has made much of its amazing ability to turn out new voters, but seems to have no problem "disenfranchising" two whole states. More evidence, they said, that "for all the rhetoric, all the speeches, the Obama campaign is just words."

But the Clinton campaign isn't an innocent party. While it slams Obama for disenfranchising Michigan and Florida, it is hoping the superdelegates will help them surmount Obama's pledged delegate lead. A reporter on the conference call asked if this wouldn't be another form of disenfranchisement: party insiders overriding the will of the people.

The Clinton campaign had an endless supply of spin to answer the question, none of which made much sense. Mark Penn said the superdelegates will look at who won the pledged delegate count, who won the popular vote, who won the most primary states versus caucus states, who is the most electable, who is the most ready to be president, and a number of other factors and then make their decisions. And maybe they'll look at something the Clinton campaign seems to have invented, "primary delegates," which are pledged delegates won in primaries but not caucuses, to see which candidate won the most support in the more democratic of the two types of contests. (Clinton currently trails by a small amount in the "primary delegate" tally, but could make up the difference with a strong showing in Pennsylvania.)

Nothing the campaign could say convinced anybody that their strategy doesn't rest on overruling the votes of the people, a scenario that can be reasonably described as the disenfranchisement of tens of millions of primary voters. The fact that disenfranchisement is an accusation Clinton is throwing at Obama even while she plans a superdelegate strategy, and the fact that Obama seems ready to kill a do-over in Michigan in order to better his political fortunes, illustrates one thing: disenfranchisement is in the eye of the beholder.

Inflation "Walloping" Everyday Americans

For those of you who don't get the WaPo delivered every day and didn't see this morning's front page:

Inflation is walloping Americans with low and moderate incomes as the prices of staples have soared far faster than those of luxuries.

Check it out, after the jump...

The goods and services Americans consumed in February were 4 percent more expensive than they were a year earlier. But there is a big divide in how much prices are climbing between the basic items people need to live and get to work, and those on which they can easily cut back when times are tight.

An analysis of government data by The Washington Post found that prices have risen 9.2 percent since 2006 for the groceries, gasoline, health care and other basics that a middle-income American family has little choice but to consume. That would cost such a family, which made $45,000 on average in 2006, an extra $972 per year, assuming it did not buy less of such items because of higher prices. For a broad range of goods on which it is easier to scrimp -- such as restaurant meals, alcoholic beverages, new cars, furniture, and clothing -- prices have risen 2.4 percent.

A standard middle income family is spending $378 more on gasoline than it did two years ago, and $253 more on groceries. The Post notes, "in 2006, the top 20 percent of households by income spent about twice as much on staples as households in the lower-middle bracket. But the top-earning families had almost six times as much income." This isn't news to Mother Jones. We've chronicled how the rich get richer and poor get dinged at every turn.

Christian Right Group: "Export Homosexuals"

The Uniting American Families Act would allow gay Americans the same right straight Americans have to sponsor a foreign partner for citizenship. The status quo, supporters argue, forces same-sex couples to leave the United States in favor of more gay-friendly countries. The right-wing Christian group Family Research Council has no problem with that. The thoughts of Peter Sprigg, FRC's Vice President for Policy:

"I would much prefer to export homosexuals from the United States than to import them into the United States because we believe homosexuality is destructive to society."

You stay classy, Christian Right. (H/T Andrew Sullivan)

The Waxman Takes Action in Obama-State Dept. Flap

Three State Department contractors have been punished for improperly accessing Barack Obama's passport and other files in what State is calling acts of "imprudent curiosity." Congressman/bulldog Henry Waxman wants to make sure there isn't something more sinister going on. He wants to know exactly who these contractors were working for. Here's his letter to Secretary Rice:

Dear Madam Secretary:

Yesterday, Ambassador Patrick Kennedy, the Under Secretary of State for Management, confirmed that three contract employees working for two State Department contractors gained unauthorized access to the passport records of Senator Barack Obama. When Ambassador Kennedy was asked for the identities of the contract employees and the companies, however, he declined to provide them:

Question: Are you releasing the names of any of these three contractors or the companies for which they were contracting on behalf of the State Department?

Ambassador Kennedy: In a word, no.

I am writing to request that you provide the Oversight Committee by Monday with the identities of the companies involved in these breaches. I also believe this information should be made publicly available.

The Committee on Oversight and Government Reform is the principal oversight committee in the House of Representatives and has broad oversight jurisdiction as set forth in House Rule X.

Sincerely,

Henry A. Waxman, Chairman

Could this be part of "Blackwater's World of Warcraft"? If anyone in Congress is going to find out, it's Waxman. The State Department doesn't seem interested in pushing this further, and the FBI and Justice Department have yet to get involved.

(If it's not clear, we here at MoJo's DC office think Henry Waxman is secretly a diminutive but powerful superhero. By day, Waxman ends corruption and graft through his work on the Oversight Committee. By night, he keeps the nation's capital city safe from common criminals. He is Waxman. Let's get dangerous.)

Update: Looks like Hillary Clinton and John McCain's files were also improperly accessed.

Obama Camp Goes Too Far To Claim Clinton = McCain

In Barack Obama's latest email pitch for donations, his campaign manager, David Plouffe, writes:

Senator Clinton and Senator McCain are reading from the same political playbook as they attack Barack on foreign policy.

They have both criticized Barack's commitment to act against top al Qaeda terrorists if others can't or won't act.

And they have both dismissed his call for renewed diplomacy as naïve while mistakenly standing behind George Bush's policy of non-engagement that just isn't working....

Barack is facing a two-front battle against Senator Clinton and Senator McCain.

Plouffe is trying to hit Clinton (and McCain) from both the left and the right (or the dovish and hawkish sides) simultaneously. But he stepped over the line regarding the former.

On the first point, Plouffe is referring to the criticism Obama drew when he suggested he would, as president, strike unilaterally against al Qaeda in Pakistan if he possessed solid intelligence and if the Pakistani government did not act. With this claim, he was obviously trying to show that he could be damn tough--even cowboy tough--when it comes to the fight against Islamic terrorists. Critics blasted him for recklessness, but it turns out that the Bush administration has mounted these sorts of attacks to take out al Qaeda leaders.

On the second point--that Clinton has "mistakenly" stood behind Bush's "policy of non-engagement"--Plouffe is stretching the facts. Clinton did jump on Obama when Obama vowed at the CNN/YouTube debate that he would meet with the thug-leaders of Iran, North Korea, and Cuba in his first year as president. But as Clinton has repeatedly said, refusing to promise meetings with these leaders in the first year of a presidency is hardly equivalent to a policy of non-engagement. She has repeatedly slammed Bush's unilateralism and called for a vigorous revival of American diplomacy and multilateralism.

Plouffe wants to lump Clinton and McCain together to show that Obama is the candidate of change taking on two candidates of Washington conventionalism. Obama does have a case in this regard. (Both Clinton and McCain share responsibility for the Iraq war.) But this argument does not extend to Clinton endorsing Bush go-it-alone-ism. Given that the Obama campaign often complains (justifiably) about the Clinton camp's truth-twisting oppo research, Plouffe ought to be more careful.

Richardson Decides

Bill Richardson is endorsing Barack Obama. His motivation may have been this charming little anecdote, it may have been a true affection for Obama (Richardson was reportedly very impressed by BHO's speech on race), or it may have just been an acknowledgment that the electoral math is so heavily in Obama's favor that it is time for the Democrats to move on to the general. Supporting that final theory is something Richardson wrote in an email to supporters. It is time, he said, "for Democrats to stop fighting amongst ourselves and to prepare for the tough fight we will face against John McCain in the fall."

As the nation's only Hispanic governor, Richardson could have been a big help to Obama in Southwestern states. Problem is, there are none left on the primary calender. The closest thing is Oregon, which is where Richardson endorsed Obama today.

In fact, John Murtha's endorsement of Hillary Clinton from earlier this week probably means more. Murtha is a long-time Pennsylvania congressman with a specialization in national security, one of the campaign's current hot-button issues. If voters in the upcoming Keystone Primary are going to be swayed by anyone, it's Murtha.

That said, it's possible that both endorsements are irrelevant. I've argued as much in the past.

March 20, 2008

Mother Jones Nominated for Two National Magazine Awards

Yesterday, we got the exciting news that Mother Jones has been nominated for two National Magazine Awards.

The NMAs are like our industry's Academy Awards. On May 1st, editors from all over the country gather in New York (totally coincidentally, where most editors live), get dressed up, go to Jazz at Lincoln Center, fix gracious smiles on our faces, and wait to see if we win an Ellie (a replica of an Alexander Calder sculpture of an elephant—i.e. our Oscar—that could double as a rather stylish weapon).

This year we've been nominated for General Excellence (think Best Picture, the word "coveted" is often applied) for these three issues. We're up against four other great, all very different, magazines in our circ size: Radar, Philadelphia Magazine, Foreign Policy, and Paste.

My friend and former MoJoer John Cook emailed to joke: "We're gonna totally kick your ass! MoJo and Foreign Policy will split the 'stuff people should care about' vote leaving Radar to sweep...." But I would never count Radar out (it's so cheeky!), and then there's Paste, which I give to about 40 friends for Christmas each year (d'oh!), and Foreign Policy and Philadelphia, like us, perennial contenders that are just as good as ever. (FP won last year.)

The other nomination is for photojournalism. Specifically this awesome photo essay by Lana Šlezić on the plight of the women of Afghanistan. In this category, we're up against The New Yorker, National Geographic, Aperture, and Virginia Quarterly Review, which is edited by our MoJo contributing writer Ted Genoways, who just happened to write the text for our last photo essay. So we'll try to be extra gracious if he wins.

These nominations are a nice nod to all the hard work put in by staff over the past year, one in which we overhauled the magazine and the site (tho' more to come) and added a seven-person Washington bureau. Monika and I are really grateful to be working with such cool, hardworking, and amazingly (esp. given what we've put 'em through) sane people. So thanks to them, and we hope the rest of you keep reading.

Careful, Obama. Humorless Feminists Are Watching

Now that we're all catching our breath after l'affaire Wright, it's not surprising that those at the center are still freaked out. Obama is too.

As Obama told CNN's Anderson Cooper this week: "In some ways, this controversy has actually shaken me up a little bit and gotten me back into remembering that the odds of me getting elected have always been lower than some of the other conventional candidates."

Uh oh. There are at least three ways to take this, all of which make my spidey sense tingly.

1) This is just another refreshing burst of honesty and humanity from the plaster saint all candidates are required to be, Transcendo-boy most of all. Thank God he didn't tear up, though that would have only endeared him to us more.

2) Or it could be a rueful admission that he, too, had become a tad over-confident, mentally re-adjusting the height of the Oval Office Aeron rather than wooing Superdelegates diligently enough. Hence the manly slap on his own wrist and cautionary tale against vainglory.

3) Last, it's possible that the day after riveting the nation with a truly beautiful, transcendent speech about race he's now playing the race card, albeit weakly, and following it up with a male privilege chaser.

Had he stopped at, "...the odds of me getting elected have always been low," it wouldn't have caught the eye. But, lemme see, what is it that sets him apart from the "conventional candidates?" And, by the way, since when is Hillary a conventional candidate? Were he only facing white men, OK. But with a woman in the race—how dare he?

Here's the flip side of the black feminist complaint that black women are either forced to choose between the two identities politically—or more typically, just have their preferences assumed to coincide with those of black men (See: Clarence Thomas) on pain of ex-communication. With this bit of rhetoric, Hillary's being forced to be white over female even while she faces non-stop sexism. Why? Because that works best for the black male candidate. Hence, my belief that we're farther along on race than we are on gender; however much racism black men face, they have in common with the worst racial troglodyte the preservation of male privilege.

I've spent the last few days doing non-stop media about Obama, forced to finally give him his props for handling everything from Ferraro to Wright brilliantly, honestly, humanely, and with a minimum of political calculation. I'd been playing hard to get, loathe to swoon over this political Moon Doggie who simply couldn't be all that, and torn by my unquenchable font of feminist fury. But I finally had to give in to my admiration for him; his insistence that Ferraro may not be very articulate but is not a racist, and his treatment of the Wright flap as the legitimate issue that it is, rather than hiding behind either religious privilege or black intransigence, are both simply irresistible.

So, his "conventional candidates" remark surprised me all the more, by sounding like fake grief, a tear-stained hanky in a fisted glove. Like a reminder that he is, all of a sudden, black and therefore downtrodden, when yesterday he was merely Every Man, albeit with a crazy uncle on the loose. (And who doesn't have one of those?)

Obama's comment is a far cry from anything approximating the kind of race-baiting America is used to, but it's pretty typical of the low-level sexism, and male privilege, many of us thought Obama was above. Just 'cause it's subtle don't mean it ain't there. Were I Clinton, I'd damn sure be making this point.

I'm tired of being watchful of public figures I'd like to take the easy way out and admire. The Clintons woke up this sleeping dog with their ham-fisted race baiting up to and including South Carolina; I'm not sure they can soothe me, and all the other formerly loyalist (my bad, "conventional") Dems back to sleep. Now Obama's got me all watchful for more male privilege coming from the quarter I thought least likely to harbor it. The Clintons have taught me well to get suspicious early and stay that way, but it's exhausting.

Of the myriad things I loved about Obama's speech (and gave him much public love for at the expense of my much needed beauty rest) was its insistence that the travails of each historically oppressed or disadvantaged group be respected and alleviated as much as possible—not used to your own advantage.

Practice what you preach, Senator. We humorless feminists are watching.

All the President's Staff

Over the weekend, the Washington Post published a convincing, though understated, rebuttal of the presidential "experience" argument that, until recently, was the biggest issue of the campaign. Combing through records of those late-night crisis calls that Hillary Clinton's "3 AM" ad seeks to highlight, the Post determined that such situations—while certainly not uncommon—rarely require the president to charge, fully dressed, into the Situation Room. The person on the other end of the line is usually a staffer who is already fully aware of the crisis. Therefore, say a number of former presidential advisers, the calls tend to be more of an FYI, after which the president can go back to sleep and deal with the issue in the morning. Kenneth M. Duberstein, Reagan's last chief of staff, described his own rule of thumb:

I had a very simple formula: If it affected the life of a U.S. citizen, you woke the president. At 3 o'clock in the morning, unless there is a nuclear holocaust coming, there is not much the president has to decide. What you are doing is starting to put into gear the response of the U.S. government on behalf of the president, not necessarily by the president.

After nearly eight years of hearing constantly how we must act "quickly" and "decisively" against ever-encroaching threats, it makes sense that many people—and even the candidates themselves—might see the job of president as similar to that of an ER surgeon. The reality, of course, is that while a president must be aware of, and respond to, hundreds of different issues simultaneously, the decisions he or she makes are for the most part well-thought-out and methodically planned, with considerable outside input. In other words, while the president will certainly be asked to lead in a crisis, and to provide necessary direction, he or she usually doesn't have to do it right that second—or alone.

I'd argue that a better question for the candidates than, "Are you experienced enough?" might be, "Who are your advisers, what are their qualifications, and can we trust them?" The more information we can get now about what the candidates' cabinets might look like, the less likely we are to be surprised (or terrified) come January.

—Casey Miner

Mike Huckabee Seems Like a Reasonable Dude

No, not on AIDS patients or environmentalism. He's pretty nutty on that. I mean on the importance of race, pastors, and surrogates in a campaign:

HUCKABEE: [Obama] made the point, and I think it's a valid one, that you can't hold the candidate responsible for everything that people around him may say or do. You just can't. Whether it's me, whether it's Obama...anybody else. But he did distance himself from the very vitriolic statements.

Now, the second story. It's interesting to me that there are some people on the left who are having to be very uncomfortable with what Louis Wright said, when they all were all over a Jerry Falwell, or anyone on the right who said things that they found very awkward and uncomfortable years ago. Many times those were statements lifted out of the context of a larger sermon. Sermons, after all, are rarely written word for word by pastors like Reverend Wright, who are delivering them extemporaneously, and caught up in the emotion of the moment. There are things that sometimes get said, that if you put them on paper and looked at them in print, you'd say "Well, I didn't mean to say it quite like that."

That explains why he wouldn't release his sermons to us. More Huck after the jump. Plus video.

JOE SCARBOROUGH: But, but, you never came close to saying five days after September 11th, that America deserved what it got. Or that the American government invented AIDS...

HUCKABEE: Not defending his statements.

JOE SCARBOROUGH: Oh, I know you're not. I know you're not. I'm just wondering though, for a lot of people...Would you not guess that there are a lot of Independent voters in Arkansas that vote for Democrats sometimes, and vote for Republicans sometimes, that are sitting here wondering how Barack Obama's spiritual mentor would call the United States the USKKK?

HUCKABEE: I mean, those were outrageous statements, and nobody can defend the content of them.

JOE SCARBOROUGH: But what's the impact on voters in Arkansas? Swing voters.

HUCKABEE: I don't think we know. If this were October, I think it would have a dramatic impact. But it's not October. It's March. And I don't believe that by the time we get to October, this is gonna be the defining issue of the campaign, and the reason that people vote.

And one other thing I think we've gotta remember. As easy as it is for those of us who are white, to look back and say "That's a terrible statement!"...I grew up in a very segregated south. And I think that you have to cut some slack -- and I'm gonna be probably the only Conservative in America who's gonna say something like this, but I'm just tellin' you -- we've gotta cut some slack to people who grew up being called names, being told "you have to sit in the balcony when you go to the movie. You have to go to the back door to go into the restaurant. And you can't sit out there with everyone else. There's a separate waiting room in the doctor's office. Here's where you sit on the bus..." And you know what? Sometimes people do have a chip on their shoulder and resentment. And you have to just say, I probably would too. I probably would too. In fact, I may have had more of a chip on my shoulder had it been me.

MIKA: I agree with that. I really do.

JOE SCARBOROUGH: It's the Atticus Finch line about walking a mile in somebody else's shoes. I remember when Ronald Reagan got shot in 1981. There were some black students in my school that started applauding and said they hoped that he died. And you just sat there and of course you were angry at first, and then you walked out and started scratching your head going "boy, there is some deep resentment there."

Lessig Launches "Change Congress" Reform Effort

"Just because there's no personal corruption does not mean that this institution is independent. It doesn't mean that there's no institutional corruption."

That's how Stanford Law Professor and Creative Commons founder Larry Lessig described the U.S. Congress at an event at the National Press Club today where he alleged that Congress "is driven by interests that ought not to be driving it." Lessig is far from the first person to bemoan the influence of money in Washington politics, and he acknowledged as much in his lecture. But he is offering a new, well-thought-out way of tackling a problem that he says causes government to consistently make the wrong decision in "easy cases," where the proper course of action is obvious. (Lessig pointed to copyright terms, nutrition guidelines, and global warming as three examples of "easy cases" Congress gets wrong).

Lessig's new group, "Change Congress", will try to "leverage and amplify" the work of the existing government reform movement. Run by Lessig and Howard Dean/John Edwards campaign manager Joe Trippi, Change Congress will use an internet-centered model similar to that of the incredibly successful Creative Commons project Lessig founded in 2001. (Creative Commons uses the internet to give artists and content creators an easy way to clarify how they want copyright to apply to their works. And it's how MotherJones.com and websites can license so many great flickr.com photos for free.)

The first element of the Change Congress initiative is a pledge, which individuals and congressional candidates can choose to support in full or in part. The pledge has four components: 1) Rejecting money from lobbyists and PACs, 2) Voting to permanently ban earmarks, 3) Supporting public financing of political campaigns, and 4) Supporting "total Congressional transparency."

The second part of the initiative involves tracking support. Change Congress will keep a registry of citizens who believe in its goals, much as Creative Commons keeps a registry of Creative-Commons-licensed work. Change Congress will use the citizens' registry to demonstrate the support government reform enjoys in each congressional district. Just as importantly, it will track which members of Congress (and challengers) support reform, and which representatives are the most beholden to PACs and lobbyists. Representatives who have pledged support and those who have actually taken action to support reform will also be tracked.

So how will Lessig and his organization get members of Congress excited about his project? He's thought about that, too. That's why the third part of Change Congress (there could be more parts after this early, "beta" phase is complete) is centered on actually funding reform. Change Congress will provide tools for individuals who want to give money to members of Congress who support reform, thus replacing the cash the MoCs could have received from PACs and lobbyists, and in return for handing out earmarks.

More than anything, Lessig's lecture highlighted why he could be an important force for change in this arena. It's not that his general ideas are incredibly new. It's that he does a great job of explaining them in a simple, clear way, and that he comes up with great examples to prove his points. Corruption, he told the crowd at the National Press Club today, is like alcoholism. An alcoholic has all sorts of terrible problems she has to deal with because of her addiction: potential loss of a job, alienation of family, jeopardizing of health. Just as an alcoholic can't deal with her other problems until first she solves her alcoholism, so too will Congress be unable to get the "easy cases" right until it solves its corruption problem. And for a nation that needs to get on the government-reform wagon, Lessig's Change Congress hopes to be AA.

(Photo of Larry Lessig by flickr user joi used under a Creative Commons license.)

Day Nine: No Straight Talk from McCain on Parsley's Call for Destroying Islam

Still nothing.

It's been over a week since this site broke the news that John McCain campaigned with (and accepted the endorsement of) a televangelist who has called for eradicating Islam, and McCain has not publicly renounced, rejected, denounced or disavowed the Reverend Rod Parsley, who is an important player in Ohio politics. McCain's campaign did tell Fox News that McCain does not agree with all of Parsley's views. But that's not much of a response to Parsley's call for a holy war to destroy the "false religion" of Islam. One could argue that Jeremiah Wright never went that far—and look what Barack Obama had to go through (justifiably).

McCain's campaign press office refuses to respond to a request for comment on this. He is trying to duck and cover. Not much courage there.

McCain May Actually Not Know Sunnis from Shiites

The blogosphere poked some fun a couple days ago when McCain said dominantly Shiite Iran was aiding dominantly Sunni al Qaeda and had to be corrected by his traveling buddy Joe Lieberman.

But I'm starting to wonder if McCain simply doesn't have a strong grasp of the subject matter. He said it twice at the March 18 press conference where he was corrected by Lieberman. He made the same assertion last month, and said it on the radio on March 17. And to commemorate the 5th anniversary of the war, he sent out a statement (likely written by his staff) that appears to repeat the claim.

The McCain campaign's explanation is that McCain "misspoke" at the press conference with Lieberman. I'm starting to seriously doubt that. But what's the actual explanation? McCain can't possibly be so ignorant of foreign affairs that he thinks Iran and al Qaeda are in bed together, can he? After this many years in the Senate? Perhaps he was having a series of what my parents call "senior moments."

For a man who has staked his entire campaign on Iraq and his understanding of foreign policy, this is bizarre.

Pennsylvania Voters: Not So Comfortable With Obama Anymore

The media elites loved Barack Obama's "Black and More Than Black" speech. They went bananas. They thought it was the greatest thing since sliced bread.

Pennsylvania voters? Not so convinced.

More than a dozen interviews Wednesday found voters unmoved by Obama’s plea to move beyond racial divisions of the past. Despite baring himself with extraordinarily personal reflections on one of the most toxic issues of the day, a highly unusual move for a politician running for national office, the debate inside taverns and beauty shops here had barely moved beyond outrage aimed at the Rev. Jeremiah Wright and Obama’s refusal to “disown” his longtime pastor.

A day after the speech, local residents were left wondering whether Obama was candid in the last week when he said he hadn’t heard any of Wright's most objectionable remarks, but then said Tuesday that he had heard "controversial" remarks while sitting in the pews.

Much more after the jump...

Glenn Peter, 54, a patron at Rauchut's Tavern, said he heard finger pointing, not reconciliation. He took issue with Obama’s explanation that Wright’s observations of a racist America were reflecting the racial scars of his past.

"I don't want to hear that you are blaming us for him saying this," said Peter, who is white and worked at an auto parts factory until it was shuttered several years ago. Cutting ties with the church "would have been the best way to do it. That way, I could have been able to listen to him again."

..."It was a great speech," one man said. "But what concerns me is that on the website for his church, they say they are unabashedly Afro-centric. … The underlying message is they are perpetual victims and they enjoy the victim status and by proxy, me as a white person is their victimizer. And as long as we perpetuate these divisions, we will never heal."

...Mitrea, the aesthetician on her cigarette break outside Beautyworx Salon and Day Spa in the Mayfair section of Philadelphia, said she watched the whole speech. And before the controversy over Wright’s sermons, Mitrea said she was 55 percent for Clinton, 45 percent for Obama.

"Now I am 100 percent for Clinton and zero percent for Obama," Mitrea said.

John and Joe Travel the Middle East

Good times! John McCain and Joe Lieberman are on a road trip through the Middle East and are continuing their pattern of gaffes. This one is not as serious as the Sunni/Shia mix up, but it is awfully amusing.

In Israel yesterday, NBC's Lauren Appelbaum reports, Lieberman once again intervened when McCain made an incorrect reference about the Jewish holiday Purim -- by calling the holiday "their version of Halloween here."

McCain made the incorrect statement during a press conference with Defense Minister Ehud Barak after touring the Israeli city of Sderot to view building damaged by Hamas rocket fire. McCain was discussing the numerous rock attacks on the city. "Nine hundred rocket attacks in less than three months, an average of one every one to two hours. Obviously this puts an enormous and hard to understand strain on the people here, especially the children. As they celebrate their version of Halloween here, they are somewhere close to a 15-second warning, which is the amount of time they have from the time the rocket is launched to get to safety. That's not a way for people to live obviously."

Purim is not the equivalent of an Israeli Halloween, Appelbaum notes. The holiday -- although a joyous one -- commemorates a time when the Jewish people living in Persia were saved from mass execution. When Sen. Lieberman had a chance to speak at the press conference, he placed the blame of the mistake on himself. "I had a brief exchange with one of the mothers whose children was in there in a costume for Purim," Lieberman, who is Jewish and celebrates the holiday, said. "And it's my fault that I said to Senator McCain that this is the Israeli version of Halloween. It is in the sense because the kids dress up and it's a very happy holiday and actually it is in the sense that the sweets are very important of both holidays."

I hope someone makes a movie out of these two. The very underrated mid-90s goofball comedy My Fellow Americans could be the inspiration. Except instead of the hilarious misadventures of two old, curmudgeony ex-presidents, it would be two old, curmudgeony wanna-be presidents.

March 19, 2008

Obama Spokesman Jabs McCain on Al Qaeda-Iran Gaffe

By now you're sick of hearing about John McCain's gaffe in Jordan—although definitely worth the attention, I'd argue—but this quote from the Obama campaign is worth passing along. From campaign spokesman, Bill Burton: "We wish the McCain campaign well as they try to figure out the difference between Iran and Al Qaeda." That's pretty funny right? Only it's not so much funny as it is scary that a man, who may very well not have more of a clue than our current commander in chief, might one day replace him. So, definitely not funny ha-ha.

Cheney on America's Opposition to the War: "So?"

Vice President Cheney took to ABC to call the war a "major success" and to dismiss the will of the American public:

CHENEY: On the security front, I think there's a general consensus that we've made major progress, that the surge has worked. That’s been a major success.

MARTHA RADDATZ: Two-third of Americans say it’s not worth fighting.

CHENEY: So?

RADDATZ So? You don’t care what the American people think?

CHENEY: No. I think you cannot be blown off course by the fluctuations in the public opinion polls.

While we're contemplating whether we still live in a representative democracy, let's take a look at some long-term Pew polls that illustrate exactly what the American people think.

Three neat graphs from the good folks at Pew:

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The Peace Movement and Darcy Burner

This week, as anti-war activists descended on Washington to mark the 5th anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, key members of the peace movement gathered at Take Back America, the annual progressive convention, to discuss their next moves in their ongoing mission to end the war. Up until now, the peace movement has relied on fiery rhetoric and tactics, including large-scale protests and congressional pressure campaigns, that have so far failed to produce the desired results. In part, this may be because the peace movement has always known when it wants to get out of Iraq ("Now!"), but not how it intends to do so.

Speaking at a Take Back America panel on Monday, Leslie Cagan, co-chair of United for Peace and Justice, stressed the need to "mount serious opposition" to Congress' next authorization of funding for the war. "Constant public protest activities," Cagan said, are needed to build pressure on the new president and Congress. She also said that continued counter-recruiting efforts are needed to curb the military's ability to wage war.

But these time-worn protest strategies haven't worked. Congress has never seriously considered denying any of the president's many war funding requests, and troops levels in Iraq today are near their highest point.

Nita Chaudhury of MoveOn.org said that the peace movement needs make it clear to Republicans that voting to continue the war won't just imperil their jobs, but send their political movement into a "death spiral" that would "doom it for a decade." Evidence of the death spiral's imminence is hard to find: The economy is outpacing the war as the most important issue in every primary, and the vehemently pro-war John McCain is polling evenly with Democrats in the presidential race.

Tom Swan, the national coordinator of the Iraq/Recession Campaign, explained that his coalition will try to convince the public that the war is causing America's economic ills. What Swan was missing was persuasive data showing that the link between the war and the recession was real, and not just an opportunistic PR tactic by the peace movement. Swan is supported by a Nobel-winning economist, but serious questions remain.

In all, five anti-war leaders spoke during the Take Back America panel discussion and not one of them devoted more than a half-sentence to the surge, which any reality-based observer would admit seriously complicates the anti-war movement's efforts to generate popular opposition to the war. And none made any mention of how America ought to withdraw.

But then Darcy Burner spoke.

A former Microsoft middle manager who is taking her second run at Congress in Washington State, Burner said that she was fed up with telling voters she wanted to end the war, only to be stymied by the question of how she planned to do so. So she met with Paul Eaton, the retired army general responsible for training the Iraqi military between 2003 and 2004, and developed a comprehensive withdrawal plan.

On the key issue of removing troops, Burner's 30-page plan, dubbed "A Responsible Plan to End the War in Iraq," glosses over the details. It notes that "troop draw-downs should begin immediately and continue until no more troops remain in Iraq," but the timeframe for the withdrawal and the path(s) out of the country aren't described. Eventually, they will be "based on planning provided by our military leadership."

But the plan is comprehensive in every other respect. Using a combination of Iraq Study Group recommendations and legislation already before Congress, the plan provides for refugee assistance and a diplomatic surge that would bring together regional leaders and aims to initiate political reconciliation within the country. It would create non-military Provincial Reconstruction Teams that would "strengthen the capacity of towns and villages to resist the insurgency" and would reach the "entirety of the Iraqi population." It calls for the departments of State, Agriculture, Commerce, Transportation, Justice, and the Treasury to work with international groups to rebuild the country. In short, it de-militarizes the occupation.

The plan also aims to restore habeas corpus to detainees, make extraordinary rendition illegal, and phase out the use of private military contractors. (It can be read in full here.)

It is far from a perfect plan, and it would likely get seriously reworked if it were introduced in Congress, no matter how large the Democratic majority. But it recognizes the anti-war movement's need to add depth to its rhetoric. For that, Darcy Burner has done folks like Cagan, Chaudhury, and Swan a great service.

Photo of soldiers in Iraq by flickr user soldiersmediacenter used under a Creative Commons license.

Replaying the Iraq War's Greatest Hits, Five Years On

It's been five years since we headed down the rabbit hole to Iraq. Reflecting on this milestone while visiting Baghdad a couple of days ago, Dick Cheney declared that "we've come a long way" since the days of "Mission Accomplished," describing the war as "a difficult, challenging, but nonetheless successful endeavor." Which in the topsy-turvy, up-is-down world of Iraqspeak means that we are still horribly, gut-wrenchingly screwed.

To commemorate the war's fifth birthday, here's a brief collection of some of Mother Jones' coverage of the challenges and difficulties of the past few years. Or, as the vice president might put it, the Iraq War's greatest hits:

• Before 2003, Iraq had no ties to Al Qaeda. Now it's a terrorist breeding ground and distraction from the war on terror—the one that was against the Al Qaeda that existed before we created the new one in Iraq.

• Remember how Ahmad Chalabi conned the White House into invading Iraq? Suckers. Hard-nosed journalists would have never fallen for his crap. Oh wait—they did.

• So maybe it was a bad idea to take the soldiers involved in prisoner abuse in Afghanistan and send them to run prisons in Iraq.

• But then, the highest-ranking officer to be tried for the abuses at Abu Ghraib was let off with a slap on the wrist. Clearly, there's nothing more to see here.

• Hey, Senator McCain—we know that it's hard to keep track of that Sunni-Shia thing. Our "Iraq for Dummies" handbook can help.

• The good news: More GIs are surviving their combat wounds than ever before. The bad news: More than 3,900 have died. And more than 4,600 have suffered serious head or brain injuries; more than 1,300 are amputees.

• Saddam's WMDs were nonexistent, but he did have real, live weapons researchers whom the U.S. let slip slip through the cracks. Just promise you'll keep that nefarious know-how to yourselves, guys!

• Public service announcement: Getting out of Iraq is gonna be ugly any way you slice it.

• So many lies, so little time—lies about WMDs, lies about progress on the ground, lies about torture. We've been collecting them in our "Lie By Lie" timeline—years of official mendacity at your fingertips!

No doubt the hits will keep coming in the year ahead. By next March, Cheney will have moved on, but no matter who occupies the White House, the U.S. will will have spent another year in Iraq.

March 18, 2008

New Deadline in Missing WH Emails Case

A federal judge told the Bush administration today that it has three days to give him a good reason why he shouldn't order the White House to make copies of every computer hard drive in the Executive Office of the President (EOP). Judge John M. Facciola's ruling (PDF) is a major victory for two Washington non-profits, the National Security Archive (NSA) and Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), who have been battling the administration in court to ensure the preservation of missing White House emails.

The emails, which could number in the millions, are from between 2003 and 2005 and could include information about the runup to the war in Iraq and the outing of Valerie Plame Wilson as a covert CIA agent. (Need to catch up? Read our full coverage of the missing White House emails story.)

In another victory for the plaintiffs, the Judge noted the fact, reported by Mother Jones in January but largely ignored in the mainstream press, that the White House's regular 'recycling' of email backup tapes prior to October 2003 indicates that emails between March and October 2003 are probably not preserved anywhere. This contradicts what Theresa Payton, the White House Office of Administration's (OA) Chief Information Officer, said in January when she claimed that "substantially all" the missing emails would be preserved on backup tapes (PDF). From the Judge's order:

It is nevertheless true that if e-mails have not been properly archived as plaintiffs allege, and copies of those e-mails do not exist on back-up tapes, then the obliteration of data upon which those e-mails may be reconstructed threatens the plaintiffs with irreparable harm. This appears to be the case for any e-mails that were not properly archived between March 2003 and October 2003, during which time no back-up tapes exist. [Emphasis added.]

Facciola's ruling indicates that he takes the plaintiffs' concerns seriously and understands that time is of the essence, since every day that goes by makes it increasingly likely that potentially recoverable email data will be permanently lost. If Facciola does order copies made, it will mean that "while the clock is ticking [the emails] are not going to disappear," explains Meredith Fuchs, the NSA's General Counsel.

There is already a court order that asks the administration to preserve emails, but it's now "pretty clear that the court seems concerned that in fact the original preservation order doesn't go far enough," Anne Weismann, CREW's Chief Counsel, told me this afternoon.

The White House has said it "fully intends to comply" with Facciola's order. That will likely mean submitting a reason why the administration thinks it would be unwise or too costly to make copies of every hard drive in the EOP. Both sides will probably bring in experts to argue over how much this will cost, and the judge will have to weigh the potential "irreparable harm" to the plaintiff's interests against the price tag of his proposed measure. "We still don't know what the court's going to do at the end of the day," Fuchs says.

Even if the court does end up following through and ordering copies made of every EOP hard drive, the lawsuit will not be over. In addition to seeking assurances that emails will be recovered, the plaintiffs are suing to make the White House implement a better archiving system. The current system, one National Archives official told the OA in November, "[H]ardly qualifies as a 'system' by the usual IT definition." An internal White House memo released by the House oversight committee said that "[S]tandard operating procedures for email management do not exist," and cautioned that "lost or misplaced email archives may result in an inability to meet statutory requirements."

With the Bush administration in its final year, there's little hope that the White House will replace the existing email archiving "system". During its first term, the Bush administration discarded the Clinton administration's Lotus-based system and started to work on a replacement, called the Electronic Communications Records Management System (ECRMS). But ECRMS was scrapped in 2006, and since then the current ad-hoc system, which relied for a long time on manual backups of data and the creation of extremely large, unstable .pst files, has been used in the absence of a dedicated archiving system. It's not clear that any replacement has been proposed or is in the works.

Another issue that will have to be resolved before this whole mess is wrapped up (something that the National Archives expects won't happen until the next administration takes office) is the constantly-changing White House line on the missing emails. After originally acknowledging that some emails could be missing, the White House claimed early this year that it didn't know if any messages are actually gone. Payton, the OA Chief Information Officer, gave apparently contradictory testimony to the House oversight committee and the court that is handling the NSA case. And documents and testimony that came to light during a February 28th oversight committee hearing make it clear that, despite its denials, the White House is likely aware of specific missing emails, some relating directly to the Valerie Plame case. One contradiction at issue is Payton's statement to the court on Jan. 16 that "substantially all" e-mails from 2003 to 2005 would be on backup tapes. The fact that tapes from March to October 2003 were recycled raises the possibility that Payton's statement may have been demonstrably false. CREW has asked that the court order the EOP to say why it should not be held in contempt of court, and submitted a motion detailing this and other contradictions in White House officials' sworn testimony (PDF).

"The White House has contradicted itself repeatedly, so they walked themselves into this," says Fuchs, the NSA's counsel. She argues that the administration's penchant for secrecy has made it hard for the plaintiffs to figure out if the White House was acting in good faith to try to preserve the emails. "For all we know they could be doing something reasonable, but we don't know."

Posted by Nick Baumann on 03/18/08 at 4:10 PM | | Comments (4) | E-mail |