History!!

What a night. What a night! The major networks have called the Presidential race for Barack Obama, and it looks like he will comfortably surpass the 270 Electoral College votes needed to claim the presidency. In fact, McCain is now conceding as I write this.

An African American, a black man has been elected President of the United States!! When one considers the long history of slavery, hate, oppression and bigotry that black Americans have suffered, I am almost driven to tears by the thought. It is at least the beginning of the end of an eight year long nightmare. Tonight I am very proud to be an American. It is a night that all peace-loving Americans should celebrate. It is a hopeful sign that the forces of hate and intolerance are being slowly, but steadily driven back. There's an enormous amount of work to do from here, but tonight is a night for celebration!!

Spreadin' it Around

So the end now is finally in sight. There really can be no acceptable reason for such an endless Presidential campaign season. In case you missed it, a little more than 2 weeks ago Canada held national elections, approximately six weeks after Prime Minister Steven Harper called for the new vote. Imagine that, a campaign in six weeks, what a concept. Almost no time to sling the mud, just enough to lay out a program and let the voters decide. And in Canada you have more than two choices, and even the "minority" parties will have seats in parliament, and a real voice in the affairs of government, not so in the USA, where our politics has essentially been reduced to a vote for Dweedle Dum or Dweedle Dumber.

Moreover, after almost a years worth of campaigning recent polling suggests that perhaps as many as 7% of Americans are still undecided with regard to the Presidential race. Undecided?? How can anyone still be undecided about this race? My question to the undecided is along the lines of, what are you waiting to hear? What is it that would push you off the fence? Will it be the last 30 second distortion of a campaign ad that you hear before going to the polls? Will it be a last minute "gaffe" from one of the candidates? A coin flip?? In my opinion, anyone still "undecided" at this point should probably do the rest of us a big favor and not bother voting, since it would seem likely that their vote in the end is likely to turn on some ridiculous bit of minutiae or spin.

With such a long campaign there is that much more time for those so inclined to truly sink into the depths. The McCain campaign has arguably set a new standard for debasing a campaign; trotting out all the most despicable aspects of human nature in its last ditch effort to win at all costs. After this campaign, McCain should never again be allowed to even whisper the terms honorable or maverick in reference to himself.

What would appear to be their last hope has been to try and label Obama a socialistic "spreader of the wealth." This charge is so ridiculous, so devoid of substance, so pathetic, that it has had virtually no effect on the race, but it does serve to highlight the nature of Republican campaigning these days. Having literally "wrecked America," this crowd has no substantive issues to run on, so their tactics are reduced to name calling. The logic is this, Obama must be defeated at all cost, therefore, he is a socialist. No evidence is required for a Party driven by dogma and ideology. So, what is the ostensible "evidence" that Obama is a closet Marxist? Apparently it is his tax plan, that proposes to raise the tax rate on those incomes above about $250,000 by, wait for it, a Leninistic 2-4%, while modestly cutting taxes for the remainder of the citizenry. So, Obama's plan cuts taxes for upwards of 90-95% of Americans, and marginally raises rates on the top 5% of the income distribution, this "proves" without a doubt that obviously he must be a commie. The new higher rate is essentially the same as that pre-Dubya, under that obvious Marxist Bill Clinton. Based on these charges it becomes crystal clear just who McCain and Co. think are "real Americans," that would be those in that top 5% of incomes, a very small fraction of the total population, but clearly part of the Republican base!

Even more astonishing is the irony of McCain, and Republicans generally, charging Obama and Democrats with being "spreaders" of the wealth, when Republicans have engineered arguably the largest transfer of wealth in the nation's history, but this transfer has been from the bottom up rather than the top down. From the Bush tax cuts for the rich, to no-bid contracts, to corporate welfare and tax loopholes the rich have essentially robbed everyone else to the tune of many hundreds of billions of dollars. Then, we can consider the work of Governor Palin in her home state of Alaska, which each year cuts a check for several thousand dollars to every resident derived predominantly from tax revenues on oil companies operating in the State. In her own words Sarah Palin described this little socialistic redistribution thus, "we're set up, unlike other states in the union, where it's collectively Alaskans own the resources. So we share in the wealth when the development of these resources occurs." Share collectively in the wealth eh, so we see that none other than right-wing ideologue Sarah Palin herself is at heart a socialist too, how wonderful. Based on this we know exactly where to put all these Republican charges of "socialism" against Obama, in the toilet where they belong.

Of course much of good governance is about collectively using resources for the benefit of the nation and society as a whole. All modern democracies have long since reached this conclusion, as it is grounded in fundamentally basic human values, but apparently not yet the politically Neanderthal Republican Party and its right-wing, Cro-Magnon apologists. Consider just one example, the Social Security program, all workers pay into it in order to guarantee at least a minimum level of retirement support and other benefits for the population, and Americans seem to think this is just fine, Social Security being one of the most well-liked government programs ever enacted. Just imagine if George Bush had gotten his way and succeeded in privatizing the Social Security system, and tying the retirement incomes of millions of Americans to the whims of financiers and the stock market. Can you say mega-disaster? I knew you could.

I live in Maryland, a state that will very likely go heavily for Obama over McCain. Nevertheless, I am often bemused and perplexed by the numbers of McCain/Palin lawn signs that I see. So, I will close this pre-election post with my satirical take on the standard McCain lawn sign. As they say, vote early, and vote often (if the past eight years have challenged your funny bone, that was a joke). In case you haven't guessed, I will be voting for Barack Obama, I hope many others will be doing the same.

Cratering Party

In his now famous snubbing of David Letterman, John McCain excused his own absence by stating that he needed to rush to Washington in order to rescue the "cratering" US economy, and thus wouldn't have the time to appear on Letterman's Late Show. In its current colloquial use the term cratering refers to a spectacular failure, and while it is an apt description of the current state of the US economy, it also perfectly describes the state of the Republican Party and its last eight years of catastrophic governance.

Now with the curtain drawing down, and what passes for an election entering its final and most ugly stage, we get to see the real nature of this Party, as well as its corporate and media apologists, as they try desperately to cling to power. So, now we are treated to the scenes of Sarah Palin and John McCain attempting to label Barack Obama a "terrorist" for the most tenuous association imaginable with one-time Weather Underground Organization (WUO) leader William Ayers. The "logic" at work here, such as it is, would appear to be at the same level as the mental machinations of Mrs. Palin who tried to argue that since she could see Russia from her state of Alaska, then she was an expert on that country with all the experience of a seasoned foreign policy wonk. For the mind that could concoct that tortured argument, it is not much of a stretch to something like, if Obama once saw the "terrorist" Ayers, then he must be a "terrorist" too!

Let's recap some of the pertinent facts surrounding this pathetic, McCarthyite attempt at guilt by association. First, Obama was an eight year old boy at the time of Ayer's involvement with the Weathermen! For most reasonable people, that should completely end the argument. Obama had precisely NOTHING to do with Ayers' alleged terrorist activities within the Weathermen. Second, the characterization of the Weathermen as terrorists is itself problematic. While the organization did engage in violence, it made a point of targeting property and not people. In general, warnings were issued well in advance of WUO bombings, and Ayers himself has stated that they were very serious about limiting injuries to civilians. Moreover, there is no evidence that any of Ayers' actions resulted in injury or loss of life, and indeed, no such charges were ever brought against him. This is not typically the behavior of truly terrorist organizations.

Now, some will no doubt argue that the violence itself, the bombings and rioting, are evidence enough of "terrorist" behavior, and no doubt this argument will find sympathetic ears with some readers, however, this conclusion ignores the fact that the relatively small-scale violence perpetrated by the WUO was a response to the truly massive violence being perpetrated by the US military in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos, the scale of which completely dwarfs anything the WUO could have brought about. Moreover, the violent actions carried out by the WUO were an attempt, though perhaps ill-conceived and naive, to try and stop the much greater crimes being perpetrated in Southeast Asia by the American government with its imperial war in Vietnam. While Ayers has over the years expressed regrets with regard to some of the WUO's violent tactics, he has consistently refused to accept the terrorist charge, "The reason we weren't terrorists is because we did not commit random acts of terror against people. Terrorism was what was being practiced in the countryside of Vietnam by the United States," he has said. Of course, in their attempts to smear Obama by association with Ayers, Republicans completely ignore all of this important contextual information. Moreover, McCain himself has had past associations with such criminals (some might say terrorists) as the infamous G. Gordon Liddy, he of the Watergate break-in and burglary. Indeed, it was none other than "journalist" David Letterman who actually questioned McCain regarding his associations with Liddy.

Since his radical days Ayers has been a productive member of society, working as a professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago, College of Education. He has done much to help improve the plight of public education in Chicago, and in 1997 Chicago awarded him its Citizen of the Year award for his education work in the city. In many ways he has worked to redeem himself from his violent past. Ironically, this is a theme that Republicans love to trot out when it suits their needs but are loath to accept in political enemies. Take McCain for example, we are meant to believe that he has "learned his lessons," and has fully redeemed himself from his past transgressions with regard to his associations with Charles Keating and the Savings and Loan scandal. Forget for the moment that McCain apparently learned nothing from the scandal, except to be more careful not to get caught in the future, as his penchant for deregulation remained unabated. Similarly, the out of wedlock pregnancy of Sarah Palin's daughter is spun as a story of redemption and lessons learned, but Republicans would never think of extending such forgiveness to the pregnant daughters of inner-city black Americans, for example. The double standards are stark indeed.

While McCain and Palin have recently tried to make the Ayers affair the center-piece of their campaign, polling around the third debate indicates that most Americans can see through the lies and distortion, and in fact, it appears likely that it is now hurting McCain more than helping him. With Ayers fading away the McCain campaign needs to find other "issues" with which to attempt to smear Obama. The latest, and perhaps most desperate (and laughable) attempt by the McCain campaign and its surrogates is to simply label Obama and anyone who might consider voting for him as anti-American socialists and Marxists (see the nice visuals at Bad American). Indeed, CNN's daft and insipid Glenn Beck was kind enough to remind us that, "The problem with all of these guys is they're all Marxists -- they're all Marxists. They'll all spread the wealth." Here, "they" presumably refers to Obama and anyone with the temerity to consider voting for him. Predictably, Beck presented not a shred of evidence to back up this ludicrous charge, but that's the great thing about being an insta-pundit, evidence is never required, and for loopy right-wingers it's much easier to just start making stuff up. I wonder if Beck has ever considered that the Bush administration, with it's tax cuts for the rich and free-wheeling, deregulatory mania, has been spreading the wealth like crazy, but in this case it has been the wealth of the lower and middle classes being transferred to a tiny fraction of the population at the top of the income pyramid. The most recent instance of such spreading being the $850 billion Wall Street bailout boondoggle! One suspects that this attempt to smear Obama as a Marxist will be about as successful as the Ayers ploy, meaning not very.

And now today we have been treated with the spectacle of Minnesota Republican Representative Michelle Bachmann's statements that Barack Obama and his wife Michelle are "anti-American," and "couldn't be trusted in the White House." Remarkably, Bachman went so far as to resurrect the spirit of Joseph McCarthy with her call for news media outlets to investigate other members of Congress to, and I quote, "find out if they are pro-America or anti-America." This is the most despicable form of demagoguery imaginable, but it is a tactic that this Republican party has turned to again and again. In similar fashion, just the other day Sarah Palin expressed her delight at visiting "pro-American" regions of the country. The unstated implication being that, in her view, some parts of the country are "un-American." Apparently, that would apply to St. Louis, MO, which today hosted a rally for Barack Obama which was attended by upwards of 100,000 people!

As is so often the case such Republican rhetoric simply stands the truth on its head. For eight years now our Nation has been governed by a political party that has put its own interests ahead of those of our country and its people. That is essentially the definition of treason, and the Republican Party is so charged. Any dissenting opinions to its reckless, incompetent, criminal and destructive course have been labeled unpatriotic. Those who dared oppose the self-annointed "true and only Americans" were dismissed as traitors. And now, with the end of their miserable rule in sight, their only recourse is the same tired demagogic attempt to slander opponents as un-American. There are only two words to describe this Party, pathetic and despicable, and in a little more than two weeks I will have one thing left to say, good riddance!

Mendacious Maverick

It's pretty obvious that national political conventions have become little more than highly staged media events, designed to, in the words of George W. Bush, "catapult the propaganda." While this is now largely true of both major political parties, the recently concluded Republican convention has clearly broken new ground in terms of outright deception, Orwellian abuse of language and the overall debasement of our political culture. Indeed, it was as if, protected by some kind of force field, the Excel Center in Minneapolis became a kind of twilight zone, with no memory, impervious to history and fact, a virtual tabula rasa on which the Republicans could hope to re-write the failed legacy of eight years of disastrous rule. Nowhere was this more evident than in the remarks from John McCain on accepting the presidential nomination of his traitorous Party.

Since it would take an epic tome to document all the dissembling and deception evident in McCain's speech, let's just hit some of the major themes and highlights and see how they hold up to some reality-based thinking. Perhaps the most astounding claims from McCain revolve around the notion that the Republican ticket represents the agent of change in the upcoming election. McCain's first change pedigree, he would have us believe, is his choice of a virtually unknown, largely inexperienced, right-wing, neophyte governor, none other than Alaskan governor Sarah Palin. As McCain boasted, "I'm very proud to have introduced our next vice president to the country. But I can't wait until I introduce her to Washington. And let me offer an advance warning to the old, big-spending, do-nothing, me-first, country-second Washington crowd: Change is coming." But wait, who exactly are those old, big-spending, country-second Washington hacks? If you're thinking they are exactly the same Party that was nominating McCain, then you'd be right, and McCain was and has been a major player in this me-first crowd for the past eight years. McCain would have you believe that he and his Party, the authors of eight years of perfidy, are the ones to "clean up the mess" in Washington. If you are willing to swallow that pile of bull, then I know a bridge for sale, cheap. The only truth here in McCain's statement is that there really is a mess in Washington, but he (and his Party) is the mess! The contradictions in McCain's message were succinctly highlighted by The Nation's John Nichols, who pointed out, "Even as he (McCain) was pledging to 'change the way government does almost everything,' the senator from Arizona announced his commitment to much, much more of the same."

McCain's next big theme was of course "defense" (actually, offense might be a more apt description). McCain boasted about his supposed key part in authoring and implementing the so-called "surge" in Iraq, and further boasted that, "Thanks to the leadership of a brilliant general, David Petraeus, and the brave men and women he has the honor to command, that strategy succeeded and rescued us from a defeat that would have demoralized our military, risked a wider war and threatened the security of all Americans." The notion that "the surge" rescued us from a defeat in Iraq is fanciful, as Tom Engelhardt has pointed out. It is an indication of the depths to which the Republican Party has sunk for its present leader to brand an unnecessary, immoral, illegal and devastating war, that has killed hundreds of thousands of people and laid waste to an entire country, a success, indeed, it is an obscene characterization. Also, McCain is apparently unaware that many in our military are already demoralized by this war, as this short video from the Guardian's Sean Smith demonstrates, and that it is the Iraq war itself, and American military adventurism, that threatens wider war and the security of Americans. By any measure; moral, economic, political, the Iraq war has been nothing less than catastrophic. To suggest continuing it to some undefined, unattainable "victory" is nothing less than insanity.

McCain, however, doesn't see fit to stop with Iraq, he further brandishes the saber at both Russia and, of course, Iran, a favorite Republican "whipping boy." But McCain really starts to lose it when he attempts to tongue-lash Russia for its "invasion" of Georgia and, in his words, "reassembling the Russian Empire." He then further castigates Moscow, arguing that, "we can't turn a blind eye to aggression and international lawlessness that threatens the peace and stability of the world and the security of the American people." The irony here is rich indeed, as McCain has been a cheer-leader for just such aggression and lawlessness with the US invasion and occupation of Iraq. However, one of the benefits of being a Republican is that it comes with an immunity to irony. If McCain had any legitimate security bonafides he might also consider the effect of unnecessary NATO expansionism in intimidating Russia toward a more belligerent posture with respect to its neighbors. Further, insisting on an unnecessary and dangerously destabilizing (and arguably useless) missile defense system in Eastern Europe, is also needlessly isolating Russia. McCain also contradicts his own CIA in perpetuating the favorite Bush administration canard that Iran is dangerously close to developing a nuclear weapon.
Clearly McCain doesn't know half as much about real national security issues as he likes to claim. As his own fellow traveler Pat Buchanan put it, if elected, "McCain will make Cheney look like Ghandi." Trust me, we can do without that.