The First Poodle?

As most every one knows, Barack Obama promised his two daughters that if elected, he would get them a dog. As most every parent knows, once you let the, ahem, cat out of the bag, it's hard to be a "flip-flopper". This morning I heard that one of his daughters is....allergic to dogs! I briefly worried that this might be the first campaign promise that Mr Obama breaks. However, I have a suggestion for the president-elect, which could get him out of some family hot water! (and no, I'm not trying for the position of "First Veterinarian") My suggestion is a simple one: get a Standard Poodle! Great for people with allergies! And, the smartest dog out there, so perhaps the dog can help with the economic crisis or orchestrate a US troop withdrawal from the Middle East. Imagine it: The First Poodle!

Mr Obama did state yesterday that: "Of course I'd like to get a shelter dog, but that might not work out" given the allergy situation. So, Mr Obama, a Standard Poodle may be just the thing for you and your family. As every parent knows, getting one's child to clean their room or do their homework is MUCH more difficult than foreign policy. Therefore, getting the "right" dog could really help maintain domestic tranquility. So best of luck, Mr President.

Saying farewell to friends.........

As I boarded my plane at DC's National Airport, two close friends were there to see me off! I didn't know he was that tall!

Obama Fights False Links to Islam

Can Obama get by this latest "Swift Boating"? Can people see past it?

By JIM KUHNHENN

WASHINGTON (AP) — For Barack Obama, it is an ember that he has doused time and again, only to see it flicker anew: links to Islam fanned by false rumors, innuendo and association.

Obama and his campaign reacted strongly this week when a photo of him in Kenyan tribal garb began spreading on the Internet. And the praise he received Sunday from Nation of Islam Minister Louis Farrakhan prompted pointed questions — during Tuesday night's presidential debate and also in a private meeting over the weekend with Jewish leaders in Cleveland.

During the debate, Obama repeated his denunciation of Farrakhan's views, which have included numerous anti-Semitic comments. And, after being pressed, he rejected Farrakhan's support in the presidential race.

The Democratic candidate says repeatedly that he's a Christian who took the oath of office on a family Bible. Yet on the Internet and on talk radio — and in a campaign introduction for John McCain this week — he is often depicted, falsely, as a Muslim with shadowy ties and his middle name, Hussein, is emphasized as a reminder of Iraq's former leader.

"If anyone is still puzzled about the facts, in fact I have never been a Muslim," he told the Jewish leaders in Cleveland, according to a transcript of the private session.

The photo of Obama wearing Kenyan tribal raiments — taken by an Associated Press photographer during his visit in 2006 to the country where his father was born — resurfaced on the Internet amid unsubstantiated claims that it was being circulated by members of Hillary Rodham Clinton's campaign. Clinton and her aides said they had nothing to do with it. The Obama campaign accused them of "shameful, offensive fear-mongering."

On Tuesday Republican candidate McCain denounced the introduction he got in Cincinnati that criticized Obama in vivid terms. Talk show host Bill Cunningham referred to Obama three times as "Barack Hussein Obama" and called him a "hack, Chicago-style" politician during the introduction of McCain.

The Obama campaign is closely attuned to the rumors and insinuations. Information on Obama's Christian faith is prominently available on the "Know the facts" page of his Web site. The campaign has distributed flyers to churches in states with presidential contests. And it encourages supporters to flag any attack that may make its way into cyberspace.

"Our campaign is vigilant in quickly responding to any information about Senator Obama that surfaces, be it on the Internet, in the media or from our opponents," spokesman Bill Burton said Wednesday.

If there is confusion — and opportunity for political mischief — it derives at least in part from Obama's rich cultural background. His mother was a white woman from Kansas, his father was Kenyan and he spent part of his childhood in Indonesia, a largely Muslim country.

"My grandfather, who was Kenyan, converted to Christianity, then converted to Islam," Obama said Sunday. "My father never practiced; he was basically agnostic. So, other than my name and the fact that I lived in a populous Muslim country for four years when I was a child, I have very little connection to the Islamic religion."

Obama has become careful in denouncing the links, lately noting that some rumors about him also have been insulting to Muslims. Jim Zogby, founder and president of the Arab American Institute, said many Arab Americans are drawn to Obama because of his cultural background.

"It is clear he wants to have a broader relationship with the Muslim world," Zogby said. "He has a biography that connects him to the Muslim world."

Obama, though in the presidential limelight now for more than a year, is still introducing himself to voters. An AP-Yahoo poll in January asked people to volunteer the first few words that came to mind about each of the candidates, and 4 percent of the respondents, unprompted, mentioned the word Muslim when describing Obama.

Some of the rumors and allegations about Obama are clearly not true, yet still spread, often anonymously:

_ A debunked chain e-mail circulating widely on the Internet suggests he is hiding his Islamic roots. It says he was sworn into the Senate on the Quran and turns his back on the flag during the Pledge of Allegiance.

He took his Senate oath with his hand on a family Bible, and he says, "Whenever I'm in the United States Senate, I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America." In fact, no candidate could survive if he publicly spurned the pledge.

_ Another false report says he attended a Muslim madrassa school as a child in Jakarta. Obama was born in Hawaii and moved to Indonesia when he was 6 to live with his mother and stepfather. He returned to Hawaii when he was 10 to live with his maternal grandparents. Interviews last year by The Associated Press at the elementary school in Jakarta found that it is a public and secular institution and has been open to students of all faiths since before Obama attended in the late 1960s. Said vice principal Akmad Solichin: "Yes, most of our students are Muslim, but there are Christians as well. Everyone's welcome here."

_ Obama also has faced questions about his pastor at Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, where he has been a member for 20 years. Trinity calls itself "Unashamedly Black and Unapologetically Christian." But it accepts non-black congregants. The United Church of Christ's president and general minister, the Rev. John H. Thomas, was quoted in a church publication as pointing out that the Rev. Jane Fisler-Hoffman, Illinois Conference Minister, who is white, "has been a member of the congregation for years."

_ Obama has been asked about Farrakhan's words of praise and Farrakhan's receipt of an award from "Trumpet Newsmagazine," a Trinity church publication last month. Obama told Jewish leaders Sunday: "An award was given to Farrakhan for his work on behalf of ex-offenders completely unrelated to his controversial statements. And I believe that was a mistake and showed a lack of sensitivity to the Jewish community and I said so."

Farrakhan did not endorse Obama but said Sunday: "This young man is the hope of the entire world that America will change and be made better." Asked Tuesday night whether he would accept support from Farrakhan, Obama said: "I live in Chicago. He lives in Chicago. I've been very clear, in terms of me believing that what he has said is reprehensible and inappropriate. And I have consistently distanced myself from him."

Following an exchange with Clinton, he then added: "There's no formal offer of help from Minister Farrakhan that would involve me rejecting it. But if the word 'reject' Senator Clinton feels is stronger than the word 'denounce,' then I'm happy to concede the point, and I would reject and denounce."

Obama’s Kenyan Roots

Hmmmm, I'm not really buying into America as the land of opportunity, a bunch of Horatio Alger stories. Recent studies show that this economic mobility is less possible for blacks than whites. However, I thought this was important to post for a couple of reasons. First, there's this campaign afoot to make Obama out aa a Muslim, and how BAD would that be for our country? Then there's the rampant xenophobia in this country, a nation of immigrants. What is THAT about? Yes,yes, Obama IS a politican but perhaps, just perhaps, his election would call into question this hatred of immigrants or at least bring it more into the light of day. We shall see.......


By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
Published: February 24, 2008
KOGELO, Kenya

A barefoot old woman in a ripped dress is sitting on a log in front of her tin-roof bungalow in this remote village in western Kenya, jovially greeting visitors.

Mama Sarah, as she is known around here, lives without electricity or running water. She is illiterate and doesn’t know when she was born. Yet she may have a seat of honor at the next presidential inauguration in Washington — depending on what happens to her stepgrandson, Barack Obama.

Mama Sarah cannot communicate with Mr. Obama, who calls her his grandmother, because she speaks only her Luo tribal language and a little Swahili. Senator Obama’s Luo is pretty much limited to “musawa,” meaning “how are you?”

People around here are giddy at the prospect of a President Obama.

“I’m up at 4 a.m. or 5 a.m. to listen to BBC news and get the latest on the campaign,” said Nicholas Rajula, who describes himself as a cousin of the senator. “By the way, what’s the latest news about the superdelegates?”

You might think that all Kenyans would be vigorously supporting Mr. Obama. But Kenya has been fractured along ethnic lines in the last two months, so now Mr. Obama draws frenzied support from the Luo ethnic group of his ancestors, while many members of the rival Kikuyu group fervently support Hillary Rodham Clinton.

The Obamas are better off than most in the area, for Mama Sarah’s house has a tin roof — a step up from the mud huts with thatch roofs that are common in the village. Mama Sarah also has a cellphone, which she charges from a solar panel, and a radio that she uses to follow primaries in America.

But the poverty is unmistakable. Jane Raila, who says she is another relative of the senator, was hobbling barefoot with a homemade crutch, for she had been crippled by polio as a child. “We’re all very excited by the news from the U.S.,” she said. “We stay up late to listen to the news bulletins.”

Mr. Obama’s late grandfather is said to have been the first person in the area to wear Western clothes rather than just a loincloth. For a time he converted to Christianity and adopted the family name Johnson.

Later he converted to Islam, taking four wives. Senator Obama’s father, who apparently converted to Catholicism while attending a Catholic school, was also polygamous in keeping with local custom, taking an informal Kenyan wife who preceded Mr. Obama’s mother but remained a consort, according to accounts by local people and the senator himself.

The father, also named Barack Hussein Obama, was as much of a pathbreaker as his son. He went from herding goats in Kogelo to studying in Hawaii and at Harvard, even if his career as an economist was frustrated in part by ethnic rivalries.

Senator Obama barely knew his father and does not know his Kenyan relatives well. He has visited Kenya three times, most recently very briefly in 2006.

On his last visit, Mr. Obama visited two area schools that had been renamed for him. The intention in renaming the schools seems to have been partly to attract funding. One person after another noted pointedly that it was a shame that a school named for a great American should be so dilapidated.

Some of Mr. Obama’s innumerable relatives also see him as a meal ticket. They have made arrangements with a tour group to bring buses of visitors to have tea with Mama Sarah.

They are also trying to raise money from interviews with her. I had made arrangements to visit Mama Sarah weeks ago, and she had agreed to speak. But when I showed up, she said that her children had told her to keep quiet. Frantic phone calls. Fierce arguments. Hints that money might make an interview possible. I didn’t pay. I didn’t get the interview.

That’s O.K. Having seen the poverty in Kogelo, I’m less offended by the outstretched palms than awed by the distance that the Obama family spans.

Frankly, I worry that enemies of Senator Obama will seize upon details like his grandfather’s Islamic faith or his father’s polygamy to portray him as an alien or a threat to American values. But snobbishness and paranoia ill-become a nation of immigrants, where one of our truest values is to judge people by their own merits, not their pedigrees. If we call ourselves a land of opportunity, then Mr. Obama’s heritage doesn’t threaten American values but showcases them.

The stepgrandson of an illiterate, barefoot woman in this village of mud huts in Africa may be the next president of the United States. Such mobility — powered by education, immigration and hard work — is cause not for disparagement but for celebration

Unstoppable Obama

by Barbara Ehrenreich

When did you begin to think that Obama might be unstoppable? Was it when your grown feminist daughter started weeping inconsolably over his defeat in New Hampshire? Or was it when he triumphed in Virginia, a state still littered with Confederate monuments and memorabilia? For me, it was on Tuesday night when two Republican Virginians in a row called CSPAN radio to report that they’d just voted for Ron Paul, but, in the general election, would vote for… Obama.

In the dominant campaign narrative, his appeal is mysterious and irrational: he’s a “rock star,” all flash and no substance, tending dangerously, according to New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, to a “cult of personality.” At best, he’s seen as another vague Reaganesque avatar to Hallmarkian sentiments like optimism and hope. While Clinton, the designated valedictorian, reaches out for the ego and super-ego, he supposedly goes for the id. She might as well be promoting choral singing in the face of Beatlemania.

The Clinton coterie is wringing its hands. Should she transform herself into an economic populist, as Paul Begala pleaded on Tuesday night? This would be a stretch, given her technocratic and elitist approach to health reform in 1993, her embarrassing vote for a 2001 bankruptcy bill supported by credit card companies, among numerous other lapses. Besides, Obama already just leaped out in front of her with a resoundingly populist economic program on Wednesday.

Or should she reconfigure herself, untangle her triangulations, and attempt to appeal to the American people in some deep human way, with or without a tear or two? This, too, would take heavy lifting. Someone needs to tell her that there are better ways to signal conviction than by raising one’s voice and drawing out the vowels, as in “I KNOW…” and “I BELIEVE…” The frozen smile has to go too, along with the metronymic nodding, which sometimes goes on long enough to suggest a placement within the autism spectrum.

But I don’t think any tweakings of the candidate or her message will work, and not because Obama-mania is an occult force or a kind of mass hysteria. Let’s take seriously what he offers, which is “change.” The promise of “change” is what drives the Obama juggernaut, and “change” means wanting out of wherever you are now. It can even mean wanting out so badly that you don’t much care, as in the case of the Ron Paul voters cited above, exactly what that change will be. In reality, there’s no mystery about the direction in which Obama might take us: he’s written a breathtakingly honest autobiography; he has a long legislative history, and now, a meaty economic program. But no one checks the weather before leaping out of a burning building.

Consider our present situation. Thanks to Iraq and water-boarding, Abu Ghraib and the “rendering” of terror suspects, we’ve achieved the moral status of a pariah nation. The seas are rising. The dollar is sinking. A growing proportion of Americans have no access to health care; an estimated 18,000 die every year for lack of health insurance. Now, as the economy staggers into recession, the financial analysts are wondering only whether the rest of the world is sufficiently “de-coupled” from the US economy to survive our demise.

Clinton can put forth all the policy proposals she likes–and many of them are admirable ones–but anyone can see that she’s of the same generation and even one of the same families that got us into this checkmate situation in the first place. True, some people miss Bill, although the nostalgia was severely undercut by his anti-Obama rhetoric in South Carolina, or maybe they just miss the Internet bubble he happened to preside over. But even more people find dynastic successions distasteful, especially when it’s a dynasty that produced so little by way of concrete improvements in our lives. Whatever she does, the semiotics of her campaign boils down to two words–”same old.”

Obama is different, really different, and that in itself represents “change.” A Kenyan-Kansan with roots in Indonesia and multiracial Hawaii, he seems to be the perfect answer to the bumper sticker that says, “I love you America, but isn’t it time to start seeing other people?” As conservative commentator Andrew Sullivan has written, Obama’s election could mean the re-branding of America. An antiwar black President with an Arab-sounding name: See, we’re not so bad after all, world!

So yes, there’s a powerful emotional component to Obama-mania, and not just because he’s a far more inspiring speaker than his rival. We, perhaps white people especially, look to him for atonement and redemption. All of us, of whatever race, want a fresh start. That’s what “change” means right now: Get us out of here!
Barbara Ehrenreich, the author of Nickel and Dimed (Owl), is the winner of the 2004 Puffin/Nation Prize.

Obama and the Ghosts of Racism

by James Carroll

“They said this day would never come,” Barack Obama declared in Iowa last week, and the ghosts of this nation nodded. With an African-American competing seriously for the presidency of the United States, the last act of a centuries-old drama begins. Obama’s blood tie to the story of American slavery, ironically, comes through his white mother’s ancestry, which apparently includes both slave owners and those who fought for the Union to end slavery. That Obama’s father was a Kenyan links him more directly than anyone could have imagined both to Africa’s past as an exploited continent, and to its present, where the bloody legacy of colonialism plays itself out. (Obama’s father was a member of the Luo tribe, like Raila Odinga, the leader of the Kenyan opposition, whose people are protesting the recent election.)

In the American memory, slavery and then the war to abolish it are taken to be the two poles of the story, but it isn’t that simple. If racial injustice continued to be a hallmark of life in the United States, it was thought to be an inevitable, but essentially unchosen consequence of the “250 years of unrequited toil,” in Abraham Lincoln’s phrase, that were imposed on kidnapped Africans and their descendants. Nearly a million Americans died in the war to end slavery, and - still in the American memory - the nation has felt badly ever since that slavery’s hangover includes discrimination against black people to this day.The conventional wisdom, given powerful articulation a generation ago by Daniel Patrick Moynihan, is that the plight of African-Americans - from broad family dysfunction, to almost unshakeable poverty, to disproportionate incarceration rates of black males - is a tragic consequence of the social evil that America nobly renounced in the mid-19th century. Black people are socially disadvantaged, according to this narrative, because of the unhealed wound that was inflicted on them across the early centuries. Innately equal, yes, but they have been made a crippled people, which accounts for their still inferior position.

But, as historians like Yale’s Harry S. Stout point out, there is a third pole to the story, and it destroys the moral symmetry of the conventional wisdom. First, Africans were enslaved. Next, a savage war was justified by the “freeing” of slaves. Then, in a distinct but insufficiently acknowledged act of the drama, black people were actively resubjugated in the decades after the Civil War. That resubjugation, embodied in a “reconstruction” bargain between North and South, according to which the other purpose of the Civil War, “union,” was given priority over “freedom,” led to the culture of Jim Crow, radical segregation, and the use of law to keep African-Americans in an assigned place. That actively nurtured system - not the crippling effects of a long-abolished injustice - defines the ongoing American crime.

African-Americans have not been passive victims of this heinous tradition. Blacks led the resistance to it, culminating in the triumphs of the civil rights movement, preparing the way for leaders like Obama. But his arrival, at a level below the surface of whatever policies he advances, calls into question the dominant way in which this nation thinks of itself - not only in terms of race, but in terms of war. After all, the American belief in the righteousness of mass killing for the sake of abstract values like “freedom” springs not from the Revolution, where the killing was relatively slight and the freedom limited to a merchant class, but from the Civil War, where a spirit of total killing was justified by a professed commitment to racial equality that simply did not exist.

In his heart-breaking second inaugural address, Lincoln argued that the “unrequited toil” and “every drop of blood drawn with the lash” would be redeemed by the war, but a month later he was murdered. The quite deliberately constructed aftermath of the war destroyed Lincoln’s promise, although Americans told themselves otherwise. They glorified war, while preserving an injustice that war supposedly overcame. That was only yesterday.

Obama embodies more than he can know. “Change” is his mantra, but the potential for transformation goes far beyond the kinds of policies pursued in Washington. Those policies are rooted in assumptions sunk deep into the national psyche, and into the structure of memory that gives it shape. War is not necessarily redemptive. Africans are not necessarily disadvantaged. African-Americans are not mere victims. Race, for that matter, need not be definitive. An old story is offered a new ending - which is the beginning America has been awaiting. The day has come.

James Carroll’s column appears regularly in the Boston Globe.

Obama talks tough.........

Excuse me, but wasn't this the guy who wanted to talk with "our" enemies and come to some understanding or did I get that all wrong?

(italics are mine)

By JEFF ZELENY, THE New York Times
WASHINGTON, Aug. 1 — Senator Barack Obama said Wednesday that the United States should shift its military focus away from the Iraq war to a broader fight against Islamic extremism, vowing to dispatch American forces to eradicate terrorist camps in Pakistan if that nation failed to take such action.

Mr. Obama, an Illinois Democrat who is seeking his party’s presidential nomination, said he would order strikes on Al Qaeda targets and withhold hundreds of millions of dollars in military aid if the Pakistani president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, did not blunt a resurging Taliban presence in the country’s tribal areas. This, he said, is the “right battlefield” to make the United States safer.

“If we have actionable intelligence about high-value terrorist targets and President Musharraf won’t act,” Mr. Obama said, “we will.” (yes, Mr Obama, I'm SURE that will help!)

In the second major foreign policy address of his campaign, Mr. Obama outlined a series of proposals to fight global terrorism, including a plan to send at least 7,000 soldiers and special forces troops to Afghanistan, in addition to the roughly 22,000 troops there now. At the same time, he said, he would also increase nonmilitary aid to the country by $1 billion to improve economic opportunities there.(I'm sure the drug/warlords and their "factions" can use the money....I hear the opium trade is sagging a bit....)

Mr. Obama is seeking to establish his foreign policy credentials after Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton and other rivals have questioned whether he has the military and diplomatic experience to lead the nation in wartime. He delivered a strong rebuke of the administration’s Iraq strategy but said the blame went far beyond President Bush.(I think Hillary called him a 'sissy')

“Congress rubber-stamped the rush to war, giving the president the broad and open-ended authority he uses to this day,” Mr. Obama said. “With that vote, Congress became co-author of a catastrophic war. And we went off to fight on the wrong battlefield (Mr Obama, is there ever a 'right' battlefield?), with no appreciation of how many enemies we would create and no plan for how to get out.”

Mr. Obama, who was not in Congress at the time of the war authorization vote in 2002 (wow, that's handy!), is working to persuade Democratic voters that he would not hesitate to use military force to protect the United States. (why does it always seem to sink to proving you are tough and willing to use force?)

“The terrorists are at war with us,” he said. “The threat is from violent extremists who are a small minority of the world’s 1.3 billion Muslims, but the threat is real.” (hmmmm, maybe there's more a threat from Christian extremists?)

The speech offered a broader glimpse into Mr. Obama’s world view. If elected, he said, he would seek out an Islamic audience in the first 100 days of his administration to “redefine our struggle” and open “America Houses” across the Islamic world to improve a tarnished image of the United States. (I'm sure bombing 'high value' targets will make a lot of Islamic friends around the world....)

While Mr. Obama often emphasizes his biography — he is the only candidate who spent part of his childhood living abroad — he did not dwell on his background during his 35-minute speech, at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars (how ironic, Woodrow Wilson was one of the most rascist presidents we've ever had....). He presented himself as a figure who could restore the country’s credibility in the world, which he said had eroded since an initial outpouring of good will after terrorists struck on Sept. 11, 2001.

“What could have been a call to a generation has become an excuse for unchecked presidential power,” Mr. Obama said. “A tragedy that united us was turned into a political wedge issue used to divide us.”

Mr. Obama has tapped into a broad network of support from the grass roots and the Democratic establishment (gag!) to raise more money than any other candidate in either party, but he has struggled to compete with Mrs. Clinton in national polls and with former Senator John Edwards of North Carolina in Iowa, which holds the first nominating contest.

Both Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Edwards, as well as others in the Democratic field, have questioned his experience.

Last week, Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama engaged in a dispute over whether they would agree to meet with hostile rulers without preconditions. Mr. Obama said he would, while Mrs. Clinton said she would not, a distinction that Mr. Obama seized upon again Wednesday in an effort to show that he is a candidate of change.

“It’s time to turn the page on the diplomacy of tough talk and no action,” he said. “It’s time to turn the page on Washington’s conventional wisdom — that agreement must be reached before you meet, that talking to other countries is some kind of reward, and that presidents can only meet with people who will tell them what they want to hear.” (oh, and then if they turn out to be 'extremists', which generally means they don't do what the USA wants, you find some 'high value' targets in their countries?)

Phil Singer, a spokesman for Mrs. Clinton, said the campaign had no response to Mr. Obama’s speech.

In his address, Mr. Obama also renewed his call to double the amount of foreign aid to $50 billion by 2012 and to provide $2 billion to fight the influence of Islamic religious schools, or madrasas, which he said “have filled young minds with messages of hate.”(Huh?)

“We know we are not who they say we are,” Mr. Obama said. “America is at war with terrorists who killed people on our soil. We are not at war with Islam.” (oh, right, just Islamic "extremists", that blurry line again......didn't Bush use exactly this same phrase?)

Me cynical? Nawwwwwhhhh!