Imagining what a real debate might be like.

People who grow up in the USA knowing only the bizarrely bland events called debates that are orchestrated by the corporte plutocrats called "the main stream media" can only have a vague sense that surely there must be a better way to do it.

Indeed there is. It is called having a "debate" everywhere else in the world.

People who have been on high school or college debate teams are the small minority of Americans who know that there is a long tradition of debating that ABC, NBC, CBS, PBS, and FOX totally ignore in their propagandized sanitations that they call debates.

Imagine what a real debate would be like.

In the famous Lincoln-Douglas debates in their campaign for the US Senate, that ranged over several weeks across seven different cities in Illinois, the 3-hour debates began with the opening speaker speaking for an hour, the second speaker for 90 minutes, and the opening speaker then closed with 30 minutes. There were no moderators at all.

This well know example begs the question why do we need moderators? What is the role of the moderator?

Among the other traditions of debate in the English speaking world is the Oxford Union style of debating. For a great online source of how this works see the Doha Debates moderated with the superlative skills of Tim Sebastion.

The Doha Debates are a public forum for dialogue and freedom of speech in Qatar.

They are chaired by the internationally renowned broadcaster Tim Sebastian, formerly of the BBC's HARDTalk programme, and held in the headquarters of the Qatar Foundation in Doha each month during the academic year.

For the past three years, the Doha Debates have been providing a platform for serious discussion of the hottest issues in the Arab and Islamic worlds, striving to be both controversial and informative. They have gained a huge international following through their broadcast on BBC World - the BBC's international television channel.

The Doha Debates are modeled on the Oxford Union debates. A motion is presented to the 350-strong audience and two speakers argue on behalf of the motion and two speak against it. Tim Sebastian questions the speakers on their positions, then opens the debate to questions from the audience. Finally, the audience votes for or against the motion, based on the merit of the arguments they have heard. Our invited speakers are highly regarded academics, politicians, religious figures, government officials, policy experts and journalists from around the world.

What we now have are highly orchestrated debates with the moderator asking the same simple-minded questions to each candidate who gets about 90 seconds to reply. Instead of being a Devil's Advocate, the moderator in American debates seems to be there to keep the debate bland and unexciting. The candidate's answer is not challenged by the moderator, because they seem to fear being called biased by one side or the other.

You have to see Tim Sebastian in action to fully appreciate what a really skilled moderator can do. After each side makes its introductry statement Mr. Sebastian takes the role of Devil's Advocate and really peppers the person with pointed questions aimed at that person's weak links. When playing Devil's Advocate Mr. Sebastian shows a devilishly sly smile as he zings the presenter in the soft spots of their argument while they dodge and weave attempting hide their logical inadequacies. This is the real balance and objectivity of moderation: equal jabbing to each candidate, not the phony objectivitiy of letting the candidate answer without challenge.

What might a real Presidential Debate look like?

First, of all, the debates would have to be open to legitimate presidential candidates other than the two parties that are now dictating the format for the debates. For example, one way to determine who would debate would be to take the candidates who are on the ballot in a minimum number of states, such as in enough states to have the number of electoral college votes to win if they won each state they were on the ballot in.

Then, in the debate format, the candidates would go in random order and begin with a 5 to 10 minute (depending on the number of candidates) statement of their platform and most important concerns. Then before going to the next candidate, the moderator like Mr. Sebastian would take 5 to 10 minutes to question the candidate on weak points of their positions or logic. Then the next candidate woould make their opening statement followed by being questioned hotly by the moderator.

The next segment could include one question by each of the candidates to be answered by the oppponants.

The last segment of the dabate could be questions from the audience with the moderator making sure that the questions are distributed evenly and most importantly, to make sure that the candidates' answers don't get a free ride absent logic.

Most important is the role of the moderator who establishes the debate's contextual culture where there is no free ride and the moderator is able to question sharply each candidate on any point.

Again, to see how a real moderator can function as a fair Devil's Advocate aimed at each side, see any one of the Doha Debates such as "This House believes the Palestinians risk becoming their own worst enemy"

This is just one way to imagine an alternative debate format. Basically just about anything would be better than the debates we have today that are planned by the two ruling parties to be as bland and nonconfrontational as they can be allowing the candidates to simply present their talking points, even when the candidates makes mistakes or outrageously absurd claims.

For example, Sarah Palin misnamed Gen. McKirnan, calling him "McClellan" twice, but Joe Biden couldn't correct her without looking "ungentlemanly" and the moderator would be believed by Republicans to be taking sides. The result is those listening to the debate were never informed that Palin could not remember the name of the general she was claiming to be quoting.

Also, Palin was able to get away with this absurity:

Now you said recently that higher taxes or asking for higher taxes or paying higher taxes is patriotic. In the middle class of America which is where Todd and I have been all of our lives, that's not patriotic. Patriotic is saying, government, you know, you're not always the solution. In fact, too often you're the problem so, government, lessen the tax burden and on our families and get out of the way and let the private sector and our families grow and thrive and prosper.

CNN Transcript of Palin, Biden debate

A moderator like Tim Sebastian would certainly have asked if she really meant to say that John McCain is unpatriotic for, you know, asking government to be the solution to the financial crisis by voting for the $700 billion bailout bill?

Back Street Gets the Shaft While Wall Street Gets Welfare & Main Street Gets Conned

We hear a lot about Wall Street and Main Street these days but the politicians and the main stream media are doing their absolute best to ignore the Back Street as usual.

Every single Democrat and Republican who is supporting the Wall Street welfare plan is nothing but a hypocrite!

Republicans voting for the $700 Billion gift to the rich, whose platform is to oppose the "welfare" state, are completely hypocritical because they support the welfare-for-the-rich state. Hating the very word "socialism," the Republicans eagerly engage in privatizing their profits while socializing their risk.

Democrats who are voting for the boondoggle are hypocritical because, while they may support welfare (as I do), they are not giving the welfare to the people who need it and instead are giving it to the rich who don't. While claiming to be for working people the Democrats are working against the interests of working people and those on the back streets.

This scenario is as old as our nation and is the direct echo of the first Congress' consideration of the first funding bills in the new Congress of 1790.

Among the most important of the very first issues the new Congress had to deal with was the funding crisis. The primary issue was paying off the national debt owed to people holding Continental Dollars that were the script issued by the Revolutionary Army to fight the war. Most of the debt was owed to farmers and shopkeepers when the Army was taking supplies to fight the war. Much of it was also in soldier's pay some of it held by the widows of the soldiers. The Continentals had the name of the person they were issued to written on them along with the dollar amount. They were more like today’s checks than currency.

During the time of the Articles of Confederation between 1783 and 1789 there was no assurance at all that these Continentals would be paid by the new nation while the Confederation Congress fought over whose responsibility it was to pay, the states or the federal government.

Some states, like Pennsylvania, just went ahead and honorably paid off the Continentals. Others did not, claiming it was the National debt.

When the first Congress convened under the new Constitution the debt payment issue came up again. In the mean time speculators had been going around the country buying up Continentals paying widows, poor farmers and other note holders at only pennies on the dollar. While the debate was going on in Congress, many Congressman were buying up Continentals using agents and brokers.

The Debate boiled down to the positions between Alexander Hamilton and James Madison. Hamilton wanted to give anyone currently holding the Continental its full dollar value. That of course meant that anyone holding them in speculation having paid only pennies on the dollar would make a giant windfall profit. Hamilton used the exact same arguments we are hearing today: it is necessary to being about confidence in the financial system, the people who bore the risk should not have to lose anything, it is good for the country.

Madison's position was that any original note holder currently holding a Continental should be paid full face value but if the current note holder was not the original person it was issued to then the current holder should only get a reasonable rate of interest on his investment and the remainder should go back to the original note holders, the widows, farmers and merchants who had to sell them to survive while Congress diddled.

Needless to say with so many Congressmen themselves holding Continental notes in speculation the Hamilton position won out and the rich shared in the spoils at the taxpayer's expense.

The parallels should be obvious today as we watch the rich both inside and outside of Congress put out the phony claim that this is needed for Americans to have "confidence" in the system when what they are doing is actually a confidence game on American taxpayer no less egregious than Hamilton's was.

There are many good solutions out there but the majority in Congress are not interested in listening. They know where and how their bread is buttered and even with all their stated concerns about Main Street, their only care is for Wall Street. And Wall Street is only a legalized gambling institution.

Where are the Back Streets in this debate?

Some Democrats and Republicans supporting this Wall Street welfare would tell you that there is help for Main Street in this package. But I don't take tax breaks for Microsoft, Wal-mart, and Harley-Davidson to be helping the people on the Back Streets. I don't see the tax breaks for toy wooden arrow makers in Oregon and Wisconsin to be helping the Back Streets or Back Roads. Those business interests are on the up side of the tracks and such pointed specific tax breaks are exactly the kind of special interest loopholes that the people want Congress to stop dealing out.

The increase of FDIC insurance from $100K to $250K isn't about the Back Street or even most of Main Street. The people I know are going from pay check to pay check and if they have $10,000 in the bank they feel lucky.

Only the Progressive Democrats like Dennis Kucinich, Barbara Lee, Maxine Waters, Lynn Woolsey, et al., have so far seemed to really care about the Back Streets of America.

What does the Bible have to offer?

As a Buddhist, I find it very hypocritical of Republican and Democratic congresspeople voting for the Wall Street welfare package to be claiming to be good Christians in this con game.

It used to be--in the long ago days before Nixon and Reagan--that good Christians saw Wall Street as a dens of gamblers who were nothing but parasites on society. Nixon began and Reagan solidified the unholy marriage of fundamentalist Christians and Republican Wall Street gamblers where each agreed to ignore their animosity for the other if they agreed to support the specific narrow issues of the other. Essentially Wall Street speculators said, "If you support us and stop calling us parasites we will support you and you anti-abortion crusade."

Of course the fundamentalist evangelical Christians were sold on that con-game and even though the promise was false from the beginning-- because Wall Street knew it could not deliver--the gamblers of Wall Street have reaped the profits of their con.

If anyone considers themselves to be a Christian, then I tell you the Bible couldn't be clearer: the rich are not on your side, they are not to be trusted, they are not to be honored, they are gamblers and thieves who are parasites on society. There is nothing at all in the Bible about being against abortion, yet how many Christians really take the teachings on riches to heart?

Sure there are some nice rich people, but the fact remains that no wealth has ever been amassed in the entire history of the world that was not at root ill-gotten gains, created in some manner by greed, hatred, or ignorance.

Most of us know the Jesus quote from Matthew 19:23-24:

Then Jesus said to his disciples, "I tell you the truth, it is hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God."

How many really give it their attention?

And take these for instance:

Proverbs 28:5-7:

5 Evil men do not understand justice,
but those who seek the LORD understand it fully.
6 Better a poor man whose walk is blameless
than a rich man whose ways are perverse.
7 He who keeps the law is a discerning son,
but a companion of gluttons disgraces his father.

Proverbs 28:27:

He who gives to the poor will lack nothing,
but he who closes his eyes to them receives many curses.

Proverbs 20:9:

A generous man will himself be blessed,
for he shares his food with the poor.

Proverbs 22:16:

He who oppresses the poor to increase his wealth
and he who gives gifts to the rich—both come to poverty.

Proverbs 22:22-23:

Do not exploit the poor because they are poor
and do not crush the needy in court,
for the LORD will take up their case
and will plunder those who plunder them.

Psalm 49:16

Do not be overawed when a man grows rich,
when the splendor of his house increases;
17 for he will take nothing with him when he dies,
his splendor will not descend with him.

Micah 3:

9 Hear this, you leaders of the house of Jacob,
you rulers of the house of Israel,
who despise justice
and distort all that is right;
10 who build Zion with bloodshed,
and Jerusalem with wickedness.
11 Her leaders judge for a bribe,
her priests teach for a price,
and her prophets tell fortunes for money.
Yet they lean upon the LORD and say,
"Is not the LORD among us?
No disaster will come upon us."
12 Therefore because of you,
Zion will be plowed like a field,
Jerusalem will become a heap of rubble,
the temple hill a mound overgrown with thickets.

Micah 6:

6 With what shall I come before the LORD
and bow down before the exalted God?
Shall I come before him with burnt offerings,
with calves a year old?
7 Will the LORD be pleased with thousands of rams,
with ten thousand rivers of oil?
Shall I offer my firstborn for my transgression,
the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?
8 He has showed you, O man, what is good.
And what does the LORD require of you?
To act justly and to love mercy
and to walk humbly with your God.

What's the point? The Wall Street Welfare for the rich has nothing to do with benefitting the people of Main Street or the Back Streets. Those who support the Wall Street Welfare are not doing so for any religious or moral reason. So, why are they doing it?

As always: FOLLOW THE MONEY!

Is Afghanistan the Sign That the Democratic Party Is Self-Destructively Chasing Moby Dick?

~
By Gregory Wonderwheel
August 31, 2008

In the best tradition of propaganda sloganeering, the Democrats labeled each day of their recent convention with a titled slogan intended to tell the party faithful what the sermon was to be about. The final day of the convention culminating in Barack Obama’s acceptance speech was titled with the religiously tinted slogan, “Change You Can Believe In.” Let the buyer beware. As Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr wrote in January 1849, “The more it changes, the more it’s the same thing” (“plus çça change, plus c'est la mêê me chose," commonly rendered as "the more things change, the more they stay the same"). With a triumph of staging, Barack Obama is selling the elixir of change in the political market places as well as preaching it from the political pulpits, still one must ask in all honesty and daring to speak truth to the power of Democratic propaganda: Where is the “change” when it is more of the same thing?

The 2008 Democratic convention is now history, yet like the lingering sour taste of the 2004 Democratic convention, the unsettling queasy sensations of altitude headiness now roll down the mountain like echos from Mile High Stadium. In 2004, the hope for change in the face of 18 months of war, was dashed in the hearts and minds of progressives who watched the micro-managing by the Kerry campaign turn what should have been a calling to the nation of a clearly enunciated antiwar message. Instead, we witnessed the nominee “report for duty” and promise that if he were elected he would win the war the right way.

Now, in 2008, we have just witnessed this election season’s central hope for change -- a world without lies and deception leading us to war – be dashed once again in the Democratic Party’s search for the great white whale, the White House. Obama staked his claim on the party’s nomination by asserting the evidence of his good judgement against the war in Iraq, and as his reward, in the convoluted primary process of caucuses and open or closed party voting, the majority of voters agreed. However, the progressive anti-war sentiments that are hung on the hook of hope espoused in the mantra of change by Obama continue to fall on the deaf ears of this captain of the Democratic Party as surely as First Mate Starbuck’s pleas to turn back were unheard by Captain Ahab. Progressives say to Obamam as did Starbuck to Ahab, "Thou hast outraged, not insulted me, sir; but for that I ask thee not to beware of Starbuck; thou wouldst but laugh; but let Ahab beware of Ahab; beware of thyself, old man." Just so to you Obama, in your voyage to war in Afghanistan, Obama beware of Obama; beware of thyself.

Herman Melville’s Moby Dick is quite instructive for those seeing insight into he ways of the Democratic Party. We progressives among the Democrats are too as the native islander and harpooner Queequeg was: pagans among the Christians. The protagonist storyteller Ismael relates how he learned of the cannibal Queequeg’s desire to see the world among the Christians:

For at bottom- so he told me- he was actuated by a profound desire to learn among the Christians, the arts whereby to make his people still happier than they were; and more than that, still better than they were. But, alas! the practices of whalemen soon convinced him that even Christians could be both miserable and wicked; infinitely more so, than all his father's heathens. Arrived at last in old Sag Harbor; and seeing what the sailors did there; and then going on to Nantucket, and seeing how they spent their wages in that place also, poor Queequeg gave it up for lost. Thought he, it's a wicked world in all meridians; I'll die a pagan.

Among those of us who belong to the progressive persuasion, there are those who convert to the self-delusions of the Democratic Party like pagans converting to Christianity, yet others of us remain unconvinced. We observe the practices of the Democrats and are soon convinced that even liberal Democrats can be both miserable and deceptive, and arriving at the conclusion that it is a deceptive world in all political meridians, we choose to remain and die progressives. Many progressives rather than return to their native lands live among the Democrats and look to Democrats themselves to be better, and like Queequeg say, "It's a mutual, joint-stock world, in all meridians. We cannibals must help these Christians."

In such spirits, progressives like Katerina Vanden Heuvel of The Nation writes in her essay titled “Don’t Make Afghanistan the Democrats’ War”:

Barack Obama not only had the good judgment to oppose the war in Iraq, he argued for the need "to end the mindset that took us into" that war. So it is troubling that a man of such good judgment is now ramping up his rhetoric about how we need to end the war in Iraq to focus on what he calls the "central front in the war on terror"--Afghanistan.

However, one didn’t need to be schooled in Melville to see in their Convention the persistence of the same old mindset by the Democrats in their clear call to arms to Afghanistan. Now that the people, who were bamboozled by a lying president into believing that a war with Iraq was both legitimate and moral, have mostly woken up from that hypnotic delusion, they seem all too willing to be entranced into a similar slumber regarding Afghanistan. Here are some examples of the mesmerising mantra delivered on the day of “Change You Can Believe In”:

Barack Obama said:

I will end this war in Iraq responsibly, and finish the fight against al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan. I will rebuild our military to meet future conflicts. But I will also renew the tough, direct diplomacy that can prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons and curb Russian aggression.

Air Force Maj. Gen. J. Scott Gration (Ret), a self-confessed recent Republican said,

When I consider who should be commander-in-chief, I ask four questions.

First, who has the judgment to make the right decisions about when to use force? In his words of caution before the invasion of Iraq, and in his consistent calls for more force against al-Qaida and the Taliban, Barack Obama has shown the judgment to lead.

And on the previous day labeled with the slogan, “Securing America's Future” Vice presidential candidate Joe Biden chanted:

For the last seven years, this administration has failed to face the biggest forces shaping this century: the emergence of Russia, China and India as great powers; the spread of lethal weapons; the shortage of secure supplies of energy, food and water; the challenge of climate change; and the resurgence of fundamentalism in Afghanistan and Pakistan, the real central front against terrorism.

and

Should we trust John McCain’’s judgment when he said only three years ago, ““Afghanistan——we don’’t read about it anymore because it’’s succeeded””? Or should we trust Barack Obama, who more than a year ago called for sending two additional combat brigades to Afghanistan?

and

The fact is, al-Qaida and the Taliban——the people who actually attacked us on 9/11——have regrouped in those mountains between Afghanistan and Pakistan and are plotting new attacks. And the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff echoed Barack’’s call for more troops.

These calls for the continued war in Afghanistan are nothing more than a Democrats version of the Republican lies that got us into Iraq. Contrary to what the so-called foreign policy “expert” Biden claims, the fact is that the Taliban had absolutely nothing to do with 9/11. There is as much evidence that the Taliban were the “the people who actually attacked us on 9/11" as there was that Saddam Hussein was buying yellow cake uranium and aluminum tubes for development of weapons of mass destruction, that is, none.

Now the question the American people must dare to ask themselves if they are ever to see the wizards behind the curtain of power in Washington DC is this: Was Biden’s false allegation that the Taliban attacked us on 9/11 just a campaign gaff or a part of the concerted plan by the military industrial complex to re-mesmerize the populace into continuing with the same war profiteering mindset that brought us Iraq?

I think the answer is abundantly clear by this thread woven through the convention advocating the need to move troops from Iraq to Afghanistan and stated explicitly also by Obama. The military contractors and war profiteers have seen the writing on the wall: that the war in Iraq is no longer popular. So what have they done? They have convinced the leadership of the Democratic Party, who are always afraid of being labeled "pacifists" or "wimps" unwilling to go to war, including Barack Obama, that reducing the war in Iraq is allowable as long as they can recoup some of their profits by increasing the war in Afghanistan with the hope of spreading it to Pakistan and Iran. And Obama has fully embraced this twisted vision of the new “just” war and appears dead set on making Afghanistan the Democrat’s war in yet another reprise on the theme of Viet Nam. This is nothing less than the Democratic leadership's purposeful collusion with the Republicans to transformation the American Dream into the Orwellian dream of perpetual war.

An honest person must ask, is this change we can believe in? Where is the change when all we are offered is the continued mindset of war with only a change in venue from Iraq to Afghanistan and with continued saber rattling threats of war with Iran? Where is the change when the lies of Hussein’s involvement in 9/11 are simply changed into lies about the Taliban being the perpetrators of 9/11?

While I detest the Taliban's politics and religious dictatorship, including their destruction of sacred Buddhist sites which is nothing less than the self-destruction of their own national heritage and potential sources of tourist income, the reality is that the Taliban never once threatened the United States and even now are only acting as nationalist insurgents seeking to throw out the current US-NATO invaders and occupiers, like they threw out the previous Soviet invaders.

There is absolutely no evidence of participation by the Taliban in 9/11 and when the USA wanted Bin Laden turned over, the Taliban did only what any sovereign government does in like circumstances, it exercised its sovereign right to hold an extradition hearing. This was, for example, what the government of the United Kingdom did when the Spanish authorities asked that Augusto Pinochet be handed over. The English did not hand him over without an extradition hearing in the courts with the right of appeal.

Would the USA turn over someone to Russia or China just because they demanded it be done without an extradition hearing? When the Taliban said they would hold an extradition hearing to determine whether Bin Laden should be turned over to the USA as soon as the evidence to do so was presented by the USA to the Afghanistan government, it was the USA that refused to participate by refusing to provide any evidence connecting Bin Laden to 9/11. Instead the USA and the Bush administration used the Taliban's adherence to and exercise of international law as an excuse to put into motion their pre- 9/11 plans to invade and occupy Afghanistan. Now Obama perpetuates the false legitimacy of those plans.

By failing to let the Taliban government hold Bin Laden under house arrest while an extradition hearing was conducted in tandem with continuing diplomatic negotiations with the Taliban, the Bush administration was directly responsible for Bin Laden being able to escape under the cover of the fog of war.

In order to show they can be just as militaristic as Republicans, as if, after Presidents Wilson, FDR, Kennedy, Johnson, Carter, and Clinton, anyone ever had any real doubts that Democrats can bomb and invade with the best of them, the Democrats are now urging a surge in the war in Afghanistan. The Democrats are using Afghanistan and 9/11 as their talisman for victory in their search for the White House just like Captain Ahab used his rage for his past injuries and peg leg in his search for the white whale. Yet Ahab at least was raging against the beast who was responsible for his injuries, while there no evidence at all that the Taliban government or the people of Afghanistan ever threatened the USA, either by 9/11 or at any other time. So we continue to invade and occupy Afghanistan unnecessarily killing innocent civilians and protecting the poppy growing and heroin trade, all based on lies that are just as pernicious and monomaniacally wrong as Bush’s invasion of Iraq.

There are some who fervently hope that Obama is just posturing and playing the war card for political gain, that once elected, Obama will remove it from the table. However, this seems like a false hope not even remotely connected to the hope that Obama is offering.

Continuing the war of occupation in Afghanistan will only further alienate the people of Afghanistan as the inevitable civilian casualties continue to add up. There is no military solution to an occupation opposed by nationalist insurgents.

In 1851 when Herman Melville wrote Moby Dick the world was not that different of a place from today. Ishmael, the narrator and sole survivor left to tell the tale of the demise of Captain Ahab, in a state of reverie considering his own fateful excursion into these well charted waters as a pawn in the greater story of world events recounts:

Finally, I always go to sea as a sailor, because of the wholesome exercise and pure air of the fore-castle deck. For as in this world, head winds are far more prevalent than winds from astern (that is, if you never violate the Pythagorean maxim), so for the most part the Commodore on the quarter-deck gets his atmosphere at second hand from the sailors on the forecastle. He thinks he breathes it first; but not so. In much the same way do the commonalty lead their leaders in many other things, at the same time that the leaders little suspect it. But wherefore it was that after having repeatedly smelt the sea as a merchant sailor, I should now take it into my head to go on a whaling voyage; this the invisible police officer of the Fates, who has the constant surveillance of me, and secretly dogs me, and influences me in some unaccountable way- he can better answer than any one else. And, doubtless, my going on this whaling voyage, formed part of the grand programme of Providence that was drawn up a long time ago. It came in as a sort of brief interlude and solo between more extensive performances. I take it that this part of the bill must have run something like this:

"Grand Contested Election for the Presidency of the United States.
"WHALING VOYAGE BY ONE ISHMAEL."
"BLOODY BATTLE IN AFGHANISTAN."

What “change to believe in” is this that Obama, now in 2008, over one hundred and fifty years after Melville wrote those words, can only offer us another “bloody battle in Afghanistan.”? What change is there when the bill of the grand program of the Democratic Party has the whaling voyage of the campaign placed in the fated interval between a “Grand Contested Election for the Presidency of the United States” and a further battle in Afghanistan?

In the entire four days of their Convention, the only true progressive voice within the Democratic Party came on day two from candidate Dennis Kucinich who was relegated to five minutes of sub-prime time. Kucinich, in his speech censored by the Obama campaign that prevented him from calling for the incarceration of he Republicans for their crimes, was the only speaker to draw the direct connection between Iraq and Afghanistan and the looming threat of war with Pakistan when he said, “Borrowed money to bomb bridges in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. No money to rebuild bridges in America.” Only Kucinich dared to speak truth to the actual power of the energy companies and weapons merchants who share control of he Democratic Party just as much they have control of the Republican Party:

Wake up, America. We went into Iraq for oil. The oil companies want more. War against Iran will mean $10-a-gallon gasoline. The oil administration wants to drill more, into your wallet. Wake up, America. Weapons contractors want more. An Iran war will cost 5 to 10 trillion dollars.

The ongoing dilemma of progressives in relation to the Democratic Party is whether to ship on board the doomed Pequod of the Party as it sails in a voyage that offers once again to use militarism and war as the instrument of its foreign policy and as the rallying cry of a fake patriotism. I have total sympathy for progressives who refuse to climb on board this damned ship and chose instead to sail the seas aboard the more modest vessels like the Green Party, searching for lost progressives like the ship Rachel searched for its lost children thrown overboard from whale boats capsized by Moby Dick. But I also have complete sympathy for those progressives who sail with the Democratic Party in its compulsive quest and who say, paraphrasing Queequeg’s words, "It's a mutual, joint-stock world, in all meridians. We progressives must help these Democrats."

Still, it does no good for progressives to attempt to help the Democrats by silence. Progressives who wish to help the Democrats must raise their voices without embarrassment to warn against the Ahab-like obsession with war in the Democratic Party's quest for the White House.

Wake Up America - Best Speech at the convention.

So far the best speech at the convention by far was by Dennis Kucinich. It will be very hard for Obama to top "Wake Up America!"

Considering that Kucinich was given only 5 minutes and not the 20 he deserved, I'd go so far as to say it was the best 5 minute political speech in my lifetime of 58 years.

The Obama campaign made a big mistake putting Kucinich in the sub-prime time slot. So far Obama is running a "safe" campaign just like Kerry in 2004, and so far the polls show that Obama may get the very same result.

Putting the inspiring Kucinich into sub-prime time, and giving the uninspiring corporate spokesman Warner the keynote address shows the low note that the Obama campaign is playing, and the note sounds pretty sour too.

The Obama campaign is micro-managing and controlling the convention just like Kerry did in 2004, and they are driving the party into the same ditch.

Betsy Rothstein at TheHill Opens her report with

Obama tightens grip on podium speeches
Written by Betsy Rothstein

DENVER — Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) is tightening the reins on campaign speeches and stressing that speakers emphasize a rags-to-riches theme.

Members of Congress and others who have been asked to address the convention must have their speeches approved by the Obama campaign. In many cases, the speeches are drastically changed — to the point where the original speech is completely scrapped, Democratic sources say.

This kind of propaganda management of the convention drains the life out of it. It is no wonder that most of the speeches are so poor. The leadership of the Democratic Party needs to learn some day that its vitality is in the free voices of the people, not in the scripted advertising of political professionals. If Candidate Obama won't let the authentic voices of his own Party speak, people had better get prepared now for the same or worse treatment from President Obama. Folks, people don't change when they get to the White House, they become more tight in their control not less.

Rothstein also reports on the Obama tampering and censorship with Kucinich's speech:

Yet not every speech has been completely overhauled. Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio), who was asked by Obama to speak about the economy, was scheduled to deliver his speech Tuesday afternoon. The Obama campaign struck just one line from his speech, which slammed the Republicans and the Bush administration, according to a Democratic source.

That line, addressing Republicans, read: “They’re asking for another four years — in a just world, they’d get 10 to 20.”

Too bad that was censored. I bet it would have brought the roof down.

Here's the YouTube video of Dennis' speech.

Here's the text from the Convention website (edited to what Dennis actually said.)

Dennis Kucinich, (OH-10)Tuesday, August 26, 2008 at 04:35 PM

Hello Fellow Democrats. Are you ready for November?

This one's for you, Stephanie.

Fellow Democrats let's go to Election Day. It’s Election Day 2008, and we Democrats are giving America a wake-up call. Wake up, America. In 2001, the oil companies, the war contractors and the neo-con artists seized the economy and added 4 trillion dollars of unproductive spending to the national debt. We now pay four times more for defense, three times more for gasoline and home heating oil and twice what we paid for health care.

Millions of Americans have lost their jobs, their homes, their health care, their pensions. Trillions of dollars for an unnecessary war paid for with borrowed money. Tens of billions of dollars in cash and weapons disappeared into thin air, at the cost of the lives of our troops and innocent Iraqis, while all the president’s oilmen are maneuvering to grab Iraq’s oil.

Borrowed money to bomb bridges in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. No money to rebuild bridges in America. Money to start a hot war with Iran. Now we have another cold war with Russia, and the American economy has become a game of Russian roulette.

Now, if there was an Olympics for misleading, mismanaging and misappropriating, this administration would take the gold. World records for violations of national and international law. They want another four-year term to continue to alienate our allies, spend our children’s inheritance and hollow out our economy.

We can’t afford another Republican administration. Wake up, America. The insurance companies took over health care. Wake up, America. The pharmaceutical companies took over drug pricing.

Wake up, America. The speculators took over Wall Street. Wake up, America. They want to take your Social Security. Wake up, America. Multinational corporations took over our trade policies, factories are closing, good paying jobs are being lost.

Wake up, America. We went into Iraq for oil. The oil companies want more. War against Iran will mean $10-a-gallon gasoline. The oil administration, they want to drill more, into your wallet. Wake up, America. Contrators, those war contractors want more. An Iran war will cost 5 to 10 trillion dollars.

Now, this administration can tap our phones. They can’t tap our creative spirit. They can open our mail. But they can’t open economic opportunities. They can track our every move. They lost track of the economy while the cost of food, gasoline and electricity skyrockets. Now they skillfully played our post-9/11 fears and they've allowed the few to profit at the expense of the many. Every day we get the color orange, while the oil companies, the insurance companies, the speculators, the war contractors get the color green.

Wake up, America. Now, this is not a call for you to take a new direction from right to left. This is call for you to go from down to up. Up with the rights of workers. Up with wages. Up with fair trade. Up with creating millions of good paying jobs, rebuilding our bridges, our water systems, our sewer systems, our ports. Up with creating millions of sustainable energy jobs to lower the cost of energy, lower carbon emissions and protect the environment.

Up with health care for all. Up with education for all. Up with home ownership. Up with guaranteed retirement benefits. Up with peace. Up with prosperity. Up with the Democratic Party. Up with Obama-Biden.

Wake up, America. Wake up, America. Wake up, America.

Karma and Rebirth

Some thoughts musing in response to comments about karma and rebirth.

It was said, "When the living being dies, the consciousness suddenly is disembodied."

There is no entity to be called "the consciousness" that becomes embodied or disembodied. Consciousness (used in the expansive sense that includes the unconscious or Alaya consciousness) is like a great river with many tributaries.

DNA is the materialist version of karma. The complexity of the structure and function of karma is as complex as the structure and function of DNA. That is why Buddha only gave the most simple teachings about karma of the kind "you reap what you sow" or "there is bright karma, dark karma, and mixed karma." These simple formulations of karma are helpful in creating the mental affinity for moral actions.

But to delve into the complex workings of karma can be counter productive by confusing people who have not had the deep experience of no self and then lead them to doubt karma and its efficacy. So Buddha usually would not provide detailed answers to questions about an individual's karma or past lives and only would offer vague or sketchy comments about them.

It was asked, "What is it that is reborn?"

There are two factors that lead to the complexity of thinking about karma. First that there is no self, only a self image, and second that karma doesn't function mechanically like a machine, but organically like life.

Because we find belief in a self that is embodied to be very comforting in the face of uncertainty and the unknown, we create many more or less gross to subtle images of the self to confirm our desire in a self to believe in. Thus we imagine that there is a thing that goes from life to life, something that wears the body like a robe and puts on a new embodiment in a new life like putting on a new robe. Seeking to know what this "something" is becomes the Buddha search and inquiry.

But simply calling it "consciousness" that becomes embodied in the next life is not enough because that kind of "consciousness" just becomes a new self image to hang onto. Hanging on to that kind of self image creates the idea that there is a linear thread of a single chain through many past lives so that a person has one life, then another, then another, in a singular chain. This is a machine view and is not the way karma and rebirth function.

Karma and rebirth function like a great river. An image one should have in mind when considering karma is a map of a great river system like the Amazon, the Mississippi, the Congo, the Nile, or the Yangtze. When we are at any place in the river there are many tributaries that have flowed into the river. Isn't it interesting that where ever any two tributaries come together that only one tributary bears the name of the river? Why is the source of the Mississippi identified as one location and not as the many locations that comprise the source of each of the tributaries? Why is the source of the Missouri river not called the source of the Mississippi? The naming of rivers is a social convention in which the larger of the two tributaries at any point of convergence is considered the main stream of the river and bears the name of the great river while the other tributary gets another name.

Karma is like that also. If we follow our past lives "backward" we imagine there is only one mainstream and call that our chain of past lives, but in fact there are many tributaries of past lives,but our social convention is to ignore those that conflict with our self image of being a singular separate self or soul traveling from life to life. So to give a concrete example, if today we were to ask what was our past life in the year 1658 we would have very many tributaries of actual contributory lives but we would select only one life as the mainstream and call that "my" past life.

Because when people do remember past lives they sometimes do remember several past lives in the same time era, that can cause confusion by challenging the belief system that the self is a separate stream. If someone remembers two past lives in the same time period, that can cause them to doubt the veracity of their memories because we believe in a self and that the self can't be in two places at the same time. That doubt can then lead to a disbelief in or denial of karma, and that can then lead to a nihilistic view that disavows morality altogether. Thus for people who firmly believe in a self, talking too much or too openly about the intricacies of karma becomes counter productive. It is easier to believe in the simplistic self than to try to understand the nuances of the complexities of karma as it relates to the self image in the cream of Consciousness.

Similar patterns for the image of the organicity of the functioning of karma can also be found in the image of a tree with spreading roots and limbs, or in the veins of a single leaf. This non-linearity and non-machine view of karma must be understood if one wants to have a realistic appreciation of how karma and rebirth function.

Some one asked, "Am i to have blind faith that this boy who apparently was a caring good natured boy deserved this to happen because of some action many lifetimes ago?"

Please remember to not confuse the judgemental concept of "deserving" with the observation of "actions" and "results." Asking whether a person "deserves" what happens to them (or any of their circumstances) shows dualistic judgementalism.

For example, none of us knows whether the boy's circumstances were the results of past actions or were innocent uncaused bodhisattva actions. We easily observe that the emotional pain people feel is the result of being human and the functioning of the 5 bundles (skandhas) of our personalities. When apparently "bad things" happen to apparently "innocent" people, we should remember to reserve judgement on the big picture, because we don't know the karmic patterns involved. Of course that doesn't mean that we don't bring the perpetrators to face the judgement of society for their actions, and hopefully the judgement of society will be as compassionate and merciful as it is firm and corrective. (The Sutra of Angulimala is an important koan in this regard.)

Most important, since there was nothing you personally could do, do you know what causes you feel pain in relation to this event you only heard about? Obviously you felt great empathy for the boy and his family. Do you simply take such empathy at face value or do you inquire into it? How much of the pain arises from realizing that the world doesn't conform to our expectations? In other words, did the concept "deserving" arise in your mind or in the world? Before you heard the story you felt one way and then you heard the story and felt differently. Ask and inquire "who feels the pain" using your meditation as your crucible. The conundrum of Buddhism is that we have to let go of our tightly held concepts of "good and evil" in order to see our original face and awaken to the original good.


As I see it, we have to distinguish, on the one hand, the expedient use of the concepts of karma and rebirth used to help us disengage from our habitual models of the world and, on the other hand, the misuse of the concepts of karma and rebirth that turn them into doctrines and even dogmas that only get us more entangled in our habitual models of the world.

We use the self-image, centered on the concepts of "us," "our," "I", "me" and "mine", to make sense out of everything that happens in consciousness and to divide up all things (dharmas) into causes and results. But fundamentally the division of everything that happens into causes and results is arbitrary because each dharma-thing is simultaneously both a cause and result, and the arbitrary division relies on the contextual concepts of time and space that bind us within materialist world views.

In Western Science the concept of "cause and effect" is used to create the temporary illusions of power and control over everything that happens in the framework of time and space, whereas in Buddhism the concept of "cause and result" (karma) is used to transcend the temporary illusions of power and control over everything that happens to realize the unborn suchness that is timeless and spaceless (sunyata).

"I see you oh, Housebuilder, and you shall build no more, the rafters are broken and the ridge beam is shattered." Dhammapada (11:154)

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Someone wrote: "Sometimes I think that Karma is misinterpreted. Like we think that when we die something that is in us like a spirit or a essence or anything for that matter is reborn. Also we hear often that some go to heaven and some to hell. If the Buddha said there is no soul then there is obviously nothing that goes to heaven and to hell. Perhaps when he talks of heaven hell and the hungry ghosts etc, he is using allegories for this world."
And another responded, "And if there's no soul or self, i shouldn't be held responsible for actions i did yesterday, last year, or even 10 seconds ago, because that obviously wasn't me. it's party time!"

These kinds of exchanges sadden me, because I would hope that inquirers would have a clearer appreciation of the teaching of karma. But they are also examples of how people may take such simplistic views of karma that they will rationalize their doubts into Nihilistic views such as "It's party time."

It is a basic fact of karma analysis that karma is not about "being held responsible" as if by some supreme being or celestial court of law. This is so in the manner that if you put your hand in a flame you will feel the pain; it is not that something or someone is "holding you responsible" for having put your hand in the flame. If you are in a car and driving toward a cliff, if nothing is done to change course or halt the car, then the car will go over the cliff. That is the karma dynamic: it is not that going over the cliff is being "held responsible" for driving the car in that direction. Same with karma, an action will have a result that the action is directed toward, unless an intervening action will change the course of events. Just karma physics.

Another karma metapohor is gardening. Certain seeds, once planted will sprout and grow and bear the result of what was sown. But if certain events prevent the development of the seed, then the karma of that seed won't be something to reap. But given the fruitful condition of most mind soil, most seeds do sprout, which is why people can't avoid karma simply by ignoring it with wishful thinking that they won't reap what they sow.

Karma is responsibility in the generic sense, in that karma is our ability to respond to our circumstances. We respond with thought, word, and deed, which is our karma. We have formed identities in consciousness, so our responses are in the form of action-intention complexes of mental (and emotional) formations in which the action and intention are inseparable. The coherence of the relations between all our action-intention complexes is what becomes the appearance of our identity or personality, which we then mistake as a "soul" or "self" when in fact there is no underlying "thing" at the core of the onion or the banana tree stalk.

In short, having "a soul" or "a self" has nothing to do with karma, while having a self-image or an identity has everything to do with karma.

The mechanism of rebirth and karma has nothing to do with something "like a spirit or a essence or anything" moving from life to life. Look at a wave in the ocean. It only appears that something is moving through the water. But a boat or a duck on the surface merely goes up and down as the wave passes by, the wave does not move the boat or duck horizontally because the water is not moving horizontally, even though it appears that something is moving horizontally. That is like karma. Each life is like an up and down motion, but over lifetimes there is a horizontal appearance of movement without any "thing" or "essence" actually moving from life to life. The wave is the appearance of an essence moving from life to life, but it is only the dynamics that are "transferred" not a "thing."

The wave dynamics appear in life to life because it is the ocean that is appearing in life to life, the wave dynamics are only an appearance of identity and are not separate from the ocean. There is no identity actually "moving," and no identity existing individually or separate from the ocean. This is why the Diamond Cutter Sutra says though there is the appearance of a living being, and the Bodhisattvas liberate countless living beings, in reality, no living being is liberated.

This is the simplest that I can make it.

People do have past life memories, and that does not mean that consciousness as a thing is transferred, only that the memory arises and falls in the continuum of time and space through the associations of identity. Many people are fooled into thinking because they have a memory of a past life that they "were" that person in the past life. It is not that simple.

In wave dynamics we can observe what are called interference patterns when waves cross each other. This can occur in karmic transmission of identity-waves so that several people can have similar cross-reference points. This is why certain powerful identities seem to resonate with many people who connect to past life memories. It is not always a wish fulfillment, because part of what makes a powerful identity pattern is the way that the karmic-waves have come together in focused conjunction in a wave formation that creates a big-wave identity-formation. When that identity "dies" the wave formations can divide again just as waves in water separate after they have moved through each other in the wave interference pattern.

In my experience, appreciating the wave dynamics of water and light (electromagnetic fields) are the best way to begin to understand how the dynamics of karma function.

A brief look at Intelligent Design

Many people think there is a basic conflict between religion and evolution as a scientific theory. As I see it the conflict is not between religion and science, but between religion as myth and revelation and science as observation. Buddhism is at its core a religion of observation, not of mythic revelation, so there is no fundamental conflict between Buddhism and science.

(To those who are familiar with the mythic aspects of Mahayana Buddhism and marvel at the idea that Buddhism is not a religion of myth and revelation at its core, let me just say that Buddhism sees such myths as "the five cosmic Buddhas" as metaphorical teaching devices for people who want to hold onto the feelings of security of such things. They are not seen as statements of objective existence but as devices that will be seen through as the practitioner develops understanding going beyond such naive views, just as a student of science develops understandings that alter the naive view of the world as earth-centric or flat.)

To me the words "intelligent design" are not objectionable per se, because as a Buddhist I have a different take on both "intelligence" and "design." As I see it, intelligence is inherent in all component things. For example, the more we look deeply into the human body within the cells, the more we see what looks to the imagination like cities or factories of immense activity and complexity. This coherence of complexity is an expression of a level or dimension of intelligence that is integral with the manifestation of life at that level. What we call our personal consciousness at the "macro" level of individuality, is itself "built upon" the foundation of the totality of consciousness at the sub-cellular level.

A principle tenet of Buddhism is called "anatman" meaning that there is no separate "self" or "soul" or "entity" within or beyond an individual or distinguishable from the unity of the person-environment, and so similarly there is no need to posit the existence of a "designer" separate from the design. To speak of the design of nature is the recognition of the laws of nature and the functions and principles of consciousness that provide for pattern creation and recognition in the universe.

Creationism in Buddhism means that the complete and completely incomprehensible and undifferentiated emptiness or nothingness separates itself into one and zero, expanding toward one and contracting towards zero. Between one and zero is "the line" of the event horizon, that includes the fundamental polarizing effect that is apparent in a wave formation with a "hill" and a "trough". As the event horizon vibrates with greater varieties of expansion and contraction along the line, for example as a string of a guitar or violin vibrates with sub-harmonics, with expansions on expansions, expansions on contractions, contractions on contractions, and contractions on expansions, exponentially replicating in patterns upon patterns and patterns within patterns, all in-filled with randomness as part of the balance-imbalance of the complexity, then the universe as we know it is created.

In this view, creation is not something that just happened in the past or is separate from the immediate current of time -- it is time itself -- and it occurs moment to moment as conditions arise, form, and dissolve. Evolution is the tracking of the changes of creation through conventional time in the sphere of biology. By tracking the changes in as many spheres as we can (e.g., in biology, geography, meteorology, psychology, etc.) we can get a sense of the laws, principles, and patterns (Dharma and dharmas) that occur naturally in the changes of our universe as it is created moment to moment as seen through the three-cornered prism of conventional time viewed as past, present, and future.

P.S. This blog was stimulated by finding a 12/2006 blog "Orr on Dawkins" at Evolutionblog

Obama is blind that Afghanistan is a lost cause

A Quickie:

Obama's centrist militant blather about moving troops from Iraq to Afghanistan is a sign that he really doesn't offer any change in foreign policy principles and is just offering the usual political bait and switch for political expediency. He doesn't have a clue about real change in foreign policy, such as what Dennis Kucinich means by not using war as an instrument of foreign policy.

Afghanistan is already a lost cause for US foreign policy, and unless a radical change in direction is made in the policy toward Afghanistan -- a change in fundamental principles in foreign relations -- Afghanistan will continue to be lost.

We are aiding and abetting the war lords and drug lords growing opium poppies and the opium trade is as high as it has ever been. We are supporting Hamid Karzai who is protecting the war lords from prosecution, while the war lords continue to prevent the development of democracy in their territories. Karzai has hardly any influence beyond Kabul and only has that control because he won't challenge the war lords and local dictators.

Our current policy in Afghanistan puts the local villagers in direct danger by leaving them defenseless to the Taliban insurgents after the US and NATO troops pass through. There is no Afghanistan structure for local village defense and self rule. In much if not most of Afghanistan, women are still as oppressed under the current government as they were before.

In sum, the U.S. has failed in Afghanistan as much as we have failed in Iraq to understand the people and the conflicts and to support the real education in democracy and reform; instead we have merely supported hacks and gangsters in the Afghanistan government.

We have already lost Afghanistan and transferring more troops there will only prolong the agony because there is no realistic goal nor is there strategy to attain the goal.

This comment is responding to Earl Ofari Hutchinson's column at the
Huffington Post and comments at The Young Turks.

What Obama Needs To Learn From Progressives

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[Cross Posted at dailykos.com ]

You can’t have a critical mass for change if you don’t have a mass of criticism about what needs to be changed.

In my recent daily post from Portside I received the recent essay at In These Times by Ken Brociner titled The American Left: What Progressives Can Learn from Obama

Brociner begins by saying,

One of the trademarks of Barack Obama's presidential campaign has been his commitment to a new style of politics. Last year, in answering a question about negative campaigning and ad hominem attacks on opponents, he said: "My preference going forward is that we have to be careful not to slip into playing the game as it is customarily played."

Here's my quick response as a reader's reply to Portside:

Re: The American Left: What Progressives Can Learn from Obama

As a radical progressive I got a good laugh from Ken Brociner's essay. Ken, you haven't presented anything that progressives can learn from Obama. Obama says "we have to be careful not to slip into playing the game as it is customarily played," and then he goes to AIPAC and plays the game completely customarily and his flip-flop cave-in on Telecom Imunity is completely customary politics, just to name two examples. Ken, in case you didn't notice, Petraeus did betray the USA, and Sirota is right that Obama is keeping hush on important issues. Ken, Obama is the best choice among what the two party machines have to offer, but after observing Obama's first two weeks as the nominee and his rush to the center, only uncritical admirers of Barack Obama can still believe he has a genuine desire to transcend old political habits.

Gregory Wonderwheel
Santa Rosa.

As you can see I'm not at all enamored by Barack Obama's candidacy. His speech at AIPAC the day after achieving the nomination was an abomination and supreme display of pandering at its worst. Self-styled progressives like Ken Brociner leave me wondering if there is a political label that Democratic centrists won't try to usurp?

So looking at Brociner's essay a little deeper, afer the first paragraph presented above, he goes on to praise Obama for running "an unusually fair-minded and positive campaign."

Next Brociner says,

Obama's commitment to a different brand of politics represents more than a mere preference for taking the high road in the rough-and-tumble world of political combat. The Illinois senator has, in fact, developed what amounts to an alternative philosophical outlook toward politics. And it is a perspective that, I believe, too many progressives have been ignoring at their own peril.

Unfortunately, Brociner then laspes back into discussing issues of political campaigning style and does not provide any examples of the "alternative philosophical outlook" that Obama is supposed to have developed. So it appears that this alternative philosophical outlook only extends to trying to be a "nice guy" campaigner.

The problem that progressives have with Obama is not as Broiner alleges that we don't trust his motivations, it is that we don't trust his politics. So far he appears to be nothing more than a better window dressing on the Democratic Party. Brociner wants us to believe that every political "enemy" be they vanilla liberal Democrat or rabid neo-con really sincerely believes "they are working to
make the world a better place." So? Perhaps Brociner's view is the problem. What ar ewe to make of people who believe they are working to make the world a better place but who are doing so in a manner that makes it worse? Okay, assuming George Bush and Dick Cheney really wanted to make the world a better place by lying to the public and illegally invading and occupying Iraq, how does that "new philosophy" help us?

Assuming that Barack Obama really wants to make the world a better place when he goes to AIPAC and kisses their shoes regurgitating their false talking points right back to them, while Israel contiues its illegal and inhumane appartheid occupation and blocade of Palestine, how does that express a new "philosophical outlook" in political policy or principles?

It is not progressives who have a one-dimensional analysis, it is Brociner who is presenting a cartoonish version of reality by erasing the facts from the picture. What is happening and why? Brociner cites a September 2005 essay by Obama sent to the Daily Kos blogs titled "Tone, Truth and the Democratic Party."

Brociner includes the following excerpt from Obama's appeal:

"...I firmly believe that whenever we exaggerate or demonize, or oversimplify or overstate our case, we lose. Whenever we dumb down the political debate, we lose. A polarized electorate that is turned off of politics, and easily dismisses both parties because of the nasty, dishonest tone of the debate, works perfectly well for those who seek to chip away at the very idea of government because, in the end, a cynical electorate is a selfish electorate."

That looks good on paper or the computer screen, but why then does Obama dumb down his political debate at every opportunity to do otherwise? Whe did Obama go to AIPAC and not mention that Israel's blocade of the movement of goods in and out of Palestine is a crime against humanity? Why doesn't Obama, who was a Constitutional law professor, use his new status as the leader of the Democratic Party to educate the electorate about the 4th Amenedment and why Telecom Imunity violates it, but instead he dumbs down the issue and falsely pretends that this bill is a compromise. That's not a new "philosophy" that's the same old stick up the rear that the American people have come to expect from politicians that leads to "a cynical electorate" that is anything but "selfish."

Obama is the one who is creating the dishonest tone to the election when he supports an assault on the Constitution and calls it a good deal for the people. The fundamental dishonesty to the Democratic Party is that Obama is conceding that he has no argument against the Republicans on national security. And on top of that Obama's basis message is even though George Bush has the power now, don't worry when Obama is president he will exercise it responsibility. That is not a new philosophy of government; that is the oldest political scam in the world. What Obama needs to learn from progressives is to quit the political con game and keep it real.

P.S. I recommend Glenn Greenwald's blog Obama's support for the FISA "compromise"

Why there is still time and reason for impeachment of Bush.

Dennis Kucinich is introducing a bill with Articles of Impeachment against George W. Bush. Conyers already presented the bogus argument that there wasn't enough time to impeach Cheney last year so we can expect to hear the same baloney from him about the Bush impeachment. However there is plenty of time as impeachment can be completed in four months as Clinton's was.

The most important reason for impeachment now is not remove Bush in order to get a new leadership but to establish the historical record for the deterrence and prevention of Bush-like tyrants in the future.

I am very grateful for Kucinich doing this now and I hope it becomes a campaign issue in every Congressional district.

When we see Conyers saying, "There isn’t the time here for it." Let him know you know he is lying. Of course there is time. And of course Conyers will be doing everything in his power to make this a self-fulfilling prophecy by his own delaying tactics. I call this playing a desperation card because it is so lacking in substance. It is nothing more than B.S., i.e.,blowing smoke.

Why isn't there time? The history of recent impeachments show that there is time. According to the History Place article on Nixon's impeachment, Sen. Sam Ervin began the Watergate investigation in February of 1973 for the purpose of investigating all of the events surrounding Watergate and other allegations of political spying and sabotage After a nearly year-long court battle over the release of Nixon's tapes, the three articles of impeachment against Nixon were approved by the House judiciary committee on the three days of July 27, 29, and 30, 1974. Nixon resigned on August 9, 1974. Thus, impeachment achieved its purpose from the beginning of the investigation to resignation in 18 months. But most of that time was the court battle over the tapes. For Bush there is no foreseeable reason for such a protracted delay of Bush's impeachment investigation to be held up in the courts.

All the evidence against Bush is already in the public domain. Testimony like McClellan's will only be icing on the cake. The evidence merely needs to be presented at a judiciary committee in an organized fashion to create the record for preferring the charges to the Senate. There are 6 months left in Bush's presidency and with no need for an original investigation like Watergate to occur we have plenty enough time, if the Democrats don't put up the road blocks.

In fact there was no time consuming preliminary investigation conducted by the House in Clinton's impeachment. According to the History Place entry on Clinton's impeachment, impeachment proceedings were initiated on October 8, 1998. The House and the Judiciary Committee did not need to conduct original investigations itself and instead relied upon testimony presented at the committee hearings. The Judiciary Committee sent a list of 81 questions to Clinton for him to either admit or deny under oath, and his responses then became the basis for one of the articles of impeachment. The committee voted on articles of impeachment on December 11, 1998, and upon the passage of H. Res. 611, Clinton was impeached on December 19, 1998, by the full House of Representatives. And the Senate trial lasted from January 7, 1999, until February 12, 1999. Thus, the impeachment and trial of Clinton took only four months. We have that much time.

There are books already published with the allegations of Bush's high crimes and misdemeanors. It would only take a relatively short time to present the case for impeachment by the appropriate witnesses to introduce the events and facts in these books as evidence. It should/could/would take only two or three months for the House to vote on articles of impeachment.

If started before Bush leaves office it might be able to continue weven after he leaves.

If delays are created by the Democrats or Republicans, there is also the question of whether or not impeachment would be made moot by the end of Bush's term. In other words, the Constitution may allow impeachment of a president even after he has left office.

Certainly it is arguable that if impeachment proceedings are begun while the president is in office, because Article I Section 3 of the Constitution provides that judgement may extend to "disqualification to hold and enjoy any Office of Honor, Trust or Profit under the United States" that an impeachment is not made moot simply by the president leaving office, because a judgement disqualifying Bush from future office would still be an effective punishment that is not made moot by his leaving office by the end of the term.

When Nixon resigned the impeachment hearings were stopped because it was seen that his resignation was punishment enough. But if Bush didn't resign, as we know he wouldn't, if he stays through his term and is simply out of office by the time running out, then he would escape all punishment, so as I see it in order to have a punishment, since removal form office would be moot, the punishment that would be available is the disqualification clause. I would argue that leaving office would make impeachment moot only if the removal from office clause were the only punishment available. Since the disqualification clause is an additional punishment I believe impeachment would not be moot if Bush leaves office on January 21, 2009.

This is an interesting Constitutional question that I have not seen specifically addressed yet. If anyone knows references to this question please post them.

And besides, even if the Republicans could delay a vote on impeachment until January 2009 and that would make impeachment constitutionally moot, impeachment proceedings would still have been the right thing to do and in the name of upholding the rule of law. Conyers and Pelosi act like they doesn't understand that the rule of law is an even more important legacy than whether or not Bush is able to run out the clock. By putting impeachment on the table now, the Democrats finally would be saying that no matter how close to the end of a term a president is, he or she can't escape the checks and balances of our Constitutional democracy.

However, by refusing to allow impeachment proceedings to go forward, it is Conyers and the Democrats who would be preventing justice and it is Conyers and he Democrats who are thumbing their noses at our Constitutional system of protections. It is Conyers and the Democrats who are letting a criminal President literally get away with murder. It is Conyers and the Democrats who are establishing the precedent that a president doesn't have to worry in the least about committing high crimes and misdemeanors if he is near the end of his term.

If the People's sovereignty is not upheld at the very minimum by at least having a hearing of the impeachment charges against George Bush, who is arguably the worst criminal president in our history, then Conyers and the Democratic Party are the one's who should be held responsible and accountable for aiding and abetting Bush's crimes. Not only that, they will be laying the foundation for the future crimes of future presidents even yet to be born. Unless Congress takes impeachment seriously, they will be sending a message to all future Presidents that the days of being held accountable re over. That is the open door to fascism.

We are always hearing how the delusional Bush claims that history will show he ws right and the people are wrong. Impeachment is the best and necessary way to write the initial historical record today that will be used in the future to document that Bush is the worst President in US history.

Why did Clinton lose? Plain and simple in one word: Judgement

Adding to the post mortems of the Clinton campaign, in my view Clinton lost because she didn't have the good judgement to win. She didn't have the good judgement to know who is in the Democratic Party and what their issues were. Clinton didn't have the judgement to see past her own issues. She didn't have the judgement to know that a leader doesn't ignore the base of the Party in fundamental issues.

At every crucial fork in the road, she misjudged the Democratic base. No amount of "experience" can make up for poor judgement unless it is used to transform poor judgement into good judgement. Unfortunately for her, Clinton just couldn't or wouldn't admit that her poor judgement on the war needed transformation. She did not have the judgement to lead herself out of the corner she had painted herself into. A leader needs the judgement to know the difference between pandering and following, and while Clinton showed no reluctance to pander on certain issues, she was incapable of following the majority of the Party's base on the most important concern of the day, and without demonstrating the judgement of responsive leadership she doomed herself and couldn't win.

In 2002, Clinton didn't have the judgement to vote against George W. Bush and he war. This was when she lost me in her bid to become president. Clinton didn't have the judgement in 2002 to know that if she wanted to run for president in either 2004 or 2008 that in 2002 she needed to show leadership against the Republican war machine. She needed to have the judgement of knowing right from wrong when it came to Bush's doctrine of preemptive war. She needed the judgement to know that the people want a leader who knows the difference between waging a war of defense from a war of offence. Clinton didn't have the judgement of Jeannette Rankin, the first woman to be elected to Congress, who voted against the First World War.

Then in 2004, Clinton went on Larry King (among other venues) and still did not have the judgement to apologize. Instead she defended her vote and defended the war with its preemptive war doctrine, claiming only that President Bush was failing to execute the war properly.

Thus, Clinton lost her campaign way before the actual race had begun.

Yes, if there had been no Obama, no viable alternative, Clinton may have gotten away with her poor judgement. But the majority of the Democratic Party was hungering for someone to stand up against Bush, not for someone who followed him off the cliff. So even though Obama didn't fight strongly against Bush once he came to the Senate, the mere fact that he was on record at the time in a speech opposing the war was enough to give his improbable campaign credibility with the Democratic base as the candidate to be rallied around and to trust as someone who had the judgement to say "No" to the stupidity of the war. No amount of sheer charisma on Obama's part would have been enough to catapult Obama into the lead if he did not have the war as the fulcrum.

Once the campaign started and before the first primaries, Clinton still refused to apologize for her war vote. She blamed Bush for lying when she still didn't recognize that the rule against preemptive war is in large part just for the purpose of protecting the people from an executive's lies, precisely because a president has too many enticements not to lie if a war will be of use to shore up a failing administration. If she had the judgement to say, "My vote was a mistake because I was not giving enough importance to the doctrine against preemptive war, and now I have learned the lesson why preemptive war is wrong" then she might have had a chance. She would have demonstrated analysis at work.

Instead she continued to embrace war as an option of diplomacy, instead of as a last resort of self defense when there are no other options. So she voted for the Kyl-Lieberman Amendment, once again demonstrating that she had learned absolutely nothing from the Democratic Party's base.

There are just too many forks in the road to list where Clinton demonstrated she did not have the judgement to listen to the Party's base and make corrections. Here are just a few the instances of failed judgement at the turning points.

At the crossroads of deciding to run on "experience" or on the vision of a better future, whether it is called "hope" or "change,"
she misjudged and chose "experience" even though her husband had run against "experience" and won.

At the crossroads of healthcare, instead of using the judgement to see that the Democratic base wants single payer health care, she chose not to show leadership and instead essentially adopted and edited version of John Edward's healthcare proposal. One has to wonder why, since she had made healthcare a center piece of her campaign she did not have an original, innovative, and bold proposal at hand before she even officially announced her candidacy?

After the first four primaries and the writing was on the wall that Obama was the frontrunner and Clinton needed a new strategy beyond the hollow claim of "experience", one that would show her leadership in action, Hillary could have come out strong against Bush and called for his impeachment. Only an issue like impeachment could have brought a significant portion of the progressive base of the party (that is of those who needed more than the mere fact that she is a woman) toward her. If she didn't want to go all the way to impeachment, she could have at least promised to call for an independent prosecutor to conduct a complete and thorough criminal justice investigation of the Bush administration's crimes leading up to the war. Instead even after Bush's lies were completely apparent, she denied the need for impeachment and did not offer any leadership toward an alternative. At this time of course, Obama didn't support impeachment or an alternative either, but he didn’t have the need to do so because he had the high ground of his anti-war vote and was the front runner. It was the need to show bold leadership at that time when she was behind that Clinton again misjudged.

Lastly, on Tues, June 3, Clinton once again showed her poor judgement by refusing to concede, and instead of selflessly stating the obvious and eloquently and graciously praising her opponent and getting behind him, she had the poor judgement to think she could continue her campaign with a tasteless appeal to her supporters to help her decide what to do next. If on the last day of the campaign she didn't have the judgement to see that she had lost and to know how to be decisive and to rise to the occasion to admit defeat, then she still didn't have the judgement to be Vice President, much less President.

Cross posted at The Daily Kos