Russert: Obama Undisputed Dem Nominee

"We now know who the Democratic nominee is going to be, and no one is going to dispute it," said NBC channel's commentator Tim Russert.

Even though Hillary vows to press on, paying millions of her own money to do it, the general consensus is that Barack Obama is the Democratic Party's nominee after his decisive win in North Carolina and a virtual tie in Indiana.

Let's pray she comes to her senses.

Telling Wright from Wrong

It's Official: America is a religion! And criticizing America per se is blasphemy. And blasphemy, although not registered as a crime - yet - is certainly right up there with murder, corruption, outright lying, torture, and pollution. Oh, and it is far worse than eliminating and disrespecting the First Amendment to the Constitution. That is, if one acts as if America is merely a word, a statue, a flag, a uniform, and a set of rhetorical rules. And in this religion-heavy world, Obama consorted with a Blasphemer, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, aka Mr. Wrong. (Click image at right for full size.)

America, according to the Majority Media view of the Majority American, is no longer a set of ideals, principles, such as, say, democracy. Otherwise, why would Bush be a patriot and Rev. Wright be an "America-hater"? Who brought the country to war over a lie and killed its best and most loyal for that lie in a foreign country which is now a spawning ground for the seeds of terror and hate, and has made the U.S. the most hated nation in the world, bar none? Who lied about his so-called "military service" and orchestrated, along with his adoring "patriotic" fans of "America" luvvers, the removal of a seasoned journalist over the mere mention of his possibly even conceivably fudging on that all-important rite-of-passage-to-patriotism, military service? Rev. Wright? McCain hobnobs with Bush and Cheney, torture-mongers, liars, people who gutted the economy and ruined jobs for millions of white-collar working class white Americans in Pennsylvania and Indiana and other hard-core white states, and no one taunts Mr. McCain with his association with those destroyers of America and its values in every respect, those Constitution-flaunters.

No one asks Ms. HRC about her association with Whitewater or Vince Foster, or some papers left on the dining room table in the white house, and why didn't she "quit years earlier" on such matters, as she claims, saintly robes in tow, to have disowned a man she and Bill previously had as an honored guest at the White House. Maybe to enjoy his rights of free speech which she now conveniently disowns.

Ms. HRC is no proponent of the First Amendment, of detente, of talking instead of bombing, of thinking twice before jumping on the avalanche of war, of debate instead of war, of open and free discussion between human beings instead of attacks between opponents and mud-slingers. She is a huge proponent of winning elections, but she can't win on her reputation as a hard-line conservative, which she isn't, or as a woman of integrity, which she isn't, or as an experienced negotiator, which she isn't, or as a person who will stand against the tide of wrong-headedness on behalf of the downtrodden or the unpopular but right side, the moral side. She's all about being expedient. So she looked at Rev. Wright out of the corner of her eye and said "I would have disowned him long ago." And so she would have disowned anyone who speaks his/her mind against the political winds of hard-headed O'Reilly-fueled hatred, war-mongering, bomb-brained protoplasm. Ah, but now saying "damn America", unlike "damn Yankees", means "hate-filled church" and that most sacrilegious thing of all, anti-Americanism, something the late J. Edgar Hoover was, like HRC, firmly against.

Democracy Now! brought this issue in debate where Adolph Reed Jr., Professor of Political Science at the University of Pennsylvania (author of several books, including Class Notes: Posing as Politics and Other Thoughts on the American Scene and Stirrings in the Jug: Black Politics in the Post-Segregation Era who makes a case against voting for Sen. Obama in the latest issue of The Progressive magazine), argues

Obama opened himself to this by leaning to—on the premise that he can
appeal to Republicans and to conservatives and by parading his personal faith
around.

and

...we’ve seen a number—a significant segment of white voters who sort of like the idea, like to savor the idea in their heads, like the sound of it in their mouths, that they’re prepared to vote for a black candidate, the closer it comes to the election of a black candidate being a reality, the more likely you’re going to find people finding ostensibly nonracial reasons to bail and to find him unlikable. And I think that’s—frankly, I think that’s—from the standpoint of the national political race, I think that’s the most significant aspect of the Wright contrast now.

Plus, regarding Wright, whom Reed believes to be honestly expressing truths,

...Obama couldn’t embrace him, couldn’t do anything except distance himself from that largely astute analysis of American power and other contradictions of the governing regime of both parties, because of the warrants of trying to win
an election in which the discursive center of gravity is much farther to the
right.

So therefore, he concludes Obama couldn't win, and he claims, neither could Hillary ... and so we vote for a "winner", then? McCain? We cave to the perception that Americans are mere protoplasm? Even if they are, even if Americans care about nothing whatsoever except maintaining their own creature comforts today, not tomorrow, it is conceivable that someone, somewhere could inspire us to higher ground.

If Obama is not that person, who on this scorched, pollution-threatened earth is? Why does everybody keep saying "Impossible!"??? What if secretly, in the hearts of most Americans, lies a soul that hopes, dreams, thinks that democracy really does mean "government by the people, for the people" and thinks "the people" is pretty damn inclusive? What if most of them actually fear bleeding democracy to death in useless, pointless, doomed wars overseas? What if they are just hoping to find someone to inspire them out of this video-game mind-numbing business of chasing celebrities while the whole country, its earth, sky, water, and people - not to mention the economy - goes to hell in a flag-draped, patriotic, rhetorically-sterile coffin?

Is it "hate" to condemn America for its racism and war-mongering? Or is it "hate" to refuse to condemn its sins and to whitewash it in red, white and blue meaningless doubletalk, and then condemn those who dare say what they really think? Are Americans really mindless protoplasm? Or do even working people, among whom I count myself, really on a higher plane than most pundits realize? Is Obama electable? Even after Wright?

Only the hopeful, optimistic, democracy-lovers who believe democracy actually could work think that way.

It's the War Economy, Cupid!

While the candidates duke it out on SuperTuesday, the economy still looms as Issue #1. But we can't ignore the War on Terror as a major source of economic drain. Although it's not the only drain. Perhaps the candidates should bear in mind some advice from a Founding Father, one whose advice seems right on-the-money, yet basically trashed by the Republican/neocon dynasty.

In fact, it's the very sense of this trashing of values and at the same time being sunk in a dynastic chain of unbreakable power that gives Obama the edge, that gives the otherwise golden Hillary that let's-think-twice voter retreat. But all could use a dose of fatherly wisdom:

"If tyranny and oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of
fighting a foreign enemy. Of all the enemies to public liberty, war is perhaps
the most to be dreaded because it comprises and develops the germ of every
other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes; and
armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few. The loss of liberty at home is to be charged to the provisions against danger, real or imagined, from abroad."

-- James Madison

Here's some opinion on the subject of budget-screwing-n-skewing from DownsizeDC:

It is because the policies of both parties, and all administrations, on both economics and civil liberties, have combined to create a perfect storm that will manifest itself in an economic way. Foremost among the forces in the approaching economic storm will be the unfunded liabilities for Social Security and Medicare.

There will be fewer young people working to create wealth, and more non-working people consuming an increasingly vast portion of what wealth there is. More elderly people also inevitably means there will be more sick people, demanding more health care. As a result . . .The federal government will lack the revenue to keep its Social Security and Medicare promises. The shortfall in funding is estimated variously at between $53 trillion and $80 trillion. We will have much more to say about this in the month's ahead. Suffice it to say that the spending policies of the federal government must change. They must change dramatically, and they must change now.

But they are not changing. President Bush has just proposed America's first $3 trillion budget. This budget projects near record deficits exceeding $400 billion dollars for each of the next two years, adding nearly one trillion dollars to the national debt in just twenty four months. And more debt means that more of your income taxes will go to pay the interest on the debt, instead of current operating expenses. The nature of the President's spending proposals also highlights the intersection between our government's war on our pocketbooks and its on-going war on the Bill of Rights. Our government has . . .

• Spent trillions projecting U.S. power around the globe . . .


• Provoking blowback in the form of terrorism, which . . .


• Has served as an excuse for the war on the Bill of Rights

The President's current budget proposal promises more of the same. It freezes most spending except for national defense, which will rise by 7% for the Pentagon and 11% for Homeland Security. The grand total for the defense budget is a whopping $515 billion, and this does not include spending for Iraq! But . . .

It seems to us that our defense establishment is perfectly tailored to fight enemies we do not have, and to create the conditions of occupation and aggressive forward projection that serve as a recruitment pitch for the enemies we do have. We are paying through the nose to make ourselves less safe, to hasten bankruptcy, and to shred our Constitution. Meanwhile, our economy crumbles.

Do You Really Want a Democratic President? Obamasize!

He's picked up the endorsements of over 100 notable feminists, CA 1st Lady Maria Shriver, Ted Kennedy, and many more - people you'd have thought would have backed Hillary. He has managed to keep the race tight against a powerful Clinton campaign machine, including its wafting aroma of spousal incumbancy success, and that sense of "inevitability" as well as that sense of Hillary being a "victim" whose woes we should somehow share, and assuage with the Presidency.

But Barack Obama's biggest selling point is his electability in the general election. Hillary is just too divisive a character, victim or not, capable or not, regardless...

Trey Ellis said it best:

I gave money three years ago to his senatorial campaign and personally have
never really considered voting for anyone else. I haven't yet advocated for
others to vote with me because despite the rancor from zealots in both camps,
Obama and Hillary are both centrists Democrats reading from the exact same
hymnal. I don't know any married couples who disagree on less. All this talk of
an historic battle for the future direction of the Democratic party is just the
same kind of hogwash HBO uses to hype prizefights.

What has become
clear, however, from the religious-like fervor of Obama believers and the
venomous hatred from Hillary haters, is that she has been so wounded by this
campaign that she will be too weak to lead us to victory in November.
Hyper-capable as she is, she's a hard woman to love. At least on her own.
Obama's breathtaking rise has at least already won him the VP nod but the
strength of his current surge will, I believe, eventually win him the
nomination.

Fairly or unfairly Obama has been christened the new Kennedy while
Hillary has been tarred the old Nixon. I just don't see how she recovers from
that.

Obama has unquestionably tapped into something profound and lacking in
this country. Let us gather around him now and get ready for the real push, the
real hard work, of wrestling power away from a handful of ultra-conservative
plutocrats who, for going on eight years now, have turned this nation into one
that we hardly even recognize.
Let's take it back with Obama.