February 24th, 2007
I’ve not been an enthusiastic supporter of Sen Obama because I’ve found him too cautious and unwilling to make strong (read partisan) statements against republicans and the Iraq war. However, I may just have to change my mind if Sen Obama continues talking this way:
Obama, speaking at a massive outdoor rally in Austin, Texas, said British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s decision this week to withdraw 1,600 troops is a recognition that Iraq’s problems can’t be solved militarily.
"Now if Tony Blair can understand that, then why can’t George Bush and Dick Cheney understand that?" Obama asked thousands of supporters who gathered in the rain to hear him. "In fact, Dick Cheney said this is all part of the plan (and) it was a good thing that Tony Blair was withdrawing, even as the administration is preparing to put 20,000 more of our young men and women in.
"Now, keep in mind, this is the same guy that said we’d be greeted as liberators, the same guy that said that we’re in the last throes. I’m sure he forecast sun today," Obama said to laughter from supporters holding campaign signs over their heads to keep dry. "When Dick Cheney says it’s a good thing, you know that you’ve probably got some big problems." [emphasis added.]
You can find out more about Sen Obama at his campaign website: http://www.barackobama.com/.
February 22nd, 2007
There’s been a lot of discussion lately in grassroots blogs about how politically tone deaf some in the establishment Democratic party seem to be about the Republican Noise Machine, and its main TV propaganda arm: Fox News.
Even after Faux News has gone after Democratic party candidates in the past, the Nevada Democratic party has made a deal with Faux News to carry one of the early nomination debates. And more recently Faux News has gone after Sen Obama, a leading presidential candidate, Robert Greenwald has more:
Earlier this week it was announced that FOX would host a Presidential Primary debate for the Democratic Party of Nevada. This farce must be stopped. FOX cannot be allowed to pretend for one day they are a news organization.
If you are thinking, ‘why bother? Who cares? No one believes or listens to what FOX says,’ I have two words for you — Swift Boat. Keeping the Swift Boaters alive was FOX’s main contribution to the 2004 elections. FOX’s bias does not just reach those who knowingly tune in to the likes of Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity. Other media become influenced by and pick up stories from FOX. Thus, the bias spreads like a cancer — destroying honest news coverage.
February 19th, 2007
Remember Jeff Gannon, the gay prostitute that was sneaked into Bush’s White House on various occasions for who knows what?
Yeah, I know, that was a life time ago and already forgotten. Anyhow, funny thing… in a recently published biography about Ariel Sharon, the former Israeli Prime Minister, he disclosed the following:
"Ariel Sharon: An Intimate Portrait" by Uri Dan, Palgrave Macmillan, 320 pages, $18.45
[...]
Speaking of George Bush, with whom Sharon developed a very close relationship, Uri Dan recalls that Sharon’s delicacy made him reluctant to repeat what the president had told him when they discussed Osama bin Laden. Finally he relented. And here is what the leader of the Western world, valiant warrior in the battle of cultures, promised to do to bin Laden if he caught him: "I will screw him in the ass!"
Funny thing, no?
February 17th, 2007
Just another example in a long list of mainstream media bias against opposition to Bush’s Iraq war:
A Divided House Denounces Plan for More Troops
That’s the NY Times headline covering the recent Democratic Party resolution rebuking Bush’s Iraq war escalation. Here’s the bias, as others have commented:
That would be the New York Times editorializing in its news story about yesterday’s House vote on the Iraq escalation. It gets even more ridiculous in the lede:
A sharply divided House of Representatives passed a resolution on Friday formally repudiating President Bush’s decision to send more than 20,000 new combat troops to Iraq.
Never mind that there were 17 Republicans voting against their own President and with the Democrats. On any other vote that would have been called "bipartisan."
February 17th, 2007
Man, where to begin on this conversation!?
It seems like we, liberals and the Democratic Party (and the country, for that matter), have been engaged in this conversation since the Civil Rights movement — and even before then, I’m sure. Frankly, everything that needs to be said has been said, the points are now old and stale and, to many, seem to lack relevancy. Please, don’t get me wrong: I’m a firm believer that conservation is always good, and that if family members (as we all belong to the American family) have grievances that they need to get off their chest, then a family meeting must be called and held till what needs to be said has been said. Of course, a resolution may not be arrived at at that time, and if more meetings are necessary then, shit, hold more family meetings. What for me is missing from the conversation that European-Americans and African-Americans have been having with each other over the past 50+ years is that there are a lot more settings at the table nowadays; consequently, these two parties must recognize that the dynamic of the conversation has changed.
Sure, the odious history of slavery in America binds European-Americans and African-Americans more closely to each other, perhaps, than how they’re bound to other hyphanated-Americans. However, while these two aggrieved family members continue their two-way conversation at one end of the table, Latinos have become the second largest group at the family gathering; Arab- and Muslim-Americans have garnered some unwanted attention of recent, and their contributions to the dialogue may be more important than ever to the global discourse; and, just as importantly, globalization is affecting everyone at the table from the bottom up.
And this is what gets me about the two-way conversation that some continue to advocate. Of course, my description above doesn’t even begin to capture the complexity of the conversation that we ought to be having; but one thing is for sure, two way conversations — specially in an age of economic and cultural globalization — are simply insufficient.
