Remembering Another Jeremiah

Pulled from a great site called Crooks and Liars...

I’ve been in communication with many other bloggers and progressive activists about various aspects of the primary race. It’s always been helpful to me to bounce ideas off of others and just check my gut reactions before I start blogging about a subject. As you might imagine, the media storm over Barack Obama’s relationship to Rev. Jeremiah Wright has resulted in a flurry of emails back and forth. One of the most thoughtful emails I got was from Jeff Sharlet, author of the upcoming book The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power, and I asked and received his permission to share it with you:

In contextualizing Jeremiah Wright’s “God damn America,” it might be worth remembering another Jeremiah who expressed similar sentiments: namely, Jeremiah. As in, the prophet of the Hebrew Bible, or the “Old Testament,” if you prefer.

Why does that matter? Because it reminds us that a core function of one who attempts to speak in a prophetic voice is to remind us that we are in this together and that we’ll both prosper and suffer together. Many evangelical Christians speak of a “gift of discernment,” not unlike the “gift of tongues.” Us democratically-minded folk might do well to remember that that core concept of a democracy is that we all have some gift of discernment. So let’s use ours and consider the prophetic statements on offer:

1. Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson said America is damned — cursed by God, though not permanently — because we tolerate feminists and queer people.

2. John Hagee says America is damned — cursed by God, though not permanently — because we tolerate Muslims.

3. Jeremiah Wright says America is damned — cursed by God, though not permanently, suffering from hate and division, from bitterness and envy — because we succumb to hating one another.

For my money, my Bible, and my democracy, that last sentiment has the ring of truth, and I’m not even a religious man.

That doesn’t mean it’s a sentiment for a campaign trail. But it does mean that in framing this, we might want to turn our anger toward Fox and the NY Post and all those denouncing Jeremiah Wright rather than the man who says we suffer because of racism. Here is a pastor trying, perhaps not successfully, to preach accountability for hate, not for tolerance. And here is a media that is demanding that we NOT be held accountable for hate.

That is, mainstream media is telling us we must tolerate hate — Hagee — but not those who don’t believe we should tolerate hate — Wright.

Jeremiah Wright’s words were harsh, as were Jeremiah’s. As were Martin Luther King’s — “I have a dream” wasn’t his only speech, and he died holding America accountable for the war in Vietnam and the war against the poor at home. That’s not left, that’s not right, that’s not “racial,” that’s not “post-racial.” It’s prophetic. The Right’s screeching, meanwhile, is simply pathetic.

You can learn more about Jeff’s book on his blog, The Revealer. Diana Butler Bass at BeliefNet also wrote a very compelling piece that I hope puts to rest the accusation of hate in Rev. Wright’s sermons:

The current media flap over the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Barack Obama’s former pastor, strikes me as nothing short of strange. Anyone who attends church on a regular basis knows how frequently congregants disagree with their ministers. To sit in a pew is not necessarily assent to a message preached on a particular day. Being a church member is not some sort of mindless cult, where individuals believe every word preached. Rather, being a church member means being part of a community of faith—a gathered people, always diverse and sometimes at odds, who constitute Christ’s body in the world.

But the attack on Rev. Wright reveals something beyond ignorance of basic dynamics of Christian community. It demonstrates the level of misunderstanding that still divides white and black Christians in the United States. Many white people find the traditions of African-American preaching offensive, especially when it comes to politics.

I know because I am one of those white people. My first sustained encounter with African-American preaching came in graduate school about twenty years ago. I had been assigned as a teaching assistant to a course in Black Church Studies. The placement surprised me, since I had no background in the subject. But the professor assured me that “anyone with experience teaching American religion” would be able to handle the load.

The subject matter was not, as the professor indicated, difficult. The emotional content, however, was. To prepare, I had to read literally thousands of pages of black preaching and theology covering the entire scope of American history. While the particulars of preaching changed through time, one thing did not. Throughout the entire corpus, black Christian leaders leveled a devastating critique against their white brothers and sisters—accusing white Christians of maintaining “ease in Zion” while allowing black people to suffer injustice and oppression.

Typical of the form used by black preachers is Frederick Douglass’ address, “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?” first delivered on July 5, 1852. The address, a political sermon, forcefully attacks white culture. “Fellow-citizens,” Douglass proclaims, “above your national, tumultuous joy, I hear the mournful wails of millions! Whose chains, heavy and grievous yesterday, are, today, rendered more intolerable by the jubilee shouts that reach them.” He goes on to calls American conduct “hideous and revolting” and accuses white Christians of trampling upon and disregarding both the constitution and the Bible. He concluded his sermon with the words, “For revolting barbarity and shameless hypocrisy, America reigns without a rival.”

This was very hard to take. I confess: nearly everything I read that semester pained and angered me. But four months of listening to voices that I wanted to reject made me different. I began to hear the power of the critique. I came to appreciate the prophetic nature of black preaching. I recognized that these voices emerged from a very distinct historical experience. And I admired the narrative interplay between the Bible and social justice. Over time, they taught me to hear the Gospel from an angular perspective—the angle of slaves, freed blacks, of those who feared lynching, of those who longed for Africa, those who could not attend good schools. From them, I learned that liberation through Jesus was a powerful thing. And that white Americans really did need to repent when it came to race.

Learning to listen was not easy. It took patience, historical imagination, and lots of complaining to my friends—even my African-American ones. Eventually, I figured out that even if your ancestors had been the oppressors, you can enter into the world of those who had been oppressed with generosity and a heart open to transformation.

As MSNBC, CNN, and FOX endlessly play the tape of Rev. Wright’s “radical” sermons today, I do not hear the words of a “dangerous” preacher (at least any more dangerous than any preacher who takes the Gospel seriously!) No, I hear the long tradition that Jeremiah Wright has inherited from his ancestors. I hear prophetic critique. I hear Frederick Douglass. And, mostly, I hear the Gospel slant—I hear it from an angle that is not natural to me. It is good to hear that slant.

By: Nicole Belle on Sunday, March 16th, 2008 at 3:32 PM - PDT

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Cocaine Abuse May Lead To Strokes and Mental Deficits

After viewing my Monday, March 10, 2008 post a second time, I decided to do some cursory research on the long-term effects of cocaine use since President Bush has admitted an earlier cocaine addiction. The purpose of this research is in no way scientific or partisan, I was just looking to see if some organic or prima facie correlation could be made. Take a look at what I pulled from NIDA NOTES, Volume 13, Number 3 (July, 1998).

By Steven Stocker, NIDA NOTES Contributing Writer

In 1977, a 43-year-old man came to an emergency room in New York City after having injected cocaine into a muscle in his left arm. Between 1 and 2 hours after the injection, he had begun having trouble speaking and was weak in his right arm and leg. After performing a brain scan, doctors at the hospital determined that the man had had a stroke on the left side of the brain. Although the man also abused other drugs, the fact that the stroke had occurred shortly after he had injected cocaine suggested that cocaine had contributed to the stroke. This case was one of the earliest verified reports of a stroke associated with cocaine use. In their report, the doctors concluded, "If, in fact, cocaine played a causal role [in the stroke], we anticipate that more strokes will be seen among the many abusers of this agent in American cities."

Their prediction turned out to be correct. In subsequent years, cocaine-related strokes became more frequent, particularly in the mid-1980s after the advent of crack cocaine. These strokes involved sudden dramatic reductions in blood flow to areas of the brain, resulting in neurological symptoms, such as paralysis, loss of speech, and dementia.

In the late 1980s, researchers began noticing another type of blood flow disturbance associated with cocaine use. This second type involved less dramatic but more persistent reductions in cerebral blood flow that could lead to difficulties concentrating, slowed thought processes, and memory deficits.

Until recently, scientists could only theorize about how cocaine was causing these cerebral blood flow disturbances. Now NIDA-supported scientists have learned more about how cocaine causes strokes and produces the persistent blood flow deficits. Other NIDA-funded researchers have observed that the brain damage caused by these deficits interferes with drug treatment, and they are studying how to modify treatment to accommodate patients with this type of brain damage.

Short-term Reductions in Blood Flow

Using magnetic resonance angiography (MRA), an imaging technique that shows blood flow in large- and medium-sized arteries in the brain, NIDA-funded researchers Dr. Marc Kaufman and Dr. Jonathan Levin and their colleagues at McLean Hospital in Belmont, Massachusetts, have demonstrated that cocaine use temporarily narrows arteries in the brain, thereby reducing the blood supply to various brain regions. Researchers had suspected this for many years because they knew that cocaine could cause vasoconstriction, or narrowing of blood vessels, in the heart and other regions of the body. This study conclusively demonstrated this effect in the human brain.

The researchers administered either cocaine or a placebo solution to 24 men, ages 24 to 34. The volunteers had used cocaine occasionally but were not dependent on the drug. The cocaine doses administered were relatively low, resulting in cocaine blood levels that were at the low end of the range typically experienced during cocaine abuse.

Images of the brain were obtained before and 20 minutes after the cocaine was administered. By comparing before and after images, the researchers could see where blood vessels were narrowed. Among the 7 men who received the placebo, only 1 showed blood vessel narrowing, but among the 9 men who received the lowest dose of cocaine, 3 had vasoconstriction in several brain arteries. Among the 8 men who received a higher dose, 5 showed this effect. The vasoconstrictions ranged from small reductions in blood vessel diameter to more significant obstructions of blood flow.

The more often the men had used cocaine in the past, the more likely the drug was to narrow blood vessels, which suggests that cocaine has a cumulative effect on brain arteries. "This cumulative effect may start with as few as 5 to 10 exposures to cocaine," says Dr. Kaufman. "As a result, people who use cocaine many times probably have a high incidence of vasoconstriction in their brains."

One possible outcome of cocaine's cumulative effect may be a stroke. As a result of many cocaine exposures, brain arteries may be more reactive to the chemical stimuli that normally cause them to constrict, Dr. Kaufman says. This constriction could substantially reduce the blood supply to a region for several minutes, thereby damaging nerve cells and possibly causing stroke-like symptoms. A more likely outcome of the cumulative effect would be persistent blood flow reductions to large areas of the brain. These reductions are less substantial than those that occur in a stroke and may not kill nerve cells, but they could cause thinking and memory deficits, says Dr. Kaufman.

Long-term Reductions in Blood Flow

Scientists began to observe that cocaine could cause persistent blood flow deficits in the brain in the mid-1980s. NIDA-funded scientist Dr. Nora Volkow and her colleagues at the Brookhaven National Laboratory in Upton, New York, and at the University of Texas Health Science Center in Houston used another imaging technique called positron emission tomography (PET), which can show the flow of blood in the brain tissue rather than in the brain arteries, as MRA does. When the researchers compared PET scans of young adult cocaine-abusing men with scans of normal volunteers, they found that most of the abusers had less blood flow in some areas of the brain. When the researchers performed PET scans again 10 days later, the blood flow deficits were still there, even though the abusers had stopped using cocaine. Many of the volunteers had difficulties concentrating and performing simple calculations, which the researchers concluded were associated with the blood flow deficits.

Subsequently, other scientists verified that cocaine abusers had blood flow deficits in the brain and that these deficits persisted long after the individuals stopped abusing cocaine. Using a technique similar to PET called single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT), Dr. Tony Strickland of Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science in Los Angeles and the University of California, Los Angeles, School of Medicine and his colleagues took brain images of cocaine abusers who had abstained from cocaine for at least 6 months before evaluation. Even after this long period of abstinence, the images showed that the abusers still had blood flow deficits compared to control subjects, suggesting that the deficits may be long-term or perhaps even permanent.

In addition to taking brain images with SPECT, Dr. Strickland's group also administered neuropsychological tests to the cocaine abusers. These tests detected many abnormalities that seemed to be associated with reduced activity in the parts of the brain affected by the reduced blood flow. These abnormalities included deficits in attention, memory, concept formation, and mental flexibility. The tests also showed that long-term cocaine abusers had trouble inhibiting inappropriate behaviors, a condition psychologists call disinhibition.

Dr. Levin, who worked on the MRA study with Dr. Kaufman, thinks that chronic cocaine abuse may lead to strokes and long-term blood flow deficits by accelerating atherosclerosis in brain arteries. Atherosclerosis is a thickening on the inside of blood vessels that some researchers believe makes the vessels more likely to go into vasospasm, which is a vasoconstriction that lasts for minutes rather than seconds. "Let's say a blood vessel in a person's brain has atherosclerosis as a result of some injury to the blood vessel. If the person takes a compound such as cocaine that causes vasoconstriction, the part of the blood vessel that is likely to go into spasm is the part with the atherosclerosis," explains Dr. Levin. This vasospasm may then damage the inner lining of the blood vessel, which would further promote the development of atherosclerosis. If the person continues to take cocaine, more vasospasms would occur and hence more atherosclerosis. "It becomes a vicious cycle," he says.

This would explain how cocaine could cause strokes. Eventually, the vasospasms induced by cocaine last so long that nerve cells die from a lack of blood. The explanation for the persistent blood flow deficits might be that the atherosclerosis is slowly clogging the inside of the blood vessels, thereby reducing blood flow. One piece of evidence in favor of this theory is that aspirin has been shown to reverse temporarily the cerebral blood flow deficits caused by cocaine. Aspirin inhibits the formation of blood clots that are part of the atherosclerotic process.

Using a technology called transcranial Doppler sonography (TCD), Dr. Ronald Herning, Dr. Jean Lud Cadet, and colleagues in NIDA's Division of Intramural Research in Baltimore have found evidence that cocaine abusers do indeed have significant atherosclerosis in their brain arteries. In TCD, very high frequency sound waves are bounced off the blood flowing in large arteries in the brain, and the characteristics of the reflected sound waves can be used to estimate the constriction of the arteries. "Our data suggest that cocaine abusers in their thirties have arteries that are as constricted as those of normal subjects in their sixties," says Dr. Herning.

Mental Deficits

Drug treatment providers should be aware that mental deficits that develop in cocaine abusers as a result of reduced blood flow may hamper the ability of these patients to benefit from treatment, says Dr. Strickland. Some patients have trouble paying attention or remembering conversations; others disrupt the therapy by being disinhibited. They constantly interrupt the therapist, they begin tasks without waiting for all the instructions, and they may become aggressive.

Dr. Strickland recommends giving new drug abuse patients neuropsychological screening tests to identify their deficits. Once these deficits are identified, the therapist can modify the drug treatment to accommodate the deficits, he suggests. For example, if the patient has trouble paying attention and remembering, the therapist could present information in small segments and repeat each segment until the patient learns it.

A major component of therapy is simply informing these patients that their long-term drug abuse has changed the way their brains function, Dr. Strickland says. "Some of these patients know that something is wrong but don't know what it is," he says. "They are relieved to learn that they're not 'crazy' and that the source of their problems is that drugs have altered the way their brains process information. They also are relieved to learn that they can take steps to enhance their performance."

"Compared to patients who have brain injury from motorcycle accidents, gunshot wounds, or other causes, drug abuse patients have considerably less impairment," notes Dr. Strickland. "We're successful in helping traumatic brain injury patients, and so the chances of helping patients with drug-induced brain injury are comparatively good."

In addition to modifying drug abuse treatment to accommodate the mental deficits of cocaine abusers, NIDA scientists are also investigating the possibility of treating their blood flow and mental deficits with medications. TCD will be particularly useful for monitoring the blood flow effects of medications, says Dr. Herning. "TCD is a quick, easy, relatively inexpensive measure that can be used repeatedly, so you can give your subjects medications and monitor them weekly, which you cannot do with PET or SPECT."

Sources

Brust, J.C.M.; and Richter, R.W. Stroke associated with cocaine abuse? New York State Journal of Medicine 77:1473-1475, 1977.

Herning, R.I.; King, D.E.; Better, W.; and Cadet, J.L. Cocaine dependence: A clinical syndrome requiring neuroprotection. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 825:323-327, 1997.

Kaufman, M.J., et al. Cocaine-induced cerebral vasoconstriction detected in humans with magnetic resonance angiography. The Journal of the American Medical Association 279(5):376-380, 1998.

Kosten, T.R.; Malison, R.; and Wallace, E. Neuropsychological abnormalities in cocaine abusers: Possible correlates in SPECT neuroimaging. In: Majewska, M.D., ed. Neurotoxicity and Neuropathology Associated with Cocaine Abuse. NIDA Research Monograph Series, Number 163. NIH Publication No. 96-4019. Pittsburgh, PA: Supt. of Docs., U.S. Govt. Print. Off., 1996, pp. 175-192.

Strickland, T.L., et al. Cerebral perfusion and neuropsychological consequences of chronic cocaine use. Journal of Neuropsychiatry 5(4):419-427, 1993.

Strickland, T.L.; Stein, R.A.; Khalsa-Denison, M.E.; and Andre, K. Neuropsychological effects of chronic cocaine use following sustained abstinence. Archives of Clinical Neuropsychology 11(5):456-457, 1996.

Volkow, N.D.; Mullani, N.; Gould, K.L.; Adler, S.; and Krajewski, K. Cerebral blood flow in chronic cocaine users: A study with positron emission tomography. British Journal of Psychiatry 152:641-648, 1988.

Tolerance Versus Acceptance...An Interesting Proposition. (Music by Dar Willliams)

Democrats Divided by Race, Sex: Obama, Clinton struggle to transcend historic alliances, prejudices

It appears that the Democrats are self-destructing...

The Associated Press
updated 4:08 p.m. CT, Sat., March. 15, 2008

WASHINGTON - Something happened to the feel-good, way-cool Democratic presidential contest in the months since a woman and a black man began their path-breaking race for the White House.

By the millions, black voters voted for the black candidate and women voted for the woman. White men seemed torn, by the millions.

Sen. Barack Obama has broken historic barriers, especially among the young, as the first black candidate with a serious chance at the presidency. Voters who might ordinarily balk at a female president have backed Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton in her pioneering effort.

Those gains have not been enough to erase divisions by race, a task perhaps beyond any mortal and any one election, nor lesser ones between the sexes.

And when the campaign moves beyond Democrats, the party of diversity, and into the general election, it's questionable how much room is left for such progress.

A significant minority of voters in Democratic contests have considered the race or sex of the candidates important — about one in five in each case. That's according to surveys of voters in about two dozen states across the country on and since Super Tuesday.

Whether clumsy, coarse or calculating, remarks by party stalwarts or hangers-on have brought race repeatedly into the discomfort zone, which is easy to do, suggesting a post-racial political consciousness is for a more distant future.

Weeks before Geraldine Ferraro argued that the color of Obama's skin gave him an edge, fellow Clinton supporter Ed Rendell appeared to argue the opposite. The Pennsylvania governor, an important figure in the big April 22 primary, said "there are some whites who are probably not ready to vote for an African-American."

On the defensive about that, he added Clinton "has the same handicap" because some voters won't vote for a woman.

By that accounting, backed by evidence in exit polls, polarized politics is still ingrained, taking bites out of "Yes we can" unity.

Clinton was an early crossover figure in one sense — blacks preferred her over Obama last year, while Obama was the pick of upper income whites.

But that changed after the Illinois senator scored a big win in mostly-white Iowa, and his movement was born.

In the South Carolina primary and beyond, blacks have powered his victories in states where they live in large numbers, joined by the young of any race — and by white men in varying degrees.

Women are credited with reviving Clinton's campaign in New Hampshire and helping to drive her wins in Texas and Ohio.

David Bositis of the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, a black think tank, says Clinton probably lost more black support than she gained among whites when supporters such as her husband began dropping subtle race cards into the debate.

"It has shifted the black vote entirely into Obama's camp," he said, and so far without costing him equivalent white support. He estimated Clinton could have held on to a third of black votes absent tactics that he said drove them away. As it is, he's beaten her 83-15 percent among black voters, according to exit polls for The Associated Press.

That's not to say most of her supporters necessarily have a problem with a black candidate, he said.

"White women are supporting Hillary because she's a woman," he said. "It's not because Obama is black." She's held a 59-36 percent advantage among white women.

Racial divisions have been most evident in the South, although not exclusive to it.

A quarter of white voters in Mississippi's Democratic primary said race was important in their choices Tuesday, and they voted heavily for Clinton. Thirty-seven percent of blacks said race was important, and nearly all voted for Obama.

In Ohio, 18 percent of white voters said race was important to their vote. Among them, 76 percent backed Clinton. She won by 16 points among women in Ohio and 29 points among whites.

In all, Clinton is winning the majority of white votes in Democratic primaries in which both candidates competed.

Obama has performed best among whites in liberal Vermont and his home state of Illinois, although he has also edged Clinton in the white vote in Wisconsin, Virginia, Utah and New Mexico.

All told, voter surveys suggest that Clinton ends up with more votes because she's a woman than Obama nets because he's black.

Copyright 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23647854/

© 2008 MSNBC.com

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"All other things being equal, the simplest solution is the best." -- William Ockham (c. 1285–1349)

Controversial Minister Off Obama's Campaign

Here is an interesting twist on speaking truth to power...Senator Obama speaking truth to his pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Nonetheless, I hear a prophetic voice in Rev. Wright that should not be ignored. I think that he could learn a lesson from the Old Testament story of Jehu, who led his nation into reform then departed from the Way of God by becoming an extremist without grace, humility, and reliant upon oppressive power.

(CNN) -- A Chicago minister who delivered a fiery sermon about Sen. Hillary Clinton having an advantage over Sen. Barack Obama in the presidential race because she is white is no longer a part of the Obama campaign.

The Rev. Jeremiah Wright is no longer serving on the African American Religious Leadership Committee, campaign sources told CNN.

In another sermon, Wright had said America had brought the September 11 attacks upon itself.

The announcement of Wright's departure from the Obama camp came after the Illinois senator on Friday denounced some of the ministers's sermons, calling them "inflammatory and appalling."

"I categorically denounce any statement that disparages our great country or serves to divide us from our allies," Obama wrote on the liberal Web site Huffingtonpost.com about recently surfaced sermons from Wright -- his longtime pastor at the Trinity United Church of Christ.

"I also believe that words that degrade individuals have no place in our public dialogue, whether it's on the campaign stump or in the pulpit," Obama continued. "In sum, I reject outright the statements by Rev. Wright that are at issue."

The sermons in question became the subject of scrutiny earlier this week after being highlighted in an ABC News report.

At one December service, Wright argued Clinton's road to the White House is considerably easier than Obama's because of his skin color.

"Hillary was not a black boy raised in a single parent home. Barack was," Wright says in a video of the sermon posted on YouTube. "Barack knows what it means to be a black man living in a country and a culture that is controlled by rich white people. Hillary! Hillary ain't never been called a 'nigger!' Hillary has never had her people defined as a non-person." VideoWatch Wright berate Clinton from the pulpit »

Wright, who retired from his post earlier this year, also says in the video, "Who cares about what a poor black man has to face every day in a country and in a culture controlled by rich white people?"

Still, Obama defended his 20-year relationship with Wright, saying that the pastor has served him in a spiritual role -- not a political one.

A sermon from Wright shortly after the September 11, 2001, terrorism attacks is also under scrutiny. In it he said America had brought on the attacks with its own practice of terrorism.

"We bombed Hiroshima, we bombed Nagasaki, and we nuked far more than the thousands in New York and the Pentagon, and we never batted an eye," he said. "We have supported state terrorism against the Palestinians and black South Africans, and now we are indignant. Because the stuff we have done overseas has now brought right back into our own front yards. America's chickens are coming home to roost."

In his statement Friday, Obama said he had not personally heard the controversial sermons.

"When these statements first came to my attention, it was at the beginning of my presidential campaign. I made it clear at the time that I strongly condemned his comments," Obama wrote. "But because Rev. Wright was on the verge of retirement, and because of my strong links to the Trinity faith community, where I married my wife and where my daughters were baptized, I did not think it appropriate to leave the church."

And in a 2003 sermon, Wright said of America's treatment of African-Americans: "The government gives them the drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes a three-strike law and then wants us to sing 'God Bless America.' No, no, no, God damn America, that's in the Bible for killing innocent people."God damn America for treating our citizens as less than human. God damn America for as long as she acts like she is God and she is supreme."

Obama and Wright have been close for years. Obama has been a member of Wright's church since his days in law school, and Obama's best-selling book, "The Audacity of Hope," takes its title from one of Wright's sermons.

But Obama also has long maintained he is at odds with some of Wright's sermons, and has likened him to an "old uncle" who sometimes will say things Obama doesn't agree with. He has also specifically denounced Wright's 9/11 comments.

Story from Alex Mooney with additional contribution from Chris Welch

© 2008 Cable News Network

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THE CONSERVATIVE CASE AGAINST GEORGE W. BUSH

(Image Provided by Blog Host, Not Mr. Bryk)

By William Bryk

Theodore Roosevelt, that most virile of presidents, insisted that, "To announce that there should be no criticism of the president, or that we are to stand by the president, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American people." With that in mind, I say: George W. Bush is no conservative, and his unprincipled abandonment of conservatism under the pressure of events is no statesmanship. The Republic would be well-served by his defeat this November.

William F. Buckley's recent retirement from the National Review, nearly half a century after he founded it, led me to reflect on American conservatism's first principles, which Buckley helped define for our time. Beneath Buckley's scintillating phrases and rapier wit lay, as Churchill wrote of Lord Birkenhead, "settled and somewhat somber conclusions upon… questions about which many people are content to remain in placid suspense": that political and economic liberty were indivisible; that government's purpose was protecting those liberties; that the Constitution empowered government to fulfill its proper role while restraining it from the concentration and abuse of power; and that its genius lay in the Tenth Amendment, which makes explicit that the powers not delegated to government are reserved to the states or to the people.

More generally, American conservatives seek what Lord Acton called the highest political good: to secure liberty, which is the freedom to obey one's own will and conscience rather than the will and conscience of others. Any government, of any political shade, that erodes personal liberty in the name of social and economic progress must face a conservative's reasoned dissent, for allowing one to choose between right and wrong, between wisdom and foolishness, is the essential condition of human progress. Although sometimes the State has a duty to impose restrictions, such curbs on the liberty of the individual are analogous to a brace, crutch or bandage: However necessary in the moment, as they tend to weaken and to cramp, they are best removed as soon as possible. Thus American conservative politics championed private property, an institution sacred in itself and vital to the well-being of society. It favored limited government, balanced budgets, fiscal prudence and avoidance of foreign entanglements.

More subtly, American conservatism viewed human society as something of an organism in itself. This sense of society's organic character urged the necessity of continuity with the past, with change implemented gradually and with as little disruption as possible. Thus, conservatism emphasized the "civil society"—the private voluntary institutions developed over time by passing the reality test—i.e., because they work—such as families, private property, religious congregations and neighborhoods—rather than the State. In nearly every sense, these institutions were much closer to the individuals who composed them than the State could ever be and had the incidental and beneficial effect of protecting one's personal liberty against undue intrusion from governments controlled by fanatics and busybodies, that which Edmund Burke presciently called the "armed ideologies," and thus upheld our way of life as flying buttresses supported a Gothic cathedral.

But the policies of this administration self-labeled "conservative" have little to do with the essence of tradition. Rather, they tend to centralize power in the hands of the government under the guise of patriotism. If nothing else, the Bush administration has thrown into question what being a conservative in America actually means.

Forty years ago, when Lyndon Johnson believed the United States could afford both Great Society and the Vietnam War, conservatives attacked his fiscal policies as extravagant and reckless. Ten years ago, the Republican Party regained control of Congress with the Contract with America, which included a balanced-budget amendment to restore fiscal responsibility. But today, thanks to tax cuts and massively increased military spending, the Bush administration has transformed, according to the Congressional Budget Office, a ten-year projected surplus of $5.6 trillion to a deficit of $4.4 trillion: a turnaround of $10 trillion in roughly 32 months.

The Bush Administration can't even pretend to keep an arm's length from Halliburton, the master of the no-bid government contract. Sugar, grain, cotton, oil, gas and coal: These industries enjoy increased subsidies and targeted tax breaks not enjoyed by less-connected industries. The conservative Heritage Foundation blasts the administration's agricultural subsidies as the nation's most wasteful corporate welfare program. The libertarian Cato Institute called the administration's energy plan "three parts corporate welfare and one part cynical politics...a smorgasbord of handouts and subsidies for virtually every energy lobby in Washington" that "does little but transfer wealth from taxpayers to well-connected energy lobbies." And the Republican Party's Medicare drug benefit, the largest single expansion of the welfare state since Lyndon Johnson's Great Society, was designed to appeal to senior citizens who, as any competent politician knows, show up at the polls.

None of this is conservative, although it is in keeping with the Bush family's history. Kevin Phillips, whose 1969 classic The Emerging Republican Majority outlined the policies that would lead to the election of President Reagan, describes in his American Dynasty the Bush family's rise to wealth and power through crony capitalism: the use of contacts obtained in public service for private profit. Phillips argues the Bushes don't disfavor big government as such: merely that part of it that regulates business, maintains the environment or aids the needy. Subsidizing oil-well drilling through tax breaks, which made George H. W. Bush's fortune, or bailing out financial institutions, such as Neil Bush's bankrupt Silverado Savings and Loan, however, is a good thing.

This deficit spending also helps Bush avoid the debate on national priorities we would have if these expenditures were being financed through higher taxes on a pay-as-you-go basis. After all, we're not paying the bill now; instead, it will come due far in the future, long after today's policy-makers are out of office. And this debt is being incurred just as the baby boomers are about to retire. In January 2004, Charles Kolb, who served in the Reagan and George H. W. Bush White Houses, testified before Congress that, at a time when demographics project more retirees and fewer workers, projected government debt will rise from 37 percent of the economy today to 69 percent in 2020 and 250 percent in 2040. This is the sort of level one associates with a Third World kleptocracy.

Even worse than this extravagance are the administration's unprecedented intrusions into our constitutional privacy rights through the Patriot Act. If it does not violate the letter of the Fourth Amendment, it violates its spirit. To cite two examples, the FBI has unchecked authority through the use of National Security Letters to require businesses to reveal "a broad array of sensitive information, including information about the First Amendment activities of ordinary Americans who are not suspected of any wrongdoing." Despite the Fourth Amendment's prohibition on unreasonable search and seizure, the government need not show probable cause: It does not need to obtain a warrant from a judge. And who can trust any law enforced by John Ashcroft, who single-handedly transformed a two-bit hubcap thief like Jose Padilla first into a threat to national security and then, through his insistence that Padilla, an American citizen, could be held without charges, into a Constitutional crisis?

All this stems from Bush's foreign policy of preemptive war, which encourages war for such vague humanitarian ends as "human rights," or because the United States believes another country may pose a threat to it. Its champions seem to almost joyously anticipate a succession of wars without visible end, with the invasion of Iraq merely its first fruit: former Bush appointee Richard Perle, from his writings on foreign policy, would have us war against nearly every nation that he defines as a rogue. The ironic consequence of this policy to stabilize the world is greater instability. It reminds me of the old FDR jingle from the Daily Worker:

I hate war, and so does Eleanor, But we won't feel safe until everybody's dead.

To be sure, there's more than enough blame to go around with the Congress' cowardly surrender to the Executive of its power to declare war. The Founding Fathers, who knew war from personal experience, explicitly placed the war power in the hands of the Congress. As James Madison wrote over 200 years ago:

"The Constitution expressly and exclusively vests in the Legislature the power of declaring a state of war… The separation of the power of declaring war from that of conducting it is wisely contrived to exclude the danger of its being declared for the sake of its being conducted."

But since the Korean War (which the Congress defined as a "police action" to avoid using its war powers), war has been waged without its formal declaration. Thus Congressional power atrophies in the face of flag-waving presidents. Perhaps Congress is too preoccupied with swilling from the gravy trough that our politics has become to recall its Constitutional role as a co-equal branch of government, guarding its powers and privileges against executive usurpation. The Congress has forgotten that the men who exacted Magna Carta from King John at sword point instituted Parliament to restrain the executive from its natural tendency to tax, spend and war.

Moreover, there is nothing conservative about war. As Madison wrote:

"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. [There is an] inequality of fortunes, and the opportunities of fraud, growing out of a state of war, and…degeneracy of manners and of morals…No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare."

By contrast, business, commerce and trade, founded on private property, created by individual initiative, families and communities, has done far more to move the world forward than war. Yet faith in military force and an arrogant belief that American values are universal values still mold our foreign policy nearly a century after Woodrow Wilson, reelected with a promise of keeping America out of World War I, broke faith with the people by engineering a declaration of war within weeks of his second inauguration.

George W. Bush's 2000 campaign supposedly rejected Wilsonian foreign policy by articulating both the historic Republican critique of foreign aid and explicitly criticizing Bill Clinton's nation-building. Today, the administration insists we can be safe only by compelling other nations to implement its vision of democracy. This used to be called imperialism. Empires don't come cheap; worse, "global democracy" requires just the kind of big government conservatives abhor. When the Wall Street Journal praises the use of American tax dollars to provide electricity and water services in Iraq, something we used to call socialism, either conservatism has undergone a tectonic shift or the paper's editors are disingenuous.

This neo-conservative policy rejects the traditional conservative notion that American society is rooted in American culture and history—in the gradual development of American institutions over nearly 230 years—and cannot be separated from them. Instead, neo-conservatives profess that American values, which they define as democracy, liberty, free markets and self-determination, are "universal" rather than particular to us, and insist they can and should be exported to ensure our security.

This is nonsense. The qualities that make American life desirable evolved from our civil society, created by millions of men and women using the freedom created under limited constitutional government. Only a fool would believe they could be spread overnight with bombs and bucks, and only a fool would insist that the values defined by George W. Bush as American are necessarily those for which we should fight any war at all.

Wolfowitz, Perle and their allies in the Administration claimed the Iraqis would greet our troops with flowers. Somehow, more than a year after the president's "Mission Accomplished" photo-op, a disciplined body of well-supplied military professionals is still waging war against our troops, their supply lines and our Iraqi collaborators. Indeed, the regime we have just installed bids fair to become a long-term dependent of the American taxpayer under U.S. military occupation.

The Administration seems incapable of any admission that its pre-war assertions that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction were incorrect. Instead, in a sleazy sleight of hand worthy of Lyndon Johnson, the Administration has retrospectively justified its war with Saddam Hussein's manifold crimes.

First, that is a two-edged sword: If the crimes of a foreign government against its people justify our invasion, there will be no end of fighting. Second, the pre-war assertions were dishonest: Having decided that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction, the policymakers suppressed all evidence that it did not. This immorality is thrown in high relief by the war's effect on Iraqi civilians. We have no serious evidence of any connection between Iraq and 9/11. Dropping 5000-pound bombs on thousands of people who had nothing to do with attacking us is as immoral as launching airplanes at an American office building.

To sum up: Anything beyond the limited powers expressly delegated by the people under the Constitution to their government for certain limited purposes creates the danger of tyranny. We stand there now. For an American conservative, better one lost election than the continued empowerment of cynical men who abuse conservatism through an exercise of power unrestrained by principle through the compromise of conservative beliefs. George W. Bush claims to be conservative. But based upon the unwholesome intrusion into domestic life and personal liberty of his administration and the local governments who imitate it, George W. Bush is no conservative, no friend of limited, constitutional government—and no friend of freedom. The Republic would be better served by his defeat in November.

Originally Released: AUGUST 10, 2004


Volume 17, Issue 31

© 2008 New York Press

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Now this is how one speaks truth to power! Encore, Mr. Olbermann! Encore!

Olbermann: Senator, you must correct the wrong done to Obama
SPECIAL COMMENT
By Keith Olbermann
Anchor, 'Countdown'
updated 8:46 p.m. CT, Wed., March. 12, 2008

By way of necessary preface, President and Sen. Clinton, and the senator’s mother, and the senator’s brother, were of immeasurable support to me at the moments when these very commentaries were the focus of the most surprise, the most uncertainty, and the most anger. My gratitude to them is abiding.

Also, I am not here endorsing Sen. Obama’s nomination, nor suggesting it is inevitable.

Thus I have fought with myself over whether or not to say anything.

Senator, as it has reached its apex in their tone-deaf, arrogant and insensitive reaction to the remarks of Geraldine Ferraro, your own advisers are slowly killing your chances to become president.

Senator, their words, and your own, are now slowly killing the chances for any Democrat to become president.

In your tepid response to this Ferraro disaster, you may sincerely think you are disenthralling an enchanted media and righting an unfair advance bestowed on Sen. Obama.

You may think the matter has closed with Rep. Ferraro’s bitter, almost threatening resignation.

But in fact, Senator, you are now campaigning as if Barack Obama were the Democrat and you were the Republican.

As Shakespeare wrote, Senator, that way madness lies.

You have missed a critical opportunity to do what was right.

No matter what Ms. Ferraro now claims, no one took her comments out of context.

She had made them on at least three separate occasions, then twice more on television this morning.

Just hours ago, on NBC Nightly News, she denied she had made the remarks in an interview; only at a paid political speech.

In fact, the first time she spoke them, was 10 days before the California newspaper published them, not in a speech, but in a radio interview.

On Feb. 26, “If Barack Obama were a white man, would we be talking about this, as a potential real problem for Hillary? If he were a woman of any color, would he be in this position that he’s in? Absolutely not.”

The context was inescapable.

Two minutes earlier, a member of Sen. Clinton’s Finance Committee, one of her “Hill-Raisers,” had bemoaned the change in allegiance by superdelegate John Lewis from Clinton to Obama, and the endorsement of Obama by Sen. Dodd.

“I look at these guys doing it,” she had said, “and I have to tell you, it’s the guys sticking together.”

A minute after the “color” remarks, she was describing herself as having been chosen for the 1984 Democratic ticket purely as a woman politician, purely to make history.

She was, in turn, making a blind accusation of sexism and dismissing Sen. Obama’s candidacy as nothing more than an Equal Opportunity stunt.

The next day she repeated her comments to a reporter from the newspaper in Torrance, Calif.

“If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position. And if he was a woman (of any color) he would not be in this position. He happens to be very lucky to be who he is. And the country is caught up in the concept.”

And when this despicable statement, ugly in its overtones, laughable in its weak grip of facts and moronic in the historical context, when it floats outward from the Clinton campaign like a poison cloud, what do the advisers have their candidate do?

Do they have Sen. Clinton herself compare the remark to Al Campanis talking on Nightline on Jackie Robinson day about how blacks lacked the necessities to become baseball executives, while she points out that Barack Obama has not gotten his 1,600 delegates as part of some kind of affirmative action plan?

Do they have Sen. Clinton note that her own brief period in elected office is as irrelevant to the issue of judgment as is Sen. Obama’s while she points out that FDR had served only six years as a governor and state senator before he became president?

Or that Teddy Roosevelt had four-and-a-half years before the White House?

Or that Woodrow Wilson had two years and six weeks?

Or Richard Nixon, 14, and Calvin Coolidge, 25?

Do these advisers have Sen. Clinton invoke Samantha Power, gone by sunrise after she used the word “monster” and have Sen. Clinton say, “This is how I police my campaign, and this is what I stand for,” while she fires former Congresswoman Ferraro from any role in the campaign?

No.

Somebody tells her that simply disagreeing with and rejecting the remarks is sufficient.

And that she should then call them “regrettable,” a word that should make any Democrat retch.

And that she should then try to twist them, first into some pox-on-both-your-houses plea to "stick to the issues," and then to let her campaign manager try to bend them beyond all recognition, into Sen. Obama’s fault.

And thus these advisers give Congresswoman Ferraro nearly a week in which to send Sen. Clinton’s campaign back into the vocabulary ... of David Duke.

“Any time anybody does anything that in any way pulls this campaign down and says let’s address reality and the problems we’re facing in this world, you’re accused of being racist, so you have to shut up.

“Racism works in two different directions. I really think they’re attacking me because I’m white.

“How’s that?”

How’s that?

Apart from sounding exactly like Rush Limbaugh attacking the black football quarterback Donovan McNabb?

Apart from sounding exactly like what Ms. Ferraro said about another campaign, nearly 20 years ago?

“President Reagan suggested Tuesday that people don’t ask Jackson tough questions because of his race. And former representative Geraldine A. Ferraro (D-N.Y.) said Wednesday that because of his ‘radical’ views, ‘if Jesse Jackson were not black, he wouldn’t be in the race.’”

So, apart from sounding like insidious racism that is at least two decades old?

Apart from rendering ridiculous Sen. Clinton’s shell-game about choosing Obama as vice president?

Apart from this evening’s resignation letter?

“I am stepping down from your finance committee so I can speak for myself and you can continue to speak for yourself about what is at stake in this campaign.

“The Obama campaign is attacking me to hurt you.”

Apart from all that?

Well. It sounds as if those advisers want their campaign to be associated with those words, and the cheap, ignorant, vile racism that underlies every syllable.

And Geraldine Ferraro has just gone free-lance.

Sen. Clinton:This is not a campaign strategy. This is a suicide pact.

This week alone, your so-called strategists have declared that Sen. Obama has not yet crossed the “commander-in-chief threshold.”

But he might be your choice to be vice president, even though a quarter of the previous sixteen vice presidents have become commander-in-chief during the greatest kind of crisis this nation can face: a mid-term succession.

But you’d only pick him if he crosses that threshold by the time of the convention.

But if he does cross that threshold by the time of the convention, he will only have done so sufficiently enough to become vice president, not president.

Senator, if the serpentine logic of your so-called advisers were not bad enough ...

Now, thanks to Geraldine Ferraro, and your campaign’s initial refusal to break with her, and your new relationship with her, now more disturbing still is her claim that she can now “speak for herself” about her vision of Sen. Obama as some kind of embodiment of a quota.

If you were to seek Obama as a vice president, it would be, to Ms. Ferraro, some kind of social engineering gesture, some kind of racial make-good.

Do you not see, Senator?

To Sen. Clinton’s supporters, to her admirers, to her friends for whom she is first choice, and to her friends for whom she is second choice, she is still letting herself be perceived as standing next to, and standing by, racial divisiveness and blindness.

And worst yet, after what President Clinton said during the South Carolina primary, comparing the Obama and Jesse Jackson campaigns; a disturbing, but only borderline remark.

After what some in the black community have perceived as a racial undertone to the “3 A.M.” ad, a disturbing but only borderline interpretation ...

And after that moment’s hesitation in her own answer on 60 Minutes about Obama’s religion; a disturbing, but only borderline vagueness ...

After those precedents, there are those who see a pattern, false or true.

After those precedents, there are those who see an intent, false or true.

After those precedents, there are those who see the Clinton campaign’s anything-but-benign neglect of this Ferraro catastrophe, falsely or truly, as a desire to hear the kind of casual prejudice that still haunts this society voiced and to not distance the campaign from it.

To not distance you from it, Senator!

To not distance you from that which you as a woman, and Sen. Obama as an African-American, should both know and feel with the deepest of personal pain!

Which you should both fight with all you have!

Which you should both ensure has no place in this contest!

This, Sen. Clinton, is your campaign, and it is your name.

Grab the reins back from whoever has led you to this precipice, before it is too late.

Voluntarily or inadvertently, you are still awash in this filth.

Your only reaction has been to disagree, reject, and to call it regrettable.

Her only reaction has been to brand herself as the victim, resign from your committee and insist she will continue to speak.

Unless you say something definitive, Senator, the former congresswoman is speaking with your approval.

You must remedy this.

And you must reject and denounce Geraldine Ferraro.


© 2008 MSNBC Interactive

URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23601041/

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Pimps in the Pulpit

I think this is best described as the pimpery of the pulpit...

Two U.S. Senators sent out a new round of letters today to some of the nation’s most high-profile televangelists, urging them to turn over key financial records. The Senators told the ministries that they want to know how their “non-profit organizations are structured and operate,” amid allegations that some of the televangelists have misused church funds to enrich themselves.

One of the letters was mailed today to televangelists Randy and Paula White, who founded the Without Walls International Church in Tampa 16 years ago, calling it "the perfect church for people who are not."

A half dozen former church employees and insiders told NBC News that they have questions about how millions of dollars in church offerings have been spent. They said that the Whites sometimes urged the flock to make checks out to them personally.

A church spreadsheet obtained by NBC News lists $43,129 in so-called "personal offerings" to Paula White in May 2006. NBC News also saw cancelled checks made out to Randy White.

One longtime former church insider, who asked to remain anonymous, said the checks were part of a troubling pattern. “It says to me that they were shearing the sheep,” the former insider said, a charge that the church denies.

The insider and five other former staffers say the Whites sometimes took cash from uncounted donations, misused church funds for personal expenses and even pressured the faithful to take equity out of their homes to boost church donations. “They came up with every kind of idea possible to get money, to make money,” the church insider said.

Senators Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) and Max Baucus (D-Montana) of the Senate Finance Committee said they sent the new letters to the Whites and three other televangelists to remind them that “the committee’s jurisdiction includes the federal tax policy governing the billions of dollars donated to and controlled by the nation’s tax-exempt groups.”

Grassley first wrote to the Whites last November. He also sent letters to: Benny Hinn of World Healing Center Church, Inc. and Benny Hinn Ministries of Grapevine, Texas; David and Joyce Meyer of Joyce Meyer Ministries of Fenton, Mo.; Kenneth and Gloria Copeland of Kenneth Copeland Ministries of Newark, Texas; Bishop Eddie Long of New Birth Missionary Baptist Church and Bishop Eddie Long Ministries of Lithonia, Ga., and Creflo and Taffi Dollar of World Changers Church International and Creflo Dollar Ministries of College Park, Ga.

Without Walls:
The Whites’ church, Without Walls, has grown over the years into a multi-media empire, devoted to preaching the “gospel of prosperity.” That’s the belief that God wants parishioners to be wealthy but that, for that to happen, churchgoers must first give money to God.

"God is going to speak to you to sow a one-week's salary. He's going to speak to you to sow one month’s salary,” Paula White has told her followers. “I want you to get up and go to the phone and to obey God!”

Cindy Fleenor was one such follower. “We're taught if we don't pay our tithes and give offering and alms that we're robbing God and we're under a curse," Fleenor told NBC News.

One church board member told NBC News that he was surprised when a 2006 audit reported the church had $25 million in debt, even though it had brought in $35 million that same year.

During the same period, the Whites appear to have prospered with a $2.1 million waterfront home in Tampa, a $3.5 million condo on Park Avenue in New York City and salaries reported to exceed $1 million each. There’s also a costly Bentley convertible, driven by Randy White.

Many of the allegations regarding the Whites were first raised through a series of front-page investigative articles published by the Tampa Tribune newspaper last year.

The Whites divorced last year, and Paula White is now pursuing an increasingly separate career through Paula White Ministries, the Without Walls church's media ministry, as a life coach and host of a syndicated religious program. But both Whites remain active in Without Walls and their organizations' finances remain entwined.

The Whites' church is registered with the IRS as a 501(c)(3) church organization. According to IRS rules, it is not only tax-exempt but also not required to publicly release IRS filings. The church website does not include specific information about its governance - it does not even include a list of church officers or members of its board of directors.

The Whites have claimed their wealth comes from appropriate and legal compensation, comparable to what other non-profit CEOs earn. They also have claimed additional wealth from for-profit business ventures - including a real estate company, a travel agency and sales of a nutritional supplement they themselves promote in an infomercial. But Senate investigators want to know more. “Questions need to be asked and questions need to be answered,” said Sen. Grassley.

So far, the Whites have not provided any answers to the Senate. When Cindy Fleenor heard that, and learned more about the Whites’ lifestyle, she stopped giving money. “I felt like I was deceived and been taken advantage of,” she said.

The Whites declined to be interviewed by NBC or to answer questions. They have denied wrongdoing, stating: "We take our financial responsibilities to our partners very seriously and to the best of our knowledge we comply with all tax laws."

Grassley said that the Whites have now agreed to cooperate with the Senate investigation. The Senate has given them until the end of the month to provide documents, and answers.

By Lisa Myers and Rich Gardella, NBC News Investigative Unit

Posted on Wednesday, March 12, 2008 6:13 PM PT

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Clinton Mixes Messages on Obama

By Ruben Navarrette Jr.
Special to CNN

SAN DIEGO, California (CNN) -- Harvard professor Samantha Powers, a former foreign policy adviser to Barack Obama, abruptly resigned last week after she was quoted in a Scottish newspaper calling Hillary Clinton a monster.

Powers got it wrong. Hillary isn't the monster. Her campaign is the monster. And it's the two-headed kind.

Just look at the mixed messages it sends. Recent examples involve talk of a Dream Ticket and what some Democrats consider the nightmare of the Ken Starr investigation in the 1990s.

One minute, Clinton blasts her opponent, Barack Obama, as so wet behind the ears that he wouldn't be able to handle a 3 a.m. phone call as president, and implies that he is trying to mask his inexperience with speeches and "rhetorical flourishes."

The next minute, she suggests that a joint ticket between herself and Obama "may be where this is headed." Just days ago, former President Bill Clinton called a joint ticket "almost unstoppable" and suggested that Clinton is "very open to" pairing up with Obama.

So after arguing that Obama can't be trusted with the presidency, the Clintons would trust him to be a heartbeat away from the presidency?

Obama himself seized upon the contradiction Monday while campaigning in Columbus, Mississippi. "I don't understand," Obama said. "If I am not ready, why do you think I would be such a great vice president?" Obama asked the crowd, which gave him a standing ovation.

"You can't say he is not ready on Day One, then you want him to be your vice president," he continued. "I just want everybody to be absolutely clear: I am not running for vice president. I am running to be president of the United States of America."

Obama isn't even toying with talk of a joint ticket. In fact, his advisers seem baffled at the Clinton chutzpah.

Former Senate Majority Leader Thomas A. Daschle, a co-chair of the Obama campaign, put it well on a Sunday morning talk show. "It's really a rare occurrence, maybe the first time in history," Daschle said, "that the person who's running No. 2 would offer the person who's running No. 1 the No. 2 position."

On another score, the Clintonistas can't decide whether they want us to remember the 1990s, or forget them.

Clinton boasts about economic prosperity during her husband's administration -- (remember) -- but she won't facilitate the release of memos, calendars, phone logs, appointment records and other documents related to her tenure as first lady -- (forget).

The stash is at the National Archives, which conveniently claims that it won't be able to release the papers until the November election is finished.

Nor has Clinton released her most recent tax returns, although her campaign says she plans to do so before the Pennsylvania primary on April 22.

When Barack Obama, who has released his returns, recently made an issue of that, Clinton communications director Howard Wolfson accused the Illinois senator of "imitating Ken Starr." That's silly -- and dangerous.

Why would anyone in the Clinton camp invoke the name Ken Starr? Doesn't the former independent prosecutor and his report fall into that part of the 1990s that Team Clinton would like us to erase from memory?

That won't be easy. There are probably millions of Americans, including many Democrats, who look back on the Monica Lewinsky scandal as a national embarrassment.

Those voters may already be flocking to Obama. So why help them along? These mixed messages only reinforce the perception that Hillary Clinton will say anything to win. That could explain why she is having trouble accomplishing just that.

Ruben Navarrette Jr. is a member of the editorial board of the San Diego Union-Tribune and a nationally syndicated columnist.

The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of the writer.

Meat producer acknowledges ‘downer’ cows entered food supply

Nasty, nasty, nasty...

Posted on CNN: 02:56 PM ET

WASHINGTON (CNN) — In his first public testimony since his company’s product became the subject of the largest recall of meat in U.S. history, the president of Westland/Hallmark Meat Co. acknowledged Wednesday that at least two “downer” cows depicted in hidden-camera videos appeared to have entered the U.S. food supply.

He previously had denied any had gotten into the food supply.

Still, there was “less than a minute chance of that product being contaminated,” Steve Mendell told the Committee on Energy and Commerce’s Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations.

Wednesday’s hearing was the latest in a string of hearings prompted by the company’s voluntary recall on Feb. 17 of 143 million pounds of beef — representing the Chino, California, plant’s output since February 1, 2006.

Living Dangerously -- the American Way

What do you think presents a more imminent danger to your average American citizen today? An Al-Qaida sleeper cell? A nuclear warhead hurtling toward the U.S. from some mobile launch pad in Tora Bora or Pakistan? A giant asteroid? An invasion of transnational flesh-eating zombies from Canada and Mexico emboldened by NAFTA? How about a lemon wedge in your Diet Coke?

Surprise! It’s the lemon wedge.

According to study conducted by a microbiologist named of Anne LaGrange Loving, 70 percent of the lemon wedges she tested (from 21 different restaurants) were contaminated with bacteria, including high counts of fecal bacteria. Ah, a nice twist of E. coli! (WATCH THE VIDEO)

“I don’t need a schmear of feces with my food!” Loving said, musing upon the results of her research. We think that ranks as one of the great scientific quotes of all time! In fact, not since Archimedes – upon discovering a method for measuring the density of an object by dividing its weight by the volume of water it displaces – rose from his tub, rushed out naked into the streets of Rome, and exclaimed, “Eureka! I have found it!” has there been a better scientific quote.

Now, can E. coli (Escherichia coli) kill you? If you’re very young or very old, or you have a compromised immune system, it sure can. In addition to severe cramps and bloody diarrhea, an E. coli infection can have some pretty serious complications, including kidney failure. There’s a relatively easy fix for the lemon wedge problem. STOP asking for chunks of fruit in your drinks.

Could schmears of feces on the fruit in our drinks have anything to do with the eye-opening fact that the United States ranks 42nd in the world in life expectancy? Well, maybe, among other things …If you follow the news on a daily basis, you’re probably wondering how an American manages to reach the ripe ol’ average age of 77.9. If it’s not the E. coli on your lemon wedge, how about the bad heparin? Last week, Baxter International recalled its blood thinner (which is used to prevent clotting during dialysis and after some surgeries) after some 448 adverse reactions and 21 deaths. The FDA is investigating two Chinese wholesalers who may have supplied bootleg “crude heparin” to the Chinese plant that sells supplies to Baxter.

Apparently there are unregulated family workshops that scrape mucous membrane from pig intestines and cook it to produce “crude heparin.”

And if it’s not the bad heparin, how about that tainted hamburger meat? A California meat company, Westland/Hallmark Meat Co., just recalled over 50 million pounds of meat after it was discovered that they were allowing “downer cows” to be butchered. Downer cows (cows that can’t walk) are banned from the human food supply because they pose an increased risk of diseases, including mad cow disease. Putting aside, for a moment, the outrageous moral indecency of ramming fork-lifts into sick animals (the Humane Society released an undercover video made in the Westland/Hallmark slaughterhouse) -- how about the fact that more than a third of the meat had been used in federal nutrition programs, including school lunches! Then, of course, there's always the possibility that you could be seated next to someone with drug-resistant tuberculosis on your airline flight. And if you survive the flight, maybe the ricin in your motel room will kill you.

And if that doesn’t do you in, perhaps your own snoring will. A new study shows that loud snorers have a 34 percent increased risk of having a heart attack and a 67 percent greater chance of suffering a stroke! (Keep in mind that loud snoring is more common in people who are overweight.)

Now, that’s living – and dying – the American way. We are literally wallowing in the fat and pathogenic filth of rampant commercialism. And we’re paying the price – with, if not our very lives, then surely our life expectancies.

Well, there was one bright spot in the news. Gorton’s Inc. recalled 1,000 cases of frozen fish after a woman found “pills” in her daughter’s Crispy Battered Fish Fillets.

What the heck are they putting in our frozen fish fillets now? Hopefully, it’s Ativan – so we can stop worrying about those lemon wedges.

By Dr. Billy Goldberg and Mark Leyner

Posted on Thursday, March 06, 2008 8:00 AM PT on The Body Odd

Obama Camp Calls for Clinton to Drop Ferraro

(CNN) — Barack Obama’s chief strategist said Tuesday that a comment by one of Hillary Clinton’s top fundraisers that Barack Obama would not be a major presidential contender if he were not black – coupled with Clinton’s “own inexplicable unwillingness" to deny that he was a Muslim during a recent interview – indicated “an insidious pattern that needs to be addressed."

David Axelrod called on the New York senator to drop former New York Rep. Geraldine Ferraro from her finance committee. "When you wink and nod at offensive statements you're really sending a signal to your supporters that anything goes," said Axelrod.

Ferraro, the Democratic Party’s vice presidential nominee in 1984, told the (Torrance, California) Daily Breeze that "If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position. And if he was a woman he would not be in this position. He happens to be very lucky to be who he is. And the country is caught up in the concept."

Ferraro said the New York senator had suffered because the press "has been uniquely hard on her. It's been a very sexist media. Some just don't like her. The others have gotten caught up in the Obama campaign."

"I was reading an article that said young Republicans are out there campaigning for Obama because they believe he's going to be able to put an end to partisanship,” she added. “Dear God! Anyone that has worked in the Congress knows that for over 200 years this country has had partisanship - that's the way our country is."

Ferraro could not be reached for comment, but Clinton spokesman Howard Wolfson has said the campaign disagrees with her remarks.

Earlier, Obama senior adviser Susan Rice called on Hillary Clinton to “repudiate” a comment by one of her top fundraisers that Barack Obama would not be a major presidential contender if he were not black.

“I think if Sen. Clinton is serious about putting an end to statements that have racial implications,” Rice told MSNBC Tuesday, “…then she ought to repudiate this comment.”

The former congresswoman is the latest Clinton surrogate to launch a firestorm this cycle with comments that related to Obama’s heritage or ethnicity. Her husband, former president Bill Clinton, drew sharp criticism from black leaders for a series of comments he made in advance of the South Carolina primary.

Former Nebraska Sen. Bob Kerrey, a major Clinton backer, referred several times to the benefit that could come from electing Obama because of his Muslim roots. (The Obama campaign has spent the campaign battling false e-mail rumors that the Illinois senator is a Muslim. Obama is a Christian.)

And shortly before the Texas primary, 84-year-old Clinton supporter and surrogate Adelfa Callejo told CBS 11 news in Dallas that Obama would have trouble attracting Latino support because he was African-American.

"When blacks had the numbers, they didn't do anything to support us," said Callejo. "They always used our numbers to fulfill their goals and objectives, but they never really supported us, and there's a lot of hard feelings about that. I don't think we're going to get over it anytime soon."

Even Clinton herself has gotten caught in the rhetorical minefield over race, drawing fire over comments about the civil rights legacies of Martin Luther King and President Lyndon Johnson. Last month, when asked if she would reject and denounce Callejo’s remarks, she said that "this is a free country."

An interviewer from Texas affiliate KTVT asked her to explain why, in light of that sentiment, she had pressed Obama to denounce Louis Farrakhan, who had expressed support for his presidential bid, but was not connected to his campaign.

"People get to express their opinions,” said Clinton. “A lot of folks have said really unpleasant things about me over the course of this campaign. You can't take any of that as anything other than an individual opinion."

Later, her campaign released a statement saying that she had been unaware of the substance of the remarks during that interview, and both denounced and rejected them.

Obama has faced his own surrogate headaches. Foreign policy adviser Samantha Power ended her connection with his campaign last week after telling a Scottish interviewer that Clinton was a “monster.”

Power also made remarks about Obama’s Iraq war policy that were used by the Clinton campaign in recent attacks. Another Obama foreign policy adviser, Susan Rice, stumbled last week when she said, in response to a Clinton campaign ad, that neither Democratic candidate is ready to answer a 3 a.m. emergency call – a comment quickly highlighted by the campaigns of both primary rival Hillary Clinton and potential fall opponent John McCain.

McCain has also found himself regularly called upon to respond to controversial comments made by supporters. Republican Rep. Steve King, who is not part of his campaign, said terrorists would celebrate if Obama wins election – sparking calls for McCain to condemn the comments by his fellow GOP legislator; backer John Hagee has a history of headline-grabbing statements about Catholics, Muslims and other groups; and Cincinnati talk-show host Bill Cunningham, speaking at a McCain event attended by the candidate himself, repeatedly invoked Obama's Muslim middle name, "Hussein" during a speech that was sharply criticized by the Arizona senator.

(Update at 2:15 with Obama campaign comments, context)

– CNN Associate Political Editor Rebecca Sinderbrand

What has happened to the mental capacity of President Bush over the last decade? Really, this is a serious question!

Watching this leaves me both saddened and terrified...



Even Scarborough is starting to wonder if Bush has a "lack of imagination"...

The Effectiveness of Torture?

Former FBI Interrogator Jack Cloonan explains that regular interrogation tactics work well on even the worst terrorists, that there's no such thing as a "ticking timebomb" scenario, and that waterboarding has done much more harm than good. You can also see interviews with Jack Cloonan in the Oscar award-winning documentary, "Taxi to the Darkside." For more, visit http://www.foreignpolicy.com

Southern Baptist Leaders Shift Position on Climate Change

I think I just saw a pig fly past my window...



Story Highlights

• Southern Baptist leaders: People have biblical duty to stop global warming
• 46 leaders denounce denomination for being too timid on environmental issues
• Southern Baptist Convention is the largest Protestant denomination in the U.S.

(CNN) -- Several prominent leaders in the Southern Baptist Convention said Monday that Baptists have a moral responsibility to combat climate change -- a major shift within a denomination that just last year cast doubt on human responsibility for global warming.

Forty-six influential members of the Southern Baptist Convention, including three of its past four presidents, criticized their denomination in a statement Monday for being "too timid" in confronting global warming.

"Our cautious response to these issues in the face of mounting evidence may be seen by the world as uncaring, reckless and ill-informed," the statement says. "We can do better."

The Southern Baptist Convention, the largest Protestant denomination in the United States, adopted a resolution last year urging Baptists to "proceed cautiously in the human-induced global warming debate in light of conflicting scientific research." The resolution said "many scientists reject the idea of catastrophic human-induced global warming."

On Monday, however, dozens of Southern Baptist leaders expressed a different view.

"There is general agreement among those engaged with this issue in the scientific community," their statement says. "A minority of sincere and respected scientists offer alternate causes for global climate change other than deforestation and the burning of fossil fuels."

The signatories pledged to do their part to fight global warming "without any further lingering over the basic reality of the problem or our responsibility to address it. Humans must be proactive and take responsibility for our contributions to climate change -- big and small."

The signatories include Frank Page, president of the Southern Baptist Convention since 2006; James Merritt, president of the convention from 2000 to 2002 and Jack Graham, president of the convention from 2002 to 2004. The group posted the statement on its Web site.

The signers of "A Southern Baptist Declaration on the Environment and Climate Change" acknowledged that some of them were skeptics at first.

"Some of us have required considerable convincing before becoming persuaded that these are real problems that deserve our attention," the statement says. "But now we have seen and heard enough to be persuaded that these issues are among the current era's challenges that require a unified moral voice."

The Southern Baptist Convention's 16 million members make up roughly 7 percent of the U.S. adult population, according to the convention and the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life.

The competing and evolving views on climate change within the Southern Baptist Convention mirror a debate that has played out among members of the theologically like-minded National Association of Evangelicals, an umbrella group that represents about 30 million people in 45,000 church congregations, including many Baptist congregations.

Its Washington policy director, the Rev. Richard Cizik, has pressed for years for more action to combat climate change, saying in a recent documentary that "to harm this world by environmental degradation is an offense against God."

His advocacy raised eyebrows given that global warming sometimes conjured "impressions in people's minds of being liberal, democratic, left wing, big government, tied to population control, all these kinds of things," Cizik told CNN last year.

Several conservative evangelicals signed a letter in 2007 urging the association to rein in Cizik or encourage him to resign. The signers included James Dobson of Focus on the Family and Gary Bauer, a former presidential candidate and president of American Values.

"We have observed that Cizik and others are using the global warming controversy to shift the emphasis away from the great moral issues of our time, notably the sanctity of human life, the integrity of marriage and the teaching of sexual abstinence and morality to our children," their letter said. "The issue (global warming) should be addressed scientifically and not theologically."

updated 5:04 a.m. EDT, Mon March 10, 2008

Senators: Where Is Iraq's Oil Money Going?

This should be basic business 101 for our nation's first MBA President!?

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- Two senators are asking congressional investigators to look at Iraq's oil revenues and see if the war-ravaged nation can pay for its own reconstruction, an effort that has been bankrolled to this point mostly by U.S. taxpayers.

Carl Levin, D-Michigan, and John Warner, R-Virginia, said in their Friday letter to the Government Accountability Office that Iraq has "tremendous resources" in banks worldwide but is doing little to improve security and reconstruction efforts.

Iraqi officials did not immediately respond to the senators' allegations.

"We believe that it has been overwhelmingly U.S. taxpayer money that has funded Iraq reconstruction over the last five years, despite Iraq earning billions of dollars in oil revenue over that time period that have ended up in non-Iraqi banks," wrote the senators, who are their party's top members on the Armed Services Committee.

The senators cited testimony of then-Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz who told a House subcommittee in March 2003 that the U.S. would not foot the entire bill for rebuilding Iraq. Wolfowitz predicted then that Iraq's oil revenues could reach between $50 billion and $100 billion in the next two or three years.

"We are dealing with a country that can really finance its own reconstruction and relatively soon," Wolfowitz said in 2003.

Using numbers from the U.S. State Department and Iraqi Oil Ministry, the senators said Iraq hopes to produce 2.2 million barrels of oil a day this year. Weekly averages suggest that the number has climbed as high as 2.51 million barrels a day.

That kind of oil production could earn Iraq a projected $56.4 billion this year, an estimate the senators say is low given the rising cost of crude.

"In essence, we believe that Iraq will accrue at least $100.0 billion in oil revenues in 2007 and 2008," the letter said.

It added, "Our conversations with both Iraqis and Americans during our frequent visits to Iraq, as well as official government and unofficial media reports, have convinced us that the Iraqi government is not doing nearly enough to provide essential services and improve the quality of life of its citizens."

Iraq's ability to spend its $10.1 billion capital projects budget in 2007 was one of the 18 benchmarks used to assess U.S. progress in stabilizing and rebuilding Iraq, according to the GAO.

The United States has spent more than $47 billion on Iraqi reconstruction efforts since 2003, according to the 2008 quarterly audit by the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction.

CNN's Mohammed Tawfeeq contributed to this report

Copyright 2008 CNN. All rights reserved.

Bush Vetoes Bill Banning Waterboarding

Reason, logic, ethics, principle, character, morality, and decency...all words that do not apply to the Bush administration. What a sorry time in our nation's history.


WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Bush said Saturday he vetoed legislation that would ban the CIA from using harsh interrogation methods such as waterboarding to break suspected terrorists because it would end practices that have prevented attacks.

"The bill Congress sent me would take away one of the most valuable tools in the war on terror," Bush said in his weekly radio address taped for broadcast Saturday. "So today I vetoed it," Bush said. The bill he rejected provides guidelines for intelligence activities for the year and has the interrogation requirement as one provision. It cleared the House in December and the Senate last month.

"This is no time for Congress to abandon practices that have a proven track record of keeping America safe," the president said.

Supporters of the legislation say it would preserve the United States' ability to collect critical intelligence while also providing a much-needed boost to country's moral standing abroad.

"Torture is a black mark against the United States," said Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-California. "We will not stop until [the ban] becomes law."

The bill would limit CIA interrogators to the 19 techniques allowed for use by military questioners. The Army field manual in 2006 banned using methods such as waterboarding or sensory deprivation on uncooperative prisoners.

Bush said the CIA must retain use of "specialized interrogation procedures" that the military doesn't need. The military methods are designed for questioning "lawful combatants captured on the battlefield," while intelligence professionals are dealing with "hardened terrorists" who have been trained to resist the techniques in the Army manual, the president said.

"We created alternative procedures to question the most dangerous al Qaeda operatives, particularly those who might have knowledge of attacks planned on our homeland," Bush said. "If we were to shut down this program and restrict the CIA to methods in the field manual, we could lose vital information from senior al Qaeda terrorists, and that could cost American lives."

The legislation's backers say the military's approved methods are sufficient to any need.

Those 19 interrogation techniques to which the bill would have restricted CIA personnel include the "good cop/bad cop" routine, making prisoners think they are in another country's custody and separating a prisoner from others for up to 30 days.

Among the techniques the field manual prohibits are hooding prisoners or putting duct tape across their eyes, stripping them naked, forcing them to perform or mimic sexual acts, or beating, electrocuting, burning or otherwise physically hurting them.

They may not be subjected to hypothermia or mock executions. It does not allow food, water and medical treatment to be withheld. Dogs may not be used in any aspect of interrogation.

But waterboarding is the most high-profile and controversial of the interrogation methods in question.

It involves strapping a person down and pouring water over his or her cloth-covered face to simulate and create the sensation of drowning. It has been traced back hundreds of years to the Spanish Inquisition and is condemned by nations around the world and human rights organizations as torture.

Some argue it must be banned because, if torture, it is illegal under international and U.S. law. The Detainee Treatment Act of 2005 includes a provision barring cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment for all detainees in U.S. custody, including CIA prisoners, and many believe that covers waterboarding.

Others say that, even if legal, there are practical arguments against waterboarding: that its use would undermine the U.S. when arguing overseas for human rights and on other moral issues and would place Americans at greater risk of being tortured when captured.

"President Bush's veto will be one of the most shameful acts of his presidency," Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Massachusetts, said in a statement Friday. "Unless Congress overrides the veto, it will go down in history as a flagrant insult to the rule of law and a serious stain on the good name of America in the eyes of the world."

He noted that the Army field manual contends that harsh interrogation is a "poor technique that yields unreliable results, may damage subsequent collection efforts, and can induce the source to say what he thinks the (interrogator) wants to hear."

The U.S. military specifically prohibited waterboarding in 2006. The CIA also prohibited the practice in 2006, and says it has not been used since three prisoners encountered it in 2003.

But while some Bush administration officials have questioned the current legality of waterboarding, the administration has refused to rule definitively on whether it is torture. Bush has said many times that his administration does not torture.

The White House says waterboarding remains among the interrogation methods potentially available to the CIA. Its use would have to be approved, on a case-by-case basis, by the president after consultation with the attorney general and the intelligence community. Among the acceptable situations for approving it could be belief of imminent attack, according to the White House.

"Because the danger remains, we need to ensure our intelligence officials have all the tools they need to stop the terrorists," Bush said.

Copyright 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

Clinton's NAFTA-Gate...Why?!?

I just want to know two things: what the f**k!!?? and why?!? Could the Democrats be self-destructing right before our eyes?

I realize I am an idiot for saying this...but what happened to telling the truth and the Golden Rule? Jesus said, "Simply let your 'Yes' be 'Yes,' and your 'No,' 'No'; anything beyond this comes from the evil one" (Matthew 5:33) and "Do to others as you would have them do to you" (Luke 6:31). I guess these are just stupid words, voiced by an insane man...or, perhaps not.

We can be different and expect our leaders to be different...if we choose to.


From NBC’s Domenico Montanaro

Per the Toronto Globe and Mail, in a story that was the lead on the paper’s front page today, that call to the Canadian embassy was actually from the Clinton campaign, not Obama’s:

“Mr. [Ian] Brodie, [PM Harper’s chief of staff], during the media lockup for the Feb. 26 budget, stopped to chat with several journalists, and was surrounded by a group from CTV. The conversation turned to the pledges to renegotiate the North American free-trade agreement made by the two Democratic contenders, Mr. Obama and New York Senator Hillary Clinton.

“Mr. Brodie, apparently seeking to play down the potential impact on Canada, told the reporters the threat was not serious, and that someone from Ms. Clinton's campaign had even contacted Canadian diplomats to tell them not to worry because the NAFTA threats were mostly political posturing. The Canadian Press cited an unnamed source last night as saying that several people overheard the remark.

“The news agency quoted that source as saying that Mr. Brodie said that someone from Ms. Clinton's campaign called and was ‘telling the embassy to take it with a grain of salt.’

“The story was followed by CTV's Washington bureau chief, Tom Clark, who reported that the Obama campaign, not the Clinton's, had reassured Canadian diplomats.

“Mr. Clark cited unnamed Canadian sources in his initial report. There was no explanation last night for why Mr. Brodie was said to have referred to the Clinton campaign but the news report was about the Obama campaign.”

*** UPDATE *** The Clinton campaign responds: "Unlike the Obama campaign, we can and do flatly deny this report and urge the Canadian government to reveal the name of anyone they think they heard from. The Obama campaign has given a variety of misleading answers to the press and the public about its top economic adviser’s contacts with the Canadian government and should come clean about why they did so," writes campaign spokespman Phil Singer.

By Domenico Montanaro
Posted: Thursday, March 06, 2008 3:37 PM