McCain: depths of dishonor

Tim Dickinson at Rolling Stone has dug through the nooks and crannies of John McCain's biography and drawn a frightening profile of a spoiled brat who never grew up, but pursues boundless ambitions with a child's selfishness and disregard for inconvenient people and realities.

The whole article is worth reading -- but since this blog has been following the development of the U.S. torture regime, I want to pass on what Dickerson writes on that topic.

Then there's torture -- the issue most related to McCain's own experience as a POW. In 2005, in a highly public fight, McCain battled the president to stop the torture of enemy combatants, winning a victory to require military personnel to abide by the Army Field Manual when interrogating prisoners. But barely a year later, as he prepared to launch his presidential campaign, McCain cut a deal with the White House that allows the Bush administration to imprison detainees indefinitely and to flout the Geneva Conventions' prohibitions against torture.

What his former allies in the anti-torture fight found most troubling was that McCain would not admit to his betrayal. Shortly after cutting the deal, McCain spoke to a group of retired military brass who had been working to ban torture. According to [Colonel Lawrence] Wilkerson, Colin Powell's former deputy, McCain feigned outrage at Bush and Cheney, as though he too had had the rug pulled out from under him. "We all knew the opposite was the truth," recalls Wilkerson. "That's when I began to lose a little bit of my respect for the man and his bona fides as a straight shooter."

John McCain, famous P.O.W. and torture victim, enabled torture for his personal political profit.

An anniversary: remember Afghanistan?

Opium poppies flourish near Bamiyan, Afghanistan. Peace doesn't do so well. (Omar Sayami photo)

Seven years ago, the United States launched its attack on Afghanistan in response to the attacks of 9/11. The United States is still at war in Afghanistan, though often it is not very clear who the troops are fighting.

Michael T. McPhearson is Executive Director of Veterans For Peace and Co-Chair of United For Peace and Justice. He was a field artillery officer in the 24th Mechanized Infantry Division during Desert Shield/Desert Storm, also known as Gulf War I. Today he shared his thoughts on the Afghan war. (That's the war Senator Obama wants to expand.)

I was in New York City on September 11, 2001. I was horrified, angered and confused by the brutality and audacity of the attack. I knew there would be a military response. So I knelt and prayed that our nation's reaction would be thoughtful and provide leadership to the world through what promised to be the beginning of a dark time. ...

The hope was eclipsed. My government chose to use war as the primary policy direction. As I said, I expected military action. However, to what end? The current policy appears to be, engage the enemy until there is no longer opposition, or in a word “war.” War is not a sufficient policy to address the causes of the attack and will not bring peace. It will only bring more war. There is not a government to defeat or leader to topple. The faces of the opposition change and remain nameless with occasional exceptions like bin Laden. But without a doubt, even if bin Laden were captured today the occupiers and resisters would continue to fight.

Caught in the crossfire of U.S. waging war against a near endless supply of nameless and faceless opponents are civilians who wish to live their lives without fear. Civilians who if choosing between living in fear of U.S. air strikes and home invasions which to them seem to have no rhyme or reason, or in fear of the medieval thinking and actions of the Taliban, will pick the fear with a face they recognize and actions they can anticipate.

Meanwhile, the U.K.'s senior general in Afghanistan says that Western forces can't win against the Afghan insurgency.

An absolute military victory in Afghanistan is impossible, Brig.-Gen. Mark Carleton-Smith told England's Sunday Times newspaper.

What foreign forces must now come to grips with, he said, is reducing the level of insurgency so that it can be managed by Afghan forces and no longer poses a major threat. ...

As such, striking a deal with the Taliban could be considered as a strategic option, Carleton-Smith said. It is an idea that has been repeatedly — and recently — advanced by Afghan President Hamid Karzai.

CBCNews,
October 4, 2008

The Canadians are naturally interested; they've lost a lot of soldiers over there. So has the United States -- more than in Iraq in recent months.

What was this war about anyway?

Once again, I cannot recommend strongly enough Ahmed Rashid's Descent into Chaos for a overview of the region and its wars.

McCain's latest race card

The Republican line of yesterday seems to be have been that Senator Obama "hangs around with terrorists." That piece of nonsense is for surrogates and the pathetic Palin to mouth. From the candidate himself, the line was slightly more subtle.

McCain, under the guise of asking legit questions about Obama's record, slips in charged language designed to paint him as a scary unknown. "He's not exactly an open book." "There's always a back-story." "Who is the real Barack Obama?"

Oddly, when McCain delivered that last line there was a visceral roar from the crowd of McCain supporters, as if this attack -- there's an alien in our midst! -- has been the one they'd been waiting for.

I think we have a case here of trying to lead low-information voters from their slightly confused and curious response to the novel Democratic candidate right on over to their distrust of a foreign-sounding, perhaps alien, indubitably BLACK, candidate.

From my experience canvassing for Obama ten days ago, this may work with some. The feeling among those few voters who were still just tuning in was that Obama is too unknown. Those who said this weren't necessarily expressing racism -- they really just didn't know what to make a candidate who wasn't an old white guy who'd been in the news for years. Maybe some of that was a cover for racism, but some was just astonishment at novelty.

I imagine the McCain sleaze attacks go over quite well in focus groups with this dwindling group. He is supplying an ugly content to an unformed feeling.

On the other hand, there are not nearly so many undecided potential voters as there were ten days ago, so there are less for McCain to influence.

Onward to the next debate...

The financial meltdown comes home

She may get some respect, but she is not likely to get a raise. Members of the USF faculty union held an informational picket recently.

Folks know their 401k plans are getting hammered as they watch the stock market tumble, but it is a little hard to envision what the "credit crunch" the media are yammering about might mean. The President of the University of San Francisco, a small Jesuit college, tried to explain it in a letter to his community today [emphasis is mine]:

This communication will come as no surprise! I write to you about the University's response to the widening economic crisis.

Vice President Charlie Cross wrote to you last week regarding the University's cash flow needs and our careful monitoring of that situation, including students' ability to pay their bills. This later consideration is critical, given that 95% of our operating budget comes from tuition, fees and room and board and that economic instability makes it increasingly difficult for families to afford college. Mr. Cross also pointed out the negative impact of the stock market decline on the University's relatively modest endowment [approximately $200 million before market]. ... we cannot completely insulate ourselves from the market's downward spiral.

Like virtually every household in the nation, the University suffers the effects of rising prices, tightening credit and wildly fluctuating variable-rate debt. There is an emerging consensus that we are at the beginning of a long story and must plan carefully for turns and twists in the plot as we work our way through an increasingly challenging situation. We must engage in the same belt-tightening that families are doing all across the country... The University will develop a graduated set of action steps that prepare it to respond to escalating financial challenges of increasing severity. While we remain hopeful about the future, we cannot allow ourselves the luxury of not preparing for the negative effects of a prolonged economic downturn.

Stephen A. Privett, S.J.
President

I'm not going to pretend I know what action steps they are imagining that will make up for a significant decline in student tuition payments as colleges loans dry up and families loose their savings when their investments plummet. I suspect the good President doesn't have much idea either.

That's the bind we're all in. We don't know and can't imagine what might protect us in a financial meltdown, either individually or collectively.

It would be nice if we had confidence that we have a government working for our interests. But we don't. We've had nearly 30 years of government pretending it worked for our interests by either ignoring the needs of most people or giving super-assistance to rich people. Can we claw our way to envisioning a democratic (small "d") government that weighs the needs of the people, and a frying globe, as of more importance than the needs of the lucky few?

Radio ad for bluegrass fans

Music for a Monday morning. I'm busy today...

Africom launched

Via Crossed Crocodiles.

Most countries exist more happily when they are not on the U.S. political radar screen. Unfortunately, as the New York Times reports today, the African continent is looming more important to Washington policy makers. And this week, it got its very own Africa Command, cutely called Africom for short.

In the newspaper of record, it emerges that this is part of the worldwide militarization of U.S. relations as the empire struggles to preserve a threatened monopoly on shock and awe. When the Pentagon is around, all other agencies of the U.S. government become obviously dispensable bit players.

Refugees International released statistics showing that the percentage of development assistance controlled by the Defense Department had grown to nearly 22 percent from 3.5 percent over the past 10 years, while the percentage controlled by the Agency for International Development dropped to 40 percent from 65 percent.

For another look at the U.S. in Africa, check out Crossed Crocodiles, a site that has been trying to expose the implications of Africom for awhile. Here's the CC take:

The Africa Command is a creation of the Bush Cheney American corporate predator state. It was conceived by people who were focused on Africa’s oil, other natural resources, and on opposing China. These are the same Bush Cheney cronies that have done the most to convert American democracy into a corporate predator state, and destroy American democracy in the process. ...

Although there is a lot of talk from AFRICOM about partnerships, there has been little real consultation with Africans. ...

Funny thing, the prescription of both the author of Crossed Crocodiles and the Africans he quotes is exactly what many of us in the States want:

What is needed is energy, focus, and money to strengthen civilian democratic political, economic, and social institutions, so that democracy, participation of all the people, can grow and flourish.

Democracy remains a potent idea.

Blindness, not insightful

As far back as I can remember, my grandfather was legally blind. With his glasses, I think he could perceive shapes when he held things next to his nose. But he didn't live in the world of the sighted. Every day he got up, bathed, dressed himself, tied his tie -- and retreated to the woodworking shop he'd set up in the attic which was the focus of his life in retirement. If I was very quiet, stayed in a corner, and promised not to move anything, I'd be allowed to watch him use a bandsaw, a drill press, and a table saw, as well as hand tools. He made kitchen utensils, furniture, and best of all, jigsaw puzzles for me. His being blind meant he had to move carefully and deliberately with dangerous tools, but it certainly didn't stop him.

So when my partner came home from a movie multiplex reporting that supporters of the National Federation of the Blind had been flyering in protest of a new film called Blindness, I was interested. Apparently the movie's plot is pretty simple: a mysterious disease starts making people blind. Locked away together in quarantine, the newly blind are unable to dress themselves, and are reduced to defecating on themselves. They then replicate the story of violent social disintegration in the novel Lord of the Flies, finally discover they can emerge from their prison, and mysteriously recover their sight without explanation. Pretty thin stuff -- and a load of defamatory drivel that reinforces fears and misconceptions about blindness that make real blind people's lives more difficult.

From NFB's flyer:

• Blind people are responsible; a sense of responsibility is not in any way related to visual acuity.

• Blind people can care for themselves both physically and emotionally.

• Blind people are conscious of the importance of hygiene and personal appearance; they do not live in filth and squalor.

• Blind people can successfully travel; they are not generally disoriented or wandering without direction.

• Blind people are unique individuals; they are not without identity.

• Blind people are active in society, not isolated from others and the world.

• Blind people can perceive their surroundings and exercise judgment.

• Blind people are as dignified and conscientious as their sighted peers.

Thanks for saying it, NFB. Thanks for my grandfather!

S.L.I.M.E. revisited

Just as guest poster Rebecca said back on September 20: the "bailout" is the "the Successful Looting and Investment Manager Employment Act -- S.L.I.M.E."

Now that it has been signed into law, Bloomberg reports:

Oct. 3 (Bloomberg) -- Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson is hiring as many as 10 asset-management firms to join the lawyers and bankers he is recruiting to jumpstart the government's new $700 billion bank-rescue program.

Full employment for financial managers ahead...

American Fascists

In his expose of authoritarian dominionists who have hijacked parts of U.S. Christianity, American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America,Chris Hedges challenges complacent mainstream religious organizations:

As long as scripture, blessed and accepted by the church, teaches that at the end of time there will be a Day of Wrath and Christians will control the shattered remnants of a world cleansed through violence and war, as long as it teaches that all nonbelievers will be tormented, destroyed and banished to hell, it will be hard to thwart the message of radical apocalyptic preachers or assuage the fears of the Islamic world that Christians are calling for its annihilation. Those who embrace this dark conclusion to life can find it endorsed in scripture, whether it is tucked into the back pew rack of a liberal Unitarian Church in Boston or a megachurch in Florida. The mainstream Protestant and Catholic churches, declining in numbers and influence, cannot hope to combat the hysteria and excitement roused by these prophets of doom until they repudiate the apocalyptic writings in scripture.

The book covers ground well-worked in recent decades by Sara Diamond, Chip Berlet, and Political Research Associates.

Hedges brings a special anguish to his portrayal of these charlatans who are out to replace our lumbering, fractious democracy with their simple-minded violent theocracy. He acquired his tolerant, humane values from a very different kind of Christianity. Later he earned a Masters from Harvard Divinity School, and saw entirely too much real violence as a war correspondent for fifteen years. The last experience led to his other major book, War Is a Force that Gives Us Meaning.

Hedges cares about meaning -- and the religious right, appropriately, scares him. He raises the alarm emphatically:

I do not believe that America will inevitably become a fascist state or that the Christian Right is the Nazi party. But I do believe that the Christian Right is a sworn and potent enemy of the open society. Its ideology bears within it the seeds of a religious fascism. In the event of a crisis, in the event of another catastrophic terrorist attack, an economic meltdown or huge environmental disaster, the movement stands poised to ruthlessly reshape America in ways that have not been seen since the nation’s founding. All Americans, not only those of faith, must learn to speak about this movement with a new vocabulary, to give up passivity and to defend tolerance. The attacks by this movement on the rights and beliefs of Muslims, Jews, immigrants, gays, lesbians, women, scholars scientists, those they dismiss as "nominal Christians" and those they brand with the curse of "secular humanist" is an attack on all of us, on our values, our religious freedoms and our democracy. Tolerance is a virtue, but tolerance coupled with passivity is a vice.

This book is very much worth a read.
***I've been reading Chris Hedges' book about our Christian fascists concurrently with trying to fathom whether John McCain has really put a dominionist on the ticket with him. Because these people don't advertise their true ends, it is not easy to draw definitive conclusions. But it certainly isn't hard to arrive at a sense that Sarah Palin, at the least, comes from a milieu where the wackier beliefs of the radical religious right are part of conventional mental furniture.

• She gives creationism the time of day and seems to think believing in God precludes accepting the truth of evolution.

• She tried to exclude a gay positive book from a local library.

• The particular Assemblies of God congregation she is connected to has some seriously rightwing connections.

• There's all too much evidence that she doesn't understand or accept the science describing climate change. From the VP debate:

  I'm not one to attribute every man -- activity of man to the changes in the climate. There is something to be said also for man's activities, but also for the cyclical temperature changes on our planet. But there are real changes going on in our climate. And I don't want to argue about the causes. What I want to argue about is, how are we going to get there to positively affect the impacts?

  In the midst of that word salad, there's plenty of room for a fundamental denial of the science. I can't help suspecting her of being far more comfortable of attributing it all to a personal First Cause, rather than delving into causes that might, as Joe Biden responded, point to a solution.

• Most tellingly of all, John McCain may not have vetted Palin much when he was looking desperately for a VP who would satisfy the Christian right segment of the Republican party. But the luminaries of the dominionist establishment sure think she is just great. I can only assume they know a good deal she isn't telling us, in addition to appreciating her stance in favor of forcing women to carry all pregnancies through to births.

Hedges' American Fascists, a volume that had been sitting for months in my "to be read" pile, seems timely indeed.

Oh that's what he meant...

Joe Biden, while effectively crushing the tiresome Ms. Palin last night, had one really odd moment that left me jaw dropped. He seemed to be saying the United States had driven Hizbollah out of Lebanon. How the hell would that happen? Hizbollah is a group of Lebanese.

Time's Joe Klein explains:

Joe Biden, by contrast, demonstrated a real knowledge of the issues in question. He made several verbal fumbles -- it was Syria, not Hizballah, that left Lebanon...

Oh, that's what he meant. I couldn't call that demonstrating real knowledge. In general, most of the world does better when our politicians think about their countries less.

Veep debate: Governor Non-Sequitur spews

When I do trainings for people who are going to have to deal with the media, I have learned from the Center for Third World Organizing to have people practice using a rather amusing exercise: whatever an interviewer asks them, their job is to explain the fact that "my dog has three legs." It's fun -- and it is remarkable how proficient very ordinary people can become at this exercise with a few hours training.

Somebody seems to have tried something similar with Governor Palin -- they gave her talking points on about fifteen issues and instructed her to get them in. She's a quick study. She's getting most of them in, regardless of what Gwen Ifill or Joe Biden happen to be talking about.

What I've learned from watching this: it's harder for an uninformed person to learn to parrot fifteen talking points than to advocate for just one.

Debate anxiety -- VP edition

If you are like me, you are worried about the Biden-Palin set-to Thursday night. Things have seemed to be going almost too well for the Obama campaign recently. Pollsters say, if the election were held today, Obama would win, very big.

But now we have to get through the Biden-Palin debate. And though the Alaska governor probably has been dragging down that sinking ship, the McCain Squirrelly Express, with her inarticulate responses to Katie Couric's interview questions, she has also provided the only life raft Republicans have found in this season.

Moreover, people who have debated her say she is good in a debate format. Here's how Alaska Republican Andrew Halcro experienced going up against Palin in gubernatorial debates:

During the campaign, Palin's knowledge on public policy issues never matured -- because it didn't have to. Her ability to fill the debate halls with her presence and her gift of the glittering generality made it possible for her to rely on populism instead of policy.

We're in a decidedly populist mood these days, confronted with the prospect of funneling billions of dollars to bankers and financiers who we believe already ripped us off. Collectively, we may give Sarah Palin some benefit of the doubt -- though both parties have allowed themselves to be trapped into supporting the unpopular bailout.

Palin will probably "exceed expectations" because expectations could hardly be lower. Pundits may conclude she "won" the debate.

But none of that matters. Here's why:

• the enormous audience this event will draw is primarily a form of voyeurism. Palin is more theater than a serious contender. The very lack of seriousness McCain demonstrated by selecting her has been undermining his credentials.

• Obama "won" last week's presidential debate in the way that mattered most: he came across as a plausible President. Since we've never had a black man with an African name in the job, that's a huge hurdle. But polling and punditry agree that he cleared it. McCain either did nothing for himself or perhaps demonstrated a churlish side. But in essence, Obama won.

• Debates mostly speak to the undecided. Even more than before last week's Obama-McCain debate, most of us now know who we are going to vote for. Barring an absurdly poor performance, those of us who have decided will almost always feel our candidate won. Meanwhile, the persuadable undecided have dwindled to something like 5 percent of potential voters. There just are not very many viewers there for Palin to win over -- probably less in total than Obama's current 5 percent margin in the polls.

• Besides, vice-presidential debates don't swing elections. Pollster Charles Franklin was asked bluntly in an online chat today:

  Marion, Ind.: Is there any history of the vice presidential debates moving the polls?
  Charles Franklin: No. Though post-debate polls have sometimes found clear winners and losers in the VP debates, there isn't much evidence that the national polls at least move much.

So, though it is hard, we need to relax and enjoy the show. Go on over to Jane R.'s place and tell her what you'll be drinking.

Google speaks: "No on Prop. 8"

The official statement:

... Because our company has a great diversity of people and opinions -- Democrats and Republicans, conservatives and liberals, all religions and no religion, straight and gay -- we do not generally take a position on issues outside of our field, especially not social issues. So when Proposition 8 appeared on the California ballot, it was an unlikely question for Google to take an official company position on.

... it is the chilling and discriminatory effect of the proposition on many of our employees that brings Google to publicly oppose Proposition 8. While we respect the strongly-held beliefs that people have on both sides of this argument, we see this fundamentally as an issue of equality. We hope that California voters will vote no on Proposition 8 -- we should not eliminate anyone's fundamental rights, whatever their sexuality, to marry the person they love.

Sergey Brin, Co-founder & President, Technology

Well I'm glad the search engine company I use every day got that right.

The Prop. 8 argument is between a fraction of the public who think they need to impose their moral postures on society in order to protect themselves from personal and social impurity -- and another (hopefully larger) fraction that thinks legalizing same-sex marriage is a matter of elementary fairness, of civil equality.

That Google and other monster corporations might place themselves on the side of civil rights is not surprising. Large, impersonal corporate entities thrive in defined legal environments in which prejudices and passions are constrained by law, though they are not always so good on equity for the low end of their workforces.

In general, they have supported affirmative action policies that create anxiety of about possible unfair outcomes in white populations. The upside of having clear rules that promote inclusion outweighs the downside of the anxieties of some (mostly) white men.

Many of the big guys, including banks, clothing maker Levi Strauss, and the power company, PG&E, have long been supportive of normalizing the legal status of gay people. For them, it's simply good business. And having a reputation for tolerance probably offers a competitive advantage in recruiting a young, creative workforce.

The culture of people who support something like Prop. 8 barely intersects with that of the No folks. I'll be writing more about this in a few days, but if you want a look at what moves the folks who feel threatened by same-sex marriage, try Chris Hedges' American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America. The link is to a Google book, by the way. It's everywhere, that Google.

Is the Obama campaign is something new?

Long time readers of this blog may remember my thesis that

If the campaign is run by labor and the volunteers are working class people, there will be donuts.

If the campaign is run by community advocates and recruits the employees of non-profit organizations, there will be bagels.

So is the Obama campaign more like a non-profit organization or a labor union? Neither it turns out. This campaign is something else again.


On Saturday in Reno, besides the standard coffee and orange juice, we were offered fresh fruit, and, under the aluminum foil, a homemade frittata.


Not that sweets were absent from the spread.

Financial follies and fluctuations

Working on campaigns encourages me to feel as if I were in control of my life. Watching the bailout go down in Congress and the stock market gyrate (Dow up 485 today -- huh?), reminds me that I'm really just flotsam in a storm, a cork bobbing in vast seas, hoping I don't get thrown up on a rocky shore. This is possibly a realistic reminder that I am not in control, that I am dependent on community and chance. But that doesn't mean I like it.

So I've read a lot of articles about the financial system -- and I am not going to pretend I understand all this. If you want a good collection of points of view, this might be a good starting point.

In my opinion, Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, offered one of the clearest explanations and prescriptions:

The main cause of the economy's weakness is not insolvent banks and lack of credit; it's the loss of $4 trillion to $5 trillion in housing equity as a result of the bubble's partial deflation. Families used their equity to support their consumption in the years from 2002 to 2007, as the savings rate fell to almost zero.

With much of this equity now eliminated by the collapse of the bubble, many families can no longer sustain their levels of consumption. The main reason that banks won't lend to these families is that they no longer have home equity to serve as collateral. It wouldn't matter how much money the banks had, they are not going to make mortgage loans to people who have no equity.

And house prices are not going to come back. This is like Pets.com. We are not going to get the price of $200,000 homes in central California back up to $500,000.

The main problem in recovering from the recession will be finding ways to boost demand other than household consumption. In the longer run, this will mean reducing imports and increasing exports. In the short-run, we will have to rely on government stimulus to help spur growth and reduce unemployment. The Democratic demands for stimulus were not extraneous to the legitimate goal of a bank bailout bill. Fiscal stimulus must be central to any serious effort to boost the economy.

He wants the U.S. government to put money directly into banks so they start loaning -- and get what private enterprise would get for its cash: partial ownership of the banks.

Probably too simple for Congress to achieve.

Guess who said it...

"Tradition has brought us this far, but the future is right in front of us."

• Secretary of the Treasury Henry Paulsen on the market tanking after the bailout bill failed in the House today?

• Speaker Nancy Pelosi on why she must bring the bailout bill back for another vote?

• Sarah Palin on the desirability of drilling for oil in ANWR?

• Christian Right preachers on why they should be able to endorse John McCain from the pulpit?

• Someone else?

Answer in the first comment.

Photos from a field trip

I'm home tonight from a weekend canvassing for Senator Obama in Reno. The candidate himself will be there at the University of Nevada campus quad on Tuesday morning if you happen to be in the neighborhood. It was our pleasure to alert lots of people in Reno to this opportunity to see the guy.

We've been asked not to blog about this work until after the election, so I won't -- except to say that it is a pleasant experience during which I never felt my time and energies were being wasted. Try it out if so inclined. Opportunities can be found through the Obama website.You won't be sorry.

Meanwhile, here are some pictures of what we saw in the town that bills itself as the "Biggest Little City in the World."

We weren't the important event in town this weekend -- that was Street Vibrations, a festival of chrome, music and revving engines. And lots of steeds parked at hotels and downtown.






Quite a beauty, that one, if you like your cycles in baby blue.

Meanwhile, out in the neighborhoods, it would have been possible not to know your town was full of thousand of bikers.


In Reno, this pretty little Buddhist Church might as well be a suburban Methodist edifice.


This community agency is probably needed here...


while this one seems highly desirable in a place that depends on the entertainment industry.

Walking house to house there were oddities. Like this:

I had no idea what was meant by this porch ornament.


Nor was I pleased to encounter this dead pigeon on one doorstep.


On the other hand, the guillotine on a suburban lawn was clearly an early, if macabre, Halloween display.


This gentleman, sadly, wasn't being at all playful. I had to wonder whether he'd ever encountered a live Muslim.

Debate afterthought: Isn't Georgia peachy?

When John McCain wandered off into a tirade about Georgia last night, I didn't get too worried. It takes the people of U.S. quite a while to get properly ginned up about the woes of people in counties they can't locate, even if those country's names seem "borrowed" from a U.S. state. (I know that last is hogwash, but let's be real about our geographical self-centeredness.)

But the complete folly of the conversation is illustrated by the graphic from the Gallup organization above. By and large, Georgians are MUCH more interested in good relations with their actual neighbor, Russia, than in being a dependent of the United States all the way around the world.

It appears that what has been deemed the "2008 South Ossetian War" has pulled the people of Georgia into a conflict with Russia at a time when many see close relations with the country as important.

Just because they have an impetuous president, Mikheil Saakashvili, who got them into a war, doesn't mean they don't know better than to pull the tail of the bear, if the people at large had their druthers.

Remind anyone of why we don't need another quick-to-the-draw, impetuous president here?

Wish Obama wouldn't take the bait on this one too!

View out my window: Reno, Nevada

My whole household is spending the weekend in Reno, canvassing for Obama. More pics later, unless I'm too pooped.

Even overdeveloped high desert is lovely at sunrise.

Hate group in town

Members of the nativist group the Minutemen brought their anger at San Francisco's "Sanctuary City" policy to the lawn across from City Hall on Thursday. About 75 Minutemen types held their rally while about 125 immigration activists marched around them, chanting vigorously.




The counterprotesters made a good showing...


...while San Francisco's finest watched warily, protecting the anti-immigrant group's free speech.


This guy has a limited notion of rights.


And I didn't mind that this one was penned in.


Meanwhile immigrant advocates tried to explain to the media how the city's "sanctuary" policy benefits all San Franciscans. Put in place in the 1980's the policy tries to assure all people that they can use city health facilities and expect police protection without having their immigration status questioned. It's a profoundly practical matter: the police would get no cooperation in whole swathes of the city, including the Mission 'hood where I live, if people had to be afraid they'd be turned over to the migra (immigration police).

In June three particularly nasty murders, gang related, allegedly committed by an undocumented Salvadoran who had benefited from the sanctuary policy, put the city's use of the policy under a microscope. The San Francisco Chronicle saw a hot story; the city was treated to a week of inflammatory headlines:

• Feds probe S.F.'s migrant-offender shield

• 8 crack dealers shielded by S.F. walk away

• ILLEGALS CALLED COURT'S PROBLEM
  MAYOR'S VIEW: Newsom says he lacks authority to turn over immigrant lawbreakers to feds
  

• S.F. mayor shifts policy on illegal offenders.

Political pressure worked and the city officially backed away from its longtime practices, at least verbally. Lots of heat was generated; extremely little light was cast. This newspaper-driven panic about the brown newcomers in our midst set the scene for today's visit from the Minutemen.

As I left the rally, I noticed a line of confident, well-behaved, school children leaving the garden that currently occupies the center of Civic Center plaza. The rally didn't scare them, nor the counterprotesters. They are the San Franciscans of the future. They don't look like the Minutemen.

Mr. Irrelevant speaks

Under the headline, George Bush's scary story, Andrew Leonard writes:

I don't think he offered enough assurance to angry Americans or doubting members of Congress that the Paulson plan delivers a fair and equitable resolution to the crisis that faces us.

Perhaps that is because the "bailout" to Wall Street isn't " fair and equitable"?

The Millennium Development Goals

Do you know what the Millennium Development Goals are? In September 2000, the 189 countries of the United Nations agreed to a project to reduce human misery around the world by 2015 by working for the following items:

• Goal 1: Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger;

• Goal 2: Achieve universal primary education ;

• Goal 3: Promote gender equality and empower women;

• Goal 4: Reduce child mortality;

• Goal 5: Improve maternal health;

• Goal 6: Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases;

• Goal 7: Ensure environmental sustainability;

• Goal 8: Develop a Global Partnership for Development.

And wouldn't this be a better world if we could do it!

So far, progress has been mixed. A U.N. report warns that the world is not getting there on schedule. The leaders of many nations gather at the United Nations today to assess that progress.

There have been critics. The Marxist objection was articulated by Samir Amin: the goals were not the result of an initiative from the economic South, the poor nations, but from the small group of North American, European and Asian nations that benefit from imposing their definition of global development on the peoples of the periphery.

I've heard a more personal version of this critique from an individual U.S.-citizen aid worker recently returned from a stint in a poor African country: nobody asked anyone she worked with whether these formulations were how they thought they could work their way out of poverty.

Even the professional nonprofit aid "industry" sometimes raises questions about the MDG approach:

In his 2006 book "The White Man's Burden," former World Bank economist William Easterly issued a sweeping critique of the whole prevailing approach to aid, detailing how, for decades, aid providers had come up with massive plans to help poor nations and then, Soviet-style, attempted to impose them from outside, to little effect. Lacking local input and insensitive to local needs, these megaproposals often failed to make a real dent in the problems they were spending millions of dollars to address.

Perhaps even worse (same source) the big signatories have mostly reneged on their promises:

Wealthy countries have closed their wallets. In Japan, the government has slashed aid budgets dramatically. In 2006, the United States cut development aid by over 18 percent, and it dropped again the next year. Despite the promises of Gleneagles, net aid handouts from the G-7 group of powerful nations fell by 1 percent in 2007, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, a monitoring group. The nongovernmental organization Oxfam projects that by 2010, wealthy nations will fall short of their pledges by some $30 billion - more than the United States' entire annual aid expenditures.

Okay, so the Millennium Development Goals are in trouble. Do they really matter?

I say yes, provisionally. Their pursuit may do something concrete for some people in the world who need a better chance to survive with human dignity. But the MDGs also give those of us in the rich world who are surviving so very well indeed on the backs of the world's poor a place to stand. They ask us to demand of our governments that they reconfigure themselves as members of an interdependent humanity and planet. It's that simple.

Given the wide diversity peoples and traditions around the planet, it's hard to find a shared platform from which to make claims for common humanity. No one religious faith or historic experience can claim to know it all. Somehow, we must learn to live together or die. The MDGs are a flawed but significant attempt to set such a goal across our differences.
***
Internet activists: if you want to work for the MDGs in the way we so accustomed to, I urge you to take part in the Avaaz.org Poverty Promise Breakers petition campaign. The organization is an effort to build something like MoveOn across national boundaries. The world needs to develop this kind of solidarity.

Something we can do against hate

Maybe you get a daily newspaper. (Fewer and fewer of us do.) Maybe you opened your copy last week and a DVD dropped out ... It was some film called Obsession. Maybe you even looked at it before you tossed it.

Somebody is spending a lot of money to spread hate and fear with this phony pseudo-documentary about Islam. It's bunk all the way, the propaganda in service of scaring people silly. The film's talking heads are wackjobs; it showcases people like

Walid Shoebat, who once told a Missouri newspaper that he sees “many parallels between the Antichrist and Islam" and “Islam is not the religion of God -- Islam is the devil.” (Springfield News-Leader, 9/24/07)

[And] Brigitte Gabriel [who] told the Australian Jewish News: "Every practising Muslim is a radical Muslim." She also claimed that "Islamo-fascism is a politically-correct word... it's the vehicle for Islam... Islam is the problem."

Obviously Islam has its crazy adherents, but so does Christianity and every other religion. This film is defamation, rather like blaming Christianity for Timothy McVeigh and Jim D. Adkisson (that's the guy who shot up the Unitarian Church in Knoxville last summer).

A shady outfit called The Clarion Fund paid to put the DVDs in newspapers, mostly in states where the Presidential election is a hot contest. Because it is a new non-profit which has not yet filed a tax return, no public record exists of its officers or donors.

Some newspapers didn't let themselves be used as a vehicle for hate. Many, however, needed the cash, so they did. They included New York Times editions in the Midwest, the Denver Post, the Des Moines Register, the Miami Herald, the Springfield News-Leader, the Las Vegas Review-Journal/Sun, the Columbus Dispatch, the Charlotte Observer, and the Philadelphia Inquirer. Full list here.

I would urge readers to check that list and see whether your paper was among the ones that distributed the hate film. If so, why not contact the paper to ask why they thought it was appropriate to spread hate-filled propaganda. Do they know source of Claron Fund cash that paid them? It could have been the KKK. Would that have been alright? More action suggestions here.

The website I'm relying on for this post is a project of Hate Hurts America, "a nonpartisan interfaith community coalition... formed to address the rising problem of hatred against American minorities." I reported their boycott of hate radio host Michael Savage previously.

McCain wigging out

Somebody get John McCain back on his meds. All the guy knows how to do is stoke crisis and create drama. Now he's "suspending his campaign" and coming back to the Senate where he's missed 412 votes this year -- hasn't been seen since April.

He's gone just completely wacko -- but that's the pattern. In August he tried to jack up a nice little war with Russia over Georgia; then he named a small time, completely unqualified minor politician as his Veep because her counterintuitive plumbing (for a Republican) made for a nice media splash.

Now he's tanking in the polls and doesn't want play the game anymore.

We need a President who can walk and chew gum, a President who can stop and THINK when confronted with reality. McCain isn't it.

Cynic that I am, even I am surprised by how completely out-of-control this man seems to have become under the pressures of running for President.

Irresponsible?

The Financial Times (UK) has done the digging -- and points out a reasonable question: where was Secretary Henry Paulsen when the trading of junk mortgages he now condemns as "irresponsible" was going on? What they learned about the former chairman and CEO of Goldman Sachs:

Until May 2006, when he was nominated by George W. Bush as the Treasury secretary, he was running an investment bank that was doing quite a bit of this slicing and dicing.

According to page 20 the Goldman Sachs 10-Q regulatory filing for the first quarter of 2006: "During the three months ended February 2006 and February 2005, the firm securitised $19.25bn and $15.24bn, respectively, of financial assets, including $18.15bn and $14.43bn, respectively, of residential mortgage loans and securities." ...

Mr Paulson now declares himself shocked, shocked that structured finance was going on on Wall Street but he was there at the time, and the $18.7m bonus he received for the first half of 2006 presumably reflected it.

And this guy wants Congress to give him unregulated authority to play with $700 billion of our money?

For starters, he could donate that $18.7 million bonus. But really -- why is Congress even listening to this guy?

H/t Just World News. Go over there and scroll down to read about the price China seems to be asking for helping the U.S. economy -- how about Taiwan?

John McCain lies Does it matter?

Over the last couple of weeks, many pundits have agreed on one point about John McCain and his campaign. The man lies. And since his basic pitch to voters is that, as a former POW he is a uniquely honorable man, this upsets observers, especially those who have known him.

Ideological differences aside, John McCain's campaign has been more dishonest, more unfair, more -- to use a word that resonates with McCain -- dishonorable than Barack Obama's. ...

McCain's transgressions, though, are of a different magnitude. His whoppers are bigger; there are more of them. He -- the easy out would be to say "his campaign" -- has been misleading, and at times has outright lied, about his opponent. He has misrepresented -- that's the charitable verb -- his vice presidential nominee's record. Called on these fouls, he has denied and repeated them.

Ruth Marcus,
Washington Post,
Sept. 16, 2008

McCain has turned ugly. His dishonesty would be unacceptable in any politician, but McCain has always set his own bar higher than most. He has contempt for most of his colleagues for that very reason: They lie. He tells the truth. He internalizes the code of the McCains -- his grandfather, his father: both admirals of the shining sea. He serves his country differently, that's all -- but just as honorably. No more, though. ...

McCain has soiled all that.

Richard Cohen,
Washington Post,
Sept. 15, 2008

When Bush, issued a “signing statement” in 2006 on McCain’s hard-fought legislation placing prohibitions on torture, saying he would interpret the measure as he chose, McCain barely uttered a peep. And then, in 2006, in one of his most disheartening acts, McCain supported a “compromise” with the administration on trials of Guantanamo detainees, yielding too much of what the administration wanted, and accepted provisions he had originally opposed on principle. Among other things, the bill sharply limited the rights of detainees in military trials, stripped habeas corpus rights from a broad swath of people “suspected” of cooperating with terrorists, and loosened restrictions on the administration’s use of torture. ...

McCain’s caving in to this “compromise” did it for me. This was further evidence that the former free-spirited, supposedly principled, maverick was morphing into just another panderer – to Bush and the Republican Party’s conservative base. ...

McCain’s recent conduct of his campaign – his willingness to lie repeatedly (including in his acceptance speech) and to play Russian roulette with the vice-presidency, in order to fulfill his long-held ambition – has reinforced my earlier, and growing, sense that John McCain is not a principled man.

Elizabeth Drew,
former New Yorker correspondent and McCain biographer

Oddly enough, given the last several months, it's genuinely hard to tell when McCain is being dishonest and when he's being incompetent.

Steve Benen,
Washington Monthly, September 14, 2008

I respected McCain’s willingness to support the troop surge in Iraq, even if it was going to cost him the Republican nomination. Now the same guy, who would not sell his soul to win his party’s nomination, is ready to sell every piece of his soul to win the presidency.

Thomas Friedman,
New York Times, September 14, 2008

This is quite a catalog of judgments against McCain. These people are not the radical left. These are centrist journalists with long experience of watching politicians. And they are appalled by John McCain's current behavior.

Sissela Bok is a Swedish-born philosopher and ethicist who literally wrote the book on deceit, Lying: Moral Choice in Public and Private Life. She defines lying as follows:

A lie is a statement, believed by the liar to be false, made to another person with the intention that the person be deceived by the statement.

The Washington Independent thought to ask Bok about McCain's string of false claims.

"I don’t think people understand how much it damages them," Bok said on the telephone from her home in Cambridge, "maybe not in the short run. In the short run, the cost of integrity, for instance, it might not seem to matter. But they have to understand that when they lie simply to win an election, they must be prepared to sacrifice their self-respect.

"Moreover, they’re doing harm to society," Bok said, "Once people have the notion that people in public service are all dishonest, the whole profession of public service, or journalism, is damaged. Everyone is seen as dishonest -- when we know there are good, honest people who choose to serve in public duty, in public life."

McCain certainly is showing he's no maverick. Like Bush and the rest of the gang we've been stuck with for the last eight years, he is willing to tear up the foundations of public trust for his personal gain.

Maybe he should have worked on Wall Street?

Global warming truth telling

Climate Progress asks:

Is the financial crisis more dire than the climate crisis?

Not even close. "If there’s no action before 2012, that’s too late. What we do in the next two to three years will determine our future. This is the defining moment." So warned IPCC head Rajendra Pachauri last fall when the IPCC released its major multi-year report synthesizing our understanding of climate science. And remember Pachauri was handpicked by the Bush administration to replace the “alarmist” Bob Watson. It’s the facts that make scientists alarmists, not their politics...

Go read it all.

H/t Gerry Canavan.

Imperial truth telling

Goodness -- look what the financial meltdown dredged out of Congressman Barney Frank:

But let’s be realistic: we’re no longer the dominant world power.”