Category: Politics

By Posted on Posted in Marketing Techniques and Philosophies, Politics, Social and Economic Justice

Barack Obama’s acceptance speech tonight showed me why he is electable–and actually got me excited enough to stay up late and blog about it.

As rhetoric, it was superbly crafted:

  • Attacking the Bush/McCain policies (and their tendency to attack those who disagree) while honoring McCain’s patriotism and sincerity–never trashing the man, only his politics and policies; positioning him as out of touch and unqualified to lead, of having a vision of America’s greatness that was incompatible with the majority of Americans, and contrasting his own vision of America’s greatness, as a champion of the poor and oppressed, as a catalyst for improving the lives of others, and as a country ready to reclaim its fallen standing–and he said, once again, that the campign was “not about me. It’s about you.”
  • Unifying Democrats who did or didn’t vote for him, by paying tribute very early to the others who sought the nomination, and especially Hillary Clinton
  • Bringing in the ghosts of major Democratic Party heroes like Kennedy, Roosevelt, and Martin Luther King, Jr.
  • Also honoring the working people of this country: teachers, soldiers, veterans, factory workers
  • Using some of the most effective rhetorical devices honed by oratorical sharpshooters from Ronald Reagan to Jesse Jackson (an area where McCain, a remarkably insipid speaker, can’t touch him)
  • Showing the failure of Bush’s policies around the war, foreign policy in general, and the dismal response to Katrina, among other areas, and linking McCain to these failures
  • Building on the months-long campaign talking points of hope and change and unity–but adding at least a few specifics, especially on energy, terrorism, and education

    • On those specifics–I endorsed Obama last winter (after Kucinich dropped out), and I found myself agreeing with about 80 percent. I have issues with his energy policy, which relies too heavily on big, scary technologies such as nuclear and coal–but I thoroughly applaud his commitment to get us off imported oil within ten years (something that should have started in the Carter administration, or even the Nixon). I have issues with his foreign policy, which strikes me as unnecessarily hawkish, though light-years ahead of McCain’s. But I commend him for consistently opposing the Iraq debacle at the beginning and putting forth a timetable, even a slow one, for withdrawal.

    And the last time there was a major-party nominee who more-or-less agreed with me on 80 percent of his positions was George McGovern in 1972–when I wasn’t old enough to vote. The one before that was probably Henry Wallace in 1948, when I wasn’t even born. The one before that might have been Thomas Jefferson.

    So Obama is real progress. Not anywhere near as far as I’d like, but that may actually be to his advantage–because I think when the American people listen, they will find a genuinely likable and sincere individual who is of the people, despite the GOP’s absurdist attempts to paint him as an elitist or as a dangerous radical. He’s not very radical at all, and he comes from a broken home, worked as a community organizer, and talked quite a bit tonight about the economic hardships he faced, and how they reinforce his commitment to make sure every American can afford a college education and decent health care. In language that the typical red state voter (if not blinded by racism) can see and hear.

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    By Posted on Posted in Business Ethics, Politics

    Putting subtle pressure on its managers to get a Republican victory in November because they don’t like a particular bill Obama supports. Sheesh!

    Find a gazillion stories about this here, including MSNBC and the Minneapolis Star-Tribune.

    Particularly cogent analysis article by Ron Galloway on Huffington Post: https://www.huffingtonpost.com/ron-galloway/wal-mart-never-saw-it-com_b_116402.html

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    By Posted on Posted in Ethics in Government, Politics

    Remember when Bush Ran in 2000, saying he’d be “a uniter, not a divider”? Hint: it was well before he started saying anyone who isn’t with us is against us.

    Yet from Day One, this illegal administration has run the most partisan White House in my memory–and yes, I remember Johnson and Nixon. The latest partisan scandal (among too many to count, including the firing of US Attorneys, the persecution of Alabama’s Democratic governor, the packing of the supreme court and the entire federal judicial system with ideologues, the outing of Valerie Plame to get even with Joe Wilson, and about a hundred other examples) is the report that prospective hires at the Justice Department were screened for political conformity.

    This made the mainstream news (I saw it in my local paper)–but I didn’t find a mainstream source quickly. Here’s the story as it appeared on Huffington Post.

    Here’s a little excerpt:

    As early as 2002, career Justice employees complained to department officials that Bush administration political appointees had largely taken over the hiring process for summer interns and so-called Honors Program jobs for newly graduated law students. For years, job applicants had been judged on their grades, the quality of their law schools, their legal clerkships and other experiences.

    But in 2002, many applicants who identified themselves as Democrats or were members of liberal-leaning organizations were rejected while GOP loyalists with fewer legal skills were hired, the report found. Of 911 students who applied for full-time Honors jobs that year, 100 were identified as liberal–and 80 were rejected. By comparison, 46 were identified as conservative, and only four didn’t get a job offer.

    The real mystery is why the Democrats haven’t been in open rebellion. Any Democrat who tried 1/10 of Bush’s shenanigans would have been impeached long ago.

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    By Posted on Posted in Energy & Sustainability, Politics

    The U.S. Senate did two idiotic things regarding energy policy yesterday. In both cases, Democrats were unable to get the 60 votes needed to stop a Republican filibuster.

    First, they voted against a windfall oil profit tax that would fund alternative energy. OK, I can understand the logic of rejecting a windfall profit tax on the big oil companies; the argument could be made that this would ultimately lead to higher gas prices and more foreign oil imports. But this time, the oil companies could avoid the profit tax by investing those runaway profits in much-needed renewable energy technology.

    But for the life of me, I can’t see the argument against extending tax credits for homeowners installing renewable energy.

    According to the New York Times, the Democrats’ energy package (not dead but on hold, currently)

    …would require electric utilities to obtain 15 percent of their electricity from wind, solar or biomass energy by 2020.

    But the energy bill would make profound changes in other areas as well. It would require car companies to increase the average fuel economy of cars and light trucks to 35 miles a gallon by 2020. It would also require a huge increase in the production of renewable fuels for cars and trucks and require the federal government to set tougher efficiency standards for electric appliances. The measure would also give the government more power to prosecute “price gouging” by oil companies.

    This is incredibly shortsighted. It increases dependence on foreign oil, increases demand, and contributes to the myth that our current energy supplies are limitless. And then people wonder why it costs $70 to fill up their SUVs, and why they can’t even sell those SUVs.

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    By Posted on Posted in Ethics in Government, Peace and War, Politics

    I’ve been calling for the impeachment of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney for five or six years now. OK, so I’m not a Democratic Party bigwig, and they don’t have to listen to me. But Ramsey Clark was Attorney General under LBJ, and he’s been sounding the call at least as long as I have.

    Why should these men be impeached?
    A very abbreviated list:

  • A long litany of unconstitutional acts that have made us a “rogue state”: illegal wars, torture of prisoners, attacks on civil liberties, etc.
  • Massive corruption and favoritism, not to mention attacks on perceived “enemies” (shades of Richard Nixon)
  • Attacking the patriotism of those who disagree with them
  • Holding themselves, their private contractors,a nd their offshore prisons above the law
  • Interfering with elections
  • Firing US Attorneys who chose not to divert resources into their pet (and baseless) fight on non-existent voter fraud among Democrats and minorities
  • Either gross incompetence, gross malfeasance, or both in the response to Katrina

    • Again, this is only the tip of the iceberg. The current gang of ruffians gets my vote for the worst administration in U.S. history. Even Warren Harding did a better job.

    So therefore I take great pleasure in reading in today’s Cleveland Plain Dealer that Congressman Dennis Kucinich, perhaps Congress’ most honorable member, has finally introduced an impeachment resolution–35 counts of it! A reader comment notes it took 3 hours to read the whole thing.

    Of course, the Judiciary Committee has done nothing with his resolution last year to impeach Cheney, and will likely do nothing with this one unless Bush is foolish enough to actually try to start a war with Iran. I still don’t understand why the Dems have had no guts on this, even after they won a majority in Congress in 2006. What have they been waiting for?

    I am not going to defend in any way Bill Clinton’s lying under oath about his inability to keep his pants zipped
    –but if that was grounds for impeachment, the far larger crimes of Bush and Cheney should have been on the table a long time ago.

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    By Posted on Posted in Politics

    Barack Obama’s and Hillary Clinton’s speeches yesterday demonstrate exactly what went right with this campaign.

    The longer the seemingly endless quest for the nomination went on, the happier I was with my decision in March to endorse Obama. While I don’t expect that an Obama candidacy will really change much, he just has so much class, I find it impossible not to like him.

    Remember eight years ago, when GWB ran as “a uniter, not a divider”–and then proceeded to run the most divisive and partisan presidency in my memory, and perhaps in the history of the country? I don’t think that would happen in an Obama presidency. At every crucial moment in the campaign, every time another candidate (like Hillary or McCain, and certainly like GWB) might have lashed out, he delivered a beautiful, genuinely unifying speech. He was graceful in apparent defeat, and remains graceful in apparent victory.

    As Alternet put it, “as is his style, Obama appealed to Democrat’s better angels to unify behind a campaign for real change.”

    Listen to Obama’s language last night, starting with his remarks about Hillary:

    Our party and our country are better off because of her, and I am a better candidate for having had the honor to compete with Hillary Rodham Clinton.

    There are those who say that this primary has somehow left us weaker and more divided. Well I say that because of this primary, there are millions of Americans who have cast their ballot for the very first time. There are Independents and Republicans who understand that this election isn’t just about the party in charge of Washington, it’s about the need to change Washington. There are young people, and African-Americans, and Latinos, and women of all ages who have voted in numbers that have broken records and inspired a nation.

    All of you chose to support a candidate you believe in deeply. But at the end of the day, we aren’t the reason you came out and waited in lines that stretched block after block to make your voice heard. You didn’t do that because of me or Senator Clinton or anyone else. You did it because you know in your hearts that at this moment — a moment that will define a generation — we cannot afford to keep doing what we’ve been doing. We owe our children a better future. We owe our country a better future. And for all those who dream of that future tonight, I say – let us begin the work together. Let us unite in common effort to chart a new course for America.

    Clinton, on the other hand, gave out two conflicting messages. To the larger public, she’s still not letting go:

    In the coming days, I’ll be consulting with supporters and party leaders to determine how to move forward with the best interests of our party and our country guiding the way.

    That same Alternet article raised a disturbing specter of Clinton the pit bull, clenching her teeth around Obama’s metaphorical pant leg and refusing to let go:

    Clinton left open the possibility that she would contest Obama’s delegate totals within the party’s governing bodies. Just this past weekend, a top campaign lawyer accused the party’s Rules and Bylaws Committee of “hijacking” delegates after that body accepted a compromise on seating the Florida and Michigan delegations. It remains to be seen whether Clinton will appeal that decision to the party’s Credentials Committee.

    “Now the question is, where do we go from here, and given how far we’ve come and where we need to go as a party, it’s a question I don’t take lightly,” she said.

    Yet, to her private e-mail list of supporters, she sent a much more conciliatory message:

    I want to congratulate Senator Obama and his supporters on the extraordinary race that they have run. Senator Obama has inspired so many Americans to care about politics and empowered so many more to get involved, and our party and our democracy are stronger and more vibrant as a result.

    Whatever path I travel next, I promise I will keep faith with you and everyone I have met across this good and great country. There is no possible way to thank you enough for everything you have done throughout this primary season, and you will always be in my heart.

    Sincerely,
    Hillary Rodham Clinton

    Let’s hope this is the real Hillary, and not the pit bull. It is long past time to get on with the business of showing McCain for the shallow, hypocritical Bush Lite he has become.

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    By Posted on Posted in Politics

    Who will be Obama’s Veep? The ideal candidate would be nationally known, white, female, from the South or West, progressive without alienating, and lacking the very heavy negative baggage of Hillary Clinton. Someone who’s been against the war from the beginning and is good on environment and economy–and who runs clean, unifying campaigns. I can’t actually think of anyone like that. Bill Richardson comes close, and is Latino to boot. So does Edwards, although he hasn’t fared so well in the past. But both of them have Y chromosomes. Where is the late Ann Richards when you need her? She’d have been perfect: sassy, clever, a friend to everyone, and the Governor of Texas before George W.

    There’s the brilliant but relatively unknown Native American activist Winona LaDuke–but she’s also from the northern Midwest, also not white as most Americans define it, and about Obama’s age. Plus she doesn’t have enough of a following and the Dems would crucify Obama for choosing Nader’s former running mate.

    Some names being tossed around make me decidedly uncomfortable, like Virginia Senator Jim Webb–and Hillary, whose sleazy, dirty, innuendo-filled, divisive campaign has appalled me.

    Where are the great stateswomen of our time? In the 70s, there were plenty of them.

    And if you were Obama, who would you choose, and why?

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    By Posted on Posted in Politics

    In Huffington Post, Robert Creamer claims the long, grueling primary will make a very strong Obama for November: battle-tested, Swift-boater attacks already launched and deflected, campaign organization in every state and their organizers understanding what it takes, and so forth.

    He concludes,

    In the end, the long primary season has set the stage for what could be a transformational election that sweeps Obama into the presidency, and substantially bolsters Democratic majorities in the House and Senate.

    Well, I hope he’s right. But meanwhile, the once-honorable McCain is getting a free ride. Took him bloody long enough to ditch Hagee, I must say. What a shame to see him betray everything he once stood for. I hope Obama busts him by 10 points or better, and carries big coattails for Congress.

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    By Posted on Posted in Peace and War, Politics

    It’s about time! The House voted against war funding (because the Republicans, for their own reasons, sat out the vote)–and the Senate voted to block more media consolidation.

    Now, we’ve got to put enough pressure that these very positive actions are mirrored in the respective other chambers.

    My question: what happens if the Senate votes to continue funding the war while the House aintains its opposition? What happens in conference committee?

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    By Posted on Posted in Business Ethics, Energy & Sustainability, General Commentary, Other, People Helping People, Politics

    Fascinating and far-ranging interview with European philosopher Slavoj Zizek on Democracy Now this morning.

    He covered war, energy, US presidential politics, and much more. But the statement that really got to me was:

    A true act creates the conditions of its own possibility. That is to say, it appears impossible, you do it, and the whole field changes: it’s possible.

    He went on to cite President Nixon’s opening US relations with Maoist China, and postulated that if Obama becomes president, he will seize a similar window with Cuba.

    But this concept has reach far beyond international relations. In sports, the 4-minute mile was an unassailable barrier for decades; once Roger Bannister broke it, many people followed quickly. In science, it was unthinkable in 1955 that a human being would walk on the moon before 1970. In energy and the environment, the work of Amory Lovins and others show new ways of reinventing society as a more earth-friendly place (see my article here). And in business ethics, I like to hope that my Business Ethics Pledge campaign will make a similar difference in the consciousness that ethical business is actually more profitable.

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