let me start by first saying that i don’t currently support, nor subscribe to, either of the remaining democratic presidential campaigns.  the candidate i supported was forced to drop out prior to super tuesday and since then i’ve been a man without a candidate.  however, given the groundswell of support from progressives countrywide, i do tend to lean ever so slightly toward senator obama.

given that, i still have problems with both candidates and their apparent attitude of ‘do what it takes to win’ whether it might actually be right or fair.  there is no doubt that campaign politics are not for the faint of heart.

i read this morning an opinion article from salon titled, why hillary clinton should be winning.  if you’ve never visited salon before, let me tell you my impression is they are a open-minded, fair, and progressive news source.

the author raises a question which, having not asked it myself, i thought was interesting.  why don’t the democratic primaries function under the principle of ‘winner take all’ as do the general elections?  the author lays out his case that, if the democratic primaries functioned more like the general election, it would be hillary, not obama, that would be winning.  and not just winning; she’d have a commanding lead and would likely and easily clinch the nomination months prior to the national convention in august. (more…)

see my post on this issue here.

these days i find myself generally pissed off at the democratic party, both on the national scene and here in hawaii.  now, i’ll admit that i’ve never been a huge fan of the party to begin with, as i feel it offers (nationally anyway) only moderate differences in policy to the republicans.  anyone who doesn’t think the dnc is just as much in bed with big business as the republicans is, in my opinion, simply fooling themselves.  but i digress….

every attempt made by democrats in congress to end this pointless, not to mention illegal, war has been met with bitter failure.  republicans (with a few exceptions) refuse to leave the side of their trusted leader (even if he is a big horse’s ass).  i think democrats continually fall short of what is absolutely needed, ending the war, but i understand to some extent the necessity for compromise.  of course, on the other side, republicans will not budge and democrats are assailed with insults from every side whenever they present any kind of change in course or policy.

take for example the most recent defeat of senate democrats to put limits on how long troops can stay in the field and how long they must have at home.  in the past, republicans have been able to use their trusted mantra “democrats don’t support our troops.”  this time, however, even a monkey (though maybe not our president) could see that argument wouldn’t fly, so they showcased others from their bag of tricks: “this is a veiled attempt to change the course of the war through legislation.”  it may or may not be true, but the fact of the matter is this bill, in my opinion, was the best shot by democrats to date.  of course, they failed again, and i’ll tell you why; once again, they let the republicans control the conversation.  once again, the democrats were forced into a defensive position.

it didn’t, however, need to be that way.  not once did i hear any democrats insist than any republican who didn’t support the bill wasn’t supporting the troops either.  democrats should have fought, tooth and nail, insisting that this bill wasn’t an attempt to change course, but that the bill does support our troops and shows our gratitude for all they do by giving them a proper rest between tours of duty.  give them time to see their friends and loved ones.  give the military time to replenish their supplies so when those troops do return to the field, they do so properly equipped.

of course, the dems didn’t say any of this (at least not that i heard).  they once again got beat by their own cowardice, too afraid to appear on the wrong side of any issue.  they got beat by their own ineptitude and inability to frame and control the debate.

i’m so frustrated at this point, i don’t even know what to say anymore….

let me start by telling you that i am a strong supporter of dennis kucinich. i am working on his campaign here in hawaii, i will vote for him in the primary and when (unfortunately, not if) he loses to one of the top three democratic contenders, i will neither work on, nor vote for, whoever the party chooses as it’s candidate….

admittedly, i probably don’t know much about senator obama as maybe i should. the thing is, what i do know doesn’t thrill me. in a hopeful attempt to make progressive obama supporters reconsider, here are a couple of items i find disturbing:

several months back, while attempting to collect information about ALL the democratic presidential hopefuls, i sent a list of questions, via email, to each of the campaigns. while i’m still waiting (pretty much given up hope of a response) from most, i did finally receive a response from the obama camp. i, in turn, replied asking for a more direct, detailed response, particularly with regard to his stance on impeachment. his response, it seems to me, has become the standard tag line for democrats. basically, senator obama says an impeachment process now would be too divisive and lock up the government from working to improve the lives of average americans.

(the most recent response can be read at one of my sites, here and here.)

this position regarding impeachment makes me see red (figuratively, that is). senator obama won’t consider impeachment because he wants to avoid partisan politics and help people. at least the second excuse is admirable, if not misguided. the democratic presidential hopefuls wax poetic about restoring america’s place as the moral beacon of the world on the one hand, but on the other hand, won’t even consider impeachment hearings against a president at a time when roughly half the country thinks he’s broken the law. his claims of executive privilege and use of signing statements is nearly unprecedented and now he is directly and intentionally hindering not one, but several congressional investigations. could it be he actually has something to hide, some wrong doing maybe? well, according to obama, getting to the bottom of these issues would be playing partisan politics and that would be wrong.

personally, i think he’s a coward, but that’s purely my own opinion….

also, as obama works to position himself as something new, a centrist democrat who can truly attract support from every side of the party, he recently stated he would, as president, bomb pakistan, if necessary, without that country’s approval. of course, he’d do it all in the name of national security, so that makes it ok. oh and it’s worked out oh so very well for us in iraq…. did i miss something?

i am, of course, no legal scholar, but have read the United Nations Charter and i’m pretty sure that what obama suggests is similar to what bush did in iraq. Chapter One, Article 2 of the UN Charter reads as follows:

The Organization and its Members, in pursuit of the Purposes stated in Article
1, shall act in accordance with the following Principles.

1. The Organization is based on the principle of the sovereign equality of all its Members.
2. All Members, in order to ensure to all of them the rights and benefits resulting from membership, shall fulfill in good faith the obligations assumed by them in accordance with the present Charter.
3. All Members shall settle their international disputes by peaceful means in such a manner that international peace and security, and justice, are not endangered.
4. All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations.
5. All Members shall give the United Nations every assistance in any action it takes in accordance with the present Charter, and shall refrain from giving assistance to any state against which the United Nations is taking preventive or enforcement action.
6. The Organization shall ensure that states which are not Members of the United Nations act in accordance with these Principles so far as may be necessary for the maintenance of international peace and security.
7. Nothing contained in the present Charter shall authorize the United Nations to intervene in matters which are essentially within the domestic jurisdiction of any state or shall require the Members to submit such matters to settlement under the present Charter; but this principle shall not prejudice the application of enforcement measures under Chapter VII.

i added the boldface. so, it would seem that the mere threat of the use of force against the government or it’s territory is a violation of the UN Charter and, as follows, a violation against the US Constitution. obama says he would only do such a thing if the evidence was strong and well supported by intelligence. whew, now i feel better…. oh wait, isn’t that what bush said he was doing when he sent troops to invade iraq…?

sorry, i’m ranting just a bit. the point, however, is this; on the one hand obama wants to go and meet with leaders around the world who are ‘hostile’ toward us, so as to improve our international relations. of course, on the other hand, if he doesn’t like what they have to say, we may just go and bomb them. someone explain to me how that policy differs from bush’s?

if obama is elected, i fear we will have yet one more president who will SPEAK honorably about the US role in the world, and then DO whatever is necessary to protect and further US power and influence with little or no regard for justice or the rule of law.

below is an email i received from the obama campaign regarding impeachment. honestly, this is reason enough for me not to support him….

Dear Friend,

Thank you for contacting me to share your thoughts on impeaching President George W. Bush. I appreciate and share your high level of dissatisfaction and frustration with the President, his actions and his priorities. I disagree with him on many issues, ranging from the war in Iraq to the future of Social Security to funding our children’s schools.

I support robust Congressional investigations into his administration and the highly questionable actions it has taken in areas such as domestic spying and the U.S. attorney firings. He has horribly mismanaged the rebuilding of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast. The Democratic Congress has achieved important progress this year, but we are still stymied by a President who is out of sync with the American people, vetoing legislation to responsibly get us out of Iraq and to support increased stem cell research.

America needs to move forward again, and I don’t believe that continuing this era of bitter partisanship is the best course of action. As I travel the country campaigning, I hear the call for a new direction and a change in our politics, a thirst for something more. I don’t believe impeachment answers this call. I believe if we begin impeachment proceedings we will be engulfed in more of the politics that has made Washington dysfunctional. We would once again, rather than attending to the people’s business, be engaged in a tit-for-tat, back-and-forth, non-stop circus.

Instead, I will continue to move forward with a positive agenda in the Senate and on the campaign trail. I hope you will stay involved and work for progress on the issues that matter most to you. Thank you again for writing.

Sincerely,

Barack Obama

Paid for by Obama for America

Aloha,

I received, a few minutes ago, an email from the campaign, in response (I’m assuming) to a request I send several months ago about where Senator Obama stands on a couple of very specific issues. I asked about single-payer health care, not health care in general. I asked about impeachment of the President and the Vice-President. These are example of just two issues I am curious about. If I wanted sound bites, or talking points, I know the website provides those.

In the months since I requested this information, I’ve been paying attention to what Senator Obama says and does (and what he doesn’t say or do). He’s clearly against a single-payer health care system, clearly against the idea impeachment. Fine.

However, as a concerned citizen and registered voter, I’d like to know why Senator Obama is against a single-payer health care system and in what way he think his system is better? I’d also like to know why this Presidential candidate hasn’t spoken to impeachment? Does he not believe this President and this administration have committed illegal acts: lying to Congress, wiretapping without warrants, violations of the Hatch Act, etc. Aren’t these issues that at least suggest the necessity of a level of investigation that only impeachment proceedings raise?

I think these are important questions that should be addressed by every candidate, particularly a top party-nomination contender. If Senator Obama is the fair, straight talker he claims to be, these should be simple questions to answer. Of course, if the Senator is worried his comments and position on these topics might ‘get out’ then I can understand his silence, though cannot respect it.

Thank you for your consideration.

i imagine most of you are aware of the media matters for america organizational website, but if you’re not you should check it out because they do a good job shining the spotlight on major new media when they aren’t walking the straight and narrow, so to speak.

with all the sites i try to visit everyday, i admit i don’t go to this site very often, but i was browsing yesterday and came across a report that was put together by media matters regarding the progressive majority and the myth that america is by and large a conservative nation.

personally, i’ve felt this way for a while, though clearly didn’t have this kind of data to back up my ‘hunch’. a similar (maybe in a more playful way) approach to this subject is taken up by Thomas Frank in his book What’s the Matter with Kansas? How Conservatives Won the Heart of America. of course, it’s a great book that i recommend (if you ask nicely, i may let you borrow mine).

anyway, the report, titled The Progressive Majority: Why a Conservative American Is a Myth, is quite insightful (or at least i think so) and is full of statistics gathered over years by nonpartisan sources. while i’ve still got a bit to get through, i thought i’d share.

while, as they say, the devil is in the details, and while this report doesn’t (at least not yet) go into details regarding issues, the numbers don’t lie. the majority of the people in this country are at least progressive leaning, even if they wouldn’t use the term ‘progressive.’ i think this report is just what progressive need to direct the conversation away from the conservative talking heads and even mainstream news media. i think this is a report everyone should read, especially those who don’t already call themselves progressives (i call myself a liberal, but mostly to annoy people).

how can we begin framing the national debate in terms of what this report presents? i’ve already started thinking about….

i came across an article today on salon about some documents from the now extinct Coalition Provisional Authority.  while the article is interesting insofar as it makes readers aware of the wealth of information available on the CPA website, i found myself skimming through it looking for the pearls, of which there are a few.

on pearl in particular i want to discuss here, if only briefly.  in the article, the author talks about a document he found giving various explanations for a decrease in violence in the Anbar province:

Microsoft Word’s “Mark up” feature shows the time and date of the deletion and the identity of the person doing the deleting, but it doesn’t give the original author of the passage or when it was written. The title and hints in the text point to a memo written by one person in December 2003 or January 2004, when daily attacks on coalition forces in Anbar, the heavily Sunni province west of Baghdad that is the heartland of the insurgency, were the lowest in many months. These were the CPA’s salad days. Prior to the al-Sadr uprising and the Abu Ghraib scandal and the failed siege of Fallujah later in 2004, the CPA believed that it was succeeding in reshaping Iraq. In his book “The Assassins’ Gate,” George Packer depicts late 2003 and early 2004 as the last phase of quiet isolation for the CPA, before the facts on the ground began to impinge on its Green Zone idyll. “Why Are the Attacks Down” shows the CPA on the cusp, as the author gives a half-dozen different theories for the short-term decline in violence.

i have to admit i find the fact that they have several theories amusing, though i understand that any or all (or none) of their guesses could have contributed to the downswing in violence.  however, the one i find particularly interesting (and amusing) is the one which refers to the notion that insurgents may be quieting down because they thought we were leaving:

“What they” — meaning the Iraqis — “have gotten wrong,” says the memo’s author, “is the idea that the military will be leaving Iraq in June, which one individual said he was sure was a major factor in the diminishing attacks. Oh well, this is one time it might be best that folks don’t fully understand things.”

i’ve read this bit a few times now, and i chuckle every time.  ‘why,’ you ask?  well, i chuckle because nowadays any notion that we should leave iraq is countered by the administration with (among may reasons) the insistence that, if we were to in fact leave, violence would erupt (the author of the article points this out, as well).  apparently bush hasn’t read this (or probably any) document from the CPA.  the man doesn’t read.

this could mean one of three things. one, the nature of the conflict and violence in iraq has changed since this document was printed (i can’t see how). two, either bush isn’t aware this document exists, or just hasn’t read it (given his record, this is completely plausible). three, he is aware of this document (though i still doubt he actually read it) and is simply has no intention of leaving and is trying to scare the American public into staying in iraq.

the point is this: you can’t believe a single word that comes out of the mouth of that man.  the same goes for any and all the cronies in his administration.  so, if the US were to withdraw from iraq, the violence would probably decline.

while i haven’t tested it to great extent, i think it is safe practice to believe the exact opposite of whatever idea or policy on which the bush administration is trying to sell you.

while flipping channels this evening, looking for something worth watching (i found nothing), i came across the glenn beck show on cnn headline news. i enjoy the news, so i watched for a minute or two. what i heard was quite disturbing.

mr. beck (ass) was interviewing someone about global warming and the report that ipcc has (will be?) publishing. like i said, i only watched for a minute and caught the end of the interview, but the gist of it was that the ipcc report could not be considered accurate given the manner in which it was produced. the guest suggested that the ipcc directed the authors with regard to the contents of the report. his evidence for this is that the summary was released before the final version. i didn’t hear the whole interview and don’t know enough about the ipcc or its process to comment, in the short time i was tuned in i got the very clear impression that the implication was the report was ‘doctored’ to present results that support the notion of global warming, which it seemed the guess believed to be at best inconclusive, at worst a hoax.

as the glenn beck show led out to a commercial, mr. beck (ass) previewed the next section by saying something along the lines of ‘innovation, not regulation is the solution to the environmental question.’ something like that. i’d like to talk to the conservative jackass that says this is ‘liberal media bias.’ in the three minutes that i watched (which i admit isn’t very long) i didn’t hear one shred of discussion or commentary that led me to think anything other than i already do; the major news media, whether it be fox, cnn, or msnbc, is nothing more than the mouth piece for big business. i don’t say the administration, because the bush administration (as well as congress) is little more than a mechanism functioning for the benefit of big business.

liberal media bias? please! if either mr. beck (ass) or his guest has suggested raising cafe standards, placing higher carbon regulations on manufacturers, or replacing the spr with renewable fuels (like biodiesel), maybe they could be called liberal. that didn’t happen and i don’t expect any major media outlet to do so anytime soon. in the meantime, we’ll continue to be told that things aren’t that bad, or that all the evidence isn’t in yet, or that we can continue to live the way we do. that’s the role of major media. does that sound liberal to you?

The word is out.  Yesterday Dennis Kucinich filed Articles of Impeachment against vice president Dick Cheney.  This is a fantastic first step and could be a great lesson for this administration about the constitution (I’m not sure they’ve ever read it).  When I saw the headline, I nearly jumped out of my seat in excitement.  Then I read the rest of the article.  It seems Mr. Kucinich doesn’t plan on putting a whole lot of effort into really getting the ball rolling on this.  What’s more, the speaker of the house, mousy Nancy Pelosi doesn’t mince words when she says keeping (and gaining more) democrats in power is more important than any impeachment proceedings.

Its true that I probably don’t understand the political nuances that are necessary to function in DC, but Pelosi comes right out and says that politics is more important that doing what’s right.  There’s more at stake here than getting the president and vice president out of office.  Impeachment proceedings would send a clear message, to both republican and democratic future presidents that the people will not tolerate the discarding of the constitution for power or political gain.  What this says to me is the democrats don’t like bush and what he does, but they wouldn’t mind it nearly as much if bush were a democrat.

Maybe I’ve become cynical about out government, but it seems to me neither party is really interested in anything other than getting and keeping power.  Of course, there are members of each party that don’t fit that mold, but as entities both parties are completely corrupt.

I applaud representative Kucinich for taking this bold step forward, even if he doesn’t plan to take another.  His actions will add fuel to the fire among liberals and add force to the conversation that’s going on nationwide with regard to impeachment.  And I hope more democrats in the house will wake up and choose to do what’s right, instead of choosing the path of least resistance to keeping their jobs and growing the democratic majority in congress.

What good will a democratic president be if he (or she) continues to ignore the constitution?