The separation of Obama and Wright.
There is a separation of Obama and Wright that is taking place based on the latest comments of Obama's campaign people, including Axelrod himself. Separations between such people are necessarily painful and will take time to heal, especially since Dr. Wright was instrumental in the development of Obama as a person. While Obama will not directly throw Dr. Wright under the bus by not attending his church, what is happening is that there is a growing distance between the two men, as evidenced by Dr. Wright's media tour and the fact that Obama's own people are saying that his tour did not help the campaign.
What we have to remember is that that both men have strong progressive credentials. First of all, we have to understand that Dr. Wright speaks for himself -- he does not represent the Obama campaign in any way, shape, or form. As such, what he says stands or falls on its own merits and should not reflect on the Obama campaign. Secondly of all, we have to stick together -- we have to remember that we are campaigning for Obama, not Dr. Wright.
But there are major differences between Obama's approach and Dr. Wright's approach. On the one hand, Dr. Wright is a fiery prophet in the mold of the prophet Jeremiah, excoriating this country for the sin of racism. But a lot of his work anticipated Obama -- the fact of the matter is that he has created a multiracial church that has thousands of people of many different races and backgrounds attending Trinity. As such, Trinity is a model for inclusion and tolerance, standing out as a witness against the racial divisions that still rack our land.
But trying to mix Obama and Dr. Wright is like trying to compare apples and oranges -- it simply doesn't work. Dr. Wright and Obama have two different objectives. Dr. Wright's goal is to define the problem of what is wrong with America. As a pastor, his job is to speak out against what he sees as the failings of this country. Pastors of every political persuasion do this every Sunday morning. But on the other hand, Obama is a politician -- and the job of any politician of any party is to bring the country together. Thus, frequently, a pastor's job is inherently polarizing; after all, Jesus said he came to bring the sword, not peace. Dr. King elaborated on this all the time during his ministry. On the other hand, the job of a politician is to deal with many divergent interests and form coalitions.
So, there are inherent philosophical differences between Obama and Dr. Wright that created the kind of friction that we see now. So, politically, Obama has to create a distance between himself and Dr. Wright in order to do his job of bringing this country together.
There is another difference between the two men. On the one hand, as Wright rightly says on a regular basis, racism is alive and well today. On the other hand, Obama is a man with a clear and consistent vision -- one cultivated by being at Trinity all these years. Obama's vision is one of a post-racial America where we are able to bridge our racial differences, bury them in the ground, and solve our problems. During his speech in Philadelphia, he himself said that in order to solve the problems of healthcare, Iraq, and other such problems, we had to be able to bridge our racial differences. And in order to do that, Obama sees himself as having to reach out to people -- hence, for instance, his appearance on FOX News Sunday.
There is no need to claim that Dr. Wright is somehow out to get Obama -- the fact of the matter is that there are big philosophical differences between the two; the fact that these differences come out does not mean that Dr. Wright is somehow out to get Obama. This separation is painful, yes -- but that does not mean that Dr. Wright is somehow out to get Obama. And there is no need for people to demand that Obama leave Trinity -- that is a decision that can only be made by him alone. It is a personal decision that only he can make, and demands that he leave Trinity are not helpful in any way. Trinity is a lot more than just Dr. Wright; it consists of thousands of people of all races and backgrounds. And it is totally unreasonable to demand that Obama leave Trinity for another reason -- the fact of the matter is that Dr. Wright was instrumental in Obama's development as a person and for Obama to leave Trinity would mean a complete and total denial of who he is as a person.
And Dr. Wright in no way is an enemy of Obama or the campaign. The fact that they are creating a distance between each other does not mean that Dr. Wright somehow becomes the enemy. It just means that the two men have two different paths created by their two different vocations and that they are going separate ways as a result.
What we have to do is point out that Dr. Wright speaks for himself and does not represent the Obama campaign in any way, shape, or form. Obama speaks for himself and should be judged on his own merits, not the merits of some other person. If Dr. Wright says that the government caused AIDS, then that should reflect on him and not Obama. Dr. Wright is not supposed to be a politician -- he is supposed to speak his mind without regard to the political calculations that dominate any campaign.
Then, what we have to do is to turn the discussion to the issues that matter. Do we really think that Dr. Wright is more important than where we want to go in our lives for the next four years? The fact of the matter is that Hillary Clinton is too negative and John McCain is too radical for this country. Hillary Clinton has not played up the merits of her campaign and her campaign has consisted of one attack after another on Barack Obama. And John McCain is too radical because he would abolish the Minimum Wage, keep us in Iraq for the next 100 years, attack Iran, and raise the deficit by $400 billion a year through even more tax cuts for the rich and through making the Bush tax cuts permanent. And on top of that, John McCain would appoint radical right-wing judges who would roll back Brown, Roe, and Griswold so that our basic freedoms would be threatened.
And this should reflect on the media as well. Why should we trust anything that the media says when they have lied to us about Iraq? Why should we trust anything that they say when it is clear that there are too many people within the corporate media like the ABC debate moderators who would substitute their own personal political agendas for what really matters?
Billions of Dollars of Iraq Contracts Never Finished.
Remember all those right-wing propagandists wringing their hands over how the media was not reporting all the good things that were going on in Iraq? Well, it turns out that many of the "good things" -- reconstruction projects that were supposed to get Iraq back on its feet -- never happened. In other words, there was nothing to report.
The audit released Sunday by Stuart Bowen Jr., the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction, provides the latest snapshot of an uneven reconstruction effort that has cost U.S. taxpayers more than $100 billion. It also comes as several lawmakers have said they want the Iraqis to pick up more of the cost of reconstruction.
The special IG's review of 47,321 reconstruction projects worth billions of dollars found that at least 855 contracts were terminated by U.S. officials before their completion, primarily because of unforeseen factors such as violence and excessive costs. About 112 of those agreements were ended specifically because of the contractors' actual or anticipated poor performance.
In addition, the audit said many reconstruction projects were being described as complete or otherwise successful when they were not. In one case, the U.S. Agency for International Development contracted with Bechtel Corp. in 2004 to construct a $50 million children's hospital in Basra, only to "essentially terminate" the project in 2006 because of monthslong delays.
And it turns out that rather than terminate projects, the Bush administration would simply modify the contracts and would lie about whether or not they were complete or not. And this will raise even more questions about the kind of work that the Bush administration is performing in Iraq; one of the questions that will be asked is, were contractors whose contracts were terminated due to poor performance later given other contracts?
A vote for John McCain would be a vote for more of the same -- more shoddy management of projects thanks to too many people on the job who think that it is not their problem because government is the problem. Take John McCain's plan to keep us in Iraq for the next 100 years and picture what Iraq would be like -- projects started but never finished, billions of taxpayer dollars that could have been invested in ending our dependence on foreign oil and creating thousands of new jobs going down the black hole of Halliburton, never to return.
The John McCain and Isaiah Thomas 25 Year Rebuilding Plans.
It is really interesting to note the similarities between the disgraced coach of the New York Knicks, Isaiah Thomas, and the disgraced President of the United States, George Bush and his faithful poodle John McCain. It was really fascinating to see how Thomas would continue to delude himself into thinking that he was building a winner when it was clear to any outside observer that he had completely lost his players and that he was making a mockery out of the game of basketball.
And in the same way, George Bush makes a mockery out of this country, and John McCain is the same way. A vote for them would be more of the same -- more crumbling schools, war with Iran, 100 years of warfare with Iraq, the end of the Federal Minimum Wage. John McCain is not even Conservative in the classical sense -- he wants nothing less than a 25-year plan to rebuild this country in his own image -- a country in which there are Two Americas. One, to continue the decadent gas-guzzling lifestyle that has brought the world to the brink of global warming, a massive shortage of resources, and where one's connections are the only thing that matters. The other America, where the only economically viable choice for many of our youth growing up in poverty is to enlist in the army and fight in John McCain's wars.
And it is really interesting how Bush, John McCain and Isaiah Thomas try to put lipstick on a pig. For one thing, Isaiah Thomas always talked about wanting to bring a championship to New York one day. In the same way, George Bush was always talking about how he wanted to hunt terrorists wherever they go and bring democracy to the Middle East. Thomas broke the law by sexually harassing an employee and then laughed about it afterwards. George Bush's adviser Karl Rove committed treason against this country and then laughed about it afterwards. The Knicks had all the talent in the world and couldn't produce; George Bush had not only his own resources but all his father's connections as well and failed. The Knicks were paid more than any other team in the NBA; George Bush had more than enough money for the rest of his life even if he had done nothing but bum around.
Now, John McCain wants us to give the Republicans a third chance. But let's face it -- the Republicans' ideas of government have been known to be failures for the last 70 years; their ideas led to the Great Depression and have been discredited ever since. Their only trump card at this point is to recycle segregationism, repackage it into something more palatable for modern consumption in the same way that Isaiah Thomas tried to spin losing day in and day out, and play off one group of people against another. Every time we experience a downturn, it is because some evil boogeyman like illegal immigrants or environmentalists or someone looking for special rights are out to get you. The Knicks are an embarrassment to the city of New York; in the same way, the Bush administration and his poodle McCain are an embarrassment to this country and to politics in general.
John McCain, go to hell!
This diary and the song with it is dedicated to John McCain and his radical right-wing agenda that is threatening to ruin our country. And now, the next stop for John McCain and the neocons is Iran. And in order to supply the bodies for the war, he would make it so that the only economically viable option for people is to enlist. This explains the thinking behind his support of wage suppression through cheap labor, his support of the abolition of the minimum wage, and his potential appointment of radical right-wing judges who would take away the right to choose.
Obama speaks to the UFCW:
While Obama is talking about our hopes and dreams, the Bush administration's outsourcing of weapons design has come home to roost.
In a narrow sense, the troubled birth of the coastal ships was rooted in the Navy’s misbegotten faith in a feat of maritime alchemy: building a hardened warship by adapting the design of a high-speed commercial ferry. As Representative Gene Taylor, the Mississippi Democrat who leads the House Armed Services Subcommittee on Seapower and Expeditionary Forces, put it, "Thinking these ships could be built to commercial specs was a dumb move."
Behind the numbers in the Accountability Office study, experts say, is a dynamic of mutually re-enforcing deficiencies: ever-changing Pentagon design requirements; unrealistic cost estimates and production schedules abetted by companies eager to win contracts; and a fondness for commercial technologies that often, as with the ferry concept, prove unsuitable for specialized military projects.
At the same time, a policy of letting contractors take the lead in managing weapons programs has coincided with an acute shortage of government engineers trained to oversee these increasingly complex enterprises.
The coastal ships — called littoral combat ships — are especially important to the Navy, which has struggled to retain a central role in American military operations after the cold war. In part, they are a response to the Navy’s own Sept. 11 moment, which came in October 2000, when two terrorists in a bomb-laden rubber dinghy rammed the destroyer Cole, killing 17 sailors and wounding 39 more.
While Barack Obama would bring change to the world, a vote for John McCain would put our nation at risk as there would be more outsourcing, more shoddy weapons systems designs, and more massive cost overruns. This is what happens when you put people like Bush or McCain, who think government is the problem, in charge. This creates the mentality where people think that things are not their problem because government is the problem.
Obama lays out his plan to bring down high gas prices, now at $3.50 per gallon:
John McCain's plan for gas prices? Nothing.
Bush's FDA failed to protect thousands of patients from complications from lasik treatment.
In the first hour of a public hearing, more than a dozen patients and patient advocates stepped to the microphone to tell an advisory panel of the Food and Drug Administration about their years of eye pain, night driving problems and suicidal thoughts.
"You have a serious problem on your hands," said Michael Patterson, a lasik patient from Atlanta.
Patterson and others asked the FDA to stop lasik, which stands for laser-assisted In situ keratomileusis. They also asked for stronger warnings about the surgery's risks and urged the FDA to better track complications and to monitor false claims in surgeon's advertisements.
Some also questioned the impartiality and expertise of the panel. Patterson pointed to one panel member, Dr. Andrew Huang, a professor of ophthalmology at Washington University in St. Louis, and shouted, "We don't need your expertise."
Patterson claimed Huang failed to follow safe lasik procedures during surgery.
Among those attending were lasik patient Matthew Kotsovolos and his wife, Beth, of Raleigh.
Matthew Kotsovolos, who experienced debilitating complications after lasik surgery, called the hearing a sham. He referred to a news release put out by a trade group for laser surgeons claiming that the FDA considers lasik to be safe and effective.
And this is the typical response from Bush's agencies -- nothing is their problem because government IS the problem. Therefore, they are doing everyone a favor by not protecting people against the risks of such procedures such as lasik surgery in their twisted reasoning. And John McCain would be no different than George Bush in that regard.
What is so twisted about this whole line of reasoning by George Bush and John McCain's reasoning is that it forces people to become scientists and prove for themselves that lasik surgery, for instance, is safe and effective. Why should people have to spend hours of their valuable time on the Internet to determine whether our foods or our cars or our medicines or some medical procedure is safe? That is what such agencies such as the FDA and the EPA and other such groups are supposed to be there for -- they are supposed to act as our representatives and determine whether or not the things that we buy are safe and effective or not.
North Carolinians owe U.S. Rep. John Dingell, D-Mich., their gratitude for leading the fight against Bush administration regulations that would cut Medicaid funds totaling $2.7 billion to the state and $50 billion nationwide over the next five years.
A bill sponsored by Dingell to put the regulations on hold for a year passed the House Wednesday with strong bipartisan support and a veto-proof vote of 349-62.
AdvertisementThe legislation has yet to be taken up by the Senate.
The ripple effect from the regulations, which were issued by the administration without congressional review, would have cost North Carolina 11,700 jobs and $415 million in lost wages during the first year alone, according to a report issued by Families USA.
U.S. Rep. David Price, D-N.C., who was among 220 House co-sponsors, helped lead the fight to pass the House bill. Other North Carolina co-sponsors included Reps. George Butterfield and Bob Etheridge.
This vote shows the kind of recklessness that is part of the Bush administration and the kind of scorched earth policy that would be part of a McCain administration -- cut budgets for the sake of doing so, regardless of who they would hurt or how it would affect our healthcare system.
Obama's ability to attract voters who have tuned out politics:
What is different about Obama is his ability to attract voters who in the past have tuned out politics. That’s true not just on college campuses, where the Illinois senator is drawing enthusiastic support, but also in neighborhoods where residents frequently feel forgotten by their elected leaders.
If those potential voters follow through on Election Day in any significant numbers, Obama will be very formidable, not just on May 6 but also in November. He’s clearly bright, personable and blends in enough nuance on issues that the public may well overlook his liberal voting record.
Clinton, presumed a few months ago to have a lock on the nomination, learned this winter just how tough Obama is on the campaign trial.
John McCain, who has yet to campaign in Indiana in any significant form, may learn the same thing come November.
But then again, John McCain is not knowledgeable about these sorts of things.
The Times reports significant uncertainties in how much Iran is really involved in Iraq:
The United States has gathered its most detailed evidence so far of Iranian involvement in training and arming fighters in Iraq, officials say, but significant uncertainties remain about the extent of that involvement and the threat it poses to American and Iraqi forces.
Some intelligence and administration officials said Iran seemed to have carefully calibrated its involvement in Iraq over the last year, in contrast to what President Bush and other American officials have publicly portrayed as an intensified Iranian role.
It remains difficult to draw firm conclusions about the ebb and flow of Iranian arms into Iraq, and the Bush administration has not produced its most recent evidence.
But interviews with more than two dozen military, intelligence and administration officials showed that while shipments of arms had continued in recent months despite an official Iranian pledge to stop the weapons flow, they had not necessarily increased.
So, while George Bush and John McCain engage in crackpot conspiracy theories on Iran, back in the real world, reality indicates that we have a measured response to Iran. And the best way to gauge Iran's intentions is Barack Obama's plan of diplomacy and personal talks with Iran's leaders, while John McCain's plan is to engage in crackpot conspiracy theories and make-believe.
The system failed again.
The New York Times writes that the system failed to deliver justice to the police who shot and killed an unarmed man 50 times.
As all New Yorkers should, we respect Justice Cooperman’s verdict, but we do not believe all questions of accountability were resolved. Mr. Bell’s family has said it plans to pursue a civil lawsuit, and federal prosecutors are examining the case. We hope they bring answers.
Large questions remain about the New York Police Department. In recent years, when police have killed unarmed men, they have been, almost without exception, black. The detectives on trial said that they believed Mr. Bell, Joseph Guzman and Trent Benefield had a gun, and based on that suspicion they fired away. No gun was found. Similarly, in 1999 police fired 41 bullets at Amadou Diallo, an unarmed African immigrant who was just reaching for his wallet. The acquittal of four police officers after that killing, which occurred during the racially challenged leadership of Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, set off unrest in which scores were arrested.
Anger and disappointment are understandable now, but New York’s leadership has changed, and community activists need to absorb that fact before they attempt to heat up reaction. Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Ray Kelly are trying to correct the conditions that led to the Bell shooting, changes that take time and good faith on all sides. Both men have kept a schedule of outreach to minority communities.
The judge may have been right as a matter of law, but that is exactly the problem -- there is no way for victims of police brutality to gain redress or closure in the event of police brutality. Police should, of course, be given the tools that they need to enforce the law. That goes without saying. But police should also be held accountable for their actions. Racist cops, like Mark Furman, do exist and do substitute their own radical right-wing agendas for their duties of enforcing the law.
This is hardly the only time that there has been police brutality performed and no justice served. The Rodney King cops got a slap on the wrist. The killers of the unarmed African immigrants were acquitted as well. Our next administration must address this problem head-on, because the more this problem goes unchecked, the more that crime will go up because minority communities will continue to lose confidence in the ability of our police officers to act with professionalism.
In order for a government to function, people must give up the right to use force (except in cases of self-defense) and delegate that authority to the government. In other words, we give up the right to kill or be killed, which is the law of the jungle. But in order for this to function, there must be a bond of trust between the people and a government that the government will not violate that trust. Any time a police officer shoots a person in the manner that these people did, that is a violation of that trust no matter what the law happens to say about their guilt or innocence. The fact that these officers were acquitted means that it is now the duty of legislatures to review the law and determine whether the law is fairly written or not. All this will take time, as legislators must consult with police officers, minority communities, and judges to see how changes would affect them. But this is a review that has to be done.
Good Morning, People!
House approves $15 billion bill to bail out mortgage foreclosure victims:
Democrats pushed a $15 billion housing bill through a House committee Wednesday over the objections of Republicans, who called it a government bailout.
The measure would send federal loans and grants to cities and counties hit hardest by the housing crisis so they could buy and fix up foreclosed properties. It passed the Financial Services Committee 38-26, mostly along party lines.
Democrats said it would prevent blight in distressed neighborhoods, but the Bush administration and Republicans view it as a government giveaway for lenders and speculators that could lead to even more foreclosures.
Barack Obama called for equal pay for women:
John McCain, however, thinks that it is OK for women to receive unequal pay for equal work.
With gas at $4 per gallon and highway congestion soaring, ridership on the nation's subways and buses has jumped dramatically. Between 1995 and 2006, use of public transportation increased by 30 percent, a rate far outstripping both population growth and increased highway usage. Last year, that meant Americans took some 10.3 billion trips on mass transit. And therein lies the problem. "There's a transportation finance crisis writ large across the country," says Robert Puentes, a fellow at the Brookings Institution's metropolitan policy program.
Because mass transit systems are so expensive to operate, they rely heavily on subsidies from federal, state, and local coffers. But the flow of money has not kept pace with the ridership growth. And when demand is coupled with capital costs or deferred maintenance and bonds coming due, many transit systems now find themselves in a financial bind that promises to only get worse.
In the red. The transit agency in Boston, for instance, is now some $5 billion in the red. The New York Transit Authority will face an estimated $700 million deficit this year, which is projected to jump to a $1.1 billion shortfall in 2009 and a $2.07 billion gap by 2011. "The state wasn't kicking in money for capital needs, so we were taking out bonds," says William Henderson, executive director of the Permanent Citizens Advisory Committee to the Metropolitan Transit Authority. "Now, not only are you having to pay for the 40 percent of cost of operations that you're not covering through the fare box, you're also paying for more and more debt service."
What we could see is that as demand skyrockets, fares could skyrocket along with gas prices as well. And this would especially affect places like North Carolina hard. For instance, the Charlotte area is one of the fastest-growing areas of the state, with local leaders struggling to keep up with the explosive growth. Barack Obama would get us out of Iraq, meaning that billions of dollars would be freed up to help cash-strapped mass transit authorities. John McCain, on the other hand, would keep us in Iraq for the next 100 years and tie up even more resources in Iran and $400 billion worth of tax cuts for the rich per year, meaning that transit authorities would face rising deficits and have to pass on their costs to the customers.
In New Albany, Indiana, Obama calls for unity:
"There's too much at stake for us to be divided, " he said to cheers. "We know what the other party is offering and they're basically offering more of the same."
Prefacing his remarks as he always does with praise for McCain's service to the nation -- he was a prisoner of war during the Vietnam conflict -- Obama said McCain has suggested teh war in Iraq is success and that that economy has made "great progress" under President Bush -- words something that brought laughter from this crowd.
"That's four more years that we can't afford," Obama said of a McCain presidency.
McCain, he said, had apparently not paid attention to the 232,000 people who have lost jobs under this administration, the millions who have lost their homes, the millions who can't afford college.
More coverage of Obama's New Albany visit:
As the nation's political attention turned to Indiana -- one of the last primaries for Democrats trying to determine their presidential nominee -- Obama said he respects his opponent, Sen. Hillary Clinton and that they share "common ideas."
But he told the estimated 2,500 people in the IUS gym that they "do have a real choice."
"I believe the only way we're going to bring about the changes that you need to see in your lives and the lives of your community is if we don't just offer different policies, but we offer a different kind of politics in Washington," he said.
Obama spoke and answered questions from the audience for nearly an hour as supporters chanted, waved and cheered, often so loudly they drowned him out.
Here is the video of Obama's PA primary night speech:
Underfunded schools in Guam putting children at risk with unsafe school buses:
Responsible for transporting the island's children to and from school each day, the Department of Public Works has been doing the task on a daily basis - despite school buses nearly falling apart and being unregistered for years. DPW is once again asking the Guam Police to pardon their lack of progress in complying with the same rules as every other motorist...but the situation has parents concerned about their children's safety.
The entire fleet of DPW's schools buses are now officially expired, not having been registered for at least the last five years. Parents like James George are outraged that the agency is putting thousands of kids, including his own, in danger everyday. George told KUAM News, "It is really scary to takes those kids into a risk life, they're (DPW) are risking their (students) lives so it's kind of a sad situation. It is a risk, too. Actually, all the vehicles need to be registered and make sure they are in safety standard [sic]."
While bus drivers are responsible for daily inspections, it's been an uphill battle as many bus drivers KUAM News spoke with today (only on the condition of anonymity), said they've tried to get the buses registered and