November 2008 Archives

At first glance it defied credulity that the staid, respected Chicago Tribune would do something as screwball as giving any credence to the issue of whether President-elect Barack Obama is really a U.S. citizen or not. But the Tribune will run not one but two big splashy ads paid for by a quasi libertarian outfit named www.wethepeoplefoundation.org based in Queensbury, New York. The group demands that Obama produce his original birth certificate with all the official markings and proper affixed signatures on it. The one that the Hawaii Department of Health officials made public last June was an electronic copy of the certificate.

Unfortunately, Hawaii officials left just enough room for the Obama birth certificate hounders to wiggle through when they correctly noted that privacy laws forbade them from releasing original documents without the authorization of the individual for which the documents are requested; in this case that individual being Obama.

Obama at the time and since then has also correctly declined to give any more ammunition to the birth certificate hounders. His campaign simply issued a statement that the document released by Hawaii officials is authentic. But that just emboldened the Obama hounders even more. Nearly a million have taken a gander at a You Tube clip on the controversy, dozens of websites fuel the rumor mill about his certificate, and a pile of articles have rehashed the issue of whether the birth certificate that Hawaii produced is legit. Nearly two dozen lawsuits or petitions have been filed in various state courts contesting Obama's U.S. citizenship (one of them was filed by political gadfly Alan Keyes).

The Tribune ads won't help matters. But it probably wouldn't have made much difference if the paper had refused the ad. The online mill would still crank away about the certificate. Wagging tongues fan a controversy and that's always good for website looks and business. As for We the People, it has used the controversy as a fund raising chip (gimmick).

But that's less important for some than finding any issue no matter how farfetched to further stoke the paranoid suspicions of more than a few about Obama. Those suspicions were deeply implanted the moment that he declared his presidential candidacy in 2007. They rumbled above and underneath the surface throughout the campaign, and never stopped when he won.

He was not black enough. He was too black. He was not patriotic enough. He was too liberal, too effete, too untested. He was a Muslim, terrorist fellow traveler, and a closet black radical. The shock of an Obama in the White House is simply too much for many to bear. Obama defies the stereotypical textbook look and definition of what an American president is supposed to look like, and be like; namely a wooden image middle-aged, or older, white male.

Obama said as much during a campaign stop in late July when he quipped that he did not look like all those other presidents on the dollar bills. Obama got torched for saying the obvious and that is that his candidacy was different. Obama later admitted that it was a racial reference. The off the cuff remark simply reinforced the point that he and his candidacy marked a turning point in U.S. presidential politics and by extension race relations.

The Obama birth certificate hounders have kept the issue alive with some mainstream papers by crudely cloaking their motives. They depict themselves as public spirited citizens and legal experts with no personal, political, let alone racial, ax to grind. Their sole goal is to insure electoral truth and accuracy, to make sure that all the legal requirements for holding a presidential office are met, and to head off a constitutional crisis. They claim they want to put the matter to rest for good before his January 20 inauguration.

Their fantasy is that the U.S. Supreme Court will help them out and demand that Obama produce his supposed "real" birth certificate and if not declare the election null and void. The Supreme Court hasn't made any demand on Obama to pony up his birth certificate, and likely won't. Even if a justice or two had a stray thought about taking a peek at the issue, the memory of the fury over the court's meddle in the 2000 election that ultimately tipped the White House to Bush is still too fresh in their and the public's mind to butt in on such a wacky issue.

The bad thing about the controversy over Obama's birth certificate is not that some print publications have dignified the issue by running paid hit ads on it, but that the ads were even conjured up in the first place. And even worse that so many millions are still willing to believe that it's an issue at all.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His forthcoming book is How Obama Won (Middle Passage Press, January 2009).

My heartfelt condolences go out to the friends and family of those killed in the Mumbai terrorist attacks. May G-d rest their souls.

I also hope that those who were wounded will recover fully and quickly in the wake of this senseless tragedy.

As the recession wrings out our consumerism-addicted society, it's good to see so many of us getting a renewed sense of what really counts in life. But as for the others among us....:

A Wal-Mart worker was killed Friday after an "out of control" throng of shoppers eager for post-Thanksgiving bargains broke down the doors at a suburban store and knocked him to the ground, police said.

At least four other people, including a woman eight months pregnant, were taken to hospitals for observation or minor injuries, and the store in Valley Stream on Long Island closed for several hours before reopening.

Nassau police said about 2,000 people were gathered outside the store doors at the mall about 20 miles east of Manhattan. The impatient crowd knocked the man to the ground as he opened the doors, leaving a metal portion of the frame crumpled like an accordion...

Kimberly Cribbs, who witnessed the stampede, said shoppers were acting like "savages."
"When they were saying they had to leave, that an employee got killed, people were yelling 'I've been on line since yesterday morning,'" she said. "They kept shopping."

The Christian Science Monitor reports that some civil libertarians and legal experts believe that an L.A. jury's verdicts against Lori Drew will "chill" Internet speech.

I normally am all about the first amendment, but I think Internet speech can afford to be chilled. One expert says that this could dampen America's long history of anonymous free speech. But the Internet has taken it to a different level, making it easy for anyone around the world to harass someone else. There does have to be some accountability. And let's bear in mind that Drew wasn't found guilty of any felonies, just misdemeanors.

Those are powerful points, Paula. But actually, Earl's photo may well be relevant here. African-Americans, and supporters of other ethnicities, found various ways of working for black freedom in the slavery and civil-rights eras. It seems fair to say that some of the more, um, vigorous and hostile approaches spurred backlashes that were counterproductive.

When al-Zawahiri jabbed at Obama for being a "house negro," he was attempting to invoke Malcolm X's militance. But history has shown that X's anger, while cathartic, was not nearly as efficacious as MLK's grace. Is there nothing to be learned there....?

Top Obama economic advisor Lawrence Summer is the consummate Wall Street, and yes another Clinton insider. His resume reads like a mini telephone book on the list of posts he's held in and out of every financial and government monetary agency imaginable. Any other time, Summers would and probably should be hailed as the apt go to guy for Obama to turn to for help in sorting out some of the economic mess. But Summer's role in helping create some of that economic mess raises one red flag. That role has been lightly talked about. But simply revisiting the part he played in creating some of the havoc doesn't answer the even more compelling question and that's: Does Summers and indeed other Team Obama's economic advisors, all like Summers old Clinton hands, still see the prescription for financial health that they peddled to Bill Clinton as the same prescription for solving this crisis?

Much has already been made about how Bush and the Republicans eagerly cut sweetheart deals with financial industry lobbyists to gut lending and stock trading regulations, winked and nodded at the banks and brokerage houses as they engaged in an orgy of dubious stock swapping, buys, and trading, conned millions of homeowners into taking out catastrophic sub prime loans and watered down the oversight powers of government regulatory agencies.

Summers and Robert Rubin who both served as Clinton's Treasury secretaries lobbied hard Clinton and Congress in the late 1990s to dump most of the provisions of the decades old Glass-Steagall Act. The Act was the 1930's Great Depression era measure that kept federally insured banks out of the go-go world of stock trading, exotic lending and financial speculation. It also set rigid standards for mortgage lending and strict oversight over banking practices.

The rationale for scrapping the Act was that U.S. banks and brokerage houses needed to have the restrictions snatched off to stay competitive with Asian and European bankers and financial traders. President Clinton bought the line. The revision bill passed with bipartisan support in 1999 and Clinton quickly signed it.

But that was only part of the financial deal cutting between the banks and Clinton and Congress. A year later Summers in tandem with then Texas GOP senator and Chair of the Senate Banking Committee Phil Gramm rammed through another "financial modernization" measure. This one took the wraps off government regulations that checked banks, insurance companies and brokerage houses from dumping billions into financial swaps (speculation) on commodities such as oil and food staples. The rationale was the same as that given for getting rid of Glass-Steagall and that was to keep the financial institutions as full profit centers with minimal to no government oversight accountability or investor, depositor and shareholder accountability.

The predictable quickly happened with the regulatory gloves off commercial banks, brokerage firms, hedge funds, institutional investors, pension funds and insurance companies could do whatever they wanted when it came to investing in each others businesses and marching in lock step with each other's financial operations. A buoyant Summers called the revamp of the financial industry as "the legislative foundation of the financial system of the 21st century".

The question that hangs precariously in the air is does Summers still think that the implosion of Wall Street which directly resulted from the terrible policies that he and other Clinton financial gurus orchestrated a decade ago and that has led to so much waste, misery and bickering is a fit model for righting the economic ship today? Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi evidently thinks so. She raised a red flag when she couldn't say enough good things about Summers and other former Clinton officials and the cast of Wall Street connected advisors that Team Obama's has put on public display.
Another red flag is that Obama's key economic players still may not have learned the right lessons from the havoc to the financial markets and damage to consumers the rush to give Wall Street a free rein created is Bill Clinton's reaction to the chaos. He has publicly said that he has no regrets over signing the deregulatory bill.

Still another red flag is the action of Senate Democrats. They helped to kill a bill in 2005 that would have re-imposed some constraints on the financial industry. The reason was the same as before; any limitation would stifle its ability to compete.

The final red flag that Obama's economic players may not be the right antidote for the crisis came from Obama. At his press conference unveiling the players, he assured that his team offered "sound judgment and fresh thinking" to deal with the dire economic peril. Time will tell on that one. But if the past is any predictor of things that can go wrong again, the red flags on Obama's economic team should fly high.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His forthcoming book is How Obama Won (Middle Passage Press January 2009)

People are allowed to contribute wherever cause they want just as others are allowed to choose whether or not they want to associate with them. But here's where it gets personal. If I had an employee who was contributing to the Nazi party, I would do my best to get him to leave. I would play Hava Nagila over the intercom, I would serve matzo ball soup daily, and I would show newsreels of Israel and the Galilee in the company breakroom. In other words, I would turn the place into a litmus test so that if he was anti-Semitic, he would want to leave and in a hurry, and if he wasn't, then he would want to stay.

The Scott Eckern Affair is indeed ironic, but the theatre managers should be allowed to hire and fire whomever they want. Voting Yes on 8 is one thing for the Artistic Director of just about any musical theatre company. Donating $1,000.00 to help it pass is another. Maybe they should have just sent him over to me.

Here's a what if. Suppose a gay rights group puts a proposition on the ballot to amend the constitution to expand the definition of marriage to include marriage between a man and a man and a woman and a woman. A gay restaurant owner, a gay waitress, the director of a musical theater, a gay minister, give one hundred or more dollars to the yes on gay marriage amendment group to insure passage.

Then the predictable happens. It kicks up a firestorm among Christian fundamentalists, traditional family groups, and the usual suspect right wing talk radio yakkers. Then one or more of them in their righteous rage says let's get the names of the above mentioned small change donors to the marriage expanding amendment. Let's then harass, harangue, and bully them. How would the gay groups that backed the amendment respond? We know the answer. They'd scream bloody murder about intimidation, harassment, and bullying. They'd shout and breast beat that it's an infringement on the right to exercise free speech and political advocacy. They would sprint to the nearest courthouse and try to get injunctions against the boycotters. Finally, they'd implore the public, authorities, and politicians to defend tolerance.

It's all of course the old saw about whose ox is being gored. The moral of this what if is this: today the target may be someone or something that you don't like tomorrow the target could be you.

For the record few black straights have been stronger supporters of gay rights including the right to marry and a louder voice against discrimination anti-gay violence, bigotry, and vilification than this writer and activist. But harassment, intimidation and bullying in defense of those rights is just too dangerous a line to cross. One that I won't cross and neither should those who called for boycotting of the Prop 8 supporters.

Continuing on the the previous post.... I'm something of a contrarian. And I also have a heart for what I perceive to be the underdog. Four or five years from now, I may well be sitting with conservative friends, agreeing strongly about how the Democrats messed up the country with bad ideas and overreaching.

But that hasn't happened yet. What has happened was that I spent the past 6+ years writing columns and talking to friends about how excessive partisanship was a big problem and that we needed to find middle ground. The response of my conservative readers and friends was, "To hell with compromise, we've got a job to do."

So conservatives took firm command of the wheel, refused to share driving duties or to listen to navigational advice from others, drove drunkenly in the wrong direction for thousands of miles at a time, and crashed the car a few times for good measure.

When 75% of the public said, "We really would like to change drivers, thank you," that 25% minority got belligerent and said, "Look, we're on the right track, and those other guys will reeeeaaaally get you lost. We mean it. Those liberals are the worst drivers ever." And many conservatives are out-of-their-minds furious that the American public could dare to pull them from the wheel.

If the GOP said, "Holy cow, this didn't go well, I guess it's time for some rehab and for us to find some new conservative approaches that are appropriate for these new times," I'd have more respect for them. Instead, they're saying, "Give me that wheel back! How dare you?!?!"

I don't much respect that. The American people got more than enough opportunity to hear the Ayers accusations and the Rev. Wright issues, and still decided that it's time to give the other guys a chance to drive. If my conservative friends are convinced Obama will wreck the car even worse, they'll just have to let that play out. But in the meantime, I don't believe them when they insist that this road trip was going to turn out well if we just stayed the course.

When the Iraq war had just started, a group of friends debated the matter. I argued against the war, while most of the rest of the group passionately defended it. I complained about how President Bush had promised a "humbler" approach to foreign policy. One friend exclaimed: "Humility will come later. It's not the time for humility now."

That humility never seemed to come. It's still not here, even after 360 electoral votes against them. Conservatives have been court-ordered to rehab, but other than perhaps a few people like Gov. Bobby Jindal, they still insist that they don't have a problem, "only our rivals do." As they say in AA, you can't get better until you admit that you have a problem, and you can't admit you have a problem till you hit rock bottom. What's it going to take for conservatives to hit rock bottom....?

Some of my conservative friends have criticized me recently for seeming too reflexively liberal, whereas I once seemed more middle of the road. I do want to offer some perspective, mainly due to my frustrations regarding where I feel conservatives have overreached.

One area that keeps coming up is the issue of "media bias," where even the relatively conservative Economist magazine decries conservatives' fascination with "diabolical conspiracies against ordinary citizens."

The simple irony is this: The more biased you may be, the more outraged you will be by someone else's bias. Most people don't worry so much about media bias; they expect reporters to be a little liberal, the way they expect businesspersons to be a little conservative. It comes with the territory. The only people who really decry it as a conspiracy are staunch conservatives and staunch liberals. Both of them howl about how the media is in bed with establishment forces.

Meanwhile, the rest of the country is reading the articles about how best to prepare a Thanksgiving turkey.

In another irony, many staunch conservatives of the talk-radio stripe have openly mocked the "dying" MSM for years, ridiculing it as "dead-tree media" that has been supplanted by blogs and talk-radio. They've insisted that the MSM is useless; now that Sen. McCain has lost, they are blaming it on the MSM.

I think the MSM does work to keep their biases in check: it's called "opinion-suppressive reporting." Conservatives decry it as "secret bias," so the MSM just can't win.

Many conservatives get angry that they don't get their talking points on the MSM, so they condemn it. But that condemnation comes from conservatives' own rigid agenda, not from an evil conspiracy on the part of those who don't feel that they need to follow that agenda. To me, all these resentments are a parallel to so many minority groups' common complaints that they're not the captains of their own destiny, and that their fates are being manipulated by external forces. I'm just surprised that ideological conservatives don't see the irony.

Proposition 8 was a tough call. After all, what can be uglier than discriminating against a group of people who never really bothered anyone and whose preferences are probably genetically wired? Yet, I voted yes on 8 in spite of all the gay and lesbian couples I know whose weddings I would gladly attend, provided they choose to invite me after this.

One reason is because of where it could lead. If gay and lesbian couples are allowed to marry, then what's to stop someone from one day engaging in holy matrimony with a dog, cat or orangutan? I know someone whose father left $10,000.00 to his dog, and while I'm sure the pooch was probably thrilled over it, this man's children would have been right in summoning the entire estate into court.

That aside, gay marriages also run contrary to most religious teachings. And if they are allowed to marry, then they could sue their church, synagogue or mosque for discrimination if they are denied membership based on a lifestyle preference, which would then hinder these organizations from exemplifying thousand year-old beliefs and blur the line between the separation of church and state.

In the end, Prop. 8 was one tough call and the best way around it is to modify it so that gay and lesbian couples are granted certain rights while allowing religious organizations to keep theirs.

Before nominating Eric Holder to be his attorney general, President Elect Barack Obama quietly asked key Senate Republicans if there would be any potential confirmation problems with Holder's nomination. Holder is his first cabinet pick and Obama wants to make sure that the pick will be hailed as a good one. The last thing he needs is a bitter, partisan, and contentious scuffle over Holder.

Holder's legal credentials, administrative experience, and accomplishments are impeccable. As Clinton's Deputy Attorney General, he got high marks for initiating community outreach programs to address domestic violence, hate crimes and child abuse, devising standards for criminal prosecution of corporations, and handling civil health care matters. He's also touted for encouraging greater diversity and more pro bono work by attorneys. Holder drew loud cheers from civil libertarians when he told the American Constitutional Society in a speech earlier this year that he would restore the "rule of law" to the Justice Department; meaning that he'd reverse the worst civil liberties abuses by Bush's Justice Department in the terrorism war.

Yet Holder's sterling credentials are one thing, but politics is another. A political appointment to a top spot is generally a pro forma affair; it may be anything but that with Holder.

The immediate cause for some worry is Holder's role in Clinton's pardon of outlaw financier Mark Rich in 2001. Holder reportedly green lighted the pardon, but soon regretted it. He says he never would have said anything favorable about Rich if he had known the full details of the case. Prosecutors, the GOP and even Democrats pounded Clinton for the pardon. But Holder's input on Rich was only one factor in Clinton's decision to pardon Rich, and it was ultimately Clinton's call.

That probably alone won't assure a smooth sail for Holder through the Senate Judiciary Committee. The Holder nomination gives a badly mauled GOP a chance to show that it still has some fight in it and that it will not simply be a rubber stamp for Obama. Some conservatives indeed have said that picking a fight over some of Obama's top picks might be a good way to show the troops that the party can regain some of its political footing.

The Rich issue is not the only skeleton that the GOP could attempt to rattle in Holder's closet to get that footing. One is the claim that Holder routinely cleared Clinton's brother Roger of any wrongdoing when he lobbied brother Bill to grant pardons for a drug trafficker and other high level crime figures. This charge will also go nowhere. Clinton did not grant the pardons. And Holder did not solely make the call absolving Roger Clinton of wrongdoing in the pardon cases. Top FBI officials and then independent Counsel Robert Ray also said that Clinton did not do anything illegal.

Another possible hit point is Holder's lobbying on behalf of telecom giant Global Crossing after the company went belly up in 2002. Global Crossing incurred millions in debt. Back in June, the Republican National Committee first brought this up and claimed it would push to make it a campaign issue. The RNC didn't say just what the issue was. It didn't matter. The charge also went nowhere.

Then there is the Elian Gonzalez case. In 1999 Cuban leaders in Florida were furious at Clinton Attorney General Janet Reno for enforcing a court order requiring that the six year-old Gonzalez be removed from his relatives' home in Miami's Little Havana and returned to Cuba. As Deputy Attorney General, Holder took some heat for enforcing the court order.

The same year Holder drew more fire for his role in approving the clemency request for 16 members of the radical Puerto Rican independence group FALN convicted of a string of terrorist bombings and murders. The FBI, Bureau of Prisons and U.S. state attorneys opposed clemency for the 16. Holder refused to comment on what part he played in the clemency action.

Silence on the part of government officials is always taken as a sign by politically driven inquistors that an official has something to hide or is trying to dodge culpability for their actions when things go wrong. The FALN clemency issue could prove to be even more an irritant for Holder than the Rich case. In June, the RNC tried to stir up the pot on the FALN issue when it issued a press release urging the FALN clemency be made a campaign issue. There were no bites and the issue quickly died.

Then Holder was not an elected official, held no government office, and was only one of several top advisors to Obama. The talk of him being Obama's pick as attorney general was just that, talk. However, he now is Obama's pick and a GOP thirsting for anyone to target to make trouble for Obama may just see Holder as that target.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His forthcoming book is How Obama Won (Middle Passage Press January 2009)

Jonathan raises some fascinating issues about free speech. I argued a few days ago that it's silly for Prop 8 supporters to claim that people have no right to boycott them. But there is a larger issue about the manner of society that we want to be. Social conservatives and gay-rights groups inevitably clash on various issues -- but does the clash have to be so rancorous and so potentially injurious to people participating in the democratic process? While high-profile actions such as the ones Jonathan lists can be cathartic to a group that feels it's being mistreated, can those actions unwittingly provoke a counterproductive, downward cycle?

Throwing Buck Burnette off the football team for using a racial slur in conjunction with a not so thinly veiled threat against President Elect Obama was an easy call for me. Much more problematic is what happened to Scott Eckern, the now former artistic director of the California Musical Theatre in Sacramento.

Now that donor records are public record, anyone who gives more than $100 to candidates and propositions can be found. This is supposed to promote transparency and openness. However, the law of unintended consequences being as sure and certain as death and taxes, there are some problems. When McCain and Feingold tried limiting campaign contributions they ran into a political buzz saw and a court ruling that held that money was a form of free speech. Okay, I can see that. So, do we want to punish legal political speech?

Eckern, for reasons best known to himself, contributed $1,000 to the Yes on 8 campaign. Now I am a passionate supporter of the right of gays and lesbians to marry. I strongly believe they too should have to hire lawyers for pre-nups and divorces; they also need to employ florists, hire bands and pay what my fellow breeders pay into the great marriage industry. Naturally, I opposed 8. Yet, I am uncomfortable with people being outted, persecuted and damaged for exercising their political free speech.

The irony of someone who makes a living in musical theatre being charged with being anti-gay is indeed rich. He probably should have gone into a more stereotypically butch field of endeavor. Surely (and don't call him Shirley), he should have known that his colleagues and employees--the actors, set decorators, make-up artists, choreographers and even the odd actor or two, not to mention some segment of the audience--might be gay. But being stupid, dense and insensitive is not a crime, and a political contribution to a legal ballot proposition is not hate speech.

More egregious was the public denunciation of a local waitress for following the exhortations of her church and contributing to Prop 8. She is an innocent civilian, and what happened to her could happen to anyone who supports a candidate or proposition. The records of our political giving are now public and therefore eternal. Going after people in the heat of the moment I understand, but still don't approve. However, I can promise that our records--people on all sides of every issue--will come back to haunt us if we encourage and countenance witch-hunts. Some day I will vote for someone who turns out to be an appalling criminal creep (probably have already, many times). Some day I will support or denounce some proposition or initiative, and I will turn out to have been hideously wrong. When they come looking for me, I'll be way too easy to find. And so will you.

President-elect Barack Obama's promise to rethink, reexamine and maybe even scrap some of Bush' executive orders was greeted with much joy by environmentalists, abortion rights advocates, and labor union officials. But Obama also lightly noted that he'd take a laser close look at those Bush executive orders which might infringe on civil liberties rights and protections. His legal vetting team won't have to look very hard. A start and end point should be the 31 Bush executive orders that deal with Iraq and the terrorism war.

The best known and most controversial was the executive order that granted wide latitude in loosely defining what and who is a "terrorist combatant," where and how long that individual could be held (indefinitely) and how they should be legally disposed of (none of the standard constitutional protections). The Supreme Court dealt Bush a mild setback in 2007 when it limited some of the worst interrogation and torture abuses the military and the CIA subjected prisoners held at Guantanamo to.

But Bush, undaunted, simply issued Executive Order 13440 in July, 2007. The order was deliberately vague and did not spell out what interrogation practices were permissible. The likelihood is that the order gave the green light to interrogators to dodge the safeguards spelled out in the Geneva Convention against illegal and inhumane treatment of prisoners. Since then the military hasn't missed a beat in their prisoner interrogations. This is only the most naked example of using an executive order to subvert the law. More than two dozen other executive orders that Bush signed into law and that quickly became operational between 2005 and early 2008 have slipped far under the public radar scope and have gotten little if any public attention or just as abusive.

The laws give the CIA power to detain and interrogate terrorism suspects, loosens civil liberties safeguards on foreign and U.S. citizens suspected of aiding and abetting terrorist activities, vastly expands the range, number and power of the foreign intelligence agencies, define what is considered weapons of mass destruction, sharply expands the number and type of documents that can be classified, and limits their release under the Freedom of Information Act.

The orders establish a national counterterrorism center, and licenses and contracts so-called security professionals. They widen the appointment power of the Secretary of Defense and his ability to determine what constitutes a national emergency, ladles out a laundry list of new powers and duties to Homeland Security, and establishes and expands the Intelligence Oversight Board.

Bush signed one executive order the same week he signed the executive order that subverted the Supreme Court's ruling on prisoner interrogation practices. The order blocks the sale and transfer of property of any individual deemed a threat to the stabilization efforts in Iraq. Translated, that means that anyone who speaks out against the Iraq War can be branded a terrorist and have their property seized. This legally dubious executive order received passing press mention and little lawmaker scrutiny.

On top of the legally suspect set of executive orders Bush issued on Iraq and the terrorism war, there's much speculation and worry that Bush plans an 11th hour and 59th minute coup and will sign nearly 100 executive orders or codify federal regulations into law. There's no mention yet specifically what these orders or regulations will entail. However, if there's any truth to the report of Bush's last gasp plan to put in place more legally troubling rules on the federal books, it's a good bet that some of the regulations or executive orders will slap even more constitutionally questionable restrictions on individual rights and liberties and give the CIA and the military even greater latitude in the terrorism war.

This would force Obama to waste even more time trying to determine which orders and regulations are sound law and which ones aren't. And then spend even more time trying to figure out how legally to unravel the ones that aren't.

Team Obama should say publicly and loudly to Bush that there's barely two months left in his White House tenure so it's unfair to saddle a new administration with the burden of having to sift through yet another batch of orders or regulations that can and should wait for Congress and the new administration to take action on, if indeed action is really needed.

Bush made a deliberate legal mess of the terrorism war, and at least some of his executive orders horribly show that. Now it's Obama's task to take a hard and long look at all of them, and then scrap the ones that blatantly stretch or violate the law.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His forthcoming book is How Obama Won (Middle Passage Press January 2009)

Supporters of Proposition 8 are angry at various acts of protest against the measure's passing, the Daily News reports here.

"Our opponents do not like the outcome and that is to be respected. They fought hard and they feel defeated and that is understandable," said Frank Schubert, co-manager of the Yes on 8 campaign. "What they do not have the right to do, however, is to harass and intimidate people. And they do not have the right to commit acts of domestic terrorism against our supporters."

What? Actually they do. That's as much a constitutional right as voting your conscience or expressing your opinion. In fact, that is expressing your opinion. Again, there is a difference between my freedom to express my opinion and someone else's duty to respect it. Are gay activists supposed to be compelled to keep eating at El Coyote?

It would be far better if we could all discuss these issues in a civil and respectful way; instead we've got angry activists doing anthrax hoaxes on one side and, on the other side, Sarah Palin complaining about how media scrutiny violates her 1st amendment right to slander her rivals. Neither side is clean here.

But there's a difference between "what's right" to an ideologue and "what a right is." There is always a right to boycott within our system.

Doesn't sound here like the world's most dangerous association:

Ayers said he didn't even know Obama when he hosted a coffee early in Obama's political career at Ayers' home in the Chicago neighborhood where the two live. Ayers added that he agreed to have the meet-the-candidate event after a state senator asked him to.

"I think he was probably in 20 homes that day as far as I know," he said. "But that was the first time I really met him."

Former University of Texas lineman Buck Burnette should have gotten the buck, boot, dump, toss or whatever you want to call it. It has nothing to do with his sneaky and garbled use of the N Word, the not so veiled threat to Obama, or a knee jerk, formula defense of political correctness. It has everything to do with the actions that could follow from mindless hate slurs aimed at a group.

It's no accident that hate slurs have been tossed at a black dragged to death behind a pick-up, undocumented workers who have been physically assaulted, gays who have been beaten to death, Muslims who have been hounded, harassed, and physically assailed and yes, Jewish-owned businesses, cemeteries, and synagogues that have been defaced.

There's a direct cause and effect between hate slurs and the violence and terror they induce. The fields of America have been stained with the blood of too many victims of race, gender, and religious hate to think that simply ordering a dumb, redneck jock to eat collar greens, tacos, bagels and lox, or couscous is any real punishment for damaging and hateful acts. University of Texas officials sent the right message by "bucking" Buck from the team. For that they should be applauded.

I credit Gail-Tzipporah for not trying to get people fired for bigotry, and I've written several op-eds in recent years decrying the overabundance of PC in our society. And yet...

Sarah Palin recently fumed that her own provocative "freedom of speech" about Obama being a terrorist-coddler was being threatened by journalists who called out her demagoguery. Nope. I'm just mirroring your "freedom of speech" with my freedom to shun you for what you speak. It works for both sides of the aisle, as when a San Francisco DJ was fired this week for a rant against Joe the Plumber.

I wrote a column several years ago in which I called for Muslims to drive out those who express hatred as vigorously as American society has begun to punish our own Marge Schotts for public bigotry. That column ran in the very conservative, very un-PC Wall Street Journal.

Again, I laud Gail-T's bigness about bigotry, and I think it's a good model for other minorities. But Buck Burnette crossed a line, yelling "N" at a virtual Klan rally. The Texas coaches weren't required to boot him, but they're certainly entitled to.

He went way too far and should have been kicked off the team, out of school and he should have had a visit from the Secret Service. This is not about freedom of speech or just innocent tastelessness. This is not about one word--even if it was the N.... word.

He wrote in his Face Book page, "All the hunters gather, there's a N.... in the Whitehouse." Sorry that is not a tasteless comic using the N.... word. That is not even about an ignorant racist. The combination of the N word and the invocation of hunters to gather is a clear threat--each part of which makes the other stronger and more obnoxious and dangerous. His sin was in the synergy of using the N.... word along with hunters. Hunters usually carry guns--although sometimes knives, or bows.

If the question is if we would react if it were aimed at another ethnic group, well, it depends. If a Catholic had been elected and he had written, "Where's Lee Harvey Oswald there's another Catholic in the Whitehouse?" Yeah. Off the team. If a Jew had been elected and he had written, "All SS gather there's a K...in the Whitehouse." Good bye again. If a woman had been elected and he'd written, "Let's assemble the serial rapists from Rwanda, Bosnia and around the world, there's a B...in the Whitehouse." Any doubt, he'd be gone?

Slurs plus violence ought to have consequences.

Being a simple, humble woman, there are a few simple, humble rules that I choose to live by. For the last five years, it has been to eschew most forms of political correctness. Of course, there are times that you have to mince words to spare another person's feelings, but otherwise, this whole political correctness phase has gotten so far out of bounds that it has turned us into a society of stiff, stuffy robots. Besides, I believe that most people who are being politically correct are being just that and little more. Inside, they could be a seething cauldron of hatred and bigotry for all I know, which is when the real trouble begins.

Take the recent incident involving Buck Burnette, the former lineman of the University of Texas' football team, the Texas Longhorns. Judging by his post on his Facebook page, he was obviously unhappy that Obama won when he opined:

"All the hunters gather up, we have a &%$^#* in the whitehouse."

I have trouble with this post on several counts. First, he wrote a run-on sentence by using a comma instead of a period after the word "up," and second, White House is two words and a proper noun and should have been capitalized. As a life-long student, he should have been paying more attention in English and history.

But that was the least of Burnette's worries after that post because he was kicked off the team shortly thereafter, as in suspended, given the heave-ho, the old "adios, hasta la vista, baby" and the "don't call us, we'll call you."

The other count which I am sure is what infuriated the coaches, the fans, those holding bake sales, Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, etc., is that Burnette exposed himself as a racist. As a member of an ethnic group that is hardly on everyone's favored party list, on a certain level I say, "so what?" While bigotry and racism are hurtful, there were ways to counter it rather than booting him off of the team. They could have, for example, sent him to a local soul food restaurant for turnips and collar greens. Or they could have taken another route and made him sit through a Busta Rhymes or Nelly concert.

While I have never been called a "kike," people have uttered similar sentiments to me, and it has often hurt my feelings. I have been told that one of my coworkers who teaches history is not covering Judaism because it is not considered a major religion. One coworker recently told me that Orthodox Jews smell funny and another said that we are aggressive.

But I did not try to get anyone fired over it. If anything, I tried to counter it, to make them see it is hurtful or try and share something about the culture with them in an attempt to soften the sting of racism because I know where it can lead.

And that's what should have happened to Buck Burnette as well.

As a strong supporter of same sex marriage, I am naturally disappointed in the passage of Proposition 8. I hope it is overturned by the State Supreme Court and then wends its way slowly enough to the Supreme Court that President Obama may have tilted the court back to the center. Some of the opponents of same sex marriage are calling me a bad sport and implying that I must accept the voice of the people. I disagree.

Yes, I believe in democracy and the democratic process. I believe that the will of the people should be heard. But (and you knew there would be a "but") democracy has limits. In this nation, we do not believe that "the majority rules." It governs with consideration of the rights of the minority. This is one of the great parts of our tradition. We don't shoot the losers or oppress the minority. We are aware of the great danger of the "tyranny of the majority."

There are other limits to majority rule. We can't vote to make a short person tall or outlaw gravity. One state legislature once voted, and got signed into law, a definition of Pi (π) that resolved it and didn't go on forever. Not useful votes.

Slavery would never have ended if it had been put to a vote. The Civil Rights movement would not have succeeded if the popular will had ruled. Lunch counters would still be segregated and schools would still be separate and unequal. In many states it is more than likely that inter-racial marriage would still be illegal.

The voice of the people and the popular will are indeed important, and courts should take them into consideration. But we have courts to explore the deeper issues of constitutionality. Same sex marriage will ultimately be decided on the basis of "equal protection" clause of our Constitution. We cannot amend our State Constitution in a manner that contravenes our Federal Constitution.

This is a proud moment for me: An old friend and protege, Kirk Wimberley, had his first op-ed published today, in the Seattle Press-Intelligencer. He discusses his reflections on a rowdy, pro-Obama party on election night.

Some salient passages:

Sniggers and sneers accompanied McCain's parting words as conversation bubbled up around me; their reactions were bitter and their words were cutting. They were no better than the dejected naysayers in Arizona....

I struggled to hear McCain's speech, but sensed his courage to stand humbly before an America that didn't want him to be president. Even he acknowledged the historical significance of Obama's victory. I felt sympathy for McCain....

Later, during his acceptance speech, Obama confirmed his campaign demeanor by saying, "I will listen to you especially when we disagree." Back at the election night party, I encountered the opposite sentiment. The celebrating politicos reminded me of the entrenched divisions still thriving in America. If we don't put aside our bitter differences, Obama's historical triumph will be reversed and we the people will have failed -- plunging us further into cynicism.

First, I do think McCain was gracious and humble in his concession, as was Palin in defeat, but that alone bothers me. They weren't gracious or humble in continually suggesting that Obama was a dangerous wacko leftist who would destroy the fabric of American society. They were either insincere in their concessions or insincere in their attacks. It's more likely the latter. But that cynical campaign strategy helped escalate a certain hatred of Obama that's counterproductive for us all working together.

Perhaps my many conservative friends who won't talk to me these days are more sincere and consistent than McCain/Palin in their muted, heartbroken reactions to Obama's victory. Yet I'll confess I'm a little peeved about how I really don't believe I avoided them for so many days after a Reagan or a Bush won re-election.
That, to me does show that Kirk is right. Both pro-Obama hubris and anti-Obama seething are dangers to our effort to show that democracy really is a system worth infusing into other nations. And I like how Kirk closes his piece:

Make a renewed commitment to work together, to honor the innate dignity in others and to meet on common ground. Each one of us, regardless of political affiliation, is responsible for that mission in the coming years.

Amen to that.

And there's another reason for conservatives to come in off the ledge. Here's a governor willing to make tough choices in cutting spending for social services and education due to economic constraints. And he's a Democrat. A good omen...?

The sky is falling and the Messiah is coming. Gail-Tzipporah and I agree again: First on Rahm Emanuel's pro-Israel bona fides and next on LAUSD's bureaucracy. I'm going to push my luck and think that we'll be on the same side of the Friendly Firing line again on this issue of hideous irony.

The Saudis are attending a UN conference on diversity, and pretending that they believe that diversity is a good thing. This sentence stands alone as the platonic form of clueless hypocrisy. But since I get paid by the word, I'll go on.

What!?!? How do they have the unmitigated chutzpah to show up and dare instruct others on diversity or criticize the lack of diversity and religious tolerance in other countries? No, nations do not have to be perfect in their tolerance to have standing to critique the less perfect. But for God's sake, they at least have to value the principle, pay some lip service to it--even if they fall short.

The Saudis run one of the most insular, intolerant and closed societies in the world. There is no religious diversity. There is no freedom to for a Christian to worship or an openly Jewish to visit. Bibles are contraband. Even Shiite Muslims do not have full religious freedom.

As for women: Well the religious police preferred for school girls to burn to death rather than immodestly escape a burning building without being fully veiled. Driving a car is out. Leading a camel (on foot) is okay.

Not since a pre-repentant Libya sat on the UN's Human Rights Commission has there been such a nauseating spectacle. Although, the ultimate prize for hypocritical irony was permanently retired when the Noble Peace Prize was awarded to Yasser Arafat.

Forget the name, Gail-Tzipporah Saunders. I am writing this under my new pseudonym, Vladimir Zybrignew, for reasons that may soon become obvious.

While we are at it, people, let me tell you something about a school district. If there is any budget deficit, no matter how great or small, it is usually because of the administration, which is so top heavy, it is going to fall over. (See the figures below.)

Figure # 1 (to your left) represents a normal school district, which in terms of a metaphor means a few chiefs but mostly Indians.

Figure # 2 (south-east) represents certain school district models of the district that shall not be named that is filled with positions like:

Head Crony, Step I
Head Crony Gofer, Step II
Chief Officer in Charge of Volley Ball Nets
Assistant to the Chief Officer in Charge of Volley Ball Nets
Counsel to the Chief Officer in Charge of Volley Ball Nets

Cafeteria Menu Manager
Chief Zucchini Dicer
Assistant to the Chief Zucchini Dicer

Et cetera, et cetera, ad nauseum. All of these positions, by the way, garner enough income to rent a villa along the Mediterranean for five-years with enough left over for a small deposit on a diamond mine in Africa, meaning they don't come cheap.

And that is one way that a school district finds its way to trouble and winds up in the papers.

Parents in Oakland California and Piedmont were surprised to learn that holding a bake sale to benefit their children's schools was not a no brainer. The big brains of the anti-taste Taliban have set up nutritional roadblocks. The parent's offerings must be vetted with strict observance of guidelines restricting calories, sodium, calories from fat and the percentage of sugar in any cookie, cake or snack. And yes, of course, we have the same guidelines in Los Angeles Unified.

The ironies abound. At a time when our schools are suffering, when our governor is lobbying to cut funding, bureaucrats have set up institutional roadblocks to fundraising. At a time when we know that parental involvement is important to maintaining the quality of the schools and the enthusiasm of the kids, bureaucrats have set up institutional roadblocks. Clearly, if there is one thing our schools know how to do it is how to separate parents from schools and common sense from policy.

Yes, obesity is a problem. I fully support the reviewing of foods served by the schools and sold in their cafeterias and from vending machines. High fat, high sodium glop spiked with sugar is probably not a great idea for either the kids or the teachers who try to instruct them during either a sugar rush or the following crash. But seriously folks, Bake Sales?

If school food is traditionally bad, the irony of policing outside contributions is truly delicious. We have real problems of kids bringing in weapons--knives and guns, not to mention drugs. We spend over $50 million per year on school policing. Now we'll add to the list of dangerous contraband cupcakes, birthday cakes and other goodies--not even meant to be consumed at school, but sold and taken home.

Our LAUSD Board just voted to eliminate 65 math and reading coaches, 19 school nurses and 19 counselors. They are struggling mightily not to cut or furlough teachers. Needless to say there is no move to reduce the numbers of sworn police officers and private security personnel. Don't you think under these circumstances we might come up with policies that encourage parental participation while bringing in much needed funds for our kids?

Ah, Gail-Tzipporah, Our first fight. I completely disagree that we disagree. The issue is not in our genes or theirs, not in our scriptures or theirs. We can find amazing loving-kindness in ours as well as monstrous acts. Same with the Quran. The most repeated words in Islam are "In the Name of God the Merciful, the Compassionate." But so many forget what is truly fundamental to our faith traditions.

Yes, they have been carefully taught to hate and fear. Yes, it has gotten worse since my years living in the Arab World, worse still since Oslo, and even worse since Israel's withdrawal from Gaza. There is little to nourish the good souls at Peace Now. Yes, post Oslo Arafat said, "the Jihad for Jerusalem continues." Yes, they never stopped teaching hate or put Israel on their maps. Yes, they know as we know that the so-called "right of return" would be a suicide pact.

Yes, experience is the greatest teacher. I spent two years in the Peace Corps in Tunisia. I don't believe I did very much that was dramatic but maybe through experiencing an American and a Jew, some of my students (now in leadership positions), will remember me when their society tries to stereotype Americans and Jews.

Writing as a Zionist, I am faced with a fundamental conundrum that is both moral and practical. Continuing down this road will only continue a world where more of "them" are willing to die, than we are willing to kill. I do not think the remedy is to kill more of them. This is a hydra-headed monster that replaces martyrs two, three and four for one. I don't know how to solve this, but this is not working for either Israel or the Palestinians.

We need, I think, not a comprehensive peace plan or treaty--the radicals on each side would not allow it. We need to find, literally, a modus Vivendi, a way of not killing each other, one day at a time. Okay, Gail-Tzipporah, now with more yeses than Molly Bloom, where's our fight?

Okay, Jonathan, that was the shortest-lived liberal-conservative Friendly Fire honeymoon ever. Here's the beef at least for me regarding Israel and the Palestinians. The only way that there can be peace in the Middle East is for the Palestinians to basically accept responsibility for themselves and their plight, alter their thinking and consciousness and stop shooting at, killing and maiming and blowing up the Israelis. Period. The end.

This may be easier said than done because of the victim mentality that has been drilled into them as well as the hatred of their Jewish neighbors. Years ago before I became a hard-wired curmudgeon and an out-and-out conservative, I was an English teacher teaching business writing to accountants from foreign countries at Arthur Anderson long before it was discovered that they were cooking their books, even if they were cooking them back then.

One of the men announced that he was from Palestine and at first refused to have anything to do with me. As luck, fate or the heavens would have it he wound up in my class, which didn't thrill either one of us at first, I am sure. Over the month-long course, we got to be friendly, we'd sit down at dinner together, and he told me that the first time he saw a Jewish person, it was an Israeli soldier, and he was shocked because he thought that we all had horns. We wound up getting along so well that he said that he is allowed to have multiple wives and invited me to visit him in his country.

From the outset, it is thinking and teaching like this that kills things. I was hoping that that would change now that Arafat has met his maker, but it doesn't seem to be the case. In fact, things have only gotten worse.

In September, 2004, then Democratic presidential contender John Kerry desperately searched for a message and a way to re jumpstart a lagging campaign. He did the politically smart thing. He called on Bill Clinton for advice. Clinton laid out his blueprint for Kerry in a long winded brain storm session from his hospital bed where he was scheduled to undergo heart surgery. The first part of the blueprint was to play to Democratic Party strengths. Those strengths were well known; talk more jobs, more funding for health care and higher wages for more Americans.

And equally important, dispel the deep, pervasive, and self-defeating perception that the Democratic Party had swerved to far toward minorities, affirmative action, big government spending on education and social programs, and had ignored the needs of middle and working class whites. This non-racial, centrist pitch did not threaten or alienate the white middle-class, and was plainly designed to blunt the standard Republican rap that Democrats pander to special interests, i.e. minorities. Clinton had fine tuned and retooled these pet Republican themes during his stint as chair of the centrist-conservative Democratic Leadership Council.

Liberal and activist Democrats roundly denounced the Clinton blueprint as bending over too far to the right. Many black Democrats saw this approach as abandonment and a betrayal of the Democrat's historic emphasis on expanded, activist government, full spending on social programs, civil rights advocacy, sensitivity toward minorities, and women, and the poor and military restraint. But Clinton correctly recognized that the Democrats had been beaten to the punch so often by the Republicans that millions of Americans felt alienated, and frustrated at the Democrats failure to present an alternative program for middle-America. The Democrats had simply failed to see that times and the public mood had changed. The Republicans had capitalized on it and parlayed their frustration into victory after victory, up to an including tightening its lock on the White House.

The emphasis just had to be packaged differently, in a non confrontational, nor divisive way that stripped it of the emotionalism that played into the GOP's hands and permitted it to continue to pulverize them as irresponsible, tax and spend politicians. Clinton's blueprint could have it both ways. It presented a directional shift toward centrist politics that would not lose its key constituencies, blacks, Latinos, and women. Clinton's blueprint became the much sought after template in the Democrats approach to winning many state and local elections and to win over conservative middle-class whites, moderates and independents.

It became Obama's during the campaign. At first glance, that's a puzzle and an irony. Obama hammered Hillary Clinton during their bitter primary wars for representing the old thinking, and old ways of doing party and political business. He sold himself and his campaign as the change candidate who would shed the SOP political deal making, cronyism and insider manipulation and take the party and politics in a totally new direction.

Bill Clinton's occasional carp at Obama seemed to signal a directional shift, and Bill's displeasure with it. In January, for instance Clinton took a swipe at Obama saying his health care proposals didn't go far enough. The implication then being that he was Republican lite with some of his initiatives. To the extent that the attack was merited, Obama was only following in the Democratic master's footsteps. But he was not part of the Clinton machine, and that made him fair game for criticism. Team Obama quickly responded with furious broadsides at Clinton for his attack. This seemed to be further proof that a dramatic and decisive break with the Clinton past and grip was in the works.
This was strictly campaign stump stuff and wishful thinking by some who held out the naïve hope that Obama and the Democrats would finally kick the Clinton syndrome. That of course hasn't and won't happen. The tip off of that came months before campaign insiders began discreetly dropping the names of those who would likely fill top positions in an Obama White House. The names read like a who's who roll call of ex-Clinton staffers, officials, advisers, experts, handlers and bankrollers. This was not idle speculation, or musing out loud. The cast of Clinton usual suspects would not have been dropped without some nod from Obama. Indeed, Obama dropped his own hints that Clinton exs would play a big, if not dominant, role in his administration. The rationale for that made sense. They had run Clinton's ship of state, and have the savvy, experience, and political know how to get things done, and get them done quickly. They also are well versed in the Clinton blueprint for political rule.

The Clinton blueprint is if anything a bow to pragmatic, cautious, corporate interests and Beltway interest politics and decision making. It was the blueprint for Obama's push for the White House. Now it's the blueprint for his reign in the White House.

Our fire is indeed friendly this week. Maybe it is the start of a whole new age. Gail and I seem to agree (Apocalypse Alert!), and I agree with both Rob and Earl. But here's the thing:

Obama's, or anyone else's, support of the existence of Israel as a Jewish State does not imply either hatred of or lack of sympathy for Palestinians. Nor does caring about the plight of Palestinians necessitate the rejection of Israel as a Jewish state. As Earl points out, lots of Israelis speak for peace, and ironically it is easier to do there than here.

This is not about fuzzy sentimentality. There are variations of two options. There is ongoing war--bitterness, attrition and escalation. This is lose-lose whatever the short-term outcome. There is peace--somehow peace, whether by treaty or just not killing each other on a one day at a time basis. That is win-win. There is no stable win-lose scenario.

People of good will (in my view, most of humanity) have to care about the poor and desperate and know, as Joe Louis said, "You can run but you can't hide." There were 16 killings in LA over the weekend. Most were gang related. Two societies one rich and educated and another lacking both education and opportunity cannot live side by side in peace. Not here. Not there. Not anywhere. I do not justify violence anywhere but its causes must call me and touch me. Why? If for no other reason than as Thomas Moore said in A Man for All Seasons, "For mine own safety's sake."

Jonathan, the notion that Obama was anti-Israel, and the even more ludicrous, anti-Semitic is not a fantasy. It was a self-serving political straw man. It was dumped on the political table by a couple of GOP leaning 527 (hit) committees based on some youthful out of context Obama utterance about a fairer shake for the Palestinians, and a picture of him sharing a table with a Palestinian scholar at a fundraising dinner. That morphed into a Sarah Palin loose lipped, desperation stump crack about him palling around with terrorists.

Obama certainly didn't need to pick Rahm Emmanuel to quash doubt that he is one thousand percent rock solid pro Israel and pro Zionist. In fact, his position papers, writings, and AIPAC speech (some said pander) earlier in the year he has promised to be the staunchest of staunch defender and protector of Israel and its interests. If he had said or written anything else he would have been Obama the might have been president elect, not president elect. A stout defense of Israel is and has been the 101 of American politics for decades. Any and I mean any tilt real or perceived toward a balanced, even handed policy toward the Palestinian question, let alone Palestinian rights would be political suicide.
Now that he's president maybe, just maybe, Obama can worry about and wrestle with attaining a balanced Middle East policy at the same time he wrestles with health care and taxes.

To: Jonathan Dobrer
From: Gail-Tzipporah Saunders
Re: Appointment of Rahm Emmanuel as Joint Chief of Staff
Date: 11/07/08

Okay, so maybe I was wrong and Obama's intentions towards Israel, and maybe he is not going to be as bad as I thought. But worse than that, I agree with you, and I wonder if my job or the smog is getting to me.

Here's a little gloating from the Family Research Council. I do wish the FRC people wouldn't characterize yesterday's West Hollywood demonstrations as "anti-family rioting." These protesters aren't really trying to break up Ward & June Cleaver's brood.

The anger on both sides often baffles me. I heard people on the radio this morning talking about how we had laws for so long against interracial marriage. And I thought to myself, "Wow, if that right were being voted on, I'd fight really hard to keep it." Then I realized that I don't particularly want to get married. But it's an interesting psychology, isn't it?

I'm still not sure why both sides have to fight over this. But frankly, if we're going to make the law mirror the vows involved in marriage, we need to make it lifelong, and to ban divorce. That'll make lots of people realize it's a right they can probably do without....

Thanks a lot, Jonathan for bringing up this lovely third-rail issue.

They have no peace in the Middle East because neither side is sufficiently "pro-peace" (think suicide bombers on one side and illegal settlements run by occasionally violent groups on the other side). Amidst this mess, many Arabs are angry that we Americans are just not "fair and balanced" in our potential mediating role. As the great Jewish sage, Jon Stewart, notes, loyal Israeli citizens and politicians can criticize Israeli policies without threat to their careers -- but American politicians cannot.

Obama's mere election will cheer many people in that part of the world who feel that, while the U.S. will continue to tilt toward Israel, a man is in charge here who seems to understand the nuances of the matter. That, for Israelis and Arabs alike, should be seen as a helpful step along the road to peace, not as a reason for fear (even if Joe the Opportunistic Plumber sees this issue differently).

Reasonable people can be hopeful about Obama's presidency or nervous. I think it's also possible to be both at the same time. Some may believe him to be too far left and some not far enough. Some might not like his friends and others may not like his enemies. Feel what you feel.

However, can we please put the fantasy that he's anti-Israel and anti-Semitic away? Yes, I know this is a rhetorical question, and the answer for some is "No we can't." But let me try a little reasoned evidence.

Aside from a flawless campaign designed, directed and run by Penny Pritzker, David Axelrod and David Jacobson (each a non-self-hating Jew), today he appointed Congressman Rahm Emanuel as his Whitehouse Chief of Staff. QED

Rep Emanuel is not simply an Orthodox Jew, but his father is Israeli born and a former member of the Irgun, an underground brigade that fought for Israeli independence and took on the British and then the Arab armies. Rahm Emanuel himself went to Israel while Saddam was raining missiles during the First Gulf War and worked as a volunteer.

So, please argue about policy, fight about healthcare, wrestle with the taxes and of course, worry about Israel. But don't worry about President Elect Obama and his commitment to Israel. Voices for Israel have his ear, and Israel has his heart.

IMHO, Rob (Don't you just love those acronyms?), I believe that we and other countries that have been sticking their collective heads in the collective sand should help them root out terrorists because I am sure that the average citizen doesn't want them around, either. The problem is that words like "nice, kind and sweet" don't exist in their vernacular, so when governments and the locals tried being nice to them, they took it as an invitation to root in and do what they do best, which is maiming others for whatever cause came into their little skulls.

I think that a lot of the problem comes from the fact that:

1.) we have made many Arabic countries rich due to the black gold (read oil) they are sitting on and

2.) their governments are either dominated by a bunch of wimps or that on some level they agreed with them and simply looked the other way.

In retrospect, many governments in that region acted like they were sitting on a lit bomb and acted like all was well, which for a while it was. Well, the fuse has burned down, the bomb has exploded and thousands of lives have been immutably altered.

I also think that education and early intervention is going to be the key. It also amazes me when I see people preying not only on each other but on those who are supposed to be their brethren.

What do you think?

As the people chanted "Yes we can. Yes we can" I traveled back in time to 1964. I was working a CORE (Congress of Racial Equality) benefit at the old Ashgrove coffeehouse on Melrose. An amazing Black woman ended the fundraising show by singing We Shall Overcome. Her deep soulful contralto performed a glissando as it dove to the depths of feeling and expressed "O, O, O" in three descending syllables. Then she continued, "Deep in my heart I do believe that we shall overcome someday." Her Os went from pain, to hope to faith. And when she sang, "I do believe," the emphasis was on "do." Her voice proclaimed a certainty more than just a passive hope. It was a commitment that was not going to count on someone else to make it come true. She was not waiting for God to get her out of bondage in Egypt; she was packing her bags and moving. In that moment, so many years ago, I DID believe.

Still, I was not prepared for last night. In Obama's words, it was not about him. He is neither Moses nor the Messiah. He will, I hope, be a wonderful president. But something deeper and more permanent than a presidency happened last night. Last night was about us, about America.

In 1964 my belief was imperfect. I did not dare envision the election of a Black man as president of the United States in my lifetime. However, I did believe in the achievement of equality of opportunity. I did believe we could end legal segregation. I did believe that we would walk hand in hand some day, some day soon. I dreamed of quality education for all with schools, work places and neighborhoods being mixtures of people without regard to race, color or ethnicity. My dream was colorblind.

Dreams are funny things. So much of what I saw as near term and reachable is not yet a reality. Yet what I could not imagine has happened. We are not colorblind, nor close to it. Race still matters to too many people of all our so-called races. We still segregate by race, associate disproportionately monochromatically and identify each other and ourselves not by the content of our character but by the content of our melanin.

As I watched the tears of so many on TV last and the tears in my own home, I too wept. I wept for all who did not live to see this moment--for James Chaney and for Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner who died together just for the right to vote. I cried for Reverend King whom I would like to believe really had faith enough to foresee this day. I wept for all those people of good will who made this happen.

I also wept for those who fought us, to reference the Exodus, whose hearts were hardened. I weep as I write for the adversaries who carried the terrible weight of hatred and fear, whose eyes were blinded to the light of humanity in others, whose spirits were crushed by rage.

No, we have not overcome, not yet. But we have crossed a mighty barrier. Last night the Red Sea parted, but it didn't part by itself. It took faith and work and votes. Last night we escaped slavery in Egypt. We all escaped--every people and every race that makes up America. We escaped together. We have a long journey ahead of us but it is a journey towards a Promised Land. This will be an arduous journey. There will be fights, quibbles and regrets. We will bicker and second-guess. We will backslide and it will take far longer than it should. But now, finally now, I DO believe, deep in my heart, I do believe that we shall overcome some day.
©2008 Jonathan Dobrer

I thank Gail-T for her helpful comment here, but I seek to draw her out a bit. Beyond the bumper sticker slogans, is Pakistan an ally or an enemy by your own standard? What's your own "nice strategy" for handling what Bush administration officials and security experts believe is a country that both harbors terrorists and is an important ally of the U.S.?

A few years ago, we started to see Democracy Hypocrisy -- when neoconservatives would demand that other societies hold elections, but cut off those societies if they elected the "wrong" person. We're seeing that again in our own nation, if you look at some of the comments posted on this site about Obama's victory.

The right-wing is angry that Americans have been seemingly brainwashed into voting for a supposed Marxist, becaue of our evil media and university system. So if you're saying that the American voter can't be trusted, are you suggesting a takeover by force...?

Personally, I would love to see some other conservatives comment about whether they agree with the specific comment I highlighted above from "JenK."

***

Speaking of our universities, the other paper has an interesting article here about UCLA students not being required anymore to take small seminar course, due to costs and space constraints. Seems like they need their own Prop 2, to protect their wingspace.

***

But again, I want to come back to the schizophrenic aspect of modern conservatism. The Bush administration was convinced it was bringing "the deepest longing of humanity" to the world, and was rosily idealistic about the chance to make a better world. Most conservatives though have seemed quite disillusioned about the world and how rotten it is.

That means that, while we were occupying Iraq, President Bush said it was to make it better while many conservatives said it was because we need to step on the throats of all the lousy people beyond our shores. That sent quite a mixed message to the rest o the world. So those conservatives who do believe in engagement overseas need to acknowledge that the many JenK's in their movement have given them a certain reputation around the world.

Like them, I wept tonight, which surprised me. I never thought a cynic like me would be so emotional about an election. When my dad died in September, I was stoic by comparison. The city teens outside my downtown apartment are screaming and hollering for joy. In a difficult and draining time for America, people around the country are more alive with hope than in a long time.

Skeptics roll their eyes. "Prepare to be disappointed, you fools," they say. But if a hardened cynic like me can melt under the warmth of it all, something wonderful may be happening. My mother called from that terror-infected Pakistan, and she marveled about a sense of a new beginning, and about the world's renewed realization that Americans earnestly mean well. My younger brother's family in Ohio has sometimes been given to wondering if this country has the stomach to accept Muslims even if they love America; and they are giddy about what it means to see a man with the "dreaded" Hussein monicker rolling to a landslide. Tens of millions of people in America, and perhaps billions of people around the world, feel more than they felt ever before, that in America, they can really belong. For someone who's not a minority, it may be hard to understand this feeling of rebirth. But for me, that's perhaps why I've been more emotional about this evening than I could have imagined. "Yes, we can....."

A dear friend of mine has a spouse who works at Focus on the Family. After seeing my post today about why the world loves Obama, she lamented, "It is still sad to me that it is personality and image that wins people over rather than what they stand for or what they promise to do."

My response was, "Most of the people around the world do support him because of what he stands for and what he promises to do."

The people in England and Germany and Dubai and Pakistan and Indonesia want a guy who stands for working with the international community instead of telling it what to do.

There's a story in Fareed Zakaria's new book, The Post-American World,* about how French prez Nicolas Sarkozy takes pride in being an unapologetic Bush administration supporter. Condi Rice asked him, "What can we do for you?" And he said, "Stop being so unpopular around the world. It's killing the ability of people like me to work with you."

So the world wants a guy who will bring a different approach, as do apparently most of the American voters. The question is whether American conservatives in 2008 represent a political minority now in terms of what they expect a person to stand for.

*One disappointed person wrote to Colin Powell after his Obama endorsement, warning him that Obama is a Muslim who has been reading a book on the death of America by another Muslim. It turned out to be this book by Zakaria. It's a very telling sign of the panicked way in which American conservatives are reading the current state of affairs.

Gail-T says that Obama's imminent election is a "snow job" perpetrated on a gullible public. So, whereas staunch conservatives used to praise the American public's intelligence and the liberals used to mock it, the roles have been reversed.

Yet today I'd rather meditate on hope. Yes, that corny snow-job word, HOPE. When I went to the DMV this morning, the African-American clerk assisting me proudly wore an MLK-Barack t-shirt that read, "A Legacy of Hope." Her joy radiated as she talked about about asking her three-year old boy a few hours earlier who the next president will be, with him yelling out, "Obama-Barack!"

Hope fills our world today, from L.A. to London to Liberia to Lahore to Laos. America's most influential, and most frustrated, minority group -- the only group that got dragged to the Land of Opportunity by its hair -- is finally able to see its face reflected in the highest office of this great land. Perhaps America's Original Sin has finally been addressed and redressed.

And the world as a whole is cheering for Obama, because the world wants to believe that America is a great nation that values the rest of the world -- a noble empire that seeks to bring change not through a steamroller but through genuine respect and understanding. If that world out there irreversibly hated us, they wouldn't have had a dog in this hunt; but they have loudly cheered one particular candidate, because they want to believe that we can be good again.

I know it's all too soft and fuzzy for some hawks; but, well, they must accept that they are "just" a minority voice now (which will hopefully help them empathize with other minorities for a change). The majority of Americans are expected today to choose to be the America that the world has been hoping for.

So cheer up, conservatives, this can't be all bad for you and me. Besides, I don't think we'll be able to manage to fully install Marxism and mandatory polyamory till at least midway through Obama's second term.

Whoever wins there will be allegations of fraud. There will be the genuine feeling that the election was stolen and that, if the Democrats win, the dead voted them in, and if the Republicans win that they owned the voting machines and kept minorities from the polls.

While there will be fraud and dirty tricks, these will not determine the election. Innocent mistakes and glitches play a far greater part in our results than fraud. Already ballot scanning machines have broken in Los Angeles, causing delays and long lines. Ballot design is a huge factor.

Remember Florida in 2000? Of course you do. The whole mess would never have gotten to the Supreme Court had not the infamous "butterfly ballot" innocently misguided my relatives into voting for Pat Buchanan. Had their intent been realized, Gore would have won and there would have been no litigation. And just who designed that evil butterfly ballot? A Democratic operative.

Somewhere around 130 million people will vote in this election. Anytime you try to count up to 130 million, you will make errors. You can recount by hand or machine and if the real number is close enough, you will get different results each time.

We really need to settle down and cool our hot blood. We need to be fon the watch for fraud--but not obsessed by it. There are no perfect elections, the best we can hope for, and work for, is a fair election.

Several weeks ago, a reader commented that my choosing John McCain is motivated by fear, which in said reader's mind is a nasty way to chose a candidate.

I beg to differ because fear can be healthy. Fear is the thing that keeps you from walking down a dark alley at night; fear is what keeps you from getting the paper in a ratty old bathrobe and fear is what is going to keep me for voting for Barack Obama, who has come up with one of the most compelling snow jobs in modern history.

Reason # 1: You are judged by the company you keep. And let's face it, this man has kept company with some pretty questionable characters, Palestinian activist, Rashid Khalidi and the Reverend Wright, just to name two. One espouses a culture that thinks it is okay to bomb Israeli children and civilians, and anyone else who looks at them cross-eyed; the other is an out-and-out racist. I wouldn't want to meet either one in a dark alley let alone in broad daylight, and as a taxpayer, I wouldn't want either one of them sitting on the upholstery in the White House.

About the only skeleton that John McCain has in his closet is an ex-wife, which is something that almost every man now has.

Reason # 2: His Economic Plan. We are trying to create jobs, not tax the devil out of companies and businesses so that they will cease and desist from creating them. Also, rumor has it that the strata that he is going to tax has changed, which means that he doesn't have a very solid plan or idea what he's doing.

John McCain plans to tax everyone equally, which would then reduce unemployment by allowing employers to create more jobs because they aren't being heavily taxed. Grumble as we may, taxes are a necessary evil because we need them for roads and schools and anything public.

Reason # 4: ACORN, the Nut Falls from the Tree. As a "community organizer" and legal representative with ACORN (Association of Community Organizers for Reform Now), he pressured Chicago-area banks to give home loans to people who did not qualify, and we all know how that worked out.

Although a brilliant strategist and orator, Barack Obama's record and personal choices cast a long, dark shadow as to what may be ahead for this country if we elect him, and it could drive us into a further abyss.

I love election day. I love the lines, the energy, the different people with different candidates and passions all lined up to cast their ballot.

This is a secular holiday--a celebration of our freedom and our hopes. Yes, I know it is a cliché to say that people have died for the right to vote and then to complain that too many Americans take it for granted and don't bother voting. Maybe they think that their vote doesn't mean anything or make a difference. I don't accept that cynical premise.

If I cast my ballot, I cast away my right to complain, whine and whimper. And believe me I hold my right to qvetch to be something God-given and sacred. My side doesn't have to win to give my vote meaning--though surely I want it to win. The meaning is conferred by the act, the act of caring, of getting out and putting my mark where my want our country to go.

I have spoken to three large groups this week and happened to ask them how many had already voted. I was astounded that over half of each group had voted absentee. I understand that it is easier and there are no lines or parking problems but communion is worth some little trouble I think.

Part of what makes this nation work and invigorates our democracy is a contract we make with each other when we vote. We don't have to like the results but we do have to accept them. This is not the case in much of the world. In too many paces there is one free and fair election that elects the president for life--sometimes that life is stunningly brief and sometimes it is Mugabe.

In those parts of the world, the losers often do not live to campaign another day. They are harassed, arrested and even executed. Their parties are declared treasonous and their newspapers are closed. Our social contract that we make at each election is that in exchange for granting the legitimacy of the results, the losers will be allowed to live, to organize and to campaign another day.

Tomorrow, I'm going to drive up to Bel Air Pres, stand in line with my fellow citizens, cast my ballot and receive gratefully, my sticker saying " I Voted!"

From the mailbag....

A reader sent along a case for naming this decade based on the fun-filled presidential election:

Any reporting of the political arena clearly makes this decade, 2000-2009, the Naughty Aughties. A brief recap of just Election 2008, strongly supports the nomenclature for the Naughty Aughties.

Palin being chosen as running mate

Palin's Pitbull Lip-stick, Joe Six Pack & foreign policy

Obama's Lip-stick on a pig

Palin's Troopergate

Joe the Plumber

Obama's "terrorist" & ACORN affiliations

McCain's Letterman cancellation

Wallstreet Bailout

Cost of Palin's wardrobe & hairdresser

Joe McCain's 911 traffic call

Obama's association w/ Rev Wright

With negative campaigning coming to a peak, it can only get "naughtier"
in these Aughties.

The UK-based Economist comes out for the Dem in a verrry long editorial with the headline: It's Time, America: Elect Barack Obama

It is impossible to forecast how important any presidency will be. Back in 2000 America stood tall as the undisputed superpower, at peace with a generally admiring world. The main argument was over what to do with the federal government's huge budget surplus. Nobody foresaw the seismic events of the next eight years.

When Americans go to the polls next week the mood will be very different. The United States is unhappy, divided and foundering both at home and abroad. Its self-belief and values are under attack.

For all the shortcomings of the campaign, both John McCain and Barack Obama offer hope of national redemption. Now America has to choose between them.

The Economist does not have a vote, but if it did, it would cast it for Obama. We do so wholeheartedly: the Democratic candidate has clearly shown that he offers the better chance of restoring America's self-confidence. But we acknowledge it is a gamble.

Given Obama's inexperience, the lack of clarity about some of his beliefs and the prospect of a stridently Democratic Congress, voting for him is a risk. Yet it is one America should take, given the steep road ahead.

The immediate focus, which has dominated the campaign, looks daunting enough: repairing America's economy and its international reputation. The financial crisis is far from finished.

The United States is at the start of a painful recession. Some form of further fiscal stimulus is needed, though estimates of the budget deficit next year already spiral above $1 trillion. Some 50 million Americans have negligible health-care cover.
Abroad, even though troops are dying in two countries, the cack-handed way in which George Bush has prosecuted his war on terror has left America less feared by its enemies and less admired by its friends than it once was.

(

The rival paper had a fascinating letter to the sports editor last Saturday:

We soon will find relief from the excessive, slanted, negative campaigning for the presidential election, but how much longer must L.A. sports fans endure the same from your staff writers in regard to USC football? Does anyone crave more extensive, unbiased reporting of the local sports scene?

The Times' coverage of USC football dominates the weekly section at a level typically reflected in a fan newsletter. Your writers' love affair with the Trojans has been so obsessive that they are running thin on material to put in their daily love letters! Can we please be spared from reports of the star sightings at practices and the high school recruits' weekly performances? Who really cares?

Exactly! This is obviously a diehard conservative showing righteous indignation about media bias. And she is a UCLA football fan (or maybe a Caltech football fan, if they have a team) annoyed at USC's monopoly on local media coverage.

Never mind that USC is in the thick of a national title race, while no one else in town can say the same at the moment. Never mind that USC sells out one of the largest stadiums in the country every game. Never mind that USC is on an unprecedented run over the past six years. Never mind that half the people at my gym yesterday were wearing USC garb, while none were wearing evidence of loyalty to USC's local rivals.

If the Times gave UCLA or Occidental or Pierce College the same kind of coverage that they give USC, those schools could surely achieve equal heights.

And if the media gave the same kind of coverage to an uncharismatic and bumbling John McCain that they give to the charismatic, well-organized Barack Obama, the GOP could win the White House again, maybe this time actually being able to enact some of the agenda that they've promised to enact for four decades.

It's said that conservatives favor freedom while liberals favor equality. But conservatives like equality just as much as the next guy -- let's get equally positive coverage for our guys, even when they're stumbling and losing. Anything less would be just unfair to our embittered pro-Palin political minority.

Call ACORN to lobby on our behalf.

I'll respond to Gail-T's comment here, then ask her to respond to the actual point I was making in the post on which she was commenting.

Gail says:

I think that this economic mess started because there wasn't enough of a system of checks and balances for the banks and lending institutions. Even King Obama was allegedly in on it when he worked as a "community organizer" and legal representative for ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now). Not only have seven of their workers admitted to registering 2,000 voters illegally, (I know. Obama didn't know) but he allegedly pressured banks into giving loans to people who didn't qualify. (He probably didn't know about that one, either, or was it that he called the banks in his sleep?)

Me, I had to deal with ACORN during my subprime mortgage lending days. There was a lot of easy credit going around, and ACORN was angrily insisting that we better not be precluding minorities and poor people from the easy cash stream. We found them to be a pain, especially because of their paranoia about discrimination. But we all would have laughed at the idea that ACORN had caused the housing crisis.

And McCain himself wasn't always an enemy of ACORN. He called them the people that make America great, when that seemed to suit his purposes. See here.

But help me out here: I thought conservatives were on the side of an unfettered free-market -- yet now they're decrying how Democrats refused to regulate the mortgage industry. Do you guys want a free market or not? I think Republicans are just grasping for a reason to blame the meltdown on Democrats, even if they have to act like Democrats to find one.

I think Stephen Colbert put it best, and most snarkily, when he commented on John McCain's concern that ACORN might "destroy the fabric of our democracy." Colbert said, roughly: Thank God that people are finally realizing that the threat to our democracy is some homeless people signing up Mickey Mouse as a voter, and that that the threat isn't coming from, oh, widespread wiretapping, an overeagerness to torture, or an excessive accumulation of executive power.

That goes to the heart of my earlier post, Gail-T. Bush/Cheney have accumulated excessive executive power, and now conservatives are freaked that it could be used against them. It shows they should have been more careful about building a process that they could live with when their opponents were in power.

But they should relax: The GOP has been the dominant federal power over the past 40 years, and they still haven't been able to ban abortions, teach creation, invade Iran, eliminate progressive taxes, cut entitlements, re-closet gays, or most anything they set out to do. So it's not as if Obama will suddenly implement Stalinism by 2012 (even if you can't get Focus on the Family to agree).

And, of course, if 2,000 guys named Mickey Mouse show up tomorrow and throw the election to Obama, I'll eat my words about ACORN being an overrated issue.

The instant that Barack Obama tossed his hat in the presidential rink nearly two years ago the twin mantra was that he could be the first black to be president and if that happened America had finally kicked its race syndrome. The twin mantra has been repeated ad infinitum, and it's dead wrong about Obama and the presidency. The early hint that race was overblown and over obsessed came from Obama. He didn't talk about it. For good reason, he was not running as a black presidential aspirant. He was running as a presidential aspirant. He had to make that crucial distinction for personal and political purposes.

The ritual preface of the word "black" in front of any and every achievement or breakthrough that an African-American makes is insulting, condescending and minimizes their achievement. It maintains and reinforces the very racial separation that much of America claims it is trying to get past. Dumping the historic burden of race on blacks measures an individual's success or failure by a group standard. That's a burden whites don't have. They succeed or fail solely as individuals.

Obama's personal history--his bi-racial parents, his upbringing, his education, and his relative youth-- defies racial pigeonholing. He was influenced by but not shaped by the rigid race grounded civil rights struggles of the 1960s as older whites and blacks were.

The institution of the presidency, and what it takes to get it, demands that racial typecasting be scrapped anyway. Obama would have had no hope of bagging the presidency if there had been the slightest hint that he embraced the race tinged politics of Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson. His campaign would have been marginalized and compartmentalized as merely the politics of racial symbolism.

He could not have raised record amounts of campaign cash. He would not have been fawned over by legions of Hollywood celebrities, corporate and union leaders. He would not have netted the endorsements of Colin Powell and packs of former Reagan and Bush Sr. administration stalwarts, and prepped by W. Bush political guru Karl Rove on how to beat Hillary Clinton. The media would never have given him the top heavy favorable coverage, endorsements, nor relentlessly hammered Republican rival John McCain. If the media had so chosen, it could have torpedoed Obama's campaign by playing up his connection with his race focused former pastor Jeremiah Wright. It bought his protest of racial bewilderment at the Wright race revelations, and dropped the matter.

Obama had to cling closely to the centrist blueprint Bill Clinton laid out for Democrats to win elections, and to govern after he won.

It meant during the campaign and will mean at least in the early days of his presidency emphasis on strong defense, the war against terrorism, a vague plan for winding down the Iraq War, mild tax reform for the middle-class, a cautious plan for affordable health care and for dealing with the sub-prime lending crisis, and a gentile reproach of Wall Street.

The old axiom that you can tell a president-elect by his staff and cabinet picks will very much apply to Obama. A cast of governors, senators and ex senators, former Clinton and Democratic party operatives, and even a few token Republican mavericks have been floated for Obama's staff and cabinet picks such as Al Gore, Tom Dachle, Tim Kaine, John Kerry, Larry Summers, Robert Rubin, Paul Volcker, Chuck Hagel, Robert F, Kennedy, Tom Vilsack, and yes Arnold Schwarzenegger. The list reads like a who's who of the Beltway and Heartland America establishment.

Obama's cautious, center-governing non-racial, likely staff and cabinet cast and policies is plainly designed to blunt the standard Republican rap that Democrats, especially one branded a liberal Democrat, inherently pander to special interests, i.e. minorities, are pro expansive government, and anti-business. They will be watching hawk like for any sign of that from Obama.

As president Obama will be pulled and tugged at by corporate and defense industry lobbyists, the oil and nuclear power industry, government regulators, environmental watchdog groups, conservative family values groups, moderate and conservative GOP senators and house members, foreign diplomats and leaders. They all have their priorities and agendas and all will vie to get White House support for their pet legislation, or to kill or cripple legislation that threatens their interests.

An Obama White House will of course be a historic and symbolic first. However, it will be a White House that keeps a firm, cautious and conciliatory eye on mid-America public opinion, and corporate and defense industry interests in making policy decisions and determining priorities. All other occupants of the White House have done that. Obama would and could not have attained the White House if he didn't do the same. This has nothing to do with race, or the nonsense of being tagged a black president, first or not. It has everything to do with the requirement of White House governance.