January 2009 Archives

Two weeks ago this writer wrote that an African-American was the last and best hope for the GOP. That meant picking an African-American to head the Republican National Committee. And I said that that African-American had to be former Maryland Lieutenant Governor Michael Steele. For its sake, someone in the GOP didn't listen with a metallic ear and picked Steele as the new RNC chair.
The Steele call was really an easy call, indeed the only call to make. This was the only thing the party could do to avoid being shoved to the outer margins of national politics. Steele said as much in his terse acceptance speech when he vowed to make the GOP a party of inclusiveness. That's a word that the GOP forgot how to say, spell, let alone put into any semblance of practice since Bush loudly declared that it was going to be the party's watchword in 2000.

The Steele choice had nothing to do with race guilt, Steele's compelling political charm, or even a panic choice to capitalize on Obama's smash White House win. Steele was chosen for a simple reason. The country's fast changing ethnic vote demographics will spell future doom for a party that's widely perceived as an insular party of nativist bent, Deep South, rural and, non-college educated blue collar whites.

In the decade and a half between Clinton's presidential win in 1992 and Obama's win in 2008, the number of black, Hispanic, Asian and Native American voters soared to nearly one quarter of the nation's electorate. At the same time, blue collar white voters shrunk from more than half of the nation's voters to less than forty percent. Obama handily won the Hispanic and Asian vote and crushed McCain with the black vote. He split close to even with McCain the votes of college educated whites. In the next four years, the number of non-white and youth voters will continue to climb and the white electorate overall will continue to decline.

The numbers tell only part of the story of why the GOP had to pick Steele. He is about the most moderate, centrist Republican that anyone could imagine to head the RNC. One of his other four opponents for the job was stuck so deep in a time warp that he thought it was hilarious to lambaste Obama with the infamous "Magic Negro" parody ditty, and when he got some mild flack for it not only defended it but bristled at the thought that others might not laugh it up too. Too many in the GOP, not including the outgoing RNC chair, didn't utter a peep of protest. Meanwhile, the Democrat's expanding core base of voters, like Steele, is more moderate, socially active, and mildly pro government; the diametric opposite of what the GOP purports to stand for.

Ultra conservative talk show shock jocks and a narrow band of Southern GOP politicians loudly protested that the GOP should resist all talk of reversing political direction and touting diversity and inclusion. Other GOP purists screamed that race should have nothing to do with picking a new RNC chairperson. That would fly in the face of the decades old sacred credo of a color-blind America.

This is nothing but PR political bluster. Race politics has always been a major part of the GOP's political calculus. The Southern Strategy typified that. The strategy was simple; say and do as little as possible about civil rights, talk God, country and patriotism, use racially tinged code words and furiously court white males. The strategy worked like a political charm for four decades. It was the path to the White House for Nixon, Reagan, Bush Sr. and W. Bush.

W. Bush, and then political kingpin Karl Rove and RNC chair Ken Mehlman, bought some insurance. They nakedly played the GOP version of the race card and dumped millions into a campaign to court Hispanic and black and Hispanic conservative evangelicals, and younger black business and professionals. It worked in Ohio and Florida. Bush modestly bumped up the percentage of the black vote he got in those must win states. He got more than forty percent of the Hispanic vote and an even bigger percent of the Asian vote nationally. That helped seal the White House for him.

The RNC and Obama's Republican rival John McCain couldn't pull that this time around. In fact, neither one really tried. African-American voters turned the Obama campaign into a holy crusade, and there was nothing the GOP could do to slow down the crusade. The Steele pick won't either. However, it does send the message that a kicking and screaming GOP finally figured that to keep doing political business the old way is a prescription for oblivion. The GOP finally got something right with Steele.

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

While wiretapping and other dastardly deeds do not qualify Bush for any Boy Scout merit badges, it does not mean that he should be put on trial because he mainly went after terrorists, as in the I'm gonna-get-you-before-you-get-me-succa type.

For a real history of rogues, try Hitler, who x-ed himself out before anyone else could, Stalin, who nature x-ed out, or Ceaucescu, who was x-ed out before either he or nature could intervene.

Besides, we have elected some chief executives who weren't exactly choirboys in their own right. Andrew Johnson kept reversing his views on slavery and Reconstruction after the Civil War, FDR turned a blind eye while Hitler tried to trounce out European Jewry and Clinton created banking regulations that some say caused the near collapse of our economy.

President Barack Obama and Attorney General designate Eric Holder are absolutely right when they emphatically said that they would not prosecute any Bush officials for authorizing dubious wiretapping, torture, and other possible illegal acts that trampled on civil liberties. That would bog the Obama administration down in an all consuming ultimately no win factional fight with Congressional Republicans, the courts -- especially the Supreme Court which virtually upheld Bush provisions that condoned torture-- and legions of holdover Bush Justice Department and civil rights division-appointed attorneys. There were few squeals from Congressional leaders at Bush's borderline legal and constitutionally dubious executive orders that permitted the long checklist of civil liberties abuses, warrantless wiretaps of U.S. citizens, being one of the more glaring.

But there's another reason that Obama won't touch the Bush crew for their dirty deeds. They weren't the only ones that winked and nodded at the abuses. A lot of Democrats did too. The Democratic-controlled Congress passed the "Protect America Act." This put the Congressional stamp of approval on what Bush did and actually expanded his powers to snoop. The targets weren't just foreign terror suspects and known operatives but American citizens. It's not a simple case of let bygones be bygones especially when the bygones involve a lot of Democrats.

I'm with Jonathan on the notion that missteps on the part of the Bush administration, while attempting to fight a war, should not be tried in court.

We are too partisan a democracy to allow such a precedent. Does anyone believe that Rush Limbaugh couldn't use such an approach to ensnare liberals in a few years, with perhaps even greater venom and skill?

Obama is setting the right tone, so far, in moving us beyond partisan expediency. Those who thirst for vengeance need to meditate on forgiveness, lest they commit "domestic war crimes" of their own.

The hot issue--besides the various plans for administering electroshock to our flat lined economy--is whether to try former members of the Bush administration for war crimes and violations of the Constitution. The loud left wants JUSTICE. Bush and Cheney should be tried for illegal wiretaps, intrusions on our privacy, authorizing torture and lying to the American people. Not to bring them to trial, they argue, would send a message both to foreign governments and to future domestic politicians that we are not seriously committed to law and that the president is above the law.

While, I'm both a liberal and not a fan of the Bush Cheney regime, and while I like the idea of justice (okay, revenge) abstractly, the cost to our nation is too great. I do not want to criminalize policy differences. I do not like the tradition in much of the Third World of immediately indicting the previous government for all kinds of crime--real and trumped up.

One of the truly wonderful things about our nation is the peaceful transfer of power from one president to another. This would, I fear, be put in jeopardy if we began prosecuting former officials over official duties. I am fine prosecuting economic crimes and corruption. If you can prove the Cheney and Halliburton relationship went beyond suspect to corrupt, fine--put him on trial and put him away. But war crimes are a more difficult issue.

In WWII our soldiers were ordered, on the highest authority, not to take prisoners on D-Day. They couldn't get on with invasion if they had to round up and take care of POWS. Should the soldiers have been prosecuted or Eisenhower or the President? The bombing of civilian areas is a war crime. Firebombing Dresden and the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were potentially war crimes.

Presidents and Prime ministers lie and deceive all the time. Churchill covered up having broken the German Enigma Code and let Coventry be bombed without giving warning. Eisenhower lied about not knowing about our U-2 spy missions over the USSR. If asked the day before the abortive invasion of Cuba, I'm confident that JFK would have lied to the American people.

Courts are not the place to redress these "crimes." This is the job of the ballot box.

©2009 Jonathan Dobrer
www.Dobrer.org

Jonathan touches in his post on a core matter of religion -- whether a person believes that her faith is the one true faith or whether it is one powerful expression out of many others that have arisen out of our vast shared human experience. It's the seed from which either intolerance or tolerance grows.

Roman Catholocism, in the wake of Vatican II, has been perhaps the most inclusive form of the major religions -- along with possibly Reform Judaism, although the latter is less interested in winning new converts. John Paul took special care to embrace Jews and Muslims, in the spirit of Mother Theresa, who said her job was less to turn a Hindu into a Christian than to turn a Hindu into a better Hindu. Benedict is more "Pope Classic," willing to draw battle lines between religions.

My evangelical friends always remind me that one can do so in a civil and honest manner intended to spur healthy debate; but I don't think such battle lines have been drawn in history without zealots stomping all over them soon enough.

Pope Benedict XVI just ended the excommunication of the late rebel Cardinal Marcel LeFebvre and the four bishops he illegally consecrated. The pope is trying to reconcile a schism in the church, but instead, he has sown the whirlwind. These non complying clergy are part of a group called the Society of Saint Pius X, and they venerate the most conservative and theologically narrow pope of the 20th century--a pope who fought against reconciliation, relations and even respect of other faiths--both Christian and Jewish.

While LeFebvre and these four now nearly forgiven bishops are portrayed as simply being conservative, that does not cover just how harmful they are or how painful this outreach to them is--particularly to the Jewish World. The Society of Saint Pius X rejects the findings and teaching of Vatican II, which sought respect for the Jewish community and lifted the ancient charge of deicide and the epithet of Jews as Christ-killers. It sought peace, mutual respect and dialogue with other faiths. It called Judaism "our older brother."

Now with this attempt to normalize or reconcile with those who reject Vatican II, I have to say, "Rome, we have a problem." One of the bishops is not just resistant to dialogue or mutual respect. He is a Holocaust denier. He says that "only" 200,000 or 300,000 Jews died in the Shoah and none was gassed. The gas chambers and the 6 million are, for him, an historic lie and a fraud.

The price of drawing such a person back into the fold of the Roman Catholic Church is higher than Benedict might have calculated. This is not about just allowing priests to face the altar while consecrating the Host, nor about reciting the Mass more frequently in Latin. It is about the classic prayer for the conversion of the Jews and the normalization of a rebellious sect that shows not only no respect for Jews and Protestants but actual and active disdain.

Denying the Holocaust is not a matter of opinion or something about which reasonable people may disagree. To deny what has been seen, found, filmed and reported by both survivors and liberators is perverse and hateful. The Catholics have a very useful, and in this case tragically appropriate term applicable to Bishop Williamson: "Invincible ignorance." He will not look, not see and not learn. His eyes are blind and his heart has hardened. He has no place among the faithful and decent Roman Catholics who make up the vast majority of the Church.

His re-communion with the Church sends a message to other priests and people; it legitimizes historic anti-Semitism and normalizes the aberrant. It is backtracking on at least 48 years of dialogue and reconciliation. It wounds the body of the Church and exacts a very high price for only the illusion of healing.

Spokesmen for the Vatican assure the world that this is not a full embrace of these people. It is only a first step, the meeting of a precondition set by the Society of Saint Pius X for them to talk. Talk about what? They are organized around the rejection of Vatican II and its attendant encyclicals. They reject the teachings of the Church, the words and spirit of both Popes John XXIII and John Paul II.

Of course schisms are bad, and these outlaws forming their own ecclesiastical orders, rites and rituals could be a threat. Politically, I understand wanting to heal the body. But what about the soul? Pope Benedict XVI wants peace for his earthly church but he might want to read Matthew 16:26 and wonder about what it profits him to gain in this world but put the soul of his church in peril.
©2009 Jonathan Dobrer
www.Dobrer.org

Congressional Republicans are threatening their first act of opposition to the new president, ironically over his first major effort to be bipartisan -- the fiscal stimulus bill.

Some observers say that both parties in Congress have welcomed the new administration with a less than bipartisan spirit. But I'll hold Obama accountable on this one anyway. It's the job of a leader to persuade, and he's one of the most persuasive characters around. if he can't do it here, it may not bode well for down the road.

My major point is that the bipartisanship counts more here than the actual dollars count. I'm not sure that a trillion dollars or so will make America a buzzing economic empire again; and even in recent decades of "prosperity," we haven't made much of a dent in our overall debt. So whatever we do, we need to do as a collective act of investment and sacrifice and commitment.

I've noted before that this economic crisis seems to require antidepressants more than bailouts. The economist-in-chief needs to bear that in mind, and find ways to have the loyal opposition reasonably loyal. Otherwise, finger-pointing over this economic depression will quickly become his Iraq, overshadowing his other ambitions for our nation.

It's not the economy, stupid, it's the bipartisanship. Obama's overarching campaign promise was collective hope for our whole nation. That's the one he has to fulfill, before he worries about stimulating banks or industries or workers.

Former congressman Mickey Edwards, author of "Reclaiming Conservatism," has a nice piece in the rival paper today, in which he addresses one key point related to my ongoing argument with John Galt.

On the premise that simple is best, many Republicans have reduced their operating philosophy to two essentials: First, government is bad (it's "the problem"); second, big government is the worst and small government is better (although because government itself is bad, it may be assumed that small government is only marginally preferable). This is all errant nonsense. It is wrong in every conceivable way and violative of the Constitution, American exceptionalism, freedom, conservatism, Reaganism and common sense.

In America, government is ... us. What is "exceptional" about America is the depth of its commitment to the principle of self-government; we elect the government, we replace it or its members when they displease us, and by our threats or support, we help steer what government does.

A shocker: The Constitution, which we love for the limits it places on government power, not only constrains government, it empowers it. Limited government is not no government. And limited government is not "small" government. Simply building roads, maintaining a military, operating courts, delivering the mail and doing other things specifically mandated by the Constitution for America's 300 million people make it impossible to keep government "small."....

Reagan, who spent 16 years in government, actually said this: "In the present crisis," referring specifically to the high taxes and high levels of federal spending that had marked the Carter administration, "government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem." He then went on to say: "Now, so there will be no misunderstanding, it's not my intention to do away with government. It is rather to make it work." Government, he said, "must provide opportunity." He was not rejecting government, he was calling -- as Barack Obama did Tuesday -- for better management of government, for wiser decisions.

This is the difference between ideological advocacy and holding public office: Having accepted partial responsibility for the nation's well-being, one assumes an obligation that goes beyond bumper-sticker slogans. Certitude is the enemy of wisdom, and in office, it is wisdom, not certitude, that is required.

John Galt and John McCain and various ostensibly fiscal conservative (or libertarian) propose often that we pay too much in taxes, and Sarah Palin mocks how Joe Biden said that we it's patriotic to pay taxes to the "government which is us," the government that builds our infrastructure for commerce and education and innovation. Yet I don't hear plausible ideas from them regarding what they're willing to pay for and what they're willing to do to get our expenses and our debt under control. I just hear a sense of "entitlement" -- usually a world to describe liberals, right? -- regarding what they "should" have.

Many people, once they're in the real world, look at the messes our governments cause, and start complaining about how they'd rather keep their money that they "earned" with their "hard work." But given the new global economy and the outsourcing to India and elsewhere, where people sleep humbly on tiny beds held together by twine and can never hope to own a second car, I think that "what I deserve" is an obsolete concept. Someone else would happily do what you're doing... for much less money than what you make at the moment.

Couldn't we start by being a little more grateful for what we have within this society, and a little less testy about what more we "should" have? While we're complaining about what we "should" have, someone overseas is underbidding us for the global economy's services.

Mickey Edwards' concerns remind us that it's not enough for the fiscal conservatives of this nation to take shots at Obama. They have to decide what the Republican party will do, besides complain, as a minority party now and as a majority party later. And that means that there will be a hard battle within the GOP over how it views responsible government action.

President Barack Obama needs to take a deep breath, and then a long look in the mirror, and repeat to himself that Rush Limbaugh can't hurt me, and anything that I try to do with Congress. Limbaugh has fast become a fringe, self-marginalized non entity. He's got as much chance to wreck Obama's legislative agenda as disgraced Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich, maybe even less. The only person who can change that is Obama. He came close to doing that when in what was either a calculated move, or an over exuberant slip he evoked in vain the name of conservative talk radio's numero uno gabber. Obama allegedly admonished wary GOP congresspersons to stop listening to Limbaugh if they want to get things done; meaning that Limbaugh is the stumbling block to them getting on board with his program.

There was absolutely no need to toss out Limbaugh's name to make that point. But by doing that, it did several things. It boosts his talk show ratings. It feeds his Grand Canyon size ego. It gives him a mountain of fodder to further puff himself up as "The I am somebody of talk radio"; the guy who can make or break politicians, including Obama. It puts a little steel in the spine of a handful of sore loser, obstructionist bent GOP house members and made them more likely to dig in their heels and take pot shots at anything Obama sends up to Capitol Hill. The most obvious is his economic stimulus plan.

This isn't the first time that a team Obama member created and then flailed at a GOP straw man target. When Republican rival John McCain plopped Sarah Palin on his ticket, a top Team Obama member reflexively hammered Palin. Obama quickly realized that was a colossal mistake. He did the smart thing and simply congratulated her on being picked as McCain's VP candidate and then went back to talking about the issues. He knew not to make her the issue.

A candidate who spends inordinate time and energy trying to tar their opponent runs the same risk as an attorney or a prosecutor in a courtroom. They avoid at all costs being seen as too overly aggressive with a witness. It's called witness badgering and that's even more dangerous when the witness is a middle or working class mother as Palin is. Bullying her can stir juror sympathy, even anger toward the attorney or the prosecutor, and it could cost them their case.

The Limbaugh quip is no different. He will use Obama's reference to his name to further whip up the pack to nit pick, blow up any and every alleged slip or misstep by Obama, and concoct even more outrageous tales of supposed deceit about the Obama administration. By making Limbaugh bigger than life in American politics, it gives steam to his inflammatory campaign of rumors, half truths, distortions, and flat out lies about Obama, liberals, and just about any other issue he bloviates on.

Obama doesn't need to create straw man Limbaugh for another reason. He already has kissed the ring of Republican leaders in Congress and made the requisite nod toward substantial tax cuts, and putting limits on spending, in his stimulus plan. This virtually assures him a near working majority in Congress behind the plan. This includes a significant number of Republicans. It also insures that he'll get politically painless approval of his cabinet appointees.

Limbaugh is irrelevant to any of this. The message to Obama, drop his name from your Rolodex.
Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His new book is How Obama Won (Middle Passage Press, January 2009).

Interesting stuff from an article here:

BARACK Obama is facing escalating death threats from white supremacists, according to senior law enforcement officers, prompting severe security restrictions in Washington DC.

The inauguration of the first black US president increases the danger, "particularly stemming from individuals on the extremist fringe of the white supremacist movement", says an intelligence assessment by the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI.

CNN reported that interest in racist ideology was so high right after the November 4 election that computer servers for two white supremacist websites crashed.

I've mulled this issue on and off. We've clearly made incredible gains as a society on the racial front; indeed, we as a nation have been better than other societies at working at getting better. That's why many conservatives argue passionately that it's high time for everyone to stop claiming that racism is still a problem in America.

But this article reminds us that we still have a ways to go, doesn't it? In a funny way, many Americans and many conservative Muslims overseas sound similar -- "Look, don't claim that the actions of a few nutcases taint the rest of us." Maybe, but that still means that both Americans and overseas Muslims have some work to do to take on the nutcases. A healthy society must always take responsibility for its extremes, rather than than getting defensive at a public relations level.

John says Wall Street is dropping under Obama because it's skeptical of bailouts.

But wasn't it Paulson, the patron saint of Wall Street, who pushed for the massive $700B bailout? And aren't most Wall Street people insisting that they're too big too fail? I can't find an example of Wall Street saying that government should stay out. John, the bailouts have happened because Wall Street begged for them, so that's why it's Wall Street's fault, not Obama's fault. Did AIG say, "No, no, please don't give us money?" Did other Wall Street firms say that is set a bad precedent? Not that I'm aware of.

I just got off the line with my financial advisor, who felt that the government did what it needed to do to prevent a complete Wall Street crash and new Depresssion. Maybe that's a real positive, I don't know. I actually am leery of the bailouts, myself. Still, your comment seems like a cynical shot at Obama, given how the free-market minds of Wall Street (and their Bush administration supporters) have been demanding our money.

I have thought of myself as more libertarian than liberal, John. But the era of government bailouts requested by industry and the era of foreign state-driven wealth funds that fund U.S. industry and government, mean that the line separating government and industry have been blurred.

I'll confess my biases here: If John McCain or Mitt Romney were inaugurated yesterday, accompanied by a 300 point drop in the Dow, I'd have snorted about how the markets have no faith in the new prez.

Instead, the Dow plummeted after Obama delivered a stirring message of renewal to a citizenry that is very optimistic about him, according to the polls -- so I'm a bit testy about how these Wall Street wimps greeted that message of renewal with another sell-off. Have they no ability to stop panicking at last? How much more rescue money, or Prozac, or both, do we need to stuff down their throat before they stop running in circles and screaming?

Well, the market never seems to make much sense, as can be seen by how Apple shares rose today even though the SEC is now poking its nose into its tent.

But after 9/11, it was seen as an act of patriotism for everyone, conservative or liberal, to avoid a rush to the exits once Wall Street re-opened. At some point, isn't there a need to bring that approach back, even just on inauguration day?

To me, the ongoing bleeding, so "confidence-related," is a reminder that too many investors are still driven by short-term speculative greed and not by the concept of prudent investment that is supposed to drive our society.

" ....a man whose father less than 60 years ago might not have been served at a local restaurant can now stand before you to take a most sacred oath." President Barack Obama's line in his inaugural speech was short, pointed and it passed too fast. But the sentiment and the message behind it were monumental. It was not solely a mild reminder that a half century ago a poor, hard core segregated and racially isolated, Washington D.C., mocked the nation's flowery claim to be the fount of democracy. Nor did Obama make the point to show just how far the nation has come to put him in the White House.
It was a painful reminder that segregation is still a fresh memory. Here's how fresh that memory is. A bare ten years before Obama was born, the ailing President of the National Association of Colored Women, Mary Church Terrell led a parade of pickets in front of several downtown Washington D.C. restaurants. Terrell demanded that the restaurants serve blacks. Terrell was hardly the first to pound on the Washington restaurant owners to drop the color barrier. The fight against the segregated restaurants had been going on for years. A federal district court finally struck down the restaurant ban in June, 1953.
The restaurant battle had much greater meaning for blacks and touched a much deeper primal anger than the other segregation fights. As rotten as the Jim Crow housing, schools, and hospitals that blacks were forced to attend, live in and get sick in, they had access to them. The restaurants were another matter. They were totally closed to blacks and this was the ultimate insult.

Blacks repeatedly hit a granite wall of resistance to opening them up. The greatest resistance of all came not just from restaurant owners but from the same Congress that Obama departed from. In the decade before the court ruling Congress could have easily passed legislation banning discrimination in public accommodations. It refused. The NAACP repeatedly demanded the ban. But Congress dominated by Southern Democrats and Northern Republican conservatives took the cue from the pithy remark by a former congressman in the 1930s who assured that Congress did not have to pass any law exempting restaurants from observing the segregation laws in force in the Capitol.
Things stayed that way until the court ruling in the 1950s. But the court ruling didn't totally mark a racial sea change in the Capitol. Schools, top city government jobs, hospitals, and housing were still segregated by law or practice. Even as the barriers of segregation fell in D.C. the 1960s, schools and housing stayed just as black, poor, and segregated as decades earlier. The private school that Obama's daughters now attend would have been slammed shut to them a few decades ago.

Obama made the Jim Crow restaurant reference in part to make the point that there has been undeniable racial progress and not just with his election. Washington D.C. is now a black run, black administered city. The suburbs surrounding the Capitol are loaded with high income black executives, white collar professionals, and businesspersons. Princes George, County is year in and year out ranked as the richest and most prestigious areas in the nation for blacks. But Washington D.C. is still a racial schizoid city. Poor blacks live in the same racial isolation that their grandparents, even their parents lived in.
While Congress has loosened the reins of control on D.C. during the past decade, it has also beaten back moves for full home rule. It was no accident that many of the black viewers that watched the inaugural speech at the gathering I attended gave head shakes and knowing nods at Obama's mention that his father (and he) couldn't have gotten past the doors at the Capitol's Jim Crow restaurants. Segregation was not just a faint memory of a distant and by gone past to many of them. It was a painful, living experience that can't or shouldn't be forgotten. Thankfully, Obama made sure of that.

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

What was up with that tepid poem that followed Obama's inaugural speech? I had to switch off the radio, at this line "A woman and her son wait for the bus." It was such a let down. I expected a rising tempo, a heartfelt celebration. And got people waiting for the bus and kids taking out pencils.

Eh.

I'm sure Elizabeth Alexander is a fine person and admirable poet, but still, was Maya Angelou busy?

I can still remember Clinton's inauguration in 1993 with crystal clarity, down to what I was seeing out of the car windshield as a hurtled down Interstate 60 in Moreno Valley headed for who knows where. It was memorable not because of anything anyone said, and not because of Clinton, but because of Angelou's "On the Pulse of the Morning" which was the most exciting part of the morning.

Wouldn't have Angelou's "Stilll I Rise" been perfect for today?

You may shoot me with your words,

You may cut me with your eyes,

You may kill me with your hatefulness,

But still, like air, I'll rise

One day I was flying from Oakland to Burbank, and next to me was a guy my age who looked both stiff and relaxed at the same time. He was dressed very neatly and groomed impeccably. He looked military.

Being a sometimes annoyingly chatty fellow, I struck up a brief conversation. The kind of standard, "Where are you headed? What do you do?" He told me that he was an airline pilot and was flying out of Burbank later. I asked if he lived in LA and he said no. He lived in Danville. I remarked that for a civilian like me, it seems strange to commute such a distance. He replied that he liked flying, gliding and Danville. That pretty much was the end of our chat till...

I am not a totally relaxed flyer. In fact, I avoided flying altogether for better than two decades. I have taken some of the great ocean liners of our time back and forth to Europe--and spent many wonderful days and nights on the original Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth. I also crossed numerous times on the France and the QE II.

18 years ago when planning our honeymoon my wife to be informed me that she was flying to Europe for our honeymoon and I could go along if I chose. That stark choice focused my mind and priorities sufficiently that I decided to get over it--not my fear but my boycott. I did join her on the 747 bound for Paris. Though, I was not comforted by the fact that Pavarotti was in first class. Keeping tons of aluminum in the air already seemed improbable if not impossible. Technically, however, I don't really have a fear of flying. I do have a fear of falling.

...So, as we were flying towards Burbank, and had begun our descent on a beautiful cloudless afternoon, we hit a big bump. It was a single shock and not the usual turbulence or bad weather. I had never felt anything like it. It was not terrifying, but I did glance at my seatmate, Sully, to see if he seemed startled or looked worried. He looked at me calmly and said simply, "Wake turbulence," and explained that we had flown through a trail of air disturbed by an earlier plane.

He wasn't worried, and therefore, I wasn't worried. He was a calm and assuring presence. He exuded a sense of competence and control. As all of America is saying today, "I'll fly anywhere at any time with Captain Sullenberger." He is so good that he doesn't even have to be flying the plane to make a nervous person feel at ease. That is good. It's better than good; it is truly "The Right Stuff."

©2009 Jonathan Dobrer
www.Dobrer.org

Nice piece today by Michiko Kakutani in the NYT, on how Obama is a product of the books that he studies and dissects and selectively ingests.

One salient passage:

Mr. Bush and many of his aides favored prescriptive books -- Natan Sharansky's "Case for Democracy," which pressed the case for promoting democracy around the world, say, or Eliot A. Cohen's "Supreme Command," which argued that political strategy should drive military strategy. Mr. Obama, on the other hand, has tended to look to non-ideological histories and philosophical works that address complex problems without any easy solutions, like Reinhold Niebuhr's writings, which emphasize the ambivalent nature of human beings and the dangers of willful innocence and infallibility.

Niebuhr. That wise and supple student of human frailty and divine hope. I suspect that well-meaning Christian politicians and commentators and voters in America would have had a far more beneficial impact on the nation they love if they packed more Niebuhr and less Hannity.

Looking back on President's Bush's lost promise amidst his attempts at "moral certainty," I think of a line by the Trappist monk Thomas Merton:

"The fruitfulness of our life depends in large measure on our ability to doubt our own words and to question the value of our own work. The man who completely trusts his own estimate of himself is doomed to sterility . . . If we believe ourselves in part, we may be right about ourselves. If we are completely taken in by our own disguise, we cannot help but be wrong."

Yet if Christians took their own theology seriously, with its central emphasis on a human fallenness that cannot be conquered by human power, it would be impossible for them to function other than as Merton proposes.

Why does the Christian church fall so short?

For one thing, moral relativism and distrust of "absolute truth" have become the prevailing viewpoint among leading academicians and authorities. In such a view, "evil" becomes a quaint or small-minded concept. Christians rise up to say that, yes, 9/11 is evil, and Saddam's tyranny is evil, and that no amount of philosophizing can get us away from the fact that evil is in our world and must be combatted.

The problem is that the New Testament revelation isn't merely that evil exists; it teaches that evil exists in all of us, and that we cannot therefore go marching off as perfectly (or even largely) decent Crusaders against evil. The battle begins with the evil in ourselves, not in Baghdad.

Yet it is easier, and more exhilarating, to rail against the evil in others, and to cheer on our soldiers as saints as they go off to blow those evildoers up.

Muslims face a similar dilemma. Some believe jihad, or holy struggle, involves a war against an evil outside world, and the bomb-throwers take it to an extreme level; but many understand jihad as a holy struggle within one's own soul, a war between the selfish and noble parts of our soul.

But demagogues in any part of the world can harness crusades and jihads for their own ends, and the result is a civil religion that ignores a religion's own heart in order to stoke the angrier sparks within its followers' hearts.

The question is, what can theologians, pastors and others do to pull their flocks away from the siren songs of jingoistic civll religions that are imposters of the real thing? I think Rick Warren is someone attempting to do his part, even as you may disagree with some of his positions as he prepares for tomorrow's inaugural prayer.

Let's say that a Vietnamese baby, one Quang Nguyen, was born in Hawaii to a Vietnamese and a French parent. He is bright and articulate and the apple of both his parents' eyes.

Along the way, Quang's mother and father divorce. She wants to go to the Louve, and he wants to live in Phnom Penh. (It doesn't really matter where for the purpose of this piece.) Even though this hurts young Quang, he still soldiers on. One day in school, he writes an essay about how he wants to one day become the President of the United States. The teacher likes it so much she staples it to the bulletin board.

Quang eats well and exercises, so he grows into a tall, strapping man with a bobbing Adams apple and a gift for oration that is beyond measure. He runs for the County Assessor's seat and wins. Then he runs for the Senate and wins that one, too.

Remembering his boyhood essay and lifelong dream, he takes his smile and his gift for oration and runs for President and nails that one as well. The day that all communities are happy for all the Quang Nguyen's, the Jose Rodriguez's, the Aaron Goldberg's and the Barack Obama's of the world is the day that Dr. King's dream will bear light.

Tomorrow's coronation is going to be the most expensive presidential fete in the history of our great nation.

People bashed Bush in 2004 for spending 40 million dollars on his inauguration because we were in a war. Four years later, Obama comes along to dole out 50 million dollars from the taxpayer's coffers when we are still in the same war with a shrunken economy added on while nary a peep is heard from any quarter.

The guy's got to have Teflon ™ circulating through his veins.

Good questions here from John Galt. I'd note that bin Laden's smirking vow to bankrupt us came more than a year into the Iraq war, once it was obvious to all that things didn't go as "planned."

If the war had been carried out as quickly, cheaply, and efficiently as Rumsfeld-Cheney had claimed, bin Laden surely would have moved on to find something else to crow about. But because it became a costly quagmire that Cheney-Rumsfeld claimed was a central front in the war on terror, bin Laden could claim that the jihadist movement would ultimately bankrupt us, at least in part because we would fight hard rather than fight smart.

So when I write that the President has "been Osama's best friend, wasting American resources in a futile effort to get the world to bend to our will," I'm saying that he got reckless in the wake of 9/11, despite his honorable intentions. I believe, from my experiences with the Muslim world, that more jihadist recruits were created via the Iraq war than would have been the case had we focused on careful police work in Afghanistan.

Isn't it astounding that Bush is leaving in one day, without having found bin Laden, dead or alive, after his supporters mocked Clinton after 9/11 for not catching bin Laden? I'd say some of the Iraq money should have been spent on finding him, and the rest should have gone to lowering our deficit, in order to help keep your taxes low.

Bruce Robbins, a Jewish scholar at Columbia University, argues here that the U.S. should cut off aid to Israel until it shows greater concern for innocents and for UN law.

I think it's another example of how the American Jewish voice regarding Israel, far from monolithic, increasingly can be seen as a fascinating dialogue. We have that conversation here on this very blog frequently, in the form of our own Jonathan D. and Gail-Tzipporah.

What an amazing confluence of events. We celebrate the life of Dr. Martin Luther King just as we take a great step towards realizing his dream. His dream is not yet a reality. There is still racism, sexism, classism and homophobia. We have not arrived at the day when all will be judged by the content of our character. We have not arrived at the Promised Land, but we are arriving. We have not overcome, but we are overcoming. His dream has become finally our dream.

Winston Churchill said in WWII after a victory in the battle of El Alamein, "Now is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning."

Well, we are in better shape than Great Britain was. While this is not the end of racism, it is the beginning of the end. We are on a mountaintop and can see the Promised Land. Today we are all higher on the mountain than we were 40 years ago, and the Promised Land is nearer. Unlike so many dreams, it has not receded as we have approached.

One of the great lessons of today is that we mustn't be afraid of dreaming, nor may we let the naysayers kill our hopes. During the civil rights era, there were many naysayers and they were not just the people who knowingly wanted to stop civil rights. The vast majority of the naysayers were not bigots or haters. They were, instead, practical people, people who could read the room and who knew the politics. They were people who didn't say, "No never." They said, "Not now. The time is not right. You're asking for too much too soon. Wait. Use caution."

If the perfect is the enemy of the good and the possible, the "right time" thinking that looks for the perfect window of opportunity is often the enemy of the right thing. As the sage Hillel asked rhetorically, "If not now, when?"

Martin Luther King was told that the people weren't ready for full equality. He was told that demonstrations would only slow down civil rights and that the backlash would hurt his cause. These often well-meaning people did not understand that it wasn't his cause; it was their cause too. As Americans, it was our cause.

I believe it is always the right time to do the right thing. I understand that we may not always do the right thing--that caution and fear, that common wisdom and inertia can stop us.

If you look at the odds and carefully reason your chances of succeeding, I can promise you, you will accomplish nothing. Our history, religious and secular, is filled with improbability--from anyone even remembering an obscure carpenter from the fringes of the mighty Roman Empire, to the unlikely survival of the tribe from which he came. No one would have given Luther much of a chance of surviving his "Here I stand; I can do no other" and nailing his thesis on the gates of the cathedral. No one seems to have thought much about the chances of the great, if imperfect, experiment in democracy that is America.

I'm not at all sure I would have liked the odds on Abraham Lincoln being either elected or being remembered as great. He was an unlikely candidate with an unlovely appearance, a stranger voice and wholly without the conventional theology of this nation. Rosa Parks sitting down and not moving to the back of the bus by tradition, law or angry threats, was not the odds-on favorite for bringing down segregation by simply doing the right thing. The smart money was on Lester Maddox, George Wallace and Bull Connor.

Nor was the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King the natural choice to stand up against first segregation, then classism and finally the war in Vietnam. A friend of mine who went to school with him admits ruefully that he did not see King's greatness of either talent or spirit in their post-graduate studies together. Dr. King was not born great; he became great by doing with passion what he believed, deep in his heart, was the right thing. Yes, he had the ability, but neither brains nor talent would have availed him or our nation, had he lacked the courage and integrity to step forward and put his life on the line.

As I have written and spoken about this past election in so many venues--and so many times, I have had a lot of positive responses and kudos. Most of the feedback has been kind, even from people who made different judgments from mine. However, I have also received hate mail that has been racist, personal, anti-Semitic and bordering on threatening. I have been told to leave the country and go back to where I belong. I have been told that I hate America and that real America hates me. I have been called a fool and a dupe. People have promised me that Obama is a Muslim, an Arab, an Al Qaeda agent and, of course, not a real American. They have offered proof that he was born in Kenya and that his Hawaiian birth certificate is a forgery. They tend not to respond when I point out the thus amazing prescience of this grand conspiracy to announce the birth of Barack Hussein Obama II on August 4, 1961 and print it in The Honolulu Advertiser on August 13, 1961. Were they thinking that clearly in planting this sleeper cell way back then, they would surely have excised his middle name, Hussein.

Talk about an unlikely candidate. The odds against Barack Hussein Obama were incalculable. Effectively, he is the child of a single white mother and absent African father, raised in lower middle class surroundings, getting to Columbia, Harvard, the Senate and the presidency. Well, there was no smart money on him.

Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech was two Augusts in the future at the time of Obama's birth. I'm not sure that even Dr. King could have foreseen this day, this mountaintop and the new hopes and dreams we share for our nation and the world.

It is, judging by my mail, a long way still to the Promised Land but I swear to you I can see it and smell its sweet fragrance. Trials and tears, thorns and obstacles still block the way, but I know it is not illusion or delusion. That land is there within the wide horizon of our finest hopes.
©2009 Jonathan Dobrer
www.Dobrer.org

The question isn't whether Barack Obama fulfilled Martin Luther King's mission but whether the black community is willing to fulfill its mission to itself. Black people aren't the only ones to have suffered discrimination, but they are one of the few communities to consider mainly themselves and act as their own worst enemies.

Consider that 34% of black males do not finish high school, that 60% of all black men who did drop out have been in jail by the time they reach 30, the black homicide rate and the number of young black men in gangs. These were all conscious choices made by (hopefully) conscious individuals and cannot be blamed on anyone but themselves.

In addition, the black community also hurts its standing among other cultures when its leaders cry discrimination but only as it relates to them. A while back, some African-American actors were complaining about the paucity of good, non-stereotypical roles for blacks, but they failed to include other minorities as well, like Asians. One only has to turn to the news (or is it the comics?) to find Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton yammering away about their civil rights while trouncing over those of others.

Most ethnics have to work twice as hard and run twice as fast as others, but that doesn't mean that they shouldn't at least run. If there can be an Oprah Winfrey, a Bill Cosby, a Condoleeza Rice and a Barack Obama, then there can be others, too and until African-Americans realize this along with the fact that we are all in this together, and that true rights are earned rather than demanded, then all the hopes, dreams and aspirations of the slain civil rights leader are going to be for naught.

The dream of Martin Luther King is not yet realized. We do not live in that Promised Land he glimpsed from the mountaintop. What he saw and foresaw with such clarity and passion so many years ago, I couldn't see from where I stood as a young white liberal in the civil rights movement.

I used to perform and emcee fundraisers for Congress of Racial Equality (and briefly for SNCC). I remember being introduced to We Shall Overcome by the late folksinger Odetta. I listened, sang along, and I was moved. But I didn't truly believe that we would overcome sufficiently to elect an African-American president in my lifetime.

We are not yet in a post-racial era. There is still ignorance and prejudice; there is still racism. So, yes, we have not arrived but are arriving. We have not overcome but are overcoming. The dream is not realized, but now too, I finally do believe, deep in my heart, I do believe that we shall overcome some day. I believe that America now stands on that mountaintop with Dr. King and we can see that Promised Land. That dream, his dream, is now our dream. It is up to us to work to make it a reality.
©2009 Jonathan Dobrer
www.Dobrer.org

I don't like piling on President Bush, and I do think he's a decent enough guy. But c'mon, Gail-Tz, I think he couldn't have caused much worse damage to us if he actually tried. He's been Osama's best friend, wasting American resources in a futile effort to get the world to bend to our will. Osama in 2004 said he wanted to bankrupt us the way his movement bankrupted the Soviet Union, and you implicitly agree that he damn near did it, if not for the "orchestrated bailouts" that he performed. I'm not ready to credit The Decider for bailing us out of a mess that he presided over for eight years, while he kept telling us just to stay the course.

Some conservative and libertarian pundits, white and black and other, claim that Obama's inauguration proves we are in a post-racial America. But they would have claimed that if McCain won too.

The inauguration isn't the full realization of Martin Luther King's dream, but it's a foretaste of the fully realized dream. Everyone's worst friend Ann Coulter railed the other day about how people such as the Obamas act like victims by emphasizing their blackness and not their whiteness; what irked me was how a relatively sane local radio host agreed with her -- as if Obama could easily pass himself off as white.

Yes, the elephant is still in the room, but it doesn't take up as much space as it did before. It's a nice step forward, but let's keep moving.

Most people have a good side. The Phantom of the Opera had a good musical ear, Saddam Hussein had choice taste in real estate and Bonnie Parker was an exemplary girlfriend to Clyde Barrows.

So it stands to reason that George W. Bush has his good side, too and hopefully, history will be kinder to him than many of his critics have. Speaking as that .0001%, which is a mere blip across the computer screen, Bush has done some pretty meritorious deeds as well.

He orchestrated bailouts of the auto and banking industries that saved our economy from near ruin while Congress snoozed on. He handled Korea well and did not make nicety-nice to the Palestinians, either. It doesn't matter that Americans are one of the most hated people on the planet. Perhaps people should hate us a little more. Then we wouldn;t have the kind of immigration problems that we do.

On a personal level, he never used the Oval Office for any trysts or romantic rendezvous and no one will ever see a picture of him canoodling with another woman because there aren't any, and he always maintained his composure or dignity during some pretty harsh and unkind treatment. He may not have been perfect, but he certainly wasn't the scourge of the universe, either.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson

The unchallenged article of faith is that the election of President Barack Obama fulfills Martin Luther King Jr.'s dream that the content of character should trump skin color. King uttered the words in his March on Washington speech in 1963. We'll hear that said time and again in the march up to the King national holiday January 19 and Obama's inauguration the next day.

Obama's election did show that millions of whites could strap racial blinders around their eyes and punch the ticket for an African-American for the world's most powerful political post. King would almost certainly glow with approval at that. But there are a couple of troubling caveats that mar America's great racial leap forward. Obama won in large part because he did what no other Democratic presidential candidate did, and that includes Bill Clinton. He turned his presidential campaign into a virtual holy crusade by African-Americans voters to get him in the White House. The staggering 96 percent of the black vote he got made the crucial difference in the key Democratic primaries and later in nailing down the victory over Republican rival John McCain in the must win states of Ohio and Pennsylvania.

At the same time, Obama's allure to white college educated young, business and professionals was overstated. McCain got 53 percent of their vote. He trounced Obama among North and South rural, and blue collar whites. Obama won in only 44 counties in the Appalachian belt, a stretch of more than 400 counties from New York to Mississippi. Overall, he got less than a third of Southern white votes. The racial fault lines are still tightly drawn within a wide segment of the electorate.

A mid-September 2008 survey also found that a significant percentage of whites who said they'd vote for Obama also said that blacks were more crime prone and less industrious than whites. There were several ways to look at this seeming racial paradox. One is that these Obama backers were so fed up with Bush policies and a battered economy that Obama offered a change and a lifeline. Another was that he presented a race neutral soothing departure from the perceived race baiting antics of Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton. And yet another was that he simply was sufficiently racially ambiguous enough not to pose any real racial threat.

In other words, he was seen as a racial exception. That's the penchant for some whites to make artificial distinctions between supposedly good and bad blacks.
These explanations don't point to a profound and benign sea change in racial attitudes let alone tell why negative racial notions could still be rife among many white Obama supporters. The reports that Obama has received more taunts and physical threats than any other president-elect is another troubling indication that an untold number of Americans still can't stomach the thought of an African-American in the White House.

The hoisting of Obama to a rarified political or non racial pedestal is the exact opposite of what King had in mind. In that same March on Washington speech what's forgotten or deliberately distorted is that King talked much about the legacy of segregation, bigotry and discrimination that trapped thousands of poor blacks and that offered no easy resolution. Nearly a half century after King's I Have a Dream words the black poor are still just as tightly trapped in the grip of poverty and discrimination that King warned about.

On the eve of the King national holiday and Obama's inauguration, the Boston based research and economic justice advocacy group, United for a Fair Economy, released its sixth annual King Day report. It found that the gaping disparities in income, wealth, employment, quality and availability of housing, decent schools, and health care between blacks, minorities and whites has grown even wider. Countless government reports and studies, and the National Urban League's 2007 State of Black America report also found that discrimination and poverty are still major barriers for millions. And it's not just the black poor that bear the brunt of discrimination. President Bush even wondered out loud recently why there were so few black reporters covering his press conferences.

Obama has publicly bristled at the notion that the civil rights movement is outdated, or worse that he somehow supplants the ongoing work of civil rights leaders. He has repeatedly praised past civil rights leaders for their heroic battle against racial injustice.
It was not simply showy campaign symbolism when Obama pegged his Democratic presidential nomination acceptance speech to the 45th anniversary of the March on Washington last August. This was a fitting tribute to the civil rights movement that challenged the nation to make King's dream of justice and equality a reality. Obama faced that challenge as a community organizer, civil rights attorney, during his stints in the Illinois legislature and in the Senate. He faces that same challenge in the White House. There's still much to overcome.

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

Rob, For some reason, the system would not let me sign in, so here is my response to your response to my last piece:

American politicians criticize Israel all the time. And in terms of Israelis criticizing their own government, Zubin Mehta, the conductor of the Israel Philharmonic, summed it up best when he once allegedly said, "I have 32 musicians and 33 opinions on how a piece should be played."

Is Sam Zell trying to destroy capitalism or does he just not understand? I mean when I studied economics I learned about supply and demand and "the market." Okay, I did study all this in the 60s and my memories may be clouded by time or second hand dope smoke, but I'm pretty sure you're supposed to lower the price to raise the demand. Sam and his minions, having squandered millions of dollars buying an empire they don't either love or understand, have presented Los Angeles with The Amazing Shrinking L.A. Times. He now combines this model of failure with raising the newsstand price by 50%!

Once upon a time you could hurt yourself picking up even the daily paper but today in both form and substance the LATs has become lightweight. Sections come, go, get reformatted and then put out of existence. Some days the Business section is one page. Even sports can shrink to a single broad sheet. Award winning writers with distinguished careers, are bought out, forced out or cut back till they fade away. Promising young talent is attracted and then let go. Editors and publishers have the life expectancy of Second Lieutenants on amphibious landings.

Now add to this abundant absence of judgment a complete absence of decency. Today, Monday January 12, we read in LA Observed that Al Martinez, Pulitzer Prize winning writer, long-times columnist and mainstay for the demographic that still reads the paper is losing his column. We do not read a complaint in Al's column today about the Times. We read instead about his daughter's fight with cancer. We are treated to his humanity, his thought provoking and tear producing handling life, death, fear, hope and beauty. In other words, we get a real Al Martinez column.

Does anyone in the shrinking Zell Empire have either a heart or a brain? Does anyone have any understanding of either newspapers or humanity? These are, I'm afraid, rhetorical questions. We know the answers.
www.Dobrer.org

I agree with this Brit-Pakistani officer who says that the use of the term Paki need not be seen as a huge affront.

Gail-Tz says that Nicholas Kristof wouldn't advocate tough love against Israel if he lived there. Let me disagree.

It takes Jewish commentators such as Jon Stewart to point out the obvious:
1. American politicians are afraid of making even the slightest criticism of Israel.
2. There is far more criticism of Israeli policy among Israelis than among Americans.

Read the pages of Haaretz or all kinds of other Israeli publications, and you'll see Israelis decrying the arrogance of their government and their settlers. You'll see a balanced view of what's happening there. If the U.S. had the same political balance that Israel has, rather than the overprotectiveness that we see, the U.S. would have more political credibility than we currently have, with partners and rivals alike.

There is one thing that I am thankful for through all this and that is that Obama has no plans to name New York Times columnist, Nicholas D. Kristof, as his foreign policy advisor. Because then we'd all be in trouble.

Take his editorial in the 1/11/09 opinion section of this paper, "Show Tough Love Towards Israel" where he outlines how the Obama administration should shore up the tough love towards Israel's in the aftermath of the government's latest retaliation against Hamas. Kristof opines:

"So what could Israel reasonably have done? Bombing the tunnels through which Gazans smuggle weapons would have been a proportionate response."

But he is forgetting one thing. What about all the bombs and rockets that Hamas has already extradited from the tunnels? After all, these tunnels are not like refrigerators with cake in them where people go back for just one more taste. These are weapons that have probably been stashed away within their homes and businesses.

In another section, he quotes Sari Bashi, the director of Gisha, an Israeli human rights group that monitors Gaza issues.

"The trauma that 1.5 million people have been undergoing in Gaza," said Bashi, "is going to have long-term effects for our ability to live together"

If Hamas would quit launching rockets into Israel then hiding amongst the civilians, then perhaps less people would be traumatized.

And last but not least he rests the judgment of Israel's actions in the hands of the six year-old nephew of (an apparently Palestinian) friend of his who works for an Israeli organization when the boy witnesses another bomb exploding, becomes frightened then brightens up and says, "Maybe the Qassam Bridges will now fire rockets at the Israelis."

Three guesses what he's been hearing at home.

"Let's show tough love to Israel," opines Nicholas D. Kristol. Maybe he would change his tune if he were living there.

We spend so much time these days ruing our economic "turmoil." Is it really so bad, or is it just another chance for us to point fingers at others for our inability to buy a newer car?

Yet my day was ruined -- or perhaps redeemed, in a less selfish sense -- when I stumbled across this picture of a child amidst a Sudanese famine 15 years ago.

Here's what porn icons Larry Flynt and Joe Francis should do if they're not just jerking (pun intended) us around when they demanded a bailout. Hire Ann Coulter to do the heavy Washington lifting for them. Coulter has a special genius for spewing obscenities that some charitably pass off as political and social commentary. The greater the obscenities that drip from her lips the more the talk show gabbers and the politicos eat it up. Coulter has shown time and time again that masquerading sex as informed opinion like porn sells and sells big.

That's why anyone who says that the porn industry is not a legitimate political business is off their rockers especially when we know that more than one senator, congressperson, governor, and even a supreme court justice has gotten popped playing grab butt in the men's john or for stockpiling X rated porn rags and peep videos. So Flynt and Francis aren't off base in asking for a bailout, or in asking Coulter to be their pitch queen for it.

After all, if Congress can ladle out obscene billons in taxpayer dollars to the pack of Wall Street scam artists than why not give the dough to those who make their living dealing in obscenity. One bought and paid for obscenity is as good as another.

Well with two hot topics--Ann Coulter and porn, the greatest challenge is not to return to Junior High School humor. This is a challenge that I may not be up to (see it starts already).

Yes, I agree that Larry Flynt is just seeking publicity and fluffing up his ego. He does not expect our government to support the porn industry any more than they already do in their private/public time. A recent survey indicates that 1/3 of all business computer use is porn. No reason to believe that our government workers are any more honest. And this is an honesty issue. Workers surfing porn sites are stealing from all of us.

Porn is one of the few industries in fact to make money on the Net. The other is, what we used to call gambling, but is now gaming. I guess porn depicts various non-traditional groups, well, gamboling, in odd combinations.

People have, from the beginning of time tried to limit sexual content and restrict both sex and love--often understanding marital sex as for procreation. This is a real conundrum (insert easy pun), religions want to decrease sexual activity and increase procreation to grow the tribe.

I do not think the porn industry is fizzling. The internet didn't kill porn any more than sexual freedom killed prostitution. There is almost no effective way to talk, bribe and threaten, mostly men, from voyeurism. I write almost no way.

The one way to stifle and staunch the male libido is to show pictures of Ann Coulter.

©2009 Jonathan Dobrer
www.Dobrer.org

Maybe Larry Flynt and Joe Francis are joking, but they must be living in a suspended state of reality if they expect a $5 billion dollar bail out from Congress. Never mind that many of our elected officials are regulars or that Uncle Sam just had an episode with the banks and the automakers. Still, if they don't want to be caught with their pants down (The only pun that this piece will contain.), then they'd better not give in. (Okay, one more, but I promise that that is the last.)

Perhaps I'm the one living in my own suspended state, but I am praying for the day their empires collapse. Then, all the actors and other self-proclaimed professionals could go into something where their moaning and groaning skills would come in handy like digging ditches on a government work project, emptying bedpans at a hospital or trying to be a union president.

In the time being, if Flynt and Francis are strapped for cash, they could always sell their holdings at an auction. Hopefully, some Mormons will show up along with Rick Warren and the ever-loving Ann Coulter.

Daily News staffer Kevin Modesti has reported that adult entertainment tycoons Joe Francis and Larry Flynt want $5 billion of taxpayer money for their industry, in order to stimulate it through hard times. There, I said it.

It seems preposterous if serious, and it's just a publicity grab for this Valley-based industry, right? Still, how exactly does GM claim it has more of a right to taxpayer money than Larry Flynt. One makes some obscenely bad products, while the other makes products that at least pass the obscenity test. It was GM that sold us the Hummer, and which now pledges to be chaster in its future designs if we can save it now.

AIG alone has rifled through our pockets to the tune of $145 billion, beyond all the other bailouts that have been occurring. If Joe Francis and our suffering local adult-entertainment workers want a mere $5 billion more, I'm not altogether sure they're any more unworthy of it than the other folks who are managing to profit off their own losses.

Dr. Richard Batista is a man who deserves the "Gift of Life" Award. In 2001, the New York surgeon donated his kidney to his ailing wife, Dawnell. Perhaps the surgery had an undocumented affect on her because she began cheating on him a few years later.

Now that they are getting divorced, Dr. Batista would either like his kidney back or 1.5 million dollars in compensation.

What do you think, dear readers? Should it be considered joint property to be amicably split or just a once in a lifetime gift?

There is a great war going on in the Middle East right now. We all know that. What not all may realize is that Israel is fighting on the Arab side. Israel is fighting a proxy war against Iran and its Shiite hegemonic ambitions.

Middle Easterners are great lovers of conspiracies and believe that nothing is as it appears. In this case they are right, but the conspiracy is hiding in plain sight. All you have to do is listen to the dogs that are not barking. The relative silence of the mainstream Arab regimes of Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States comes from their own self-interest. They know that Iran is seeking influence and control in their region and working actively to subvert their understandably unpopular governments.

America did the Iranians the great favor of getting rid of Saddam, who blocked their way into the heart of the Arab World. Now Iran has influence over the first major Arab state that is both Shiite majority and Shiite governed. Iran is projecting power and threat through Hezbollah into Lebanon, as well as through the minority Shiite government of Syria.

Iranian interests and power are projected into Southern Lebanon through its agent, the heavily armed Hezbollah. The cease-fire supposedly concluding the last Israeli Hezbollah war in Lebanon, Hezbollah used to rearm itself. Israel will not fall for this ploy again. Hezbollah is currently projecting Iranian power into Gaza and the West Bank by supporting and arming Hamas.

So, when Israel is fighting Hamas, it is acting in the interests of the Palestinian Authority (Fatah) and its president, Abbas. It is also acting in the interests of Egypt, which is appropriately fearful of a religiously fundamentalist and militant Hamas. Egypt understands that Hamas is an agent of Iran and will be a destabilizing influence. The entire Arab World knows this.

To understand this ongoing war as Sunni versus Shiite, while true, is an oversimplification. It is like understanding Northern Ireland as truly about religion and theology and forgetting the history of the Irish and English peoples. While the theological differences between Sunni and Shiite are significant, they are really only the uniforms worn by the combatants and not the true causes belli.

This is more about race and ethnicity than religion. The greater war now being fought is mostly between the Arab World and the Persian World. The Arabs long for a return to power and prestige--as under Saladin, the great restorer of Sunni Islam. The Arab World adopts Saladin as their own, even though he was half Kurdish and born in Tikrit (Yes, the birth place of Saddam).

Meanwhile, the Iranians remember their ancestors, the Persians, with their great history and culture and believe that real power is not in the Arab World, but the Muslim World, the Dar Al Islam. They believe they are the rightful inheritors of the legacy of the Prophet.

This is a real death match, and Israel is caught in between these contesting giants. Arabs remember Cordoba, Damascus and old Baghdad, and Iran remembers pre-Muslim kings and emperors and dreams of restoring their ancient empire.

Israel is not helpless in this struggle, but like England once did, plays a balance of power part--sometimes aiding one side and sometimes the other. Right now Israel remembers the relatively benign treatment of Jews from Saladin and his son. Israel knows that the enemy of my enemy can be my friend. Today, the Arab states are Israel's passive friends. Israel also remembers that Cyrus, King of Persia, is called a savior of Jews in Hebrew Scriptures. All is not hopeless and bleak. Just bleak.
©2009 Jonathan Dobrer
www.Dobrer.org

Ann Coulter is a genius. All she has to do is shake that stringy blonde hair, prance around in tight mini skirts, show her rail thin, pale white legs, spew foul mouthed expletives about her favorite whipping boy, liberals and the so-called liberal media and the tongues roar furiously. Coulter's payoff: off the chart book sales, jingling cash registers, insanely high program ratings, and a perpetual trot to TV talk shows.
Coulter displays her special genius again with a well leaked drib from her new liberal bash book Guilty about Michelle Obama. Her bash is not about Michelle's education, politics, or her marriage to the president-elect. No, she skewered for her dress, jewelry, hair, and her alleged poor woman's imitation of Jackie O. Unlike her ritual liberal hit pieces, Coulter knows that a Michelle hector will send the tongues hurtling into orbit. Why, because unlike hubby Barack, a lot of people plainly don't like Michelle. Her unfavorable ratings soared during the campaign when she uttered an unguarded moment, ill timed, intemperate, out of context, perceived insulting and disgruntled quip about God, country and the flag. Since her hubby's ratings are off the chart, what better straw woman for Coulter than the first lady to be.

Pure genius; genius because it will work. Her book will fly off the shelves. Coulter will dash around on the talk and lecture circuit, and the cash registers will again jingle off the hook.

Coulter, of course, will get the usual public pounding as a washed out loud mouthed right wing shill. She'll be privately and less charitably pounded as a mic and camera chasing "B", "C" and "W" word. And she'll love every call out of her name insult, slam, dig, knock, hit, and rap she gets. If she can get a Michelle camp retort it would be the icing on the cake. The cancellation of her scheduled appearance on the NBC Today Show to hype the book notwithstanding, Coulter sure knows how to work the crowd. That takes genius.

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

The Council on American-Islamic relations is protesting how a Muslim family was taken off a flight from Washington, DC to Orlando on New Year's Day.

I can appreciate, in principle, how CAIR is attempting to create an effective civil-liberties organization like the Anti-Defamation League. And I've defended them from critics who allege that CAIR is in cahoots with extremists.

But I wish that CAIR would, for the sake if its own Muslim constituents as well as their American homeland, spend a little less energy complaining about mistreatment and a little more energy fighting extremism within its religion. My brother and I once penned a piece in which we called for CAIR to consider spending some money assisting the victims of jihadist extremists.

I've argued since 9/11 that South Asians and Middle-Easterners should steel themselves for certain forms of "benign" racial profiling, as a necessary compromise in the greater effort to have a secure place in American society. Let's face it, if there's another 9/11, there will be widespread support for far more draconian measures than staring down Pakistanis in airports.

In the Name of God, the gripping 2007 Pakistani movie about the war between moderates and fundamentalists in Islam, depicted a pro-Western Pakistani immigrant who had been tortured unfairly; it resonated with Pakistani-Americans, many of whom have heard such stories second or third-hand. Those are the sorts of civil-liberties issues that CAIR should concern itself with. They don't need to sweat the smaller stuff.

I also don't feel that a religious person acts in good faith when he acts completely divorced from the extremists in his camp and expects not to be questioned in light of his extremists' actions.

All major religions are dominated by people who love to brag about how their one true faith is a wonderful brotherhood of believers who are the salt and light of the world. But when they come under criticism for some aspect of religious zealotry, they immediately throw their brothers under the bus, saying, "Oh, that's just a small minority that does that -- they don't represent our faith."

But you can't have it both ways. If you believe you're a brotherhood, you have to accept some responsibility for your wayward brothers' actions; you have to work to improve the situation (which includes locking up your brothers if they're a true menace) and have to accept that their bad behavior will make your life more complicated. That's real brotherhood, the kind that's not mere religious posturing. That's what the Muslim family traveling to Orlando, and CAIR, and various other people of various faiths need to remember.