August 2009 Archives

NASA satellite view of So Cal Fire

Well, it's our annual inferno season in Southern California. It comes regularly between draught, flood, earthquake and riot seasons. For the last four days the fire has grown without the help of any wind. Now the wind, the Devil's Wind, is pouring out of the desert and being funneled and concentrated through the Cajon Pass. It is a disaster. Tens of thousands of homes are in peril. People are being given mandatory evacuation notices. (Since last year, the law has changed and mandatory no longer means you have to go. The police and fire folks got really tired of yelling, begging and arresting homeowners who valued their property more than their lives.)

We react to fire as we do to rain. When it rains here, no one slows down on the freeways or tries to compensate at all for the change in the index of maximum adhesion. So, we crash. Here in Sunny Southern California, we just refuse to recognize reality--wet, dry or on fire. In some ways this is commendable in our nature. There are no real lessons here. Every place we can live comes with its own perils--war, tornado, hurricane. We just hang on, rebuild and try to tough it out. We can weep and cry, but we should not be surprised--either at events or our own resiliency.
©2009 Jonathan Dobrer
www.Dobrer.com

Earl's political analysis of our deteriorating situation in Afghanistan is insightful and correct. The political perils are indeed grave. But beyond that what of our strategic and military prospects? Is Obama's policy a brave but risky operation that could lead to a better world? Is this a profile in courage? Yes. Is it also a profile in folly? Probably.

These are complex and perilous times. There are, however, opportunities to unite in fighting the clearest threats and dangers. These are not the Taliban or the assorted tribes and ethnicities in Afghanistan. Al Qaeda and Iran are center stage for the foreseeable future.

©2009 Jonathan Dobrer
www.Dobrer.org

In August 2007 Senator Barack Obama fresh on the presidential campaign trail made an impassioned promise at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars to wage what he dubbed the war that has to be won. The war is the war in Afghanistan. He promised to quickly get out of Iraq, corral America's allies in a partnership to wipe out the terrorists and their mass destructive weapons, end corruption, hold free elections, and insure a stable government in Afghanistan.

Two years later and a shell out of $230 billion dollars, and more than 700 US dead, not one of these goals have been met. There's absolutely no guarantee that the request of $65 billion more which is an amount bigger than the amount budgeted for Iraq; and the 17,000 more troops which will bring troop deployment in Afghanistan close to the number in Iraq that Obama will be any closer to attaining the goal of zapping Al Qaeda and installing a corruption free, democratic government there. Military analysts, Pentagon insiders, and the Joints Chiefs, agree that to attain anything faintly close to Obama's goals in Afghanistan will take a long hard slog that will cost billions more and take thousands more American troops (with increased casualties).

From his early speeches and now administration war policy set in stone Obama is doggedly convinced that the Afghan war can be won, no matter the cost. And he's willing to stake the credibility of his administration on that, no matter the price. The price is high. A mid-August Washington Post-ABC News poll found that more Americans than ever say the war is pure folly. A majority of Obama's most fervent backers say the same. These are the supporters who Obama will need to beat back the mounting GOP counterinsurgency against him, make gains or at least cut potential Democratic losses in the mid-term elections in 2010, and to vigorously pump his shaky health care reform package. With the grumbles from liberal Democrats and progressives getting louder about Obama's betrayal and backsliding on his campaign promises, Afghanistan looms even larger as Obama and the Democratic Party's Vietnam.

Vietnam is the dreaded word that presidents Lyndon Johnson, Bill Clinton, and Bush heard about Vietnam, Somalia, and Iraq. It's still the poster war for a failed, flawed, and hopelessly unwinnable war. The word has been a political tipping point for presidents. It soured public opinion, drained the economy, fueled public dismay and anger, hampered passage of their domestic programs, fractured their party, and stirred big losses in Congress.

Public shell shock over unpopular wars always redounds to the advantage of an incumbent challenging a president whose name is linked to the war. In 1952, Eisenhower ran on the pledge to visit Korea if elected. Though Ike never directly promised to bring the troops home if elected, the implicit commitment was that if elected he'd do that. He really didn't have to make that promise; public weariness over the war was so great that Ike's generic oath to visit the troops was enough to help sink Truman. In the public's mind the Korean War had become Truman's war, or more accurately Truman's failure to win the war.

Similarly, Nixon learned from Ike. During the presidential campaign against Democratic Vice-President Hubert Humphrey in 1968, Nixon dropped careful politically calculated hints of a "secret plan" to end the Vietnam War if elected. Like Ike, he didn't spell out in any real detail just what his secret plan was. And like Ike, he didn't really have to. Public revulsion over Vietnam, as in Korea, was so great that even the scintilla of a suggestion that Nixon could end the war aroused voter optimism for him and even greater fury against Humphrey who was widely seen as the caretaker of Johnson's war (Johnson saw the handwriting on the wall and declined to run).

These two unpopular wars did in Truman and the Democrats in 1952, and President Johnson and the Democrats in 1968. They also had a tsunami effect on Democratic elected officials. In both election years, the Democrats had a decisive edge over the Republicans in Congress, a wide body of public support, and political prestige. Eisenhower, and later Nixon, painted Korea and Vietnam as a hopeless muddle that Truman and Humphrey (in tandem with Johnson) made a mess of. The two Democratic presidents paid dearly for it, and Bush and the Republicans paid just as dearly for the Iraq quagmire.

Obama knows this history well. He embedded that history into his presidential campaign and continually reminded voters of the history of the Iraq war failure. Financially draining wars take a huge toll on the economy, drag down public morale, and cause a steep plunge in American prestige internationally. It also whips up greater anti-American sentiment.

Three failed and flawed wars and the public's distaste for those wars helped topple two sitting Democratic presidents, and hopelessly discredited a Republican president. The same public distaste for the Afghanistan war can easily make it Obama's Vietnam. History has served notice on Obama of this peril.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His weekly radio show, "The Hutchinson Report" can be heard on weekly in Los Angeles at 9:30 AM Fridays on KTYM Radio 1460 AM and live streamed nationally on ktym.com

JFK's and RFK's ghosts always loomed over Ted Kennedy. From purely the perspective of being an icon, Teddy had the peculiar misfortune to live a full life. JFK once supposedly remarked that Lincoln's assassination is what made our civil war leader larger than life. And so it would be with him and Bobby.

As a Capitol Hill intern in 1987, I walked past Teddy in a hallway and nearly passed out from the excitement that rose up in me, who'd spent the summer reading about the Kennedys. For the next 22 years, the word "liberal" would be such a negative term, and Teddy would be so much the dictionary illustration for it, that much of his mystique wore off in my mind, especially given some of his foibles and disappointments.

Yet he accomplished much in line with liberal ideals, more than his beloved ghost brothers. It may be his final victory that the word liberal is no longer the dangerous pejorative that it's been for so many years.

They didn't waste any time in hatin' on Ted Kennedy. I'm not talking about Rush Limbaugh and his widely self-promoted gloat that he predicted that President Obama, liberal Democrats, and the alleged liberal controlled media would deify Kennedy on his death to shame the Senate into backing Obama's health care reform package. The "they" are the packs of web sites, bloggers, and talk jocks who have turned Kennedy into their anti-deity to lambaste Obama and the Democrats. There were more than 2 million references on Google to conservative criticisms of Kennedy after his death.
The attacks repeat the standard litany of slurs and slanders against Kennedy--a murderer (Chappaquiddick of course), a marriage defiler (support of same sex marriage), a race baiter (support of affirmative action), illegal alien defender (support of immigration reform), flag burning desecration (staunch support of first amendment protections), Constitution usurper (support of expanded hate crimes laws), and a baby killer (staunch pro choice support).

Kennedy is justly hailed and honored for the towering role he played for nearly five decades in championing the best of American liberalism and his unwavering backing of civil rights, civil liberties, economic justice, and health care for all. And that makes him the perfect foil to further whip up a big and seemingly growing chunk of Americans against those Kennedy ideals.

Yes, the ghost of Mary Jo Kopeckne haunted Ted Kennedy, as was appropriate. What is remarkable is that instead of getting lost in denial and more dysfunction, Teddy turned his life around.

Teddy Kennedy grew morally and spiritually and in the last third of his life found redemption through service. Teddy is a reminder that at any age or stage of our lives, we can turn things around.

©2009 Jonathan Dobrer
www.Dobrer.com

Teddy Kennedy had a lot to overcome as the youngest of nine children in a family of overachievers. It would have been a lot for most anyone to overcome, but perhaps more so for him because his parents viewed him as the least talented, and he grew up in the shadow of his older siblings. He also grew up with death and tragedy. His older brother, Joseph, who his parents had hoped would become president, was killed during World War II, and he lived through the assignations of his two brothers, the death of his nephew and many other family tragedies and convictions.

Yet to his credit, he became the guardian and protector to his fatherless nieces and nephews. He also carved out a niche for himself in the Senate. Going by that family motto of service he learned as a child, he created and passed many programs that helped the less fortunate. The minimum wage increase was due to him, as was the Family and Medical Leave Act where a person cannot be left to the whim of his employer for requesting a leave under certain conditions. This was all good.

Then there was Chappaquiddick, hanging over his life and career heavy as an anvil. He was 37 years old and no kid when he drove his car into the water off Chappaquiddick and left Mary Jo Kopechne to die while he swam to safety. This was the blot in his career that could and should not have been erased.

I first saw Teddy Kennedy--though he was Edward then--in 1960 in Beverly Hill. He was speaking at a campaign event for his brother John. He was young. He was thin. He was a truly terrible public speaker. He seemed to have nothing to say except that his brother John should be president. I predicted, with all the arrogant certitude of a 16 year-old, that he wouldn't go far.

But perhaps the most extraordinary thing about his life is his "story arc." He had a rough first act. He had a bad second act. His third act however was a triumph. His is truly a story of redemption through service.

©2009 Jonathan Dobrer
www.Dobrer.com

I read that Bernie Madoff may have pancreatic cancer and only a few months to live. It should be obvious that the only decent compassionate thing to do is to grant him compassionate release.

Follow the English Scottish example and let Bernie go. Set him free. Send him to Libya.
©2009 Jonathan Dobrer
www.Dobrer.com

I think the folks at Fox n' Friends will say that a non-partisan study of the economy and the stimulus is only non-partisan if it confirms what they want to believe.

For the record, the $1.6 trillion projected deficit terrifies me, and we'll need greater maturity out of our populace than we've currently got to make the tough choices.

The previous administration crashed the nation's Trans Am into a ditch. Obama, at considerable expense, has gotten it started again. He deserves credit for that, in the face of those who acted as though the engine was going to pop to life on its own (remember that last December we seriously believed we were entering a Second Depression).

But now the bill for the repairs is coming due, and we need more than partisan posturing. We need Dems to cut back on social services and pandering to lobbies, Republicans to cut back on wars and low-tax fantasies that don't work as advertised, and all Americans to realize that our credit addiction needs to be dealt with at the national and individual level.

Just when you thought it was over, it comes back again. Libyan President Moammar Gadhafi, is coming to the United States and setting up housekeeping in Jersey. That he would even be allowed to park himself here may be another sign that the liberals have landed and taken over.

He plans on meeting with the United Nations General Assembly, which given some of their resolutions, may be par for the course. They are the ones, after all, who equated Zionist with racism, and wanted to boycott Israel, so if Gadhafi wants to meet with them, let it be on a barge around the Bermuda Triangle.

He has been given a hero's welcome in other countries. During a 2007 visit to France, he cut a business deal worth billions, and he has met with the heads of state in Spain and Russia, proving once and for all that nations don't have permanent friends or enemies, only permanent interests.

But he shouldn't be allowed on American soil because of what this country is supposed to stand for. Liberty and justice for all should not mean for those who support terrorism or had an alleged role in the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland that killed all 259 people on board, who have ties to terrorism or who laud convicted killer, Abdel Baset al-Megrahi, in a homecoming after his early release from prison because he is dying of cancer.

This is not what we should even begin to stand for.

The good news for Obama is that a major, longtime world leader has rebuked conservatives who've been complaining that their president is a crazy foreign socialist intent on destroying America.

The bad news is that his defender is this guy....

House Democrats Keith Ellison, John Conyers, and Maxine Waters loudly and defiantly shout that they will not vote for a health care reform bill that doesn't include the public option. The three congresspersons are African-American, on the far left side of Congress, and at one point President Obama's biggest cheerleaders. Their loud grumble and possible defection from backing Obama on health care is not a fatal blow to the bill. No matter what bill ultimately comes out of the House, it will pass overwhelmingly. But their noisy opposition to a health care reform sell-out points to a far bigger threat to Obama than the GOP could ever pose. That threat is the active and passive drift of progressives away from full throated support of his policies.
The brutal reality is that Obama desperately needs progressives to be the shock troops in Congress and in the field to sell his program and his administration. Red dog Democrats, bankers, corporate CEOs and lobbyists can't and won't do it even though he is the consummate Beltway centrist Democrat. They can't and won't put the passion, energy and most importantly the bodies out there to do the grunt political work to sell his program, and to spearhead his re-election battle in 2012.
The progressive bodies to do this are there. There were 120 million voters in 2008. The Congressional Black Caucus, the Hispanic Congressional Caucus, and the Progressive Democratic Caucus, the third parties, left leaning labor unions, and left independents represent, together represent an estimated 10 to 15 percent of the overall vote. That's 12 to 15 million voters. However, it's not just the numbers. It's also where the numbers are. The bulk of the voters in Pennsylvania, Ohio, North Carolina and Florida traditionally are Republican, and independent moderate and conservative Democrats. With the exception of Pennsylvania, Bush won these states in 2000 and 2004, and bagged the White House. Obama did not change the voter demographic in these states. He did though drastically rev up the numbers of black, Latino, and youth voters, generally more socially and politically progressive, and self-designated progressive voters that turned out. This made the crucial difference and cinched his win.

The 2000 election debacle was a near textbook guide to how a small number of bloc votes can tip an election. A significant number of the nearly 100,000 votes that Green Party presidential candidate Ralph Nader got in Florida almost certainly would have gone to Al Gore. This turned a contest that shouldn't have been close into a Bush win or steal. In Ohio in 2004, Bush got 18 percent of the black vote, or nearly 100,000 black votes. In times past, most of these votes would have gone Democratic. If they had in 2004, the vote would have been close enough that Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry almost certainly would have challenged the election result in Ohio.

Progressives within and without Congress scream at the top of their lungs at Obama to remember the promises he made on health care and that is to back a single payer plan. And even though he's backpedaled from that, they implore him to not to back away from the public option; take off the gloves, play hardnosed politics, nose thumb the GOP, and shove a real health care reform bill through Congress. A hard uncompromising fight would do much to reassure distraught progressives that there is still some semblance in him of the progressive Democrat that many thought they were voting for. So far, there's little evidence of that happening. That's really no surprise. In fact, it was inevitable.

Obama had the standard liberal reservations that the stimulus bailout gave too much away to bad behaving, profligate spending banks and Wall Street greed merchants and that massive tax cuts wouldn't do much to help the poor and the middle class unemployed. But he backed the bailout and tax cuts, albeit modified, to get the support of a handful of congressional Republicans.

He opposed the Iraq war, but he calculates that if he pushes for a quick and immediate withdrawal the military brass and conservatives will howl and dig in their heels to resist. He now solely talks about flexible timetables and a phased withdrawal. In the case of Afghanistan, he's sent the strong signal that he'll rush even more troops into the quagmire. This virtually assures that just as Iraq was seen and pilloried as Bush's war and folly, Afghanistan will be seen and pilloried as Obama's war.

The health care retreat and other Obama shifts aren't the things that are making droves of progressives shut down on him. It's the great fear and expectation that he'll perform more infuriating back flips or do little to expand civil rights, and liberties protections, gay rights, end the wars, and rein in corporations and Wall Street abuses in the next three years.

This will draw more howls of betrayal and add up too even greater disillusion, despair, and defections among progressives. The defections will be a far greater lethal blow than anything the GOP could deliver.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His weekly radio show, "The Hutchinson Report" can be heard weekly in Los Angeles at 9:30 AM Fridays on KTYM Radio 1460 AM and live streamed nationally on ktym.com

Let's be honest. Does the figure on the right look alive to you? I didn't think so, either. In this photo with Ecuadorian President, Rafael Correa. ex-Cuban lifetime President, Fidel Castro, looks like a corpse that has been dusted off and propped up.

Notice the pallor in Castro's face. Notice the deep etches around the eyes or the painted on expression on his face. Nope. It appears that the man's upped and met his maker. Yet in order to keep it a secret, they keep propping him up, dusting him off and applying a little blush to the apples of his cheeks, so he can make the occasional public appearance.

Either that or upon his passing, his ego wouldn't allow him to admit it, so he makes the occasional public appearance when need be.

The release of convicted Lockerbie bomber, Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi, was premature. By definition any release of this monster while still alive is premature--and just wrong. That the Scots Justice Secretary, with the Dickensian name of Mac Askill, is calling this a "compassionate release" is both hideously ironic and wrong on so many levels.

This is about neither compassion nor justice. This is about Shell Oil's British division and British Petroleum. This shames Scotland, England, Tony Blair and Prime minister Brown--and, of course, their Scottish puppet Justice (sic.) Secretary MacAskill.
©2009 Jonathan Dobrer
www.Dobrer.com

In an interview on NBC's Today Show two weeks after he was sworn in President Obama was blunt. He said that if he didn't deliver he'd be "a one term proposition." Put this in the category of what did he know and when did he know it. The it is that he was under the white hot glare of the public to deliver the goods, or be quickly dumped in the presidential has been bin. Polls back up this hard political reality about Obama. A mid August Washington Post-ABC News survey found that his approval ratings continue to plunge. Part of that can be chalked up to inevitability.

New presidents always ride into office on the crest of both voter hopes and euphoria about the prospect of change and disgust at and voter fatigue with the former seat warmer in the White House. And new presidents just as quickly see their approval ratings dip or freefall. It's easy to see why. They try to do too much to soon, promise not to do political business in the old ways, try to make too drastic legislative changes, or quickly reverse the bad old policies of their predecessor. It's the fabled man on the white horse coming to the rescue. This is, of course, just that fable. Real politics and an impatient public knock that storybook notion for a loop.

In Obama's case, he gambled that his presidency would be a crowning success if he could beat back the fine tuned, well-oiled, and well-endowed health care industry juggernaut and get health care reform, that's real health care reform, through Congress and into law. Only one president has been able to do and that was Lyndon Johnson. He arm twisted, browbeat, and out smarted Congress and the health care industry to get Medicare. Johnson had won a landslide election victory in 1964, had fine tuned, hard nosed political skills, had the reform spirit of the civil rights movement and a solid Democratic party behind him. And he had the well spring of public sympathy after JFK's murder. Obama is not LBJ, politically. And he has neither the times or Johnson's massive mandate for change going for him.

Above everything else, the voters put Obama in the White House to make the economy right, reign in the Wall Street greed merchants, save jobs and homes, and get the credit pipeline to businesses open. That hasn't happened. Instead they've gotten a raucous, and contentious health care reform fight that's given a badly fractured and reeling, GOP, the butt of scorn and jokes, something that it never dreamed in its wildest dreams in mid November could happen. That's the weapon to get back in the political hunt. If anyone had dared say a month ago that the percent of voters who blame Obama for making a mess of health care reform was in striking distance of the number of voters who blame the GOP for the mess, they'd have been measured for a straightjacket. A mid-August Pew Research survey found just that.

Obama eventually will get a health care bill to sign. But it will be a bill that will satisfy few. Progressives will scream even louder that the bill sans a public option, and deal laden with big Pharma giveaways, is smoke and mirrors, a sham reform, and another infuriating betrayal of his campaign pledge of hope and change. The Fox Network, Limbaugh, and the GOP attack hounds will scream even louder that the bill and Obama are taking the country down a sink hole. The bill will leave the majority of voters confused, perplexed, and even more uneasy about what Obama is really up to, and his seeming inability to be the tough, decisive leader that millions took a chance on and backed.

The conventional wisdom is that Obama has plenty of time to get things right. Here's the problem. Health care and the economy are signature markers for a successful Obama first term, and the justification for a second one. Doubts, unease, or his real or perceived failure will be hard to unhinge from voter thinking. Blacks, Hispanics, young and progressive voters will still back him. But will they crusade for him as they did in 2008? That means again turning out in big and impassioned numbers. This won't happen if they feel Obama waffled or reneged on his key promises. Meanwhile, the GOP will sow more fear, pound away on the doubts, unease and perceived failures of Obama. It will dump its bizarre Palin fascinaton, will have a fat campaign chest, and will groom a fresh new GOP face, (just like the Dems did with Obama).

Worse, Obama won't have the gargantuan trump card he had in 2012. That was the Bush bogeyman to scare, shock, and rev up voters. This doesn't spell defeat in 2012. It does spell an Obama nightmare about a one term presidency.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His weekly radio show, "The Hutchinson Report" can be heard weekly in Los Angeles at 9:30 AM Fridays on KTYM Radio 1460 AM and live streamed nationally on ktym.com

President Obama has blown his chance, in the wake of the biggest corporately sponsored meltdown in memory, to remind Americans that we can't just trust the free market. Instead, the talk-radio and Fox crowds have out-communicated the Greatest Communicator in signaling to average Joes that Obama's a big-government tyrant.

We need both the public and private to work in harmony. The public sector has the public's interest in mind, based on how a democratic citizenry holds its leaders accountable. The private sector holds a short-term profit in mind, and is efficient in how it attains it.

If the public sector alone ran our food supply, we'd have healthy enough food but it'd be more expensive and less tasty. The private sector runs our food supply, which is delicious, fattening, and poisonous in a thousand ways. A smart person, free of ideological baggage, would learn from that and work toward a dynamic balance of public and private within a democracy. Health care is the best laboratory for this at the moment.

I agree with Jonathan. The problem with the public option plan was that the public didn't understand it. And in the midst of all this stood Barack Obama trying to bail water from the Good Ship Lollypop as it sank.

Of course we need reform against insurers who reap profits as they cross their arms and deny coverage for procedures that could save lives. And of course the 50 million uninsured (legal) residents need coverage as well.

The current administration should scrap this plan and invite a panel of health care experts to come up with a better one. Invite the president of Johns Hopkins and the Mayo Clinic. Invite Barack Obama's former doctor, Dr. David Scheiner, who opposed the plan and invite my physician's assistant who thinks that everyone should help pay for the uninsured while allowing everyone else keep their coverage, and that everyone except for the poorest and most indigent, should pay something even if it is five dollars for an office visit.

And for heaven's sake, limit the government interference when hammering out the details. Station the militia at the door if need be. After all, if our elected officials can't manage a "Cash for Clunkers" program, then how are they supposed to run a health care plan?

I love the topic of healthcare reform or insurance reform--or whatever we're branding it this week. Everyone, left and right, understands that our system is broken--even those of us who have good insurance know we can max out, be denied and that the price is going up twice as fast a real wages. We are heading for a cliff.

This is the perfect vacuum into which we can opine. It would be funny, were it not for that cliff.
©2009 Jonathan Dobrer
www.Dobrer.com

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius found out the hard way that when you say what your boss may really be thinking or worse end up doing on a crucial piece of legislation you get quickly smacked down.Sibelius in an unscripted and unvetted moment said that President Obama's public option in the health care reform war could go by the wayside if that's what it takes to get Senate obstructionists to back a reform bill. Sebelius didn't say anything that Obama point man, Rahm Emanuel didn't hint at weeks earlier, and that Obama himself has hinted at. The public option is not only expendable but likely will go.

Even if Sibelius, Emanuel, and Obama hadn't dropped the hint that it can be tossed, it would still likely go. This has much less to do with angry town hall loudmouths, the drum beat Fox Network, Limbaugh, and the legion of right shrill blogger attacks, and GOP orchestrated Senate attacks on the public option, than Obama the politician. Obama wants, no desperately needs, to win a big victory on health care, or at least the appearance of a victory, even if the victory means scrapping the only thing in the health care reform package that really represents true health care reform. Put another way, a government health insurance option is the only real lever to make the pharmaceuticals and health care insurers lower drug costs, reduce their obscene profit rake offs, deliver better services, eliminate the endless dodges that insurers use to cherry pick only the most healthy and profitable patients, and make some dent in the 45 to 50 million uninsured.

If private health insurers and the pharmaceuticals had done that decades ago without a government lever, the whole health care debate and crisis would have long since been a moot point. Obama well knows this, and has said as much in his earlier political days. But that was then, and now it must be said again, and again that Obama quickly morphed into the archtypical Hollywood casting lot moderate, centrist Democrat who will cut a political deal with legislation to get something, anything, out of it that can be sold as a win. This is nothing new, let alone a sign of duplicity, with Obama.

A cursory read of his record, as well as a fine comb of his speeches, statements, and interviews, that the talk during the campaign of Obama as an unreconstructed far out liberal was mostly talk by first Hillary Clinton, and later by conservative talk jocks, Sarah Palin and the GOP attack teams.

If he even remotely resembled what the attack hounds claimed he was he could never have gotten the stamp of approval from top Democrats, beat down the Clinton Machine, gotten the parade of endorsements from former Reagan and Bush Sr., and even W. Bush officials. And most imortant, broken the cash registers on fund raising. That included a a generous plop of more than $2 million into the Obama campaign till. Republican rival John McCain got a relatively paltry $600,000 and some change.
Obama's centrist bent was plainly evident during the campaign when he and McCain at times sounded like they were more agreement than not on the issues of expansion of stem-cell research, immigration, faith-based social services, expanded government wiretapping, building more nuclear power plants, global warming, fair trade, and the death penalty. The similarity between the two was more glaring when Obama edged closer to McCain on their plans on health care and taxes and the Iraq War. This also was no surprise.

The truism in American presidential politics is that liberals and even one time progressives always run to the political left in the early stages of a campaign. They then move quickly to the center or even rightward as victory becomes a real possibility.
Even when Obama spoke most passionately about change he kept the door wide open to reshape, massage, and contour policy issues to conform to what was pragmatic, doable and acceptable. Obama's voting record in the Illinois state legislature gave a strong hint that his liberal record was hazier than it appeared. He got high marks from liberal groups on votes on environmental, gun control, abortion, and civil liberties protections, and ethics reform. But he also deftly ducked taking positions on some of the same issues when they could stir rancor and were potentially polarizing. During his stint in the legislature, Obama used the tactic more often than most senators and rarely gave a reason why.

Whatever Obama's motive for not taking a firm stand on these issues, and not spelling out the reason why, it helped burnish his credentials with conservative Republicans and right leaning Democrats as a man willing to compromise even conciliate on big ticket issues that conservatives routinely support or oppose.
That hasn't changed. And all signs past and present point to the public option as the latest casualty in the routine compromises that politicians make in playing the political game. And Obama has played the game far better than most.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His weekly radio show, "The Hutchinson Report" can be heard weekly in Los Angeles Fridays on KTYM Radio 1460 AM and live streamed nationally on ktym.com

The right is winning the war against President Obama, and winning it handily. The formula explanation for the right's walkover of the White House is that a pack of GOP orchestrated health care town hall loudmouths and a well-heeled, well-financed, and over media exposed core of GOP attack hounds have rattled Obama, game changed the health care debate, and swayed public opinion against the administration.
That's partly true, but only partly. The right could not win without the White House's tactical stumbles, caution and compromise on core issues, and its gross underestimate of the potency of racial fears, hostility and paranoia. The stumble was to attack and keep attacking Rush Limbaugh and the shrill conservative gabbers. They totally dominate and abuse the airwaves. To pick a fight with them only inflated their importance, presence, and numbers. The attack allowed Limbaugh to cloak himself in martyr's cloth and claim that he was under siege by a bullying, intimidating, and vengeful White House. In radio listener surveys, Limbaugh's ratings soared, and radio affiliates, giddy at the surge in the ratings, played his show up even bigger.
The ratings snapped many shell shocked Congressional Republicans out of their post election daze. They quickly drew a hard and fast line in the sand against any and everything that Obama proposed, health care being at the top of their list. It stiffened the backbone of many cautious Republicans and made them determined not to be bullied, or at least appear not to be bullied, by a mere talk show host into standing up to Obama.
The way to fight the right counterinsurgency was to do exactly what Limbaugh and company did with the airwaves and grassroots conservatives. That is to arouse and organize the legions of young, progressives, blacks, and Hispanic voters who crusaded for Obama. They were passionate for him because they expected him to quickly repair the wreckage Bush made of health care, the economy, the war, civil liberties, the environment, and abortion. They expected Obama to make good on his promise to be a real change president. Instead they've watched in dismay the White House compromise and flat out backslide on ending the wars, single payer health universal health care, and deal cutting with health insurers and pharmaceuticals. They've grumbled at the White House giveaway of billions to Wall Street greed merchants, banks and brokerage houses, the refusal to press criminal charges against the CIA and Bush officials and operatives for their gross flaunt of international law on torture and wiretapping, and its infuriating pander to red dog Democrats and especially GOP Senators. They have made it clear they will say and do everything they can to kill any program or initiative of Obama's. This has sown disillusion and cynicism among many of his fervent backers.

Obama's worst mistake has been to misread the election results. Much is made that he got more white votes than John Kerry or Al Gore, revved up young whites, and totally exorcised race from the campaign. Obama's win supposedly was final proof that America had finally kicked the racial syndrome. This is the stuff of media talk and wishful thinking. Despite a GOP racked by sex and corruption scandals, an anemic presidential opponent, a laughingstock vice presidential candidate, a collapsed economy and an outgoing GOP president with a rating worse than Herbert Hoover's, McCain still crushed Obama by a twelve point spread among white voters.

The route was not just among old, Deep South unreconstructed or latent bigoted white male voters, but in virtually every voter demographic among whites, including a dead heat with Obama among a majority of younger white voters. This doesn't tell the whole story of the sharp racial divide Obama faces. A sizeable percentage of whites were disgusted enough with Bush's policies to stay home on Election Day, but not disgusted enough with him and his policies to vote for Obama. The Henry Louis Gate's affair and the right's town hall rabble rousing have made more whites wary of Obama's policies. Polls after the Gates outburst showed that a majority of whites condemned Obama for backing Gates and even more ominous expressed grave doubts about his policies. A painful reality is that the crushing majority of whites who oppose Obama or disavow his policies for racial, party, or ideological reasons or personal prejudices, are fast forming the backbone of the radical right's counter insurgency against him.
The radical right has gotten its way in the media with its fist shaking town hall shock troops. But the White House has given the counterinsurgency a generous boost with its fits and starts, and conciliation on health care, and waffling on a total rollback of Bush policies. Obama hasn't lost the war yet, but without a huge battlefield counterattack, defeat may not be far off.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His weekly radio show, "The Hutchinson Report" can be heard weekly in Los Angeles at 9:30 AM Fridays on KTYM Radio 1460 AM and live streamed nationally on ktym.com

Let's try to think about organized hate groups and militias in "shoe on the other foot" terms.

Since 9/11, we've had passionate debates about whether moderate, non-violent Muslims here and abroad are obligated to do more to counter violence among their rabid, frothing extreme fringe.

Groups such as CAIR seem to resent being associated with extremism while not seeming to do much to efficaciously stand up to their affiliated extremists.

Another conundrum is that many moderate Muslims rationalize the anger of jihadists, saying that wackos in Gaza and Peshawar Kashmir take understandable grievances to unacceptable extremes. They suggest that if India or Israel or America adequately address the grievances, the extremist hatred and violence will go away.

That usually rings hollow and tinny to people on the outside. It sounds as though the moderates are acting like enablers in a crazed, abusive household.

Yet now the American right, who has comprised the most vocal critics of such rationalization-and-codependence approaches in the Mideast, will need to rise above their recent tendency to use just the same approach in the Obama era.

Shortly after then Democratic presidential contender Barack Obama clinched the Democratic nomination in June 2008, two of America's oldest and best known hate groups, the KKK and Aryan Nation wasted no time. They endorsed Obama for president. The prospect of him bagging the White House sent them into absolute delirium. The hate bunch hadn't undergone an earth rattling epiphany. Quite the contrary, a black president was their made in heaven meal ticket to jump start their moribund ranks.

In its new report on hate groups the Southern Poverty Law Center found that 50 new "anti-government" hate groups have cropped up in the past few months. There has also been a sharp up tick in recruiting, mobilizing, and more worrisome, gun buying by these groups. They are playing hard on the fear and hatred among the radical right of a black man in the White House, the economic downturn and the GOP orchestrated disruptions at health care town halls.

The angry faces and the fist shaking at the health care town halls today could provide a fertile recruiting ground for new more vocal and visible anti-government groups. Some of whose members could be sorely tempted to do more than just rant and fist shake. Hate group's bank on the volatile mix of frustration, anger and hostility toward a government they feel has betrayed them, and a black president whose message of change spells socialism to them, to swell their ranks. That's a chilling prospect for Obama and all of us.

Surprise of all surprises. There's been a surge in hate groups across the country.

And a charming lot they are. In a video from "The Ohio Militia," a man donning a face scarf and sounding like he was inside a drainpipe, said that we should be very afraid, though exactly of what, he did not say. At one point, he encouraged everyone to stockpile guns and ammunition in preparation for a war, like the one in their minds.

According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, the three divining rods that have caused a 54% membership surge since 2000 are: the Obama administration, the economy and illegal immigration. Other than lining the Ohio Militia and other groups up and having them use each other for target practice, the best way to combat them is through education. Once children learn how to read, let them learn about different ethnic groups, not only one or two. Let them watch videos and go to plays. The Obama administration should also launch its own ethnic PR blitz for all ethnic groups, which would finally be money well spent.

Although no sane person would want to meet them in a dark alley let alone in broad daylight, there is little chance they will take over. Not only because vigilance reins supreme but because they are devoid of functioning brain cells and will eventually step into a booby trap of their own making.

I'm frightened, and I like to think that I don't scare easily. The lack of comity in our social discourse has grown. Conversation has deteriorated to cacophony. There is lots of shouting but little listening.

©2009 Jonathan Dobrer
www.Dobrer.com

Some Canadians are highly incensed, and it concerns our cousin, David Jacobson*, who is our new ambassador designate to Canada. It is not that Canadians don't want David. His credentials are impeccable. His intelligence is nearly without peer in our family. (I have to be vague about that part so as not to insult our many other brilliant cousins). He is well informed and socially graceful. He must also be a kind of expert in things Canadian, given the Palin criterion, since he spent 30 years in Chicago where he could almost see Canada across a Great Lake.

Some Canadian pundits snidely opine (which is what pundits do), but with typical Canadian modesty and self-deprecation, that David must have done something truly terrible to warrant being banished to Ottawa. I want to assure my Canadian friends that David and his whole family are thrilled and honored for him to be ambassador to our largest trading partner. I look forward to great things in our mutual relationship. Eh.
*Okay, full disclosure: He is married to my wife's cousin.
©2009 Jonathan Dobrer
www.Dobrer.com

I'm touched by Gail-Tz's story about Michael Weisser and Larry Tripp, and I believe it's essential to counter the Furrows of the world.

There is an incredible amount of hatred today in the air, born of the excruciating economic and societal uncertainties of our times, and I don't think we make much headway by shaming those who think and talk and act shamefully.

Sometimes we get pulled into pointless but vicious debates about "which side" is more guilty of hate, and why we're justified in, well, hating those whom we believe hate us even more. It not only derails our efforts to become better as individuals and as a society, it accelerates us down a cliff.

The Weisser way is, with apologies for punnery, the wiser way.

I first spotted the ghoulish, macabre face on the poster with the word "socialism" slapped underneath it on wallboards and on an occasional freeway onramp girder around Los Angeles last April. From time to time the poster would pop up (really more a crude handbill) on walls and even stuck to billboards. It was so ludicrous, cartoonish and amateurish that I never made the connection between the lurid face on the poster and President Obama. That is until a Fox TV News Los Angeles feature spotlighted the poster as the Heath Ledger Dark Knight Joker character now turned President Obama. This was not just another comic take off on a popular movie character, or even low brow spoofery or political punditry. This was a grotesque slap at Obama.

Politicians and public figures are not sacred cows. They are fair game for the endless cartoonish, lampooning, even ridicule that pundits take special delight in. They are routinely defrocked in print and shown in the electronic media in every kind of unflattering pose. Their foibles, follies, and slapdash antics are legitimate grist for the satirical pen and drawing pad of critics and artists. Presidents are not exempt from the same lampooning. Bush was routinely typed in every raucous and irreverent pose that a writer or cartoonist could conjure up.

This included cartoon depictions of him with horns, as a vampire, Hitler, and yes, the Vanity Fair Magazine depiction of him as the Joker. The depictions often badly crossed the line between legitimate satire and criticism and grotesque character assassination. But as juvenile and offensive as they were, there was no Pravda state censors rushing to yank the cartoons or depictions from public view.

There was always a legion of conservative pundits and cartoonists who had free and unlimited access to a vast network of conservative talk radio stations, cable TV stations, websites, and print publications to rail against the Bush bash, and to counter attack with their own equally garish and outrageous slam of liberals, gays, minorities, environmentalists, and pro-choice women's groups.
That was their right too, and no one said they couldn't exercise it. But when the table is turned, and when this writer and a handful of other critics had the temerity to brand the Obama Joker Poster as a demonic and mean spirited slur of President Obama, the Obama loathers went into a manic tail spin. Just as with Bush and the vampire or Hitler depiction, to call Obama a socialist because they don't like his health care reform proposals and economic policies is to sail way off the deep end.

The websites and chat rooms quickly filled with shrill screeches about the first Amendment, free speech, and liberal double standard hypocrisy. Those were the more charitable defenses. As silly and loose screwed as the depiction of Obama is as a socialist Joker, this writer did not scream for the posters to be summarily yanked down, and tossed in a Hitlerian banned book bon fire. Instead the call was simply for the individual or groups slapping the posters up to publicly ID themselves and take credit for their work. Come forth and take public pride in branding the president a jokester and a socialist. Don't slink around at Midnight, taking the guerilla graffiti artist's route, and smear walls with the posters when cars disappear around the bend. That's not the joker's MO. It's certainly not befitting someone who's bold enough to call the President the Joker and a socialist.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His weekly radio show, "The Hutchinson Report" can be heard weekly in Los Angeles at 9:30 AM Fridays on KTYM Radio 1460 AM and live streamed nationally on ktym.com

Two days after hate filled, cowardly Buford Furrow shot up the North Valley Jewish Community center wounding five, four of them children, and later completing his deranged mission by murdering Joseph Ileto, a Filipino-American postal worker, this writer publicly called for a walk against hate. It was a spontaneous call, with virtually no time for planning, and almost no publicity.

I expected maybe half dozen or so persons to show up for the walk. I was stunned when I pulled up in front of the Post Office on Vermont near USC for the start of the walk to an off campus Jewish student center. More than a hundred people were there with homemade signs and banners plastered with appeals to stop the hate.

The walk couldn't bring Ileto back or speedily heal the wounds of the four children. It did though put hate mongers on notice that their sick violence will not stop us from working toward racial and religious peace and reconciliation in Los Angeles. Hate terrorist Furrow proved a timeless point with his hate act and that's that good can sometimes come out of the most horrific acts. It did that day when a throng said no to gutless hate violence.

Buford Furrow shot up the Jewish Community Center in Northridge on August 10, 1999. After wounding three children and the receptionist, he murdered a postal worker of Filipino origin.