January 2010 Archives

Earl, Bubbelah, racism is as old as the hills, or maybe even older. According to drawings on cave walls, it started when one Cro-Magnon man saw that another had less arthritis than the others and that was it. They held a Town Hall meeting and bought out the lout's time share.

By the time our forefathers came around, the idea had gelled so firmly that they were going to add "Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness and the chance to be a racist," to the Constitution, but they didn't because they wanted to continue to be elected to office.

The good thing about racism is that it somehow gets distributed more or less equally in this country because someone usually has it out for someone else. Blacks, Whites, Jews, Asians, Hispanics, no one gets left out.

It's like Tom Lehrer sang in his "Brotherhood Week" song,

"Oh, the white folks hate the black folks
And the black folks hate the white folk
And the Protestants hate the Catholics
And everyone hates the Jews
Because it's Brotherhood Week..
Time to be good to
Those who are inferior to you...
because it's Brotherhood Week."

Why else was a groundbreaking comedy like "All in the Family" such a hit? Because it was true and because everyone had an Archie Bunker in his family sometimes even living in his own house. So long as no one gets clobbered over the head for it, gets his church or synagogue burned down because of it, is denied a job, or even worse gets to keep one, then all is well.

But the best way to shoot it down is for minorities to set a good example no matter how much it sometimes kills them.

One of the many things that I like about Obama is that he's pretty pragmatic. He's not ruled by ideology or party line. He can change policies when they are not working. This does not mean he has no moral core but that values and objectives dwarf strategies. One of the few things that I do not like about Obama is that he talks the talk of holding people accountable, but, so far, he has not walked the walk--or to be more precise: Wielded the axe.

I'm still hopeful that because Obama is both a pragmatist and a fast learner, accountability will be incarnated in action. He campaigned on "Change you can believe in." Now he needs to know that there are changes he can make that will help us believe in him. Changing policies is not a vice if values are held fast.

©2010 Jonathan Dobrer
www.Dobrer.com

My new book is finally here, and it's available right over here. I'll share more information about it in coming days. But in a nutshell, it discusses my background in both conservative Islam and conservative Christianity--with an eye on how both religions have been compromised by their roles within contemporary politics and nationalism.

Just when you might think a violent religious extremist terrorist can't sink any lower, Osama Bin Laden dives to the bottom. We have reached the point that you can't count on the zealotry of, well, a zealot.

Now, being no fan of Osama Bin Laden, it's not up to me to give him good or helpful political advice. It is just kind of depressing when zealots start to play at politics and their needy personal desperation become clear.

©2010 Jonathan Dobrer
www.Dobrer.com

Ugh oh. The Moral Police are out again, and this time they have landed in various locations from the halls of Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli, meaning from the MSNBC studios to South Carolina to sunny Santa Clarita, California.

First, it was a routine PC sin for South Carolina's Lieutenant Governor, Andre Bauer, who compared welfare recipients to stray animals. The advice came from his grandmother who said, "Don't feed stray animals because they will produce a culture of dependency. They will reproduce, especially the ones that don't think much further than that."

I wish my grandmothers had told me that. But they wouldn't have because they were both city dwellers and no self-respecting stray animal would have made the trek up either the front or the back steps of their walk up apartments. And there you have it.

But Bauer wasn't referring to the Nuevo recipient who falls on the occasional hard time amidst a life of supporting the other group, but the ones whose are gainfully unemployed, or the ones who would put an checkmark on a form listing their status as unemployed if they could read it to begin with. He still got it from the employed, the unemployed and everything in between and wound up apologizing, poor man.

Next they zeroed in on Santa Clarita City Councilman Bob Kellar who in a comment taken out of content said that he was a "proud racist," but that's not exactly what he meant. What he said regarding the illegal immigration problem was, "I am an American, a proud one. And I believe it is time we stand behind our laws and the principles that have made our nation great."

When a Brigade member told Kellar that he sounded like a racist, he said that in that case, he was proud to be one. The crowd became like those bulls running through Pamploma, Spain each year.

And then there is MSNBC's Chris Matthews who slipped and uttered that he almost forgot that Obama is black after his State of the Union address. While it wasn't the choicest of comments, it wasn't Armageddon, either. People have said things to me, too once they find out what I am. I once met someone who said that I am "nice for a Jewish person," and while I wasn't exactly thrilled by the comment, I let it pass and to be the best one I could be no matter how much it sometimes killed me.

Chris Matthews got a mini-version of the Harry Reid treatment for his honest slip that he almost forgot Obama was black when he watched him during the State of the Union Speech. Matthew's operative word is not black but "almost." But it really wouldn't have made much difference if Matthews had dropped the almost. The meaning, or at least the thought behind it, would still have been the same. Matthews just couldn't stop thinking about race when Obama spoke.
Can't be too hard on him, though, for his foot-in-the mouth blurt. Matthews, as Reid, simply muttered an uncomfortable but tormenting reality for Obama; and that's that Obama's presidency, eloquence, political acumen, and still sky high personal likeability has not buried thoughts about Obama and race in the skulls of many.
The racial pillorying of the president has been ruthless and relentless. There are countless active anti-Obama websites filled with demeaning racist cartoons, depictions, characterizations and racially poisonous verbal bashes and attacks. The sites have received millions of hits and posts--almost all unflattering.
The digs have worked. Polls show that a majority of Republicans and a significant percent of other respondents still think there's something to the charge that Obama is an illegal alien. On the eve of Obama's State of the Union Address, and fully one year after his election, a California Field Poll found that, fully one-third of Californians nation's most populous state are not satisfied that Obama was U.S.-born. More than ten percent have convinced themselves that he's a Constitution-violating foreigner and nearly one-quarter aren't sure.
The silly talk about a post-racial America after Obama's presidential win was not merely exercises in self-delusion, honest wish and hope, or deliberately disinformed media chatter. Race, Obama or no, is and continues to be America's oldest, deepest and touchiest issue. Politicians know it. And they can subtly work the race card to inflame passions, deepen divisions, and bag votes. Or they can ignore it and hope that it goes away, at least until the votes are counted. With presidential candidates, and as we've seen with Obama in the White House, race has been a taboo subject for presidents and their challengers on the campaign trail for the past two decades. No president or presidential challenger, especially a Democrat, can risk being tarred as pandering to minorities for the mere mention of racial problems.

The double standard on race is troublesome to Obama. He backpedalled fast from his first, and impulsive, quip that the white Cambridge officer who man handled and cuffed Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates was out of line. The reaction to Obama's Gate's defense was savage and the backlash momentarily sent his poll numbers down. When the Congressional Black Caucus saber rattled Obama in December with the threat of voting against one of his financial reform measures if he didn't do more to help black businesses and the black unemployed, Obama was unfazed. He told an interviewer that he would not do anything special to help blacks. He had too. He has one eye always nervously fixed on public opinion. The Gates flap reminded him again in no uncertain terms that race is a deadly minefield that can blow up at any time and the explosion can fatally harm him, his image, and his presidency.

But polls, white voter wariness over race and Obama's nervous eye on them can't magically make racial issues disappear. In each of its annual State of Black America reports the past decade the National Urban League found rampant discrimination and gaping economic disparities between Latinos and whites in every area of American life. In the past decade, the income, and education performance gaps between blacks and Latinos and whites have only marginally closed, or actually widened. Discrimination remains the major cause of the disparities.

Shunting race to the back burner of presidential campaigns invariably means that presidents shunt them to the backburner of their legislative agenda. Yet, presidents have not been able to tap dance around racial problems. Reagan's administration was embroiled in affirmative action battles. Bush Sr.'s administration was tormented by urban riots following the beating of black motorist Rodney King. Clinton's administration was saddled with conflicts over affirmative action, police violence and racial profiling. W. Bush's administration was confronted by the HIV/AIDS pandemic, voting rights, reparations, and affirmative action battles, gang violence, and failing inner city public schools.
The pile of racial or race leaden problems that always lurk just under the surface haven't and won't go kapoof and vanish. Matthews's "almost forgot" crack about Obama's blackness was just one more reminder from a windy, and obnoxious, talking head of that.
Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His new book is, How Obama Governed: The Year of Crisis and Challenge (Middle Passage Press).

Passionate hatreds can give meaning and purpose to an empty life. These people haunted by the purposelessness of their lives try to find a new content not only by dedicating themselves to a holy cause but also by nursing a fanatical grievance. A mass movement offers them unlimited opportunies for battle. -- Eric Hoffer, The True Believer

Earl offers some valid concerns about Obama's potential to be a failed, one-term president, and Jonathan laments an unexceptional State of the Union address by an exceptional orator. But I think the theater of the Obama era could be more surprising than many would guess.

I can see Obama having a mixed record after four years, just as he had a mixed record after his first year. "Mixed?" ask his critics in disbelief. "It's not mixed, it's catastrophic."

Perhaps. But then these critics will have figure out how to position themselves for 2012, and that's when things will get even more intriguing. Just as the Tea Party begins to flex its muscles, the social right will begin to clash with the GOP's libertarian types, and the moderates with the extremists. The GOP, as the paradoxical party of governance that even doesn't like government, has just as many dysfunctions as the Dems who loved government too much. The GOP of today is united only by its contempt for Dems, not by any unified Republican vision for the future. Obama-hating is a nice way to stall the civil war within the GOP, but it cannot postpone it forever.

Then, in 2016, an Obama may ride back in, claiming to be ready to seize back a mantle that had been blackened by the efforts of birthers and other opponents. Hardly a farfetched scenario, given how the Republicans are united today only by shared grievances rather than shared values.

And yes, the Dems will unify in hatreds and grievances against whichever Republican wins in 2012. If we're to advance as a society, however, we as followers will somehow need to escape our tendency to slaughter our own leaders for sport.

I listened with rapt attention to the State of the Union speech.
I hoped it would rekindle my feelings of hope and optimism, the old "Yes we can," energy of the campaign. I came away disheartened--and it wasn't all Obama's fault. The divide in our nation, and the oppositional mentality of politicians of all stripes, means that we are not serious about solving social problems. We are way too serious about making sure our opponents become enemies and, as enemies, we can make them fail. The President addressed this head on, but clearly to no great effect.

He asked the Democrats to be brave and put country ahead of personal political ambition. He asked Republicans to be cooperative and put country ahead of personal political ambitions. The message was: Put our country ahead of your personal ambition. This is 8 words and takes a little under 4 seconds. I endorse the message but it is not a plan but a prayer. And yes, it doesn't have a prayer.
©2010 Jonathan Dobrer
www.Dobrer.com

It's one thing to be a leader who goes charging up a hill with bayonets drawn and troops in tow. It's another to go charging up alone because the troops have run off and gone AWOL. And so goes the saga of President Obama's first year in office.

Part of their defection may not be his fault. He inherited one heck of a mess. Yet under his reign, the unemployment rate has risen higher than even when his nemesis, George Bush, was in office. In his State of the Union address, Obama admitted that he could have explained the health care plan better, but maybe he really couldn't have because it was more full of holes than a pastry sieve and that rather than the Republicans was the problem. Then there is our sandbag of an economy and that near terrorist hit last December. All rather chancy.

But being a smart man who came out of nowhere, he thought he was prepared. The people that voted for him thought so, too. But results don't lie, and his popularity has taken a hit like a grounded Goodyear Blimp. While it is true that every job has its learning curve, few can have such far-flung consequences as that one. Still, the jury's still out and like Earl recently said, he has three years to help us straighten up and fly right. In the meantime, could someone pass me the aspirin?

No, he's not "the most polarizing president in history," he's merely the president at the most polarized moment in our lifetimes. That's why his staunchest critics manage to deride him both as a bumbling do-nothing and as a shrewd devil who's instituting socialism in calculating fashion.

To be more effective, Obama should move toward the center in some areas (debt reduction, tort reform and so on), but he needs to move away from the center in other areas, such as his ineffective Bush-era approach to addressing extremism overseas.

President Obama never encouraged the media concocted, ad man's fantasy land, comparison of him to Franklin Delano Roosevelt. He didn't discourage the comparison either. He was flattered by it. But with the Massachusetts vote debacle smacking him in the face, his only hope for rebound is to really act like FDR.

FDR knew he was in a political life and death, take no prisoners war with his political enemies-- the GOP, ultra conservative Democrats, Wall Street, the big bankers and big manufacturers. He repeatedly lambasted them as obstructionists and economic royalists. Obama is in the same war. They make absolutely no effort to mask their loath of his policies and presidency, and have made it clear they will stop at nothing to bounce him from office. This was before Scott Brown's win. They'll be even more bellicose, intransigent and war like against him and his agenda now.

FDR didn't just hit back, and hit back hard, against the economic royalists. He did not make weak appeals and empty threats to banks and Wall Street to be responsible, do the right thing, and ramp up lending to businesses, farm and homeowners, and pump money into job creation efforts. He imposed tough regulations on them. One of the toughest was the Glass Steagall Act. The congressional gut of Glass-Steagall unleashed the orgy of Wall Street freeboot speculation, trading, swaps, and scams of investors, borrowers and the government that nearly wrecked the economy.

FDR's bank and Wall Street rein in sent the blunt message that he meant business on financial reform and that this was a key to job creation, saving homes, and getting businesses up and going. FDR spent, and spent, and spent some more on jobs, housing, and social service, public works in the right way. FDR did not resort to smoke and mirror photo-op, PR, showpiece White House jobs summits, conferences, and imploring business councils to expand and create jobs. He put the money directly in the hands of the needy through the litany of alphabet recovery programs.

Obama has belatedly acknowledged that Glass-Steagall must be reinstated. That's only a start. Obama should do what FDR did and plough stimulus dollars directly into government run job training programs, job banks, and public works projects.
FDR's economic brain trust were tough, reform minded academics and public officials, not Wall Street, and corporate shills. Obama should put the same team around him. That means asking for the immediate resignation of Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner. His bumbles, manipulation and outright lies as New York Federal Reserve Chairman and as treasury secretary to cover up the malfeasance of AIG, Goldman, Sachs and other Wall Street wheeler dealers have done more to taint Obama as a hopeless captive of Wall Street. Giving Geithner the boot would reinforce a tough message that Wall Street and the banks must toe the administration line on reform.
FDR would quickly pull the plug if something didn't work or worked badly to advance his agenda. The health care reform bill is that something. Obama should yank it off the Senate table. His mistake was not to battle for health care reform, but to battle for it at the wrong time and on the wrong terms. It was a fight that was preordained to be long, contentious, embittered, and ultimately shamelessly compromised; a fight that let a GOP, flat on its back, off the canvas. He should revisit the issue later and this time write the bill himself with a fully functioning public option, firm cost containment measures, and tough monitoring provisions. Then quietly and patiently sell congressional leaders and the public on it.

FDR made sure that when he went to war it was truly the right war in the right place at the right time. He had America's allies and the American people firmly behind him. Afghanistan and certainly Iraq are not the right wars, and only for a brief moment did they have the full cooperation of America's allies, and the American public firmly behind them. Obama should set and stick to a firm date for withdrawal, call a regional conference of allies to inform them of the exit plan, and then demand that they make regional security, containment, and peace as much their responsibility as the US's. He should then announce that the billions saved from disengagement will go directly into a massive program of jobs, education, housing expansion and infrastructure rebuilding--in America.
FDR did not substitute rock star photo op, stagey, high profile media posturing for tough leadership. When the GOP and the press wrote the epitaph for him midway through his second term in 1938 and a decade later wrote the same epitaph for Truman both came out swinging. FDR took to the airwaves and blasted the economic royalists. Truman tooled through the nation with his famed whistle stop train campaign and hammered the do nothing GOP congress.

FDR and Truman fired up their base, inspired millions of Americans, continued to push reform, and kept the presidency. Obama could do the same. But only if he really acts like FDR.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His forthcoming book, How Obama Governed: The Year of Crisis and Challenge (Middle Passage Press) will be released in January 2010.

I don't have as strong opinions about Pope Pius XII as does Gail or many devout Catholics or Jews.

But I always respected Newsweek's old religion writer, Kenneth Woodward, and he wrote a decade ago a fascinating defense of the wartime pope, here. I'd love to hear others' thoughts on it.

Mandatory evacuations were ordered to protect residents of Glendale, La Canada and Flintridge from mudslides. Mandatory does not apparently really mean mandatory. The city is reporting a compliance rate of only about 50%. So, unless we, as a society, are really willing to arrest residents who stay home, mandatory means only "really, really recommended."

So friends, if you want to ride it out, I feel for you, but don't expect me to join you. I've been on that ride before.

©2010 Jonathan Dobrer
www.Dobrer.com

The Leno/Conan saga is mainly about ego, about two guys who have jockeyed for position. Right now Conan looks better than Leno, because he seems more like a victim of execs, and is using that for maximum (perhaps excessive) comic effect. But the alpha-male, "Le Tonight Show, c'est moi" ego is the same. It's about both publicly demanding the spotlight as something they've "earned." Personally, I would have expected a huge buyout to soften Conan's outrage a little. Imagine what he'd have done if he were dismissed like most mortals are.

Republican Scott Brown's Massachusett's Senate victory was almost certain days before the election. President Obama's stump for Democratic challenger Martha Coakley took the almost out from in front of certain. The seed of the Obama debacle was there long before the tea party protests, the relentless pound from Rush Limbaugh, the Fox News Network, the pack of right side talk jocks, and Republican National Chair Michael Steele. The seed was in the silly belief that Obama's victory was tantamount to FDR's 1932 smash election victory and the even sillier belief that the GOP had been reduced to a dwindling bunch of tobacco spitting rednecks in the Deep South and know nothing heartland voters. Neither was ever true.
The myth that Obama had game changed American politics by swaying a majority of mid America voters got started in the string of Obama primary victories over challenger Hillary Clinton in the Deep South and heartland Red States. Those were Democratic caucus or primary victories. They meant nothing in his general election showdown with John McCain. These are all rock solid GOP states and McCain swept them all. The five states that broke ranks and ultimately tipped the election to Obama were Ohio, North Carolina, Virginia, Florida, and Pennsylvania. The states are either solidly GOP or tenuous swing states, with a huge percent of the voters blue collar, anti-big government, socially conservative, pro defense, and intently patriotic. There was nothing close to a changing consensus that Obama's policies had gained any traction with these voters. He won because black and Latino voters turned his campaign into a holy crusade with an off the chart record voter turnout in four of the states. In Florida, the fifth that went for him, if the large bloc of liberal, black, Jewish, and younger Latino voters in South Florida hadn't crusaded for him, Florida also likely would have ended in the McCain win column.

After his White House win, polls repeatedly showed that while a majority of voters said they personally liked Obama, a mounting number said that they didn't like, or at best, were deeply ambivalent about his polices. The polices they disliked ran off the sheet--his failure to wind down the Iraq War, escalating the failed, flawed, no-win war in Afghanistan, a muddled, patchwork, terribly compromised health care reform plan, failure to rein in Wall Street profiteering, skyrocketing unemployment, bottomless home foreclosures, a stimulus plan that hiked the deficit but created few sustained, verifiable, long term jobs.

The even bigger mistake was too badly misread the presidential election results. Much was made that Obama got more white votes than John Kerry or Al Gore. That he revved up young whites, and that he totally exorcised race from the campaign. Obama's win supposedly was final proof that America had kicked the racial syndrome. This was 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 divide Obama still 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 Gates affair and the right's town hall rabble rousing made more voters wary of Obama's policies. Polls after the Gates outburst showed that a majority of whites condemned Obama for backing Gates and, even more ominously, expressed big doubts about his policies.

A painful reality is that the crushing majority of independents who oppose Obama or disavow his policies for racial, party, ideological reasons or personal prejudices, are a solid backbone of the GOP's counter insurgency against him. The New Jersey and Virginia gubernatorial races in November showed that except for a handful of counties with the big cities with a majority of young, liberal, and minority voters, the GOP swept all the counties. That should have set bells and whistles clanging among Democrat's that Obama's presidential victory was a mile wide but an inch deep, and that trouble was brewing over Obama's continued pander to Wall Street and the big banks and his diddle on mounting a full court press on the economy. The bells and whistles didn't clang. Top Democrats and pundits sloughed off the gubernatorial losses as an aberration or chalked it up to weak, corrupt or discredited Democratic candidates.

That's not the case with Brown's win. It was clearly about Obama. Obama lost the state long before his win.
Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His new book is, How Obama Governed: The Year of Crisis and Challenge (Middle Passage Press) will be released in January 2010.

If there was ever a modern-day pope aiming to kill off Catholic-Jewish relations, then Benedict XVI is it. After a wartime stint as a forced member of Hitler's Youth in his native Germany, it doesn't look like he forgot about many of their teachings once he ascended to the papal throne.

In January 2009, he reinstated a clergy who had denied that the Holocaust killed six million Jews, and he also didn't score any more bonus points in the Jewish community when he reinstated a prayer asking for the Jews to convert.

But those were just entrees towards his latest piece de la resistance over the impending sainthood of Pope Pius XII who reigned at the Vatican during World War II. Pius' allegiance towards the Nazis was questionable at best, but one thing is certain: he stood silent while they rounded up the Italian Jews and deported them to concentration camps. It's like that old expression, "bad things happen because good people (and indifferent popes) do nothing."

Croaking out a response, the Vatican has said that Pius worked behind the scenes to save the Italian Jews because he feared that a chirp, a gurgle or tweet in their direction would only make the surly Nazis surlier and more rabid than they already were and make things worse for the Jews. The jury is still out on that one because some have said that he secretly snuck some Jews out of the country, but the archives will remain sealed until 2014. Yet in spite of protests from leaders in the Italian Jewish community, Benedict is forging ahead with his plans to canonize him.

Bu these are the same guys that turned a blind eye and shuffled pedophile priests from parish to parish to hide their wrongdoing, so what should we expect?

I hate writing "Arnold is not to blame," but this time it's true. Releasing 40,000 prisoners was not his idea. In fact, he fought it at every level. The problem is that we have been ordered by the court to provide what would have been considered, had Obama's health care bill been put into law, a Cadillac Plan for our felons. While you and I have no inherent right to medical coverage, felons residing in prison do. Oh irony, where is thy sting?

Yes, Dickens was right, "The Law is an ass."

©2010 Jonathan Dobrer
www.Dobrer.com

If all goes as planned, then the doors of many jailhouses will fling open sometime next week and 6,000 bearded and tattooed male and female felons will step in the rain or sun and grope their way to freedom. Not the most murderous ones may be released, mind you, just your everyday run of the mill ones featuring auto thieves, check forgers and drug dealers.

No more sleeping with one eye open for these guys, even though most everyone else will have to, as they are sent back into society with about the same social graces they had before and larger muscles and better tattoos. Now with the turn of a tumbler key they may be free to roam the environs of the state where they will do what they want and won't even have to answer to one lousy parole officer. Talk about a disaster plan.

The disaster plan to combat the bulging jails is backed by Governor Schwarzenegger and supported by another genius, State Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation spokesman, Gordon Hinkle, and that's about it aside from the support of the average felon. It would have been more palpable for the public had they learned something basic like how to function in the outside world. But it doesn't take a rocket scientist to see where this could go and fast. If there was ever a time to batton down the hatches and leave your Jeep, Hummer or Lexus at home and under a detector, this may very well be it.

A few nights ago, Jon Stewart had the best reaction to the prospect of Democrats losing their 60-seat uber-majority in the Senate, wondering aloud why the Democrats worry that they won't get anything done with a mere 59-seat. As Stewart noted, George W. Bush generally had a far smaller majority and was still able to do pretty much "whatever the bleep he wanted."

If the public -- even the liberal public of "Taxachussetts" -- won't punish politicians for defying President Obama's agenda, then Democrats need to take stock of their situation and adjust their agenda accordingly. Bush was able to get his way because the opposition party feared defying him. If the opposition, or even Democratic moderate Blue Dogs, don't fear defying Obama, he needs to sit down and decide whether this is a communication problem or a simple disconnect with the public.

Personally, I've said many times in the past year or two that I'm a recovering libertarian, more willing to recognize that we need a dynamic balance of private and public efforts. I'm a bit surprised and disappointed that Obama can't seem to convince the American public of that, which has led to the propagation of tea-party propaganda about a new socialist era.

I love my country. Truly. I love my country right or wrong, but pray we will be right. But even when I think we're wrong, my love is not diminished. My love, whether for my country or my family, is constant. Agreement, respect and pride are bit more flexible. When disappointed by a love, there is pain. But when my loved ones do me proud, well, the pain turns to pride.

Of course, from Venezuela to Iceland, Canada to Cuba other nations and peoples are also giving. Are we all strange allies in this specific cause? Maybe. It does seem a shame that we can work together in extremis but not in normal times. Maybe we can learn something of lasting importance by joining together in this critical humanitarian effort. What is important is that we are there making a difference, saving lives and being up-lifted ourselves. We come, we help and we don't stay. This is what America does best. This is America at our best.
©2010 Jonathan Dobrer
www.Dobrer.com

Earl, part of Haiti's problems stem from its history, which is like a slippery slope. No matter how many times they tried to ascend that slope, they always slid back down. Seeing that the country was a gateway into the Caribbean, the Spanish took over and then the French, making the colonialism that followed no picnic. When the French left, the place collapsed, but being under colonial rule was only part of the problem. The other part was that they had more than their fair share of Rogues Gallery of elected officials and dictators.

But how can you blame the west or the world for problems that they have created including those brought on by Papa and Baby Doc et. al? While there are links between poverty and violence, one doesn't always have to be a gateway to the other due to the element of free will.

Fuggetabout Haiti's debt to the World Bank. Many countries owe them and big. Had it not been for the earthquake, come May, Haiti would have owed them $146,730.00, which is chump change compared to Korea's expected payment of $103,111,290.00, and China's of $37,686,020.00.

The best thing to do for that ravaged country after all the relief and aid have poured in, is to send them a peacekeeping task force to train them and help them produce things that they can export to bolster their sagging economy.

The heartbreaking and pathetic scene I and a group of other American visitors witnessed at the small beach town in Northern Haiti still haunt me. We had no sooner arrived at the beach when a contingent of Haitian police and local officials frantically waved away a throng of the town's residents who had poured onto to the beach to hawk food, trinkets, and carvings, and tattered clothing items, but mostly to beg. Their torn tee shirts and ragged shorts, and emaciated, hollow eyed looks bespoke of more than Haiti's legendary, world leading poverty. It spoke of the sheer, utter desperation to get anything from those they regarded as rich foreign tourists.
The tormenting scene that I and thousands of other visitors to Haiti have routinely witnessed routinely during the past decade has become the national emblem of Haiti. Yet, it took a murderous earthquake, clips of bodies sprawled in the streets, a collapsed palace and shanties, torn streets, and the shocked expressions on children's faces for the US and legions of public agencies and private donors to leap over themselves to promise to send an armada of food, medical supplies, clothing, building materials, construction teams, security forces and cash to Haiti.
Why did it take a natural tragedy for this? Haiti's sorry history of American occupation, brutal dictatorial and military rule, the flood of refugees trying to escape the nation's destitution, the perennial food crisis's, the wave of devastating hurricanes that tore through the country in one month in 2008, the US, Canada and France's meddling in the nation's internal politics , and the grinding poverty is well known.
Haiti's corrupt, repressive military rulers and government officials get standard blame for the country's chronic poverty and bankruptcy. There's much truth to that. But Haiti is also a relentless victim of crushing and never ending debt servitude to the IMF and foreign banks, vicious labor exploitation, and the blind eye US aid policies that stunt Haiti's farm and manufacturing growth.
The nation's debt burden would sink virtually any developing nation. Haiti is compelled to shell out nearly $1 million a week to pay off its debt to the World Bank and the IMF; debt incurred by the Papa and Baby Doc Duvalier regimes and their successor military governments in the early 1990s propped up by the US. Half of the loans were given to the Duvaliers and the other dictatorships. They squandered the cash on presidential luxuries with barely a cent going to development programs for the poor.
In 2008, World Bank President Robert Zoellick in reaction to massive outcry from government officials and Haitian activist groups publicly pledged to forgive part of the nation's the debt totaling a half billion dollars. The Bank reneged on the promise. The money could have bankrolled a vast expansion of healthcare, nutrition and feeding programs, supplies of clean water, and rebuilding the country's badly frayed infrastructure.
The United Nations has hardly been a benevolent force to aid the country's development and Democratic rule. The UN yearly shells out $600 million to maintain its 8000 peace keepers.
Yet when the hurricanes ravaged the country the UN force did not dispatch amphibious units, build temporary bridges, or provide trucks or equipment to provide emergency help to Haitians in distress.
US AID has come under intense fire for turning a blind eye to corporations and contractors who ignore basic Haitian labor, human rights, minimum wage and environmental laws, shun service providers, and invest only a relative pittance of profit back into Haitian small businesses, manufacturing, and food production. This is a particular sore point given Haiti's near total reliance on foreign food imports has resulted in famine, near starvation, and food riots.
The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization report that with proper investment in food production the country is more than capable of feeding its 8.5 million population.
In 2008, a coalition of US and Haitian human rights groups flatly accused the US of aiding and abetting corruption in the country. It demanded that then President Bush and Congress determine which US corporations and Haitian officials pocketed and benefited from the more than $4 billion USAID and their sub-contractors spent from 1994 to 1998. They demanded to know who profited and enriched themselves from the over $8 billion dollars spent following the US engineered overthrown of democratically elected President Jean Aristide. The groups charged that the systematic looting of the country's treasury did not end with his ouster. Their demands fell on deaf ears.
A colossal earthquake brought the world to Haiti's doorstep. The questions though are why did it take that? And what will it take for the world to stick around after the rubble is cleared and help transform Haiti into the democratic, self-supporting nation it can be?

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His forthcoming book, How Obama Governed: The Year of Crisis and Challenge (Middle Passage Press) will be released in January 2010.

I'm darker than thou. I don't know you, but that's based on the demographic odds. I'm also shorter than thou, assuming you're male -- again, based on the odds. Science says there are biases involved in such matters. I'm a victim of Mother Nature, and I intend to sue her pants off.

But I don't have much to complain about with Senator Reid, or even Joe Biden, who Jonathan says is a bigger problem than Dirty Harry. We're still learning what it means to be human, we're still learning what is truly inexorable in human nature and what is cultural. As a minority, I'm keenly aware of the peculiar tendency of Pakistanis and others to cherish lighter skin within their groups. And I'm not naive about how my political prospects in America would be helped by my dressing and speaking like a "regular American" than if I wore traditional Pakistani garb and spoke with a thick accent. What's the surprise here?

I want to see more grace toward those who put their foot in their mouth -- not just the Harry Reids of the world but even the Rush Limbaughs and Michael Savages of the world, who skate on dangerous racial ice for the sake of demagoguery and ratings. If we're all slouching toward enlightenment, we can't be so quick to crush those who may appear to be lagging behind.

This week, the Jews lost a friend from among those we can count on the collective fingers of one hand. Miep Gies, the protector of Anne Frank and her family and the guardian of her diary, died last Tuesday at the age of 100. By now, most people know that Gies not only helped hide the family in the annex of Otto Frank's office but that she also found Anne Frank's diary after they and the Van Dan's were hauled off by the Nazis.

What they may or may not know is that she worked with four other office workers in Otto Frank's company or how she scrounged for food by going from one market to another to avoid being detected. Oddly enough, she never considered herself a hero.

Like Gies, there was a woman who helped save my father's life during the Holocaust. A teenager near the end of the war, he was rounded up with some other Hungarian Jews and sent to a work camp, but after checking his surroundings, he walked out the front gate with a crowd and tore the Star of David off his jacket. Then he boarded a train and went to his uncle's apartment in Budapest where his uncle's housekeeper helped him probably in much the same way that Gies did.

Of all the things I asked him about his life during that time, I am sorry I never asked him her name because if I had, I would have searched for her or her children and grandchildren so I could profusely thank them and shower them with money, tributes and gifts. May their souls ascend to heaven.

The big story of this week, to me, was the departure of USC's Pete Carroll to the Seattle Seahawks. As a USC alumnus and staff member, and as an unabashed Carroll worshipper, I spent days mulling why he would go back to the pros when he stated so emphatically so many times that he wouldn't do it.

In the end, I knew we Carroll fans were wasting our prayers and breath in wishing for him to stay forever. I realized this late in the 2005 season, when Carroll had reached unimaginable heights at the tail end of USC's 34-game win streak. A local Fox sports reporter asked him in a long, philosophical interview if he felt that his transformation from an unsuccessful pro career to a spectacular college career proved that his true bliss comes as a teacher of young men than as a manager of jaded millionaires. It was Carroll's attempt to show that he really did "get" it, that he understood himself to be more of a John Wooden than a Bill Belichick.

Carroll didn't bite. He said he saw no difference in the two roles, and that both college and the pros are simply about competing. He went on to say that the NFL represented the pinnacle of his profession, but that he felt the USC gig just seemed more "right" for him.

To use those terrible Ginger & Marianne analogies from Gilligan's Island, I came to realize that college ball would never be more than his Marianne, the sweet but plain girl that he tried to settle down with; but his passion was still with glamorous Ginger, if she would only call give him another shot on terms he felt could give him a better shot to succeed next time.

And so it was inevitable that his insistence that he'd stay in LA would be meaningless. Those exclamations about refusing to leave were a case of, "He doth protest too much." Now it can be seen why Mark Sanchez's own decision a year ago to shun college glory for NFL glory provoked Carroll to act a bit immature publicly in denouncing it: Sanchez was choosing a path that Carroll was trying to convince himself was no good.

Upon leaving, Carroll told the rival paper on Monday that being at last week's BCS title game at the Rose Bowl, but "it's not the same" as the NFL playoffs. "It's a great spectacle, but the other thing is a whole different level." Indeed. The NFL was his dream, and we were never going to keep him here forever. There will never be one like him, but we Trojans are trying to take it better than Tennessee fans rioting over Lane Kiffin's sudden exit to replace Carroll. Sheez, and I thought I took this stuff too seriously.

If love means never having to say you're sorry, then the political life means often having to say you are, even when you're not. Take Harry Reid and his on-target political observation that Obama was elected partially because he didn't use the "Negro dialect."

After all, only a director on the sci-fi genre could imagine hip-hop moguls like Snoop Dogg, Jay-Z or Michael Vick in the White House. If things are bad now, just imagine what would happen should that day should ever come. A marijuana cloud would float over Capitol Hill while dogs scrambled and fought on the White House lawn. And forget about any domestic or foreign policy because they would do away with both.

But the PC Brigade has no one to blame but themselves. When you are part of an ethnic group that most of society views askance, you'd better mind your p's and q's unless you want to plug into a stereotype. And this means just about anyone whose ancestors did not arrive on the Mayflower. This isn't always easy to do, but it is not done by producing videos with half-naked women prancing around, by glamorizing the thug life or by calling women "ho's."

If anything, we should all cut Harry Reid some slack. He comes from a generation where that awful and offensive word was used in the open in proper and polite company. And for his astute political commentary, he should hire himself out as a political analyst opposite Sarah Palin.

From the faux controversy surrounding accidentally saying something true, you might think that Harry Reid was worse than "Shoe Bomber" Richard Reid. Richard lit a fuse and only gave himself a hotfoot and a long jail term. Harry put his foot firmly in his own mouth and may lose his Senate leadership position and his Senate seat in Nevada.

Truthfully, if we're looking for inappropriate praise for Obama, we need look no further than Joe Biden. No surprise here. During the primary season Joe said that Obama was "clean and articulate." Again, while true, no one ever comments on the cleanliness of a white candidate. Joe's was a more grievous sin for which has was severely punished by being made to serve as Vice President.
©2010 Jonathan Dobrer
www.Dobrer.com

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Senate Majority leader Harry Reid apologized profusely for his unguarded quip that Obama's light skin and non-Negro dialect stood him well with him and by implication other whites. President Obama graciously accepted his apology and applauded him as a supporter and friend. But the embattled leader spoke the awful truth that millions did give Obama a racial pass. The pass did not win the White House for him; money, timing, a skillful campaign, and most importantly Bush blunders and GOP disgrace ultimately tipped the White House his way. But Obama's racial pass made a difference, maybe a crucial difference.

Two months before the presidential campaign wrapped, a survey found that one quarter of whites held negative views of blacks that were laced with the standard stereotypes. The respondents said that blacks use race as a crutch, are not as industrious as whites, they opposed interracial marriage, and are terrified of black crime (Obama mildly chided his white grandmother in his so-called race speech in March 2008 for saying she feared black men). Yet nearly a quarter of them claimed they'd vote for Obama. In every poll taken from the instant he declared his candidacy the overwhelming majority of whites were adamant that race had absolutely nothing to do with whether they'd vote for him or not. The difference was not just his lighter coloring, but his words, demeanor and political approach. His race neutral campaign was widely perceived as a soothing departure from the race baiting antics of Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton. But others liked him because of, and were plainly fascinated by his racially exotic background. It supposedly didn't fit that of the typical African American. This was Reid's point.
Obama's light color, the downplay of his blackness, his clipped King's English delivery, and his tireless pitch as the blank slate, every person's candidate, made him personally and politically attractive. It also made him the textbook racial exceptional. This is the penchant for some whites to make artificial distinctions between supposedly good and bad blacks. It's apparent in the unthinking infuriating, insulting, and just plain dumb crack made to some articulate, well-educated blacks in business and the professions that they are different than other blacks. Or that they are not like other blacks.

Racial exceptionalism stems from the ingrained, but terribly misplaced, belief that blacks are perennially disgruntled, hostile, and rebellious, and are always on the lookout for any real or perceived racial slight, and they etch to pick a fight over it. African-Americans who don't fit this brash, outspoken, faintly threatening type have been touted, praised, even anointed over time by some as the reasoned voice of black America. A century ago the mantle of the reasoned, exceptional African-American was bestowed on famed educator, Booker T. Washington. He was showered with foundation and corporate money, honors, and fame.

In the 1920s and 1930s, NAACP leaders always found a ready welcome at the White House. They were praised in the press and bankrolled by some industrialists. In the 1960s Urban League President Whitney Young, NAACP executive secretary Roy Wilkins, and Martin Luther King Jr. before he fell out of favor with Lyndon Johnson after his too vocal opposition to the Vietnam War and turn to economic radicalism, were lionized for their reason and racial moderation.

In the 1980s, Presidents Reagan and Bush Sr. actively cultivated and promoted a pack of younger GOP friendly academics, black business leaders, and black conservatives. Reagan and Bush Sr. plainly saw them as a leadership alternative to the black Democrats and the old guard civil rights leaders. The black conservatives were appointed to government posts, bagged foundation grants, were feted by conservative think tanks, and their columns were routinely published in major newspapers. They were continually cited by writers and reporters as a breath of fresh air among African-Americans mostly for their willingness to break ranks with and to blister Jackson, Sharpton, and the civil rights establishment.

Obama hardly fits the mold of a black conservative. And at no point during the campaign, and certainly at no point during his tenure in the White House has he said or done anything to personally distance himself from his blackness.

He has on occasion bristled publicly at the notion that he's in competition with or a critic of civil rights leaders, or that he is immune from racial jabs. He cited countless instances and times in his books where he felt the pang of discrimination, even racial profiling. He has repeatedly praised past civil rights leaders for their heroic battle against racial injustice.

But Reid and millions others didn't give Obama a racial pass because he put race at arm's length. He got it because of the nagging penchant to elevate some blacks above the racial fray, and declare them the exception. Reid, apology or no, simply spoke the awful truth and confirmed that.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His forthcoming book, How Obama Governed: The Year of Crisis and Challenge (Middle Passage Press) will be released in January 2010.

As one of Gail's "two readers," I find her perceptions of Muslims to be very troubling in this post. No doubt the larger Muslim world has serious issues to work through. I can agree with people ranging from the conservative Bernard Lewis to the liberal Reza Aslan on this. But Gail goes as far as to take Nonia Darwish seriously in the contention that the Muslim world is actively attempting to, uh, infiltrate the West.

To a degree, every proselytizing religion intends to infiltrate the rest of the world. That's the definition of proselytizing. Gail, don't imagine that your evangelical pro-Israel allies don't want the empty churches in Tel Aviv to someday be filled with persons like yourself.

Nonie Darwish reminds me of the former nun, Karen Armstrong, who's become a vocal critic of Christianity and a strong apologist for Muslims. Armstrong criticizes the Judeo-Christian tradition for being too mean to idolaters, but passes over Muslims' intense anti-idolatry. She claims that Christians have sexual hang-ups and that Muslims don't, which seems a stretch. She claims that Islam is more inherently forgiving than Christianity.

Mostly, she seems to be an angry child still railing about the injustices of Daddy. So does Nonie Darwish. Do you really believe Darwish is brave? She's an opportunist, refusing to grow up, because attention and money incentivize her continued immaturity. Both Armstrong and Darwish serve the interests of demagogues who like stirring up action against whole civilizations, by claiming, "But they started it."

To My Two Readers Out There, whoever you are:

I now believe I have proof positive that AOL is owned by the Arabs. In this link to a lingerie ad, a woman steps out of the shower, dabs on some mascara while Middle Eastern music plays in the background, admires her beautiful self in the mirror before slipping a niquab over her head. As only her mascara-ridden eyes peer out from under the veil, the tagline reads, "Sexiness is for everyone."

What's wrong with this? Let me name the chief way. The article, featured by none other than AOL, is running in the wrong part of the world. When I am not writing these things, I sometimes venture outside where I have seen many people of many races and creeds. Some are short, some are fat, some are tall and some are skinny, some are tattooed and some are not. While I have seen several Moslem women in scarves, I have never seen one covered head to toe.

So why did AOL run this? Not for reasons of cultural sensitivity or so we can all hold hands and form one giant human chain to be sure.

Several months ago a Republican organization featured a brave Arabic woman as its guest speaker. In her speech, Nonie Darwish said that the goal of much of the Muslim world is to infiltrate the West. On the north side of Van Owen Boulevard near Louise, there is an ornate Mosque that reaches skyward, yet remains empty. According to Mrs. Darwish, they don't care if it's empty because they one day hope to fill it with believers.
Or in the words of conservative columnist, Michelle Malkin, "They're baaaack!"

(If the link doesn't come up, the story is on the online January 7, 2010 edition of "Daily Finance" under "German Lingerie Ad Lifts the Veil on Muslim Women.")

Vanity Fair made it official. Tiger is now a member in good standing in the pantheon of gang banging, drive by shooting, menacing, thug life, sexually on the make, young black males. At least that's what the lengthy pack of Tiger bashers quickly branded the pumping iron, buffed, ghetto trademark ski cap wearing Tiger that ungraces the cover of Vanity Fair. They and a handful of black commentators gloated that the magazine dumped on Tiger something that Tiger allegedly spent the better part of a decade fleeing in horror from, namely his blackness. The nonsensical talk of Calabanasian, as he coined his mixed-race (Caucasian, black, Native American and Asian) heritage, and his public duck and dodge of any identification with black causes, supposedly was final proof that Tiger had danced down the OJ Simpson path, and of course, we know what happened to him. The Tiger baiters bet that now that he's been scorned, trashed, and battered by corporate, and Golf World America he'll suddenly have an OJ racial epiphany.

Any other time, the Vanity Fair shot would be laughed away or shrugged off as just fun and games stuff. It would do little to change the universal perception of the carefully honed Wheaties Box, wholesome, image of the Golf World's reigning superstar. Indeed, when the photo was snapped in 2006, the devoted family man, clean Gene image of Tiger was still deeply frozen in the public's psyche. The parade of porn figures, lap dancers, cocktail waitresses, and call girls who allegedly wound up in Tiger's lair have rendered that image laughable, even pitiable. That makes the Vanity Fair cover thug life looking Tiger totally believable.

Still, the Tiger as racial martyr, closet thug, and America's new racial bad boy is silly stuff. The racial stereotypes that the Vanity Fair-Tiger shot reinforces is not. It's the shortest of short steps to think that if a fallen from the perch Tiger can be depicted as a caricature of the terrifying image that much of the public still harbors about young black males, then that image seems real, even more terrifying, and the consequences are just as dangerous.

The thought was that Obama's election buried once and for all negative racial typecasting and the perennial threat racial stereotypes posed to the safety and well-being of black males. It did no such thing. Immediately after Obama's election teams of researchers from several major universities found that many of the old stereotypes about poverty and crime and blacks remained just as frozen in time. The study found that much of the public still perceived those most likely to commit crimes are poor, jobless and black. The study did more than affirm that race and poverty and crime were firmly rammed together in the public mind. It also showed that once the stereotype is planted, it's virtually impossible to root out. That's hardly new either.

In 2003 Penn State University researchers conducted a landmark study on the tie between crime and public perceptions of who is most likely to commit crime. The study found that many whites are likely to associate pictures of blacks with violent crime. This was no surprise given the relentless media depictions of young blacks as dysfunctional, dope peddling, gang bangers and drive by shooters. The Penn State study found that even when blacks didn't commit a specific crime; whites still misidentified the perpetrator as an African-American.

Five years later university researchers wanted to see if that stereotype still held sway, even as white voters were near unanimous that race made difference in whether they would or did vote for Obama. Researchers still found public attitudes on crime and race unchanged. The majority of whites still overwhelmingly fingered blacks as the most likely to commit crimes, even when they didn't commit them.

The bulging numbers of blacks in America's jails and prisons seem to reinforce the perception that crime and violence in America invariably comes with a young, black male face. And it doesn't much matter how prominent, wealthy, or celebrated the black is, Tiger again. The overkill frenzy feeding on the criminal or borderline criminal antics of a litany of black NFL and NBA stars, that run afoul of the law or are poorly behaved, and of course, everyone's favorite stomping boy, the rappers and hip hop artists, further implant the negative image of black males. None of them, like Tiger, are hardly poor, downtrodden, ghetto dwelling young black males.

Tiger didn't commit any crime, and the only one that he hurt was his wife, family, sponsors, and the fantasy image of him as the Simon pure sportsman. For that he's paid and will continue to pay a dear price. The Vanity Fair cover just assured that the price he'll pay will be even steeper.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His forthcoming book, How Obama Governed: The Year of Crisis and Challenge (Middle Passage Press) will be released in January 2010.

Oh Gail-Tzipporah, I try to be positive, but I'm only positive about disagreeing with the entire content of your column on adopting Israeli style security at our airports.

We need to deal with what we can do and evaluate the trade offs we are willing to make. Right now, we are dealing with illusions and pretend. We have given up a lot and received very little. Personally, I think we should copy the English who kept their stiff upper lips stiff and went about their business when rockets rained on London, when the IRA blew up bombs in public places and yes, when Al Qaeda inspired terrorists attacked London busses and the underground. We surrender our freedoms and surrender to our fears too easily. Our lips quiver disproportionately to the actuarial threat.

©2010 Jonathan Dobrer
www.Dobrer.com

Suck it up over airport security, Jonathan? When antelope fly. The problem is that the liberals have taken over around here and have blown everything sky high. It used to be that people basically could say whatever they wanted without fear of being branded as politically incorrect. They have taken care of that and now no one can say anything. It used to be if people did something wrong, they suffered a consequence. Now the criminal element is given second and third chances before being hauled off to the pokey. Jobs used to be given out on merit, not on racial balance. Now people sit in chairs and shuffle papers back and forth and all around in a job with a basic lifetime guarantee. We used to have standards, but now no one has any shame for not meeting them. In fact, they try and make their lack of gumption look normal and make the other guy look like the freak for working hard to meet them.

And now we are supposed to make nicety-nice with terrorists and those with darker skin and swarthy features because we might be accused of racial profiling? There are too many people who need to go home and see their friends, kids and grandkids. There are too many people with too many things to do to play around like that. If anything, we should adopt the Israeli policies and tighten airport security before liberal convention halls of the ACLU make us buy them first class tickets.

Many Americans were surprised to him in a role like this, as the President of our great nation. You see, he was young, and black. Yet he had a certain steady charisma about him. And a sense of integrity.

Tonight, I saw him on television, as he talked plain talk to Americans, helping them make sense of our challenging times. He mentioned that this great recession may make us great again, spurring us to revalue that which matters most in life. He gave hope to his listeners.

How sad, though, that this was an Allstate commercial featuring this guy. I hoped to see Obama playing more of this role as the Preacher-in-Chief, yet he hasn't warmed to that role.

"Anyone can take people where they already want to go," said the pundit Jonathan Alter many years ago. "True leaders can take people where only their better selves are willing to tread." If Obama is to change the tone in Washington, he will have to make an effort here. He may have had a better first year if he spent more time pointing his fellow countrymen to a better place rather than jumping in so quickly into the partisan fray.

There is no real security at our airports or in any airports. Okay, Israel is an exception, but whether or not its procedures should be replicated here, they can't be. They are small and we are big. So, we put our money into the illusion of security. We stand in long lines while inattentive, underpaid and overworked screeners try to see what is being scanned. Their failure rate is pretty high but not recognized because so few people really want to hurt us.

The more we harden our airports, the more attractive other targets become--theatres, shopping malls, sport's stadiums. We are not safe and we will just have to live with it. Putting things in perspective--which we're not very good at--we lose over 30,000 Americans every year to gun violence, car wrecks and seasonal influenza. This is over 120,000 Americans a year. But we'll cower in fear of terrorists and TSA officials and be frightened and humiliated at our airports. For what? Illusions.

©2010 Jonathan Dobrer
www.Dobrer.com

I just learned that LA Observed has listed our blog from among the 30 essential blogs in LA. Congrats all around. And thank you to our publisher, Jack Klunder, our editor, Mariel Garza, and to my co-bloggers, Rob, Jonathan and Earl.

http://www.laobserved.com/pages/bloglinks.php

Failed airline bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab is yet another pawn in the terror war. Terror suspects take center stage not just in how they're prosecuted, but how the terrorism fight is being waged. President Obama took the predictable heat from Bush counter terrorism officials, top GOP senators and Joe Lieberman when he decided to try Abdulmutallab in an open, civilian court. Obama's decision also goes against the grain of public opinion which opposes civilian trials for terror suspects.

Lieberman and the GOP leaders say that Abdulmutallab and others like him will get the legal and constitutional protections that war combatants should not get. Prosecutors and investigators, they say, can't wring information out of him that could be used to hunt down other terrorists.

The argument is bogus and dangerous. Federal courts are tightly secured. Federal judges and prosecutors have ample legal tools to prevent any classified information from slipping out, and federal prosecutors have a well established track record of convicting terror suspects. Judges routinely impose tough sentences on them. The opposition to a civilian court trial for Abdulmutallab rests on the presumption that he is guilty, and that he has secrets to tell, and will tell them, in a military court, but not in a civilian court. The charges against Abdulmutallab are criminal charges, and as with any defendant charged with a crime, he's presumed innocent. The aim of a criminal trial is not to wring real or imagined secrets out of a suspect, but to get a conviction; a conviction that sticks, and a prison sentence that guarantees that he doesn't waltz out of prison anytime soon. Civilian trials even for men such as Abdulmutallab send two crucial messages. The legal system can get convictions without trampling on defendant's rights. It is a shield against legal abuses and is a firm deterrent to serious crime.

The notion that a military court can get secrets out of Abdulmutallab is pure conjecture. Presuming that he had any secrets to tell the only conceivable way that he'd tell them would be to subject him to enhanced techniques or less politely, harsh interrogation techniques, or let's call it what it is, torture. A Rasmussen poll shows that a majority of Americans think torture should be used against Abdulmutallab. But studies have shown that torture doesn't work. Terror suspects will lie, exaggerate, embellish, invent, and concoct stories to make their interrogators stop the abuse. Their interrogators are more than happy to gloat over extracting false or fabricated confessions because getting any information out of a suspect no matter how far-fetched and useless serves as rationale and justification for their dirty work. The paltry information plucked out of suspects beaten, water boarded, subject to cold, heat, and sleep deprivation, and round the clock interrogation at Gitmo is ample proof that torture as an effective technique is a flop.

Using torture doesn't just result in collecting piles of nonsense. It also creates the false sense that getting worthless information actually is the best way to prevent future terror attacks. Abdulmutallab is a good example of that. If as alleged, he was radicalized, trained, and given his marching orders by Al Qeada in Yemen, then with all the terror suspects that the US has rounded up and endlessly grilled why wasn't he fingered and scooped up with the others?
The Military Commissions that the US set up in 2001 to try suspected terrorists has hardly been a model of criminal justice efficiency. The commissions have been plagued by legal shifts, confusion, conflicts, procedural delays, and trial postponements. The confusion has been compounded by Congressional changes in the Military Commissions Act of 2009.

The clamor to scrap civilian trials for terror suspects has less to do with hysteria over security, cracking terror networks and putting terrorists away for good, than the fierce political gamesmanship that the terrorism war has long been notorious for. Bush and Congressional Democrats fought and now Obama and Congressional Republicans fight a protracted political battle over shuttering Guantanamo, the shameless political use terrorism color code warnings, the provisions of the Patriot Act, intelligence agency operations, the Iraq and Afghan wars, and civilian versus military courts. Abdulmutallab has just exacerbated their fight.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His forthcoming book, How Obama Governed: The Year of Crisis and Challenge (Middle Passage Press) will be released in January 2010.

There are certain ideas, trends and concepts I just can't wrap my head around. It used to be peace and love, even to those you wanted to club with a tire iron. Now, it's food and just about anything that can make its way down the gullet.

Take the Internet, one of the foodie's chief meeting places aside from a banquet hall or restaurant. On one networking site, some restaurateurs invited future patrons to discern from among the different kinds of olive oil and sample their 86 cheeses. The bottom line is that olive oil does not change form that much once it sails down the old alimentary canal and most people would wind up on a hospital gurney after eating that much cheese. I even tried an online cooking quiz, but got half wrong and guessed on the other half I did get right, and I've been getting some serious spam from cooking schools.

It looks like baking, broiling and flambéing are on par with winning a Gold Medal for the 100-yard sprint or discovering life on other planets.

Still, having an inquiring mind, I went to see the latest foodie movie, "Julie and Julia" when it came out. While Meryl Streep's acting could only be compared to that of a creampuff, I still could not see what was so exciting about the whole concept. A flicker of understanding did occur for a frame or two, but then it was back to normal.

I also work with someone who reads cookbooks for pleasure and cross-references her recipes, so I asked her to help me out, but she started to sound like she was talking in tongues.

I now believe this is because of my astrology and upbringing. Regardless of what people say, there has to be a reason why so many actors are born under Leo, so many cooks under Cancer and so many detectives under Scorpio. I am on the cusp of Libra Scorpio, which makes us discerning and critical. In fact, Judge Judy and I share a birthday, but could anyone see her getting worked up over creating a baked Alaska or cherries flambe? How about Leonadro di Caprio or Robert Downey, Jr.? Probably not.

I also grew up in a house where TV dinners and carry outs were a staple and potatoes were baked until the outside felt like a basketball and the interior had disintegrated into potato flakes. I thought this was normal until I started comparing them to restaurant potatoes. This has served me well, though, because every fast food restaurant, vending machine and employee cafeteria, looks fine to me, meaning that I may never starve.

Either way, there are two universal truths in all this. One is that this is just going to go over some people's heads and two, these people would probably get kicked off a reality TV cooking show hosted by Gordon Ramsey or someone else like that.