December 2010 Archives

I am happy to have made it through another year, happy to be here and happy to be freelancing for the Daily News. I was surprised when this section's editor, Mariel Garza, offered me the job two and one-half years ago because I thought I was done for when the previous editor and my one contact at the paper, Chris Weinkopf, left. But then life really is full of surprises.

For me, 2010 was a year of triumphs as well. I wound my way through a difficult time and came through stronger and perhaps better. They say that it is not the easy times that shape us but the hard ones, and this I found to be true.

I learned, above all else, to stop giving so much of a damn about what others may think. I still may give a little damn, perhaps, but not nearly the kind of damn I gave before.

We had our ups and downs in our country and the world, but those are always going to be. We had the Arizona Immigration Law, where our boneheaded politicians voted to boycott the state. How this helps in the long run is anyone's guess, but some people will do just about anything just to stay in office. We also had the BP oil spill, which made California's boneheads look like a bunch of neophytes.

The good news is Chelsea Clinton got married and Hugh Hefner got engaged. I predict that this one will last as long as he does. A 60-year age gap may look funny on paper, but they do look like they are in love. Or maybe I've just been living out here too long.

The other good news is that the executives of Seattle's Metro Bus Company voted to oppose an ad from the "Seattle Mideast Awareness Campaign," (read the Arabs) accusing Israel of war crimes, and the Catholic church has continued accepting responsibility for pedophile priests. You have to give credit to anyone who would risk the pain of standing up in public and reliving painful memories. But I know there is redemption and empowerment in standing up and facing a tormentor as well. Either way, their strength and courage has brought light to the darkness.

My hopes for the coming year? That the economy picks up so that those who once earned a paycheck can do so again, that the homeless get off the streets, that we solve our illegal immigration problem and that racism, hunger, drug addictions and religious intolerance will fade away and end.

It may be a tall order to fill, it may be idealistic, but if we can elect a Black president and get a woman's MS to abate with an experimental stem cell implant, then maybe those things are possible as well. Here's to another day, another gift, as my father used to say, another year. Here's to another chance to make a difference.

All times are, by definition, modern. All years are filled with triumphs and tragedies. There is always birth, death, war, sometimes peace and happily peaceful moments of escape from the hurly-burly of full-contact life. This past year is, of course, no exception. It was a hell of a year both personally and for the larger world. And I use "hell of a year" in both senses of hell--good and, well, hellish. Most end of year columns would acknowlege that the Lakers won and the Dodgers didn't, that it was a tough year for Obama up till December when we all learned that lame ducks may limp on the ground but can soar in the air. But you know all of this. I want to get mostly personal.

On the down side, reason has not always triumphed. Nearly 50% of Americans do not believe in evolution. Their failure to evolve may prove their case. Unreason continues to triumph in much of the world as we create differences and make them temporarily important. Tragically many of the consequences of our prejudices and phobias result in permanent damage and needless deaths. Would that our souls could make the same progress as our science and our compassion expand to embrace the full spectrum of humanity. We live, as always, in both the best and the worst of times--with abilities to kill beyond the fantasies of fabled monsters and abilities to build and heal beyond the dreams of seers and saints. We have such power to truly make this simply The Best of Times.

©2010 Jonathan Dobrer
www.Dobrer.com

Who would have thought that Kim Kardashian would take off on Kobe Bryant for anything other than their shared sports and celebrity status? Kardashian in addition has carved out a growth industry in flesh baring, body ogling and sex titillation. But there's Kardashian lambasting Bryant for his two year deal pitching the glories of riding the skies on Turk Hava Yollari AO, Turkish Airlines, the country's state-run airlines.
Kardashian and a legion of Armenian organizations and leaders are ticked at Bryant for the deal which they say is tantamount to Bryant endorsing Turkey's slaughter of 1 to 2 million Armenians in 1915. They want Bryant to do two things, scrub the deal and speak out against Turkey for its dogged refusal to admit its murderous crime against the Armenians.

Bryant does not put a PR sheen on that crime, and knocking him for the airlines deal does nothing to bring Turkey to heel for the genocide. It's simply the pure symbolism on the protestor's part in using Bryant as the foil for their legitimate campaign to get Turkey to admit the slaughter. The slaughter has been well-documented. Turkey's near century refusal to admit, apologize, and atone for it for nearly a century is a galling blight on history, morality, and human rights. Armenian organizations are right to press the case against the Turkish government for the massacres. But that's where it should begin and end. The fault and the blame for Turkey's refusal to admit the killings lay with the Turkish government, the United Nations, Congress. Armenians have pushed for years the various world organizations and Congress to brand the massacres as genocide. The House Foreign Affairs Committee resolution was introduced in 2007. It stalled. The Obama administration has come under fire for refusing to support Congressional action on the genocide resolution. The resolution specifically calls on Obama to reflect "understanding and sensitivity" to Armenian genocide. The resolution puts the Obama administration in a virtual no win situation. If it endorses it, it risks a major breach with the Turkish government. The country is just too vital as an ally that provides crucial intelligence, military and logistical support for its wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and a counterbalance to l Iran and counter and radical Islamic groups in the region. Though France passed a resolution recognizing the genocide in 2001 and it had no effect on trade between the countries. France is not waging war in Afghanistan and does not need Turkey aid in protecting its regional interests. The Congressional resolution bumps up hard against Middle East geopolitics and security interests. Bryant's airline deal will have absolutely no effect in influencing US and Turkish relations.

Then there's the genocide. It is compared with the Nazi Holocaust against the Jews and Armenian activists say that German companies, and the German government were held accountable, apologized and paid reparations. There also the comparison to the US government's apology and payments to Japanese-Americans for the seizure of their property, businesses, and internment during World War II, the US governments apologies and land concession to American Indians for the theft of their land. In each case, the actions were government sanctioned, condoned and encouraged. It was not the act of one individual doing business with a company decades after the historic crime. That's the case with Bryant and Turkish Airlines.
In the past celebrities have been hammered by activist groups for shilling for controversial products or companies such as the Kruggerand sales during the Apartheid era or Nike accuse of sweat shop labor practices in Asia. The offending companies or products directly affected the lives of workers, and propped up a government that grossly violated human rights. In each case, the celebrity was lending their name to that exploitation and human rights abuses.
Bryant's deal doesn't fit that category. A spokesman for Turkish Airlines got it right in the statement defending the airlines deal with Bryant, "Kobe Bryant is a cultural figure, not a historian, and is in no way related to a sensitive and complex controversy over highly contested history."Still, Armenian leaders hector Kobe as a hypocrite for denouncing the genocide in Darfur. But that is not a fair comparison. The genocide in Darfur did not happen a century ago. It's recent and by some accounts still ongoing. That genocide has been universally condemned.
Kobe for his part has remained tight lipped about the deal. There is little reason to think or expect that he will cancel it. It is a straight business proposition made by a major corporation with one of the world's best most recognizable celebrities. Armenian groups are right to press Congress and the Obama administration to press the issue of Turkey's responsibility for its historic crime. Just don't blame Kobe for it.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. He hosts nationally broadcast political affairs radio talk shows on Pacifica and KTYM Radio Los Angeles.
Follow Earl Ofari Hutchinson on Twitter: http://twitter.com/earlhutchinson and on thehutchinsonreportnews.com and view The Hutchinson Report on http://www.ustream.tv/channel/hutchinson-report-tv

There are certain people who shouldn't have certain jobs - no matter what. While Simon Cowell may be a great music impresario, I wouldn't put him in charge of a psych unit. While Pamela Anderson may be a great animal rights activist, I wouldn't put her in charge of an accounting firm, and while George Washington was a great commander-in-chief, I would't have put him in charge of a sewing circle. Meaning that some people aren't cut out for certain jobs. It's not in their nature.

The same with Michael Vick. He belongs with a dog like Ahmadinejad belongs on the planning committee of a JCC. How did I and most other sane people aboard the mother ship come to this conclusion? The way that most other people come to theirs, by past experience.

Vick's record of not only pitting animals against each other but of electrocuting, torturing then drowning them once they lost and fostering rapes of female pit bulls is too much to bear. And there is no way that anyone could do a 180-degree turn without having some electroshock treatment himself or a lobotomy, which Vick hasn't done. He probably hasn't even gone into therapy or counseling sessions to see what led him to brutalize creatures that were at a disadvantage to begin with.

Race may be the killer issue for some, but if Vick were white, Hispanic or anything else, those defending him would suggest that he buy a stuffed animal, if even that. I question whether he should be allowed to spawn children because it's frightening to think of what kind of a role model and what kind of a parent he would be.

If Michael Vick is not violent now, then he at least had violent tendencies well into his prime and after he should have known better, and no matter how much jail-time he served or what kind of an inmate he was, he should never be allowed to own so much as even a goldfish let alone man's best friend.

America usually loves a second act, a story of redemption. We are normally generous and applaud the reformed sinner, the fallen hero who gets back up and triumphs against his demons.

©2010 Jonathan Dobrer
www.Dobrer.com

Any dog that Michael Vick owned would be the luckiest dog on the planet. But a dog won't get that honor, at least not just yet. And it's dumb, and silly not to give Vick the chance to give a dog the love, care and devotion that he would give the lucky pet. There are two reasons why Vick won't get to own a pet now. They tell much about the idiocy of a court system that deals in rigid absolutes and about many that are still blinded in part by mania over the Vick's past reprehensible actions toward dogs, and in part racism. Vick is barred from buying, selling and most grievously to him, owning a dog. Grievous, because he has publicly pined to own a dog, his children's desire to have a dog, and most importantly that owning a dog would send the message that redemption is more than just a Webster dictionary word. Vick understands the importance of that message and said so in an interview, "I think it would be a big step for me in the rehabilitation process." Wayne Pacelle, president of the Humane Society of the United States cosigned that message when he said "I have been around him a lot, and feel confident that he would do a good job as a pet owner."

The sad thing is that Vick and Pacelle can talk all day about the message that Vick would send by being allowed to own a dog but it won't change anything. This is the same Humane society that whipped up public rage against Vick to the point that Vick was tried, convicted and sentenced in the court of public opinion long before he put a toe in a court room. This assured that Vick's name would be spat out in the same breath as the names of the worst of the serial killers, pedophiles, and terrorists.
Vick could have volunteered round the clock at PETA events, camp in front of fur manufacturers with a picket sign, clean kennels at pet shelters and bankroll and appear in ads against animal abuse. It would not have changed his fate. The imprint "reprehensible" that NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell stamped on him and his crime, not to mention the much less charitable epithets that thousands have hurled at him in Internet chat rooms and on sports talk shows would have still stuck tightly in big, bold letters on him. Despite Vick's 19 month sentence served, full cooperation with federal authorities in identifying dog fighting rings, storybook triumphant comeback with the Philadelphia Eagles, his earning the accolades of coaches, the NFL establishment and sportswriters for his gracious, thoughtfulness, and exemplary comportment on and off the field, Vick is still a much hated figure among many.

He was not just a dog torturer. He was a rich and famous African-American celeb that went bad. That instantly stirred a mob vendetta against Vick. The Atlanta NAACP understood that. It publicly pleaded against rushing to judgment about his guilt and begged that Vick not be permanently barred from the NFL. It took much heat for that and drew the inevitable squawk that it was playing the race card. But it understood that in the case of men such as Vick, even when they admit guilt and plead for forgiveness, the words mercy and compassion are alien terms.

He could spend millions and hire legions of pricey publicists, consultants and image makeover specialists and it wouldn't change one whit the public's hostility and negative perceptions of him. The bad boy image of Vick was indelibly plastered on their foreheads by the public.

Public revulsion over Vick's crimes and resentment at his fame, wealth and race only partly explain why he's in a near hopeless spot when it comes to rehabilitating his image. He's the latest and handiest target for a public sick to death of sports icons and mega celebrities getting kid glove treatment for their misdeeds or outright lawbreaking.
Vick will pay and continue to pay two steep prices for his crime. He's done the jail time, coughed up a load of cash in fines and restitution and legal debts, and was ousted for a time from the NFL. That price was fair and warranted. And he's more than paid it. The other price that he'll never stop being asked to pay is that he'll be the permanent poster boy for animal abuse and the bad behaving celebrity, a black celebrity that is.
Vick put it best when he said that he feels that his shameful actions are behind him and he wants to go forward. He has, but many others are bound and determined not to forgive him. This makes it even sadder that there's some dog out there that won't get a chance to let Vick prove that he would be the best pet owner on the planet.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. He hosts nationally broadcast political affairs radio talk shows on Pacifica and KTYM Radio Los Angeles.
Follow Earl Ofari Hutchinson on Twitter: http://twitter.com/earlhutchinson and on thehutchinsonreportnews.com and view The Hutchinson Report on http://www.ustream.tv/channel/hutchinson-report-tv

When I get unreasonably angry with someone--as opposed to reasonably angry--I try to have the discipline to look at myself. As with so many of my fellow liberals, I have been reasonably upset with Obama. My sense of disappointment however seems to have grown to an intensity that demands some self-reflection.

Yes, I have problems with the tax compromise. Of course I was disappointed with the lack of scope in healthcare reform. Naturally I had issues with saving Wall Street and demanding nothing from the financial institutions that are now sitting on over a trillion dollars and not investing in homes, jobs or small businesses.

These are all manageable irritations. My rage, however, focuses on our two wars. After two years in office, these wars, like the economy, fairly or unfairly, are now Obama's. When I look at the utter futility, the waste of life and the rain of lies, I start to channel Berkeley in the 60s. I keep wondering where the rage went? When I look to our schools, colleges and universities, I don't see our youth in the streets or at the barricades.

Yes, I know why. There is no draft. The relatively privileged are not at risk for being taken off to war against their will. Just as importantly their parents and grandparents--my cohort--are silent. We don't have skin in the game. So we worry about the tax compromise. We discuss the 3 million dollar versus 5 million dollar threshold for estate tax vulnerability. We may deplore the war, if we think about it at all, but mostly we just sigh sadly and try to manage our blood pressure for those important economic and lifestyle issues.

My tardy moral inventory leads me to believe that when I think I'm unreasonably angry with Obama, I'm deflecting the heat from me and mine and projecting it on to the President.

I am mad as hell now that my cohort seems to have turned off our moral radar. We go about our business of business. As Jacob Marley tells Scrooge, "Business! Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence, were all my business. The dealings of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business!"

If it were our children who were fighting, dying or being maimed, we would be screaming. If our children were vulnerable to a draft, they'd be out on the streets. What the hell is wrong with all of us? Do we not understand that all of the soldiers are our children, and we do have skin in the game?

In England they riot and threaten "off with their heads" at Prince Charles and Camilla--not because he is a twit but because of a rise in tuition. In France, they run riot through Paris because the government is trying to raise the retirement age. In Greece they are tearing Athens apart over rescinding part of their social safety-net.

But for two wars and their associate lies, we sit passively. Yes, I'm angry at the lies--they are so transparent. We don't really believe we won in Iraq, do we? We do understand that we declared victory and are getting out leaving Sunni and Shiite to fight, the parliament not to meet and the oil revenue agreement not to get done?

We do understand that while we kill more of them than they kill us in Afghanistan, we are neither building a civil society nor are we keeping Afghans safe. Afghans understand, if we do not, that we will leave and that they will have a life/death choice between being seen as complicit with us or continuing to live. They will not choose us--now or later.

Yes, the lies are troubling, but our silence is worse. Yes, the great economic issues are important, but our priorities are damning. Obama on the TV screen, I can forgive. But the man in my mirror?

©2010 Jonathan Dobrer
www.Dobrer.com

I have never liked it when our presidents spun the facts, lied to us and miss-spent the blood of our young. I didn't like it when LBJ did it. I didn't like it when George W Bush did it, and I like it even less when Obama does it.

He is wrong on our Afghan policy, and he is prevaricating by spinning the long-promised evaluation as "progress." I am angry and disappointed because, expecting more of him, he has farther to fall, and right now in my view is in freefall.

Yes, he campaigned on the Afghan War being the good war--as against the Iraq War being a dumb war. Yes, he promised to focus his attention on Afghanistan, but he did not seem to realize that while we may have had a chance at the start, six years in, we faced a different reality. Against the advice of Richard Holbrooke, whom he now praises posthumously, he sent a surge of soldiers. Then he promised us a full analysis. Now we have it, and it does not say what he is saying that it says.

Yes, our military will always win the medium and large scale encounters. We will always win the daily, weekly, monthly and yearly body count--as we did in Vietnam. That is the truthful metric for the military, but it doesn't tell the whole story.

We are not succeeding in the centerpiece of our COIN (Counter Insurgency) strategy. This holds that we need to have a decent entity to protect, defend and build upon. In Karzai, we do not have this, nor do we have prospects of a creating morally defensible government.

It is not that we lack legitimate interests in the area. We should care very much about Afghan chaos. It is currently a battleground, not just for the various tribes and ethnicities native to the region (and it is a region and not a nation as we understand nationhood), but it is also a battleground for India and Pakistan who are waging an under-reported war for influence. Iran is also exerting its interests in the north and China is trying to get its economic foot in the door--a door that we built.

Nothing in this situation is good. There is no progress except for the body count. We fought for Helmand province and waged a pitched battle for Marja. Of course we won. We killed Taliban--and some bystanders--innocent or not is impossible to know in this part of the world and in this kind of conflict. The bystanders remain dead, while the Taliban have moved to other areas in the vastness that is Afghanistan.

Now Obama tells us that while he will begin withdrawing troops in 2011 as promised, it will be minimal and we will really see how we're doing in 2014. This is a disaster. The military will always tell us, again truthfully, that they could do still better with more troops and more time. But this will not achieve even our rapidly shrinking ambitions.

The prize is Pakistan. The dangers to us are Pakistan's nuclear weapons--estimated at numbering between 85 and 110 bombs. We need to care that these weapons don't fall into the hands of Al Qaeda. We need to care that Pakistan and India do not blunder into a nuclear war. We do not need to nation-build in Afghanistan. Hell, in California, we can't city-build in Bell, Maywood or Vernon.

Obama needs to tell us the truth and come up with a policy that is possible to implement. Pushing our endgame down the road two years, like the tax deal compromise, costs us money, and more importantly, blood. It will not be better for our prestige to leave in 2 or 4 or 6 years than to leave now. And by "leave" I do not mean the utter abandonment of the region, but withdrawing from nation-building, halting our military patrols and fortifying our position at Bagram Air Force Base--there to monitor the situation in the east and launch planes and drones in the Afghan/Pakistan border.

We are not competent to fix their politics or society. All we can do is defend our critical interests in seeing that Pakistan does not fall into chaos and give up its nuclear weapons to terrorists. To stop his freefall, Obama needs to tell the truth and pursue a policy that is military, politically and economically possible.
©2010 Jonathan Dobrer
www.Dobrer.com

I never paid much attention to Oliver Stone, aside from a movie here and there, so I never knew he had a problem. But it's beginning to look like he's a crazed loon. Consider his recent pile of bile when he said:

"Hitler is an easy scapegoat... Hitler did far more damage to the Russians than to the Jewish people (there is a greater focus on the Holocaust than to Russian suffering because of ) the domination of the Jewish media."

He's missing a few points here, namely that the Holocaust was the systematic attempt to exterminate the Jews, and while it is unfortunate that twenty-million Russians were killed, they weren't sent to concentration camps, starved, raped, beaten, tortured to death or thrown into ovens. Neither did they have anything even close to a Kristallnacht, the night in November 1939 when the night the Germans looted and burned the Jewish-owned stores while protecting German ones. It is considered the official marking of the beginning of the Holocaust, even thought there were many incidents leading up to that point.

As far as Stone's claims that the Jews own the media, I only wish. Do you think we'd let him and others stand out in public and spew lies and anti-Semitic rants? How about those others eager to sweep the Holocaust under the rug by saying how other groups have suffered? The Holocaust is ours and ours alone and must never be forgotten. Because otherwise, it could happen again, if not to us, then to others. That's why you often see Jewish people forming human rights groups to defend others in places like Sudan. That's why you saw us marching for civil rights. Because we know what it's like.

I don't know what's wrong with Oliver Stone. His father was Jewish, so one would think that he'd at least have some empathy. Maybe he didn't like his father, or maybe he just doesn't like himself. But his twisting and distortion of truths that are then painted as lies is just too much because unless the other side is presented, people may believe him.

Stone and others like him have got to go. Let's picket and boycott his movies. Let's send him to live as a Jew not in America, where he is protected, but in the West Bank as a Jew. Then he may begin to know what it's like.

Prosecuting Julian Assange is tantamount to railing at the hired hand who left the barn door open and let the cows out. It's futile, pointless, and vindictive. Every legal expert that's looked at a possible Justice Department espionage prosecution of Assange has said pretty much the same thing. One, there's absolutely no proof that Assange stole classified US documents or even collaborated with, let alone directed, anyone to sneak into the vaults and steal the government documents. They were leaked to him and there are several well-identified likely sources for the leaks. Two, there's still a little thing called the First Amendment which means that the DOJ would have to haul the Washington Post, the New York Times, and other media outlets into court and make an espionage case against them for publishing the cables. You'd have a better chance of winning the Big Spin lottery prize without buying a ticket than that happening.

Third, there's nothing in the documents that reveal that any state secrets have hit print and the airwaves that directly harm US security or interests; embarrassing yes, harmful hardly. In other words US national security has hardly been endangered from Assange's stuff. In fact, the kind of stuff that's been published so far--Israel and Saudi Arabia chomping at the bit to sledgehammer Iran, chatter from and about UN diplomats, and atrocities in Afghanistan are not exactly the revelation of the ages.

Aside from a couple of women that Assange may or may not have groped, molested, or assaulted in Sweden and for which the Swedes and the Brits will have to sort out to decide his legal fate, Assange is pretty much home free on a US espionage prosecution. And that's the way it should be on WikiLeaks.

While prosecuting Assange is not quite as bad an idea as trying Khalid Sheikh Mohammad in New York City, it comes perilously close. First of all, Gail is wrong that a reason to prosecute him is that he is aware that he did something wrong. I doubt that it is factually true. I see most bad things done by people with unreflective certainty of the goodness of their acts. That he may be an idealist believing that he is carrying out the Lord's work should have no bearing on our desire to bring him to trial. I'm pretty sure that John Wilkes Booth and Sirhan Sirhan were sure of their cause.

©2010 Jonathan Dobrer
www.Dobrer.com

Should WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange, be prosecuted for leaking all that information? Let me put it to you like this: Is the pope Catholic? Is Grant buried in Grant's Tomb? Is the Lincoln Tunnel named for Abraham Lincoln?

Then Assange should be prosecuted. One reason is that he knows he did wrong. He may have been hiding because he knew that some wanted his kishkies after that, but this wise and erudite blogger believes he also knew he was doing wrong to some extend by publishing some of those secrets.

Hillary Clinton saying what she really thought of heads of state? Funny but not illegal because it is just her opinion and it exposed her for the debutante she really is. What those in the royal palace really think of Prince Charles as the future King of England? Ditto, though if they were all smart, they would have paid attention to that old Russian proverb about the unspoken word being your master and the spoken one being your slave. Or they might have talked to my mother who would have told them not to put certain things in writing, as she has told me many times over the years.

But where Assange should pay the piper is in matters of national security. As an upright homosapien who has been in business, he should know that access to something doesn't give anyone permission to use it, and for this he should have to pay if enough security was breached. Otherwise, he is no different than that gossipmonger, Perez Hilton, who should also be banned from the Internet and relegated to a street corner somewhere in downtown Los Angeles.

Our American Air Force has just strafed itself in the foot. Better make that both feet. In a fit of futile pique, they have put the New York Times off limits. Like some kind of wicked city filled with bordellos, they have forbidden access to the Times. This is supposed either to protect our delicate Air Force folks from being contaminated by news--available to the rest of the world, or, alternatively yet equally futile, to punish the Times for printing news about the WikiLeaks.

We leave our Air Force personnel in the truly bizarre position of being denied access to our major newspaper--along with the most prestigious papers of our allies, but they can still get Al Jezera-and doubtlessly plenty of porn! In what moral, political or practical universe does this make any sense?

©2010 Jonathan Dobrer
www.Dobrer.com

Leave it to Ralph Nader to do a Tea Party like slur of President Obama the few times a reporter comes calling. During the presidential campaign a peeved, and unnerved Nader didn't stop at criticizing Obama for what he considered a bought and paid for Beltway insider. He asked rhetorically "Is it because he wants to talk white." Nader got singed for playing the race card (along with a lot of applause from some who should have known better). Now Nader's back and he topped that by calling Obama "a con man" in an interview with The Hill.
He couldn't stop at that slur and had to add "I have no use for him." There are a couple of reasons Nader's still around and still gets an occasional nod in the press. The obvious one is that he can always be depended to take a swipe at Obama when there's a touchy issue at the head of the nation's political table that puts Obama on the spot. The tax cut deal Obama brokered with the GOP that sent liberal Democrats and progressives into orbit was the wedge to squeeze Nader into the press to rap Obama.
The other reason that Nader has some press ink value is because there are many that still like and admire him, and like even more like his anti-corporate, tweaking of the two parties. They fervently believe there is no substantive difference between the Democrats and Republicans. They don't see Obama as a real change guy but rather another deal making Beltway insider who has betrayed his hope and change promise. That's been the constant mantra of left side Democrats and Independents who pound Obama for what they believe are flips, reversals and shifts on crucial policy issues; the tax cut deal being just the latest.
Though Nader has for the most part been the invisible man in the media, he's still doggedly talking up his populist message, and railing at what he calls the Democrats and GOP corporate laden policies.
But Nader is not delusionary. Though he flatly called for someone to oppose Obama in the 2012 Democratic primary, he knows that someone is not him. He's had his moments in the political sun, and the combination of age (he's 76), the still heavy historical cross he'll always bear as the "spoiler" who tipped the election to Bush in 2000, and his virtual disappearance from the media scene except for the occasional pro forma raps of Obama, make him a political anachronism, and to some, even a pariah.
Now his charge that Obama is a "con man" may get a few cheers from the diehard Obama loathers on the left, but it won't do much to make Nader a voice that anyone at the top will listen to and heed. In other words, Nader's biting personal words about Obama "I have no use for him" apply to him as well with those who count.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. He hosts nationally broadcast political affairs radio talk shows on Pacifica and KTYM Radio Los Angeles.
Follow Earl Ofari Hutchinson on Twitter: http://twitter.com/earlhutchinson and on thehutchinsonreportnews.com and view The Hutchinson Report on http://www.ustream.tv/channel/hutchinson-report-tv

A man's gotta do what a man's gotta do and a president's gotta do what a president's gotta do. Of course, Obama had to sustain George W.'s tax cuts even for those making over $250 big ones a year in exchange for extending unemployment benefits. On that point, however, I am a hybrid Democrat-Republican. On the one hand, there are the chronically unemployed (Republican view); on the other, there are no jobs (Democratic one). I should know because I recently looked myself in something I was well qualified for. And even with my shining personality, I still came up empty handed. Maybe it was something else.

Then there is the question of his plummeting popularity. Driving past the post office the other day, a small group had set up a table encouraging people to sign a petition for Obama's impeachment on their way to and from mailing packages, letters and other things of holiday mirth. One guy even held up a regular picture of our president with a Hitler-esque type mustache drawn over it. These were probably the same guys who voted for him.

While I think he's likeable enough, it appears that he expected to tap dance his way through the presidency and that's why the low popularity ratings. He billed himself as a political messiah who could even walk on the icy Potomac, and he's fallen through. He's like the guy holding the finger in the dam. He inherited a mess, which has gotten worse since he's been in office, and perhaps the supposed answer this time was to compromise en route to plugging other leaks. But plugging up the major one as in creating more jobs? Priceless.

Elizabeth Edwards' death brought tears to my eyes. By now, her trials and tribulations have been well chronicled, the death of her teenage son in a car accident, the philandering husband who knew about his illegitimate child as he ran for president, the terminal cancer she would contact because of missed mammograms to help him. She will be remembered for facing adversity with courage, grace and dignity. May you rest in peace, Elizabeth. You were an inspiration to us all.

Progressives and liberal Democrats are blowing hot air on President Obama's tax cut deal. They include saber rattling of a Senate filibuster, screams for everyone from defeated Wisconsin Senator Russ Feingold to Hillary Clinton to challenge Obama in the Democratic primary, polls on left blogs and websites running heavily against him seeking re-election, and mountains of sworn promises that progressives will not spend a second of time working for Obama's reelection or contribute a dime to his reelection bid.

This is pure bluster. The political reality that Obama faced and that progressives and liberal Democrats are loathe to admit but must face nonetheless is that Obama had no choice but to hold his nose and make the deal. The reasons were simple. The GOP held all the cards. It's nice to engage in feel good rhetoric about Democratic majorities in the House and Senate, and to say that the president should have used those majorities, and the bully pulpit of the Oval Office to do a Harry Truman and FDR and give the GOP hell as hypocrites, obstructionists, and the party of big wealth. And then defiantly tell the American people why he'd stand tall and veto any tax cut bill that kept the cuts for the rich in there. He would have drawn wild cheers and back-patting from liberals and progressives but come January and beyond when the paychecks of tens of millions of workers shrunk, and tens of thousands of small and medium sized businesses screamed bloody murder about tax hikes, more forced payroll slashes and reduction in equipment buying, and millions of unemployed were hung out to dry with not a nickel of income coming in, guess whose head the wrath of the nation would come down on.

Then there's the reaction of GOP hard liners. They froth at GOP leaders for giving up more than they should have given up on the unemployed and social security benefits that do help far more workers and needy then the tax giveaway to the rich.

The shouts that Obama should just turn the tables on the GOP and dump the blame back on them also ignores too much. He's tried to do that all along and the message has been deliberately and skillfully twisted, ignored, and used to hector him by the GOP echo chamber. The fight that liberal Democrats are screaming that he should have made all along; one could just as easily asked why didn't most of them launch their own national campaign to back Obama and educate their constituents that if the GOP let the rich get their way on taxes after January it was their fault. But they didn't and because of a mix of timidity, fear, and in some cases flat out believe that the GOP was right and the tax cuts for the fat cats weren't a totally bad thing, they dumped the heavy lifting to do this on Obama's shoulders. In other words, many Democrats through cowardice or belief in the phony and totally discredited trickle down line that giving the rich more cash will somehow magically translate into more investment, more jobs, and more economic growth sat on their haunches.

It's odious to give money to those who don't need it, will hoard it, and not create one job, or save one foreclosed home, or help sustain one small business. But it would have been even more odious to watch the GOP noise machine trot out nightly a homeless laid off worker, or family pushed over the edge after losing their child tax or earned income credit weeping on national TV about how Obama (not the GOP which rightly should be fingered) pushed them into the breadlines.

The conventional wisdom from progressive and liberal Democrats is that Obama left himself wide open for the beating he's getting for making the deal with the devil because he promised so long and so vehemently on the campaign trail to nail the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy to the wall and that he lied, or that he's just to weak too do anything but cave to the GOP bullying, badgering and hectoring. That's even more asinine. Candidate Obama could make any promise he wanted including be a tough guy and torpedo the Bush tax cuts for the rich. But presidential candidate Obama didn't face the loss in November of sixty Democratic House seats, seven Senate seats, and a slew of suddenly GOP controlled state legislatures in the must win states of Ohio and Florida in 2012.

Candidate Obama did not face a GOP that will stop at nothing to hack up or do away with any aid to the poor, working class and unemployed, and that has the power to do it. That's called hardnosed realpolitik. This has and always will trump symbolic protests, or unwinnable line in the sand stands. Obama got the best deal he could have gotten given the impossible political odds he faced, and any other Democrat that sat in the same seat he does would have done the same.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. He hosts nationally broadcast political affairs radio talk shows on Pacifica and KTYM Radio Los Angeles.
Follow Earl Ofari Hutchinson on Twitter: http://twitter.com/earlhutchinson and on thehutchinsonreportnews.com and view The Hutchinson Report on http://www.ustream.tv/channel/hutchinson-report-tv

Yes, I still like Obama. I like him personally. I like his intelligence, but most of all I like him for what most people on the left dislike. His modus operandi is compromise. He never gets the perfect result. He never vanquishes his foes. As the quintessential man in the middle--black and white, African and American, Chicago inner city community organizer and Harvard Law and Chicago Constitutional law professor--he is unique.

He has spent his young life building bridges. He clearly believes that under the political bluster and posturing, there is a reasonable middle way. Perhaps it is not win-win but at least it is not lose-lose. No, he didn't get the healthcare reform I wanted. But he got something, and that is more than any other president since Truman began this quest. No, he didn't tame the banks and Wall Street, but he did pull us back from the brink of disaster. And please notice that the much-maligned "socialist" takeover of a dying General Motors was, in the end, a capitalist coup. He bailed them out, saved them and then sold the stock at a great profit.

On balance, would I vote for him again? In a heartbeat. He is not the Messiah. He is a politician. And to paraphrase his remark about Hillary during the campaign: He is likable enough--for me.
©2010 Jonathan Dobrer
www.Dobrer.com

The CNN poll in October that found that almost as many people said they liked George W. Bush as President Obama seemed like it was either a case of some drunk counting the numbers, or a headline grabbing ploy by CNN on a slow news day. The poll seemed to add even more insult to absurdity when it found that a statistically insignificant 2 percent said that Bush was a worse president than Obama. A year earlier Obama had more than a 20 percent edge over Bush in the number that ranked him a far better president than Bush. But now Gallup has weighed in with its poll on Bush's alleged renewed popularity. It went even than the earlier poll and found that Bush has edged past Obama by one percentage point as the better ranked president. Gallup just crunches the numbers and doesn't really go to deep into why the supposed stunning turnaround in Bush's popularity other than to chalk it up to the passage of time, short memories, a little historical revisionism, and of course, Bush's well orchestrated and scripted book tour filled with adulatory, and puff ball interviews.
That's much too simple. It's true that the passage of time does dim memories and presidents that left office with abominable ratings (Truman) or were driven from office in public disgrace (Nixon), or suffered a landslide loss (Carter) get cut some slack with age, and are benevolently viewed as harmless, even wizened elder statesman. With the passage of time, historians pick and highlight the favorable things that low rated presidents did. In Truman's case, it was the Marshall Plan and his hanging tough against the Soviets during the early stages of the Cold War. In Nixon's case it was his China thaw, and accepting the wind down of the Vietnam War. With Carter, he's garnered admiration as a better president outside the White House than inside the White House with his thoughtful books, commentaries, and insights on foreign policy and his globetrotting peace keeping and humanitarian efforts.
But that took years, even decades before the public rehabilitation of former presidents. Bush is getting the historical pass barely two years out of office. The colossal giveaways to the corporate rich and Wall Street, a failed, flawed, and absolutely unnecessary war, a bungled Katrina response, off the chart sex, and corruption scandals within the GOP, a tanked economy, and a general clueless, governing incompetence that defied political belief have seemingly vanished from public and historical view faster than a Houdini disappearing act. The disappearance doesn't totally explain why so many now pine for a return of Bush over Obama. Bush has rally done nothing to deserve this nostalgia, and history has certainly not absolved him, let alone vindicated him of, his colossal policy failures.
Bush gets the early pass in part because of the two year relentless, and structured GOP campaign of denigration, vilification, and assault on Obama's policy initiatives and Obama personally. Its shock troops, the Tea Party horde, Glenn Beck, Limbaugh, Palin and the endless pack of shrill, hatchet job rightside bloggers, websites, and talk show hacks have effectively painted a picture of an Obama as an alien, anti-American, a closet Muslim terrorist sympathizer, a socialist, communist, and an inveterate America basher and hater.
The other part is the confusion, frustration, and even anger at Obama for not selling the positive accomplishments that his administration has accomplished in the face of the GOP assault and the mess that Bush's failures have littered his presidential path with. There's also the anger at him from the throng of progressive and liberal Democrats for not hitting, and hitting back hard ala Truman and FDR at the GOP's bullying, badgering and hectoring. The term that was once heard in only the faintest of whispers "cave" in in regards to his policy compromises with the GOP has now progressed to a roar. The latest being the compromise agreement to extend the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy. Even though his back was to the wall and there were pluses in the compromise--unemployment extension, social security tax cuts, and cuts for small business-- the president will be endlessly reminded he broke his cornerstone campaign promise that he would not back the tax cut extension for the rich. That's now ancient history.
Bush's rehabilitation can be chalked up in part to the penchant to give lambasted presidents good marks when they are safely out of the White House and can do no more harm and in bigger part to the calculated assault on Obama. But the desire of so many to compare the man who was the architect of so many towering policy failures to Obama and then believe the worst of the worst about Obama still grates to no end.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. He hosts a nationally broadcast political affairs radio talk show on Pacifica and KTYM Radio Los Angeles.
Follow Earl Ofari Hutchinson on thehutchinsonreportnews.com And on Twitter www.twitter.com/earlhutchinson

Just when I thought Israel didn't have a friend in the world, the following countries sent aid to help battle the fire raging near Haifa. Thank you to Greece, England, the United States, Russia, Egypt, Cyprus, Jordan, Spain, Azebaijan, Romania, Turkey, Australia... and the Palestinian Authority of all places. Who knew?

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton must explain what she meant when she allegedly signed the much railed at orders in April and July 2009 that allege that she ordered US diplomats to spy on UN officials and others. But that hasn't stopped the rush to judgment in the calls for her resignation. It's not just a premature call, it's a silly call.
Yes, on the surface, it does look bad. The Secretary seeming to secretly order State Department officials to collect the fingerprints, facial images, DNA, and iris scans, of African leaders and to obtain passwords, personal encryption keys, credit card numbers, frequent flyer account numbers, and other data connected to diplomats. The Clinton bashers have leaped to conclude from this that she ran a giant spy network out of the State Department and used state department officials, American diplomats, and the usual suspects, the CIA, and other shadowy US backed foreign intelligence agencies to get the goods on diplomats, big and small.

There are three problems with this. The WikiLeaks cables are simply raw cables. There is absolutely no context, background, rationale, or even hard verification about the time and place given for when and even why Clinton or any other state department official asked for the information, not to mention what they hoped to do with it if they did indeed order systematic spying.

The U.S. has run well documented intelligence and counter-intelligence operations since the Cold War and has vast experience, state of the art technology, and well placed operatives to gather whatever information it needs on the actions and activities of friends and foes. It has never had a problem getting that information.
The second problem is that much of the information that Clinton allegedly hungered to get on UN diplomats was already public information and easily obtained in the endless meetings, conferences, discussions, and briefings, as well as the exchange of information that American friendly diplomats routinely share with the State Department. The information is shared through front and back door channels.

Clinton reiterated this point noting that official foreign policy is not set through diplomatic cables but at and within the White House. Clinton also added the obvious that she and other US diplomats routinely meet with and get information all the time from an array of sources, and the information, some of it sensitive, is given without the need for stockpiling DNA, fingerprints and Iris scans.

The biggest problem is the speed and fury in the call for Clinton's head. The calls are not made because of high moral concern over a compromised State Department, a suddenly ineffectual Clinton to do her job, or the illegality, or at best embarrassing impropriety of what the cables purport to show she did. It's about politics. Spying is institutionalized in US foreign policy and every other major nation's policies and operations and every president and state department official has either authorized spy operations, snooping on allies, or flatly conducted illegal operations.

The Bush administration targeted any and everyone it considered a foe or potential foe, American citizen or not, with a systematic spy, monitoring and surveillance operation if suspected of being a potential terrorist. Organizations and individuals were slapped with so-called roving wiretaps (taps that can be placed on an individual or group anywhere, anytime) again based on the flimsiest evidence or suspicion. Bush officials stretched the term terrorist to include anyone that it said was a "terrorist combatant," where and how long that individual could be held (indefinitely) and how they should be legally disposed of (none of the standard constitutional protections).

There were no calls for Bush officials to resign and there were no demands that the State Department which certainly was privy under Secretaries of State Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice to the dubious actions tender their resignations. Or that they resign following the totally discredited doctored evidence of alleged WMD that provided the cover for the Bush administration to wage the Iraq war. Then Secretary of State Powell defended this phony evidence at the UN.

But on the strength of one of even a handful of unvetted memos from a dubious source Clinton has suddenly become hopelessly damaged goods and must go. The call is an empty one since Clinton hasn't her say on what she had in mind, if indeed she even authorized the spying in the damaging way WikiLeaks documents purport to show. The jury is way out on that and is likely to stay that way.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. He hosts nationally broadcast political affairs radio talk shows on Pacifica and KTYM Radio Los Angeles.
Follow Earl Ofari Hutchinson on Twitter: http://twitter.com/earlhutchinson and on thehutchinsonreportnews.com

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