June 2011 Archives

This is the worst I've seen things in the good old US of A. Manners and boundaries have gone out the window, and people have no decorum anymore.

Let's take fashion. When I was growing up, women wore white gloves for social occasions and even when riding the el train downtown, and men wore fedora hats. I wasn't too perturbed when that went by the wayside, though it was a neat and polished look.

Then came jeans, sneakers and flip-flips, which were fine even normal even if some people looked like they trimmed their toenails with a pair of gardening shears. But things have gone so far down that it isn't unusual to see people showing up in public in their pajamas. I know that Hugh Hefner wears them all the time, but that's different. It's part of how he gets all those girls, that and all his loot. I am talking about people who have so little respect for themselves and others that they go shopping in slippers and flannel pajamas. I saw one in the cereal aisle of Albertson's the other day and nearly flipped. And don't get me started on the butt crack and thong phenomenon. If I wanted to see that, I would have studied medicine and done cololoscopies for a living.

Another bee in my bonnet is free speech. Some free speech is fine, but using it to swear at officials and public servants is too much. I don't like certain people, either, but I would never use my free speech to swear and heckle, humiliate and embarrass. I just give them the cold shoulder and act rude.

And don't get me started on today's kids and the high school drop out rate. They know that they can disrespect their teachers and disrupt not only their own education but that of others. Many phone calls home are met with threats of a lawsuit, blame against the teachers for not knowing how to handle their little dumplings, or in rare cases, parents admitting that they are at a loss as well. Oftentimes the district will take the path of least resistance and side with the parents, though it has backfired. In California the drop out rate is over fifty percent because even a knucklehead knows that he doesn't have to value hard work or the discipline that it takes to sit in a chair for fifty minutes, open a book and learn something. You can hardly blame these kids. Their families and society have given them permission to whoop it up, that and the free speech that rap music and many of their movies provide.

So many grow up thinking that they can become rap stars and basketball players, which leaves a huge gap in the work force for jobs in science and technology because most of them have been hanging out and smoking whatever they can lay their hands on while dreaming their dreams.

These are some of the bugaboos that are turning this once great nation into a giant, drugged out cesspool. I have some other gripes, too, but I will try and think of them before the next holiday. Try and have a Happy Fourth anyway!

It's a good thing that Hillary Clinton isn't going to be the head of the World Bank. If how she's handling her job as Secretary of State is any indication, the world would be headed for a global meltdown rivaling 1929.

Her latest ballyhoo is that she wants the US to negotiate with Egypt's Muslim brotherhood because "it is in the interest of the United States to engage with all parties that are peaceful and non-violent."

I'd hate to give her a reality check, but the Muslim Brotherhood is a code word for Hamas, the Hamas that has been shooting rockets into Israel and the Hamas that has been behind many suicide bombings around the world. That Hamas and that Muslim Brotherhood.

And to think that she is a native daughter of Illinois like I am. Where did our educational system go wrong? Is it something in the water in Washington, D.C.? With her aide, Huma Abedin and Anthony Weiner? Is she mad at her son-inplaw, Mark Mezvitsky? Regardless, on this one, Madame Secretary has all the sensitivity of a moose in heat.

I told many people not to vote for Obama, but their fear was that McCain would die and we'd be left with Sarah Palin. While her antics may be goofy, I doubt that even she would have gone that far.

Like I complained/ opined a few weeks ago, we need someone to take over and fast before the whole world implodes and we all go along with it.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson
President Obama thundered to the throngs at the recent LGBT Leadership Council fund raising bash in New York, "I believe that gay couples deserve the same legal rights as every couple in the country." This was not hyperbole that he had to shout to one of the country's most prominent, and influential gay rights activists off his back about his opposition to gay marriage. Despite the withering heat has taken for that opposition, Obama has been the best friend that gays have ever had in the White House.
He backed gay rights in speeches and legislation more than a dozen times as an Illinois state legislator and U.S. Senator. The record number of gay appointments, and the speed with which he's made them, were just the extension of his personal and political conviction that discrimination against gays is every bit the civil rights issue that discrimination against women and minorities is. He issued executive orders mandating that hospitals treat gay and lesbian couples the same as heterosexual ones, and at the same time expand rights for gay couples who work in the federal government. He vigorously opposed Proposition 8, the California initiative that would have effectively banned gay marriage. He reversed his position on the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act and calls it abhorrent.

But he won't take the final step and flatly say I support gay marriage and will back every effort in every state to pass a gay marriage law. This refusal mystifies, rankles and angers gay rights organizations and is the single biggest stumbling block to theme giving Obama their full throated, all out backing. Obama may in time back gay marriage, he's said his position is "evolving" but it's not going to happen just yet.
That would require Obama to reverse not his political thinking, but his fundamental and personal beliefs. He made that perfectly clear in a blog talk last October when he flatly said he wouldn't sign on to same sex marriage because of his "understandings" of what traditional marriage should be. That's the decades old unambiguous and universally consecrated notion that marriage is and should only be between a man and a woman. That's not just, antiquated, bigoted, and a rapidly discredited understanding that Obama refers too, and that he's still stuck on.

Obama is no different than many other fiercely liberal, tolerant and broad minded African-Americans on diversity issues. But he, like many others, still can draw the line on gay marriage and that's fueled by deeply ingrained notions of family, church, and community, and the need to defend the terribly frayed and fragmented black family structure. This mix of fear, belief, and traditional family protectionism has long been a staple among many blacks and virtually every time the issue of legalizing gay marriage has been put to the ballot, or initiative a legal challenge, or just simply the topic of public debate there has been no shortage of black ministers and public figures willing to rush to the defense of traditional marriage.

The warning signs that many blacks were susceptible to religious and conservative pitches to oppose gay marriage lit up in 1997. Then the late Green Bay Packers perennial all-pro defensive end Reggie White, an ordained fundamentalist minister stirred a firestorm when he took a huge swipe at gay rights and gay marriage in a speech to the Wisconsin state legislature. White became the first celebrity black evangelical to say publicly what many black religious leaders said and believed privately about gay issues. Few blacks joined in the loud chorus that condemned his remarks.
A year before White's outburst, a Pew Poll measured black attitudes toward gay marriage and found that blacks by an overwhelming margin opposed it. A CNN poll eight years later showed that anti-gay attitudes among blacks have softened at least publicly among many blacks. But the line continued to be just as firmly drawn on same sex marriage as ever. The Pew Research Center for the People & the Press and the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life in polls in 2009 and 2010 found that blacks opposed same sex marriage by gaping margins over whites or Hispanics. The finding was even more striking in that Pew also found that for the first time in the decade and half that it had been polling Americans, attitudes toward gay rights, and that includes gay marriage, that less than half of Americans oppose same sex marriage.

It's wrong headed and wildly inaccurate to think that President Obama opposes same sex marriage out of narrow religious belief, conservative family upbringing, or a racial herd mentality that is unyielding on the traditional defense of family values. But it's just as wrongheaded to say that none of these things have and do weigh in the president's unwillingness to take the final step and say yes to gay marriage. Time will tell when he will finally change, but that time hasn't come yet and there are reasons why.

As an opinion writer and an opinionated writer, I write about what is wrong. In some ways this is also the theme of regular, in theory, un-opinionated reporting. We report and analyze the tragedies, the failures of diplomacy that is war, the failures of vision that result in political deadlock, the failures of integrity that become scandals.

Our journeys are incomplete. This is good news. We live in a country that still needs us to keep working and building and dreaming. We have not yet arrived but it has been one heck of a trip so far!

©2011 Jonathan Dobrer
www.Dobrer.com

I'm free, free at last! I have cut the cord, severed the bond and turned away from the seductive gorgon called Facebook. No I wasn't addicted. I didn't check my wall many times daily or even daily or, to tell the truth, weekly. I only responded to email notifications of postings to my page or "wall."

However, the best part of all our newfangled technology is the ability to visit with my grandchildren. So I'll give three cheers for iChat, Facetime and Skype. But listen up Facebook, it's over between us. I'm not saying that reconciliation isn't possible some day, but for now, let's just try living apart. I need my own space. No not My Space. And, by the way, here's a notice to Linkedin: Unless you want me to break the link, stop pushing unrequested information, invitations and update notifications. I don't want to be alone, but neither do I want to feel harassed. Social networks have become, at least to me, another annoying demand on my time with constant requests for meaningless tasks.
©2011 Jonathan Dobrer
www.Dobrer.com

Christian Choate/ Riley Choate

It's a good thing I can usually control myself because I'm not sure what I'd do if I ever came across sub-humans like Riley Choate and Christina Kubina, the father and stepmother of Christian Choate.

The details of this child's life are enough to make me cry, and I don't cry easily. The pair are accused of locking Christian in a five foot high dog cage the last year of his life, beating him and of denying him food and water. He wasn't in school because Kubina, was claiming to have home-schooled him and assigned essays like:

"Why do you want to play with your peter?"

"Why do you want to see your mother?"

"Why can't you let go of the past?"

"What does it mean to be part of a family?"

His answers in documents obtained by the Indiana Department of Children's Services spoke of his despair. He wondered why nobody liked him and of how he wanted to be liked by his family. He wondered when someone was going to check on him and give him food and something to drink, and he wrote of a desire to die.

Although he had a sister, Christina, their father threatened to harm her if she ever told anyone, so it would be years before she did.

One night in April 2009, Christian vomited after being let out of his cage, so his father beat him unconscious and put him back in. His died during the night, and his sister discovered his lifeless body the next morning. He was only thirteen. Their father put him in a shallow grave behind the house, covered it with a thin layer of concrete, put a slab of wood over it and moved the family to Kentucky where Christiana wasn't allowed to go to school or use the phone.

Two years later, Christian's biological mother awoke and called the police because she hadn't heard from her son in a while. This prompted an investigation and Christina told about what happened to her brother. Authorities were led to Riley who led them to the grave and admitted to burying the boy but not to killing him.

Riley Choate and Christina Kubina have been charged with murder, battery, neglect of a dependent, moving a body from a death scene and failure to notify authorities of a death.

This calls for the need for reform on behalf of all the Christian Choate's out there to see that this stops happening. The school districts should set up a task force to make surprise visits to the houses of kids who are being home schooled and others that have fallen off the radar.

Either way, it's a good thing I am not going to be working in the jail these two are going to because I would want to do things to them that would cause me to get sent there myself. The only consolation is that they will be going there and that felons don't tend to take too kindly to child abusers.

It's the least we could do for a boy who only wanted to be loved.

from my humble perspective here at wordpress. Gracias.

Saudi Arabia never was on my list of the top ten places to visit mainly because I wouldn't be able to find any kosher meat there or any kosher bakeries. So finding rugelach or kosher shish kabob would be out of the question.

I'd also probably wind up getting thrown into jail for looking suspicious or Semitic in the wrong kind of way, so I will nix the idea.

I used to work with someone from that country with a natural PR bent, who said that they were very hospitable to their Jews. I didn't know there were any. Judging by their lack of synagogues, kosher bakeries and Federation fundraisers over there, and it doesn't look like they are interested in having any, either.

And so it will remain now that Delta Airlines has partnered with Saudi Arabian Airlines along with the following stipulations. In addition to the baggage limit when flying there, none of the following items will be allowed on board:

Stars of David
Anything in Hebrew
Jewish Prayer books
Prayer Shawls
Yarmulkes
Rugelach
Sponge Cake
Crosses
Priests Collars
Catechism Books and
Holy Anointing Oil

Delta, an American company based in Atlanta, is going to comply. Who they do business with is their business, and who I buy my tickets from is mine, the same for the rest of the people in a country that has a Christmas tree on the White House every year.

Someone should pray for their stockholders and soon.

Republican presidential contender Mitt Romney wasted no time in intimating that it was politics more than necessity that prompted President Obama's cautious phased drawdown of US forces in Afghanistan. Romney's gentle knock that it was politics not pragmatism of Obama was tame compared to other GOP critics who accused the president of playing politics with American lives in Afghanistan, compromising the security of American forces there, and subverting the training and security capacity of the Afghan police and military to maintain order in the country. And worst of all asserting that the troop reduction emboldened the Taliban to step up its war against US forces. The criticism is as wrongheaded as the insidious political motives of Romney and the GOP critics for making the criticism.

Obama is the last one that the GOP could gripe about when it comes to the willingness to use American might in Afghanistan. He has never shirked from that. Just ask Obama's Democratic critics. For the past year they have loudly demanded that Obama get the troops out and get them out fast from Afghanistan. They have penned countless resolutions, declarations, statements, and convened party confabs, all hammering Obama on the Afghan build-up and continued bankroll of billions for a war whose aim of total victory is still mushy, unattainable, and a massive drain on the budget and the economy.
Polls consistently show that a majority of Americans also consider the war endless, futile and a massive drain on the economy. So the criticism that Obama is playing politics with his modest withdrawal of troops, or that he's not getting the troops out fast enough seems even more far-fetched. The premise of both the GOP and the Democratic critics is that politics is the driving force behind Obama's resolve to press the war.
Long before Obama won the White House he made it clear that he thought the Afghan war was the right war, in the right place at the right time. That was in stark contrast to his view of the Iraq war. He clearly saw waging war in Afghanistan as of critical importance to U.S. security.
In an August 2007 speech at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, in Washington, D.C., Obama left no doubt that Afghanistan would be his number one priority. He made an impassioned promise to wage what he dubbed the war that had to be won.
Spelling out in minute detail his plan of attack, Obama vowed to drastically increase troop strength; ramp up spending on an array of military-related programs, such as mobile special-forces, pacification teams and intelligence operations; and to beef up military aid to Pakistan. He vowed to take the war to the Taliban in Northwest Pakistan. In a CBS Face the Nation interview the same year, he promised to "finish the job" in Afghanistan.
Even as he promised to set a firm timetable for eventual withdrawal from Iraq, he gave no timetable for a similar withdrawal from Afghanistan. He did just the opposite. He vowed to end corruption, hold free elections, bolster Afghan security forces, boost intelligence gathering and monitoring, beef up Afghan security forces, and ensure a stable government in Afghanistan.
He took much heat for it then and the temperature level went up even higher after he upped the ante in the number of ground forces in the country his first year in office. Obama heard and ignored the Democrats that pounded him even harder for his decision to escalate. The killing of bin Laden didn't change Obama's view that the war still had to be prosecuted for all of the strategic reasons that he has repeatedly talked about for the past three years.

Given Obama's unrelenting commitment to the war and its aims, as problematic as it is of completely achieving those aims, his withdrawal of troops, any troops, from the country has to be considered a move in the right direction. It shows that he is willing to buck hard line conservatives and many in the military that scream that any drawdown of troops is a prescription for defeat. It also finally puts him firmly on the path to doing what Democrats insist that he do and that he bring the war to a final close.
Obama understood that the Iraq war was an ugly and shameful page in U.S. history and that millions of Americans were furious and frustrated by it. The same can be said of the Afghan war. And there have been no shortage of Obama war critics to make that point. Now they're at least getting him to take the first step that they wanted and that's begin the troop withdrawal. If that's what's considered playing politics with the war, then it's the right kind of politics.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. He is an associate editor of New America Media. He is host of the weekly Hutchinson Report Newsmaker Hour on KTYM Radio Los Angeles streamed on ktym.com podcast on blogtalkradio.com and internet TV broadcast on thehutchinsonreportnews.com
Follow Earl Ofari Hutchinson on Twitter: http://twitter.com/earlhutchinson

This has got to be one of the worst congresses in history because they will block whatever Obama does without offering another solution. If he waited for Congress' approval, then, Gaddafi or whoever would be either in a nursing home or featured on a jar of Smucker's celebrating his 100th birthday.

The President was right in attacking Libya, but he went about it in the wrong way by not seeking Congress' John Hancock. Of course, the Republicans are going to squawk. That's why many of them were born.

As a Democrat, Dennis Kuchnich's opposition was surprising, but he has his reasons. Maybe it was a publicity ploy on his part for reasons that he has yet to reveal. Maybe he's planning on jumping ship and switching parties. Maybe he likes all the attention.

Obama was right to go into Libya to try and flush out madman Gaddafi, but he was wrong in how he went about it. He wasn't the first president who violated the Constitution, and he won't be the last, but we should cut him some slack because he did so with good reason. People are out of work and have no place to live. Funny how Kuchnich et al aren't up in arms over that.

I have supported Obama since the beginning. I wrote endorsements before he became president and defenses since. I have settled for the possible instead of the perfect and given him credit for his accomplishments without obsessing over disappointments. These have all been based on my good faith belief in his good faith.

Law and lawlessness are another kettle of smelly fish. President Obama is in violation of the War Powers Act with his prosecution of the military violence in Libya. My problem, for the purposes of this article, is not about the cost, practicality or morality of intervening in Libya. My concern is the law and the balance of power amongst the Executive, the Legislative and the Judiciary. My concern is that if our representatives in Washington, however flawed they may be, allow this president, for whatever reasons good or bad, to act in violation of law, we will set a precedent and weaken the rule of law.

I may think he did the right thing, but I must ask if he did the legal thing. If I pursue an act of civil disobedience for a good cause, I expect my actions to be judged in the legal system. It is not my legitimate expectation that the righteousness I feel provides immunity from law.

The War Powers Act was put into law to limit the ability of a president to go to war. It recognized the fact that we have not had a declaration of war from the Congress since WWII, but have had to use, and have chosen to use, military force often. The Congress, not wanting to surrender its Constitutional power to declare war and recognizing that emergencies do arise, gave the president 60 days to consult with the Congress. These 60 days could be extended to 90.

President Obama has chosen to shop for a legal opinion that allows him to deny the obvious fact that we are committing acts of war against Libya. With a kind of Talmudic Jesuitry that all should find offensive to reason, he has found a creative rationale that asserts that we are not involved in military action because the chances of our having significant casualties are low. This is a twisting of facts and logic that would do former Attorney General Gonzales and Department of Justice legal council John Woo proud. It is the same tortured logic that redefined torture. It cannot stand.

As much as I like Obama and have relatively little regard for Congress, it is dangerous to our democracy to allow Congress to surrender its right and its duty for having a speaking part in our use of state violence.

I wonder where the peace movement is? Were this being done by a Republican, we would be in the streets, but because we believe that he is at heart one of us, we sit meekly in front of our TVs because we don't want to hurt his chances in the next election. We are disciplined to silence because we believe a Republican would be worse. My generation should remember LBJ and how relieved we were not to have elected Goldwater. This lulled us so that it took us a couple of years to wake up.

No president likes the War Powers Act and its legality has not been adjudicated. Neither side wants it settled--afraid of an adverse judgment. Nor does the judiciary really want to be caught between the Scylla and Charybdis of other two branches. However we may fear trying the issue, we dare not passively surrender to an Imperial Presidency.

No I don't want to remove Obama, but I damn well want to wake up Congress and get his attention.

©2011 Jonathan Dobrer
www.Dobrer.com

President Obama got it right about Libya, Congress notwithstanding. There is no dispute that presidents have a legal, constitutional and political responsibility to get approval from Congress when the issue is waging war. This obligation is clearly spelled out in the War Powers Act. And those who made that point were right to make it. But those who rip Obama about Libya certainly know that there is virtually no possibility that Obama will blatantly abuse that power as Bush did in Iraq and Afghanistan and commit American ground troops to combat in Libya. This would be a gross violation of the provisions of the Act.

Obama backed the Libyan no-fly zone because the United Nations Security Council by unanimous vote backed it. The House Foreign Affairs and Intelligence committees backed the action. More importantly, the Arab League requested that the United Nations impose a no-fly zone over Libya. And nearly every humanitarian group around has backed it.

But, most important he backed it because it's the politically and morally right thing to do. Ohio Democratic congressional showboat Kucinich and GOP congressional leaders looking for any angle to hector Obama would have screamed the loudest if Obama had done nothing and Gaddafi slaughtered thousands in a blood-lust rampage against the rebel groups. In his case, and that of every other dictator that's ever been under siege from their own people, it always leads to the slaughter of innocent women, children and elderly, under the guise of restoring order. If Obama hadn't acted, he would have been even more loudly condemned as being weak, indecisive and a chronic ditherer when it comes to making tough decisions on foreign policy issues.

The outbursts from Kucinich and other Democrats, and the GOP then, about Obama violating Congressional trust and prerogatives on Libya, simply adds to the political confusion. And that's political manna from heaven for the GOP. Kucinich, for instance, has found a warm reception on some conservative talk shows; shows that normally would not give him the time of day at any other time. The lambaste of Obama coming from a liberal Democrat is something that the Right will always gleefully welcome. At any other time, Kucinich would lustily demand and cheer the action Obama and the United Nations took. The fact that he and few others don't, but chose to nitpick instead tells more about their ongoing political anger at Obama than any real concern over whether Obama snubbed his nose at Congress.

As a liberal I usually cringe when conservatives criticize us for being over-reaching acolytes of some super nanny state. Ordinarily I feel they are being overly harsh. But now all they have to do is point to San Francisco and smugly, in tones of William F Buckley, intone: Res ipsa loquitur --the thing speaks for itself.

These are perhaps well intentioned, but are actually distractions creating controversies without changing facts. We all can easily see how San Francisco will be surrounded by pet stores and circumcision mills in the next counties. I can only be embarrassed for myself as a liberal because I want to concentrate on war and peace, healthcare and poverty.

©2011 Jonathan Dobrer
www.Dobrer.com

Okay, kiddos, this is it, an update on pepper.

Peace, Blessings and Happy Father's Day.

G-Tz.

here on wordpress under "I'm Not Crazy - It's Them," which happens to be very, very true.

Thanks for the read.

Every Democrat from the White House down screamed loudly for New York Representative Anthony Weiner to resign, and he finally did. But it's not a Democrat that's breathing the biggest sigh of relief at Weiner's downfall. It's Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. There was much talk a year ago that Weiner would be the point man on the House Judiciary Committee if it decided to go after Thomas for his long trail of financial manipulations, abuse, and duplicity. Weiner gave some hope that he'd be the go to guy against Thomas because he had been hammering him publicly on his dealings and demanding that he recuse himself from any high court deliberations and ruling on the constitutionality of the health care reform law that conservative's loathe.

Weiner certainly had a lot of ammunition to make Thomas's misdoings a prima facie legal and political embarrassment for the GOP. This stemmed from Thomas's wife Ginni's mini-king ransom earnings she received from assorted right wing foundations and think tanks. The Heritage Foundation, was a prominent funder of Ginni as well as the ultraconservative Koch brothers, the Coors family and Richard Mellon Scaife, all of which have a major interest in any number of Supreme Court rulings.
Thomas did disclose her earnings. He did not disclose speaking fees and perks he got from a bevy of the same conservative groups that his wife worked for and had close political ties to. And then he refused to acknowledge her involvement with Liberty Central.
Then there was the strong hint that Thomas perjured himself in his testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee during his court confirmation hearings in 1991 and that he compounded that by lying under oath to Congress during the hearings.
Thomas was asked directly by Utah senator Orin Hatch during his confirmation hearings about Anita Hill's allegations of sexual harassment and misconduct and whether he used sexually suggestive language. Thomas answered: "I deny each and every single allegation against me today that suggested in any way that I had conversations of a sexual nature or about pornographic material with Anita Hill, that I ever attempted to date her, that I ever had any personal sexual interest in her, or that I in any way ever harassed her. "
Thomas was emphatic, "If I used that kind of grotesque language with one person, it would seem to me that there would be traces of it throughout the employees who worked closely with me, or the other individuals who heard bits and pieces of it or various levels of it." This was stated under oath to the Senate Judiciary Committee. Thomas's sworn testimony was clearly contradicted even then in public statements by witnesses. The witnesses were not called to testify.
Two decades later Thomas's apparent perjured testimony to Congress was back on the legal table when another Thomas intimate confirmed that he engaged in sexual harassment, was addicted to pornography, and talked incessantly and graphically about it and women were truthful.

It's also clearly established that a public official--whether the president, presidential appointees, or judges--can be punished for giving false information (and that's any false information of any nature) to the House or Senate.

A close scrutiny by House Democrats of Thomas's possible wrongdoing was taken off the Congressional table when the Republicans took back control of the House last November. And Thomas's financial misdoings and dubious confirmation hearing testimony quickly fell from the news.
But with the 2012 elections nearing and the possibility that the Democrats could either win back control of the House or substantially boost their numbers there, the Thomas's financial double dealing and shadowy political ties could easily have been back on the political table. Weiner showed intense interest in Thomas's doings, and his public hectoring of Thomas during the health care debate about his financial dealings sent a mild signal that Thomas at some point could be fair game for a probe. That would have done much to further expose the financial, legal, and moral misdeeds by conservatives that the GOP routinely sweeps under the rug.
Now Thomas and the GOP doesn't have to worry about that. Thomas's potential tormentor is out of the House and Democrats seem pretty much content to put the Weiner and the Thomas matter behind them. Thomas can now safely breathe a big sigh of relief at that.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst and New America Media associate editor. 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

When the nicest people, in the most civil society, which is to say Canadians, start to riot, the world must be out of whack, or totally wacked. When I saw the headlines this morning and then film on TV of rioting in Vancouver, I thought that something terrible much have happened.

Someone must have put meth in the water system or perhaps there had been a military coup and Canadian democracy was no more. Maybe the report was just wrong and the riots were in La Canada in Southern California--or perhaps, if it were Canada, maybe they got the coast wrong and it was Quebec. I mean there have been disturbances in Quebec. But Vancouver? No, not possible.

Then I theorized that these were probably British sports hooligans visiting Canada and certainly not real Canadians. The news media, however, are not backing me up on the possibility of the mass importation of British hooligans. All is not lost for Canadian pride and dignity because there is an even better theory. It was, according to Canadian sources, anarchists from Eugene Oregon! Yes, that makes sense. So it wasn't young testosterone-besotted Canadian sports rioters. It was Americans--exporting our troubles and rage, which are, after all, our most significant export.

©2011 Jonathan Dobrer
www.Dobrer.com

I completely understand why politicians are held in appropriately low regard. Our Congress is deadlocked and poisonously partisan. Half the political news is about greed, conflicts of interest or personal misbehavior. The rest of the news is about bickering and gaining personal and partisan advantage. No one, from the national level to the state, seems either to be honest or actually working for our interests.

This whole debacle is a cynical mess and why, across party lines, few of us have much respect for any of them. However, I am grateful that Jerry Brown, right or wrong, had the integrity to keep his promise and send this mess back to the squabbling children who tried to foist it on us.

©2011 Jonathan Dobrer
www.Dobrer.com

I'm hoping for a political miracle, someone to come riding in to rescue us from this mess. Excuses or not, enough time or not, Obama's had three years to bring forth the change, and we're in a bigger mess than before. The housing report is bleak, the unemployment rate has risen to the double-digit level in many places, and the stock market has gone berserk.

While I like the president personally, his approval rating isn't that high, either. According to the Rasmussen Report, it has dropped by 20%, and his disapproval rating has risen by 30%, from 15% to 45%. So nearly half those polled think that he's doing a bad job. Me too.

Telling people that he just needs more time is another excuse. The man doesn't need more time; he needs more strategy. I understand that the economy is cyclical and may need time to heal, but what's he going to say in four more years, that we needed more time and that this is a long-lasting impact of the Bush Effect?

We need someone to come riding in on a charging stallion and save this country. Though he may garner the Holy Grail of the coveted Good Old Party nomination, Mitt Romney isn't looking like it after all. Michelle Bachman would probably send everyone to Bible school, and Sarah Palin's an ornament. The others will be forgotten as soon as the last folding chair in New Hampshire has been put away.

What we need now is someone with the charm of Obama, the integrity of Lincoln, the policies of FDR and some of the money management skills of Bill Clinton. It makes genetic engineering look all the better.

Newt Gingrich, former Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty, Rick Santorum, talk show host Herman Cain, and former Utah governor Jon Huntsman and of course Mitt Romney have one chance and only one chance at knocking off President Obama. That's a complete, and I mean complete, tank of the economy in the next year. Short of that or an Arnold Schwarzenegger magnitude personal scandal involving Obama, this bunch is essentially running for the presidency in 2016, and simply using 2012 as a warm-up act.
Obama is not just a moderate, still appealing, mainline Democratic sitting president, he's a cash cow. He will have a king's ransom campaign war chest. Romney is every bit the corporate cash cow as Obama. He pumped tens of millions into his virtually self-bankrolled, failed campaign in 2008. He can do what Obama can do -- and that's open the GOP's corporate money spigot.

But that's not enough. His shaky ties with evangelicals and his backing of the GOP-loathed health care reform plan in Massachusetts are big liabilities with the Palins, Limbaughs, and Ralph Reeds, and a vast troupe of evangelical conservatives. In 2008, legions of Christian evangelicals stayed home. They are still vocal, very big in numbers and politically dangerous to any Democrat. They provided the vote muscle for Bush in 2000 and especially 2004.
Romney will need someone on the ticket to fix things with them. He can't win without them. That's where former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee might have helped. But he's sitting it out. So if Romney is the last man standing when the primary election dust settles he will have to either find a Huckabee type or do the sell job of his life to convince the Tea Party leaders and activists that underneath his moderate-by-GOP standards, flip-flopping, Mormonism, and his tout of the despised health care plan in Massachusetts, he's really at heart one of them. That will be a feat to see. Short of that, and he'll likely come up way short, presidential match and set to Obama.

The more I know--really know--about an event or issue, the more flawed I find the media coverage. I'm pretty willing to be informed about something I know nothing about. I'll let the media fill in the spaces in my knowledge and experience. When, however, I really know a subject, the simplifications, the over-simplifications, the misunderstandings conveyed drive me crazy.

Take the story reported today about the appeal of the anti-gay marriage initiative, Prop 8. Some folks who were opposed to gay marriage appealed the decision finding it unconstitutional on the basis that the judge was gay and therefore couldn't rule objectively. Most reporting, including NPR said that the basis of the appeal was the discovery after the ruling that the judge was gay and in a long-term relationship. Therefore, they reasoned, he had something to gain and should have recused himself.

We are really good at making the complex too simple and the simple too complex. In fact, I'm pretty sure that I've done both.

©2011Jonathan Dobrer
www.Dobrer.com

The Republican debate did not bring many surprises. They all were true to the party line of cut taxes, cut federal spending and cut regulation and let the magic of the market fix everything. Yet, there were some surprises, but very few sparks.

This led to the surprise of the night for me. Tim Pawlenty looked slight, nervous and not at all presidential. He was physically and rhetorically adumbrated by Romney. While it is too soon to say it's over for him--it is over for him. The money will dry up. If the Evangelicals--to say nothing of the anti-Obamacare folks--want a Great White non-Mormon candidate, it won't be Pawlenty, Santorum or Gingrich. Maybe it will be Herman Cain. Although both his names sound pretty Jewish.

©2011 Jonathan Dobrer
www.Dobrer.com

Here on wordpress.

Enjoy,

G.- Tz.

The advertising slogan for the jam was, "With a name like Smuckers you've got to be good." Well with a name like Weiner, there also comes a higher degree of responsibility. Weiner certainly is in a jam. Coincidentally, Weiner and Smuckers share a certain Yiddish relationship with weenie. As someone who heard weenie jokes his entire life the irony of his situation should not be lost on Weiner--nor on anyone else. There are just some things that you shouldn't do with any name, but with a name like Weiner, you really ought to pick a different vice.

©2011 Jonathan Dobrer
www.Dobrer.com

Newt Gingrich recently and famously said, "If you quote me accurately, it will be a lie." We have clearly entered the world of Alice Through the Looking Glass. In today's politics of spin, reverse spin, double-spin and double-cross quoting accurately or fulfilling request can be, well, spun as a betrayal, a trick or a "gotcha."

So, what does all this posing, posturing, spinning and kabuki mean? What is the import of asking for what you really don't want and then pretending shock and anger when you get it anyway? Here is what it means: Our politicians are all so busy playing the gotcha game of partisan politics, so obsessed with their own power and with winning each encounter, spin cycle or news cycle (tragically synonymous), so busy trying to enhance their own status and embarrass their opposition that they have forgotten us.
©2011 Jonathan Dobrer
www.Dobrer.com

The enshrined political article of faith is that presidents and presidential candidates rise and fall on the economy. There's much to be said for that. And presumptive frontrunner for the 2012 GOP presidential nomination, Mitt Romney is loudly claiming that President Obama has failed on the economy. Polls show that his attack is getting some resonance. He's in a statistical dead heat with Obama in the race for the White House. The polls don't mean much at this point in the still very embryonic presidential election season. But talk of, or rather perception and reality, about the economy does. Obama's "frustration index" according to one poll among voters is at an uncomfortably high near 70 mark. Even the momentary bump up in approval ratings that he got from the bin Laden take down has evaporated. But that didn't mean much anyway when it came to the economy.
Obama has been continually plagued by voter perception that he is fumbling things on the economy. The White House protests that it inherited the economic wreckage from the Bush administration and has prevented wholesale collapse through bail-outs, the stimulus, and spending cuts. This hasn't had much resonance with a majority of voters.
Yet the near 70 frustration index Obama is saddled with is still a ways away from the high of 80 in 2008. Obama and the Democrats used this high frustration voters had with Bush and the GOP as their heavy hammer to pound the GOP and snatch back the White House and Congress. The GOP turned the table on the Democrats and used that same high frustration level with the Democrats in 2010 to take back the House.
Romney banks that voters will be so furious at Obama for the still high number of home foreclosures, anemic job creation numbers, high gas prices, massive deficits, and government waste that the moderate and conservative independents that deserted the GOP in droves in 2008 will flock back to the GOP in 2012. Romney will flaunt his corporate and business credentials to make the case that he will be the nation's consummate fiscal manager.

But it's not that simple for Romney and the GOP. Despite the conventional wisdom it's not always the economy that makes or breaks presidents. Since 1948 when the economy hit the skids or appeared to skid, the scorecard for six of eight presidents that won or lost because of economic woe is a draw. Three were beaten and three beat back their challengers. It came down to whether voters really perceived that their economic pain would show no sign of a cure if they kept the incumbent in office.
Both Republican and Democratic presidents won and lost even when there was widespread public unease over the economy and many voters believed things wouldn't get any better. The presidents who won had to do one crucial thing in the face of rising unemployment, recession, inflation, and public grumbles. They had to assure a majority of voters that things would and could get better with them if they stayed in the White House and their opponent couldn't do any better.

That combination of real and voter perceived economic woe helped sink Presidents Gerald Ford and Bush Sr. It helped and hurt Carter. It helped Reagan and it hurt Bush Sr. in their reelection bids.

Bush Sr.'s history did not repeat itself with George W. Bush in the 2004 election. While unemployment was high, and economic growth was slower than during Clinton's second term, the Clinton bar was impossibly high to match anyway. By all economic standards, his economic track record was the best of any of the last five presidents. Even by his inflated standard, and despite the industrial erosion in some sections of the country, during the last two years of Bush's first term, overall unemployment and economic growth still slightly improved.

This was the powerful spur that Bush used to spin news, even bad economic news, as a gain. He solemnly pledged there would be more economic goodies for voters if he was reelected. If the economic negatives had hit harder in his last two years, as it did with his father, it would have been Democratic presidential John Kerry's ticket to the White House.
The economy's performance is undoubtedly a blessing or a curse for an incumbent. But it's also a matter of luck, timing, perception, and an incumbent's political adeptness at deflecting blame that count just as much in determining whether the sitting president retains or is bounced from the White House. Romney and the GOP will blame Obama for the nation's real or perceived economic misery. But that's a double-edged sword. Obama and the Democrats can and will remind voters that it takes time to drag an economy out of its quagmire, a quagmire created by the party of the candidate that seeks to replace him. Obama will make the equally compelling case that the GOP challenger can't do any better and possibly even make matters worse. Obama and Romney will hammer away at each other with their dueling economic woe messages. There's no guarantee that Romney will win that duel.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. He is an associate editor of New America Media. He is host of the weekly Hutchinson Report Newsmaker Hour on KTYM Radio Los Angeles streamed on ktym.com podcast on blogtalkradio.com and internet TV broadcast on thehutchinsonreportnews.com
Follow Earl Ofari Hutchinson on Twitter: http://twitter.com/earlhutchinson

GOP Presidential nominee Mitt Romney was asked during the 2008 GOP presidential primary campaign what he thought about diversity. He gave the stock answer that he supported it in government and corporations. A little later Jay Leno in a late night interview asked him whether his administration would be truly inclusive. Romney tossed out the pithy one liner that he believed discrimination is wrong.

Romney managed to answer the question that has nagged every GOP presidential candidate (and president) since Nixon without saying anything. But it's not a politician's words that count. It's their action and public record. Bush managed to blunt the hard criticism that a GOP White House is almost always a virtually an exclusive white, rich, male, clubby preserve with his arguably breakthrough appointments of Coin Powell, Secretary of State, and Condoleezza Rice, National Security Advisor and Secretary of State, and Alberto Gonzalez, Attorney General.

But a Romney White House almost certainly could roll back the Bush clock. Start with his record on diversity as Massachusetts governor. When it came to appointing minorities and women to judicial posts his record was atrocious. The Massachusetts Women's Bar Association repeatedly lambasted him for his near exclusive white male state house. Romney partly in response to the public pounding, and partly with an eye on a presidential run where he knew his state record on diversity would be closely scrutinized made a slew of appointments of minorities and women to the state bench in his last year in office.

Romney's successor Deval Patrick, a Democrat, and the state's first African-American governor, wasted no time in knocking Romney for his blatant race and gender blind spot on appointments. In his inaugural address he made it clear that he would make diversity and inclusion a huge part of his administration. Romney, not surprisingly, did not attend Patrick's inaugural.

Romney now that he's the declared GOP presidential candidate and the presumptive front-runner for the nomination can't duck the diversity issue. The parade of Romney race tinged gaffes that include the metaphorical reference to hanging Obama, a joke about Obama's birth certificate, using the racially offensive word "tar baby" to describe a public works project, and an animal reference in a pose with an African-American doesn't tag Romney as a racist. He apologized or pleaded ignorance in every case. But it does touch off warning bells on race.
Then there are the questions about Romney's faith. The Mormons at one time clung tightly to a well-documented, race-tinged dogma for more than a century that blacks were an inferior race, could not be priests, serve on missions or be married in the Temple. Mormons were hardly the only religious group that hid behind the Old Testament curse of Ham as a cover for their blatant racial bigotry. Many evangelical fundamentalists did the same. The Mormons scrapped it only after church leaders said they got a revelation from God in 1978. That was a decade and a half after the great civil rights battles of the 1960s.

The Mormon leaders claim that they have convincingly junked their racist past, and tout their much-publicized genealogical research on African-American families, their aggressive missions in Africa, and the handful of blacks that serve in the important church body known as the Quorums of the Seventy to proof it. But Mormon leaders have also have rejected calls for the church to apologize for its century plus defense of that past.

Mormon change efforts are certainly commendable, but that doesn't lessen suspicion that the attitudes of rank and file Mormons toward race and gender issues aren't still frozen in time. The inherent social conservatism in the Mormon faith and practices further deepens the suspicion that a Mormon in the White House would hardly be prone to make diversity the watchword of their administration.

In opinion polls nearly half of all Americans have an unfavorable view of Mormons. They still see the faith as clannish, cultish, polygamy practicing, and far out of the mainstream of American religious traditions. They are rightly troubled that Romney's faith and conservative politics may be so meshed that a Mormon could not keep church and state matters separate.

Romney bristles at this notion. In a speech in December, 2007 he tried to put the fears to rest that his faith would not be an issue in his governing. Romney's right that his faith shouldn't be the determining issue in whether he's fit to be president. And an irony is that in some polls African-American Protestants are actually less hostile to Mormons than hard line white evangelicals. Still, Romney's actions, not his words or poll numbers, on diversity are and should be a determining issue whether Romney is fit to be president. His record and words are anything but promising on this. And that's more than simply a matter of faith.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. He is an associate editor of New America Media. He is host of the weekly Hutchinson Report Newsmaker Hour on KTYM Radio Los Angeles streamed on ktym.com podcast on blogtalkradio.com and internet TV broadcast on thehutchinsonreportnews.com
Follow Earl Ofari Hutchinson on Twitter: http://twitter.com/earlhutchinson

Never known as the most conventional of places, California has long been home to many things, Arnold, the Haight-Ashbury movement and many bead and head shops. Most recently, it's been home to a movement to ban male circumcision within Santa Monica and San Francisco. "It's barbaric!" the founders of the movement claim. "Let the lads decide for themselves when they are adults!"

If that were the case, then many men would probably rather commit harry carry. Started by Lloyd Schofield, the movement is the latest tact in a string of anti-Semitic assaults, as other ways have backfired.

"No one has the right to cut off another part of another person's body without their consent," said Matthew Hess, one of the supporters of the movement, and the author of a virulently anti-Semitic comic, "Foreskin Man." The comic features a dark-haired villain, named "Monster Mohel," and the save-the-world hero, the fair-haired and muscular, "Foreskin Man."

Had Schofield et al done their homework, they would have known that practice has been around for four thousand years and hasn't hurt us Jews one bit, as we have excelled in science, medicine and literature without anyone ever complaining about that owie. My great-great grandfather, Velvel Koragodsky, fathered eleven children. His grandson, Yakir, four. My own father had two, and as we were girls, he would sometimes go outside and kick a football around with the boy who lived next door, so it didn't appear to have hurt him much, either.

I've also met men who converted to Judaism. One lives in Israel and has six children and seven grandchildren and said he has nothing to complain about family-wise. The other already circumcised, chose to redo himself, which he later admitted wasn't the smartest idea. It didn't negatively impact either one a bit even as adults.

Lo and behold, research has shown that it is actually healthier. A study found that Jewish women have less cervical cancer than other woman, and it's because of that. There is also less opportunity for infection, and according to one man not having that extra baggage makes him a better partner. Also, there has to be a reason as to why Jewish men seldom rape. My theory is that there is more fun in the seduction, though others say that the memory never completely fades and that circumcised men are in better control of themselves.

So Schoefield and his goose stepping crew are going to have to try something else. Maybe they can try turning Friday night Sabbath candle lighting into a city-ordinance fire hazard or go after the non-dairy butter used in kosher bakeries. If they want to go international, they can fly to Afghanistan and start their movement over there, since Muslim men also have the same procedure. I'd love to hear what happens to them once they do.

Some food and drug stories emerged and converged this week that make me happy not to be politician--and I'm not talking about Weinergate (although it does involve a job and a fatty food). Taken separately each is interesting, challenging and important. Taken together they show us how impossible it is to formulate coherent policy.

A 19-member panel of the UN has recommended that all nations reconsider our various Wars on Drugs. Though the wars are all different in approach--from education to eradication, to military action--what they share in common is FAILURE. The distinguished panel found that nations are destabilized, civilians slaughtered and governments corrupted by the trade. The mortality figures are far higher from growing, shipping and selling drugs than from taking them.

Healthy eating could be unhealthy for the economy--and as people grow poorer, they eat more fast food. Policy experts, please try to make sense out of this. It's enough to drive a thoughtful person to drink...or drugs.
©2011 Jonathan Dobrer
www.Dobrer.com

Sarah Palin is just teasing us. But she is very good at the tease. She is mediagenic and just shines through the lens. Like Reagan, Clinton and Teddy Kennedy, she is a great retail politician. She lights up a political rally. Charisma is not fair, but she has it. It will continue to serve her well as part of the "lamestream media." Oh the irony.

Just as most Sunni do not consider the Alawite branch of Shiah Islam to be Muslim, many Evangelicals and other Christian fundamentalists do not consider Latter Day Saints to be true Christians. While they might accept a Roman Catholic more easily than a hundred years ago, today it is harder for Mitt than it was for his father George to be embraced by the Christian Right 40 years ago. So, no matter how hard he swings right, they will not trust him--not simply on policy but more profoundly on faith. I make no case for Mitt Romney, but he will be denied the nomination for the wrong reason, religious bigotry--even though, were he to get it, he would be the most likely to beat Obama. More irony!
©2011 Jonathan Dobrer
www.Dobrer.com

Okay, Earl, I've read the memo. I know that Sarah Palin's not going to become President Palin. I'd hate to go out on a limb here, but she's probably not going to garner the GOP nomination, either, though I'm sure she'll show up at the convention and do something memorable. She's just that way.

Methinks that Mitt Romney is going to get the GOP nomination and may even become our next president if the following terms and conditions are met:

1.) If the economy continues to plummet,
2.) If the job market continues to plummet,
3.) If the illegal immigrant population continues to rise.

Obama's a genius at fundraising and self-promotion, but according to the world of Saunders, "poli," the root word of politician, means throwing many expensive fundraising dinners and being a master self-promoter. Arnold was good at it, too, and so was Antonio, though we've all seen where that's gotten us. The lowest bond rating in the country, a raging illegal immigration problem, one illegitimate child, a partridge in a pear tree and an ex-governor who wants to get back into movies.

Given the dangerous precipice we are on, we may be rife for a Republican takeover, if there are any normal ones out there, and it could just be Mitt Romney. Why not? He'd look good in official photos, and he's got good conservative values that hopefully won't seep into Tea Party country over time. Besides, in some ways he was right when he said that the economy has gone from bad to worse since Obama took over. But the proof is in the pudding, as they say. Just look at the recent housing market report. It sent the stock market plummeting and on the day I planned on cashing in on my 403 B plan, no less. If the Republicans put up a strong candidate, they just may take the prize home, and Sarah Palin will eventually get a job at Goldman-Sachs or be reduced to a Wikipedia entry and more Tina Fey SNL skits.