Barack Is Deaniac From 2004: His Anti-War Image Is No Fairytale

When Bill Clinton called Barack "the biggest fairytale I have ever seen," he meant the totality of Barack. The person, his lifestory, his candidacy, his blackness, his whiteness, his Boston convention speech, everything, the package deal.

Then the remark backfired a little, especially among leading African Americans across the country, especially after Hillary went right ahead and belittled none other than MLK himself (And The British Left India On Their Own), and she topped it off with her use of the word "slum" to describe a black Chicago neighborhood. And Bill Clinton backpeddled. I just meant his Iraq War thing, he said. As in, his image of being an anti-war person is a fairytale.

Fairytale, now that is a loaded racial codeword. Suggestion: don't take this guy seriously. People who don't take my blog seriously call it The Onion. If once in a while I am funny, I am glad. But this blog is no Onion. There is some cutting edge stuff going on at this blog.

Bill Clinton has not backpeddled enough. He needs to go ahead and eat his words. When Bill Clinton is talking about Barack and Iraq, he is lying. Again. Is there anything Bill Clinton has not lied about over the vast expanse of his career? He probably calls it political skill. I call him a guy who just does not get it. He does not get the politics of hope, the new kind of politics. What Barack is preaching is a new religion, and Bill Clinton has not the slightest clue. Bill Clinton is acting like a holdover from the 1990s that he is.

Barack's new kind of politics is a foreign language to Bill Clinton, he does not get it. Hillary is the same way, she must be married to Bill: she talks derisively of "false hopes" and "hoping for change."

Barack's hope message is not one that is naive, it is a muscular message that will deliver as many states to him in fall as Reagan managed in 1984, his muscular hope is the kind that can take you to the moon. This is not a weak hope of hoping the computers crash at the credit card company headquarters and all your credit card debt goes away. This is the kind of hope that ends slavery, the kind of hope finds the polio vaccine, the kind of vote that takes you to the moon.

This is also the kind of hope that ends a war that should never have been authorized - Hillary? - and never have been waged. Bush?

Barack was a staunch Dean 2004 person. When that organization became Democracy For America, it got behind the Senate candidate Barack Obama. Today Barack is the most prominent Deaniac there is.

Howard Dean Was Grassroots 1.0, Barack Is Grassroots 2.0

Guess what defined Dean 2004 more than any other thing: Howard Dean's anti-war stand. If anti-war is cool today, all the credit goes to Howard Dean. Barack took the right anti-war stand in 2002, but he did not have Howard Dean's clout at the time to go national with it.

Howard Dean made anti-war cool in 2004, Barack Obama gave the Dems a big victory with it in 2006. Dean was anti-war 1.0, Barack was anti-war 2.0 in 2006. The Dems took the House and the Senate in 2006, thanks to Barack.

To doubt Barack's anti-war stand is to doubt Howard Dean's anti-war credentials. That is like saying George Washington is not the Father of the Nation, Ernest Hemingway did not write The Old Man And The Sea. It really is that basic.

Barack was anti-war in 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007 and this year too. Barack will be anti-war in 2009 as president. Barack will stay anti-war until the war is over, until he brings it to an end as president.

Barack was the most sought after Democrat during the 2006 election that turned the tide for Democrats in this country after six lonely years. The anti-war plank is what got the Dems the victory in 2006 and there was general consensus that Barack was the mascot nationally for that anti-war theme.



So how do you explain a few things?

Why did Barack say right before the 2004 convention that he did not know how he might have voted on the war if he were Senator in 2002? Duh. He was trying to enhance the chances of the Kerry-Edwards ticket. Both Kerry and Edwards had voted for the war, but now they were the candidates who were going to end it. So if your goal is to end the war, you do all you can to enhance the chances of a Kerry-Edwards ticket. So Barack said what he said. That was still an anti-war stand. Don't you get it?

And why has Barack voted to fund the war? That is what any responsible Senator would do. You don't say because I am opposed to the war, now I am going to cut the funds to starve the American troops out in that desert.

You still want to end the war, and you take the necessary political steps. It was not the mistake of the armed men and women who have done everything that has been asked of them. It was the mistake of George Bush, it was the mistake of the Republican Party.

And so Barack took the political step of being the most visible Democrat in the country for the 2006 elections. Victory came along, but he realized that had not been enough to end the war. So he changed his mind on not running in 2008, and he ran. He ran to end the war.

So, if a guy was anti-war in 2002 when he was a nobody trying to be a somebody and anti-war was not how you became somebody in 2002, if a guy was a Deaniac in 2004, the most prominent Deaniac in the country, and the guy was The Anti-War Mascot Of The Democratic Party for the 2006 elections, and the guy became the only prominent Dem running in 2007 who had actually opposed the war from the very start, what I would like to know is when did he become not anti-war.

I respect and admire Bill Clinton. He gave good eight years. Personally I am thankful for the dot com boom. So I will give him the benefit of doubt. It might have happened in 2003. 2003 is the year that escapes attention. Barack might have made a pro-war lapse as a desperate nobody that year. Somebody go do the digging on this one and help Billie Clinton out.

Barackface: Critiquing A Critique Of The Iraq War Critiques
Barackface: Obama's Weapon On Clinton: Iraq
Barackface: Barack's Fairytale Position On Iraq War, Fairytale ...
Barackface: Complicated Iraq
Barackface: Hillary Messed Up On Iraq, And Al Qaeda Is Strong ...
Barackface: Movie: Iraq For Sale
Barackface: Iraq Movie, Liberally, But Not Drinking
Barackface: Obama Gameplan: Stable, Democratic Iraq
Barackface: Impeach Bush-Cheney, Nancy Pelosi Gets To Become First ...
Barackface: Iraq Intel: The Spy Who Failed Me
Barackface: Lamont: The Iraq War Ferment In The Democratic Party
Barackface: Iraq: Dumb War
Barackface: Iraq Did Not Have The Bomb, Iran Does Not Either
Barackface: Hillary's Iran Vote, Not That Different From The Iraq Vote
Barackface: Lieberman, Lamont
Barackface: Flatten It Out
Barackface: The Unthinkable: Nuclear Weapons Are Not Made To Be Used
Barackface: I Don't Doubt Hillary's Compassion Overall, Just Her ...
Barackface: Barack's Politics Of Hope, Hillary's Politics Of Fear
Barackface: Hillary's Pro-War, Anti-Immigration Plank







Barackface: Howard Dean Was Grassroots 1.0, Barack Is Grassroots 2.0
Barackface: Dick Cheney, Nelson Mandela, Howard Dean
Barackface: Dean-Hillary-Obama Ticket
Barackface: Messages To Dean, Ferrer
Barackface: I Am Running For Dean 2008 Campaign Chair
Barackface: Dean Was In Town Yesterday
Barackface: Dean, DFNYC, Daily Kos, Justin, Brooklyn, Nepal
Barackface: Bill Clinton Is Now Anti War Like Dean

Progressive Political Religion: No Place For Superpowers

The spectrum concept is a powerful concept, and it can be used to create a near permanent progressive majority. You map the electorate on each issue, 1 to 10. So 5-10 is 60% of the electorate. You are trying to get them to vote for you. One person's map might not agree with that of another. And candidates might differ on exactly what position to take to get all of 5-10 to vote for you.

And you make the 1-4 feel like you have really really heard them. You have listened to them and you have understood what they have to say and why. This makes for a compassionate progressive. You are being respectful of the fact that in a democracy, a voter, no matter how wrong, is still rightly entitled to one vote. All votes are equal. Your ideology does not, should not, determine the weight of a vote.

Barackface: Health Care As A Spectrum
Barackface: The Spectrum/Dialogue Concept Is Key To Power
Barackface: The Spectrum Concept: Wide Applications

So mapping is step one. Positioning is step two. What position can someone running for office take to get the 5-10 to vote for them? And it is not like there is only one issue. There are a host of issues. Your positions on one issue might make you lose someone who might agree with you on something else. So you have to account for that. Mapping might be great material for the brains, the intellectuals, the pollsters, the think tank types. But positioning will be best done by the professional politicians, people who go out there and shake hands.

So there is the spectrum. And then there is The Matrix that is an ideal. It will not take shape just like I have outlined. But in a scenario when near everyone is online, The Matrix will come alive. The democracy will become almost direct. I don't think the political offices will go away, there is no replacing humans, but all the offices will become fundamentally transformed.

You introduce democracy into a country with a Big Bang.

Spread Democracy
Revolution

Then you introduce the spectrum and The Matrix, if the country is online enough.

Basically what you are doing is you are building political infrastructure. Political, and social, and economic infrastructure. A state, any state, a country, any country, a government, any government, is but a tool to building that political, social, economic infrastructure, the goal always being to benefit the individual.

Money is not everything, money can buy you bed but not sleep, and they say the best things in life are all free, but money just so happens to be a big, big chunk of all policy talk. And so, to keep things simple, I am going to put a dollar figure on every human forehead. That is how much money that person makes in a year.

The progressive goal is to acquire power to build the political, social, economic infrastructure so as to make the dollar figure go up on every forehead.

It is about the individual. It is not about this or that country being a superpower. If all of humanity were engulfed in a one person one vote arrangement, there would be no superpower at all.

So, no, I am not someone plotting to have America replaced by India and China as superpowers. I am a progressive. That is my political religion.

I think the spectrum concept is particularly well suited to handle social issues that have been the trickiest for progressives generally.

I am going to work much more on the Democracy Spreading Mechanism (Spread Democracy). It was forged through work on Nepal's April Revolution 2006, with some collaboration, but it failed me during the Burma protests, primarily because I just did not have the network and the penetration that I had with Nepal. In Nepal's case I had managed to penetrate all the political parties, top human rights NGOs, and diaspora organizations. This Democracy Spreading Mechanism (Spread Democracy) is the weakest link in the chain right now. I think I need to define it more, and add ways to measure readiness level. For example, at what point do you finally call people out into the streets? Too early, and you fail, like in Burma. But then there is also such a thing called too late.

In The News

Obama cannot beat Republican attack machine, says Clinton Guardian Unlimited She presents herself as a battle-hardened veteran, having weathered whole books full of smears, innuendo, half-truths and unfortunate facts. ........ The possible lines of attack against Obama are already being rehearsed on rightwing websites and talkshows. A claim on InsightMag.com - owned by the Unification Church - that he had attended a radical Islamic madrasa as a boy, was repeated on Fox News and other conservative outlets. In fact, the primary school Obama went to for two years when growing up in Jakarta, Indonesia, was a state school with a largely secular curriculum.
Barack Obama targets southern barbershops Telegraph.co.uk
Clinton, Obama shake up politics of identity Reuters 40 percent of blacks in South Carolina are likely to vote for Clinton ..... Obama scored well among women in Iowa and around 40 percent of blacks in South Carolina are likely to vote for Clinton ...... No black candidate has been elected to the Senate in the U.S. South for over a century, a fact seen as evidence that black candidates are at a disadvantage in a region where the legacy of slavery and racial segregation remains visible. ...... the Democratic race has turned assumptions of the role of race and gender in presidential campaigns on their head and helped energize the voting base .... the Democratic nominee in 2004, John Kerry, won just 30 percent of the white vote in the south
Momentum turns toward Obama in SC Chicago Sun-Times National polls may show Hillary Clinton slightly ahead of Barack Obama .... In New Hampshire, an Obama win was mistakenly predicted. ..... Obama's heady win in Iowa and his close seconds in New Hampshire and Nevada ...... No one cares about the Rezko issue outside Chicago ..... Young is a "has-been," one of the old guard of civil rights workers whose hard struggles have become just history book anecdotes for the younger African-American generation that has embraced Obama as an icon of change. .... Obama now leads among African Americans in South Carolina by 64 percent to Clinton's 20 percent.
Clintons lying about Obama's Reagan remark Baltimore Sun
Bill Clinton raises eyebrows as campaign surrogate for his wife The Canadian Press Obama made it clear he was going to hit back. ..... "This has become a habit and one of the things that we're going to do is to directly confront Bill Clinton when he's making statements that are not factually accurate."
Pitbull Bill - the 'other' Clinton revelling in his return to the fray Guardian Unlimited It has come down to Obama versus Clinton in the key southern state of South Carolina - but the Clinton that Barack Obama is up against is Bill, not Hillary. ....... At Lizard's Thicket diner, beside the Columbia highway yesterday, he let his breakfast of omelette and grits grow cold. He was enjoying taking questions from reporters far too much to care about food. After weeks of Hillary and Barack Obama being top of the news agenda, he was the story. ...... Arguments were inevitable in politics, he said. "This is a contact sport." ...... as he put it, the First Laddie ...... he took time to work the room ..... The Clintons have a reputation in Washington for ruthlessness. Their research team has spent a year digging through Obama's background, examining in detail his upbringing and, more specifically, his voting record while a senator in the Illinois legislature. ....... negative campaigning, no matter how often the public claims to dislike it, is effective ...... Bill Clinton is a brilliant and intelligent politician who makes no chance remarks: it's all deliberately worked out.
Obama Offered Dance Test for Clinton The Associated Press
Bill gets some shut-eye at MLK day event Boston Herald

Tackling Race As An Issue The Average Person Way

There are more than whites and blacks in America, there are also Latinos, there are Asians. But race seems to tango primarily between blacks and whites. I believe race has to be tackled as an issue at the level of the average person, one conversation at a time.

It can start as an in-group thing where blacks are primarily talking among blacks, and whites are primarily talking among whites. It's okay to start that way if only because that is what the living arrangements are for the most part. Blacks live with other blacks. Whites live with other whites.

You bring forth simple questions and you go around and have people answer them. Among a black group, I would pose these questions.

What does race mean to you? How big an impact do you feel race has had in your life? Slavery happened. How do you feel about that? Segregation happened. How do you feel about that? What have been your personal experiences in racism, if any? In what forms does racism exist today? Do you think those can be tackled? How? What constitutes the black identity? How do you fight internalized racism among blacks? How do you take pride in your black identity? Black identity can not be to do with slavery and segregation. Those were aspects of race relations that did not quite work out. Black identity has to be to with music, and culture, and history, and religion, and art, and black heroes and role models, it has to be positive, and it has to be independent of anything to do with white misbehavior in the past or present. So what is that black identity? Tell me.

Don't get me wrong, I am mad as hell at racism, and I have experienced it myself, but it really bothers me to realize so much of the black identity revolves around slavery and segregation. I am not saying don't talk about it, quite the reverse. But I am saying slavery and segregation are not identity. They were diseases. They can't be identity.

So what is that positive black identity? What is it made up of? Swahili? African art and artifacts? I think for a big part Africa is the answer. Blacks in America would do well to learn some Swahili for pride purposes. Not necessarily fluent Swahili, broken Swahili would be just fine. There was Swahili before there was slavery and segregation. Swahili can be identity, slavery and segregation are not identity.

Mind you, I am not saying don't talk about slavery and segregation. Talk to your heart's fill. Talk as much as you want. Just don't talk like they are your identity. Disease can not be identity.

Some people say blacks should adopt Islam. What I say is those blacks who want to convert to Islam should happily do so. If you feel like adopting a religion that is different from that of most white folks will make you feel more whole as a person, heck, it is called religious freedom. It is guaranteed by the Universal Declaration Of Human Rights. By all means do so. Any religion is fine. If you were to ask for my recommendation, I would say Buddhism. Wink, wink.

Racism hits the family structure hard. There has to be enough grassroots organizing at the community and church levels among blacks that people raise their political consciousness level to say the external reality of racism can not be allowed to affect the internal reality of one's self or the semi-internal reality of one's family.

Racism is still wrong, and it is hurting enough, but you can make it not seep into the walls of your home where no white people are around, it is just you and your family. And that requires conversation, that requires political education.

We don't live in a time when racism is the law. We do live in a time when there is much social segregation. You could say the institutions of power are infected, some more so than others.

But those black people who might ask that the whites cleanse their hearts of racism must exhibit the guts to also cleanse their hearts of internalized racism. And if they can't cleanse their hearts of internalized racism, they must acknowledge it is hard for anybody, black, white or other, to do any kind of cleaning.

Not everything that whites have and blacks don't have can be attributed to racism. Life and the institutions of society and wealth creation are a little more complicated than that. You can argue whites got a headstart because their ancestors owned slaves, and their fathers got to eat lunch at segregated lunch counters, and they got to go to whites only beaches. But at some point you have to get out of memory and walk the current reality. Life is unfair, but you can seek opportunities.

The black schools are not as well funded. On average black children do not get the early childhood education that the average white kids might. The gates to the big seats of learning might favor the whites more than the nonwhites. It is a complex situation. There might be glass walls and ceilings at the workplace. Not there might, there are.

But despite all that there is no denying the importance of knowledge in wealth creation. Whites might have an unfair advantage in accumulating that education, and whites might even have unfair advantages at the workplace. But one of the starting points is strong families and strong communities that make the best of what is already available in terms of opportunity. The beauty of that argument is that strong family, and that strong community will also take the political actions necessary to expand the opportunities. You don't get to say, damn those white people, because of them I don't have a strong family, my community is not that strong, and it is not very well organized politically. All that you got to do on your own, and if you do that, good things start happening.

Grassroots organizing has amazing power.

And the conversation has to expand and move to mixed groups. It could look like this.

Black Person: Slavery happened. My people got wronged.
White Person: I could not agree more.
Black Person: Segregation happened. My people got wronged.
White Person: I agree.
Black Person: Slavery and segregation is the reason why I am still lagging behind in life today.
White Person 1: It is possible that is true.
White Person 2: C'mon, man. Get a life. If carrying the burden of dead white men is hard for you, why do you think it is any easy for me? I don't want to carry it either.
Black Person: Racism exists today.
White Person: Like how?
Black Person: America never had a black president. India has a Muslim president and a Sikh prime minister. An Italian born woman almost became prime minister of India.
White Person: Sorry, we are running late. But I am for Barack.
Black Person: All institutions of society are infected.
White Person: Most of the time most of the people in most of the institutions are doing things that are right and necessary and not racist at all. Don't throw the baby with the bathwater. You are going to have to get more specific than that.
Black Person: But racism exists.
White Person 1: Yes, it does.
White Person 2: No it does not.

I think the idea is to find common ground among blacks and whites that slavery and segregation were wrong. And then disagree on if racism still exists or not and in what form. The disagreement will be of degree, it will not be total one way or the other. The important thing, the most important thing, is that race has to be talked about. It matters less what form that conversation takes than that the conversation takes place in the first place.

If a Barack victory in South Carolina generate a white backlash on February 5, America is a sick country. Give a biracial man a biracial treatment. Barack is America's best hope of moving beyond the old and tired arguments on the issue of race relations.

Barackface: How To Play The Race Card In South Carolina
Barackface: Race, A Few Different Angles
Barackface: Race, NYC, Future, Globalization, Internet, Glass ...
Barackface: Race, Gender, Progressive, Conservative Divides
Barackface: Race, Gender
Barackface: The Spectrum/Dialogue Concept Is Key To Power
Barackface: White Media Says The Clintons Won Nevada
Barackface: Landscape Talk



Rediscovering Drinking Liberally

I think I might go ahead and become a regular. That would be a great way to build back my social muscles. I sorely need that.

The first day Justin Krebs saw me, he saw me do the hot dog thing that you do at Rudy's. If you don't know there is free hot dogs at Rudy's at the center of the known universe: Times Square. Krebs went ahead and ordered pizza for everybody. We had not talked yet.

All these videos down below are my handiwork.

I think I have always liked it so much that Drinking Liberally is so unstructured. I find that appealing. Some of the other organizations are too structured and not online enough for me. I think people don't realize NYC is the progressive capital, and going online is a way to reach out perhaps to small town across the country, for one. But then most folks get involved because to them it is more socializing and less political action. And, as they say, it is a free country.

Barackface: Drinking Liberally
Barackface: Facebook And Drinking Liberally
Barackface: DFNYC, Drinking Liberally, DL21C, Cosmopolity
Barackface: Laughing Liberally Brings The House Down December 30
Barackface: Hands Off Brooke Ellison
Barackface: Justin Krebs
Barackface: Murderball
Barackface: Liberally Tipsy
Barackface: Iraq Movie, Liberally, But Not Drinking
Barackface: Knock, Knock, Knocking On Heaven's Door

Jewish

I have talked about at this blog about how I had to google him and that is how I found out Spitzer is Jewish. He looks like a white guy to me. And his last name is no better.

But then, can you tell the difference between a Pahadi and a Madhesi? Or a Tamil and a Maratha?

Born

Most people are born into a certain religion. Most people are born black or white. What side of the race argument/discussion you are on often depends on that. And so I think it is a big deal that Barack is biracial, like really really big. The voters need to know he was raised by a white mother. That is fundamental to his identity. If voters on February 5 have to vote before knowing he was raised by a mother who happened to be white, Obama 2008 has not done a good job at all. I am dedicating February 5 to Barack's mother.










In The News

Obama, Reagan and the Internet New York Times In 2006, he says, he was the person whom most members of Congress (Democrats, presumably) sought to have come into their districts ...... “’Now, it is blasphemy for Democrats,” Obama pollster Cornell Belcher said of Reagan, “but that hope and optimism that was Ronald Reagan’ allowed him to ‘transcend’ ideological divisions within his own party and the general electorate.” ..... he says that when you discuss war with Baby Boomers, their frame of reference is Vietnam. “My frame of reference is what works” ..... The campaign is now running a biographical spot across the country.

Obama's Relationship With Alleged Fixer The Associated Press