Obama-lovin' late

I bumped into some people and they asked why i haven't blogged in a while. I stared at them with disbelief that they knew i had a blog, much less read it.

Well, i'm almost stunned that Obama won. I thought that when he beat Hillary, he had it in the bag. So that's why i'm not stunned. But i get the shivers at thinking that he actually won. A facebook friend of mine, which means he knows people i know but i don't remember the dude, Khari wrote a wonderful article about how and why i'm awe-struck. Couldn't have said it better myself, and i think i'm a good writer.

Recently, also on the Obama wagon, i read that Obama will have 48 appellate court seats to fill. The reason there were so many was that Bush couldn't push through his ultra-conservatives, and Clinton dropped the ball. you can find the rehashing of the same article if you search for 'obama' 'court' and 'fill'. This, i am excited about.

I wrote earlier here about Obama's thinking about the courts and strategy, which basically said that civil rights movements should look to creating legislation, and not the courts, to get their way, much like the conservative movement. I also told people that i was excited to have Obama as president, not only because he's black but because he brings to the presidency the subtle and profound thinking of a constitutional-law professor.

Obama on civil rights & equality strategy

I got this from Slate, one of my regular rags. i found a real insightful observation (in bold below) about the different attitudes that conservatives and liberals have on the role of the courts. I relate it to what i learned from the book Who Rules America by Domhoff.

begin quote"
In some states, like California, judges instructed the state to take steps to equalize school funding from district to district. In others, like Kansas and Kentucky, and in ongoing litigation in Connecticut, the court decisions are framed in terms of adequacy of funding—making sure each district has enough, rather than the same amount. Either way, it's redistribution of what's become a rather routine sort. This is what Obama was talking about when he said in the radio interview, "Suddenly, a whole bunch of folks start bringing these claims in state court under state constitutions that call for equal educational opportunity, and you see state courts with mixed results being more responsive to it."

What comes through far more clearly in the interview is a tactical point: Obama thinks it's a mistake to rely too much on courts to further any broad agenda. He says, "I think one of the tragedies of the civil rights movement was that the civil rights movement became so court-focused. I think there was a tendency to lose track of the political and organizing activities on the ground that are able to bring about the coalitions of power through which you bring about redistributive change, and in some ways we still suffer from that." And then he continues, "Maybe I am showing my bias here as a legislator as well as a law professor, but you know … the institution just isn't structured that way."

This is a whole separate, bitter, ongoing fight in legal circles—over when to turn to courts as a means of change and when to turn to the legislature, which is directly accountable to the voters and so perhaps the safer and more stable route. It's a truism that conservatives favor legislative change and see the courts as an undemocratic end run around it. They especially think that about any push for "redistributive change," Obama's subject here. In this interview, Obama comes down on the traditionally conservative side, albeit for presumably different reasons. He thinks the civil rights movement misjudged the courts' utility—they were good for providing for a right to vote and for black people to sit with white people at a lunch counter, to use Obama's examples, but they're not good for deciding who's entitled to what government benefits or property rights. "Obama is with Bork on this," Cass Sunstein, an Obama adviser, told me, referring, of course, to the arch-conservative, famously not-confirmed-to-the-Supreme Court Judge Robert Bork.
copied from this Slate article
"end quote

What i found interesting was that Domhoff outlines how the 'elite' class influences America, but i don't remember any explicit contrast between the legislative and court-based strategies of getting what you want done. I think if more liberals look at passing laws (liberal majority yeah!) instead of waiting for the courts, then America would be a much more balanced society.

Jesse . . WTF?

Yo, in the news, Jesse and other supposed 'civil rights leaders' are complaining that Obama is talking down to blacks when he talks of personal responsibility. Apparently they've never heard of anyone besides themselves. Now i don't like this, but i understand it. You, well really me, has got to realize that they are 'civil rights leaders', which by definition points their attitudes and attentions toward government and business policies and actions. They aren't 'personal responsibility leaders' which has them focus on what's happening inside of the black community. They are attending to what's happening to the black community.

This is a real important distinction. There's a big difference between figuring out what's happening inside of a context (community, business, etc) and what's happening outside of that context, and especially how that entity/context is interacting with its environment.

So, most of the media is forgetting that the role of Jesse and Al and others is not to speak to black folk about what black folk 'should be' or 'ougth to be' doing. Their role is to speak to non-black communities and institutions and telling them what they 'should' or 'ought' to be doing in relation to the black community.

So its is no wonder than people in the role of civil rights leaders would have a problem with Obama talking to his own folk about their behavior, simply because Obama isn't towing the civil rights part line. Makes sense to me, I see what the fuss is about, but i see what causes the confusion amidst the fuss also.

I also heard that Jesse's out-of-wedlock baby's aunt wrote a letter detailing how Jesse himself is a dead-beat dad. And by extension it is no wonder that Jesse doesn't want to look at personal and parental responsibility, simply because he has little ground or integrity to stand on and speak from.

Why vote for Obama

here's something that i left on a forum thread whose title was Obama vs Clinton

here's why i am and think you (and everyone) should vote for Obama:

At least internally, he's resolved what many of us see as dualities. It sounds like to him there is no race, gender or class, despite the media attention and pigeonholing of democratic candidates into race (Obama), gender (Hillary) and class (Edwards) [and isn't that ironic that we have(d) all three discussions in our face and didn't know to comment on that].

Obama seems to have touched what it is to be human. He seems to know what it is to have your heart broken because of chance, racism, happenstance, economics and gender. When he talks, he talks to the core of what it is to be human. He's not thinking of you, me and others as individuals with different shades and shapes, he's talking to the fact that we're cut from the same cloth. He takes into account that after years, decades and centuries of injustice, still we live and toil. He talks to humans of what is possible for humanity and mankind [and possibilities create opportunities for action]. And i think that what he talks about is a reflection of his thoughts. He speaks hope. He is hope.

I'm somewhat hesitant to say it but . . . him being in the political arena, he's playing a game that's beneath him. He's Plato's philosopher-king, Rand's Galt and Neo after the Oracle. His true voice would probably be found, mined, smelted and formed in the halls of academia, but since philosophy has been so long divorced from politics, his craft and words would fall on deaf ears. So he's doubly equipped as a philosophical non-dualist clashing swords in the halls of academia and an expert in the game of politics clashing in the halls of congress. You'll not find another benevolent warrior-king inside the world of politics since Ghengis Khan and perhaps Mansa Musa.

When i argue with people who've known me for a while, I tell them that every four or five years i get a new paradigm. I've been afrocentric, socialist, capitalist and perhaps a few shades of other stuff. My problem was that many times, these paradigms for me would be an intellectual exercise, rather than something that spoke from my Being, both as a human, and as a blackman. But for the last couple years, since i have distinguished this, i've grown to know an cherish how to speak from my experience as a human, and occassionally managed to talk to others in terms of their experiences as humans too. And i'm no master, i falter. Obama is a master, and he falters too.

It seems like for Obama, the unrelenting aspiration for the expression of love and fairness in the lives of everyone is the only life he wants to live, not a dog-and-pony show for votes. I can't help but support that. This is in stark contrast to Hillary who emotes some of this on cue and Edwards who really feels it, but isn't it. Shit, i even like McCain. McCain has the same qualities that i describe in Obama, but living his life in the machiavellian world of politics (as an honorable politicisan, not the derogatory intonation that we think of today) McCain is anchored in this realm of passion for love and fairness, but as a ship, not as an anchor. Obama is the anchor, the mooring of hope.

So for me, at least, not voting for Obama and the hope that he exudes, exhorts and represents would be perhaps the most traitorous thing i could do as a human.

Hope for President

Okay Jeff, that's not why you should vote for Obama, but why i am. And i hope that looking through the particular glasses that i look through in life, you'll start to see what it is about Obama that i know you feel, but just can't distinguish.

On Obama . . is there anything else?

I invited my dad over so he could wax poetic about how important the Kennedy endorsements were. Being a youngster, i hear about the literal adoration that a whole nation had for the Kennedy's (something that Bill C. didn't achieve). So i had to tap someone who actually lived through those times to weigh in on how important this was, and the ramifications in that generation.

So in this analysis, my dad said (you'll hear a lot of that in this post) that Hillary was counting on the white baby-boomer women to be at least a solid backbone to her campaign. So the Kennedy endorsement flies in the face of that. The 'princess' and heir apparent to the Kennedy legacy (that would be Caroline folks) has just endorsed Obama. What was important about that was that Caroline isn't a politician. Analogously, that's like Princess Di supporting a candidate for Prime Minister over.

And Ted/Edward Kennedy coming out behind Obama does something serious to the race. Even though my dad says Ed is a wildcard, his weighing in makes New York a battleground for Hillary and not a walk-over. The Kennedy's are heavy in the Northeast, and their name carries weight in both political and social circles, so this is really big folks.

I've got my eye on New York's numbers in the upcoming days. What about you?

My dad also dropped some science on the racial politics of "'ol miss" and how the Jack Kennedy (Jack was his nickname) sent troops to ol miss. Apparently after Eisenhower sent troops to Little Rock, a few years later Kennedy sent some federal marshals to "Ol Miss". Apparently 60 of those marshals were hospitalized!!! In response, Kennedy sent parts of the 82nd airborne and the 101st (both of which landed in Normandy) down to Mississippi to show the Gubna of Miss just what country he was in. And apparently it was that that had black America fall in love with the Kennedy's . . . troops in mississippi, whodathunkit

watched my first debate

. . . of this election cycle that is. And i think that Obama fricasseed (had to look that spelling up) them how do you spell that word? I think the only fault that i have with Obama is that his speech is choppy. He has a lot of 'uh's and what i think is a mild stutter. I think it's cuz he's actually thinking about what he says, which is actually becoming of him.

I did find that he doesn't support universal healthcare, which i TOTALLY agree with. And when it came down to it, Hillary came out in full dig-her-heels in force for universal healthcare (which Obama calls 'mandatory') and that's just what i don't like about her. Sure, i like mandates. But she's not going after a mandate. She said that universal healthcare is a core democratic value. That's a mis-statement. Universal Healthcare is a core liberal value, and unfortunately she's confused the two, just as many other people have.

I think Edwards is fighting a real good fight. Honestly, i like his honesty and his fight for poverty. But i just don't think his fight against poverty is ripe yet for the picking. I'm for an Obama Edwards ticket. I think Obama would serve as a wonderful uniter, and Edwards with a good groundwork during those years can come with the knock-out punch to help end poverty and its brother: overconsumption, in the next eight years. All the while, i do think that we should have at least one republican congress during that sixteen years to keep those pesky democrats (i'd say 'asses' but i mean that in the symbolic not literal sense) honest and not too wild.

I think Hillary has an axe to grind, and i neither agree with her particular axes, how she's grinding them or why she's grinding them. I think Obama's message of hope and unity hasn't been heard within the beltway for a long time, and it's time to hear it again. And i think Edwards has a passionate empathy for the underdog . . . it's too bad he's a white man having to stress how he's for the 'little man' against two 'minorities'. I think in a playing field of all white men he'd be doing MUCH better, but his message of empathy 'for' someone is much different than a message of empathy 'from' someone. I just hope his love for people doesn't get lost in the fact that he's a white guy.

In this corner

I've been sorta watching the Obama-Clinton fiasco. What was really interesting was to hear Bill Clinton come out on radio (heard on the Tom Joyner show) not really attacking Obama, but really taking the man's campaign to task. It was funny, i started to think about the fight as a boxing match and thought of what was going on. What i thought was Bill was definitely a past champion, on the ropes fighting against Obama, but not really wanting to blow the guy out of the water. For some reason, in his diatribe, it just didn't sound like Bill had the poise he once had as president and expert politician. He sounded like he was on the defensive, but not in terms of being pummeled, but in terms of trying to get the sympathy for him that black folk so desperately want to give him for being married to that tyrant in heels.

Also, i read a great article on a website that i used to read a bit, but haven't lately (slate) which is decidedly anti-Hillary. It's almost slanderous (not really, i just wanted to say that word). My favorite is an article that says that she's actually not more experienced than Obama. Bascially, her elected official tenure is six years, compared to Obama's 11 when you include his stint in the Illinois State legislature. So what Hillary has been trading on is her proximity to Bill!!! http://www.slate.com/id/2182073/ there's the link

ps: note to self, i gotta learn to embed links in html so they come up snazzy like in other blogs. If anyone knows how to do this, drop me a line

Hope for Obama

I'm an avid supporter. I think he's the great black hope, the great white hope and just the great hope. But i'm scared. I don't want to think it . .. but i was just looking at the video of him after the Iowa win . . . he's inspiring, he makes me want to believe, and i do believe. . . he makes me think that i can make a change. But i also know that there are people out there hating their fear of him. But they don' t know that they hate their fear, they think that they hate him. And they may try to take it out on him, instead of doing 'work' on themselves.

Obama for emperor. . .not

So, what's new?

Obama for Emperor. . . he hath no clothes, no substance, only that politically seductive smile. The only clean guy in the mudslinging fight. I read his second book. He's playing the role of a referee, which is great and what we 'need'. But how is he going to ref the superbowl when he's new to high-school ball? The book is good. But after the first three chapters there isn't any more substance to be had. Rather the book is about outlining his perspective, not his plan. Think of it as a book about the art, not art itself.

What do i think? Gore for president, Obama as vice pres. This would give Gore another run, with a highly seductive candidate on his heels. And this will also give Obama the necessary experience to know what the big house is like.

Beware, watch out for Gingrich. He'll be late in comin, but he'll be blowin full steam ahead when he throws his hat into the race. His late start will place him in the role as a new/fresh face (cough) in a field of people already being criticized.