Obama's Chicago Days: Was He Ever Leftwing?
Teaching Law, Testing Ideas, Obama Stood Apart
Wednesday 30 July 2008
by: Jodi Kantor, The New York Times
http://www.truthout.org/article/teaching-law-testing-ideas-obama-stood-apart
Before he outraised every other presidential primary candidate in American history, Mr. Obama marched students through the thickets of campaign finance law. Before he helped redraw his own State Senate district, making it whiter and wealthier, he taught districting as a racially fraught study in how power is secured. And before he posed what may be the ultimate test of racial equality - whether Americans will elect a black president - he led students through African-Americans' long fight for equal status.
So how do you go from being that person, to being this person?
How Chicago Shaped Obama: A Look at the Rise of a Politician
Democracy Now! Interview with Ryan Lizza
http://www.democracynow.org/2008/7/28/how_chicago_shaped_obama_a_look
The other thing that it did, besides the fact that his constituents now were so much different, the overall goal of redistricting in Illinois was to take back the State Senate for the Democrats. They gerrymandered the state, and they accomplished that in 2002. So, after 2002, Barack Obama, who had been a state senator since January of 1997 in the minority, where he couldn’t get much done, he’s now a state senator in the majority. And that allowed him to do—to actually get some things passed and get all of the issues—and get all of the things passed that he would then use as a platform for his 2004 Senate campaign. So that redistricting was incredibly important to his political career. I think you could make an argument that without that redistricting, he may not have been a real contender in that US Senate race.
Interesting further comments from Lizza:
At the same time, he made a—if you read it today, it still stands up very well. He made a very powerful case against the Iraq war at a time when a lot of Democrats weren’t doing that. But there were certainly some politics in mind. And if you talk to some of the people who were in that audience that day, one of the common things you hear is, “Wow, this guy is not just talking to us, he’s talking to either some statewide or national crowd. This speech seems pointed for the—seems more like for the history books than just for us here at this antiwar rally.” And this comes up throughout Obama’s political history. He often had his eye on the next rung of the ladder, if you know what I mean.
And finally, from the excellent Adolph Reed:
“Where Obamaism Seems to be Going”
http://www.blackagendareport.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=697&Itemid=34
This is what passes for a left now in this country. It is a left that can insist, apparently, that Obama's FISA vote, going out of his way (after all, he could simply have followed the model of Eisenhower on the Brown decision and said that the Court has ruled; therefore it's the law, and his job as president would be to enforce the law) to align himself - twice, or three times -- with the Scalia/Thomas/Roberts/Alito wing of the Supreme Court, his declaring that social problems, unlike foreign policy adventurism, are "too big for government" and pledging to turn over more of HHS and HUD's budgets to the Holy Rollers are both tactically necessary and consistent with his convictions. So, if those are his convictions, or for that matter what he feels he must do opportunistically to get elected, why the fuck should we vote for him?
House Committee Holds Rove in Contempt!
Today the House Judiciary Committee of the US Congress voted to hold Karl “M.C.” Rove in contempt by a 20-14 vote!
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/presidentbush/2008/07/rove-in-contemp.html
This is how the LA Times framed the charge: “Failing to honor a subpoena to testify about his role in the federal and possibly political prosecution of former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman, a popular Democrat sent who was to prison on corruption charges that are now under appeal”
This is how AP frames the charge:
“allegations of White House influence over the Justice Department, including whether Rove encouraged prosecutions against Democrats such as former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman.”
Also:
“For his part, Rove has denied any involvement with Justice decisions, and the White House has said Congress has no authority to compel testimony from current and former advisers. His attorney, Robert Luskin, had urged the panel in letter not to vote for a citation, calling it a "gratuitously punitive" action that would serve no purpose because the question of executive privilege is already pending in two other cases in federal court.”
Still, Pelosi has said she won’t put the recomendation to the House until September.
Lisbon & Ireland
http://www.irishleftreview.org/2008/07/22/lisbon-immigration-ireland-voted/#more-348
Not sure I buy it, but worth reading.
Probably the largest factor that swung it was that the Yes campaign failed utterly in providing the undecided voter with a very good reason why they should have voted Yes to Lisbon. They provided a lot of reasons why they shouldn’t believe what the No campaigners were saying, but nothing about why it would be good for them, and for Ireland, to change the sovereignty of their constitution to ratify this particular treaty when it was stated that it was purely a procedural document.
Asia Times: Unsolicited advice for Bush on Iran
Unsolicited advice for Bush on Iran
By Jim Lobe
And:Indeed, hawks outside the administration who are nonetheless closely associated with administration hardliners led by Vice President Dick Cheney have been complaining bitterly about the decision to send Burns since it was announced. The neo-conservative Weekly Standard called the move "stunningly shameful", while former UN ambassador John Bolton said it was proof of the administration's "complete intellectual collapse".
On speculation that Israel may be preparing to take unilateral military action against Iran's nuclear facilities, Brzezinski said it would not be a "smart strategic choice" due to the likelihood that the US would even become "more bogged down" in the region. Scowcroft said he would tell the Israelis to "calm down".
Bob Herbert on Al Gore's Speech
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dt9wZloG97U
No doubt, this is one of the greatest speeches I have ever seen. Please take 30 minutes of your time to watch it. Turn off your phone, lock your door, tell anyone who might distract you to go away. Then make a cup of tea and focus, hard. Do whatever you have to do. But make it happen. I don't think I am exaggerating when I say that this will be one of the most important 30 minutes of your lives.
And I'm not the only one who feels this way:
Yes We Can
Saturday 19 July 2008
by: Bob Herbert, The New York Times
http://www.truthout.org/article/yes-we-can
My view of Mr. Gore's passionate engagement with some of the biggest issues of our time is that he is offering us the kind of vision and sense of urgency that has been so lacking in the presidential campaigns. But the tendency in a society that is skeptical, if not phobic, about anything progressive has been to dismiss his large ideas and wise counsel, as George H. W. Bush once did by deriding him as "ozone man."
Informal Review of Soros, 'The New Paradigm'
I picked up a copy of George Soros's new book this week, 'The New Paradigm'. Its a little bit self-involved, but if you can get past this, its actually quite worth the effort. The basic argument is that blame for the current debt crisis should be lain squarely at the feet of modern economic theory, and its misguided belief that it is a 'science'. The idea that economics is a science is misguided, he argues, because relations between human beings are slippery things, and ultimately resistant to study through scientific method. Simply put, any such method would require objectivity. Yet it is impossible to ever be fully objective about a process in which you are yourself a participant. The analytic principles you would apply in the natural sciences are not legitimate for this purpose because you'll never have perfect information about the ongoing processes in which you are yourself participating and, more importantly, you'll never be able to completely remove your own bias from the analysis.
The solution to this philosophical problem, Soros argues, is to introduce reflexivity into our analysis. Reflexivity requires us to lower our expectations about what we can claim to know about human affairs. Making absolute predictions about future performance, for example, is impossible because any assumptions upon which such predictions might be based are necessarily incomplete, and tentative. Yet it is not enough simply to resolve this issue on an esoteric or philosophical level. For we have 'bet the farm,' so to speak, on a global financial system built around a set of non-reflexively developed assumptions. Namely, the assumptions of economic theory.
As a science of human relations, economics proves its worth by identifying generalizable patterns of human behavior over time. To do so, however, it necessarily relies on metaphor to limit the complexity of the things it sees. Take for example the fundamental argument of classic economic theory, that supply and demand always tend towards 'equilibrium' in the long run. The idea is that, with good enough information, the unrestrained pursuit of self-interests will always lead to an optimal allocation of resources.
As a functional metaphor for economic analysis, the idea of economic equilibrium may hold up for long periods of time. Yet it should not be accepted as dogma. For what are these concepts, of supply and demand? How are they made?
Economics says we have, each of us, inbuilt or 'given' outcome preferences. These are our most fundamental and timeless traits because they are so deeply embedded in our human nature. Now, certainly, if we really possessed such enduring traits then our analytical dilemma would be over. For these preferences would make our behavior in different contexts predictable, following basic laws of cause and effect over time. The problem, however, is that in financial markets the participants are not passive entities. They are reflexive beings, with capacities both as actors (agents of change) and observers (agents of knowledge). And given that each capacity has the potential to influence the other, those fundamental traits posed by economic science appear anthropologically specious.
If we are reflexive beings then the premise that we engage in the market in a purely rational fashion appears somewhat overstated. For where rational actors adapt their expectations to new information in order to maximize their interests, reflexive beings develop beliefs which, if held collectively, can create fundamental shifts in the nature of the market itself.
Contrary to economic equilibrium theory then, we find that actors do not approach the market from a position of externality, with preformed preferences, ever-adapting to new information about their position relative to an ideal point of equilibrium. Beliefs and perceptions, not expectations, are what we really need to be thinking about. Beliefs literally 'constitute' the economic system (and, I would argue, far more than even Soros lets on!).
So what does all of this mean for the current debt crisis? Well, Soros is clear here. The emergence of a new set of beliefs about the market is more than a mere reflection of what is going on 'out there', more than a mere change in expectations. Instead, it is an event with significance for the market itself. It can fundamentally re-write the basic narrative metrics that actors use to describe risk.
Soros goes through a series of booms and busts to show how well his theory holds up: the Conglomerate Boom of the 1960s, the 1980s International Banking Crisis, the late-90s Asian Financial Crisis, etc. At each point, his model is used to show that the market and its participants were engaged in reflexive behavior conditioned by certain basic understandings of what was 'normal' in the game. In the 1980s, for example, the creditworthiness of borrowers and the willingness of the debtors to lend were involved. But the creditworthiness of Mexico was not a 'real' thing in its own right. Rather, as it turned out, Mexican creditworthiness *mattered* historically only to the extent that it existed in the heads of the independent banks who narrated it.
And they narrated it as 'just fine' all the way to the bust. That is, the "moment of truth" where "reality can no longer sustain the exaggerated expectations" (66). Indeed, even at this moment they did not necessarily 'correct' their behavior. Like lemmings over a cliff, beliefs can drive the market often far, far on, past the moment of truth, and into calamity. "As long as the music is playing, you've got to get up and dance," as Soros cites Chuck Prince, the CXO of Citibank (84). It turns out, then, that there is little that is rational in the process at all.
So how about today's situation? In the current conjecture, are prices just a reflection of reality or are they effecting reality? Soros argues the latter. As he says, equilibrium is an ever "moving target" (72). And in this sense markets are always wrong. But sometimes they are more wrong than others. And you know you are in one of those moments when "some form of credit or leverage and some kind of misconception or misinterpretation" start to radically skew our economic affairs (78).
The current crisis is unlike any that has occurred before. Namely because it involves two bubbles, not just one. While the US mortgage crisis is the immediate "trigger" bubble, another "longer-term super-bubble" is by far the more important of the two. For where the misconception driving the property boom was that "the value of collateral is not affected by the willingness to lend," the super-bubble is driven by a more foundational issue: "market fundamentalism," the desire to extend the principles of laissez-faire economics to the entire domain of human global activity (91).
Soros goes into some detail about the ideology behind the super-bubble, and the development over time of a range of 'synthetic' securities of such complexity that they were beyond the understanding even of the regulators. Nevertheless, believing in the myth of market equilibrium, the regulators confidently abdicated their responsibility to investigate these instruments. All too casually, as we now know, they assumed the market would automatically correct any excesses.
How does Soros propose we remedy the situation? Case-by-case solutions are required. But at the general level, he argues, we need a more cautionary approach to the use of leverage. If creditors can expect to be continuously bailed out by central banks when their willingness to lend gets them in trouble then regulators should exact a price for this. And the public should support this, too. For given that the US housing market is especially unlikely to bottom out on its own any time soon, it is clear that the costs of this breakdown will dwarf the costs of the regulative regime that might have prevented it.
What are we to make of these arguments? Critical social science theorists will not find anything particularly new or innovative in this text. But the books importance lies not simply in what it is saying, but who is saying it. This is not the sort of radical free-market ideology you would expect from a financial speculator. And while I am not an economist, I am nevertheless fascinated that someone like Soros should start to enter into the realm of social science philosophy for guidance on the operations of economic markets.
Obviously enough, this book won't be put on any freshmen economics course reading lists. On the one hand, its just too incendiary - I can't imagine many economists would want their students to read about why the most essential assumptions about economic science are perniciously wrong. On the other, its a little too self-indulgent. But no surprise there. Its not an academic book, and its not meant to be. After all, these are the critical musings of a multi-billionaire with an enormous ego and little personally at stake.
Yet I can't help but feel that this book ought to be read. If for no other reason than it gives us some pause to reflect on just how much power we have given to the operative assumptions of economics. We have essentially abandoned vast tracts of the public sphere to market-based governance in the hope that it will arrange optimally efficient outcomes. Moreover, perversely, we tend to think that any effort to to re-regulate any of these lending practices would be incommensurate with the values of democracy. But just how democratic is a way of life governed by the logic of casino capitalism?
Economists say they are simply scientists telling us the truth about ourselves. But they are so much more than that. When they teach us that we are market-based creatures, they are creating a powerful metaphor about man's nature, and passing it off as a universal 'truth'. Warranted by their status as 'scientists', this truth works to erect limits on the horizon of questions we may be permitted to ask legitimately about what life is and what it is for. It is to this deeply political question that Soros wishes to draw our attention. And if he is right that we are witnessing the end of the current economic era, one can only hope that his message will get a fair hearing as we move to debate the terms of whichever system of exchange emerges to replace it.
- Nicholas J. Kiersey
Drudge Power
Witness the maelstrom set off by a Drudge headline posted last evening that blared: "CHICAGO SLAPDOWN: REV. JESSE JACKSON SAYS OBAMA TALKING DOWN TO BLACKS."The item, which featured a hint at the comments made about Barack Obama by Jackson in front of an active Fox News Channel mic and later reported on "The O'Reilly Factor", immediately shot around the newsrooms of the country and reporters sprung into action.The Post's Jonathan Weisman posted a piece entitled: "It's Jackson vs Jackson on 'Ugly' and 'Demeaning' Obama Remarks"; The New York Times "Caucus" blog wrote an item of their own -- "Jackson Apologizes for Remarks on Obama" -- as did the Los Angeles Times and the Wall Street Journal among many, many other news outlets. Every cable network covered the story extensively and the CBS and NBC evening news both fit the story into their ever-shrinking news hole.While the story would almost certainly have gotten attention due to its salacious nature, make no mistake: Matt Drudge made that story and ensured that it dominated the world of political journalism for at least 24 hours."Drudge has become center court at Wimbledon," said Alex Castellanos, a Republican media consultant and adviser to former governor Mitt Romney's presidential bid. "If it doesn't happen there, it doesn't happen."What explains Drudge's reach?
Christopher Hitchens, WATERBOARDED
By John Dolan, AlterNet. Posted July 2, 2008.
http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/90292/?ses=bea37389b24e8773a7f5fc4506075382
Stop the presses! Christopher Hitchens just noticed that waterboarding is torture!Hitchens announced the news like he'd brought it down from Mount Sinai, in a Vanity Fair article. "Believe me," he told a waiting nation, "it's torture." Well, yeah. It usually is, when it happens to you. When it happens to somebody else, it's "extreme interrogation." I thought everybody over the age of 5 knew that, but as usual, I misoverestimated the media. Hitchens' tame little torture session is the biggest S&M video on the web since "9½ Weeks."Hitchens' video is totally fake -- there's even soft-rock background music playing on the video, better music than you usually get at the dentist's office, and his "interrogators" treat him more like a client getting a mud pack at a spa than a real suspect in Iraq. That makes it even more disgusting that Hitch caved in after only 11 seconds of having water poured over a towel on his face. Eleven seconds! Think about the timeline here: For five long years he supported this stuff when it was happening to other people. Once it happened to him, he needed exactly 11 seconds to see the light.
NYT: China Inspired Interrogations at Guantánamo
By SCOTT SHANE
July 2, 2008
But committee investigators were not aware of the chart’s source in the half-century-old journal article, a connection pointed out to The New York Times by an independent expert on interrogation who spoke on condition of anonymity.The 1957 article from which the chart was copied was entitled “Communist Attempts to Elicit False Confessions From Air Force Prisoners of War” and written by Albert D. Biderman, a sociologist then working for the Air Force, who died in 2003. Mr. Biderman had interviewed American prisoners returning from North Korea, some of whom had been filmed by their Chinese interrogators confessing to germ warfare and other atrocities.
Hersh: PREPARING THE BATTLEFIELD
PREPARING THE BATTLEFIELD
The Bush Administration steps up its secret moves against Iran.
by Seymour M. Hersh
JULY 7, 2008
Although some legislators were troubled by aspects of the Finding, and “there was a significant amount of high-level discussion” about it, according to the source familiar with it, the funding for the escalation was approved. In other words, some members of the Democratic leadership—Congress has been under Democratic control since the 2006 elections—were willing, in secret, to go along with the Administration in expanding covert activities directed at Iran, while the Party’s presumptive candidate for President, Barack Obama, has said that he favors direct talks and diplomacy.
Keith Olbermann Special Comment
NJK
Added: December 06, 2007
Keith provides his infamous special comment segment, focused on the warmongering of President Bush, even with knowledge of the NIE report made public this week. He highlights the subtle changes in Bush's rhetoric in August, after he supposedly did not hear the details of the NIE report.
ASM: What is a Prostitute?
American Sexuality Magazine
http://nsrc.sfsu.edu/MagArticle.cfm?Article=885&ReturnURL=1
In Egypt the oldest profession isn't just a sex-for-cash exchange
By L.L. Wynn
In short, it was not the injection of money into a sexual relationship that defined it as prostitution. While everyone agreed that “prostitutes” probably did accept money in exchange for sexual acts, the exchange wasn’t seen as fundamentally different from that of an unmarried woman who had sexual relationships with boyfriends who supported her financially. Both were seen as existing on a continuum of immoral sexuality, but that didn’t necessarily mean the women were “prostitutes.”Nor was “prostitution” even necessarily about sex, since a woman could be labeled a prostitute when there was no proof that she was sexually active at all. For example, sometimes Zeid and Lina would have disputes over whether a particular friend of Lina’s was a “prostitute” or not. Zeid, for example, claimed that one of Lina’s childhood friends was a prostitute because she drove around alone after midnight. Lina argued, “She’s just bored! She’s so innocent, you can’t believe it—she’s never even been kissed!”
WTC7: Controversy and conspiracies debunked
NJK
Controversy and conspiracies III
Mike Rudin 2 Jul 08, 09:00 AM
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/theeditors/2008/07/controversy_conspiracies_iii.html
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/conspiracy_files/7483700.stm
The mystery of the missing tapes didn't last that long. One very experienced film librarian kindly agreed to have another look for us one night. There are more than a quarter of a million tapes just in the Fast Store basement at Television Centre. The next morning I got a call to say the tapes had been found. They'd just been put back on the wrong shelf - 2002 rather than 2001. Not so sinister after all.