[PAA-Discuss] Let us dispense with racist rhetoric....its the 21st Century

Thu Jul 31 23:21:47 EDT 2008

Let's keep it real. I also disliked the FISA vote but frankly you will never find any candidate
  who votes completely the way you wish that they would. I don't agree with everything that my husband votes for either but that hasn't made me demand a divorce. We can't be certain how Obama will be as President but we are positive what McCain will be like. He wants
  to make permanent the tax cuts for the rich and he is already drooling at the idea of attacking other countries. Iran would definately be a target for him. He is after all Bush III.
  I'll take my chances with a far less militant candidate. I can accept warts but I would demand that the checks and balances be restored. 

  Melinda

rebelljb at aol.com wrote:
  However, this does not take away his vote for the FISA/wiretapping/telecom immunity bill. I judge a candidate on how he votes on certain issues that are important to me.

-----Original Message-----
From: Melinda Iley-Dohn <iley_dohn at yahoo.com>
To: graham2639 at mindspring.com; Discuss at paa-tx.org
Sent: Thu, 31 Jul 2008 9:55 pm
Subject: Re: [PAA-Discuss] Let us dispense with racist rhetoric....its the 21st Century

    Have you checked out Open Secrets for Obama's finanial Reports? I don't see a lot of corporate support here. He only has a tiny PAC amount. He's also been very transparent, unlike McCain, whose cash source of a wife has never disclosed any sources of income until she was forced to in this election.  

  http://www.opensecrets.org/pres08/summary.php?cid=N00009638&cycle=2008

            Individual contributions  $336,740,735  99%      PAC contributions  $1,570  0%    =0 A  Candidate self-financing  $0  0%      Federal Funds  $0  0%      Other  $2,474,012  1%
  How complete are this candidate's campaign finance reports?              Full Disclosure  $181,250,335  (94.0%)      Incomplete  $0         No Disclosure  $11,540,120  (6.0%)

  Unlike most Senators, Obama has been an activist in the South side of Chicago.
  Th is is hardly a K Street type of arrangement. He could have been even better
  positioned politically if he had taken his panache as the first black editor for the 
  Harvard Law review and he had gone straight into a top law firm. He would have had
  an easy access to the big business money but he has chosen the approach of more than a million small donors,hardly a big business arrangement. 

  Check out McCains in comparrison if you want to see a corporate owned candidate....

  http://www.opensecrets.org/pres08/summary.php?cid=N00006424&cycle=2008

  Source of Funds       

          Individual contributions  $121,232,420  83%      PAC contributions  $1,220,479  1%      Candidate self-financing  $0  0%      Federal Funds  $0  0%      Other  $23,013,302  16%
  How complete are this candidate's campaign finance reports?              Full Disclosure  $106,364,853  (88.7%)      Incomplete  $0         No Disclosure  $13,575,369  (11.3%)
  < div> 
  Note the amount that is not disclosed from a "straight talker". That's a lot of undisclosed cash.

  Melinda

Ron and Kris Graham <graham2639 at mindspring.com> wrote:
      Here are the references for the Paul Street ZNet article, Melinda. I didnâ€™t post them because there are 56 of them, and I figured my post would be â€œbumpedâ€ because of length if I included them. I also included a comment from the author of the article, Paul Street. If you are citing Glen Ford talking about Obamaâ€™s black heritage I donâ€™t see where the racism is. Obama is half African. Ford saying black face means nothing. I have a white face. Who gives a shit? Ford didnâ€™t call him a derogatory term, so get over it. You seem to be looking for a way to make Glen Ford a racist when he purely states his take on Obama and Obamaâ€™s seeming indifference to the plight of African Americans and especially poor ones. This indifference should be baffling given that Obama is â€œhalf blackâ€. Of course if one realizes that Obama doesnâ€™t wish to be seen as â€œuppityâ€ by the whi te boysâ€™ club establishment then his indifference makes perfect sense. You state we
 should look at Obamaâ€™s policies and not his heritage, and I would agree. His voting record and the things he has said in the past and continues to say today tell me the man has no moral convictions. He is merely a political opportunist who is looking to be president and will say and do anything to get that position.

  K

  NOTES

  1. Paul Krugman, "The Obama Agenda," New York Times, June 30, 2008. p. A23.

  2. Paul Krugman, "Mandates and Mudslinging," New York Times, November 30, 2007.  

  3. Barack Obama, "A Way Forward in Iraq," Speech to Chicago Council on Global Affairs, Chicago Illinois (November 20, 2006), available online at http://obama.senate.gov/speech/061120-a_way_forward _in_iraq/index.html; 
  ; Barack Obama, "Renewing American Leadership," Foreign Affairs (July/August 2007), read online at http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20070701faessay86401/barack-obama/renewing-american-leadership.html; Barack Obama, "Moving Forward in Iraq," Speech to Chicago Council on Foreign Relations, November 22, 2005, read at http://obama.senate.gov/speech/051122-moving_forward/; Lance Selfa, "The New Face of U.S. Politics," International Socialist Review (March-April 2007); Stephen Zunes, "Barack Obama on the Middle East," Foreign Policy in Focus (January 10 2008), read at http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/4886; Juan Gonzales, Amy Goodman, and Jeremy Scahill. "Jeremy Scahill: Despite Antiwar Rhetoric, Clinton-Obama Plans Would Keep US Mercenaries, Troops in Iraq for Years to Come," Democracy Now (February 28, 2008) read text version at www.democracynow.org/2008/2/28/jeremy_scahill_despite_anti_war_rhetoric; Jeremy Scahill, "Obama's Mercenary Position," The Nation (March 16, 2008); Paul
 Street, "The Audacity of Deception: Barack Obama and the Manufacture of Progressive Illusion," Black Agenda Report (December 12, 2007), read at http://www.blackagendareport.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id3D463&Itemid=1.

  4. David Moberg, "Obamanomics," In These Times (April 2008); Max Fraser, "Subprime Obama," The Nation (February 11, 2008);  Doug Henwood, "Would You like Change With That?" Left Business Observor, No. 117 (March 2008); Paul Street, "Obama's â€˜Shift to the Center' and the Narrow Authoritarian Spectrum in U.S. Politics," ZNet Magazine (July 1, 2008), read at www.zcommunications.org/znet/viewArticle/18052; Susan Davis, "Obama Tilts Toward Center," Wall Street Journal, June 25, 2008; Michael Powell, "For Obama, a Pragmatist's Shift Toward the Center," New York Times, June 27, 2008; Janet Hook, "Obama Moving Toward Center: Democrat Edging Away From Left on Some Issues in Effort to Woo Independent Voters," Los Angeles Times, June 27, 2008.

  5. Barack Obama, "Renewing American Leadership," Foreign Affairs (July/August 2007), read online at http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20070701faessay86401/barack-obama/renewing-american-leadership.html; Paul Street, "Running Dog Obama," ZNet (July 29, 2007), read at http://www.zmag.org/znet/viewArticle/14853.

  6. For unpleasant details and sources, see my following articles: "Obama's Audacious Deference to Power," ZNet Magazine (January 24, 2007), read at http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemID=11936; "Imperial Temptations: John Edwards, Barack Obama, and the Myth of Post-World War II United States Benevolence," ZNet Magazine (May 28, 2007), read at http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemID=12928; â€˜Angry John' Edwards v. KumbayObama," SleptOn Magazine (December 28, 2007), read at www.slepton.com/slepton/viewcontent.pl?id=1234-; "Obama Speaks: â€˜Oh Great White Masters, you Just Haven't Been Asked to Help America,' " Black Agenda Report (December 19, 2008); "The Audacity of Imperial Airbrushing and Why It Matters," Black Agenda Report (July 9, 2008), read at www.blackagendareport.com/index.php?ption=com_content&task=view&id=695&Itemid=1

  7. John B. Judis, "American Adam: Obama and the Cult of the New," The New Republic (March 12, 2008).

  8. For useful accounts, see Janny Scott, "In 2000, a Streetwise Veteran Schooled a Bold Young Obama," New York Times, 9 September, 2007, pp. A1, A20; Liza Mundy, "A Series of Fortunate Events: Barack Obama Needed More Than Talent and Ambition to Rocket From Obscure State Senator to Presidential Contender in Three Years," Washington Post Magazine (August 12, 2007); Janny Scott, "At State Level, Obama Proved to Be Pragmatic and Practical," New York Times, 30 July 2007, p. A1; Rick Pearson and Ray Long, "Careful Steps, Looking Ahead," Chicago Tribune, 3 May 2007; David Mendell, OBAMA: From Promise to Powe r (New York: HarperCollins, 2007); Scott Helman, "In Illinois, Obama Dealt with Lobbyists," Boston Globe, 23 September 2007; Bob Secter and John McCormick, "Portrait of a Pragmatist," Chicago Tribune, 30 March, 2007; David Jackson and John McCormick, "Building Obama's Money Machine," Chicago Tribune, 13 April 2007.

  9. Ryan Lizza, "Making It: How Chicago Shaped Obama," The New Yorker, July 21, 2008. 

  10. Larissa MacFarquhar, "The Conciliator: Where is Barack Obama Coming From?," The New Yorker (May 7, 2007

  11.  Larissa MacFarquhar, "The Conciliator: Where is Barack Obama Coming From?," The New Yorker (May 7, 2007). 

  12. Mundy, "A Series of Fortunate Events." 

  13. Mundy, "A Series of fortunate Events."

  14. Janny Scott, "A  Streetwise Veteran;"  Pearson and Long, "Careful Steps, Looking Ahead;" Janny Scott, "At State Level;" p. A1. 

  15. Scott, "At State Level, Obama Proved to Be Pragmatic and Practical."  

  16. Pearson and  Long, "Careful Steps, Looking Ahead."  

  17. Quoted in Lizza, "Making It."

  18. Pearson and Long, "Careful Steps, Looking Ahead;" David Jackson and Ray Long, "Obama Knows His Way Around a Ballot," Chicago Tribune, 3 April, 2007. 

  19. Scott, "At State Level." 

  20. Pearson and  Long, "Careful Steps, Looking Ahead."

  21. Salim Muwakkil, "The Squandering of Obama," In These Times, August 14, 2007.  

  22. Mendell,20OBAMA, pp. 249-51, quoted phrase on p. 250. 

  23. Pearson and  Long, "Careful Steps, Looking Ahead."

  24. Mendell, OBAMA, p. 250-51. 

  25. Scott Helman, "In Illinois, Obama Dealt with Lobbyists," Boston Globe, 23 September 2007. 

  26. Barack Obama,"Against Going to War With Iraq," speech delivered in Chicago, Illinois, October 2, 2002, read online at www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/02/28/7343/.
  &nb sp;
  27. Jodi Kantor, "A Candidate, His Minister and the Search for Faith," New York Times, 30 April 2007, p. A1. On U.S. foreign policy as context for terror attacks on U.S., see Johnson, Blowback.  

  28. Carl Kaysen et al., War With Iraq: Costs, Consequences, and Alternatives (Cambridge, MA: The Committee on International Security Studies of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, December 2002); Paul Street, Empire and Inequality: America and the World Since 9/11 (Boulder, CO: Paradigm, 2004),  pp. 57-63. 

  29. Pearson and Long, "Careful Steps."

  30. Lizza, "Making It: How Chicago Shaped Obama."

  31. Davidson is quoted in Adam Turl, "Is Obama Different?" Socialist Worker Online (February 2, 2007). Davidson's comment should not be taken to mean that Obama ever questioned whether the Iraq invasion was morally and/or legally "wrong." Obama has never publicly questioned the invasion in moral or legal terms. Davidson has nonetheless spent hours (as part as his role as a leader of "Progressives for Obama") opposing my Left critique of Obamaism in the readers' comments section of ZNet this year.

  32. Paul Street, "Kerry is Coke, Bush is Crack," ZNet Magazine (March 24, 2004), available online at http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=33&ItemID=5204.  

  33. New York Times, 26 July, 2004. 

  34. Chicago Tribune, 24 July, 2004. 

  35. Janny Scott, "At State Level, Obama Proved to Be Pragmatic and Practical," New York Times, 30 July 2007, p. A1. 

  36. Bob Secter and John McCormick, "Portrait of a Pragmatist," Chicago Tribune, 30 March, 2007. 

  37. Joe Klein, "The Fresh Face," Time (October 17, 2006).

  38. Ryan Lizza, "The Agitator: The Unlikely Political Education of Barack Obama," The New Republic (March 19, 2007). 

  39. Adolph Reed, Jr., "The Curse of Community," Village Voice (January 16, 1996),reproduced in Reed, Class Notes: Posing as Politics and Other Thoughts on the American Scene  (New York, 2000).

  40. See Michael C. Dawson, Behind the Mule: Race and Class in African-American Politics (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994).

  41. David Jackson and John McCormick, "Building Obama's Money Machine," Chicago Tribune, 13 April 2007. 

  42. Pearson andLong, "Careful Steps, Looking Ahead."

  43. Janny Scott, "At the State Level, Obama Proved to Pragmatic and Practical," New York Times, 30 July 2007, p. A1.

  44. Scott Helman, "PACs and Lobbyists Aided Obama's Rise," Boston Globe, 9 August 2007. 

  45. Jackson and McCormick, "Building Obama's Money Machine." 

  46. Binyamin Appelbaum, "Grim Proving Ground for Obama's Housing Policy," Boston Globe, June 27, 2008. 

  47. For an extensive critical review, see Street, "Audacious Deference to Power."
      48. Barack Obama, The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream (New York: Crown, 2006); Mundy, "A Series of Fortunate Events."

  49. Ken Silverstein, "Barack Obama, Inc.: The Birth of a Washington Machine," Harper's (November 2006). 

  50. Mendell, OBAMA, pp. 248-249.

  51. Adolph Reed, Jr., "Obama No," The Progressive (May 2008).  

  52. Reed, "The Curse of Community."

  53. Lizza, "Making It."

  54.  See the haunting and brilliant reflections of Sheldon Wolin in his latest book Democracy Incorporated: Managed Democracy and the Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008).

  55. Christopher Hitchens, No One Left to Lie To: The Values of the Worst Family (New York: Verso, 2000), pp. 17-18. Also less than novel is the Obama campaign's exploitation and occasional pure embodiment of what might be considered a second great dark "essence of American politics": the tendency of candidates, party managers, public relations handlers, and media authorities to treat citizens as mere spectators by focusing elections on often trivial questions of candidate character and qualities over substantive matters and issues of policy, power, and ideology. 

  56. Richard Hofstader, The American Political Tradition (New York, 1948), pp. 3-56; Herbert Aptheker, The American Revolution, 1763-1783 (New York: International, 1960); Jennifer Nedelsky, Private Property and the Limits of American Constitutionalism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990); Paul Street, "By All Means, Study the Founders: Notes from the Democratic Left," Review of Education, Pedagogy, and Cultural Studies Volume 24, Number 4 (October-December 2003): 281-303.

---------------------------------

  A Note on Notes 
By Street, Paul   I doubt they do endnotes over there. It's not what's generally done in our intellectual and political culture and they are all about and not challenging what is conventionally done. I occasionally catch some Hell when I do long pieces with notes . People will complain in private e-mails about having to read a long time and flip back to see sources. There's a big premium on concision and brevity - nothing more than 1000 words -- in our sound bite era. I'm sympathetic to the complain t in at least one way --- time is short in overworked America --- and I'll do the occasional op-ed length piece and drop the notes and  sometimes enjoy that. But the annotation to me is like a record of a big part of the the labor process --- the real work of research and reflection ---- that goes into demystifying (...some would say misunderstanding)  mystified subject matter.  I think there's an egalitarian component in that it lets the reader go sample the sources themselves
 and draw their own conclusions and check the writer's research. Don't take it from me - go check it out yourself. 

---------------------------------

  From: Melinda Iley-Dohn [mailto:iley_dohn at yahoo.com] 
Sent: Thursday, July 31, 2008 7:36 PM
To: graham2639 at mindspring.com; Discuss at paa-tx.org
Subject: RE: [PAA-Discuss] Let us dispense with racist rhetoric....its the 21st Century

  Where are the references that he based his opinions on. The firts thing I learned when debating 37 years ago was that I had to cite any sources that I quoted. I am still offended by the "black face" and other clearly racist terms. One hundred years ago, my ancestors were called savages. I don't care for such jargon that has nothing to do with any substanative information. Let's look at his policies not his heritage.He's caucasion also.

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