Basra

I've been trying and trying to wrap my head around Iraq's new strategy in Basra to take control of the city any by virtue of that, take control of the oil that is shipped out from Basra to the world. Estimates have it that billions of dollars worth of Iraqi oil is being stolen by the bosses of these non-governmental militias.
The more I think about this, the less sense it makes to me.
I mean, take a look at Iraq on the map. Basra is in the lower right corner just above the tiny strip of shoreline that Iraq has on the Persian Gulf. In that region, Iraq borders on only two other countries, Iran, and Kuwait. Kuwait is our ally. Iran isn't. In both cases there is no reason to think America and its allies couldn't control the flow of oil through the existing pipelines.
After five years of occupation and with God only knows how many warships in this tiny region, we Americans are expected to believe - not understand, just believe - that it is somehow possible for Iraqi militias to smuggle billions of dollars worth of oil out of this region without us having any way of stopping it other than for the government of Iraq to fight a civil war over it, winner-take-all.
That overwhelms my powers of suspension of disbelief.
The only model that fits here is if you understand that George W. Bush is Mafia and so is his boss Dick Cheney, and what Cheney really told Maliki last week when he went to visit him was that if he wants a cut of this dirty oil money, he'd damn well better be willing to fight for it because that's how it works in the New World Order.
You see, the real "Anti-Christ" is the Mafia, the real boss in this so-called New World Order.

Personal Attack Defined

A spokesperson of the Clinton campaign team has defined what it means to be negative in a campaign with a "personal attack". Read the evidence in the Los Angeles Times.
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When asked whether the Obama campaign's request for tax information was what the Clinton team considered a personal attack, Clinton spokesman Howard Wolfson said: "When you accuse somebody of being disingenuous and question their integrity and their honesty, as they are doing, that constitutes a personal attack."
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Of course, the Clinton campaign would never engage in anything like that! Heavens no! They play clean! They just slip the evidence out to the media and let the media do their dirty work.
Then again, by accusing the Obama campaign of accusing Hillary of being disingenuous, of questioning her integrity and her honesty, aren't they questioning Obama's integrity and honesty? Aren't they accusing Obama of being disingenuous? Doesn't that constitute a personal attack by the very definition given by the Clinton campaign? What, are they too simple-minded to see this? Or is it the electorate that the Clinton campaign thinks is simple-minded?
Op! There I go! A personal attack by their definition!! Forgive me!!

Is Wright Wrong?

There's a new controversy swirling around Barack Obama this week, a controversy over the impassioned words of Obama's Black pastor back home in Chicago. From what I gather, Fox News aired a January 13 speech by Pastor Wright where he describes Jesus as a poor black man in a rich white country and culture.
After reading some commentary about Wright's speech in the liberal blogs basically advising Obama to renounce his relationship with Pastor Wright, I was expecting to hear a dark sermon of black racism and hatred. Instead, I hear a man passionately describing what it means to be a minority black in a majority white country. I hear a man brilliantly describing what it meant in the world of the Roman Empire for a man born into racial and cultural oppression to embrace his enemy with love.
In the same way that Jesus embraced his enemy with love, so now does Barack Obama. The enemy isn't the white skin, it is the idea that white skin makes people more worthy. Nothing could make more sense nor be more positive than the message of Wright's speech.
Yet in our racially charged but politically correct world, we react to this notion by saying this pastor is a racist and should be shunned in today's world.
Sigh.........
When will we ever rise above reactionary politics and begin to see the light?
Obama isn't a man who is being favored by a politically correct mentality that forces us to bend over backwards and support him because of the color of his skin. Obama is a man who has risen spiritually to a point where he can transcend racism and speak the truth to a world that is blinded by racism, blinded to the fact that truth can come from the mind and mouth of a dark-skinned person.
When I look at Obama, I don't see a black man. I don't see a white man. I don't see a colored man. I see a man who speaks the truth in a world filled with lies. That's why Clinton will never embrace him. That's why the Republicans will fight against him. He speaks truth and hope into a world filled with the despair generated by layer after layer, year after year of lies.
Wright was right, but in the eyes of the reactionary right, he is wrong. I hope Obama has sense enough to embrace and not repudiate these truths.

Spit on Spitzer

I don't know anyone including myself who isn't repulsed at the discovery that New York's Democrat governor was spending tens of thousands of dollars on sex with high-priced prostitutes. Eliot Spitzer, who as New York State Attorney General, won fame as a champion for law enforcement even against prostitution. This week he fell from grace as the entire nation reacted to the news of his $4,000 plus hotel visit in Washington with an "escort" a.k.a. hooker. Various sources suggest that Spitzer may have spent as much as $80,000 on these call girls. Most people find this behavior troubling, especially for someone in Spitzer's position as Governor of New York, married man, and father of three lovely girls.
But park your reaction of disgust to this situation for a few minutes and let's think about this.
While it is very clear that Spitzer worked really really hard to get himself into this mess, it isn't as though he didn't have some help from a few of his enemies. Spitzer fell from power because of information that was leaked from what we now know is a highly politicized US Justice Department now under the direction of Michael Mukasey, a New Yorker, Republican, and orthodox Jew whose father emigrated from Russia shortly after the Communist takeover. I have nothing to base this idea on, I'm not from New York, but I'd bet that Mukasey has more conflicts of interest with Spitzer than you could fit on Babe Ruth's bat. I mean, how could that not be so?
The reality of this situation is that agents under the supervision of Mukasey probed into the private life of New York's governor, then without even filing charges illegally leaked information to the press that brought about Spitzer's downfall. If this isn't politics, what is? And if this is true, then it nails the lid on the coffin for Bush's Justice Department. Law enforcement doesn't get much lower than this.
And I thought Ohio politics was corrupt...
OK, I release you. Go back to your reactionary politics.

Ferraro

Geraldine Ferraro became a household name in yesterday's political history when she was chosen, because she was a woman, to be the vice presidential running mate for Walter Mondale in 1984 running against Ronald Reagan then running for his second term. Mondale lost despite his politically correct choice for a running mate.
Ferraro has now resurfaced in political politics as a member of the Hillary Clinton campaign and an outspoken critic of Obama's qualifications suggesting that Obama in 2008 is where he is because of his race just as she was chosen in 1984 because of her gender. Many people, not just Obama supporters, see this as nothing but the most vile of politics.
I really don't need to say more, but just in case you might wonder what my feelings are, I give you MSNBC's Keith Olbermann!

Classic Politics

As an Obama fan I am annoyed if not surprised by Hillary's cosmetic victory in yesterday's primaries. I don't like the way things are going even one little bit. It's not that I don't think Obama is holding up well. I do think he is. But Hillary and her directors are turning the Democrat side of these primaries into something so distasteful as to challenge even some of her strongest supporters. She is using all of the known dirty tricks that politicians in dire straits use to win elections and in so doing she is doing severe damage to the progress that the progressive wing of the Democratic Party is trying to achieve.
The result of Hillary's campaigning may or may not win her the eventual nomination and it may or may not win her victory in November against her virtual twin John McCain who no doubt will match Hillary's negativism tit for tat. But more important, Hillary is destroying the distinction that Obama is trying to make between Democrats and Republicans. Obama is trying to send the message to America that the Democratic Party is the party of progress and of ideas and of solutions and of cooperation in trying to achieve these goals. Hillary is using the same old divide and conquer approach that won George W. Bush his victories in 2000 and 2004 and the Republicans Party their victories beginning in 1994.
There's every reason to think that negative divide-and-conquer politics wins votes from our fear-centered reactionary electorate. There is no reason to believe and every reason not to believe that our country is better off when we rely on negative politics to select our leaders.
If this feels like sour grapes, fine. So be it. Hillary won a clear cosmetic victory yesterday and I don't like the way she went about it. Obama did as well as I was expecting him to do so it isn't a disappointment to me that the day worked out the way it did. Obama is still clearly in the lead in terms of convention delegates. That isn't what has me upset this morning.
What has me upset is that what is at stake here is not the image of the Democratic Party but its heart and soul. In the same way that Tom DeLay, Karl Rove, Rush Limbaugh, Dick Cheney, and yes George W. Bush hijacked the Republican Party and destroyed its soul, Hillary and her advisors, hungry for victory and power, are doing the same thing to the Democratic Party. I for one don't want to see that happen. I want to see progress for the progressive movement within the party. If Republicans had a progressive movement, a movement based on reason and logic and ethics rather than on reactionary fear mongering and Machiavellian power grabbing, I would support that too. That's where American politics needs to go. We need to get out of this gutter. Here's hoping that McCain's paternal supremacy and Hillary's maternal supremacy don't again win out in America over progressive politics.
I do realize that what Hillary is doing to Obama is no different from what McCain will do to him. There is no doubt that Obama has an opportunity here to distinguish himself. But Hillary is destroying all claim to the notion that dirty politics is a Republican thing and she's doing it right out in the open where everyone can see it. She may or may not be damaging the chances that a Democrat will become president next year. What she is doing, though, is damaging the chance that such a victory would spell a difference in America. She is ripping the heart out of the Democratic Party. It's no wonder that she doesn't have the overwhelming support of the party!