Progressive Ponderings: Obama’s Self Conflict

By Joe Mayer

Sandwiched within just a couple of weeks were Pres. Obama’s visiting and speaking at three events dealing with veterans and war – saluting the coffins of returning dead at Dover Air Force base, the memorial service at Fort Hood, and the traditional wreath-laying at Arlington National Cemetery. These events seemed to have ignited renewed interest in considering the physical, mental, and emotional costs being inflicted on a small contingent of our fellow citizens who are carrying the burden of our world policing adventures.

Toward the end of these events, two others occurred that are significant to our occupation of Afghanistan. Pres. Obama rejected all four of the Pentagon plans for increasing troop levels in Afghanistan and our ambassador to Afghanistan, Karl Eikenberry, sent a letter to the president with strong reservations about sending reinforcements to that country.

Obama’s three interactions with suffering military families may counteract the constant drumbeat of the war hawks who consistently advocate that the poor, the minorities, and the middle class sacrifice themselves for the economic benefit of the elite. This is the normal history of war.

President Obama seems to have a conflict within himself. Upon his election the peoples of the world hoped that the United States might once again join the world as partner rather than as dictator. In country after country that Obama visited since his election large crowds gathered to hear his message of hope. He has promised to withdraw from Iraq. He is attempting diplomacy instead of belligerent threatening.

On the other hand he lives in Washington. He has hawks within his cabinet. He is Commander-in-chief of a Pentagon whose existence depends on conflict. He works with a Congress that long ago abdicated its Constitutional responsibility to make decisions on war, garnering constant criticism. He deals with a media that has a history of promulgating fear by aggressively cheerleading for war.

Those of us in the peace community need to strengthen his resolve. Veterans seem to be leading, pointing out the folly of a nation that asks less than one percent of its people to take on the world, to be the guarantor of U.S. security in a world that hates American aggression and occupation. Veterans are saying the cost is too much in the ruined lives of its members and the ruined dreams of American people. The cost is too much when the military is given a political task, a hopeless political task to bring democracy to nations with the barrel of a drone.

Can the peace community teach us, convince us to live in a world we cannot control? Will our youth rebel against its nation that sacrifices its own principles on the altar of power? Can we come to understand that other peoples of the world do not like to be occupied or controlled?

The last administration used terms like “50 years war” and “unending war.” Will this be our legacy? Did we vote in the last election for this? Can a democracy – can any nation – survive perpetual war? Washington points in this direction. Obama’s conflicted. Will we accept this opportunity to strengthen his resolve for the U.S. to join the world community?

Obama's harshest criticisms are coming from the left

On the left, Hamlet stands over the body of Polonius, whom he has mistakenly slain.

by Leigh Pomeroy

Joseph Stiglitz and Paul Krugman, two Nobel Prize winning economists, were more than happy to see the promise of Obama replace the know-nothing, do-nothing, what-me-worry mentality of the previous administration. Yet today they are two of the Obama-Geithner-Summers financial rescue plan's most vocal critics.

Ultra libertarians like Jim Willie have been warning about the Wall Street meltdown for years. And while Willie's found a niche on the far-out other side of the philosophical-financial spectrum, all three men — Krugman, Stiglitz and Willie — agree that the deviously brilliant but morally lacking scions of Wall Street, being instrumental in creating today's economic mess, are now not only being courted but appeased in the desperate search for solutions.

Of the three, Willie is probably the most straightforward: Buy gold, get rid of the Federal Reserve and lock the Wall Street bastards up.

Stiglitz and Krugman prefer a more European (and perhaps humane) solution: Nationalize the banks and put the Wall Streeters out to pasture.

Willie might argue that even in the pasture they could do harm, and I wouldn't be surprised that Stiglitz and Krugman would agree, arguing they should be carefully monitored at all times.

Of course, the problem is not just Wall Street. There are systemic problems worldwide, of which the U.S. is inarguably in the middle. Yet the U.S. no longer has the control or clout it used to. It is more like a ship in an angry sea created partially by its own making, being steered by helmsmen without proper charts, radar, sonar, climate predictions and other key navigation tools.

Young Obama is doing an admirable job under the circumstances, but while he is intelligent and charming and well educated he cannot possibly know all the nuances of the past on which good decisionmakers rely to predict the best course of action for the future. For that he must trust his advisers. And if those advisers are tainted by the Wall Street mentality, despite their best intentions they may not be capable of steering the best course.

The solution? I am certainly no economist, but the argument for simplicity time and again makes the most sense. For individuals and families that translates to living within one's means. For financial institutions it means minimizing the complexity of business dealings. And this goes for government as well. All other things being equal (and sometimes even unequal), simpler is better. It's more transparent and requires less administration — an incentive-defeating burdensome cost as evidenced by the U.S. healthcare system and taxes.

In Hamlet Polonius said, "Neither a borrower nor a lender be: For loan oft loses both itself and friend." While Polonius was no mental giant, being treated with some disdain by Shakespeare through Hamlet, Wall Street would have done well by following a modicum of his advice. As Stiglitz (among others) has written, "Banks got themselves, and our economy, into trouble by overleveraging — that is, using relatively little capital of their own, they borrowed heavily to buy extremely risky real estate assets."

Polonius is calling from the grave: "I told you so!"

FISA Bill: Clinton and Obama to Vote “No” on Cloture

from Firedoglake

BREAKING: Hillary Clinton To Vote “No” On Cloture Tomorrow
UPDATE: Barack Obama Will Be There Too

By: Jane Hamsher Sunday January 27, 2008 7:12 pm

According to the Clinton campaign, Hillary Clinton will be in the Senate tomorrow to vote "no" on cloture on the Intel version of the FISA bill. The vote is scheduled to take place at 4:30 pm Monday.

I've also been trying to confirm whether Barack Obama will be there. His campaign people have not gotten back to me, but Obama does have a 4pm fundraiser scheduled in Washington DC.

Bravo, Senator Clinton. Well done.

UPDATE: The Obama campaign confirms that Senator Obama will be there too, and voting "no." Way to go, Senator.

Looks like we're gonna have quite a CSPAN liveblog party tomorrow.

Iowa schmiowa: Who cares?

by Leigh Pomeroy

The whole lead-up to the Iowa caucuses and the caucuses themselves kind of reminds me of first-time sex: There's a hell of a lot of anticipation... months, even years. And then it happens and it's all over so quickly. Boom. Afterwards there's the after-glow — the winners — or the second thoughts, perhaps regrets — the "losers".

I put "losers" in quotations because even though two candidates end up at the top of the heap as clear winners, in this case Huckabee and Obama, I don't consider those who finished second, third and even fourth "losers". It's simply that they didn't finished first among Iowans, who make up less than a whopping one percent of the entire U.S.

Yep, a lot of Iowans did show up for the caucuses, so many in fact that caucus monitors had to check local feedlots to see if they were missing some residents during that brief two- to three-hour span Thursday night. In Chicago, dead people vote; in Iowa, it's hogs.

The clear winner in Iowa — my opinion only — was campaign finance reform.... Or is that wishful thinking? Despite his paucity of political plunder, Mr. Huckabee clearly emerged as the frontrunner in the GOPBA, the Grand Old Party of the Born Agains. My chiropractor suggested to me this morning that the GOPBAs didn't need any of the local hams to generate votes since, being born twice, they all had two votes anyway.

But being in charge of Congress, if not the government, the Dems are now at the top of the pork heap, adding it willy-nilly to legislation of their choosing and collecting it from campaign contributors. They didn't have to raid feedlots for votes; it came already cut up, sliced, diced, packaged and ready to be fed to Iowa's now fat media outlets. BURP!

As for Obama's "surprising" ability to attract white votes... forget it! The so-called color barrier for white males ended when blacks became NFL quarterbacks and Tiger Woods won the Masters. Besides, Obama isn't black at all. Like Tiger, he's cocoa, and everyone likes cocoa. I suspect that if you put all the males in America into a giant Cuisinart — a thought, no doubt, that appeals to a lot of women these days — and mixed 'em all together, you'd come up with a color (excluding the blood, of course) about the same as Obama's. So there.

If you were in Iowa this past week I'm sure it was fun. The caucuses are a great boon for that state, allowing it for once every four years to become a tourist attraction. Yet Iowa reminds me of the pre-Thirteenth Amendment South. Up until 1865, even though blacks were disenfranchised, they were counted as three-fifths of a person for determining political representation, giving those states' voters an inordinate amount of power.

What with all the ridiculous attention given to Iowa every four years, it's as if three-fifths of all the denizens of the state's feedlots pad its political importance as well.