HOW TO REALLY STOP BIG OIL RUNNING OUR GOVERNMENT

In light of the offensive "magic wand" speech today by Dubya (stands for Wastrel), here's an online tool for you to track precisely how Big Oil buys our politicians. Oil Change International has a stated purpose of separating oil and state, and they/we are making progress. They note that "in the 2006 election:

• ALL of the incumbents who took no oil money won. Each and every one of the Congressional incumbents of either party that refrained from accepting campaign contributions from Big Oil in 2006 was successfully re-elected to office.

• Big Oil’s biggest friends lost. Four of the top five Congressional recipients of campaign contributions from Big Oil during the 2006 election cycle lost to cleaner candidates in close Senate races.

• The 110th Congress is the least beholden to the oil industry in a generation. Roughly one quarter of Congress is completely free of oil industry campaign donations, and the majority takes less than $5,000 in each election cycle."

In addition to education and calls for action, they have a marvelous tool for tracking oil money contributions, Follow the Oil Money. You can search by zip code, U.S. Congress, and Presidential Race, and you can see the results in a Relationship View (similar to a cloud format), Politician View, or Company View.

My search for the U.S. Presidential Race today, rendered in Politician View, turned up the following:

GIULIANI, RUDOLPH W. $659,158
ROMNEY, MITT $442,063
MCCAIN, JOHN S $291,685
CLINTON, HILLARY RODHAM $289,950
RICHARDSON, BILL $206,125
OBAMA, BARACK $163,840
THOMPSON, FRED DALTON $161,654
PAUL, RON $92,742
HUCKABEE, MIKE $76,739
BROWNBACK, SAMUEL DALE $43,665
EDWARDS, JOHN $36,350
DODD, CHRISTOPHER J $33,350
THOMPSON, TOMMY G $18,400
BIDEN, JOSEPH R JR $6,600
VILSACK, THOMAS J $2,300

Please note: The genuinely progressive Democrats received far less oil money than the current front-runners.

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NOTHING EVER "JUST GROWS THIS WAY"

I'm very proud to announce that some of my thinking/writing, solicited by Jesse Wendel, is included in an extraordinary essay by Lower Manhattanite over at Group News Blog right now, titled Ad-Topsy.

LM takes on the viral video, put out by Lee Habeeb and members of the McCain campaign, intended to destroy the inroads Barack Obama has made among independents, crossover Republicans, and some white members of the Boomer generation. His dissection, assisted by other members of the Boomers who HAVE NOT FORGOTTEN THE ORIGINAL BATTLES (me included), is essential to stop this kind of shit from stealing another American election. Please read it and carry it on.

And -- if you have not yet watched Obama's Speech on Race, a brilliant offer to have a grown-up discussion with us all on this topic, here it is in full. A complete transcript is after the fold. Don't let them divide us again. We can have it ALL. Raise the roof.





Remarks of Senator Barack Obama
"A MORE PERFECT UNION"
Constitution Center, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
18 March 2008

"We the people, in order to form a more perfect union."

Two hundred and twenty one years ago, in a hall that still stands across the street, a group of men gathered and, with these simple words, launched America's improbable experiment in democracy. Farmers and scholars; statesmen and patriots who had traveled across an ocean to escape tyranny and persecution finally made real their declaration of independence at a Philadelphia convention that lasted through the spring of 1787.

The document they produced was eventually signed but ultimately unfinished. It was stained by this nation's original sin of slavery, a question that divided the colonies and brought the convention to a stalemate until the founders chose to allow the slave trade to continue for at least twenty more years, and to leave any final resolution to future generations.

Of course, the answer to the slavery question was already embedded within our Constitution - a Constitution that had at is very core the ideal of equal citizenship under the law; a Constitution that promised its people liberty, and justice, and a union that could be and should be perfected over time.

And yet words on a parchment would not be enough to deliver slaves from bondage, or provide men and women of every color and creed their full rights and obligations as citizens of the United States. What would be needed were Americans in successive generations who were willing to do their part - through protests and struggle, on the streets and in the courts, through a civil war and civil disobedience and always at great risk - to narrow that gap between the promise of our ideals and the reality of their time.

This was one of the tasks we set forth at the beginning of this campaign - to continue the long march of those who came before us, a march for a more just, more equal, more free, more caring and more prosperous America. I chose to run for the presidency at this moment in history because I believe deeply that we cannot solve the challenges of our time unless we solve them together - unless we perfect our union by understanding that we may have different stories, but we hold common hopes; that we may not look the same and we may not have come from the same place, but we all want to move in the same direction - towards a better future for of children and our grandchildren.

This belief comes from my unyielding faith in the decency and generosity of the American people. But it also comes from my own American story.

I am the son of a black man from Kenya and a white woman from Kansas. I was raised with the help of a white grandfather who survived a Depression to serve in Patton's Army during World War II and a white grandmother who worked on a bomber assembly line at Fort Leavenworth while he was overseas. I've gone to some of the best schools in America and lived in one of the world's poorest nations. I am married to a black American who carries within her the blood of slaves and slaveowners - an inheritance we pass on to our two precious daughters. I have brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews, uncles and cousins, of every race and every hue, scattered across three continents, and for as long as I live, I will never forget that in no other country on Earth is my story even possible.

It's a story that hasn't made me the most conventional candidate. But it is a story that has seared into my genetic makeup the idea that this nation is more than the sum of its parts - that out of many, we are truly one.

Throughout the first year of this campaign, against all predictions to the contrary, we saw how hungry the American people were for this message of unity. Despite the temptation to view my candidacy through a purely racial lens, we won commanding victories in states with some of the whitest populations in the country. In South Carolina, where the Confederate Flag still flies, we built a powerful coalition of African Americans and white Americans.

This is not to say that race has not been an issue in the campaign. At various stages in the campaign, some commentators have deemed me either "too black" or "not black enough." We saw racial tensions bubble to the surface during the week before the South Carolina primary. The press has scoured every exit poll for the latest evidence of racial polarization, not just in terms of white and black, but black and brown as well.

And yet, it has only been in the last couple of weeks that the discussion of race in this campaign has taken a particularly divisive turn.

On one end of the spectrum, we've heard the implication that my candidacy is somehow an exercise in affirmative action; that it's based solely on the desire of wide-eyed liberals to purchase racial reconciliation on the cheap. On the other end, we've heard my former pastor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, use incendiary language to express views that have the potential not only to widen the racial divide, but views that denigrate both the greatness and the goodness of our nation; that rightly offend white and black alike.

I have already condemned, in unequivocal terms, the statements of Reverend Wright that have caused such controversy. For some, nagging questions remain. Did I know him to be an occasionally fierce critic of American domestic and foreign policy? Of course. Did I ever hear him make remarks that could be considered controversial while I sat in church? Yes. Did I strongly disagree with many of his political views? Absolutely - just as I'm sure many of you have heard remarks from your pastors, priests, or rabbis with which you strongly disagreed.

But the remarks that have caused this recent firestorm weren't simply controversial. They weren't simply a religious leader's effort to speak out against perceived injustice. Instead, they expressed a profoundly distorted view of this country - a view that sees white racism as endemic, and that elevates what is wrong with America above all that we know is right with America; a view that sees the conflicts in the Middle East as rooted primarily in the actions of stalwart allies like Israel, instead of emanating from the perverse and hateful ideologies of radical Islam.

As such, Reverend Wright's comments were not only wrong but divisive, divisive at a time when we need unity; racially charged at a time when we need to come together to solve a set of monumental problems - two wars, a terrorist threat, a falling economy, a chronic health care crisis and potentially devastating climate change; problems that are neither black or white or Latino or Asian, but rather problems that confront us all.

Given my background, my politics, and my professed values and ideals, there will no doubt be those for whom my statements of condemnation are not enough. Why associate myself with Reverend Wright in the first place, they may ask? Why not join another church? And I confess that if all that I knew of Reverend Wright were the snippets of those sermons that have run in an endless loop on the television and You Tube, or if Trinity United Church of Christ conformed to the caricatures being peddled by some commentators, there is no doubt that I would react in much the same way

But the truth is, that isn't all that I know of the man. The man I met more than twenty years ago is a man who helped introduce me to my Christian faith, a man who spoke to me about our obligations to love one another; to care for the sick and lift up the poor. He is a man who served his country as a U.S. Marine; who has studied and lectured at some of the finest universities and seminaries in the country, and who for over thirty years led a church that serves the community by doing God's work here on Earth - by housing the homeless, ministering to the needy, providing day care services and scholarships and prison ministries, and reaching out to those suffering from HIV/AIDS.

In my first book, Dreams From My Father, I described the experience of my first service at Trinity:

"People began to shout, to rise from their seats and clap and cry out, a forceful wind carrying the reverend's voice up into the rafters....And in that single note - hope! - I heard something else; at the foot of that cross, inside the thousands of churches across the city, I imagined the stories of ordinary black people merging with the stories of David and Goliath, Moses and Pharaoh, the Christians in the lion's den, Ezekiel's field of dry bones. Those stories - of survival, and freedom, and hope - became our story, my story; the blood that had spilled was our blood, the tears our tears; until this black church, on this bright day, seemed once more a vessel carrying the story of a people into future generations and into a larger world. Our trials and triumphs became at once unique and universal, black and more than black; in chronicling our journey, the stories and songs gave us a means to reclaim memories that we didn't need to feel shame about...memories that all people might study and cherish - and with which we could start to rebuild."

That has been my experience at Trinity. Like other predominantly black churches across the country, Trinity embodies the black community in its entirety - the doctor and the welfare mom, the model student and the former gang-banger. Like other black churches, Trinity's services are full of raucous laughter and sometimes bawdy humor. They are full of dancing, clapping, screaming and shouting that may seem jarring to the untrained ear. The church contains in full the kindness and cruelty, the fierce intelligence and the shocking ignorance, the struggles and successes, the love and yes, the bitterness and bias that make up the black experience in America.

And this helps explain, perhaps, my relationship with Reverend Wright. As imperfect as he may be, he has been like family to me. He strengthened my faith, officiated my wedding, and baptized my children. Not once in my conversations with him have I heard him talk about any ethnic group in derogatory terms, or treat whites with whom he interacted with anything but courtesy and respect. He contains within him the contradictions - the good and the bad - of the community that he has served diligently for so many years.

I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother - a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe.

These people are a part of me. And they are a part of America, this country that I love.

Some will see this as an attempt to justify or excuse comments that are simply inexcusable. I can assure you it is not. I suppose the politically safe thing would be to move on from this episode and just hope that it fades into the woodwork. We can dismiss Reverend Wright as a crank or a demagogue, just as some have dismissed Geraldine Ferraro, in the aftermath of her recent statements, as harboring some deep-seated racial bias.

But race is an issue that I believe this nation cannot afford to ignore right now. We would be making the same mistake that Reverend Wright made in his offending sermons about America - to simplify and stereotype and amplify the negative to the point that it distorts reality.

The fact is that the comments that have been made and the issues that have surfaced over the last few weeks reflect the complexities of race in this country that we've never really worked through - a part of our union that we have yet to perfect. And if we walk away now, if we simply retreat into our respective corners, we will never be able to come together and solve challenges like health care, or education, or the need to find good jobs for every American.

Understanding this reality requires a reminder of how we arrived at this point. As William Faulkner once wrote, "The past isn't dead and buried. In fact, it isn't even past." We do not need to recite here the history of racial injustice in this country. But we do need to remind ourselves that so many of the disparities that exist in the African-American community today can be directly traced to inequalities passed on from an earlier generation that suffered under the brutal legacy of slavery and Jim Crow.

Segregated schools were, and are, inferior schools; we still haven't fixed them, fifty years after Brown v. Board of Education, and the inferior education they provided, then and now, helps explain the pervasive achievement gap between today's black and white students.

Legalized discrimination - where blacks were prevented, often through violence, from owning property, or loans were not granted to African-American business owners, or black homeowners could not access FHA mortgages, or blacks were excluded from unions, or the police force, or fire departments - meant that black families could not amass any meaningful wealth to bequeath to future generations. That history helps explain the wealth and income gap between black and white, and the concentrated pockets of poverty that persists in so many of today's urban and rural communities.

A lack of economic opportunity among black men, and the shame and frustration that came from not being able to provide for one's family, contributed to the erosion of black families - a problem that welfare policies for many years may have worsened. And the lack of basic services in so many urban black neighborhoods - parks for kids to play in, police walking the beat, regular garbage pick-up and building code enforcement - all helped create a cycle of violence, blight and neglect that continue to haunt us.

This is the reality in which Reverend Wright and other African-Americans of his generation grew up. They came of age in the late fifties and early sixties, a time when segregation was still the law of the land and opportunity was systematically constricted. What's remarkable is not how many failed in the face of discrimination, but rather how many men and women overcame the odds; how many were able to make a way out of no way for those like me who would come after them.

But for all those who scratched and clawed their way to get a piece of the American Dream, there were many who didn't make it - those who were ultimately defeated, in one way or another, by discrimination. That legacy of defeat was passed on to future generations - those young men and increasingly young women who we see standing on street corners or languishing in our prisons, without hope or prospects for the future. Even for those blacks who did make it, questions of race, and racism, continue to define their worldview in fundamental ways. For the men and women of Reverend Wright's generation, the memories of humiliation and doubt and fear have not gone away; nor has the anger and the bitterness of those years. That anger may not get expressed in public, in front of white co-workers or white friends. But it does find voice in the barbershop or around the kitchen table. At times, that anger is exploited by politicians, to gin up votes along racial lines, or to make up for a politician's own failings.

And occasionally it finds voice in the church on Sunday morning, in the pulpit and in the pews. The fact that so many people are surprised to hear that anger in some of Reverend Wright's sermons simply reminds us of the old truism that the most segregated hour in American life occurs on Sunday morning. That anger is not always productive; indeed, all too often it distracts attention from solving real problems; it keeps us from squarely facing our own complicity in our condition, and prevents the African-American community from forging the alliances it needs to bring about real change. But the anger is real; it is powerful; and to simply wish it away, to condemn it without understanding its roots, only serves to widen the chasm of misunderstanding that exists between the races.

In fact, a similar anger exists within segments of the white community. Most working- and middle-class white Americans don't feel that they have been particularly privileged by their race. Their experience is the immigrant experience - as far as they're concerned, no one's handed them anything, they've built it from scratch. They've worked hard all their lives, many times only to see their jobs shipped overseas or their pension dumped after a lifetime of labor. They are anxious about their futures, and feel their dreams slipping away; in an era of stagnant wages and global competition, opportunity comes to be seen as a zero sum game, in which your dreams come at my expense. So when they are told to bus their children to a school across town; when they hear that an African American is getting an advantage in landing a good job or a spot in a good college because of an injustice that they themselves never committed; when they're told that their fears about crime in urban neighborhoods are somehow prejudiced, resentment builds over time.

Like the anger within the black community, these resentments aren't always expressed in polite company. But they have helped shape the political landscape for at least a generation. Anger over welfare and affirmative action helped forge the Reagan Coalition. Politicians routinely exploited fears of crime for their own electoral ends. Talk show hosts and conservative commentators built entire careers unmasking bogus claims of racism while dismissing legitimate discussions of racial injustice and inequality as mere political correctness or reverse racism.

Just as black anger often proved counterproductive, so have these white resentments distracted attention from the real culprits of the middle class squeeze - a corporate culture rife with inside dealing, questionable accounting practices, and short-term greed; a Washington dominated by lobbyists and special interests; economic policies that favor the few over the many. And yet, to wish away the resentments of white Americans, to label them as misguided or even racist, without recognizing they are grounded in legitimate concerns - this too widens the racial divide, and blocks the path to understanding.

This is where we are right now. It's a racial stalemate we've been stuck in for years. Contrary to the claims of some of my critics, black and white, I have never been so naïve as to believe that we can get beyond our racial divisions in a single election cycle, or with a single candidacy - particularly a candidacy as imperfect as my own.

But I have asserted a firm conviction - a conviction rooted in my faith in God and my faith in the American people - that working together we can move beyond some of our old racial wounds, and that in fact we have no choice is we are to continue on the path of a more perfect union.

For the African-American community, that path means embracing the burdens of our past without becoming victims of our past. It means continuing to insist on a full measure of justice in every aspect of American life. But it also means binding our particular grievances - for better health care, and better schools, and better jobs - to the larger aspirations of all Americans -- the white woman struggling to break the glass ceiling, the white man whose been laid off, the immigrant trying to feed his family. And it means taking full responsibility for own lives - by demanding more from our fathers, and spending more time with our children, and reading to them, and teaching them that while they may face challenges and discrimination in their own lives, they must never succumb to despair or cynicism; they must always believe that they can write their own destiny.

Ironically, this quintessentially American - and yes, conservative - notion of self-help found frequent expression in Reverend Wright's sermons. But what my former pastor too often failed to understand is that embarking on a program of self-help also requires a belief that society can change.

The profound mistake of Reverend Wright's sermons is not that he spoke about racism in our society. It's that he spoke as if our society was static; as if no progress has been made; as if this country - a country that has made it possible for one of his own members to run for the highest office in the land and build a coalition of white and black; Latino and Asian, rich and poor, young and old -- is still irrevocably bound to a tragic past. But what we know -- what we have seen - is that America can change. That is true genius of this nation. What we have already achieved gives us hope - the audacity to hope - for what we can and must achieve tomorrow.

In the white community, the path to a more perfect union means acknowledging that what ails the African-American community does not just exist in the minds of black people; that the legacy of discrimination - and current incidents of discrimination, while less overt than in the past - are real and must be addressed. Not just with words, but with deeds - by investing in our schools and our communities; by enforcing our civil rights laws and ensuring fairness in our criminal justice system; by providing this generation with ladders of opportunity that were unavailable for previous generations. It requires all Americans to realize that your dreams do not have to come at the expense of my dreams; that investing in the health, welfare, and education of black and brown and white children will ultimately help all of America prosper.

In the end, then, what is called for is nothing more, and nothing less, than what all the world's great religions demand - that we do unto others as we would have them do unto us. Let us be our brother's keeper, Scripture tells us. Let us be our sister's keeper. Let us find that common stake we all have in one another, and let our politics reflect that spirit as well.

For we have a choice in this country. We can accept a politics that breeds division, and conflict, and cynicism. We can tackle race only as spectacle - as we did in the OJ trial - or in the wake of tragedy, as we did in the aftermath of Katrina - or as fodder for the nightly news. We can play Reverend Wright's sermons on every channel, every day and talk about them from now until the election, and make the only question in this campaign whether or not the American people think that I somehow believe or sympathize with his most offensive words. We can pounce on some gaffe by a Hillary supporter as evidence that she's playing the race card, or we can speculate on whether white men will all flock to John McCain in the general election regardless of his policies.

We can do that.

But if we do, I can tell you that in the next election, we'll be talking about some other distraction. And then another one. And then another one. And nothing will change.

That is one option. Or, at this moment, in this election, we can come together and say, "Not this time." This time we want to talk about the crumbling schools that are stealing the future of black children and white children and Asian children and Hispanic children and Native American children. This time we want to reject the cynicism that tells us that these kids can't learn; that those kids who don't look like us are somebody else's problem. The children of America are not those kids, they are our kids, and we will not let them fall behind in a 21st century economy. Not this time.

This time we want to talk about how the lines in the Emergency Room are filled with whites and blacks and Hispanics who do not have health care; who don't have the power on their own to overcome the special interests in Washington, but who can take them on if we do it together.

This time we want to talk about the shuttered mills that once provided a decent life for men and women of every race, and the homes for sale that once belonged to Americans from every religion, every region, every walk of life. This time we want to talk about the fact that the real problem is not that someone who doesn't look like you might take your job; it's that the corporation you work for will ship it overseas for nothing more than a profit.

This time we want to talk about the men and women of every color and creed who serve together, and fight together, and bleed together under the same proud flag. We want to talk about how to bring them home from a war that never should've been authorized and never should've been waged, and we want to talk about how we'll show our patriotism by caring for them, and their families, and giving them the benefits they have earned.

I would not be running for President if I didn't believe with all my heart that this is what the vast majority of Americans want for this country. This union may never be perfect, but generation after generation has shown that it can always be perfected. And today, whenever I find myself feeling doubtful or cynical about this possibility, what gives me the most hope is the next generation - the young people whose attitudes and beliefs and openness to change have already made history in this election.

There is one story in particularly that I'd like to leave you with today - a story I told when I had the great honor of speaking on Dr. King's birthday at his home church, Ebenezer Baptist, in Atlanta.

There is a young, twenty-three year old white woman named Ashley Baia who organized for our campaign in Florence, South Carolina. She had been working to organize a mostly African-American community since the beginning of this campaign, and one day she was at a roundtable discussion where everyone went around telling their story and why they were there.

And Ashley said that when she was nine years old, her mother got cancer. And because she had to miss days of work, she was let go and lost her health care. They had to file for bankruptcy, and that's when Ashley decided that she had to do something to help her mom.

She knew that food was one of their most expensive costs, and so Ashley convinced her mother that what she really liked and really wanted to eat more than anything else was mustard and relish sandwiches. Because that was the cheapest way to eat.

She did this for a year until her mom got better, and she told everyone at the roundtable that the reason she joined our campaign was so that she could help the millions of other children in the country who want and need to help their parents too.

Now Ashley might have made a different choice. Perhaps somebody told her along the way that the source of her mother's problems were blacks who were on welfare and too lazy to work, or Hispanics who were coming into the country illegally. But she didn't. She sought out allies in her fight against injustice.

Anyway, Ashley finishes her story and then goes around the room and asks everyone else why they're supporting the campaign. They all have different stories and reasons. Many bring up a specific issue. And finally they come to this elderly black man who's been sitting there quietly the entire time. And Ashley asks him why he's there. And he does not bring up a specific issue. He does not say health care or the economy. He does not say education or the war. He does not say that he was there because of Barack Obama. He simply says to everyone in the room, "I am here because of Ashley."

"I'm here because of Ashley." By itself, that single moment of recognition between that young white girl and that old black man is not enough. It is not enough to give health care to the sick, or jobs to the jobless, or education to our children.

But it is where we start. It is where our union grows stronger. And as so many generations have come to realize over the course of the two-hundred and twenty one years since a band of patriots signed that document in Philadelphia, that is where the perfection begins.

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If you'd to read another great (related) essay, check out the guest post at Group News Blog by TerriInTokyo, a minister's daughter brought up in Harlem and Queens Village, at Black Liberation Theology.

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BROAD CAST 19 FEBRUARY 2008: PICKING A CANDIDATE, RACISM IN AMERICA, ESSENTIALISM, DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPHY, PARTHOGENESIS, KNEE REPLACEMENT, AND SWEAT

Well, the Big Dog called me yesterday. Got my voice mail because I was asleep. He urged me to vote for his wife. I appreciate the effort, Bill -- the history-making thrill of getting a call from a former President asking me to vote for his wife. Duly noted.

Also noted is that this week the television ads for Hillary changed. The one that had been running was a snoozer, especially when compared to Barack's, which showed him as a little round-head with his Mama, talking about health care costs consuming her thoughts in her last months. He ends with "I approve this message because in order to fix health care, we have to fix government." Fantastic delivery -- but for those of us who watched incredulous as Reagan delivered his infamous "Government isn't the solution, government is the problem" damnation that is a direct line to Katrina, the Minneapolis bridge collapse, and untold human suffering -- it was too calculated to play on Texas independent nostalgia for Ronnie Raygun. I really don't appreciate the K-Y approach, Barack.

Now Hillary's ads begin with a shot of Bobby Kennedy. If you think that doesn't make boomers sit up and howl, you don't know anything. It's followed by pictures of Cesar Chavez, then earnest endorsements of Bobby Jr. and Cesar Jr., before Hillary makes an appearance. Yellow-dog Democrat dancing on the border of outright liberal, that ad. What a fucking relief to see on the airwaves again. I have no idea how it will play, and honestly I don't think anyone else does, either. Until the votes are counted.



I took the Implicit Association Test for Presidential Candidates being touted on Bitch Ph.D., Pandagon, and other places to see if it would reveal my preference to me effortlessly. Except it didn't turn out to be effortless. It actually caused me internal dissonance, a form of pain, to click on the "good" buttons when pictures of Huckabee or McCain came up. I had such a hard time, my test was littered with red X's and, toward the end, exhaustion from confusion. It was ornery enough to make me seriously trust the results -- I was too resistant to "game" the test.

And the results didn't get me any further. Hillary and Barack came in dead even, in my preferences, and way "up there". Whereas sucking the bottom of the pond algae were Huckabee and McCain, again as equals. At least I'm consistent.


The excellent Black Agenda Report currently has an article on Holding Barack Obama Accountable which is an interesting read. Managing editor Bruce Dixon leads with:

'The presidential campaign of Barack Obama has become a media parade on its way to a coronation. Journalists and leading Democrats have done shockingly little to pin Obama down, to hold him specifically responsible for anything beyond his slogans of "yes we can" and "change we can believe in". Prominent Black Democrats, many ministers and the traditional Black leadership class are doing less than anybody to hold Obama accountable, peddling instead a supposed racial obligation among African Americans to support this second coming of Joshua and his campaign as "the movement" itself. What would holding Barack Obama accountable on war and peace, on social security, health care and other issues look like, and is it possible to hold a political "rock star" accountable at all? '

Even better is Dixon's extremely well-researched piece on 2008's Ten Worst Places to be Black in America. Dixon uses prison populations as his criteria, stating "America's prison system, the world's largest houses some 2.2 million people. Almost half its prisoners come from the one eighth of this country which is black. African American communities have been hard hit by the social, political and economic repercussions of the growth of America's prison state. Its presence and its reach into Black life is a useful index of the quality of life in Black America itself."

He goes on to state "Although our Black presidential candidate would have us believe that African Americans are, as he has said many times, '90% of the way' to freedom, justice and true equality, the facts seem to say otherwise. As recently as 1964, a majority of all US prisoners were white men. But since 1988, the year Vice President George H.W. Bush rode to the White House stoking white fears with an ad campaign featuring convicted Black killer and rapist Willie Horton, the black one-eighth of America's population has furnished the majority of new admissions to its prisons and jails. The fact is that while US prison populations have grown seven times since 1970, crime rates have increased only slightly over that time. According to Berkeley scholar Dr. Loic Wacquant the increase in America's prison population over that time has been achieved simply by locking up five times as many people per one thousand reported crimes as we did in 1980."

There is a kick-ass looking map heading this article which I was unable to get enlarged enough to read. (If anybody else can, please send me a copy.) In lieu of sharing that with you, I'll include a couple of the tables Dixon has created, but folks, DO go read this article and its comments, and credit/link to this man's if you pass on his information.

10 WORST STATES TO BE BLACK
Each line shows, in order:
STATE
BLACK PRISONERS AS % OF TOTAL BLACK POPULATION
RATIO OF BLACK TO WHITE IN PRISONS AND JAILS
BLACK % OF STATE POPULATION
Wisconsin 4.5% 10.64 6%
Iowa 4.2% 13.59 2%
Colorado 3.5% 6.65 4%
Arizona 3.3% 5.58 4%
Oklahoma 3.3% 4.39 8%
Texas 3.2% 4.74 12%
Kansas 3.1% 6.99 6%
California 3.0% 4.68 7%
Oregon 2.9% 5.84 2%
Kentucky 2.8% 4.98 8%

Excluded from this list are South Dakota, Vermont, Utah, Montana, Idaho, North Dakota, where African Americans make up 1% or less of the population, but which do have extremely high rates of Black incarceration. Also excluded, until the data becomes available, are the nearly 200,000 prisoners under federal lock and key.

Introducing a second table, Dixon states "Most US prisoners are nonviolent drug offenders. Although federal statistics show the rates of illegal drug use for whites, Blacks and Latinos to be within a single percentage point of each other, African Americans are an absolute majority of the people serving time for drug offenses. The start and inescapable fact of double-digit disparity between Black and white incarceration rates is hard to miss, and harder to explain, except in terms of a consistently applied, if rarely acknowledged policy of racially selective policing, sentencing and imprisonment....The states with the fifteen highest disparity rates between black and white incarceration show some interesting characteristics. First, none of them are in the South. Secondly Blacks make up a negligible percentage, 6% or less in ten of these high disparity states. Thirdly, the other five high-disparity states either contain or are adjacent to three of the five largest concentrations of African American population in the US, namely the metro areas of New York, Chicago and Philadelphia."

BLACK AND WHITE DISPARITY IN SENTENCING AND INCARCERATION
Each line shows, in order
STATE
BLACK % OF STATE POPULATION
BLACK IMPRISONMENT AS A PERCENTAGE OF TOTAL BLACK POPULATION
BLACK-WHITE IMPRISONMENT DISPARITY
Mississippi 37% 1.74% 3.46
Louisiana 32% 2.45% 4.69
Georgia 30% 2.06% 3.32
Maryland 29% 1.58% 5.48
South Carolina 29% 1.86% 4.47
Alabama 26% 1.91% 3.54
North Carolina 22% 1.72% 5.40
Delaware 21% 2.51% 6.36
Virginia 20% 2.33% 5.89
Tennessee 17% 2.0% 4.12
Florida 16% 2.61% 4.45
Arkansas 16% 1.84% 3.86
Texas 12% 3.12% 4.74

(Unnamed performers, photo by Charles "Teenie" Harris in Pittsburgh, PA, circa 1940s)

For those of us (besides me) feeling a jolt at The End of Polaroid As We Know It, as reported by Liza at See Saw, here's an article by Brian Haynes for American Scientist on Computational Photography, which states:

"Imaging laboratories are experimenting with cameras that don't merely digitize an image but also perform extensive computations on the image data. Some of the experiments seek to improve or augment current photographic practices, for example by boosting the dynamic range of an image (preserving detail in both the brightest and dimmest areas) or by increasing the depth of field (so that both near and far objects remain in focus). Other innovations would give the photographer control over factors such as motion blur. And the wildest ideas challenge the very notion of the photograph as a realistic representation. Future cameras might allow a photographer to record a scene and then alter the lighting or shift the point of view, or even insert fictitious objects. Or a camera might have a setting that would cause it to render images in the style of watercolors or pen-and-ink drawings."

Zelig meets the Purple Rose of Cairo.

(Image by Maira Kalman)

For those of us who have never believed the road to democracy lies in going shopping, and who say "Can what?" when we hear "Yes we can", consider this lovely essay from JSpot (Jewish perspectives on contemporary issues of social and economic justice), Rabbi Danny Nevins speaks to Parshat Terumah: Sanctity in Sweat:

"Humility is appropriate in situations of physical labor and also in our efforts at social change. Frequently it seems that we work at tasks that can never be completed. We identify ideals such as justice and peace that seem always beyond our grasp. This situation can be demoralizing. What’s the point of trying when the world seems always to veer back in the direction of oppression and war? Parshat Terumah is encouraging—identify worthy tasks and use every resource you can muster to complete them. But do not be discouraged when success eludes you. Build the sanctuary in the wilderness—wherever there is human need, build a home for God. And in that effort God will join you, dwelling in your very midst."

(Ant With Acorn, woodcut by Tugboat Printshop)

Here are updates and new angles on various posts in the past (some of them quite some time ago, but my above-average readers keep sending things my way, bless you):

From this week's New York Times, via Martha, an article entitled Women More Likely to Postpone New Knees could have been lifted from my own experience. It begins:

"Women appear to delay knee replacement surgery longer than men, and often show up far more disabled by the time they undergo the procedure.

"The gender differences among knee replacement candidates is cause for concern because far more women than men suffer from osteoarthritis, which can wear down the cartilage in knees and leave sufferers with bone-on-bone rubbing and agonizing pain. Patients are typically advised to delay knee replacement as long as possible because titanium knee parts eventually wear out too. By delaying the treatment, the patient ideally will die a natural death before replaced knees wear out again.

"But doctors now say they may need to rethink that advice because women appear to take it to the extreme."

Yeah, tell me about it.

In a related note, a recent study reported on in the Journal of Neuroscience states "chronic pain seems to alter the way people process information that is unrelated to pain". An article on the study quotes the researchers as stating "These findings suggest that the brain of a chronic pain patient is not simply a healthy brain processing pain information but rather it is altered by the persistent pain in a manner reminiscent of other neurological conditions associated with cognitive impairments."


For those of you who read Skene or are familiar with past references to the 70's dyke pursuit of parthenogenesis, here's riveting news:

By Roger Highfield, Science Editor for the Telegraph in the U.K., written on January 31, 2008, Sperm cells created from female embryo, it reads:

"Sperm cells have been created from a female human embryo in a remarkable breakthrough that suggests it may be possible for lesbian couples to have their own biological children.

"British scientists who had already coaxed male bone marrow cells to develop into primitive sperm cells have now repeated the feat with female embryonic stem cells.

"The University of Newcastle team that has achieved the feat is now applying for permission to turn the bone marrow of a woman into sperm which, if successful, would make the method more practical than with embryonic cells.

"It raises the possibility of lesbian couples one day having children who share both their genes as sperm created from the bone marrow of one woman could be used to fertilise an egg from her partner.

"Men and women differ because of what are called sex chromosomes. Both have an X chromosome. But only men possess a Y chromosome that carries several genes thought to be essential to make sperm, so there has been scepticism that female stem cells could ever be used to make sperm.

"In April last year, Prof Karim Nayernia, Professor of Stem Cell Biology at Newcastle University, made headlines by taking stem cells from adult men and making them develop into primitive sperm.

"He has now managed to repeat the feat of creating the primitive sperm cells with female embryonic stem cells in unpublished work.

"The next step is to make these primitive sperm undergo meiosis, so they have the right amount of genetic material for fertilisation.

"Prof Nayernia showed the potential of the method in 2006, when he used sperm derived from male embryonic stem cells to fertilise mice to produce seven pups, six of which lived to adulthood, though the survivors did suffer
problems.

"He is now optimistic about the prospect of lab-grown sperm from women.

“I think, in principle, it will be scientifically possible,” Prof Nayernia told New Scientist.

"He said that he has applied for ethical approval from the university to use bone marrow stem cells from women to start experiments to derive female sperm.

“We are now writing the application form,” he said, adding that experiments will begin in Newcastle if and when they get approval.

"However, Dr Robin Lovell-Badge, a stem cell and sex determination expert at the National Institute for Medical Research, Mill Hill, London, doubts it will work: “The presence of two X chromosomes is incompatible with this.
Moreover they need genes from the Y chromosome to go through meiosis. So they are at least double-damned.”

"In Brazil, a team led by Dr Irina Kerkis of the Butantan Institute in Saõ Paulo claims to have made both sperm and eggs from cultures of male mouse embryonic stem cells in the journal Cloning and Stem Cells.

"The researchers have not yet shown that their male eggs can be fertilised to produce viable offspring, but they are thinking about possibilities for same-sex human reproduction.

"If all these experiments pan out, then the stage would also be set for a gay man to donate skin cells that could be used to make eggs, which could then be fertilised by his partner’s sperm and placed into the uterus of a
surrogate mother.

“I think it is possible,” says Kerkis, “but I don’t know how people will look at this ethically.”

"The UK parliament is now debating changes to the 1990 Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act, and the government is under pressure to include an amendment that would allow the future use of eggs and sperm grown in the lab from stem cells.

"However, a clause added to this amendment would restrict this to sperm from genetic males and eggs from genetic females."

Yet another reason to up funding for science in this country.

And, to illustrate what kind of legislation ignorance about basic biology leads to (especially in Missouri), check out this post at Bitch Ph.D., Next Up, We'll Repeal the Law of Gravity! which explains in clear, useful terminology how fertilization does NOT equal conception, and illustrates how the not-so-secret goal of the Right is to outlaw contraception, not just abortion. If we don't remain their breed cows, they have no hope of keeping human progress from continuing joyfully onward.


Regarding the dead-end nature of essentialism, both culturally and as a political strategy, there's a series of articles in the latest issue (Jan-Feb) of The Gay and Lesbian Review Worldwide tackling "The science of homo-sex". Not all of the pieces are available online, but one that is features an interview with Joan Roughgarden, Nature Abhors a Category. To quote their introduction:

'JOAN ROUGHGARDEN threw down the gauntlet at the feet of the evolutionary biology establishment a few years ago when she published Evolution’s Rainbow: Diversity, Gender, and Sexuality in Nature and People (UC Press, 2004). The book challenged the widely held Darwinian dogma that some traits—especially those that appear maladaptive for survival, such as the peacock’s feathers—come into existence through competitive “sexual selection” rather than a cooperative form of classical natural selection. Such traits were thought to survive because they’re favored by the opposite sex—with females doing most of the selecting—which interprets them as an indicator of genetic fitness. One of Roughgarden’s main examples is the prevalence of homosexual behavior among animals—she documented some 300 such cases—which cannot be explained with recourse to sexual selection, which envisions a competitive struggle among members of the same sex. Instead, homosexual behavior among both males and females suggests a larger survival strategy based on group cooperation and teamwork, which in turn are promoted by physical intimacy.
Dr. Roughgarden is a professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at Stanford. Her latest book is Evolution and Christian Faith (Island Press, 2006).'

Two other pieces worth mentioning (available in print only) are
"Genes, Hormones, and Sexuality" by Neena B. Schwartz -- Why the rush to explain behavior patterns in biological terms?

and
"Can Biology Vanquish Bigotry?" by Sean McShee -- Now that we’ve hitched our wagon to a genetic model...


In a post this year on Judy Grahn, I showed the photograph above by Cathy Cade of Gail Grassi and Kate Kaufman repairing a car, East Bay, 1970s. I was browsing a website of Maoist Chinese propaganda posters online and discovered, lo, the very poster that is on the wall of this women-run garage -- first printed in 1971. I remember this poster being in lesbian households. Now I know the caption in Chinese reads: "Struggle to quicken the implementation of agricultural mechanization" (Wei jiasu shixian nongye jixiehua er fendou)


Here's something I especially love about my quirky cat Dinah: If I pull my shirt up so my head and face are covered, then growl ferociously, when I look at her again her pupils are dilated, her tail is frizzed and her ears are laid back. As if I had transformed into a monster. I honestly don't think she's taken in by the cheap transformation, I think she's just playing along -- either as a kindness to me or because life with a crippled obsessive writer is so boring, she maximizes any stimulation that comes along.

I have a canister of Whisker Lickin's Chicken and Liver treats on my computer desk. There is no way I can lift it and get the lid off without her hearing, no matter where she is in the apartment or how asleep she might be. She comes at a desperate gallop, and the last foot or so she makes a breathy little chirrup. Kitty crack, I guess.

Here, I'll try again right now, because I can hear her snoring on the top of my red shelves in the open box of envelopes.

Nope. She heard me. She is now doing her James Bond impression: Once is not enough.

And, in her honor, some LOLCats (etc) from little gator:

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TEN LETTERS TOWARD AN ALPHABET OF PRESIDENTIAL CHOICE

I wonder how many other former Edwards supporters are now in a period of deep analysis, trying not just to decide on a second-choice candidate but to understand the "why" of that choice. So far, the differences between Barack and Hillary are not substantial enough to easily sway me. I'll be fuckin' thrilled with either one, and that's the truth.

I read a lot of blogs each day, liberal/progressive and radical feminist, mostly. Here's what I (very subjectively) seem to be noticing:


(a) A lot of women my age, white women from what I can tell, were not especially on the Hillary bandwagon to begin with but are now getting behind her just because of the appalling woman-hating being aimed her way. I don't find this public vituperation "unbelievable" because I'm a decades-long feminist who has never been "post" or in denial about how shit on women (and woman-ish folk) are in this culture. We've actually lost ground in the last 15 years in a number of key aspects, including (and often most painfully) within what used to be our "safe" communities, i.e., lesbian enclaves. Lesbian never did equal feminist, but the public room to question masculinity, woman-hating and gender essentialism has vanished from queer space; we tend to find it now only in straight feminist arenas. (For which I want to say here, thank you, sisters, for leaving the light on for us.)

(b) Once discussion is under way about Barack vs. Hillary in a blog comments section, so-called liberal white boys cannot seem to stick to issues and cannot resist oozing into anti-woman crap, even as they deny it IS anti-woman crap. Honest to god, the hateful stuff coming out of the mouths of Chris Matthews, et al in White Boy Media is really not substantially different from what's cropping up in comments at Kos, Digby, etc. So much so that responsible blog moderators are having to clamp down on misogyny in comments. Way to go, guys.

(c) Rightwing verbal rape of Hillary, as usual, finds a mirror outlet in the mainstream media, who simply laughs at hate rhetoric in a frat-boy snicker of appreciation. The origin of that laugh is, of course, Ronnie Raygun. The one consolation I keep finding in this pile-on is the audible "click" I keep hearing from progressive bloggers, a "click" my generation heard in around 1975: Yeah, it's that vicious. Yeah, it runs all discourse in this country. Yeah, how'd YOU like to try to assume leadership or a voice in the midst of that kind of onslaught?

(d) The emotionality of the men who are trying to shout down any (even imagined) Hillary support is never acknowledged as emotionality and hysteria. Because, you know, men don't get hysterical.


(e) We're not seeing how Barack would respond to this kind of furor (yet), so I don't have a good guess as to how cool he can stay. I'm duly impressed with Hillary. She's been in the crosshairs for a long time, and is doing well -- except, of course, for the slow, long-term damage that is a result of living in crosshairs. I kinda need to know if Barack is going to lose it and get pissy, unfocused, rigid or wobbly, when his turn comes, like Kerry -- not to mention McCain, Bush, etc, of course.

(f) I just listened to Prairie Home Companion, and they did a long segment where their talented crew of mimics did pretend speeches from Barack, Hillary, McCain, Reagan, and Bush. These were wildly funny, poking at folks on both sides of the divide, and I was struck with how well they did Barack and Hillary. Barack couldn't answer a question in specifics, instead always speaking about "vision" -- convincingly, it was actually persuasive, in the way that good mimicry will be. Hillary kept making it about her ego and her experience, and I laughed hard, though uncomfortably. This gave me a lot to think about, in conjunction with:

(g) More than one blogger had suggested checking out the Presidential selector quiz at Select Smart, so I finally did. The unsettling results were that my position on the issues covered by their list of questions (which would NOT be my list of questions, let me issue that caveat) was shared by
1. Theoretical Ideal Candidate (100 %)
2. Dennis Kucinich (withdrawn) (94 %)
3. Barack Obama (86 %)
4. Joseph Biden (withdrawn) (81 %)
5. John Edwards (withdrawn) (80 %)
6. Christopher Dodd (withdrawn) (79 %)
7. Hillary Clinton (79 %)
8. Alan Augustson (campaign suspended) (78 %) [who???]
9. Wesley Clark (not running, endorsed Clinton) (73 %)
10. Al Gore (not announced) (70 %)
11. Bill Richardson (withdrawn) (65 %)
12. Michael Bloomberg (says he will not run) (65 %)
13. Mike Gravel (63 %)
14. Elaine Brown (55 %)
15. Ron Paul (40 %)
16. Kent McManigal (campaign suspended) (37 %)
17. Mike Huckabee (28 %)
18. Rudolph Giuliani (withdrawn, endorsed McCain) (28 %)
19. Wayne Allyn Root (27 %)
20. John McCain (27 %)
21. Chuck Hagel (not running) (24 %)
22. Sam Brownback (withdrawn, endorsed McCain) (20 %)
23. Tommy Thompson (withdrawn, endorsed Giuliani) (20 %)
24. Mitt Romney (withdrawn) (19 %)
25. Newt Gingrich (says he will not run) (18 %)
26. Alan Keyes (13 %)
27. Fred Thompson (withdrawn) (13 %)
28. Duncan Hunter (withdrawn) (11 %)
29. Tom Tancredo (withdrawn, endorsed Romney) (11 %)
30. Jim Gilmore (withdrawn) (6 %)
31. Stephen Colbert (campaign halted) (4 %)


To respond, I'll begin by saying that Kucinich's avowed willingness to consider Ron Paul as a running mate wiped him off my radar permanently. No cozying up to Nazis, that's a deal-breaker for me. Biden, Edwards and Dodd's alignment with my own views I already knew about. But Barack was a shock. I realized, at that point, I actually don't know his hard views on issues. All I get from the mainstream press and his blogger cheerleaders alike is "the vision" thing. Which isn't enough for me -- I liked and believed in Bill Clinton, I was very swayed by his charismatic speeches, even though I suspected he was at best a moderate. It was the first time I voted for a candidate who won, that blissful year in 1992: Clinton, Ann Richards for Governor and Glen Maxey for my state representative, folks I believed in and they all won. I've been a voter since 1972, and for a long time I used my electoral capital on Socialist, Peace and Justice, or Green party causes. After Reagan came along, I began voting for sheer survival and have stuck to it. But Bill seemed to be the best of both. Well, no more voting for personality reasons. I'll go research Barack's stands, as well as his Senate career, and we'll see.

(h) The questions I want addressed by a candidate are not appearing on these lists. Will they restore habeas corpus as it was in its entirety? Will they reverse NAFTA? Will they strip away the "unitary executive" power-grab of the Bushies and restore checks and balances to our government? Will they not just get us out of Iraq, but drastically cut the military and return that funding to social services plus a foreign policy based on compassion instead of building empire? I felt like I knew how Biden and Edwards would answer these questions, and their answers were mine. I'm not so certain of either Hillary or Barack, and I'm equally unsure of both, Hillary because she's a gifted "player" and Barack because he fumbles (as he has, repeatedly, around gay issues).


(i) Doris Lessing tossed a piss-filled water balloon into the plaza today by with her statement that Barack "would certainly not last long, a black man in the position of president. They would murder him." This has been said for a few weeks now on various blogs, and I have repeated it myself. But now it's an international item. Lessing certainly has a history of speaking her mind in ways that I may or may not agree with (her pointing out that the September 11th attacks were not that big a deal -- agreed -- and her disavowal of feminism -- stupid, stupid Doris). Still, I don't seeing the notion of "Of course they'll kill him" being given a sort of legitimacy, an air of inevitability. Energetically it's bad news.

(j) This brings me back around to the beginning, how different the attacks are on Barack and Hillary, but I insist we cannot quantify which is worse, woman-hating or white supremacy. I have a distant cousin whom I know only through similar genealogy research, from South Carolina (the problem child of the South), who after 9/11 sent me anti-Muslim group e-mails on a regular basis, no matter my protests. In the last six months, however, he's switched his focus to anti-Barack garbage. It's my barometer on what's up for those who have no reluctance to proudly display their mental illness known as racism. The corporate elite who run our government and the Republican Party will stop at nothing to deny our will, and if they can find a way to bring the nigger-hating out from their 30% base to a larger view with as much public acceptance as their woman-hating receives, they'll do it.


Which, as a conscientous citizen, makes me question everything I hear, looking for the manipulation behind it. Question my own beliefs, and dig deeper. This essay is just one manifestation of my quest to overcome the conditioning which has rotted my soul and which, at least, I am not dense enough to deny exists.

(Image by little gator, now on the FRONT PAGE! at I Can Has Cheezburger

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DEEP DIALOGUE OR WATCHING O.J.: CHOOSING TO LISTEN AND SPEAK IN A T-DRIVEN WORLD

(Image from Rashani Rea's Dharma Gaia Cards)
In his brilliant rant during the Emmys, Lewis Black stated that in 1968, the average length of a candidate's sound bite on television newscasts was 42 seconds. Today, the average length of a candidate's sound bite is about 8 seconds. Look who we're electing as a result.

This is your brain on IM attention spans -- demanding that meaningful public discourse be reduced to fast shiny











Okay, ready for some antidotes?

Check out this amazing cartoon from Transparency, who create graphical explorations of the data that surrounds us.

Central Kings Rural High School, Halifax, Nova Scotia students David Shepherd and Travis Price -- photo taken by Ian Fairclough, Valley Bureau
Two high school men choose humanity over the idiocy of masculinity in I've stood around too long.

Cleek helps us decipher a briefing slide from General Petraeus's Pony show (we were all asked specifically not to steal this graphic, go look at the original).

(From Spirited Away by Hayao Miyazaki)
Following up on a New York Times story, I discovered YourMorals.org, where you can learn about your own morality while contributing to scientific research on moral psychology. You do have to register to take their tests, but the array of measurements is rich and the results fascinating. For those more interested in a self-examined life than haircuts, of course.

Street Prophets has a great article on Presidential religiosity, race, and gender.

I'm always up for promoting the work of ISNA, the Intersex Society of North America. Currently up is a great post which begins "A recent article entitled “Adult Genital Surgery for Intersex: A Solution to What Problem?” by Mary E. Boyle, Susan Smith, and Lih-mei Liao suggests that genital surgeries among adult women with intersex conditions present dilemmas similar to those involved with infant surgeries." As a member of the disabled community, I am always interested in busting the practice of medical solutions for social ills and the tyranny of trying to appear "normal".

(Tomato and Salt Shaker by Kelly Cameron)

And -- another great, makes-you-think cartoon by Tengrain presents "Pickles Von Strap-On in 'Feminism'".

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