White Privilege, White Entitlement and the 2008 Election By Tim Wise

For those who still can't grasp the concept of white privilege, or who are constantly looking for some easy-to-understand examples of it, perhaps this list will help.

White privilege is when you can get pregnant at seventeen like Bristol Palin and everyone is quick to insist that your life and that of your family is a personal matter, and that no one has a right to judge you or your parents, because "every family has challenges," even as black and Latino families with similar "challenges" are regularly typified as irresponsible, pathological and arbiters of social decay.

White privilege is when you can call yourself a "f*&^$n' redneck," like Bristol Palin's boyfriend does, and talk about how if anyone messes with you, you'll "kick their f#$%^n' [censored]," and talk about how you like to "shoot s#@t" for fun, and still be viewed as a responsible, all-American boy (and a great son-in-law to be) rather than a thug.

White privilege is when you can attend four different colleges in six years like Sarah Palin did (one of which you basically failed out of, then returned to after making up some coursework at a community college), and no one questions your intelligence or commitment to achievement, whereas a person of color who did this would be viewed as unfit for college, and probably someone who only got in in the first place because of affirmative action.
White privilege is when you can claim that being mayor of a town smaller than most medium-sized colleges, and then Governor of a state with about the same number of people as the lower fifth of the island of Manhattan, makes you ready to potentially be president, and people don't all [censored] on themselves with laughter, while being a black U.S. Senator, two-term state Senator, and constitutional law scholar, means you're "untested."

White privilege is being able to say that you support the words "under God" in the pledge of allegiance because "if it was good enough for the founding fathers, it's good enough for me," and not be immediately disqualified from holding office--since, after all, the pledge was written in the late 1800s and the "under God" part wasn't added until the 1950s--while believing that reading accused criminals and terrorists their rights (because, ya know, the Constitution, which you used to teach at a prestigious law school requires it), is a dangerous and silly idea only supported by mushy liberals.

White privilege is being able to be a gun enthusiast and not make people immediately scared of you. White privilege is being able to have a husband who was a member of an extremist political party that wants your state to secede from the Union, and whose motto was "Alaska first," and no one questions your patriotism or that of your family, while if you're black and your spouse merely fails to come to a 9/11 memorial so she can be home with her kids on the first day of school, people immediately think she's being disrespectful.

White privilege is being able to make fun of community organizers and the work they do--like, among other things, fight for the right of women to vote, or for civil rights, or the 8-hour workday, or an end to child labor--and people think you're being pithy and tough, but if you merely question the experience of a small town mayor and 18-month governor with no foreign policy expertise beyond a class she took in college--you're somehow being mean, or even sexist.

White privilege is being able to convince white women who don't even agree with you on any substantive issue to vote for you and your running mate anyway, because all of a sudden your presence on the ticket has inspired confidence in these same white women, and made them give your party a "second look."

White privilege is being able to fire people who didn't support your political campaigns and not be accused of abusing your power or being a typical politician who engages in favoritism, while being black and merely knowing some folks from the old-line political machines in Chicago means you must be corrupt.
White privilege is being able to attend churches over the years whose pastors say that people who voted for John Kerry or merely criticize George W. Bush are going to hell, and that the U.S. is an explicitly Christian nation and the job of Christians is to bring Christian theological principles into government, and who bring in speakers who say the conflict in the Middle East is God's punishment on Jews for rejecting Jesus, and everyone can still think you're just a good church-going Christian, but if you're black and friends with a black pastor who has noted (as have Colin Powell and the U.S. Department of Defense) that terrorist attacks are often the result of U.S. foreign policy and who talks about the history of racism and its effect on black people, you're an extremist who probably hates America.

White privilege is not knowing what the Bush Doctrine is when asked by a reporter, and then people get angry at the reporter for asking you such a "trick question," while being black and merely refusing to give one-word answers to the queries of Bill O'Reilly means you're dodging the question, or trying to seem overly intellectual and nuanced.

White privilege is being able to claim your experience as a POW has anything at all to do with your fitness for president, while being black and experiencing racism is, as Sarah Palin has referred to it, a "light" burden.

And finally, white privilege is the only thing that could possibly allow someone to become president when he has voted with George W. Bush 90 percent of the time, even as unemployment is skyrocketing, people are losing their homes, inflation is rising, and the U.S. is increasingly isolated from world opinion, just because white voters aren't sure about that whole "change" thing. Ya know, it's just too vague and ill-defined, unlike, say, four more years of the same, which is very concrete and certain.
White privilege is, in short, the problem.

Tim Wise is the author of "White Like Me "(Soft Skull, 2005, revised 2008), and of Speaking Treason Fluently, publishing this month, also by Soft Skull.

wdstk,
Tim Wise has been discussed at length around here before due to another's use of and belief in everything he writes. I don't know how familiar you are with his work, but I have read him for years and not because I am a fan. Personally, I find him very offensive in some of what he writes as a white man trying to make me feel guilty about being white also. Do not be surprised if you hear others weigh in on this one.

I would rank Mr. Wise right up there with Obama's former pastor.

Purely divissive.

His thoughts on how people are viewing those he is talking about are off, I know of no one who follows that mind set. Allthough some may, it would be a vast minority who think like he supposes.

I wonder if either candidate would dignify his remarks with any sort of repsonse.

I know that he could be pretty inflamitory. I didn't think that this one was with the exception of throwing around the phrase of "white privilege" Those are all things that the Obamas have been criticised about and the McCain/Palin ticket gets a gloss over.

I am inclined to think that neither candidate should be commenting on how to handle the economic crisis that is going on right now. This is a crisis situation, that has been unraveling and changing rapidly, and neither candidate is privy to the full, rather complex, information about what is going on. I don't think a crisis should become a political football, which is what McCain is trying to do with it.

McCain is making a fool of himself by the things he saying in response to the current situation. He is being impulsive in his judgments, and is clearly displaying what would be his worst liability as president.
One day McCain says, "the fundamentals of the economy are sound", the next day, he suddenly realizes, about several months, belatedly, that "we are in a crisis". He staunchly advocated deregulation, then did a sudden turnaround this week and began calling for more regulation than even the average Democrat. He said the government should not bail out private corporations, like AIG Insurance, and the next day, after the government gave AIG a hasty $85 billion loan, he sheepishly said the government had to do that and revealed how little he understands about the total picture of the economic situation, or the government's response to it. Then, apparently trying to mimic Palin's style of governing, he announces he would fire the chairman of the SEC. However, it is not even clear that a president has the power to fire an SEC chairman

Quote:

---

McCain, the Republican presidential nominee, Thursday said that if elected, he would ax SEC Chairman Christopher Cox. But though the president nominates the SEC head, and he must be confirmed by the Senate, legal precedent strongly suggests the chief executive can't fire him.

In 1935, for instance, President Roosevelt tried to fire a Federal Trade Commission member. The Supreme Court called the action unjustified and, according to a court summary, "reasoned that the Constitution had never given 'illimitable power of removal' to the president."

McCain's camp contends that at the very least, the president can pressure a member into resigning.

And, it adds, since the president designates the chairman, he can remove him.

---

So, it remains a rather moot legal point whether McCain could even "fire" this person, but why would McCain want to fire him? Bush (who has an MBA degree from Harvard) is not dissatisfied with SEC Chairman Cox, but, if McCain thinks Cox is incompetent, why isn't he attacking Bush for not pressuring Cox to resign?

Obama is displaying the level temperament, and objectivity to realize that the present government has to be allowed to act in this crisis situation--before anyone should continue to lay out plans about what they would do after next January if they were elected president. You first have to see what the present government will do, what the consequences of that will be, and how that will play out and affect the economy.

Quote:

---

Although Obama had promised to unveil his plan to deal with the economic problems, he released a statement saying he was going to delay that until seeing the Fed-Treasury plan. “Given the gravity of this situation, and based on conversations I have had with both Secretary Paulson and Chairman Bernanke, I have asked my economic team to refrain from presenting a more detailed blue-print of how an immediate plan might be structured until the Treasury and the Federal Reserve have had an opportunity to present their proposal.”

---

Obama is the one acting with true executive leadership ability and good judgment, and the one who understands the true gravity of the present situation. He is not impulsively offering quick solutions, to an immediate crisis, that vary from day to day, as McCain has been doing.

In a clear crisis situation, McCain is displaying inconsistency, confusion, impulsivity, and poor judgment. This is an economic crisis, there is no reason to believe he would behave any better in a foreign policy or military crisis. He is revealing that he lacks the abilities of leadership, temperament, and intellectual objectivity, to respond to a crisis--any crisis. Palin is just plain out of it. These two are neither qualified nor fit to hold the reins of leadership of our country. And they are making that very clear to anyone who is paying attention right now.

Understood Wdstk, Jordan and I are familiar with some of his other writings as well from the past, which also are along the same lines as these ones.

Chelsea, when I have a spare hour I will look deeper into your whole post.

BxBarracuda, just listen to the way Obama and McCain each responded this morning, after the Treasury Secretary announced the unprecedented bail-out of the economy.


McCain continued to make it a partisan issue, taking jabs at Obama and talking about cleaning up Washington, and throwing out some quick fixes--his standard stump speech--with little awareness of how grave the immediate economic situation is. Palin did the same. Yesterday, McCain was opposing the massive bail-out the government had to do today, because he did not fully understand the seriousness of the situation--our entire economy was about to collapse. His manner is impulsive and his thinking is inconsistent.

Obama, on the other hand, specifically said this is not the time for partisan bickering, he said both parties had contibuted to the problems we have now, he expressed support for the actions of the Secretary of the Treasury, voiced confidence in the long range stability of the economy, and urged bi-partisan and international cooperation in resolving the grave economic situation. He clearly differentiated between the government's actions of this past week, which are necessary to address our current crisis, and his long range proposals to address the underlying problems which have led to the current crisis. He demonstrated a command of the issues, and a clear understanding of priorities. He called for unity, and not divisiveness.

This morning McCain was still huffing and puffing, throwing out partisan jabs, and saying anything he thought would get him elected. This is not putting your country first--it's acting in your own self interest. Our country is in crisis and McCain simply gives us more campaign slogans and swaggering and more divisiveness. He does little or nothing to inspire confidence, or promote unity, in a time of national crisis.

Obama was calm and confident in manner, thoughtful and knowledgable in his responses and judgments, and he sounded like a mature statesman addressing a crisis of unparalled proportions--he was clearly the more "presidential" in manner and approach. He is an inspiring leader. He would be the one to better lead the country--in any sort of crisis.

I watched Obama's statement with someone who turned to me and said, "I wish he were president right now". So do I.

I have been listening from many sources, and am on the fence as to who to vote for at the moment. I find both to be capable, and both have strong points which will be good for the country.

I have developed my own filter when it comes to listening to candidates and others talk about them.

Funny, do you think Obama hesitated to run his mouth on what he would do to alleviate the current situation because he is second in line to Chris Dodd as far as money given him by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac?

In his nearly four years in the Senate, with a total of 143 working days in the Senate, did Barack Obama propose anything, at all, to deal with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac? Did he lift a finger to address what so many others saw as a huge and looming problem? McCain saw it and McCain supported some legislation on it. Obama says he has experience, he says we should not put down his experience, to do so is racist. He says he's experienced in ways others are not.

He tells us what he's going to do now, and he's pointing a finger of blame at everybody but his circle of political hacks, the people who are responsible for this. I will tell you what Obama did during his 143 days in the Senate while all this was bubbling up and the house of cards was about to crumble. He took money from Freddie Mac. He took contributions from Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. He spent his entire time in the Senate planning his run for president, taking money out of these institutions. And now, chelseabelle, you laud him for keeping his mouth shut? Granted, McCain has gone back and forth on this, but come on, take a look at both sides with at least some semblance of equality. The rest of the the posters on here seem to be doing at least that much and not, as I said before, laying all the blame at the feet of one person or party. The U.S. Government et al does not work like that and if it is, then we have no checks and balances period, no need for a party system at all, and might as well throw in the towel.

CRESCENDO.....

This is the word I can think of which best describes the issues facing the candidates and how they responded.

As we approach election day, the crescendo becomes louder.

This thread may go to 100 pages, for all I know.

I am relatively new here, but wish I started out with you ten years ago.

Because, it is intersting to me to see how people still want to believe in the one person who will lead us best, but I hate to see so many of us be disappointed when all the bickering is over, and we wake up to more problems than we can deal with.

McCain is not as genuine as he tries to project himself, and Obama says all the right things that sound good, but can he deliver?

These are sorry times, times of much despair and neglect.

We are more divided than ever. And yet, there is a sickening silence out there that seems so spooky and sad.

Fact is, McCain is so far removed from the rest of us. His second wife is much better off than most of us. He married well the second time around. What can they possibly do for us who know struggle and hardship?

With Obama I see a different approach. I see one I am willing to gamble on, even if he can't deliver most of his ideas. He says what I see going on.

We aren't the people we once were. Time and tide did change us. Maybe we were changed for the better, but I can't say entirely.

Our culture is far from wholesome, and people all over the world recognize that and take issue with it.

We need, more than ever, a uniter who transcends all divides and heals rather than sows new seeds of hate.

Some of the posts here indicate a hatred for politicians, and that is understandable.

We are, more than ever, far removed from our elected officials who have built for themselves a cozy little world to it's own.

Some things need changing.

I hope and pray we are on a new frontier of building a better future, because the image I see is not clear.

This was once a land of great opportunity, of unlimited ideas and inventions that made life enjoyable and exciting. All our recent inventions and new products aren't cutting it for us. There has to be a way to recapture the glory I once knew, the fresh ideas that sprung up from everywhere...the joy that filled the air and blessed us all...making us proud and standing tall.

I see none of those ideals anymore.

Up pops a Palin lady I can hardly recognize or identify with. She waves and smiles, and I'm supposed to get excited?

Please.

jordandog, Obama did complain about the subprime mortgage crisis, and it's looming effect on the economy in March 2007.
First you point out what a brief time he's had in the Senate, but then you criticize him for not doing more. McCain has been there for almost 3 decades--which of the two men should have done more?
If you think that the past 8 years under Bush, and a Republican Congress for 7 of those years, has been good for our country, you should definitely vote for John McCain.


It is rare that we ever have an actual national crisis occuring in the middle of a presidential election. But, that is what has been happening for at least the past week--the problems in our economy escalated rapidly, prompting unprecedented actions on the part of the government to avert a catastrophy.
We, therefore, have had an opportunity to see how both Obama and McCain deal with crisis--what their leadership is like, what their termperament is like, how well they understand complex issues, what their judgment is like--and this does give some idea of how they would deal with a crisis as president. This week has provided both men with a real audition--to show us how they might behave in a crisis if they became the president.

Let's just consider this past week.

McCain has been extremely inconsistent, first not recognizing the severity of the problem ("the underlying fundamentals of the economy are strong"), then impulsively changing his mind from day to day in terms of his judgments of how he felt things should be handled. He never got a grip on the problem, and his continually changing his mind showed a man clearly floundering. He was also clearly at odds with what the administration was frantically doing this week, by pouring money in the economy, and kept voicing disapproval, again suggesting he did not grasp the severity and magnitude of the problem. He kept offering solutions ("I would fire the Chairman of the SEC") which were completely irrelevant to the acute crisis that was actually going on. And, worst of all, he chose to use a national crisis as a political football, and started blaming Obama for it because he took campaign money from Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae.
McCain never acted like a leader this entire week. He did not display the confident, consistent, thoughtful, informed judgment, and understanding of the issues, one expects from a president. After this week, I wouldn't trust McCain to be Commander-in-Chief of anything.

Obama reacted with calm consistency, and displayed a firm, carefully considered, in-depth grasp of the issues. He expressed confidence in what the administration was currently doing to address the immediate crisis, and urged bi-partisan and global cooperation in resolving the underlying problems. He acknowledged that both parties played a part in creating the current economic crisis. Obama was calling for unity in a crisis, in the best interests of the country, while McCain was still sputtering his reform slogans and doing his divisive partisan war dance.
Obama laid out his broad, long range economic proposals, but wisely pointed out we must first see the effects of the government's current emergency actions. McCain and Palin continued to present themselves as a SWAT team who would storm Washington, guns blazing, and kick butt, with no indication of how they would realistically deal with partisan divides to get anything accomplished, how Washington would suddenly manage without all that cash from lobbyists, nor any real understanding of what the inflationary fall-out might be from the actions the government has just taken, and how that might affect anything they might want to do in office.

In the past week, and most definitely in the past two days, Obama has managed to rise above the partisan bickering--in a time of serious national crisis--and focus on what he felt was important for our country right now--unity. We must all work together to get out of this mess. He did display true leadership ability, and considered judgment and intelligence, of the type one expects in a president, and a statesman, while McCain bounced impulsively from issue to issue, spouting partisan invective, displaying confusion about priorities and his own positions, and a lack of understanding of the gravity of the situation.

We did see, this past week, how these men respond to a national crisis. One of them was presidential, the other was not. You don't need to evaluate Obama and McCain solely in terms of what they are promising--look at how they actually acted and reacted this past week, in terms of leadership ability, during a time of national crisis. Which one inspires more confidence?

Jordandog,

"Obama says he has experience, he says we should not put down his experience, to do so is racist."

Could you provide some examples of when Obama made this statement?

If you're truly upset that Obama took money and more money and even more money from Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae then you must be equally upset that McCain's campaign manager, Rick Davis was paid by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac several hundred thousand dollars early in this decade lobbying for said companies.

This from a Fact Check:
The McCain campaign is clearly exaggerating wildly in attempting to depict Franklin Raines as a close adviser to Obama on "housing and mortgage policy." If we are to believe Raines, he did have a couple of telephone conversations with someone in the Obama campaign. But that hardly makes him an adviser to the candidate himself -- and certainly not in the way depicted in the McCain video release.

Source: http://voices.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/2008/09/obamas_fannie_mae_connection.html

Seattle Post-Intelligencer

McCain feeds America a junk food diet with Palin choice
September 19, 2008

By STEVEN L. KATZ
GUEST COLUMNIST

John McCain has put himself and the nation on a strict diet of political junk food by choosing Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as the Republican vice presidential candidate.

While the national media and Internet are freely dispensing all the political junk food about Sarah Palin as fast as they can, many voters including those who were considering voting for John McCain can't stomach it. Can you?

Here it is in one large spoonful.

Small-town white-female mayor who bullies librarians and museum directors, lobbies Washington to obtain federal funds and claims that she is against "pork barrel politics," is elected governor of the state with one of the smallest populations in the country, so small that she can afford to work from home for most of the year and charge the taxpayers for working from home as a "duty-station," lives closer to the melting Arctic ice caps than any other governor in the country but does not believe in global warming, cracks the whip in dog-sled races and in retaliation towards state officials who she thinks have wronged her family, and turns otherwise right-wing fundamentalist social vices into Republican political virtues.

What does it sound like when people can't stomach McCain's political junk food diet? "Shame on John McCain for choosing Palin as his running mate." This is just one of the more common, and most disgusted of voter reactions to be heard, and which the media does not report on.

Who are these voters? They include Republicans, independents and Democrats.

Why doesn't the media cover these voter reactions? For one, they are too busy photographing gleeful elderly white women cheering for Sarah Palin as if they had successfully photographed a species of wildlife long considered extinct.

The real reason, however, is that these voters no longer fit into a neat box of supporting Obama or McCain. They do not easily fit into the other available categories of "undecided" or "swing voters." In fact, they may not vote at all -- and that makes the real untold story of John McCain's campaign different than reports of how he discovered a "chick magnet" to resuscitate his dying presidential aspirations.

When McCain loses, reporters will swarm all over the real story, and it is how he alienated so many voters who were hoping that McCain was a serious leader and not just applying his self-acclaimed political maverick mentality on the voters.

"Shame on John McCain" also evokes such a strong feeling not just because people can't stomach McCain's choice of Palin, but because John McCain repeatedly reveals a number of disappointing similarities to outgoing President Bush. It is not just the use of campaign tactics to win the presidency at any costs.

It is McCain's and Bush's ultra-thin skinned reaction when anyone in the public or the media criticizes their most obvious seriously bad choices and decisions, and the parallel stubborn trait of failing to see and acknowledge reality as others see it. You have probably seen McCain in action -- insulting his opponents because he is insulted by criticisms of Palin and her combination of personal dramas, false declarations, actions as a public official and overall lack of qualifications for serving as vice president let alone to step in as president.

Yet it is McCain's inability to see clearly the nation's economic woes that should trouble America the most. Sounding a lot like his former Senate colleague and economic advisor, Phil Gramm, who denied the existence of a recession and called America a country of whiners, McCain persistently claimed that the American economy was sound when every real soccer and hockey mom is worried sick about money. Suddenly, he's declared that America is in a crisis.

Maybe it is McCain's diet of political junk food that he and his entire campaign is consuming that has made him so cranky and desperate. Sens. Barack Obama and Joe Biden can contribute leadership, statesmanship, understanding and intelligence. That is the substantive diet the nation needs.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Email Steven L. Katz, counsel to former U.S. Sen. John Glenn, D-Ohio: katz@liontaming.com

© 1998-2008 Seattle Post-Intelligencer

Speaking from my perspective as an Alaskan and my broader perspective as someone who has lived in differing areas of the United States and abroad for 3 years, it is totally outrageous that McCain lawyer Edwin O'Callaghan and a host of McCain's lawyers have descended on Alaska to politicize and squash the Troopergate scandal into Sarah Palin's abuse of power. Shame on you John McCain!

It is totally outrageous that the Palin-appointed Attorney General Talis Colberg has advised state employees and Tod Palin to not comply with subpoenas issued by a bipartisan Alaska Senate Judiciary committee who unanimously voted that there was enough evidence to warrant an investigation into abuse of power by Sarah Palin. Shame on you Talis Colberg!

It is totally outrageous that Sarah Palin, who repeatedly stated that she had nothing to hide and would welcome and cooperate with the investigation, now apparently does have something to hide and will not cooperate at all. It is outrageous that she has changed her story as to why she had a subordinate fire a well-respected Commissioner of Public safety at least three times. Shame on you Sarah Palin!

America, is there any believable reason that Sarah Palin is exempt from having to answer critical questions from the press about her experience, her ethics, and her beliefs before we have to make a decision about who would best serve the country when we vote on November 4?

I tend to be someone who rarely gets upset, but the lies and hypocrisy surrounding the entire matter has me livid. That McCain picked such an unqualified, intellectually uncurious, dogmatically dangerous running mate to help him shore up his credentials among the Republican far right speaks volumes about him. I liked John McCain far better in 2000, before he sold his soul for a chance to win the Presidency and before he let winning an election be more important than what's best for the country. Country first? What an incredibly bad joke.

All well and good. I could use up all the bandwidth on this site on the many sins and generally Stalinist tendencies of the Cook County Democratic Organization. So in the end I guess it's which hurt and anger one wishes to clutch to their breast while they angrily cast their vote for the opposition. For my part, I find the choices given in this particular election to be especially abysmal. Still, like a good citizen I will vote for someone this November. You can rest assured it will not be for Barack Hussein Obama and Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. If I can't summon up the effort to vote for the Republican ticket, we do have some third party options in this country. Please no lectures about "wasting" my vote.

As someone who will vote for Obama (whether his middle name is Hussein or not), but at the same time as someone who isn't a Democratic zealot, I have to give Obama credit for at least being willing to talk to the press and to answer questions over this too-long election period. This has allowed voters to make up their mind about whether he would do a good job as President. McCain and Biden too have been accessible to the press. And whereas I don't have Obama fever and think he (or anyone) has all the answers for the complex issues that face our country, I at least think he has the intellectual capacity that will take our country in a different direction than the mess that the last 8 years have been.

I don't think McCain will. And Sarah Palin is essentially a dumber but more telegenic George W. Bush. The McCain team is essentially the Bush team, no matter how they may try to disguise themselves otherwise, from their speechwriters to their economic advisers to the people behind the scenes. They are all the same people, hardly supporting the contention of McCain as a maverick or someone trying to shake up the system.

I'm not entirely convinced that Obama will be a good President, but I hope he will be and it wouldn't shock me if he turned out to be a great President, one who draws people together instead of apart. I'm fairly convinced that McCain won't be a good President and it would surprise me if he were. You may feel differently and that's the beauty of democracy, where we can respectfully disagree with each other.

Paul, since I live in Alaska, I could be easily lectured about wasting MY vote, if the polls are correct. Darn electoral college! What I would ask people to note, though, in examining Alaska polls in the Obama/Biden vs. McCain/Palin contest, that the heavily Republican state of Alaska has the McCain/Palin ticket only leading by 57% to 35%.

The point of note is that 57% is far lower than the inflated approval ratings that have been attributed to our Governor that are usually quoted at 80% or higher. I've realized for a long time that Palin's approval ratings are considerably less than what's been quoted, despite her handing out free money instead of putting money into education, healthcare, developing alternative energy for the future and infrastructure. I've seen polls where most (over 70%)of Alaskans think Palin has been lying about the Troopergate investigation, and that's hardly good for one's approval ratings.

The Seattle Times
Sunday, September 21, 2008

Barack Obama for president

An economic Katrina is shattering the confidence of hardworking, middle-class Americans. The war that should never have been in Iraq is dragging on too long. At a time of huge challenge, the candidate with the intelligence, temperament and judgment to lead our nation to a better place is Sen. Barack Obama.

Obama should be the next president of the United States because he is the most qualified change agent. Obama is a little young, but also brilliant. If he sometimes seems brainy and professorial, that's OK. We need the leader of the free world to think things through, carefully. We have seen the sorry results of shooting from the hip.

As our country lurches from one financial or energy crisis to the next, American taxpayers remain burdened with the cost of the war in Iraq and Afghanistan — to the tune of $12 billion a month.

Consider the banking and financial morass. Neither Obama nor his opponent, Sen. John McCain, offers a perfect solution. But McCain is all over the map, veering from statements such as "The fundamentals of our economy are strong" to the more obvious "Wall Street is threatened by greed."

McCain is at heart a deregulator. But it is the hands-off and ineffective federal regulatory system that allowed this mess to fester. Obama offered a more coherent approach months ago when he called for regulating investment banks, mortgage brokers and hedge funds and streamlining overlapping regulatory agencies.

Our country is on the wrong track. Average, middle-class citizens have lost confidence that if they work hard, they can improve their lives, afford to send their kids to college and not be tossed out of their homes.

American optimism has been wracked by President George Bush and a previous Republican Congress. If you want change, you do not keep what is essentially the same team in power. You try something different. You vote for the stronger matchup, Obama and Sen. Joseph Biden, a smart and steady hand on foreign policy and other matters.

On the issues:

• The economy: The Good Ship America is listing in turbulent waters. Sinking mortgage and banking institutions are wreaking havoc at home and abroad. The problem is in the private sector, but it has been made worse by a federal policy favoring big corporations. The Bush administration has not regulated these companies effectively or done what it takes to curb their wants.

Obama understands this better than McCain and makes clear he would do more to correct it. Obama's assistance to the middle class in the form of tax cuts and college-tuition breaks is a centerpiece of his campaign.

• Energy: The energy crisis is zapping our economic well-being. What does McCain want to do? "Drill, baby, drill," to quote the mindless chant at the Republican National Convention. That is not an energy policy. It is a cheap, shortsighted slogan.

Obama has a coherent plan that includes some drilling, as a stopgap, but he looks to a mix of renewable resources. He is more likely to move America off its dependence on foreign oil. McCain has been in office for 26 years and done little to change this dynamic.

• The Iraq war: Many Americans will cast their vote on this one issue alone. Past performance is the best indicator of future conduct. Obama opposed the war, McCain supported it full-bore. Obama has a plan for moving the troops out; McCain seeks "victory," whatever that actually means. The net effect will be more time and money wasted in a country that did not participate in 9/11.

Afghanistan harbors the key culprits, and the situation there is worse than it has been in eight years. Afghanistan is where our bigger effort should be, as Obama has articulated.

• Education: Obama is more practical than ideological on education. He wants merit pay for good teachers and extra training or firing for lousy ones. He wants to double federal funding for charter schools, but not in a way that cuts into the heart of public schools. Obama recently gave a major speech on education. McCain is too low-key on an important issue.

On numerous other issues, from media consolidation to health care, Obama has the stronger take. He makes up for a thin résumé with integrity, judgment and fresh ideas. Obama can get America moving forward again.

Copyright © 2008 The Seattle Times Company

Strnog, The way in which you describe the incident involving Palin is very similiar to how those around Elliot Spitzer, former New York Governor, handled things in regards to a State Trooper situation. Allthough this one was having the troopers illegally spy on a political rival. The trooper incident was not what got him eventually got him to resign either, it was the prostitute scandal which did that.

They are handling the situtation in a typically political manner.

The issues with Obama aren't what he says he will do. He does have a way of saying the right things, sometimes to the point of double-talking. It is what he will do, and what he will be capable of doing while president.

Does he have what it takes to get the other politicians, even within his own party, behind him with his most important ideas?

Can he get these ideas pushed through while being corrupted the least.

Every good idea in politics always has those elements which get corrupted. Only by working heavily within that system can one learn to weave ones way through that system, and have their ideas come out as intact as possible.

"jordandog, Obama did complain about the subprime mortgage crisis, and it's looming effect on the economy in March 2007."
Yes, he did, but what about the Senate Bill McCain helped draft and signed onto in 2005 regarding this? Granted, it did not pass, but it still existed, yes? I don't think it took a rocket scientist to realize this in March of 2007, when the average American like myself was well aware of it simply by paying attention to what was going, when it was going on, and who was behind it.

It seems that much of what Obama has said he will do has just been put on the back burner, so to speak. It doesn't really surprise me to see this, I assumed he would have to eventually admit this with all we have going on as far as monies being put into the bailout situation.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080923/ap_on_el_pr/obama


"Obama can get America moving forward again."
Possibly, hopefully, but will he be another 'lets move forward, but let's not take the time necessary to clean up the mess already there'?

Do you honestly see his program for tax cuts being instituted when we, the taxpayers, have just been footed with another huge bill? A lot has been previously sighted in this forum as to the differences betwen McCain and Obama's approach to the current crisis. Now though, both Obama and McCain have said "the government's plan to lend AIG $85 billion was regrettable but necessary."

This entire thread seems to have been turned into a cheerleading session for Obama and Democrats, for the most part. I have attempted, unsuccessfully, to try and balance out some of this and look at both sides. It's pretty difficult when article after article is thrown out there. I do tend to read things from many different sources because I absolutely refuse to fall under the panderings of one group and one group only. I'm not about to jump on the *Obama is the new Messiah of the American people* anymore than I will sit here and doggedly defend McCain and the Republican Party et al. One thing this discussion has done is to reinforce my opinion that though many like to think they are the fresh voices of reason, they are still bogged down in the quagmire of it's our way or the highway.

I am still sitting on a very wobbly fence as far as the whole situation goes. In all my years of voting, I cannot come even remotely close to remembering such a feeling of despair as I have right now....

(edited to correct typo)

In reference to the "handing out free money" thing, with Palin.

I live in Alberta, the Canadian province that is probably closest in nature to Alaska - thinly populated, lots of resource money, strong right wing feeling in the population. We've also had some cash handed out by government, in good years.

This has been pretty popular with the general population, people who don't really think about government or policy much. However, among those who are interested and knowledgeable about public policy, it's regarded as little more than a cynical vote-grab - paying for our votes with our own money.

This goes right across the political spectrum - both right wing and left wing think it's a stupid idea. The main reason is that it is hugely expensive. In Alberta's case, the last cheques cost almost as much to process as they did to pay - that is, working out who was eligible, making out the cheques, and mailing them, cost almost as much money as was actually paid out. Depending on where you stood politically, you would have a different idea about what the money should be used for - tax cuts, put into a savings trust for when resources run out, put into government programs - but it's unanimous that handing out free money is a very inefficient use of public resources. A classic example of doing what is best for your own political career, rather than what is best for the country.

By the way, it's a little amusing to see the American Democrats equated with Socialism. From any wider-world viewpoint, the Democrats are still pretty much right of centre.

I think I can safely say that the center in the USA is to the right of most of the countries I've lived in or visited in my travels. And Socialist, perhaps I'd say that there's a tiny resemblance to countries that actually have socialized medicine and other things operating, but I always do a double take whenever I read "stalinist" in conjunction with anything the Democrats or whatever the definition for the American Left to Center is for the person using this term.
Indeed, the only time I really read this term is while perusing the conservative websites or documents to get an impression of how people think. I suppose folks like Rush all the way to the right are bandying this term about to scare people into equating government interference with a Stalinist regime.

The dictionary definition of Stalinist being "The bureaucratic, authoritarian exercise of state power and mechanistic application of Marxist-Leninist principles associated with Stalin." I just find that doesn't do it for me by any stretch of the imagination. I mean that the 'left' or the 'MSM' (Mainstream Media, another term used by some commentators for just about any main TV or newspaper commentator) is Stalinist?
The USA has always had so much autonomy amongst the states that I can't imagine any federal govt taking that away or truly chipping away and eroding it substantially. I mean, do we realize in the USA, how little the federal govt actually intervenes in our lives? Compared to others, it's a picnic getting along with your life without constant federal reminders. Seems to me that STate and local government regulate more in that respect.

Most of the Americans I know, regardless of their political affiliation, would be content to have govt 'interference' when it mattered and was necessary and have them butt out when they didn't need more laws. Most of us are happy to be able to have law enforcement protecting us when we call them, and not breathing down our necks when we don't call.

STalinism to me is the 'personality cult' thing and you could safely say that most any politician has this...not just Obama. It all depends on whether you agree with what that person does with his or her charisma. I guess McCain isn't really charismatic in that respect, but Bill Clinton, Obama, Palin in some respects, and a few others come to mind.
I suppose, and this is a stretch, that George W. Bush gained some strength from the obvious crisis and how he dealt with it. I guess I'm going to go on a limb and call that charisma. People sure placed their trust in him, and, he managed to manipulate plenty of folks into 'with us or against us' in terms of war.

So the whole political spectrum in the USA is very conservative compared to other countries. You almost have to put it through a left right converter! Some find Sarkozy almost a facist in political life as he says things out loud that no one else says, and yet, by American standards he'd be to the left of center.

If by the term Stalinist people mean government interference in every pie and a Big Brotheresque government, then, I think that Democrats also fear that. But look at what we had during the Bush presidency...wire tapping, all kinds of stuff.

Connecting the term Stalinist to Obama or journalists on TV or online just doesn't seem apt to me. Unless you happen to know of some real connection. Whenever I hear someone say this, I think they're trying to evoke massacres of innocent people somehow. It's rather distracting and not terribly amusing.

I'm not saying it to anyone in particular here as everyone is civil, but I'm just saying that the main place you hear it or read it is on the right wing commentators blogs etc but without any substantiating of that claim.

"Connecting the term Stalinist to Obama"

I don't know if that or Agony's comments were directed at anything I have said, Heather, but I don't believe I have ever referred to Obama and/or Democrats as being 'Stalinist' or equated them with 'Socialism'. It is not something that I even consider and would not use either term in describing them.