Political Landscape: November 2008 Archives

George W. Bush really loves us. He's working hard with his administration to leave all of us parting gifts. For the environmentalists, he's working to water down regulations that protect endangered animals. For parents, caregivers and, well, people who need to take time off to care for themselves, he's making it harder for us to use the Family and Medical Leave Act.

One of the more reported regulation changes Bush hopes to gift us with is one that "would allow providers, based on their personal biases, to withhold both services and the critical information women need to make fully informed decisions about their health care." Yes, this is targeted towards anti-choice medical providers who don't want to give women all the information they need to make choices or even provide them with those choices. From birth control to reproductive technology, the rules can have a huge effect on the women of this country.

It's Hillary to the rescue!

Despite what critics may say, Senator Clinton has been quite the advocate for women's reproductive health. And while most of the media and blogosphere has been working overtime pondering whether or not she would be a good secretary of state or if Bill can keep his business clean, no one has said much about why she should stay put in the Senate.

Along with Senator Murray, Clinton has introduced legislation that would block the pending Bush regulations. This citeisn't the pair's first time defending women's reproductive rights.

Clinton and Murray are long-time champions of women's health; by holding up Andrew von Eschenbach's confirmation as permanent FDA commissioner, the pair forced the FDA to approve emergency contraception for over-the-counter access.

Amie Newman of RH Reality Check responded to my question if it is best for women if Clinton takes the secretary of state position, "In my opinion, I think we'd be losing someone who has clearly established herself as a leader on sexuality and reproductive health rights issues -- not just a willing advocate but a true leader." Obviously Clinton and Murray are not the only pro-choice senators we have, but they are clearly our pro-choice leaders. Would anyone have Murray's back if Clinton were to leave to put out fires around the world?

On the other hand, perhaps as secretary of state, Clinton will work with President-elect Obama to restore our funding to the UNFPA, ensure that girls attending school in Afghanistan is a priority to our success in rebuilding, our women troops don't have to travel from Iraq to New York to obtain abortions, and that women and girls will never be used as an excuse for an unjust war again.

Maybe our loss will be the world's gain.

[Image: poster by Tony Puryear, via The Swamp]

The vetting of the new Treasury Secretary is taking place in the gladiatorial fundament that is the media chattering classes even before an actual name has been offered up for our consumption. Floating around the ethers and the blogosphere are names like New jersey Governor John Corzine, former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volker and Tim Geithner. The present economic crisis -- which may be as bad as The Great Depression, if conventional wisdom holds -- has thrown an unusually bright spotlight on who mans (or "womans") the Treasury desk.

Larry Summers, who was treasury secretary under Clinton and a former Harvard president, has emerged as the frontrunner. This event has reopened the wounds of his feud with Cornel West, in which Summers questioned the validity of the hip-hop professor's academic work, culminating in the African-American scholar very publicly leaving Harvard for Princeton.

Stanley Fish, in this week's NYTimes Op-Ed, writes:

It was perfectly O.K. for Summers to be concerned that even high-profile faculty members fulfill their pedagogical and research responsibilities. It was not O.K. -- it was clumsy and ham-fisted -- to call Cornel West on the carpet and interrogate him in a way that led West to go to the press, which then broadcast a story that then led to a public melodrama (complete with protests, campaigns, threatened resignations and divisions among the faculty) that ended with West going to Princeton and taking with him the superstar philosopher Kwame Anthony Appiah.

After Summers left the presidency of Harvard, Professor West, in a parting shot in The Boston Globe, said of his replacement, Shirley Tilghman, "'I think she'll be much more open than Brother Summers,' he says.'The hip-hop scared him. It's a stereotypical reaction.'"

On Wednesday's Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC, West let bygones be bygones about their spat. West forgave Summers on the air for creating conditions that led to his leaving Harvard. But the Princeton professor also aired his skepticism that the former Harvard president -- or even former Clinton appointee Robert Rubin -- would be the best man at Treasury, despite the sense of continuity in this time of trouble. "My critique of Brother Summers would ... be more political and ideological than personal," said West. "It was precisely brother Summers who called for deregulations (in the '90s, which led to the present crisis) ... We need (people like) Joseph Stiglitz ... of course we need markets but they must be regulated so that they do not allow greed to surface ... Why recycle (the Clintonites) now?"

Would the restorative sense of calm and continuity that a former Treasury Secretary can bring to Wall Street and the world's financial centers be a wise idea in an Obama administration? Or would it be, as West argues, recycling the architects of the problem.

[Image: MarcLamontHill]

Many questions have to be settled before Barack Obama is sworn into office in January and one of them is which school the girls, aka "WeeMichelles," will attend. As the mom of a school-aged child in a big city (Chicago) I feel their pain... I feel it because I'm still aching from last year's school application process.

The smart money is on a private school because the WeeMichelles go to one now. I can't recall if this moment happened when I was in a session interviewing Obama about his senate run or saw it on TV, heck maybe both, but President-elect Obama did remind us that Michelle got a deal at the Lab School since it is run by the University of Chicago, where she works. If that's true, I'd want my daughter in that school too. Why? Because it is one of the top schools in the city and getting a discount at a private school would make it worth it.

Then again, last year when my husband and I were applying for schools for our daughter, we applied to only one private, aka independent, school. We wanted a school that was diverse in many ways, and while that one wasn't racially diverse, we were comfortable with the administration.

So to all the school watchers, who knows, Michelle might walk into an elite school and just feel at home. Maybe chills will run up her spine and she'll sprint to the neighborhood school. When choosing a school for your children, private, public, charter, whatever, you do a heck of a lot of research, you go on tour after tour, and it sometimes comes down to your gut.

Should the Obamas choose a public school for the sake of it being a public school? Should they at least tour a few public schools? Will you think that they don't support public schools if they go with a private?

[Image: Seattle Post-Intelligencer]

If you didn't know who will.i.am was when the year started, you'd have to be living deep inside a cave not to know who he is now. He only created the most-viewed Election-related clip on YouTube, featuring several of Generation O's biggest icons: Scarlett Johannson, John Legend, Common... the list goes on and on. Indeed, it wouldn't be too much of a stretch to say that his video had a huge impact on this election, inspiring record numbers of young Americans to vote.

Now he's back, celebrating that victory with a new tune for a new day. "It's a New Day" went up last Saturday and has so far garnered nearly a quarter-million hits. The spot might not match his earlier success, but for will.i.am, that's no reason not to celebrate with song.

Yesterday morning and afternoon, 100,000 copies of a special edition of the New York Times were distributed throughout New York City, and 1.2 million were reportedly dispersed around the country.

Obviously, it was a hoax. The paper, dated July 4th, 2009, was produced by the Yes Men and a number of other organizations and individuals to do what they do best: shake things up and get some attention from the powers that be, and that might be able to make the "fake" news -- such as the creation of a new economic plan for a "sane" economy -- a reality.

Video by: Max Joseph, Chris Weller



What could be more important than the election? What the next president actually does once elected. While a feverish media dissects Palin's wardrobe and plumbs "Joe's" biography, real challenges for America are piling up. Domestic struggles over marriage and abortion rights will define who we are, and our response to global conflicts and crises will determine our place in a new century. The end of the campaigning is just the beginning.
 An original GOOD Video.

It's a new day.

There will be a new spirit and a new sense of purpose throughout this country (not just at KCP) this morning.

We have a billboard that posted on the Westside Highway this morning that says:

"A PRECEDENT WE CAN BE PROUD OF.
-KENNETH COLE
CONGRATULATIONS BARACK OBAMA."

I received this list of "what if" scenarios swapping the biographical details of Barack Obama and Joe Biden with those of John McCain and Sarah Palin from an old acquaintance, who spotted it over the weekend on the comment board for an online Colorado Springs newspaper.

Unfortunately, I don't have the original link, but it's worth a read. The lack of editorializing makes it especially compelling. It's "just the facts, ma'am."

Obama/Biden vs McCain/Palin, what if things were switched around? Would the country's collective point of view be different?

Ponder the following:

What if the Obamas had paraded five children across the stage, including a three month old infant and an unwed, pregnant teenage daughter?

What if John McCain was a former president of the Harvard Law Review?

What if Barack Obama finished fifth from the bottom of his graduating class?

What if McCain had only married once, and Obama was a divorcee?

What if Obama was the candidate who left his first wife after a severe disfiguring car accident, when she no longer measured up to his standards?

What if Obama had met his second wife in a bar and had a long affair while he was still married?

What if Michelle Obama was the wife who not only became addicted to pain killers but also acquired them illegally through her charitable organization?

What if Cindy McCain graduated from Harvard?

What if Obama had been a member of the Keating Five? (The Keating Five were five United States Senators accused of corruption in 1989, igniting a major political scandal as part of the larger Savings and Loan crisis of the late 1980s and early 1990s.)

What if McCain was a charismatic, eloquent speaker?

What if Obama couldn't read from a teleprompter?

What if Obama was the one who had military experience that included discipline problems and a record of crashing seven planes?

What if Obama was the one who was known to display publicly, on many occasions, a serious anger management problem?

What if Michelle Obama's family had made their money from beer distribution?

What if the Obamas had adopted a white child?

You could easily add to this list. If these questions reflected reality, do you really believe the election numbers would be as close as they are?

This is what racism does. It covers up, rationalizes and minimizes positive qualities in one candidate and emphasizes negative qualities in another when there is a color difference.

I did not attend the Obama rally in Frederickburg, Virginia in order to get this shot. Although I am an event photographer here, this wasn't a photography gig. My family wanted to hear Senator Obama and Senator Biden speak.  

The four of us -- me, my wife, 15-year-old Taylor, and 13-year-old Hunter -- lined up with thousands of others at about noon in order to enter at 3PM with the hope of getting a good seat. The crowd was overwhelming and the mood palpably positive. Over 26,000 people turned up in a town with a total population of only about 21,000. I gave up the idea of getting any decent shots of the senator about the time we found ourselves wedged mid-way in the throng. When the first downpour began at 5:30 pm, I covered my camera with plastic and hoped to get a semi-decent souvenir shot. It temporarily stopped raining when Senator Biden took the podium at about 7 pm. Senator Obama sat close by on a stool, listening intently to his running mate.  

On a wish and a prayer, I lofted my Nikon D300 as far over the heads of the thousands in front of me as I could and snapped.  

The resulting picture reveals everything I have come to appreciate in Senator Obama: poise, strength, compassion, and hope. He is surrounded by supporters of all ages, races, and backgrounds who had also waited for hours in heat and rain. Clearly nobody minded the wait or the weather. My family and I felt as if we were part of an important historic moment -- something infinitely bigger than ourselves, a sentiment I believe Barack Obama shares.

We're raised to expect a certain degree of fairness and integrity among those who watch over us -- first our parents, then our teachers, and finally, those who maintain the systems that keep society running. Because we, as adults, tend to share that final role, we hope that each of us will take the role seriously when it's our turn to perform. Whether you're a cop, a lawyer, a bartender or a CEO, you have the power sometimes.

And on election day, it's the people running the polls who hold the reigns, from accounting for each of the ballots cast to counting the Chad. The latter is what caused all the frenzy back in 2000, when Florida screwed up the tallying process and, according to some, cost Gore the election.

Last Wednesday, the New York Times published a piece about rumors circulating in Jacksonville, Florida, where many black voters have already cast their votes for Barack Obama to avoid a similar mess in 2008, that a conspiracy was in place to "lose" early ballots in an effort to further disenfranchise black voters.

The scam has been denied by the citizens who run the polls, like the librarian at the library where one black resident voted last weekend, but it's not so far-fetched to be just a crackpot conspiracy theory. History's taught us that.

And as much as we hate to distrust those kindly souls, everyday folks we know from the neighborhood, it's not such a bad idea to be leery of anyone in power on election day.

So who will watch the watchmen?

In the age of New Media, anyone who wants to, thanks to cheap digital cameras, editing software and YouTube.

Video the Vote, which began in 2006, asks citizen journalists to document their voting experiences and polling places. In its first year 1,300 amateur and professional videographers responded, and hundreds more have submitted videos since.

Started by filmmakers Ian Inaba (GNN.tv) and John Ennis (Shoot First, Inc.) and online organizer James Rucker (ColorOfChange.org), Video the Vote will be in full swing Tuesday, when even more people are likely to document their experience and, potentially, provide necessary proof in the event of another Florida fiasco.

"The [founders] originally envisioned a platform for organizing independent filmmakers on Election Day 2006, but the idea quickly morphed into a populist program that brought together citizen journalists of all experience levels to document the election in their communities," Video the Vote COO Daniel Souweine told The Independent.

Souweine says they have 2,600 volunteers now, but they want more -- particularly in swing states where results could be hotly contested in the days following the election.

After Tuesday, Souweine says they plan to cut thematic pieces about the major problems that arise and use them to educate the public and policymakers about the need for election reform. "We think video can play an important role in telling the story of the changes that need to be made in our election system," he told The Independent. "While the bulk of our volunteers are active on Election Day, Video the Vote is part of a coalition of groups working year-round to make improvements to our democracy. We want to put ourselves out of business; in an ideal world, there wouldn't be a need for a project like this in the first place."