I like McCain.

Okay, I know this post is two years old. Sorry I haven't gotten around to it sooner. But there are a lot of reasons why I thought, two years ago, I could stomach McCain. Before Obama came around, I thought, of all the Republicans out there, I, a life-time Socialist-Democrat, could perhaps vote for McCain. He was more against the war than Bush. His stance on immigration and the environment were palatable. (It's hard to remember how much higher the standards have risen with the rise of Obama.) But most of all, because of his background, his stance on torture was actually right, and not in pursuit of crimes against humanity as the Bush regime desires.

Which is why I get exceptionally angry at the recent rise in accusations of flip-flopping directed towards Obama. Many of us remember how we once (relatively) liked McCain, if there were no other options. Many of us have been astonished at how very much he has reversed his positions, and, I say this with no political gloss, truly become a clone of George Bush. I today see really no difference between the two- except that McCain hasn't actually done the sins of Bush. Which I suppose is marginally better- that you only want to commit the sins, but haven't yet done so.

For the alternative, we have Obama, who has begun to move towards the center, as you do in any general election, but it is more glaringly obvious because of this super-long primary season this year. Yes, my left-wing bleeding-heart self is disappointed at these moves toward the center, but in truth, they are quite minor. Fox and other Republican establishments are all over the airwaves now, declaring that Obama is now calling for a responsible and gradual withdrawal, instead of an immediate one. They seem to have forgotten all of Obama's debates, where he said he would immediately begin withdrawing, but we should be as careful getting out as we were careless getting in. I remember. I remember thinking, I wish he would just withdraw everyone immediately, but I understand how that isn't possible to say, if you want to be elected President. I understand that I could never be elected.

Saddest of all, the Republicans may be able to sway the American consciousness, stricken as it is with Short-Term Memory Syndrome. They woke up and realized their candidate was flip-flopping all over the place, and decided in Rovian style that they had to immediately accuse their opponent, en masse, of the sins of their candidate. But truth has never been an impediment to these ideologues. They fear the light, for they do not understand it, but they are intimately familiar with the ways of darkness.

Beholden to No One

Everywhere today people are talking about Obama withdrawing from the public financing system. Let's just put the cards on the table right off the bat. Yes, he broke his word, and yes, that's disappointing. He should just admit that. He did say that he would accept public financing, and rigorously pursue this with the Republican candidate.

But it would have been political suicide to accept public financing. Whereas he has raised vast amount more than McCain, and Obama and Clinton together more than double McCain, the RNC has a war chest about 10 times larger than that of the DNC. And the National Committees have no limits on what they can raise and put into the national campaigns. And yes, so far, the only outside groups who have supported candidates have been Democratic ones, most notably MoveOn.org. Does anyone beyond poddy training seriously believe the Republican outside groups aren't far behind?

We seem to be in such great pursuit of the letter of the law that we have forgotten the spirit. Why do we support public financing? For finance reform. And why do we support finance reform? Because we want everything given in Presidential campaigns to be completely honest and ethical. Obama is the only candidate who has refused all money from PACs and lobbyists, insisting on small donations only. Through that method, he has raised more money than any candidate in history. This means he is beholden to no one, and no special interests will control him when he is President- unlike McCain. Which after all was the original purpose behind campaign finance reform. Yes, Obama went back on his word- because he found a better way to be ethical about financial support.

Oh, and thank you Obama, for insisting on only money from those supporting your campaign, rather than from taxpayers in general. I wish the Republicans would get on board with reducing unfair tax burdens, but then, that's why I'm a Democrat.

Why should I be proud of this country?

Cindy McCain has recently started a smack-down on Michelle Obama, over Michelle's words, months earlier:

...for the first time in my adult lifetime I am really proud of my country. And
not just because Barack has done well, but because I think people are hungry
for change.”

I am so tired of the same old politics. Why can't the media look at the meat of the issues? Since they won't, let's break it down.

Michelle at no time said she was proud of her country for the first time. Let's just get it out there- Cindy and others are lying, and knowingly. Michelle said for the first time, she was really proud. Anyone who has a basic knowledge of English understands that this implies that the speaker has been proud in the past, but is now extra proud.

Why was she proud? Not for a self-serving reason, but because, for the first time in her adult life, there is a move to change the status quo, to shift our paradigms, to do something new. I echo this. For the first time in my life, since I didn't live in the 60s, I'm seeing this too. And this is really what the media should be focusing on- that Michelle was pointing out a sea change in the way we do politics. Instead, sadly they chose to focus on the lowest common denominator, and rallied around the Fox flag.

Let us go deeper. I think it is great that our country is ready for change. But what is the problem with pointing out that there are reasons to lack pride in one's country? When did that become an evil? How can we grow unless we recognize our faults? Though Michelle didn't say this, she would not have been at fault to say, "For the first time, I'm proud of my country." There is nothing wrong with saying you are not proud of your country; that your country makes mistakes. Just as with individuals, it is a sign of maturity if you can recognize errors, and work to change them.

Deeper still. How is it even okay to be proud of your country? Here I go beyond what Michelle is capable of, for I recognize that the candidate and his family have to be patriotic, if they're to be elected. But for the rest of us, has everyone forgotten how often patriotism leads to war? Patriotism inherently entails putting my country first, saying my country is better than others just because it's my country. And this always leads to forcing other countries to see it your way. And for those who are Christians, patriotism is idolatry.

And this brings us to the deepest level. Why Michelle was wrong in her statement. This mass forgetfulness in our nation, where we no longer remember that pride is a bad thing. Sure, being proud in another is something different. But pride is one of the seven deadly sins, if the most overlooked one. It does come before the fall. Pride is where I focus on myself, or my group, rather than God, or others. I start to think I am great, and too great, when I am proud. To extend that to my group is precisely that- extending the boundaries of my own ego. And to Michelle's credit, the rest of her statement indicates that she's not supporting her own ego- rather, she's proud of what others are doing, and bolstering them up. Which leaves me with only one thing wrong with Michelle's statement- a grammatical error in the use of the word "pride". Which surely isn't the biggest issue of this campaign?

Have you chosen your VP yet? I have.

Now you can participate! New site, along the lines of March Madness but more fun, lets you pick from groups of two your pick for VP, and then advances on preselected dates based on popularity of participants. Totally unscientific, but interesting. Visit VP Madness. A corollary to my polls on the Left.

Why, Obama? Why?

Why didn't you listen to me, Barack? I said there was a reason I soured on Hillary. I liked her initially. I was hoping she'd be President. But then she went and heavily courted the Israeli vote in order to win the New York Senate seat. She even apologized for greeting Arafat's wife in the traditional manner. I was disgusted by such racism, and so decided at that point long ago to not support her. She could have advocated a neutral position on Israel and Palestine, continuing to be an honest broker, and able to argue that both sides need to be defended and supported. There are plenty of Arabs and Muslims in New York City as well. But she didn't do this. She went way over to the extreme, like nearly every other American politician.

Now, today, Obama, you started down the same slippery slope. I didn't even fully have a chance to get excited about you're winning the nomination. These weren't the words you expressed in Audacity of Hope. There you expressed something more equitable, at least, more equitable than we commonly see in American politicians. But today you spoke of an unending Jewish nation of Israel, and an undivided Israeli Jerusalem forever. You actually supported a racist state. I'm not here saying Israel is inherently racist. But rather, you supported the idea that Israel should be made of one race or religion only.

Yes, you are to be commended for speaking of the need for a contiguous and viable Palestinian state. But you missed an opportunity to speak of one state, uniting different factions, a multi-ethnic and multi-religious state, where the rights of everyone are guaranteed and protected. Isn't that what you talk about constantly here in the US? Why not speak of that in Palestine and Israel as well? Why not speak of the need for both sides to act justly, to speak against terrorism and also against Israeli apartheid?

I know you need to get elected, and so you need to speak in moderated terms. I don't expect miracles from you; I know you probably aren't going to be as equitable on this issue as most people are outside the U.S. But you could have taken that opportunity to strive for justice, and speak of being a good friend to Israel by calling Israel to act justly. Today I was disappointed.

Let every vote count.

Lately, Hillary has been stating, many times, that she has won the popular vote. She makes this assertion by including Florida (where she campaigned against party rules but Obama didn't), including Michigan (where she was on the ballot but Obama wasn't), and not including four caucus states, where the popular vote was estimated but never officially reported. Hillary has even run ads in South Dakota making the specious claim that she won the popular vote- and from the most recent polls, has managed to fool the voters there as well.

That a candidate can win a caucus state with no official popular vote reported highlights the difficulty in trying to argue that the popular vote is important. Rather, in agreement with Hillary Clinton (of October, 2007), the popular vote doesn't matter- it's the delegates. When you have a caucus state, there's a range of individuals voting for delegates at the precinct level, and then a range of delegates at every level representing the next level up. It's the system we run by- a system not guaranteed in any way constitutionally. The Supreme Court has regularly upheld that primary and caucus votes are private party votes, and so there is no constitutionally guaranteed right to vote, on that level.

There is a certain irony that, if Michigan and Florida had waited, considering the extended primary season, their vote would have mattered a good deal more, even ignoring being seated as full delegations. For that matter, Puerto Rico could have been more of a deciding factor if they had stuck with their original June 7th date, rounding off the primaries, in a cheaper caucus. There has been regularly a fear that states won't get their dues, so they act on that fear, and lose out on the reward they would otherwise have gained.

But still, I want my vote to count. If I'm in a state that followed the rules of the private party, that didn't try to jump ahead and steal the thunder of another state, I feel my vote ought to count.

But I'm in one of those four caucus states that Hillary would exclude in order to maintain that she won the primary vote. I'm in Washington. So I ask. How dare you, Ms. Clinton, try to strip me of my voting rights within the party? How dare you suggest that my vote doesn't matter? You tell the superdelegates that you have won the popular vote, only on the back of my disenfrachisement. My state didn't jump the gun. We obeyed party rules. And yet you have the audacity to suggest that how we voted, and the vast numbers of us who voted, don't matter? What makes you think we would even consider voting for you in 2016?

Obama: The Child of Promise

Story re-orders, sifts through experience, and allows others, young children and adults alike, to hear what we think truly matters. We are constituted by the stories we tell ourselves and others. Thus stories serve an ontological purpose. Story connects us with that which lies beyond ourselves and this process makes us ask questions about the meanings of our lives. It is, in fact, a way we can begin to define what we mean when we use the term "spirituality."

Barbara Kimes Myers
Young Children and Spirituality

I've been reading Dreams of My Father, Obama's first book. It's a book about the stories he pursued, the stories of his life, and the stories of his family. But there's one story that stretches back much further, echoing the dawn of our memories.

Towards the end of the book Obama's grandmother tells the story of their family. It begins with a genealogy, of who begat whom. Then we come to Opuyo, who traveled from a faraway land in Kenya to a land he didn't know. Opuyo sired Obama (first name), who was not the eldest brother, and therefore didn't have land or wealth. He ended up working for another, wealthier family. He worked so hard that the family became very impressed by him, and gave Obama their daughter in marriage.

Obama married others, and built up his lands, so that his son, Onyango, came from a family of means. But at this time the white man was entering the land that would be Kenya. Onyango alone of his village saw the potential of this new world, and left the land of his people to work for the whites in other areas of Kenya, and in other African countries. Though he was often ostracised by his family, Onyango learned the white's ways, and was therefore the first of his village to understand modern life and technology, and used that to his advantage, gaining more wealth and lands. He took many wives, and one son was born Barack Hussein Obama, who had a son by the same name, who later went on to run for President of the United States.

Do these stories sound at all familiar? Consider. Barack Obama's grandma began her story with begats. She then told of Abraham, going to a land that was not his own. Abraham's grandson Jacob was not the eldest son, so he worked for his uncle Laban for many years, and eventually won the right to marry Laban's daughters. Jacob's son Joseph was often ostracised by his family, and went to the foreign land of the Egyptians to learn their ways, becoming a man of great wealth. The similarities are rather eerie.

Sometimes I sit and imagine how God might have appeared to Ipuyo, telling him to go to a new land. He would say that he would bless Ipuyo, if he is willing to take this risk and trust in the Lord, and one day his descendant, a descendant he would never meet, this descendant would become great in a faraway land that Ipuyo had never heard of. Or God might come to Obama (first name) when Obama had no work and no hope. God calls Obama to trust in him, and one day a descendant with his name, his great grandson, would rise to become the most powerful man in the world.

And this descendant would be a child of promise, who would obtain this position as long as he walked in humility and followed the ways of God, using his power to serve others. For in this scenario our candidate becomes not Jesus, but the leader of promise, a King David.

Of course, these conversations with God are solely in my imagination. But Obama's family history shows the power of hope so gloriously, that it is easy to imagine God's hand throughout. It shows how a family can rise from the humblest of beginnings, and how God can work through them in miraculous ways- ways we could never suspect. And it offers us all the lesson, and the hope, that when things are at their most dire, God is still working. We may not see his plan, or even see it work out fully in our lifetime, yet God is still doing something so wondrous we could never imagine it.

On why we want educated voters.

We've all heard the infamous lines from Hillary Clinton. Obama can't win support from "hard-working Americans, white Americans". I've already previously pointed out that Hillary's cries of "elitest" refer to Obama's education, and not his economic background, as he came from a vastly poorer background than nearly every other viable Presidential candidate. Hillary seemed to agree with me, saying, "the whites in both states who had not completed college were supporting me". So, the issue is actually education. Let's explore that for a moment.

Don't get me wrong. We should all be equal in America. We should all equally have a vote, regardless of education and intelligence (two very different items). But, don't we think there is some positive aspect to education? Isn't that why we strive for good schools and good teachers? Isn't that why we try to get women educated around the world- that educating women is the best proven method to raise societies and families out of poverty, and provide emancipation for women? I understand that there is a striving in post-modern society to say that any old belief is fine, and therefore education is looked down upon, but one can only go so far before you start denying antibiotic resistance from viral evolution and global warming and have killed every person on the planet in a mass extinction event.

For some mysterious reason, many voters who are uneducated are not voting for Obama. Both he and Hillary are equally educated, the only difference being that Obama has spent more time being poor, being with the poor and uneducated, than Hillary has. (Read his biography.) I don't know why they don't get that- other than Hillary has repeatedly claimed what is opposite of the truth in this matter, and if you say something enough times, no matter how false it is, it becomes truth.

But for some reason, those without college degrees are not voting for him. Okay. But why- why does Hillary seem actually proud of this fact? As if this is a good thing? If you have to choose, wouldn't you want the support of the educated voters? Yes, everyone has the right to vote- but that doesn't mean everyone has an equal ability to understand politics and life around them. This, after all, is why we educate our children- so they can better understand life and be prepared for it. If it's not, then we are lying to them, and ourselves. To claim that someone has the right to vote if they are uneducated, and therefore also has an equal ability to a graduate student to comprehend political issues, is as ridiculous as saying we have a right to believe any religious belief we want, therefore evolution and intelligent design should both be taught equally in the classroom.

Equal right does not mean equal abilities. And it seems our society has come to a point where we can no longer distinguish the two. If more uneducated people are voting for you than your opponent, the answer is not to crow in that fact. The answer is to help them get educated.

How Can She Fool Everyone?

Hillary has managed to convince, it seems, the entire nation. Again and again, working class whites are voting for her, because she's one of them. She speaks of not accepting money from large donors. And she has convinced the nation that Obama is an "elitist".

But this is a woman who regularly accepts money from lobbyists, unlike Obama, who everyone acknowledges is the first viable candidate in American history to accept money only from small donors, and never from lobbyists (except as individual contributions).

This is a woman who, with her husband, is worth 100 million. This is not to say Obama is poor- but being worth millions is different from being worth tens of millions. Indeed, Obama is the poorest of all the top Democrat and Republican candidates in the race to date, and got his millions only in the last few years. I'm not saying Obama is poor, or even close to it. But how does a woman who has 100 times the money get off saying the less wealthy guy is less in touch with the working class?

Perhaps it's their histories. Perhaps one of them grew up poorer, and that's how Hillary is able to say this.

From Wikipedia:

She was raised in a United Methodist family, first in Chicago, and then, from the age of three, in suburban Park Ridge, Illinois.[1] Her father, Hugh Ellsworth Rodham, was a child of Welsh and English immigrants who managed a successful small business in the textile industry.

Not a wealthy lifestyle, to be sure. Not poor either. More...middle class.

How about Obama?

Obama wrote his first book, Dreams From My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance, before he was in politics. Lest you get confused, the inheritance he gets has nothing to do with wealth.

He states:

A few months after my twenty-first birthday...the apartment was small, with slanting floors and irregular heat and a buzzer downstairs that didn't work, so that visitors had to call ahead from a pay phone at the corner gas station, where a black Doberman the size of a wolf paced through the night in vigilant patrol, its jaws clamped around an empty beer bottle.

Later Obama shares of growing up in Indonesia, where the family was not the poorest of the poor, for they had their own house- but certainly would be considered poor by American standards. He describes the people around him:

I didn't tell [Grandma] and Grandpa about the face of the man who had come to our door one day with a gaping hole where his nose should have been: the whistling sound he made as he asked my mother for food. Nor did I mention the time that one of my friends told me in the middle of recess that his baby brother had died the night before of an evil spirit brought in by the wind -- the terror that danced in my friend's eyes for the briefest of moments before he let out a strange laugh and punched my arm and broke off into a breathless run. There was the empty look on the faces of farmers the year the rains never came, the stoop in their shoulders as they wandered barefoot through their barren, cracked fields, bending over every so often to crumble earth between their fingers; and their desperation the following year when the rains lasted for over a month, swelling the river and fields until the streets gushed with water and swept as high as my waist and families scrambled to rescue their goats and their hens even as chunks of their huts washed away.

Obama's experiences are not that of a typical American, middle class or even working class. Perhaps some in New Orleans can relate, but for most of us, what he's experienced, what he's seen, is a level of poverty far lower than the poor of America. Obama may be out of touch, not because he is too elite, but because most Americans have experienced and seen less extreme poverty than he has!

And not to take delight in his relative poverty, but if Clinton is going to take out the measuring stick, does she have some sort of comparable experience in poverty when she was also nine years old? Or at any time growing up in suburban Illinois, is there something that would help her more greatly identify with the plight of the poor and working class?

I have no disagreement with the concept that Hillary did not grow up in the upper class. I affirm that she's solidly middle class in upbringing. And Obama is working class, in upbringing. Sadly, in this election, as in all others, we again and again hear about the needs of the middle class, and the working class, who do not vote in as large numbers, get ignored. And so Hillary can get off with saying she is in touch with voters and not elitist, because she grew up middle class.

What about his experiences makes Obama elitist? What could Hillary possibly be referring to?

One gets a sneaky, very disturbing feeling that it's because of where Obama went to school - Harvard (like Hillary's Yale). That's a fairly elitist school. But if so, then what she objects to is when those of the working class pull themselves out of their situation through hard work and education.

Long before this controversy came up, I liked Obama for many reasons. One was that, for the first time in a long time, I felt like here was a candidate who could identify with the situation of the lower class. I'm lower class, and proud to be so. I want a candidate who can understand it. I want a President who understands what it's like to try to make ends meet. I want a President who has a heart for the poor and the disenfranchised. I do not want a candidate who tries to put one over on the lower class, thinking we are all rubes, and will believe her when she says she's in touch with us because she grew up with more money than we're likely to have, and now has tens of millions more money than we'll ever have. I do not want a candidate who will call me elitist because, though I grew up in poverty, I went to a good school. Hillary Clinton, start speaking Truth.

Wright, not White

I previously shared on the Reverend Jeremiah Wright. How impressed I am by him, as he applies the truth of the Gospel to American life, how he's a true prophet, and how I wish Obama had supported him, but I understand that Obama can't, as he's running for office to be a leader, not a prophet.

Since that post, Hillary and the Republican Machine have come out to condemn Wright, and through him Obama. Hillary has reminded us all that she's not part of a church by stating she would have left that church after not agreeing with her pastor. (Obama had it right when he compared Wright to a family member- everyone in a church is. We don't just leave our churches like cherry pickers when there's something we don't agree with. You remember that last time you disagreed with something your pastor said? I do- three times in the last sermon.) Wright has finally come out to begin to defend himself. And Obama has adamantly, irrevocably, and completely distanced himself from Wright. He misinterpreted Wright's use of the word "politician" as negative, when Wright was just using it as a description of Obama's occupation. I wish Obama hadn't distanced himself, but I understand he has to, to win this election- for many of his supporters will also hear the word "politician" in the same manner. Ultimately, Wright had a poor choice of words- for he is not a politician.

But let us turn to Wright's defense. It was beautiful. For again and again, Wright pointed out that he wasn't defending himself. He was speaking on behalf of God - true apologetics. He was speaking what the Bible say on justice. He was patient, and waited a long time before responding to his critics. Now he does, in a few interviews and speeches, and is accused of trying to make a name for himself by media pandering. Everyone seems to forget the incredible weight of attacks by the media, Republicans, and Hillary a month ago, as those parties sought to make a name for themselves on the back of Jeremiah Wright.

As Wright defended the politics of Jesus, he also demonstrated that his remarks were deep in the black preaching tradition. But he isn't the first to point this out. And this is what is saddest from this entire controversy.

There wasn't much I disagreed with in Wright's remarks- and I refer to the out-of-context snippets on YouTube. But though I'm white, I didn't grow up in American culture. Most American whites were shocked at what Wright said. They couldn't believe that a loyal American would say such things. Most American blacks were scratching their heads and wondering what the big deal is.

What the Wright controversy has revealed is a deeper kind of racism. It is the not merely the discrimination that occurs every day, but the lack of knowledge and awareness of the other in our midst. We (white America) are fine with blacks as long as they stay like us and act like us. When they're by themselves, they can do their own thing. But we've reached the point where, at least in general, we'll treat them with respect and equality as long as they act white.

Imagine the shock to find out that they don't always act the same way. Anyone who's had the opportunity to visit or be part of a black church already knows this. There is a strong tradition of the prophetic in the black church- and by prophetic, I of course mean in the Biblical sense of the word - calling people to justice. What Wright said was no different from what you hear in thousands of black churches- and also from the Reverend King, as he contemplated his last sermon "Why America May Go to Hell" because of the lack of concern for poverty- a sermon he never gave because an assassin's bullet got in the way.

But we in white America don't want to hear that. We in rich America don't want to hear that. We want to be happy in our privilege and wealth, and if the underprivileged and underclass want to go off somewhere to make themselves feel good, so much the better- just don't let us hear about it. And God forbid that we should be called to account for our actions. I fear we desire the metaphorical assassin's bullet to silence the prophetic Biblical calls to justice and change.

And now, we ask that, even in the black churches, these voices be silenced. Sure, this is wrong, because it steals from people the place where they can freely express themselves, and witness to the injustices of their oppressors. But more than that. More than that, it steals from us the prophetic witness that we need as a nation, as a people. Without the black prophetic witness, our nation is very poor indeed. Without that call for justice, our Christianity becomes a weak, snivelling thing, withered on the vine, suitable only for the rubbish heap and gehenna fire. What has grown in the pyre of years of torture and slavery is a phoenix truth of what it means to follow justice and hope- what it means to be a Christian.

Hope. There's that word again. Make no mistake, the same hope that inspired Obama after listening to a Rev. Wright sermon to write The Audacity of Hope, that same hope was born in the fiery calls to justice in the misery of oppression.

Obama has to lead all of America, as Wright said, and therefore he has to speak to lower class whites like myself, to those of us who don't even begin to understand the black prophetic voice, and are repelled by it. But here there be dragons. Obama too strongly distanced himself from the truth of the Rev. Wright's words. Wright's words were racially tinged because he was pointing out the racism in American society. And if Obama goes too far in rejecting what the Rev. Wright says, Obama risks losing that very foundation of hope that has galvanized a nation.

For let us not forget. This hope did not begin with Obama. This call for justice did not begin with him. It did not begin with Jeremiah Wright. It did not begin with the Reverend Martin Luther King. For the beginnings, we need to go a little earlier. In the following quote, only the racial words have been updated to reflect modern class distinctions.

Come now, you whites, weep and howl for the miseries that are coming upon you. Your riches have rotted and your garments are moth-eaten. Your gold and silver have rusted, and their rust will be evidence against you and will eat your flesh like fire. You have laid up treasure for the last days. Behold, the wages of the migrant laborers who mowed your fields, which you kept back by fraud, cry out; and the cries of the blacks have reached the ears of the Lord of Hosts. You have lived on the earth in luxury and in pleasure; you have fattened your hearts in a day of slaughter.

James 5.1-5