Office of the Independent Blogger

Here is an interesting development worth paying a little attention to.

Mike Huckabee on Tuesday announced he is establishing a political action committee to back Republicans who share his ideology. The former GOP presidential candidate launched a fundraising organization called “Huck PAC.” The first beneficiaries will be three key supporters of Huckabee’s White House bid. Presumptive GOP presidential nominee John McCain will also benefit from Huck PAC, the former Arkansas governor said. The biggest beneficiary of Huck PAC may be Huckabee himself. Analysts compared his start-up to a PAC that Ronald Reagan launched following his failed 1976 presidential campaign. Craig Shirley, a GOP strategist who has written about the former president, said Reagan’s PAC was adept at supporting conservative candidates while at the same time defining the future president’s credentials ahead of his 1980 run.

Maybe I am reading too deep into this, but I think this means that McCain has told him No, you will not be my Vice Presidential running mate and Huckabee is attempting to keep himself relevant somehow. I’ve said before that Huckabee would be a strong balance for McCain but that it might not happen because of his lack of electoral power and McCain’s antipathy toward religious conservatives, and maybe this bears it out, although it could just be an additional tool for a McCain-Huckabee weapon. I do doubt that. I think it’s likelier that McCain takes shots with college students than breaks bread with Huckabee.

It is always good to see the American government do what is right because it is right.

US President George W Bush has ordered the release of $200m in emergency aid to alleviate food shortages in Africa and other parts of the world. The White House said the money would be used to meet unanticipated needs for food aid. Rising food prices have sparked recent riots in several countries, including Haiti, the Philippines and Egypt. The World Bank has said a doubling of food prices in three years could push 100m more people into poverty.

“This additional food aid will address the impact of rising commodity prices on US emergency food aid programmes and be used to meet unanticipated food aid needs in Africa and elsewhere,” the White House said in a statement.

There is nothing else to add here, except that it satisfies me to know that my country keeps the world fed and secure.

I was in Los Angeles all weekend and that is why I did not post from the 11th through about an hour ago. I arrived in LAX, drove out to West Hollywood with a friend, then spent the rest of the weekend with a friend and Friend’s friends. I won’t be listing the itinerary, but I will say that I had a great time. As a plus, the week or so leading up to this weekend have been amusing in conversation with my friends here at home. People would ask, “Would you like to go out this/next weekend, Greg?” and I would say, “I would, but I am going to be in California for that/the/this weekend.” They would ask why, and I would have to explain that I was going to be attending a “Bacon Party” and then enjoying Los Angeles. Truthfully, I have wanted to just hit the road for a week or weekend for a while now, as I have been working very hard since last February, so when an invitation was extended I took it, and relaxation greeted me on the West Coast. Met some hilarious, intelligent and fun-loving people, had great conversations about history, politics, the human brain and the art of directing, and even got some good reading done late at night and on the plane to-and-from. The trip was revitalizing because it was beautiful in LA (”You brought the first fully-warm day of the year, Greg!”) and because it was a pleasure (I happen to love being around people) and because someone said something to me that was, perhaps, the final thing I needed to hear to re-ignite my love affair with the ambition to strive toward electoral politics at the highest of levels (”She attacked your dreams, Gregory”). I have a lot of work to do this week, but I feel refreshed by this adventure and will be taking more trips to more places soon enough.

Barack Obama has his gaffe. On the other hand, he launched a hilarious attack on Clinton as “Annie Oakley,” for claiming that she has shot duck, but that is not enough by any stretch of the electorate to offset his comments about “bitter” white voters. Clinton has regained the momentum in this race, and Obama is on the defensive. She is still a significant underdog, but he is no lock, and this race will continue.

I want to comment on a wide variety of domestic political and electoral issues but I was so moved by what I saw on my television yesterday that I simply have to put those off for a moment. The Olympic Torch was to be carried through San Francisco but anti-China, pro-Tibet protesters ended the celebration prematurely with their attempts to blow it out. I must admit that I could not take my eyes off the spectacle, and I give kudos to citizens of the world, from San Francisco to Paris, who made it clear to the Chinese that their censorship and repression does not hold in free states. I thought it was a perfect representation of free expression in a democracy and everything the Chinese fear. It was representative of what democratic leaders must deal with, and do, often effectively because democracy begs questions and self-correction while tyranny fears these processes. There is no doubt in my mind that George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George H.W. Bush, Reagan, Carter, Ford, Nixon, Johnson, and everyone before them has been made a better President and a better man for the criticisms they’ve received, warranted and not, civil or virulent, like a writer who becomes stronger with revision or bones strengthening on the mend.

But the beauty of the protests and everything they symbolize begs a question: should the American government boycott the opening ceremonies of the Olympics in Beijing? Morally, there is no doubt, but there are other considerations. To some, a boycott is necessary because it will deny the Chinese government the prestige that they desperately crave. To others, such a move would be foolish because the Olympics should transcend politics. I think that we should not protest the Olympic ceremony, however tempted I am to believe that the proper course of action, because I think our appearance can and should be used as a diplomatic tool. Now, I have zero sympathy for the Chinese or their evil government, and I actually think they’re a disturbingly absurd group. For instance, they seriously argue that the Dalai Lama is a man of war! But that aside, I believe that we should attend and later remind them that we are allies, whatever problems we have between one another, to foster the bond between our states and therefore be a boon to peace in the coming years.

I do think we should defend the Tibetans and the Taiwanese and everyone else who is a victim of the Chinese. I just do not believe that we have to do this by humiliating and marginalizing their state. I think a boycott would do that and might have disastrous consequences. If we do boycott, I don’t think it’ll necessarily have the disastrous outcome I fear, but I fear it all the same and I think we might be able to use diplomacy to more effectively coerce the Chinese into not slaughtering people.

John McCain’s “character” is a big deal today — here is a great anecdote of McCain and a senior liberal congressman making friends, and here are anecdotes from a new book, “The Real McCain,” where he calls his wife by the foulest term and attacks fellow congressmen. That he once told Ted Kennedy to shut up is supposed to be a bonus bad, but I (a liberal Democrat) certainly don’t think so! The other stories, however, should give anyone pause, and I must reiterate that I have always had a visceral reaction to McCain. Are these true? I don’t know for sure, and I won’t operate under that assumption because it is unfair to make such assumptions, whether it’s of Clinton based on The Truth About Hillary or Obama-as-Muslim on the Internets. I don’t think they’re impossible, however, and I wonder what sort of effect they might have on his campaign.

Christopher Hitchens, as usual, has written a provocative piece on black leadership and Barack Obama. I would encourage you to read it.

This article makes me angrier than words can express.

In an effort to quell unrest, Communist Party officials are ordering Tibetans back to school. Buddhist monks, civil servants and public school students have been instructed to attend special classes in the virtues of Chinese rule and the evils of their exiled leader, the Dalai Lama. In these classes, the Tibetans read and recite from texts that denounce the Dalai Lama as a “political reactionary” and a “betrayer of the motherland.”

Ideological training is an enduring feature of Communist life, but has taken a back seat in a country consumed with more modern pursuits, such as making money. But in Tibetan areas, the Communist Party is pursuing “patriotic education” with new zeal. But the campaign may be backfiring. Clashes that erupted last week in Sichuan province’s Ganzi prefecture (known as Kardze to Tibetans) were reportedly triggered when the head of the Tongkor Monastery objected to Communist Party teaching materials that criticize the Dalai Lama. Tibetan activists say eight people were killed in the April 3 incident.

Nevertheless, Communist officials insist that the program be expanded.

Touring a monastery last week, the deputy Communist Party chief for Tibet, Hao Peng, called for strengthening “patriotic education so as to guide the masses of monks to continuously display the patriotic tradition.” Besides the monks, Tibetan civil servants, party members and schoolchildren have attended special reeducation sessions, according to the Tibet Daily. At an elementary school, children viewed photographs of stores damaged in March 14 riots in Lhasa, the Tibetan capital, and sang patriotic songs.

“If I hadn’t seen it, I wouldn’t have believed those bad guys were so abhorrent,” the newspaper quoted a third-grader as saying. In a Tibetan village, an elderly party member was reported to have shouted criticism of what officials call the “Dalai clique” during an education session: “They are going to plunge us once again into the abyss of suffering. Their methods are despicable and cruel.” Tibet experts say the rhetoric harks back to the reeducation and self-criticism campaigns of the 1960s and 1970s, but is unlikely to be successful today.

“Getting people to denounce the Dalai Lama or to recite ideological statements shows a lack of imagination on the part of the Communist Party. There is no way they can force people into what they say is the correct way of thinking,” said Ronald Schwartz, a Canadian scholar[,]

and it is absolutely shameful to try. The arrogance of some human beings (not limited to Chinese autocrats) is astonishing.

Before we get to the meat of this coconut — God, I love that phrase — let’s take a quick look at the best dumb quote of the weekend. “[This country has been taken over by banks and corporations.] The federal reserve isn’t even American. It’s private!” Let me say that I am not at all a hyper-capitalist. I am a very modest capitalist, and I do believe that the government has and should have roles within economics and the general public sphere. I just thought that line was ridiculous. I heard it on Real-Time with Bill Maher, uttered by Esai Morales.

Maher said something very insightful on his latest show to make up for his stupid comments a few weeks ago: slightly paraphrased, he said, “if the Democratic Paty can’t survive voting it is not very democratic” and he went on to ridicule those Democrats who suggest that they should stop fighting because they’ve got scratches. I agree wholeheartedly. I would also add my agreement to Jon Corzine’s latest article on the illigitimacy the Democratic primary will take on if Michigan and Florida are not counted. But democracies, and genuine democratic (and republican, each lowercase) candidates survive democracy and accept it.

This isn’t like what’s going on in Zimbabwe, where the government is trying to steal an election with a recount of votes that haven’t even been made public yet.

The Weekly Standard makes a fascinating proposal: John Kerry for Vice President on an Obama-led ticket. What reason do they give for resurrecting the dead from their watery grave off Cape Cod? The magazine believes he can add gravitas to an inexperienced ticket and they think he is a lot of fun to cover. Relatedly, John Kerry says Barack Obama won’t be swiftboated, and he’s right. The Republicans will have to find something else to destroy him with, and we’ll have to wait and see whether or not he’ll be able to mount an effective counter-attack.

Here’s an interesting question: was there a way to effectively handle Willie Horton, or the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth? Some people might think of Bill Clinton and the draft as well as Gennifer Flowers, to prove that candidates can counter seemingly-daunting charges, and that might be a good example (it was certainly the first thought that came to mind) but I also think it’s quite different than the first two because Horton killed a man and the Swift Boat Veterans alleged that Senator Kerry wasn’t half the man he claimed to be. The sex scandals are remedied by a confession that, hey, I’ve made mistakes and my wife and I have worked through them; the draft issue was one many American families could relate to, but beyond that most families didn’t want to sit around talking about such matters when the economy was a mess. But there are certain incidents that are simply impossible to survive, I think, and Swift Boats/Willie Horton might have been such.

I imagine that the Republicans are going through Weather Underground videos looking for shots of Bernadine Dohrn and Obama together, and I bet they’re going through Wright’s sermons with a fine-tooth comb to find a great attack to make. We’ll have to wait and see what they fire at him and how he counters it, but it’s impossible to know how someone will react to a punch until it’s been landed right on their kidneys. “Not God bless America — God damn America!” is going to be a vicious shot when the Republicans wind up and put their elephantine weight into it.

I’m having trouble falling asleep, and so I am up watching a program about America’s Loch Ness Monster on the Discovery Channel. What else is on, right? Made a few phone calls, spoke with the people I love (or some of them), but still can’t quite fall asleep. Well, there was a commercial for climate change action by an environmental group, and I thought to myself are you serious? It’s one in the morning. Who exactly are they tailoring that ad to at this hour? We liberals have much work to do.

Does Barack Obama ignore gay media outlets?

At this point in the Democratic presidential campaign, we’re able to view the candidates by their actions. And we have found that Sen. Barack Obama would rather talk at the LGBT community than with them[…] [t]he fact is that Obama has spoken with the gay press only twice, and one of those interviews…was in 2004, before he became a U.S. senator. The other limited interview occurred after controversy erupted when his campaign added an anti-gay minister to his tour of the South. It has now been 1,522 days since Obama has been accessible to our community.

An interesting question that rises from this editorial and its counterpart, an interview with Hillary Clinton, is, Why would Barack Obama ignore the gay community’s newspapers? What, exactly, is the benefit? Isn’t Obama all about bringing people together? How would this be accomplished by ignoring a key segment in the Democratic Party? A more cynical person might suggest that Barack Obama knows that gay people are, ah, unpopular with conservative voters and black voters (in addition to his racist, nasty reverend), and so he is attempting to be a politician by ignoring them. But that assumes that he is ignoring gay media and voters, which I am not sure is the case but this Philadelphia newspaper certainly makes a strong case.

There was a time when I thought Democrats were insane to stand by gay people despite the “damage” it does in Middle America, but if that is a principle our candidates stand by, then they should by all means stand by it, because I am not in favor of sacrificing principle for votes. Interestingly, Clinton is a well-known panderer, as her husband was — sources from Bob Kerrey to John Kerry have talked about how they care about “nothing but power” and are all about election, not principle, ever — and, again, I do not know that this is true, but I don’t doubt all the people who have argued it from both parties, so that is an interesting angle that this takes. Is Clinton’s support genuine? Can she be counted on to be firmer than her husband who, if you recall, promised to put gays into the military and then backed off on it? (Of course, the military almost rioted and forced his hand, but the premise stands: he did not keep his promise.)

Don’t kid yourself — Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are both politician’s politicians.

Ultimately, the West, Russia and China have a deep interest in maintaining a cordial and working relationship, despite any and all political and economic differences because our current world demands cooperation at the end of the day. This article makes me hopeful now and into the future about life in the 21st century.

President Vladimir Putin of Russia complained Friday that NATO was not taking Russia’s legitimate security concerns into account, but he also said that President George W. Bush was listening to Moscow’s criticisms of a planned missile-shield for Europe to be based in the Czech Republic and Poland. In a closed meeting with NATO leaders, Putin was described by officials as both combative and thoughtful, criticizing NATO’s promise to eventually make Ukraine and Georgia members. “NATO cannot guarantee its security at the expense of other countries’ security,” he said, according to one official, and complained that some NATO members, presumably those formerly under Soviet occupation, “went as far as total demonization of Russia and can’t get away from this even now.”

Putin denied that Russia had imperial ambitions, said Moscow wanted cooperation with NATO on joint security problems like Afghanistan and terrorism and agreed with Bush that the Cold War was over, another Western official said. It was Putin’s first visit to a NATO summit meeting as the Russian president, and also his last, since he is scheduled to hand over his job in May to Dmitri Medvedev. Putin gave one of his trademark press conferences, taking questions for nearly an hour from the international media in a measured and articulate way.

In one of his odder comments about relations with NATO, he told reporters: “Let’s be friends, guys, and be frank and open.”

Does Putin mean and believe that? I was musing the subject of world peace recently and I wondered how long our world can exist with its current power system intact — with the American government at the top, the Western European countries willing partners with Washington, the Russian and Chinese states as competitive-but-not-hostile rivals, all operating in a system that facilitates international debate and peaceful solutions through the United Nations and causes balance through international institutions such as NATO, not to mention the dependence we, and they, have on the rest of the world for economic security, and I wonder when the world will be drawn into tragedy again. I hope not in my lifetime!

To an extent, I think we are seeing a world whose idea of war is in reverse: war has evolved from a professional affair in the 18th centuries, for instance, where soldiers fight soldiers in lines and without involving too many civilians, to a total war caused by nationalism and the ultimate manifestation of that in the World Wars. It appears that we are reverting to more limited wars and perhaps we will wind up with “professional” conflicts until we escalate once again. Maybe it’s possible that our new economic system forces force between states to the side, but I don’t think so. I’d like to hope so, and I think it’s so for awhile, at least.

If you think the article I linked to and excerpted from yesterday is damaging to the Clinton campaign, I direct you to this Slate piece about the public education system in Chicago. If you have any interest in education systems in general, it is worth a read for its insight into the unique board system in Chicago. If you are only interested in politics but not necessarily the nuts and bolts of education policy, it is worth a read to gauge Obama. What do I think is the money quote?

The story of Obama’s involvement suggests that on similarly contentious fronts involving national education policy, like the No Child Left Behind Act, he might respond the same way—holding back when powerful interest groups collide, only to support the status quo of local control in the end. The candidate’s Chicago record on education also raises questions about his much-vaunted ability to bring different sides together to find lasting solutions.

That Barack Obama can claim “I can bring different groups together” is fascinating. First of all, Obama has never in fact done so to any real and significant degree, because not sponsoring much legislation, infuriating the Republicans when you offer to work with them on campaign finance and then pull away, and defeating Alan Keyes in a landslide do not make you a uniter, and though he has never “proven” his ability to “bring people together” he is allowed to claim it without much criticism. In fact, countless Obamaniacs love it and believe it, and then make the ridiculous argument that Clinton is the one getting away with hollow claims (about experience). In fact, I think his “lie” is much more egregious. His claim that he can inspire hope and bring people together is a platitude on steroids much akin to Jimmy Carter’s famous pledge to “never lie to you,” and I find it insulting. “I will never lie to you” is the ultimate lie; “I can bring people together” is an inherent falsehood because no one can bring everyone together, no matter how much they try. What does it mean to “bring people together,” anyway? To inspire fifty four percent of the public to vote for you? Only tragedy “unifies” people unequivocally, and that comes during crisis that we should not encourage (like Katrina) or when the masses join at the voting booth to vote against a crank (Goldwater, McGovern, Carter). “Let’s get together” is a bad pick-up line, but I guess it has its niche.

I’m just surprised and disappointed that Democrats of all people would fall for this line. George W. Bush once declared that he was “a uniter, not a divider.” I don’t doubt that he believed or believes that. In 1968, Richard Nixon said, “I saw many signs in this campaign. Some of them were not friendly. Some were very friendly. But the one that touched me the most was — a teenager held up the sign ‘bring us together.’ And that will be the great objective of this administration, at the outset, to bring the American people together.” And he was genuinely interested in it, too. It simply isn’t possible to do what they would have loved to do in a perfect world and what Obama thinks he’s going to do. Obama, and his supporters, should start thinking more about what they would do if elected to govern because it is much more difficult than they might think. Right now, Barack Obama is a main course in desperate need of side orders.

This is not a pretty picture of a young Hillary Clinton.

As Hillary Clinton came under increasing scrutiny for her story about facing sniper fire in Bosnia, one question that arose was whether she has engaged in a pattern of lying. The now-retired general counsel and chief of staff of the House Judiciary Committee, who supervised Hillary when she worked on the Watergate investigation, says Hillary’s history of lies and unethical behavior goes back farther – and goes much deeper – than anyone realizes. Jerry Zeifman, a lifelong Democrat, supervised the work of 27-year-old Hillary Rodham on the committee. Hillary got a job working on the investigation at the behest of her former law professor, Burke Marshall, who was also Sen. Ted Kennedy’s chief counsel in the Chappaquiddick affair. When the investigation was over, Zeifman fired Hillary from the committee staff and refused to give her a letter of recommendation – one of only three people who earned that dubious distinction in Zeifman’s 17-year career.

Why?

“Because she was a liar,” Zeifman said in an interview last week. “She was an unethical, dishonest lawyer. She conspired to violate the Constitution, the rules of the House, the rules of the committee and the rules of confidentiality.” How could a 27-year-old House staff member do all that? She couldn’t do it by herself, but Zeifman said she was one of several individuals – including
Marshall, special counsel John Doar and senior associate special counsel (and future Clinton White House Counsel) Bernard Nussbaum – who engaged in a seemingly implausible scheme to deny Richard Nixon the right to counsel during the investigation.

I have always said, “Hillary Clinton is Richard Nixon with ovaries.” That means she is brilliant, decisive, foward-thinking — but mistrusting and vindinctive. It isn’t unusual for a politician to have these qualities, but I think Clinton has a lot of undesirable habits that George Stephanopoulos and her handling of the impeachment proceedings (behind the scenes) betray, and I am not sure — her protests to the contrary notwithstanding — she has anywhere near the vision that Nixon had on foreign affairs or domestic policy or the political mood of the country. That said, I continue to prefer her candidacy to the candidacy of platitudes and naïveté that is Barack Obama’s, but I am not optimistic about our chances this year. Obama is, I think, a bubble that will pop once it is removed from the cozy confines of the Democratic primary, and Clinton’s negatives are unforgivably high with independents and Republicans. McCain has a lot going for him but then again, he’s running with the handicap of being Bush’s successor, even if he is able to claim to be a voice for change because he is not with the Administration and has always been a maverick.