Can Obama Sell to Blacks and Whites?
October 26, 2007 10:02 PM ET | Bedard, Paul 

Just in time for the early primaries and caucuses in January, Simon & Schuster is shopping a book for media outlets to serialize that declares Sen. Barack Obama won't win because he's caught between strategies to woo blacks and whites. A Bound Man: Why We Are Excited About Obama and Why He Can't Win, by race and culture scholar Shelby Steele, helps to explain the candidate's bid to stay above politics. While we aren't allowed to quote from the early excerpts, a Simon & Schuster letter explains that Obama "walks in an impossible political territory where any expression of what he truly feels puts him in jeopardy with one much-needed constituency or another." Steele argues that Obama is in a pickle. With whites, Obama bargains, telling them: "I will not rub America's ugly history of racism in your face if you will not hold my race against me." To win blacks, the publisher's letter says, Obama must challenge whites on race and demand they back "black-friendly policies." Steele gives examples of who uses the dueling strategies: Oprah Winfrey and the Rev. Al Sharpton.

I'll keep my eyes open for the excerpts and the book. This is a case that can be made honestly. It is also a case into which you can pack as much socioeconomic presumptions and political bombast as you'd like.

If Steele is smart, he'll make the case honestly. Fewer people would like the book but more people would be convinced by it. Which is not to say it will change all that many minds either way.

it's not enough for Madden now to declare that he doesn't think Mitt's miscue rises to the level of needing an apology. Last year, Romney himself insisted that such incidents require one.

So Romney has made his own rules. If he fails to abide by them, what conclusion can we draw?

Just this: The home-state candidate is one humongous hypocrite.

Romney's faux pas
By Scot Lehigh, Globe Columnist  |  October 26, 2007

MITT ROMNEY owes Barack Obama an apology. It's as simple as that.

And if you don't believe me, why, just ask our last governor.

The 28 soldiers in the Puget Sound case were stationed at Fort Lawton on Aug. 15, 1944, when Mr. Olivotto was found dead after a night of fighting among American and Italian soldiers on the base. Some American soldiers — white and black — objected to what they saw as lenient treatment of the scores of Italian prisoners held there....

The ruling notes that white military police were lax in quelling the riot. And it suggests that Mr. Jaworski, who died in 1982, would have been aware of testimony, which he did not share with the defense, that suggested a white military policeman could have been involved in the Olivotto killing.

One black soldier had told an investigator that a white military policeman had threatened to “bust” the skull of an Italian soldier.

In his book, Mr. Hamann said the evidence pointed to a white military policeman who had been present at every critical moment in the days leading up to the lynching, and who discovered Mr. Olivotto’s body. The policeman, who is deceased, was convicted of going absent without leave.

1944 Conviction of Black G.I.’s Is Ruled Flawed
By WILLIAM YARDLEY

SEATTLE, Oct. 26 — Guglielmo Olivotto, an Italian prisoner of war, died with a noose around his neck, lynched at a military post on Puget Sound 63 years ago. Samuel Snow, 83, hopes that people will stop blaming him and the 27 other black soldiers convicted of starting the riot that led to Mr. Olivotto’s death. It was one of the largest Army courts-martial of World War II.

This week, a review board issued a ruling that could lead to overturning the convictions of all 28 soldiers, granting honorable discharges and providing them with back pay.

All things become possible when hearts fixed in mutual contempt begin to grasp a transforming truth; namely, that this person I fear and despise is not an alien, something less than human. This person is very much like me, and enjoys and suffers, loves and fears, wonders, worries, and hopes. Just as I do, this person longs for well-being in a world of peace.

Realizing God's dream for the Holy Land
By Desmond Tutu  |  October 26, 2007

WHENEVER I am asked if I am optimistic about an end to the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, I say that I am not. Optimism requires clear signs that things are changing - meaningful words and unambiguous actions that point to real progress. I do not yet hear enough meaningful words, nor do I yet see enough unambiguous deeds to justify optimism.

Never-ending debt to society
By hanna ingber win, October 25, 2007 9:43 am

I spot a very tall man with broad shoulders. He’s sporting a sharp pinstriped suit, sunglasses and Bluetooth piece on his ear. He’s standing on the sidewalk, staring straight ahead, like a security guard. We are outside a job fair, and I assume he works there.

Tony Scarbough, 45 and from Los Angeles, turns out to be an ex-offender.

He’s at the job fair because he has spent the past ten years trying to get a job with the city or state, but without success.

Tony used to do drugs and alcohol and got in trouble with the law a number of times. His convictions include possession of cocaine, receiving stolen property and grand theft auto.

In 1994 Tony was released from prison and has been clean ever since. “I’ve been drug and alcohol free for about thirteen years,” he says. He turned his life around, getting married in 1998, having a child and holding down a job at a retail store.

via Group News Blog  

GM also stated that the owner of the vehicle may opt out of the service upon request. GM's research has indicated that 95% of current OnStar subscribers would like to participate.

Police Can Disable New Cars on Demand
By Bill Christensen
posted: 10 October 2007 12:23 pm ET

General Motors plans to equip 1.7 million of its 2009 models with a system that allows OnStar operators to cut engine power in the car if the police request it. The system was demonstrated in Washington, D.C. today.

GM's OnStar system already contains built-in GPS tracking that would allow police to find any OnStar-equipped vehicle. With the new technology, if the police request it, an OnStar operator will inform the occupants of the vehicle and then cut power. The engine will be slowed to idle speed, to allow the driver to move to the side of the road. Brakes and other electrical functions of the vehicle will still work.

Here are the candidates in the order in which they match your views:

• Click on a candidate's name or photo to learn more about the candidate.
  
• Issues in boldface are those you selected as important.
  
• A match on an issue is denoted with a check mark ().
  
  

Shame on — shame on you. Fool me — you can't get fooled again!

The headline makes me feel like those guys who cheered the Brown v. Board decision with "Free by '63!" Because there are 3,141 counties in the USofA. We're talking about one of them. And just one unjust charge.

Jailed for Teen Oral Sex, Now Ordered Free
Georgia Supreme Court Found a 10-Year Sentence for Oral Sex With Fellow Teen 'Cruel'

0ct. 26, 2007—Georgia's Supreme Court on Friday ordered the release of a young man who has been imprisoned for more than two years for having consensual oral sex with another teenager.

The court ruled 4-3 that Genarlow Wilson's 10-year sentence was cruel and unusual punishment.

In fact, there's a level where it's pretty goddamn bizarre that one should be so relieved to find that there may actually be limits.

It's 2007. Maybe now it would be safe to say "Free by '63!"

Matt confuses the world with his description of the world. Most folks do...

A Little Night Nuance
by tristero

In a post titled "A Little Nuance"Matt writes:

Perhaps this is just pointless hairsplitting, but I feel I should say that while I'm not at all happy with the precedents Bush is setting with regard to presidential power, that I think the case for strong executive power as such is actually pretty strong. The trouble comes from the nexus...[etc.]

We'll get to whether or not there's a little nuance, a lot, or none, in Matt's post in a moment. But one thing I can certainly say is that Matt was not splitting hairs. The trouble comes from the nexus between the world of reality and the assertion of a non-existent realm of principles (ideas) co-existent with that reality but independent of it. [P6: IOW, your model of the world is wrong.] In short, there's a little bit of an epistemological incoherence goin' on.

Inadvertently, Matt has fallen for one of the oldest trick in the rightwing's rhetorical playbook. They often assert a crude dualism where principles are divorced from reality, where mind exists apart from the matter of the brain, where you can just decide things and make them happen. Some examples of this strategy in action: 

Regarding Alito, I was once asked, "Don't you think that, in principle, a president has the right to pick a Supreme Court justice in agreement with his ideology?" "In principle, isn't the removal of Saddam Hussein a good thing?" "Looked purely in regards to whose position it furthers and whose it doesn't, were not the peace protestors of early 2003 ojectively pro-Saddam?"

The problem with such characterizations is that the rhetorical tactic of "in principle" reifies a supernatural world.

when i spoke to the aforementioned young man on the phone, he told me he was not scared he's been attacked by drunk white men muttering the n-word on late trains coursing through brooklyn, where he lives. where i am from as well. he told me that these sorts of encounters are why he did not want to go to school in the South.

welcome to New England.

race and violence: freshmen of color at yale

i have someone here at yale this year who i love very much. we have known each other a long time and he is a brilliant, forward thinking, conscious young black man. he is a freshman from brooklyn, new york with sensibilities he has gained from navigating all sorts of worlds - prestigious boys' school for the New York City elite, elementary school in clinton hill in the nineties, all sorts of neighborhoods in brooklyn and queens and the bronx, now yale's campus and new haven.

The whole sorry episode highlights the absurdity of the ban on openly gay people in the military. Israel, Australia, Britain and 21 other countries have no problem with gays and lesbians serving openly in their armed forces. With its military stretched to the breaking point, the United States should follow their wise lead. That it doesn't is as shortsighted as it is unjust.

Don't Ask
The military cruises a gay Internet site for employees, albeit briefly.
Friday, October 26, 2007; A20

THE U.S. MILITARY has positions to fill. Thousands of them. And, like any enterprise seeking employees, it casts a wide net to find qualified people -- as long as they're not gay. So it was the height of irony that military want ads were placed on a gay professional networking Web site last week. In fact, the placement would have made perfect sense were it not for the wrongheaded "don't ask, don't tell" policy that bans gay people from serving openly in the military.

Darfur Rebels Attack Oil Field, Warn Chinese to Leave Sudan
By Mohamed Osman
Associated Press
Friday, October 26, 2007; A15

KHARTOUM, Sudan, Oct. 25 -- Darfur rebels launched a brazen attack on Sudan's oil fields days before peace talks are scheduled to begin with the government, kidnapping two foreign workers and giving Chinese and other oil companies a week to leave the country, a commander said Thursday.

The rebel Justice and Equality Movement said it attacked the Chinese-run Defra oil field Tuesday in the neighboring Kordofan region, the group's latest attempt to broaden the battle beyond the Darfur region of western Sudan.

"The latest attack is a message to the Chinese companies in particular," said Mohamed Bahr Hamdeen, the head of the rebel group in Kordofan. "The Chinese companies are the biggest investors in the Sudanese oil industry."

Despite their brutality, the robberies are not necessarily motivated by ethnic bigotry, authorities say. Rather, they are typically crimes of opportunity. While the majority of the perpetrators have been identified as black men, Latinos and whites have also been charged in some cases, authorities said.

"All you need is a shadow and a victim," said Warren Jensen, a Montgomery police officer who is a member of the unit assigned to combat such robberies.

Robbers Stalk Hispanic Immigrants, Seeing Ideal Prey
By Ernesto Londoño and Theresa Vargas
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, October 26, 2007; A01

By the time they set upon Victor Hernandez, knocking him to the pavement and kicking him furiously, the teenagers were deep into a weeks-long spree of robbing Hispanic immigrants.

They coined a term for the assaults, one that reflected the uniformity of the victims they selected: "amigo shopping." The teenagers recorded some of the attacks with a cellphone camera, saving one of the videos under the file name "amigo," a source familiar with the case said.

Republican Hot Flashes
By Eugene Robinson
Friday, October 26, 2007; A21

Has America become a mean, ungenerous, cramped and crabby nation, a deeply insecure colossus -- one that just might be taking all those Viagra and Cialis commercials a bit too personally? Is the country desperate to find scapegoats for a perceived decline in, um, vigor? Or is America still a confident land of hope and promise, a place still potent with possibility?

It's watching the Republicans in Congress and on the presidential campaign trail that makes me pose those big-picture questions. I'm just suggesting a context for assessing the actions and rhetoric of a party that seems to be in the throes of andropause.

House Passes Health Bill but Gains No Republican Votes

I know how this works. You need to have a narrative that doesn't impugn the integrity of the nation. That's why you took impeaching Bush and Cheney off the table, counterproductive toward your intent though the decision be. Bush has established that the executive branch is only constrained in those areas where it allows itself to be, and has established a Supreme Court whose policy is to recuse itself from the discussion. THAT is the threat to our integrity.

You actually have your choice of issues on which to break that pattern, but S-CHIP is the firmest ground on which you can stand. If you really understand the need to keep those powers balanced then you have to demonstrate you have equal power.

So send it back. You know you have the public support.

Unfortunately, assertions that unregulated financial markets would take care of themselves have proved as wrong as claims that deregulation would reduce electricity prices.

A Catastrophe Foretold
By PAUL KRUGMAN

“Increased subprime lending has been associated with higher levels of delinquency, foreclosure and, in some cases, abusive lending practices.” So declared Edward M. Gramlich, a Federal Reserve official.

These days a lot of people are saying things like that about subprime loans — mortgages issued to buyers who don’t meet the normal financial criteria for a home loan. But here’s the thing: Mr. Gramlich said those words in May 2004.

And it wasn’t his first warning. In his last book, Mr. Gramlich, who recently died of cancer, revealed that he tried to get Alan Greenspan to increase oversight of subprime lending as early as 2000, but got nowhere.

So why was nothing done to avert the subprime fiasco?

Before I try to answer that question, there are a few things you should know.

Lone Bidder Buys Strands of Che’s Hair at U.S. Auction
By MARC LACEY

DALLAS, Oct. 25 — The hair itself looked unexceptional, dark with sun-burnished tips, perhaps 100 strands, wrapped in a piece of notebook paper. But when the final gavel fell Thursday in a bizarre auction conducted under high security here, the hair and the sheaf of historical documents that accompanied it sold for $100,000, the minimum bid.

The lock of hair on auction was taken 40 years ago from the corpse of Che Guevara, the famed revolutionary and cultural icon, by one of the men who had tracked him down and, after he was killed, buried him.

The Unted States of America is going to bomb Iran.

U.S. Plays Its ‘Unilateral’ Card on Iran Sanctions
By HELENE COOPER

WASHINGTON, Oct. 25 — In announcing sweeping new sanctions against an elite unit of the Revolutionary Guard Corps in Iran, Bush administration officials took pains to offer assurances on Thursday that at least for now, the United States is not going to war with Iran.

“We do not believe that conflict is inevitable,” said R. Nicholas Burns, the under secretary of state for political affairs. “This decision today supports the diplomacy and in no way, shape or form does it anticipate the use of force.”

But the images, federal and private analysts say, suggest that the Syrian authorities rushed to dismantle the facility after the strike, calling it a tacit admission of guilt.

Good lord. You say the Israelis bomb the place and cleaning up the rubble is a sign of guilt?

Satellite Photos Show Cleansing of Syrian Site
By WILLIAM J. BROAD and MARK MAZZETTI

New commercial satellite photos show that a Syrian site believed to have been attacked by Israel last month no longer bears any obvious traces of what some analysts said appeared to have been a partly built nuclear reactor.

Two photos, taken Wednesday from space by rival companies, show the site near the Euphrates River to have been wiped clean since August, when imagery showed a tall square building there measuring about 150 feet on a side.

You know that old wisdom Black folks are taught..."You have to be twice as good to get half as much". You remember that.

You believe that, too. Don't you?

Good. Because it means you'll understand me when I turn it on its axis and tell you that you are, right now, more than you appear to be. Even to yourself.

Sleep on it.

White Ethnic Politics: Irish and Italian Catholics and Jews, Oh, My!
By Sewell Chan

An Irishman, an Italian and a Jew walked into the grand auditorium of the New York Academy of Medicine on Wednesday evening – not to tell jokes (or be part of one), but to engage an audience of some 400 people in a discussion about white ethnic groups and their evolving roles in the politics and culture of New York City.

The panelists — Edward I. Koch, mayor from 1978 to 1989; Pete Hamill, the journalist and author; and Frank J. Macchiarola, schools chancellor from 1978 to 1983 — had been invited by the Museum of the City of New York to reflect on a new book, “White Ethnic New York: Jews, Catholics and the Shaping of Postwar Politics,” by the historian Joshua M. Zeitz.