James E. Clyburn of South Carolina's statement about his "disappointment at comments by Bill and Hillary" is the latest effort by Blacks and White journalists to anoint Barack Obama as the Democratic nominee at the expense of the truth.

Clinton's comments comparing Obama to Martin Luther King Jr. and herself to Lyndon Johnson was a perfectly reasonable analogy. King's organizing and soaring rhetoric were keys to waking up America to the sins of racism. However it was Johnson's political skills and willingness to use them that enacted one civil rights law after another. It also created the politics we know now a solid South for the Republics. To deny this reality would be like saying Abraham Lincoln didn't free the slaves even though Frederick Douglas agitated for abolition.

However this not the first time in this campaign that truth has been sacrificed in the name of some sort of political correctness. Prior to Iowa Caucuses MJ Rosenberg claimed that Clinton was playing the race card. There was no real evidence for this and the charge disappeared as soon as Obama won his victory.

It continued with the hysteria over Jack Shaheen's truthful statements about Obama's cocaine use. Obama has admitted it and has written about it. Shaheen had the nerve to suggest Republicans would use it again Obama. Two days later Republican operative Ed Rollins did just that. However Shaheen was sacrificed to the forces of PC who prefer lies over the the truth.

Yesterday there were two more examples of soft-headed and lazy journalists trying to wrap a cocoon around Obama. The first was a slander against NYS Attorney General Andrew Cuomo. He was accused of using "shuck and jive" as a racial negative against Obama. However, a simple call to either Cuomo or the journalist who ran the original story would have shown that the phrase had nothing to do with Obama. People have to get over the fact that various phrases associated with Blacks have now entered everyday conversation. Perhaps some have to get their keyboards out of their mouths?

There should be no doubt that as Shaheen tried to point out that the Republicans will use race against Obama if he is the nominee. It pains me to defend Karl Rove since he is likely to lead the attacks on Obama or any Democratic candidate. However his WSJ Op-Ed piece was hardly racial.

Obama's comments at the Democratic Debate were cold and rude. Calling them "trash talk" seems a perfect description. For those who don't like "trash talk" as a phrase should look at the backpage of the NY Daily News with the headline "Trash Day." It is all about trash talking.

Playing pick-up basketball at Harvard is racial? Because Harvard is so associated with the Black Ghetto? If I said I played pick-up basketball at Penn what would that tell anyone?

Finally, Rove is not the first person to suggest that Obama is lazy. It has been pointed out that he missed many votes in both the Illinois Legislature and the U.S. Senate. It has also been said that as Chairman of a Senate Sub-committee he has rarely called a meeting. Juan Gonzalelez in a NY Daily News column headlined "I smell Obama baloney" also raises this issue among others. Perhaps there are legitimate reasons to miss votes and not to call hearings, but why not say what they are rather than smear people?

Both Politico and Dan Abrams have started to look at the Press. The Media does not like the Clintons. Abrams also claims the Press wants a Black President and implies they will sacrifice truth and reality and fairness in order to protect Obama.

You combine the desire for a Black President with an incredible smugness and sanctimony and laziness ignorance the Media is clearly ready to sacrifice truth and decency in order to shield Obama.

I have not seen much discussion of our Attorney General's testimony before the Senate. Not so much his defense of the Constitutionality or legality of the NSA spying.  I am thinking of some of the amazingly stupid things he said. 

After acknowledging that Bin Laden was undoubtedly aware that his conversations were being listened to Gonzales suggested he might forget this except for being reminded by mentions in the newspapers.  Is there any doubt why we have not caught Bin Laden?  Bush treats him as if he was a moron.

 In his prepared remarks Gonzales talked about the much broader electronic eavesdropping done by previous presidents including Washington and Lincoln.  Washington and Lincoln?

 I am not sure what is more disheartening.  That our government has distain for rights and values or that they seem so stupid.

An Iranian newspaper in retaliation to the Danish newspaper running the now well known, but largely unseen in America, cartoons is soliciting cartoons about the Holocaust. The relevance of the Holocaust to the Danes is hard for me to see. Even more peculiar is that every act of the Muslims and their defenders makes what apparently in the cartoons more legitimate.

[news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/4688466.stm]

Alexander Hamilton made one speech at the Constitutional Convention. He called for a monarch for the executive power in the new government. The idea was rejected by the convention. Article II creating the presidency was left a bit vague because everyone knew George Washington was going to be the first president and it was going to be left to him to fill out some of the elements of his office.

The Founders intended, and expected, that the Congress in general and the House in particular to be, and was going to be, the most powerful branch of government. They were also creating a government of limited powers in which powers not explicitly given to the Federal Government remained with the people and the States.

Thus, I do not understand the Bush Administrations straining to find regal powers inherent in Article II. Where are these powers? For an administration that believes in "strict construction" and small powers they reserve for themselves quite expansive dictatorial powers.

This was the story behind the amazing evolution of Fischher's friend Hans-Joachim Klein, the penitent terrorist.  Klein had joined the Revolutionary Cells in Germany and had united with Carlos the Jackal believing that he was going to put his mechanic's skills to good use in a left-wing military organization, fighting Nazism in its modern disguises.  The Revolutionary Cells sent him for miltary training in an Arab country. In his intereview on this theme with Cohn-Bendit in the mid nineteen-eighties, Klein did not specify which country, but wherever it was, the place did not agree with him.  He found himself in a military training ground where in one part of the camp,European leftists singing left-wing songs received their anti-Zionists military training and , in another part, European fascists singing fascist songs received their own anti-Zionist military training.

The Palestinian movement tturned out not to be an anti-fascist or anti-Nazi cause at all.  It turned out to be an anti-Jewish cause.  Klein was horrified.  His mother had been imprisoned for a while in Ravensbruck, the Nazi camp and died later on from her sufferings there, when he was still a little child.  In his adulthood, he began to imagine or perhaps to fantasize, that she was Jewish--a not uncommon fantasy among modern Germans.  That was why he abandoned the Revolutionary Cells and then went even further and accused his old comrades among the German guerrillas not just of having betrayed the revolutionary ideal but of being out-and-out anti-Semites.  That was a shocking accusation. Klein was disturbed by something else at the Palestinian military camp,too, and this was a cult of suicide--a weird phenomenon that he was among the first to notice, back in the seventies.

[Paul Berman, Power and the Idealists.  pp.57-58.]

The early Zionist settlers, being solid European socialists and anarchists, basked in the sympathy of at least some portions of the European left.  In  the late nineteen-twenties and early thirties, however, the world Communist movement came out in favor of the Arab resisters.  Then, in the nineteen-forties, both the Communists  and the democratic left in Europe returned to, or re-affirmed, their original sympathy for Zionism--only to have things switch again in the nineteen-fifties, when Israel lined up as an ally of the British and French imperialists.

The 1967 war, in which the Israelis seized a lot of land, seemed to confirm Israel's imperilaist nature.  The Soviets became fierce enemies of Zionism.  Palestinian Marxists stepped forward, Soviet resources poured in.  And, under those cirucmstances,  the New Left came up with one more interpretation of the Middle Easter conflict, in which the New Left's vision of a lingering Nazism of the modern life was suddenly reconfigured with Israel in the a leading role.  Israel became the crypto-Nazi site par excellence, the purest of all examples of how Naszism had never been defeated but had instead lingered into the present in ever more cagey froms.  What better disguise could Nazism assume than a Jewish State?

[Paul Berman, Power and the Idealists pp. 53-54

In each country where the New Left happened to flourish, the revived panic over a newly discovered, cleverly disguised, still flourishhng Nazism seemed to be confirmed by strictly local cirucumstances.

The crudest of those alternatives, the least imaginative, was simply to revert to the old-fashion sectarian Marxism of the nineteen-thirties and to go about fighting Nazism in exactly the way that people had done in the past, by organizing disciplined, Leninist structures based on obedience, dedication, and self sacrifice, the dream words of the Great Depression, and in this manner to sink into a sepia-toned memory of long ago....

And yet retro-Marxism was never New Leftism's main impulse.  A still larger number of people took up the second alternative, a Marxism that was distincly of the nineteen-sixties and seventies: The Marxism of Ho, Mao, Che and Fidel, mixed with a few doctrines of the Frankfurt School philosophers....

As for the New Leftism's third alternative, it was fundamentally anarchist--a libertarian impluse that sometimes drew on the nineteenth-century pamphlets of Bakunin and Kropotkin, sometimes on the early-twentieth-century writings of Anton Pannekoek and the Dutch councilists, and sometimes on the contemporary but equally obscure pamphlets of the autonomists in Italy and the Socialism or Barbarism group and the Situationists in France.  But most often the anarchist alternative drew on nothing at all, on a breeze blowing through the university neighborhoods and on rumors from the California counterculture.

The piece has a history of Jewish Iranian relations.  She notes that the secular intellectual revolutionaries made a fatal error in not opposing Khomeini's persecution of the Jews and the B'hai sect by noting this set in motion the movement that would ultimately swallow them too.

Then in 1943 Lippmann wrote "that the new world order should be dominated by 'great regional constellations of states which are homelands, not of one nation alone but of the historic civilized communities.'"  

Lippmann's views were put forth not only in a desire to get America engaged in the world but in distinction to Woodrow Wilson's universalism.

However the one big difference is that the Show used the word "nigger" or more accurately "nigga" very often.  What to make of this?

I presume that most of the Cartoon Network's audience and thus the audience for Boondocks is White and generally young males.  The use of the word, which most newspapers won't print and I know of no one who has used in my presence, was said in a casual way hardly angry or pointedly as often seems to be the case in rap songs.  It would seem to me that it makes it more easy to accept the word.

If the show is a success won't it be soon before we hear more Whites use the word "nigger?"  What will the consequence be?  Will it represent a splint on generational grounds?

What is the meaning of its use by Blacks?  I am sure that every ethnic group has used the slur words used by others in an effort to take away their sting.  It is one thing for such a word to be used within the group than against the group.  But what happens when the group uses it so often?

Democrats should become the party of politics.  This is about the recongnition that in order to accomplish policies those affected have to accept the goals and the means.  This is not just about pandering to the public.  I will confess to finding the lines of the movie Blazing Saddles to be both funny and true, "they are farmers, people of the land, you know morons."  However, Democrats have to open up discussions with fellow Americans and people of the world to convince them of the rightness of various policy alternatives.

Many people at the CAFE believe passionately both in various policy alternatives that resemble the social welfare states of Europe.  There is also a belief that Americans are just waiting to adopt such policies.  I am skeptical on both accounts. However, I do believe that the Democratic Party instead of being the "know it all" party should instead  take a page from community developement corporations or even Saul Alinsky and begin talking and listening to others. Democrats will  have a chance to have both better and more successful policies as well as defeat the Republicans.

With tax reform coming to the fore this should open such a debate. Everyone hates the taxcode and most don't like paying taxes. However, opening this process up to debate and conversation may illustrate to Americans that Republicans are interested in shifting the tax burden from the wealthy to working people.  But beyond this particular issue this should be how Democrats should address our fellow citizens about all issues.  It will allow us to advocate more difficult policies and achieve greater results.

In the last week Syria has been accused of murdering Lebanese political leader Rafik Hariri and the President of Iran has called for Israel to be wiped out. However, no one at the Cafe has made mention of either event.  

This at a site that denouces Democrats who supported getting rid of a tryant who ran rape rooms and invaded neighbors.  Many at the Cafe spare no effort to blame the war in Iraq on supporters of Israel for the sake of Israel yet say nothing about the suppression of Lebanon by Syria.  For those who denounce Israel for its treatment of Palestinians where is the outrage about the treatment of Arabs at the hands of Arabs?

Beyond the infrastruction there will be the need to rebuild neighborhoods and shopping areas.  The Gulf Coast should borrow a page from New York City.  Localities should divide their towns and cities into development lots.  They should then layout the specs for that redevelopment, size, height, density and perhaps the look they want.

Then they should put the lots up for bid. The key is not money but plans.  Would be bidders will have to present a complete package that complies with the overall development plan.  As part of the bid there must be building plans, a development team, financing, a sales or rental team all in place.  The groups with the best plans that can get from scratch to built to filled best should be choosen.

The Federal Government can provide three services.  The first is subsidized bonds to pay for the building. In exchange builders will have to offer a mix of incomes in what they building.  The Federal Government can also make sure low income tax credits are available and known to the builders.  This will give investors a tax rightoff in exchange for low income rentals being built.  Lastly, the Federal Government can offer subsidized mortgages for buyers of the newly built properties.

This plan will allow a private, local and Federal  partnership that will limit the waste of money and get real buildings built to house real people.

Initially especially in the 1960s Democrats answer to fear was that an appeal to hope and the basic principles of America.  The way to fight fear was speaking of the Constitution and the Declaration of Indepedence and expanding who is included within those principles.

Somewhere, I think it was with the advent of the Vietnam War and Watergate, Democrats stopped appealling to hope and inclusion and instead offered our own version of fear.  Fear of being left behind.  Fear of evil corporations and other remnents of a failed Marxism.

During the debate over CAFTA here at the Cafe a few people refered to NAFTA as causing job loss in the United States and being bad for Mexico as well.  This made no sense.  The United States has more jobs now than when NAFTA was passed and how could it be a lose lose situation?

Tom Friedman addresses post NAFTA Mexico in "The World is Flat.  (I know he is not well liked here at the Cafe but I think that is because he is more correct than most and wont wallow in the fear mongering).  This quote from page 310 from Guuillermo Oritz of the Mexican Central Bank:

'That was a real shock. We started reducing our gains in market share and then started losing them.  We said that there is a real change here... And it was about China.'

China is such a powerhouse of low-cost manufacturing that even though the NAFTA accord has given Mexico a leg up with the United States andeven though Mexico isright next door to us, China in 2003 replaced Mexico as the number two exporter to the United States....

Democrats, Progressive voices have to stop fooling ourselves and demonizing people who are in business because we fear that the days of powerful unionized industries are fading and the comfortable life we had is going with them.  

If Democrats try to out fear Republicans we will live not only in a grim world in which we all race to the bottom but given that this country has never been all that hospitable to leftward politics, even domestic versions like Henry George, we will give this country over to the Republicans for a long time to come.

Since September 11, 2001 the use of fear has been even more palpable.  Fear is the excuse for robbing Americans of liberties, for going to war, for reducing our interaction with the rest of the world.  The use of fear especially when combined with a desire to have it easy has made for a mean and sterile politics.

Democrats should call for a series of governmental initiatives that call on the United States to strive to greater things and are based on hope.

Transportation, including the moving of the data and comminications.  It was the Erie Canal that originlly made New York City the world capital.  Whether it is rail, shipping or the internet the United States should be on the cutting edge of transportation.  We need to be able to move goods, people and ideas from coast to coast and beyond the coasts with greater ease and lower costs.

Biology, the human genome project was originally a governmental enterprise.  The need for basic biological research maybe beyond the cost of private companies.  The government ought to expand funding of biology.  One of the terrible things about the push against evolution is not so much the pushing of relgion on us but what is says about scientific knowledge in this country and the efforts to make our students as ignorant about science as possible.

Engery, this almost goes without saying but energy has economic, environmental and military consquences.  From top to bottom in the energy complex there needs to be changes from extraction to conservation.  We are never going to be self-sufficient but we can use a great deal less energy.

Water, though it is not talked about too much may be the crisis in coming years.  One of the reasons the Middle East is such an intractible problem is not oil but water.  We have a drought now in the Mid-West, Europe and Africa.  There has to be a better way to gain access to potable water and to use less water.

Space, for some reason Progressives have often disparaged the space program.  However, exploring the universe especially as a global enterprise gives us more basic knowledge and lifts us beyond the mundane.

It would be my goal that these projects would serve a number of ends.  They would find solutions to current problems, generate current jobs both in government and throughout private enterprise.  Beyond the current they would create ideas that lead to a world we cannot now imagine starting whole new industries.  Creating exciting new jobs with careers that are both personally and socially fulfilling it will lead to greater demand for better schools and an improvement of the schools.

A last thought.  This country has lost two generations of Ph.D.s.  The first in the 1970s and now as many cannot find jobs in Universities. We ought to open up high schools and lower to Ph.D. regardless of the education courses they have taken.  Perhaps like in Europe they can be encouraged to write and publish in their feel thus improving their skills and taking advantage of tenure in high schools that otherwise to be a nice perk but a perculiar protection.  Schools should be filled with teachers who know and love their subjects and thus will be far better teachers.

Since the Civil Rights Movement and Vietnam the United States has combined a level of self satisfaction and the fear that the good ies will be taken away.  Both parties have pushed fear as their major electioneering tool.  It is time for Democrats to turn our back on fear and call on the country working together to do great things.