What About The Green Zone? Part XVIU

The AP:

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama said Tuesday that security in Iraq has improved and that the United States urgently needs to turn its attention to Afghanistan.

I keep wondering about the status of the Green Zone. The article states Obama met local Iraqi leaders in Ramidi, in AnBar Province. But what kind of travel is permitted for most Americans and Iraqi national leaders around, into, and from, the walled Green Zone?

If it's now secure in Baghdad, tear down the Green Zone walls, and start announcing scheduled visits by American officials.

Until then, I'd say not much has changed.

Two Score and 10 Olympics Ago

It's hard to believe that two black men raising their fists at an Olympics award event merited being suspended from the U.S. team and being banned from the Olympic "village". And death threats.

Pushing It

OK, even I'll admit I'm getting a bit tired of the wimpishness here.

And we can do without the MoveOn.org-sixties-counterculture lectures, too.

Obama and Ideology

I agree, sadly, with much of what Krugman is saying here. The Democrat's ideological mushiness and timidity is in fact a major pet peeve of mine and I've written about it repeatedly in this space.

But there a few mitigating factors to consider.

One is that in most surveys, respondents are about twice as likely to identify as conservative as liberal (40% to 20% on average) and this self-identifying trend predates Reagan's campaign or presidency. So this is the lay of the land most Democrats face. I would argue that Democrats need to do a better job of rehabilitating the liberal label, but that's probably a post for another day.

Second is that the 1980 Reagan and 1992 Clinton comparisons are not equivalent. The economic and international environments were more severe in 1980 than 1992, leaving Reagan a better opportunity to rework the political landscape.

There's also the matter of the structure of American politics, which in both elections was shaped by a Democratic Party that still had a sizeable national presence in the South. The 1994 elections largely eradicated this feature of American politics. But again, as with the economic and international environments, Reagan was on a lot safer ground in many respects.

Finally, the 1994 election results came about largely on the basis of the Republican's depiction of Clinton as a radical liberal. Clinton's first two years were fairly bold ones--he attempted to allow gays to serve freely in the military; with Hillary he attempted an overhaul of the health care system to provide universal coverage; and he engineered the passage of the deficit reduction bill, which among other things, raised marginal tax rates. Similar to George W., Clinton stood accused of having run as a moderate New Democrat but as having governed as a crazed liberal wacko from San Fran.

The upshot of all of this is that there are reasons for doubting that, despite the country's apparent disapproval of a Republican president, we are on the cusp of a liberal revolution. The structure and geography of American politics makes such change, or at least the duration of such change, very difficult. Add to that the racial issues already affecting the campaign, and Obama's "triangulating" is somewhat understandable.

At the same time, mostly because he is an economist, Krugman overlooks many of the fields in which Obama has sounded pretty distinctly liberal tones, especially in regards to foreign policy in Cuba and the need to change, not just the tactics, but the underlying basis for American imperialistic policies around the globe and in the Middle East.

So, with Krugman, I share more than a little concern with any rhetoric that seems to give up the battle by trying to "transcend" ideology (remember Dukakis?). But Obama in many ways does represent a significant ideological departure from the norm. Maybe this will bear fruit in an Obama administration and maybe not. But it's pretty safe to say he's a better ticket to that kind of alteration than Hillary (or Biden or Bayh) would have been and certainly a better bet than John McCain.

Slaughter 'em all

Not only is Hugh Hewitt terribly afraid of the Islams and Obamas, he's also terribly fond of the brutality of football and eager to watch his team "slaughter" another team in the sport.

But isn't Hewitt supposed to be a "Christian" kind of conservative? Is the kind of "Christian" society Hewitt wants to impose on us all one in which we go around "slaughtering" our enemies, literal and figurative, real and imagined (mostly imagined)?

Bible Bamboozlement

Have you ever noticed that although conservative religious folk whine incessantly about how supposedly persecuted they are, how they aren't being allowed to practice their faith to the fullest extent in the public square, how somehow they and their faith are slighted by elites abroad in the land in academia, in the media, in Hollywood, etc, that when someone actually refers directly to what the Bible literally says, these same uptight, conservative fundies just blow their stacks, as if quoting from their holy book is intolerable?

After referring to the book of Leviticus's condoning and provision for slavery (the book of Exodus blesses it, too; take a read through chapter 21), for the buying and selling of human flesh, for created human beings, the Christianist brigade goes into overdrive complaining, bizarrely, that Obama is "deliberately distorting" the Bible and "dragging Biblical understanding through the mud."

But what is Obama distorting? He's merely quoting from the Bible, which they falsely claim to rever.

What the Dobsonites really mean is that it is unfair for Obama, or anyone, least of all the sheeples in the pews, to dare to interpret the Bible for themselves, to read it just as it is written. Rather, it is insinuated, there is a grand tradition of evangelical Christian thought that is the only proper intepreter and guardian of the scriptures, and that unless we are party to this elite consensus on the holy book, then our views, our readings, are invalid. Only religious elites like Dobson can explain the Bible for us. This is an old argument, at least as old as the Reformation when the Roman Catholic Church hierarchy first tried to prevent the widespread printing and distribution of the Bible and then when that became impossible, amped up its supposed prerogatives to infallibility, meaning that for the simple lay person, they could read the Bible, but couldn't decide for themselves what the texts meant or how to apply them. But as literacy and education have spread, and just as importantly, as people have become more healthy and prosperous, the would be dictators in the Roman Catholic Church, Southern Baptist Convention, Mormon church, and in Colorado Springs lose more of their hold on the public imagination. The same old tricks don't work any more.

Put simply, Dobson and his ilk believe only they are fit to interpret the Bible. The rest of us are supposed to follow mindlessly like the most rabid ignorant fanatics.

Dobson and his FOTF are a Joke

This is amusing.

Speaking of faith matters, Obama said:

"Which passages of scripture should guide our public policy?" Obama asked in the speech. "Should we go with Leviticus, which suggests slavery is OK and that eating shellfish is an abomination? Or we could go with Deuteronomy, which suggests stoning your child if he strays from the faith? Or should we just stick to the Sermon on the Mount?

"So before we get carried away, let's read our Bible now," Obama said, to cheers. "Folks haven't been reading their Bible."

He also called Jesus' Sermon on the Mount "a passage that is so radical that it's doubtful that our Defense Department would survive its application."

In response, Dobson's camp issued this declaimer:

...Obama should not be referencing antiquated dietary codes and passages from the Old Testament that are no longer relevant to the teachings of the New Testament.

Get that? The OT is just junk, according to Dobson. It's "antiquated" and "no longer relevant."

But then later, the FOTF chieftain through is PR minion issues this smarmy, contradictory statement:

"Evangelicals are people who take Bible interpretation very seriously, and the sort of speech he gave shows that he is worlds away in the views of evangelicals," he said.

Get that? "Evangelicals...take Bible interpretation very seriously." No, they don't. Just after throwing three quarters of the Christian holy book (i.e. The Old Testament) under the bus, Dobson's munchkin has the gall to claim that "Evangelicals....take Bible interpretation seriously."

But even if you allow Dobson and his crew to claim that when they want to impose Biblical morality on the country they really only mean the New Testament Bible, there's still that matter about the Sermon on the Mount and Obama's linking of those famous injunctions to the presence of the U.S. Department of War (er, Defense), which Dobson's mouthpiece didn't bother reflecting on.

So, when it really comes down to it, when you get through with Dobson's Christian Bible, what you have left is basically the covers.

Dobson and the Christianist, theocon community are a ridiculous joke.

Bite Me

Brooks doth protest too much.

I keep having this fantasy of Obama telling the Israeli Lobby, the Cuban Exiles, Faux News, the Wash Post editorial page, the Bush Dog Democrats, Joe Lieberman, and the other clowns ruining our Democracy to go screw themselves.

But in the absence of that, a reputation for ruthlessness won't hurt.

Is the Speaker of the House still a Dem?

I'm assuming the Speaker can block bills like this from coming to the Floor. But what do I know.

Remind me again, how did Steny Hoyer get to be Majority Leader?