The Birther Truth

[An oldie but a goodie]

Okay. I've held my tongue long enough. It's time to tell you what I know. You may not want to hear it, but it's important. So important that it could change the history of this country, maybe even the world.

Some years back, when I was practicing law in New York, I worked with a group of well-connected, New York liberal lawyers. Some were New Lefters from pre-HUAC days—certainly the old lions in the group. Most spent their summers at socialist camps. Hard core. Their clients were mostly politicians and leftist activist agencies and their principals. I was a good lawyer and did my job faithfully representing their interests. But this is beside the point. Needless to say, these guys were deep in, high and mighty mucky-mucks, who were all really, really angry about what President Ronald Reagan had done to their beloved Soviet empire.

Anyway, one evening we were at an upstate country-club for our annual summer golf/tennis outing. I'll not name it here (nor any of the people), but the PGA has played major tournaments there. After a dinner of London broil and lobster, a few of them retired, as they did every year, to the gentleman's locker for some cards and cigars. "Care to join us for a Cuban, Jim my boy?" one of the younger partners, my mentor, asked me. I was surprised but truly honored. After having practiced law with most of these guys for over eight years, this was the first time I'd been asked into their sanctum sanctorum. "Absolutely," I said, knowing that this was an initiation rite for me I could hardly refuse. I knew enough, besides, not to open my mouth except to raise or pass or fold or puff or sip.

We played cards late into the night. The talk ranged from hot female paralegals at the firm to the Yankees to celebrities they had known from their school days. Most of it very light-hearted. As the evening wore on and the scotch wore in, the talk naturally enough turned to politics. They hated Ed Koch—'Bozo the Clown' they called him. They thought Rudy Giuliani, then a U.S. Attorney, was a fascist ('Mussolini-lite') who was crucifying Michael Milken—a firm client for certain minor real estate matters, I might add. And they wanted to string up Henry Kissinger as a war criminal. etc., etc. You can get the drift.

Then the talk turned to the current administration. Reagan was a stooge, they said, a cut-out for his then-Vice President George H.W. Bush who was the power behind the attempt on Reagan's life and, though nobody could prove it, on JFK. What was happening with the shadow government he was running from the basement of the White House was no less than an attempted coup. There was lots of rumbling agreement around the table. All of this political stuff meant little to me; I had never even voted.

"Not to worry," the most senior guy, an old 50s radical, said. "We've got a guy." He'd obviously had a few too many, and the liquor and the outrage had gotten the better of him. One of the other senior partners from our Chicago office whom I didn't know hissed an 'Ix-nay' at him and tried to change the subject, nodding covertly in my direction. From the corner of my eye I noted my mentor giving him a quiet nod across the table as if to say it was okay to talk around me. I could be trusted. I pretended to be lost in thought about the five cards I'd just been dealt—two low pair, fives and threes, if I remember correctly. I took a deep draw on my cigar, folded, and wandered back over the bar to refill my drink—f.y.i. Basil Hayden straight up with one cube of ice.

I thought nothing more about that little slip until later in the evening, as the clock approached the single digits, the senior partner and the Chicago partner started talking somewhat absent-mindedly among themselves—it was probably the scotch that loosened their inhibitions around me. I don't remember the exact words of their conversation but its import has haunted me to this day, and it's especially poignant now given the current controversy. I don't know why I never put it together before now.

Here's what I learned that night: the two of them had been involved in a secret society that had been culled from a larger group of radicals and leftist liberals. They had formed just after the JFK assassination—in fact in reaction to it. They believed it had been an outright coup by the "right-wing, military-industrial complex" and felt they needed to do something to set the country back on the path toward socialism. They had discovered a young man, 'Mau Mau' I think they called him, who would help them exact their revenge. His father, it came out, had been a covert Soviet spy who had brainwashed and recruited his mother to raise him as an agent of influence. There had been a few technicalities they had to iron out early on, I remember them saying. Something about a birth certificate and the child's bona fides—Operation Hula Hoop they'd called it, laughing. Obviously, I thought nothing of this little detail at the time; I had no idea what they meant by legitimacy. I had no reason to, obviously, at the time. From what I gathered, they had been covertly watching out for him through the years, using his teachers and friends, his church leaders and the organizations which employed him to groom him for the great role they had for him. Again, I had no idea what role they meant. They talked about how much trouble they had had bringing him to New York from an obscure West Coast college (I don't recall the name). They talked about how they had sponsored what they called his 'politically correct' education somewhere here in town and then sent him off to Chicago. As Harvard Law School alums themselves, they were proud of the way they'd managed to matriculate this Mau Mau at their alma mater. One of the Yale Law grads at the table harrumphed and mentioned some fraternity buddies of his at Yale who could've helped, if they'd only have let them. I had no idea what he meant. I just figured this was part of the normal rivalry that went on all the time between these two groups of elites.

Pretty soon, everyone's attention started fading, and the game petered out. I lost about $25 that night, not too much. My mentor, one of the Yalies, had won a couple hundred bucks. I pretended to be a little drunk and even closed my eyes to make the men think I was nodding off as the two old partners nattered on about how it wouldn't be long before they would finally set things aright in this country—even if it didn't come in their lifetime. They just had to be patient. The optimism and hope in their jaded old faces was unmistakable; it energized them. Gave them life

But, of all the things that happened that night, nothing is starker in my memory than what happened later in the parking lot. As I was walking out to my car, my mentor caught up with me and put his arm firmly around my shoulder, gripping me the way he'd done a thousand times. "Jim old boy," he said, "sometimes people say things aloud they really shouldn't, you know?" "Not sure what you're talking about, Bill." He stopped, "You can never ever tell anyone what you heard in there tonight." And he dug his fingers into my shoulder just at the pressure points to the point that it hurt. "I have no idea what you're talking about," I told him. "Good," he said, "keep it that way." His words were deeply chilling. His meaning was crystal clear. "See you Monday."

I never learned any actual names that night. I had pretty much mastered the art of eavesdropping—making myself appear nonchalant, uninterested, distracted—so I didn't ask any follow up questions as I would have, say, if I'd been cross-examining the men under oath, even though I comprehended very little of what they were saying. The next week, one evening when I was sure I wouldn't be noticed, I searched the records room and file rooms of the firm for any further evidence about this so-called Mau Mau or Operation Hula Hoop conspiracy. Needless to say, I found nothing. And I thought nothing further about it.

Until this week. Even now, I am shaking as I type this. It all came back to me in stark relief when I heard Lou Dobbs and the folks at FoxNews talking about this so-called 'birther' controversy. Some people believe that President Obama is not really a citizen of this country. They believe he was born in Kenya and might be an agent of influence for some foreign power or have divided loyalties. They believe he has been planted in the presidency to destroy this country. I don't know anything about that. All I know is what I heard a number of years ago over whiskeys and Cubans around that Westchester card table late one summer night. All I know is what they're alleging sounds a lot like what those old liberal, New York lawyers were laughing about that night. It's remarkable that even then, back before the Civil Rights Amendment had even been passed, they could've foreseen that, with proper guidance, a middle-class boy of mixed-race and mixed-religious parentage from Hawaii (a brand new state at the time) could navigate the treacherous waters of American politics, rise to the very pinnacle of power that rich white men had monopolized throughout the history of the country, and deceive the American public into voting him president. And actually win. How those old card-carrying, card-playing liberals could've known that then I'll never know.

In the intervening years, I've cut all ties with those old guys at my former firm. And most of the men—particularly the two older partners—have since either died or retired. Yet... Yet, I hesitate to write this in fear of what they could do to me. This powerful cabal of leftists has eyes and ears everywhere; I mean, if what I think happened happened, their man—their plant—is now the most powerful person in the world, and only a small group of heroic, right-wing, truth-seeking patriots (bloggers and talk radio callers) stands between him and the fulfillment of this ultimate, nefarious plan to destroy this country hatched by a bunch of defeated, resentful liberal elites nearly a half-century ago and executed with the sort of cunning and precision that makes Dick Cheney, David Addington, Scooter Libby, Karl Rove, and the whole American Enterprise Institute's Project for a New American Century look like a bunch of pikers—a real Mayberry Mafia.

Who Will Save Us?

Okay. I've held my tongue long enough. It's time to tell you what I know. You may not want to hear it, but it's important. So important that it could change the history of this country, maybe even the world.

Some years back, when I was practicing law in New York, I worked with a group of well-connected, New York liberal lawyers. Some were New Lefters from pre-HUAC days—certainly the old lions in the group. Most spent their summers at socialist camps. Hard core. Their clients were mostly politicians and leftist activist agencies and their principals. I was a good lawyer and did my job faithfully representing their interests. But this is beside the point. Needless to say, these guys were deep in, high and mighty mucky-mucks, who were all really, really angry about what President Ronald Reagan had done to their beloved Soviet empire.

Anyway, one evening we were at an upstate country-club for our annual summer golf/tennis outing. I'll not name it here (nor any of the people), but the PGA has played major tournaments there. After a dinner of London broil and lobster, a few of them retired, as they did every year, to the gentleman's locker for some cards and cigars. "Care to join us for a Cuban, Jim my boy?" one of the younger partners, my mentor, asked me. I was surprised but truly honored. After having practiced law with most of these guys for over eight years, this was the first time I'd been asked into their sanctum sanctorum. "Absolutely," I said, knowing that this was an initiation rite for me I could hardly refuse. I knew enough, besides, not to open my mouth except to raise or pass or fold or puff or sip.

We played cards late into the night. The talk ranged from hot female paralegals at the firm to the Yankees to celebrities they had known from their school days. Most of it very light-hearted. As the evening wore on and the scotch wore in, the talk naturally enough turned to politics. They hated Ed Koch—'Bozo the Clown' they called him. They thought Rudy Giuliani, then a U.S. Attorney, was a fascist ('Mussolini-lite') who was crucifying Michael Milken—a firm client for certain minor real estate matters, I might add. And they wanted to string up Henry Kissinger as a war criminal. etc., etc. You can get the drift.

Then the talk turned to the current administration. Reagan was a stooge, they said, a cut-out for his then-Vice President George H.W. Bush who was the power behind the attempt on Reagan's life and, though nobody could prove it, on JFK. What was happening with the shadow government he was running from the basement of the White House was no less than an attempted coup. There was lots of rumbling agreement around the table. All of this political stuff meant little to me; I had never even voted.

"Not to worry," the most senior guy, an old 50s radical, said. "We've got a guy." He'd obviously had a few too many, and the liquor and the outrage had gotten the better of him. One of the other senior partners from our Chicago office whom I didn't know hissed an 'Ix-nay' at him and tried to change the subject, nodding covertly in my direction. From the corner of my eye I noted my mentor giving him a quiet nod across the table as if to say it was okay to talk around me. I could be trusted. I pretended to be lost in thought about the five cards I'd just been dealt—two low pair, fives and threes, if I remember correctly. I took a deep draw on my cigar, folded, and wandered back over the bar to refill my drink—f.y.i. Basil Hayden straight up with one cube of ice.

I thought nothing more about that little slip until later in the evening, as the clock approached the single digits, the senior partner and the Chicago partner started talking somewhat absent-mindedly among themselves—it was probably the scotch that loosened their inhibitions around me. I don't remember the exact words of their conversation but its import has haunted me to this day, and it's especially poignant now given the current controversy. I don't know why I never put it together before now.

Here's what I learned that night: the two of them had been involved in a secret society that had been culled from a larger group of radicals and leftist liberals. They had formed just after the JFK assassination—in fact in reaction to it. They believed it had been an outright coup by the "right-wing, military-industrial complex" and felt they needed to do something to set the country back on the path toward socialism. They had discovered a young man, 'Mau Mau' I think they called him, who would help them exact their revenge. His father, it came out, had been a covert Soviet spy who had brainwashed and recruited his mother to raise him as an agent of influence. There had been a few technicalities they had to iron out early on, I remember them saying. Something about a birth certificate and the child's bona fides—Operation Hula Hoop they'd called it, laughing. Obviously, I thought nothing of this little detail at the time; I had no idea what they meant by legitimacy. I had no reason to, obviously, at the time. From what I gathered, they had been covertly watching out for him through the years, using his teachers and friends, his church leaders and the organizations which employed him to groom him for the great role they had for him. Again, I had no idea what role they meant. They talked about how much trouble they had had bringing him to New York from an obscure West Coast college (I don't recall the name). They talked about how they had sponsored what they called his 'politically correct' education somewhere here in town and then sent him off to Chicago. As Harvard Law School alums themselves, they were proud of the way they'd managed to matriculate this Mau Mau at their alma mater. One of the Yale Law grads at the table harrumphed and mentioned some fraternity buddies of his at Yale who could've helped, if they'd only have let them. I had no idea what he meant. I just figured this was part of the normal rivalry that went on all the time between these two groups of elites.

Pretty soon, everyone's attention started fading, and the game petered out. I lost about $25 that night, not too much. My mentor, one of the Yalies, had won a couple hundred bucks. I pretended to be a little drunk and even closed my eyes to make the men think I was nodding off as the two old partners nattered on about how it wouldn't be long before they would finally set things aright in this country—even if it didn't come in their lifetime. They just had to be patient. The optimism and hope in their jaded old faces was unmistakable; it energized them. Gave them life

But, of all the things that happened that night, nothing is starker in my memory than what happened later in the parking lot. As I was walking out to my car, my mentor caught up with me and put his arm firmly around my shoulder, gripping me the way he'd done a thousand times. "Jim old boy," he said, "sometimes people say things aloud they really shouldn't, you know?" "Not sure what you're talking about, Bill." He stopped, "You can never ever tell anyone what you heard in there tonight." And he dug his fingers into my shoulder just at the pressure points to the point that it hurt. "I have no idea what you're talking about," I told him. "Good," he said, "keep it that way." His words were deeply chilling. His meaning was crystal clear. "See you Monday."

I never learned any actual names that night. I had pretty much mastered the art of eavesdropping—making myself appear nonchalant, uninterested, distracted—so I didn't ask any follow up questions as I would have, say, if I'd been cross-examining the men under oath, even though I comprehended very little of what they were saying. The next week, one evening when I was sure I wouldn't be noticed, I searched the records room and file rooms of the firm for any further evidence about this so-called Mau Mau or Operation Hula Hoop conspiracy. Needless to say, I found nothing. And I thought nothing further about it.

Until this week. Even now, I am shaking as I type this. It all came back to me in stark relief when I heard Lou Dobbs and the folks at FoxNews talking about this so-called 'birther' controversy. Some people believe that President Obama is not really a citizen of this country. They believe he was born in Kenya and might be an agent of influence for some foreign power or have divided loyalties. They believe he has been planted in the presidency to destroy this country. I don't know anything about that. All I know is what I heard a number of years ago over whiskeys and Cubans around that Westchester card table late one summer night. All I know is what they're alleging sounds a lot like what those old liberal, New York lawyers were laughing about that night. It's remarkable that even then, back before the Civil Rights Amendment had even been passed, they could've foreseen that, with proper guidance, a middle-class boy of mixed-race and mixed-religious parentage from Hawaii (a brand new state at the time) could navigate the treacherous waters of American politics, rise to the very pinnacle of power that rich white men had monopolized throughout the history of the country, and deceive the American public into voting him president. And actually win. How those old card-carrying, card-playing liberals could've known that then I'll never know.

In the intervening years, I've cut all ties with those old guys at my former firm. And most of the men—particularly the two older partners—have since either died or retired. Yet... Yet, I hesitate to write this in fear of what they could do to me. This powerful cabal of leftists has eyes and ears everywhere; I mean, if what I think happened happened, their man—their plant—is now the most powerful person in the world, and only a small group of heroic, right-wing, truth-seeking patriots (bloggers and talk radio callers) stands between him and the fulfillment of this ultimate, nefarious plan to destroy this country hatched by a bunch of defeated, resentful liberal elites nearly a half-century ago and executed with the sort of cunning and precision that makes Dick Cheney, David Addington, Scooter Libby, Karl Rove, and the whole American Enterprise Institute's Project for a New American Century look like a bunch of pikers—a real Mayberry Mafia.

The Po-Mo Prometheus

Sorry if my last post ended on a glum note. After writing it, I wondered where that bit of pessimism came from in me.

I had to think, questioning some of my basic assumptions about my expectations for Obama's presidency. If you look back over the last year of posts here on WoW, you'll find a number of feuilletons railing against what I believe to have been war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by the Bush administration. Other, more connected, more important people (including some in Congress) have taken up the mantle. Let's hope they keep at it.

I needed a frame of reference because that sort of came out of nowhere. Now, I'm not necessarily a Jungian or a Joseph Campbellite depth psychologist, but I do believe mythology often supplies us with narratives to help us understand our experience—as, of course, does literature. So, as I've done in the past, I looked to mythology for a template. My likening of McCain/Palin to the Narcissus/Echo myth is Exhibit A. So, thinking in terms of myths, I suppose I wanted Obama to be like Hercules and clean out the Augean stables of the muck and shit left behind by the prior administration.

Lakoff's piece, The Obama Code, threw me off my frame. What Lakoff seems to be saying—and, again, forgive me for using a mythological narrative as an interpretive tool—is that Obama is more like Prometheus; he is trying to bring the fire of moral conscience to society. Let me explain:

Briefly, the familiar story of Prometheus: he was one of the Titans who sided with Zeus against his own kind. In some versions of the story, he was the creator of the human race. He tricked Zeus into accepting animal sacrifices of fat and bones, allowing humanity to eat the meat. He stole fire from the immortals and brought it to the human race. Zeus punished him for this, first by sending Pandora with her box as the first woman, then by having him chained to the Caucasus Mountains where an eagle or vulture came every day and feasted on his liver (which, of course, regenerated every night).

The symbolic act that stands out, of course, is the bringing of fire. In some versions of the story, Prometheus stole it from the sun; in others, from the Olympian gods themselves who had been hiding it from humanity. In Aeschylus's Prometheus Bound, he also is claimed to have rescued humanity from destruction and taught them the arts of civilization. For this act of defiance against the gods and for his choosing to side with humanity against the gods, Zeus exiled him, imprisoned him, and subjected him to eternal torture.

My pessimism, I think, stemmed from this myth. The learning is that consciousness-raising is invariably a painful psychological upheaval. That's at the individual level. But, in the social arena there's a parallel: The elite, the status quo, the powers-that-be (=the gods) cannot abide the lower classes (=mere mortals) having the same privileges (=fire) they enjoy. When one of their own—preferably a newbie—effects such a betrayal by enlightening those they consider their lessers, they will surely try to bring him down.

This is what Obama, if I read Lakoff aright, has done.

The mantra of the religionist reformer has always been that you have to change the inner person before you can effect behavioral and, indeed, societal change. That is the aim of 'conversion'. But we live in a secular society and politicians are not priests.

From 20th Century analytic philosophy, we glean that understanding the way the mind works can only truly come about through understanding the way language works: again, the model of consciousness. Changing the rhetoric of politics would represent, then, on this model, an attempt to reform politics, in specific, and society, in general.

What Obama is attempting to do, according to Lakoff's Obama Code, is inculcate a moral conscience in the consciousness of the nation: social responsibility and accountability. The resistance to this has been fierce among certain groups already, principally those who cannot see beyond their own noses: that is, those for whom there is no greater and no other morality or accountability than that of the individual. To make people aware of their own collective responsibility is a Promethean transgression akin to stealing fire from the gods and bringing it to humanity. And it is sufficient to invite their everlasting animosity.

There is some reason for hope, however; again, hewing close to the interpretive power of the myth: Prometheus was eventually rescued from his torture and exile by...drumroll please...Hercules! So, on our interpretation, it may, indeed, take a cleaning out of the Augean stables—prosecuting the Bush administration for its crimes and cleaning out the Constitutional muck they left behind—to save Obama from their wrath.



Do you think this is stretching it?

"Our Common Humanity"

"...that as the world grows smaller, our common humanity shall reveal itself..."

Barack Hussein Obama, Jan. 20, 2009, First Inaugural Speech.

Amen.

I'm going to hold you to that, Mr. President! Good luck! Now, get to work. Have you closed that prison at Guantanamo yet? Have you repudiated all uses of anything that reeks of torture at Abu Ghraib or elsewhere? What about the practice of extraordinary rendition? And say, any word on those war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in your and my name over the past, oh, eight years or so?

Just asking.


UPDATE: Jan-22-2009: 15:30 E.S.T.: Damn if he didn't do it (ex-Nuremberg): Gitmo, torture, rendition on Day Two! Plus, Mitchell and Holbrooke to boot! Wow.

Oh yes we did!

There is so much to be said about yesterday's landslide election of Barack Obama as the President of the United States of America. Other journalists and pundits and bloggers will have much to digest. I want to give some of my own personal reflections.

First, about me. I grew up in the rural South (a county that went approximately 60-40 for John McCain this year). There were two elementary schools, one all white and the other all black. The first African-American student, Max Black (I still remember his name), came to our all-white school when we were in the third grade. At the time I did not understand the stir his presence caused. I tried to make friends with him. I didn't really see the difference. I was naive. In that community many of the blacks had the same last names as many of the white families. For those of you not from that region, that could mean one of two things: at some point in the 19th Century the white family owned the black family and, upon Emancipation, the black family took on the name of their owner because they either had no historical memory of their original African family name or because they had a 'familial' relationship with their owner—that is to say, they were his bastard children. Fact of life in the American South. Often, too, you could see family resemblances across the races which implicated the latter explanation. (I used this as a motif for my protagonist's coming-of-age in my (still unpublished) novel EULOGY.) Blacks and whites were not allowed to swim in the same swimming pools. Blacks had to sit in the balcony at the only movie theater in the nearby town, using a side entrance.

With the Civil Rights Act of 1964, things changed. My father, a Baptist minister, in what was a heroic move, exchanged pulpits with the pastor of the nearby black church one Sunday. Shortly thereafter, we had a cross burned on our front lawn. Still, to his enduring credit, he made it an annual affair. Once the two separate schools were finally merged, there was a surreptitious Klan rally on the ballground of the school and another cross was burned. There was an atmosphere of anonymous malevolence, spite, disgust, resentment surrounding me in my youth. That's my story. To live to see the election of an African-American as President in my lifetime seems an unfathomable amount of change. I believe there is still racial hatred in pockets of this country—not just the rural South, mind you. My moderate friends and family who either support Obama or oppose him on policy grounds all say they worry that someone will try to assassinate him. Many pray it won't happen. Those fears and hates are deep-seated and not easily eradicated. Still, I believe Obama's election is an enormous step in healing over those primitive feelings.

Some have said that slavery is America's original sin. This makes some sense. It was prevalent in the colonies, engrained in the Constitution of 1789, and continued as an institution until the 1860's. In the South, the rifts from the Civil War persisted throughout most of the 20th Century. In my own lifetime, I've known children of both slaves and slave owners (including, sad to say, my own great-grandmother). These rifts help explain much of the hatred and resentment that characterized the South of my youth. In this sense, Barack Obama's election may actually signal the beginning of the end of the American Civil War, the beginning of the healing of these tremendous fault lines in American culture. Here is the slogan which got to me:

Rosa sat, so Martin could march, so Obama could run, so our children can fly!

But that is all history and symbolism. Important, yes. But not determinative. I actively and vigorously supported Barack Obama for President, but not for the reasons above. Perhaps the most profound line in the most profound speech I heard in my lifetime was this: "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character." That is Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" 1963 speech from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. I couldn't agree more whole-heartedly. It was his mind and the content of Obama's character, not the color of his skin, that won my vote.

He is not a dauphin, a son of privilege—either the admiralty or governmental and moneyed elite. He got where he is on merit. I was an editor of my law review (though not its president) and I know how tough and competitive that position is, especially at Harvard. He is smarter than I am and I am sick and tired of having a dolt for a president. I want someone who is curious, interested, and smart and confident enough to know what he doesn't know and seek input from a diversity of advisers, not yes-men—a problem solver. Obama seems even-keeled and exudes an air of calm, quiet confidence. He seems to be emotionally stable, in command of both his campaign and himself. He doesn't seem particularly truculent. His actions appear to be rational and well-considered—he is not a shoot-from-the-hip, cowboy, rogue maverick. He does not seem to be defensive or paranoid. He does not seem antagonistic to the American people or its press. In fact, quite the opposite, he appears to be responsive to the wishes of the country. He does not seem to be afraid to speak the truth, to communicate, to identify problems and openly propose solutions. He seems to understand complexity and to have the sort of analytical mind it takes to sort things out. He seems to be rational and realistic, to understand cause-and-effect, and his policies seem to offer direct and practical solutions to specific identifiable problems. He does not appear to be in the thrall of an ideology that colors his motives and policies and actions. He does not seem to be afraid of details. He knows how to use the English language. He is not jingoistic.

Our country and, indeed, our world are in a mess. It's going to take some brains to sort it out. I believe Barack Obama is the right man at the right time.

Oh and also too by the way, how must it feel to be a Republican this morning? According to them, Obama is completely inexperienced. He is the "most liberal Senator" in the United States. He even consistently votes to the left of an avowed Socialist. In fact, he is a Socialist, probably a Marxist and a Communist. He wants to redistribute the wealth. He's going to raise everybody's taxes. He is a secret Muslim who pals around with terrorists and like the Manchurian candidate part of a secret cell of terrorists who plan to destroy this country. He and his wife are un-American and they hate everything America stands for. He has so many unsavory and radical associations. He doesn't support our troops. He wants to surrender. He will negotiate with tyrants without pre-conditions or preparation. He can't be trusted. And guess what? He still drubbed them. How must it feel to lose so badly and thoroughly to such a heinous candidate? This can't be good for their self-esteem. But this raises the question: does he have a mandate to destroy capitalism and implement the socialist agenda? According to Republican rhetoric, apparently he does.

One last point re: Sarah Palin in 2012. Sarah Palin will never be president—in 2012 or ever. Mark my words. There are too many big boys lying in the tall grass waiting their chance. To name two: Mitt Romney and Jeb Bush. They will take her down before they take on each other. And as I often counsel my friends, never get in the middle of an elephant-f*ck.

... Red Ghoti, Blue Ghoti*

Here are some teaser quotes from a tremendous column, "The Power of Passive Campaigning," by Stanley Fish. Go read it here. He draws on John Milton's Paradise Regained to describe how the Obama campaign has so far prevailed over the McCain campaign:

The McCain campaign huffs and puffs and jumps from charge to charge: Obama consorts with terrorists; he’s a socialist; he’s a communist; he is un-American; he’s not one of us; he’s a celebrity; he’s going to take your money and give it to people who never did a day’s work; he’s going to sell out Israel; he’ll cozy up to foreign dictators; he’s measuring the drapes.

In response, Obama explains his tax policy for the umpteenth time, points out that capitalists like Warren Buffet support him, details his relationship with Bill Ayers, lists those he consults with, observes that Senator McCain, by his own boast, voted with President George W. Bush 90 percent of the time, and calls for change.

What he (or his campaign) doesn’t do is bring up the Keating Five, or make veiled references to McCain’s treatment of his first wife, or make fun of Sarah Palin (she doesn’t need any help), or disparage his opponent’s experience, or hint at the disabilities of age. He just stands there looking languid (George Will called him the Fred Astaire of politics), always smiling and never raising his voice. ...

What’s going on here? I find an answer in a most unlikely place, John Milton’s “Paradise Regained,” a four-book poem in which a very busy and agitated Satan dances around a preternaturally still Jesus until, driven half-crazy by the response he’s not getting, the arch-rebel (i.e., maverick) loses it, crying in exasperation, “What dost thou in this world?”...

Jesus is “a solid rock” continually assaulted by “surging waves”; and even though the repeated assaults result only in the waves being “all to shivers dashed,” they keep on coming until they exhaust themselves “in froth or bubbles.” The power Jesus generates is the power of not moving from the still center of his being and refusing to step into an arena of action defined by his opponent. So it is with Obama, who barely exerts himself and absorbs attack after attack, each of which, rather than wounding him, leaves him stronger. It’s rope-a-dope on a grand scale.

*If you're wondering what that 'Ghoti' thing is, go here.