The Progress Report.

The Onion's take.

I haven't written much about Obama's historic win because I've mostly been speechless about it and so much has already been said that says it for me. But I was moved to tears by the history and meaning of it all, and am proud to be an American.

On the other hand, why does he want this job, is one question -- with G W Bush having left him, as one of the Daily Show pundits put it last night, a "giant shitburger supreme" on his doorstep.  Or, as the Onion put it today (just for laughs):

Black Man Given Nation's Worst Job

NOVEMBER 5, 2008 | ISSUE 44*45

WASHINGTON-African-American man Barack Obama, 47, was given the least-desirable job in the entire country Tuesday when he was elected president of the United States of America. In his new high-stress, low-reward position, Obama will be charged with such tasks as completely overhauling the nation's broken-down economy, repairing the crumbling infrastructure, and generally having to please more than 300 million Americans and cater to their every whim on a daily basis. As part of his duties, the black man will have to spend four to eight years cleaning up the messes other people left behind. The job comes with such intense scrutiny and so certain a guarantee of failure that only one other person even bothered applying for it. Said scholar and activist Mark L. Denton, "It just goes to show you that, in this country, a black man still can't catch a break."

A year later: My grandfather and the election.

Almost a year to the day that my grandfather passed away, just after reaching 100 (which I wrote or rambled about here and here), comes this year's Presidential Election. Between the fact that this year it falls on my grandfather's birthday and then hearing the sad news that Barack Obama's beloved grandmother had passed away, it is impossible not to think now of him again.

And to wonder about how he would have reacted to this election, and how he would have voted.

For you see, my grandpa Lou was a lifelong, well, what I'd call an FDR Democrat (and he could certainly remember FDR -- in fact, he could vividly remember Coolidge and Harding!) He couldn't stand nor trust most Republican leaders, and up until the last few months of his life maintained a keen sense of interest and active engagement in political affairs. I sometimes felt his abject hatred of George Bush was one of things that kept him going in his final years. (In fact, I swear I think one of his final active physical movements from his deathbed was to shake his fist at the TV screen as CNN showed the president from the Rose Garden.)

But for a long time he also seemed to have a bit of a paternal racist side, not, alas, uncommon among older Jewish retirees in Florida. Feelings about African-Americans in particular, while not at all spiteful, were definitely of the patronizing variety. My dad loves to tell the story of us driving around Golden Gate Park during one of my grandparents visits to San Francisco, and my grandfather from the passenger seat noticing one of the street names in the park, Martin Luther King Blvd. "I see they made a concession to the coloreds, eh?" And the rest of us sinking down as low as we could into our seats, my poor grandmother digging her nails into my knees -- though she often did that to represent her terror at whoever was, and how they were, driving. On the other hand, my grandfather also spoke respectfully at other times about MLK and what a great man he was. It was like that -- the occasional disrespect at African Americans followed by a surprising statement to show he appreciated their contributions.

And so here we have this year's model, an African-American presidential candidate, of mixed race to be precise, versus a "maverick" Republican whom I'm pretty sure my grandfather couldn't stand. We joked that if he was still alive this year, this election would've killed my grandfather anyway.

I'll never know how he would've voted in this one, had he been both still alive and capable of voting, but I like to use an anecdote I heard today from Miles Gerety (volunteering down in Florida), as reported on Huffington Post:

Sometime after 2:30 a man with a Jamaican accent called me and asked me to help an elderly man who was "fading." The elderly man, George McLain (85), father of a police officer and of a speech therapist and grandfather of twelve, looked very tired. It was obvious he needed to sit down. So I walked Mr. McClain across the grass (avoiding the longer sidewalk path) and into the library and found him a seat. The system was that someone in the line would have to act as Mr. McClain's placeholder. Mr. McClain had laughed when I'd softly said I thought Obama would be our next president and he responded "a black man can't be president." He looked frail, I didn't want him to be kept waiting too long inside, so rather than having the Jamaican man act as his place holder, I asked a group of women closer to the front of the line to claim Mr. McClain as their own.

Sometime later, I saw Mr. McClain leaving the polling place. He had voted. I said."Mr. McClain can you tell me who you voted for?" He looked up (I noticed he had a cataract growing in his right eye), tilted his head close to mine, and whispered "Barack Obama, who did you think I'd vote for."

In the last months of my grandfather's life, as his health faded, he was cared for by a lovely Jamaican man whom I had the pleasure of meeting when I had to go say my goodbyes. I saw pictures of the man's family, and heard stories of how he patiently fed my grandafther, gave him liquids when he couldn't eat, even held his hand when he was in pain. As his life slipped away, I heard and then I saw how my grandfather grew to appreciate, even, I think, love the man who helped care for him and could care less about the color of his skin. Some people, as they get older, get even more stubborn with their racist tendencies, clinging to them as if a tattered security blanket. But I think even more people let go of such pettiness. 

I will never know how my grandfather would have voted this year if he had the chance, but that anecdote from Florida and my own experience at the end of his long, long life make me think he would've whispered "Barack Obama" and quietly voted for him, too.

Racism and the election

I didn't write this, but it's pretty spot-on. It's circulating throughout the 'net so most of you have already seen it and mulled it over, but just in case...

Racism and the election What if things were switched around? Think about it. Would the country's collective point of view be different? Could racism be the culprit? [this most certainly must be a rhetorical question!] What if the Obamas had paraded five children across the stage, following the debate, including a three month-old infant and an unwed, pregnant teenage daughter? What if John McCain was a former president of the Harvard Law Review? What if Barack Obama finished fifth from the bottom of his college graduating class? What if McCain had only married once, and Obama was a divorcee? What if Obama had met his second wife in a bar and had a long affair while he was still married? What if Michelle Obama was the wife who not only became addicted to pain killers but also acquired them illegally through her charitable organization? What if Cindy McCain graduated from Harvard? What if Obama had been a member of the Keating Five? What if Obama was the one who had military experience that included discipline problems and a record of crashing seven planes? What if Obama was the one who was known to publicly display a serious anger management problem? What if Michelle Obama's family had made their money from beer distribution? You could easily add to this list. If these questions reflected a reality, if the tables were turned, do you really believe the election  numbers would be as close as  they are? This is what racism does. It covers up, rationalizes and minimizes qualities in one candidate and emphasizes negative characteristics in another when there is a color difference. And, think of this - the candidates' educational backgrounds: Barack Obama: Columbia University - B. A. Political Science with a Specialization in International Relations. Harvard - Juris Doctor (J. D.) Magna Cum Laude Joseph Biden: University of Delaware - B. A. in History and B. A. in Political Science. Syracuse University College of Law - Juris Doctor (J. D.) John McCain:United States Naval Academy - Class rank: 894 of 899 Sarah Pali n: Hawaii Pacific University - 1 semester North Idaho College - 2 semesters - general study University of Idaho - 2 semesters - journalism Matanuska-Susitna College - 1 semester University of Idaho - 3 semesters - B. A. in Journalism Education isn't everything, but this is about the two highest offices in the land as well as our standing in the world. You make the call.

New Yorker editors on the choice for president.

The Choice.
Never in living memory has an election been more critical than the one fast approaching—that’s the quadrennial cliché, as expected as the balloons and the bombast. And yet when has it ever felt so urgently true? When have so many Americans had so clear a sense that a Presidency has—at the levels of competence, vision, and integrity—undermined the country and its ideals?

The incumbent Administration has distinguished itself for the ages. The Presidency of George W. Bush is the worst since Reconstruction, so there is no mystery about why the Republican Party—which has held dominion over the executive branch of the federal government for the past eight years and the legislative branch for most of that time—has little desire to defend its record, domestic or foreign. The only speaker at the Convention in St. Paul who uttered more than a sentence or two in support of the President was his wife, Laura. Meanwhile, the nominee, John McCain, played the part of a vaudeville illusionist, asking to be regarded as an apostle of change after years of embracing the essentials of the Bush agenda with ever-increasing ardor.

The Republican disaster begins at home. Even before taking into account whatever fantastically expensive plan eventually emerges to help rescue the financial system from Wall Street’s long-running pyramid schemes, the economic and fiscal picture is bleak. During the Bush Administration, the national debt, now approaching ten trillion dollars, has nearly doubled. Next year’s federal budget is projected to run a half-trillion-dollar deficit, a precipitous fall from the seven-hundred-billion-dollar surplus that was projected when Bill Clinton left office. Private-sector job creation has been a sixth of what it was under President Clinton. Five million people have fallen into poverty.  Read the whole article here >>

Pastors politicking and religious hypocrisy.

1)  Piece by Frank Scaeffer, a self-described life-long Republican and former evangelical leader, on Evangelical/Republican Racist Hypocrites for McCain, or Redemption.

Senator Obama won scholarships to America's top academic institutions, was voted by his peers to be editor of the Harvard Law Review, is a family man with an exemplary and obviously loving marriage, has a wife who is a brilliant charismatic woman, two lovely children, is a churchgoing born-again Christian comfortable with his faith, has avoided making the fast buck in the new gilded age of greed when he could have, served his community, is thoughtful, considered in his opinions, slow to anger, proved right in his judgment about the Iraq war, looks at every side of a question before making a decision, and is not given to grandstanding. He would be vastly ahead in the polls, even in polls of Evangelical voters who, after all, are also watching their savings and home values evaporate... unless he happened to be... black.

I speak as someone who was brought up in an Evangelical household by famous and influential Evangelical leaders (Francis and Edith Schaeffer). And this year even I've learned something new about my old Evangelical/Republican tribe! This election has shown the true nature of the Evangelical/Republican establishment as never before.

2)  Orange County pastors test the IRS rule against politicking:

...He urged members to think about their faith when voting and spent much of his 40-minute sermon giving a partisan speech about the presidential candidates and their issues. "According to my Bible and in my opinion, there is no way in the world a Christian can vote for Barack Hussein Obama," Drake said. "Mr. Obama is not standing up for anything that is tradition in America."  [Notice the use of his middle name to scare the flock?]

This is the kind of thing that happened in the last election. People need to see through it, look within themselves, to break away from churches that begin to mix state in. that begin to tell you whom to vote for, how to vote.

What's more, looking back at Schaeffer's piece, when you compare the two candidates at hand, if religious voters can separate from the issue of abortion and look at the two candidates in their lives, in their histories, in what they have done for their communities and in their gleaming from their own churches a desire to help others, to demonstrate the highest possible morality when it comes to raising his children, setting examples for others and giving back to the world -- all things I would hope would be important to true Christians and true believers in other religious faiths -- then to me it is no contest. It is Barack Obama, not John McCain, who reflects these values most clearly.

McCain versus Obama on education

UPDATE: Mark Phillips reacts to McCain and Obama sharing their educational philosophies at the final presidential debate: John McCain on Education: Limited and rash.

This piece appeared in the Marin Independent Journal (the "IJ") and was written by my father, Mark Phillips, a professor of secondary education at San Francisco State University.  So while I'm biased, I suppose, I had to repost this here because it's a critical look at one of the most underappreciated aspects of this campaign. Please read.
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JOHN McCAIN and Barack Obama are now poised for the final months of combat. A major challenge for all of us, but for parents and educators especially, is to determine how well prepared each candidate is to help our schools and our children.

It is understandable that economic and national security concerns will be in the forefront of voters' thinking and the media's focus. But the critical educational issues facing the nation must also be addressed.

I am not unbiased. I think that the best that can be said about John McCain's perspective on education is that his powers will be limited by what will probably be a Democratic-dominated Congress.

Beyond that, I think his educational ideas are wrongheaded and potentially destructive. Barack Obama, on the other hand, although not an educational visionary, shows far more promise than most of our political leaders.

All political candidates share the same platitudes in support of excellence, high achievement and accountability. But McCain and Obama are light years apart on how to get there.

McCain, the more conservative candidate, in one respect has the most radical educational agenda. He strongly advocates school choice and has publicly declared his support for a voucher system through which parents would be given a stipend to enable them to place their children in whatever schools they choose.

This would be federally supported, implemented with a degree of flexibility by each state and initially targeted towards the poorest children in the worst schools. 

He believes that "all federal financial support must be predicated on providing parents the ability to move their children, and the dollars associated with them, from failing schools."

Volumes have been written about the dangers of vouchers. It's a bad idea educationally.

Where vouchers have been tried there has (a) been no evidence of improved achievement, (b) the creation of a two-tiered system in which the strongest schools get stronger and the weakest schools deteriorate further. It's a bad idea socially, encouraging further segregation and stratification, with no evidence that it helps low-income children and families.

Fox Attacks: Obama, Just Like They Did Kerry

From Robert Greenwald/Brave New Films:

 

Did you see Barack Obama go on The O'Reilly Factor last night—right into the belly of the beast?  While we didn't want Obama to appear on FOX initially, he wisely chose the same night John McCain delivered his RNC speech (the same night FOX received some of its highest ratings) to make an appearance.  Talk about stealing the GOP's thunder!

 

Obama was no doubt trying to appeal to conservative voters, since 88% of FOX viewers voted Republican in 2004. But FOX won't let their conservative base go without a fight.  That's why O'Reilly needled and interrupted Obama, trying to get him to simplify many of his answers—a far cry from the softballs O'Reilly lobbed at many prominent Republicans like Rudy Giuliani in the past. And that's why FOX has been attacking Obama with the same relentless smear tactics that they used against John Kerry four years ago.  Watch them use the exact same attacks.

Don't let FOX repeat its history of distortions.  Send this video to everyone you know!  And get a copy to networking sites like Digg as soon as possible.  Make sure everyone knows that FOX is always willing to distort, slander, and smear—whatever it takes to advance their conservative agenda.

And for more on how damaging FOX and the corporate media have been, tune into Meet the Bloggers today at 1pm ET/10am PT.  Our guest host, punk rock icon Henry Rollins, will be joined by bloggers Jonathan Kim (FOX Attacks!), Liliana Segura (AlterNet.org) and Paul Waldman (Media Matters) to discuss the media's overt bias.

Palin vs. Reality.

UPDATE: This is the best summation of who Sarah Palin really is that I have seen. I don't think it will be topped. Please read. From a resident of Palin's town of Wasilla, Alaska.

(Okay, I'm getting tired of thinking about her; that's what McCain's campaign wants, for all of us to be so mesmerized by Palin, whether in a good way or not, that we are distracted away from the real questions and issues of this campaign. But since there are real questions about her qualifications for higher office, let's take a look at them, shall we?)

Mark Kleiman on the Reality-Based Community (Same Facts) has this dissection of Palin's distortions and outright lies.

Palin vs. Reality

Teasers in the continuation below:

McCain's Dishonest Obama Ad(s)

"What's worse than John McCain's dishonest ad? Finding out he had another, equally dishonest ad ready to air if Obama DID visit the hospital. He just wasn't going to be honest with American voters no matter what happened, and now everybody knows it, even the press he calls his "base." He'll never live it down." -- Kagro X, Daily Kos

 

Election fraud worries, 2008 version.

I don't usually like to re-post entire emails but this one from investigative journalist Greg Palast is too important. Read and pass it on:
==
Obama Doesn't Sweat. He should.

by Greg Palast

 

In swing-state Colorado, the Republican Secretary of State conducted the biggest purge of voters in history, dumping a fifth of all registrations. Guess their color. In swing-state Florida, the state is refusing to accept about 85,000 new registrations from voter drives - overwhelming Black voters.

 

In swing state New Mexico, HALF of the Democrats of Mora, a dirt poor and overwhelmingly Hispanic county, found their registrations disappeared this year, courtesy of a Republican voting contractor.

 

In swing states Ohio and Nevada, new federal law is knocking out tens of thousands of voters who lost their homes to foreclosure.

 

My investigations partner spoke directly to Barack Obama about it. (When your partner is Robert F. Kennedy Jr., candidates take your phone call.) The cool, cool Senator Obama told Kennedy he was "concerned" about the integrity of the vote in the Southwest in particular.

 

He's concerned. I'm sweating.

 

It's time SOMEBODY raised the alarm about these missing voters; not to save Obama's candidacy - journalists should stay the heck away from partisan endorsements - but raise the alarm to save our sick democracy.

 

And that somebody is YOU. Joining with US, the Palast investigative team. Here's how: