From a disappointed Associated Press:

Detroit Mayor Ken Cockrel addresses the media during an Angels’ Night news conference with members of local law enforcement agencies in Detroit, Wednesday, Oct. 29, 2008.

Thousands to douse annual Detroit arson tradition

By BEN LEUBSDORF, Associated Press

DETROIT – The city that used to burn on the night before Halloween as mischief-makers torched abandoned buildings has largely doused its Devil’s Night by mobilizing tens of thousands of citizens and law-enforcement personnel each year to patrol city neighborhoods…

At its peak in 1984, 810 fires were reported in Detroit from Oct. 29 to 31, fueled by, among other things, Devil’s Night’s growing notoriety and the city’s large number of abandoned buildings.

But the number of blazes has dropped — 147 fires were reported last year for the three days ending Oct. 31, up from the 113 reported in 2006 and 121 in 2005.

That’s in part thanks to volunteers and law enforcement officials who patrol neighborhoods and monitor abandoned buildings starting the night of Oct. 29, part of what has been called Angels’ Night since the 1990s.

This year, officials worry that the national foreclosure crisis, and a spate of vacant homes left in its wake, could be tempting targets for arsonists. Detroit ranked as the 14th hardest-hit metropolitan area in the third quarter of this year by foreclosure listing service RealtyTrac Inc.

About 35,000 volunteers have signed up with the city for this year’s Angels’ Night, and about 50,000 people will volunteer, said Daniel Cherrin, a spokesman for Mayor Ken Cockrel Jr. The city also imposes a youth curfew and takes other preventative measures.

“It’s a testament to Detroiters that we understand that we have to be proactive,” Keith said. “We can’t afford complacency by any means.”

Personnel from the city’s fire and police departments will be joined this year by state and federal agencies, as well as 25 volunteers from the Michigan Army National Guard, some of whom will patrol in uniform…

Isn’t it wonderful the great “traditions” in some parts of our country?

The article does mention in passing that besides these laudatory patrols, Detroit has imposed an “emergency curfew” upon juveniles for years.

From the Angels’ Night website:

WATCH YOUR CHILDREN – ENFORCE THE CURFEW

Again this year an emergency curfew is in effect for juveniles under the age of 18. It is unlawful for juveniles under the age of 18 to be on City streets, unaccompanied by a parent or guardian, from 6 p.m. October 30 to 6 a.m. October 31.

Our children are the future of Detroit. You can encourage them to take pride in their City and become responsible citizens of Detroit by asking them to:

    * Observe the regular and special Halloween curfews.

    * Encourage their friends to do the same.

    * Encourage adults to play an active role in the anti-arson campaign.

    * Turn on their porch lights during the three-day Halloween period.

    * Participate in activities such as the Halloween parties sponsored by the City of Detroit Recreation Department.

Hopefully someone is organizing “Angels’ Night” volunteers across the country for the evenings after November 4, no matter how things turn out.

Maybe we had better have a curfew as well. And maybe the National Guard should be turned out.

Just like the “tradition” in third world countries on election day.

From Ohio’s Columbus Dispatch:

Checks on ‘Joe’ more extensive than first acknowledged

Tax, welfare info also sought on McCain ally

Wednesday,  October 29, 2008 8:05 PM
By Randy Ludlow

A state agency has revealed that its checks of computer systems for potential information on “Joe the Plumber” were more extensive than it first acknowledged.

Helen Jones-Kelley, director of the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services, disclosed today that computer inquiries on Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher were not restricted to a child-support system.

The agency also checked Wurzelbacher in its computer systems to determine whether he was receiving welfare assistance or owed unemployment compensation taxes, she wrote.

Jones-Kelley made the revelations in a letter to Ohio Senate President Bill M. Harris, R-Ashland, who demanded answers on why state officials checked out Wurzelbacher.

Harris called the multiple records checks “questionable” and said he awaits more answers. “It’s kind of like Big Brother is looking in your pocket,” he said.

If state employees run checks on every person listed in newspaper stories as buying a business, “it must take a lot of people a lot of time to run these checks,” he said. “Where do you draw the line?”

The checks were run after the news media reported that Wurzelbacher was considering buying a plumbing business with more than $250,000 in annual income, Jones-Kelley wrote.

“Given our understanding that Mr. Wurzelbacher had publicly indicated that he had the means to purchase a substantial business enterprise, ODJFS, consistent with past departmental practice, checked confidential databases ,” she wrote.

“Not surprisingly, when a person behind in child support payments or receiving public assistance is receiving significant media attention which suggests that the person appears to have available financial resources, the Department risks justifiable criticism if it fails to take note and respond,” Jones-Kelley wrote.

The results of the searches were not publicly released and remain confidential, she wrote. Wurzelbacher has said he is not involved in a child-support case and has not purchased any business.

Jones-Kelley wrote that the checks were “well-meaning,” but misinterpreted amid the heated final weeks of a presidential election…

Republicans have painted the checks on Wurzelbacher as a politically motivated bid by Democrats to dig up dirt and discredit the McCain ally. The Obama campaign has said it has no ties to the checks and supports investigations.

The administration of Democratic Gov. Ted Strickland has said the information was not improperly shared and that there were no political motives behind the checks.

The Dispatch has uncovered four uses of state computer systems to access personal information on Wurzelbacher, including the child-support check authorized by Jones-Kelley.

She said on Monday that her department frequently runs checks for any unpaid child support obligations “when someone is thrust quickly into the public spotlight.”

Republican legislators have challenged Jones-Kelley’s reason for checking on Wurzelbacher as “frightening” and flimsy.

Jones-Kelly also has denied any connections between the computer checks on Wurzelbacher and her support for Obama. She donated the maximum $2,500 this year to the Obama campaign.

Ohio Inspector General Thomas P. Charles is investigating whether the child-support check on Wurzelbacher was legal.

Where is the outrage?

Alas, we may have to get used to this.

From the UK’s Times:

Found in a rundown Boston estate: Barack Obama’s aunt Zeituni Onyang

James Bone in Boston, Rob Crilly in Kogelo and Ben Macintyre

October 30, 2008

Barack Obama has lived one version of the American Dream that has taken him to the steps of the White House. But a few miles from where the Democratic presidential candidate studied at Harvard, his Kenyan aunt and uncle, immigrants living in modest circumstances in Boston, have a contrasting American story.

Zeituni Onyango, the aunt so affectionately described in Mr Obama’s best-selling memoir Dreams from My Father, lives in a disabled-access flat on a rundown public housing estate in South Boston.

A second relative believed to be the long-lost “Uncle Omar” described in the book was beaten by armed robbers with a “sawed-off rifle” while working in a corner shop in the Dorchester area of the city. He was later evicted from his one-bedroom flat for failing to pay $2,324.20 (£1,488) arrears, according to the Boston Housing Court…

In his book Mr Obama writes that “Uncle Omar” had gone missing after moving to Boston in the 1960s – a quarter-century before Mr Obama first visited his family in Kenya. Aunt Zeituni is now also living in Boston, and recently made a $260 campaign contribution to her nephew’s presidential bid from a work address in the city.

Speaking outside her home in Flaherty Way, South Boston, on Tuesday, Ms Onyango, 56, confirmed she was the “Auntie Zeituni” in Mr Obama’s memoir. She declined to answer most other questions about her relationship with the presidential contender until after the November 4 election. “I can’t talk about it, I just pray for him, that’s all,” she said, adding: “After the 4th, I can talk to anyone.” …

Isn’t it funny that Mr. Obama’s destitute relatives would be turned up by a British paper, rather than by members of our stateside watchdog media?

And isn’t it odd how Ms Onyango cannot speak to the press until after Election Day?

Still, as the article notes, Aunt Zeituni looms large in Mr. Obama’s first autography, Dreams From My Father.

We will let Mr. Obama’s musings on the meaning of family (pages 152-4), brought about by meeting Aunt Zeituni and the rest of his family in Kenya:

What is a family? Is it just a genetic chain, parents and offspring, people like me? Or is it a social construct, an economic unit, optimal for child rearing and divisions of labor? Or is it something else entirely: a store of shared memories, say? An ambit of love? A reach across the void?

I could list various possibilities. But I’d never arrived at a definite answer, aware early on that, given my circumstances, such an effort was bound to fail. Instead, I drew a series of circles around myself, with borders that shifted as time passed and faces changed but that nevertheless offered the illusion of control. An inner circle, where love was constant and claims unquestioned. Then a second circle, a realm of negotiated love, commitments freely chosen. And then a circle for colleagues, acquaintances; the cheerful gray-haired lady who rang up my groceries back in Chicago. Until the circle finally widened to embrace a nation or a race, or a particular moral course, and the commitments were no longer tied to a face or a name but were actually commitments I’d made to myself.

In Africa, this astronomy of mine almost immediately collapsed. For family seemed to be everywhere: in stores, at the post office, on streets and in the parks, all of them fussing and fretting over Obama’s long-lost son. If I mentioned in passing that I needed a notebook or shaving cream, I could count on one of my aunts to insist that she take me to some far-off corner of Nairobi to find the best bargains, no matter how long the trip took or how much it might inconvenience her.

“Ah, Barry…what is more important than helping my brother’s son?”

If a cousin discovered, much to his distress, that Auma had left me to fend for myself, he might walk the two miles to Auma’s apartment on the off chance that I was there and needed company…

At first I reacted to all this attention like a child to its mother’s bosom, full of simple, unquestioning gratitude. It conformed to my idea of Africa and Africans, an obvious contrast to the growing isolation of American life, a contrast I understood, not in racial, but in cultural terms. A measure of what we sacrificed for technology and mobility, but that here-as in the kampongs outside Djakarta or in the country villages of Ireland or Greece — remained essentially intact: the insistent pleasure of other people’s company, the joy of human warmth.

As the days wore on, though, my joy became tempered with tension and doubt. Some of it had to do with what Auma had talked about that night in the car — an acute awareness of my relative good fortune, and the troublesome questions such good fortune implied. Not that our relatives were suffering, exactly. Both Jane and Zeituni had steady jobs…

Still, the situation in Nairobi was tough and getting tougher. Clothes were mostly secondhand, a doctor’s visit reserved for the direst emergency. Almost all the family’s younger members were unemployed, including the two or three who had managed, against stiff competition, to graduate from one of Kenya’s universities. If Jane or Zeituni ever fell ill, if their companies ever closed or laid them off, there was no government safety net. There was only family, next of kin; people burdened by similar hardship.

Now I was family, I reminded myself; now I had responsibilities. But what did that mean exactly? Back in the States, I’d been able to translate such feelings into politics, organizing, a certain self-denial. In Kenya, these strategies seemed hopelessly abstract, even self-indulgent. A commitment to black empowerment couldn’t help find Bernard a job. A faith in participatory democracy couldn’t buy Jane a new set of sheets.

For the first time in my life, I found myself thinking deeply about money: my own lack of it, the pursuit of it, the crude but undeniable peace it could buy. A part of me wished I could live up to the image that my new relatives imagined for me: a corporate lawyer, an American businessman, my hand poised on the spigot, ready to rain down like manna the largesse of the Western world.

But of course I wasn’t either of those things. Even in the States, wealth involved trade-offs for those who weren’t born to it, the same sorts of trade-offs that I could see Auma now making as she tried, in her own way, to fulfill the family’s expectations…

It was the same dilemma that [the Communist] old Frank [Marshall Davis] had posed to me the year I left Hawaii, the same tensions that certain children in Altgeld might suffer if they took too much pleasure in doing their schoolwork, the same perverse survivor’s guilt that I could expect to experience if I ever did try to make money and had to pass the throngs of young black men on the corner as I made my way to a downtown office.

Without power for the group, a group larger, even, than an extended family, our success always threatened to leave others behind. And perhaps it was that fact that left me so unsettled-the fact that even here, in Africa, the same maddening patterns still held sway; that no one here could tell me what my blood ties demanded or how those demands could be reconciled with some larger idea of human association.

It was as if we — Auma, Roy, Bernard, and I-were all making it up as we went along. As if the map that might have once measured the direction and force of our love, the code that would unlock our blessings, had been lost long ago, buried with the ancestors beneath a silent earth…

Obviously Mr. Obama’s guilt about his suffering relatives was merely a literary affectation.

From Reuters:

Wed Oct 29, 1:40 PM ET

Mark Salter, senior advisor to Republican presidential nominee Senator John McCain sits backstage at a campaign rally in Hershey, Pennsylvania, October 28, 2008.

Wed Oct 29, 1:40 PM ET

Senior advisors to Republican presidential nominee Senator John McCain Steve Schmidt, Mark Salter and Steve Dupree wait for an elevator in New York, September 24, 2008.

Wed Oct 29, 1:40 PM ET

McCain advisors Mark Salter (L), Nicolle Wallace (C) and Brooke Buchanan listen as Republican presidential nominee Senator John McCain makes a statement to reporters in West Des Moines, Iowa, September 29, 2008.

Please note that the second two photos are from a month ago, and yet Reuters has them up as if they are news.

It’s almost as if they are trying to make it look like the McCain people are despondent.

Why is that?

From a series of book interviews from back in 1995 with Connie Martinson, via the American Spectator, who got it from the pro-Obama site Old Man McCain:

“Wright, who is my pastor, and he is a wonderful man… He’s a pastor of a large congregation in Chicago, and one of the interesting things that I discover in my journey to discover what my identity is and who my father is, is also discovering my own faith, which is not necessarily a traditional faith.

I don’t come out of an institutionalized religious setting. But what becomes important to me as I work with churches in the South Side of Chicago and low income neighborhoods is to realize that all of the stories and songs of the Church, the hope that is embodied in the Church, the sense of liberation that is embodied in the historically African American Church, is really something that moves me deeply.

And I think is probably the main pillar around which a lot of inner city communities are going to be built, and Reverend Wright, my pastor who I speak about in the chapter in the book, I think represents the best of what the black Church has to offer.”

Testify!

Some excerpts from Mr. Obama’s second autobiography, The Audacity Of Hope, pp 34-37:

“WE HOLD THESE truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

Those simple words are our starting point as Americans; they describe not only the foundation of our government but the substance of our common creed. Not every American may be able to recite them; few, if asked, could trace the genesis of the Declaration of Independence to its roots in eighteenth-century liberal and republican thought. But the essential idea behind the Declaration—that we are born into this world free, all of us; that each of us arrives with a bundle of rights that can’t be taken away by any person or any state without just cause; that through our own agency we can, and must, make of our lives what we will—is one that every American understands. It orients us, sets our course, each and every day…

At its most elemental level, we understand our liberty in a negative sense. As a general rule we believe in the right to be left alone, and are suspicious of those—whether Big Brother or nosy neighbors—who want to meddle in our business. But we understand our liberty in a more positive sense as well, in the idea of opportunity and the subsidiary values that help realize opportunity—all those homespun virtues that Benjamin Franklin first popularized in Poor Richard’s Almanack and that have continued to inspire our allegiance through successive generations. The values of self-reliance and self-improvement and risk-taking. The values of drive, discipline, temperance, and hard work. The values of thrift and personal responsibility.

These values are rooted in a basic optimism about life and a faith in free will—a confidence that through pluck and sweat and smarts, each of us can rise above the circumstances of our birth. But these values also express a broader confidence that so long as individual men and women are free to pursue their own interests, society as a whole will prosper. Our system of self-government and our free-market economy depend on the majority of individual Americans adhering to these values. The legitimacy of our government and our economy depend on the degree to which these values are rewarded, which is why the values of equal opportunity and nondiscrimination complement rather than impinge on our liberty.

If we Americans are individualistic at heart, if we instinctively chafe against a past of tribal allegiances, traditions, customs, and castes, it would be a mistake to assume that this is all we are. Our individualism has always been bound by a set of communal values, the glue upon which every healthy society depends. We value the imperatives of family and the cross-generational obligations that family implies. We value community, the neighborliness that expresses itself through raising the barn or coaching the soccer team. We value patriotism and the obligations of citizenship, a sense of duty and sacrifice on behalf of our nation. We value a faith in something bigger than ourselves, whether that something expresses itself in formal religion or ethical precepts. And we value the constellation of behaviors that express our mutual regard for one another: honesty, fairness, humility, kindness, courtesy, and compassion…

But we cannot avoid these tensions entirely. At times our values collide because in the hands of men each one is subject to distortion and excess. Self-reliance and independence can transform into selfishness and license, ambition into greed and a frantic desire to succeed at any cost. More than once in our history we’ve seen patriotism slide into jingoism, xenophobia, the stifling of dissent; we’ve seen faith calcify into self-righteousness, closed-mindedness, and cruelty toward others. Even the impulse toward charity can drift into a stifling paternalism, an unwillingness to acknowledge the ability of others to do for themselves.

When this happens—when liberty is cited in the defense of a company’s decision to dump toxins in our rivers, or when our collective interest in building an upscale new mall is used to justify the destruction of somebody’s home—we depend on the strength of countervailing values to temper our judgment and hold such excesses in check. Sometimes finding the right balance is relatively easy…

More often, though, finding the right balance between our competing values is difficult. Tensions arise not because we have steered a wrong course, but simply because we live in a complex and contradictory world. I firmly believe, for example, that since 9/11, we have played fast and loose with constitutional principles in the fight against terrorism. But I acknowledge that even the wisest president and most prudent Congress would struggle to balance the critical demands of our collective security against the equally compelling need to uphold civil liberties. I believe our economic policies pay too little attention to the displacement of manufacturing workers and the destruction of manufacturing towns. But I cannot wish away the sometimes competing demands of economic security and competitiveness.

Unfortunately, too often in our national debates we don’t even get to the point where we weigh these difficult choices. Instead, we either exaggerate the degree to which policies we don’t like impinge on our most sacred values, or play dumb when our own preferred policies conflict with important countervailing values. Conservatives, for instance, tend to bristle when it comes to government interference in the marketplace or their right to bear arms. Yet many of these same conservatives show little to no concern when it comes to government wiretapping without a warrant or government attempts to control people’s sexual practices. Conversely, it’s easy to get most liberals riled up about government encroachments on freedom of the press or a woman’s reproductive freedoms. But if you have a conversation with these same liberals about the potential costs of regulation to a small-business owner, you will often draw a blank stare. In a country as diverse as ours, there will always be passionate arguments about how we draw the line when it comes to government action. That is how our democracy works. But our democracy might work a bit better if we recognized that all of us possess values that are worthy of respect: if liberals at least acknowledged that the recreational hunter feels the same way about his gun as they feel about their library books, and if conservatives recognized that most women feel as protective of their right to reproductive freedom as evangelicals do of their right to worship…

Of course, this approach to policy making doesn’t always work. Sometimes, politicians and interest groups welcome conflict in pursuit of a broader ideological goal. Most antiabortion activists, for example, have openly discouraged legislative allies from even pursuing those compromise measures that would have significantly reduced the incidence of the procedure popularly known as partial-birth abortion, because the image the procedure evokes in the mind of the public has helped them win converts to their position.

And sometimes our ideological predispositions are just so fixed that we have trouble seeing the obvious. Once, while still in the Illinois Senate, I listened to a Republican colleague work himself into a lather over a proposed plan to provide school breakfasts to preschoolers. Such a plan, he insisted, would crush their spirit of self-reliance. I had to point out that not too many five-year-olds I knew were self-reliant, but children who spent their formative years too hungry to learn could very well end up being charges of the state.

Despite my best efforts, the bill still went down in defeat; Illinois preschoolers were temporarily saved from the debilitating effects of cereal and milk (a version of the bill would later pass). But my fellow legislator’s speech helps underscore one of the differences between ideology and values: Values are faithfully applied to the facts before us, while ideology overrides whatever facts call theory into question.

Notice how this passage starts out, and how it ends up.

That is really the alpha and omega of Mr. Obama as well.

Did you know that Barack Obama had a “diary” at the Daily Kos?

But back in September of 2005 Mr. Obama was so concerned about the good opinion of the denizens there, he felt he had to write an apology about not having attacked those Democrats who voted for the nomination of John Roberts to the Supreme Court more forcibly.

Mind you, Obama himself did not vote for Roberts.

Still, he felt the need to explain how he and the Democrats in general need to pretend to be less radical than they really are if they are going to get enough people elected into power to really change things the way they and the folks at Daily Kos want to.

In other words, Mr. Obama tells the Kossacks about the need to hoodwink the American public in order to get their way.

From the Daily Kos:

Tone, Truth, and the Democratic Party

by Barack Obama
Fri Sep 30, 2005

I read with interest your recent discussion regarding my comments on the floor during the debate on John Roberts’ nomination. I don’t get a chance to follow blog traffic as regularly as I would like, and rarely get the time to participate in the discussions. I thought this might be a good opportunity to offer some thoughts about not only judicial confirmations, but how to bring about meaningful change in this country.

Maybe some of you believe I could have made my general point more artfully, but it’s precisely because many of these groups are friends and supporters that I felt it necessary to speak my mind.

There is one way, over the long haul, to guarantee the appointment of judges that are sensitive to issues of social justice, and that is to win the right to appoint them by recapturing the presidency and the Senate. And I don’t believe we get there by vilifying good allies, with a lifetime record of battling for progressive causes, over one vote or position. I am convinced that, our mutual frustrations and strongly-held beliefs notwithstanding, the strategy driving much of Democratic advocacy, and the tone of much of our rhetoric, is an impediment to creating a workable progressive majority in this country.

According to the storyline that drives many advocacy groups and Democratic activists – a storyline often reflected in comments on this blog – we are up against a sharply partisan, radically conservative, take-no-prisoners Republican party. They have beaten us twice by energizing their base with red meat rhetoric and single-minded devotion and discipline to their agenda. In order to beat them, it is necessary for Democrats to get some backbone, give as good as they get, brook no compromise, drive out Democrats who are interested in “appeasing” the right wing, and enforce a more clearly progressive agenda. The country, finally knowing what we stand for and seeing a sharp contrast, will rally to our side and thereby usher in a new progressive era.

I think this perspective misreads the American people. From traveling throughout Illinois and more recently around the country, I can tell you that Americans are suspicious of labels and suspicious of jargon. They don’t think George Bush is mean-spirited or prejudiced, but have become aware that his administration is irresponsible and often incompetent. They don’t think that corporations are inherently evil (a lot of them work in corporations), but they recognize that big business, unchecked, can fix the game to the detriment of working people and small entrepreneurs. They don’t think America is an imperialist brute, but are angry that the case to invade Iraq was exaggerated, are worried that we have unnecessarily alienated existing and potential allies around the world, and are ashamed by events like those at Abu Ghraib which violate our ideals as a country.

It’s this non-ideological lens through which much of the country viewed Judge Roberts’ confirmation hearings. A majority of folks, including a number of Democrats and Independents, don’t think that John Roberts is an ideologue bent on overturning every vestige of civil rights and civil liberties protections in our possession. Instead, they have good reason to believe he is a conservative judge who is (like it or not) within the mainstream of American jurisprudence, a judge appointed by a conservative president who could have done much worse (and probably, I fear, may do worse with the next nominee). While they hope Roberts doesn’t swing the court too sharply to the right, a majority of Americans think that the President should probably get the benefit of the doubt on a clearly qualified nominee.

A plausible argument can be made that too much is at stake here and now, in terms of privacy issues, civil rights, and civil liberties, to give John Roberts the benefit of the doubt. That certainly was the operating assumption of the advocacy groups involved in the nomination battle.

I shared enough of these concerns that I voted against Roberts on the floor this morning. But short of mounting an all-out filibuster — a quixotic fight I would not have supported; a fight I believe Democrats would have lost both in the Senate and in the court of public opinion; a fight that would have been difficult for Democratic senators defending seats in states like North Dakota and Nebraska that are essential for Democrats to hold if we hope to recapture the majority; and a fight that would have effectively signaled an unwillingness on the part of Democrats to confirm any Bush nominee, an unwillingness which I believe would have set a dangerous precedent for future administrations — blocking Roberts was not a realistic option.

In such circumstances, attacks on Pat Leahy, Russ Feingold and the other Democrats who, after careful consideration, voted for Roberts make no sense. Russ Feingold, the only Democrat to vote not only against war in Iraq but also against the Patriot Act, doesn’t become complicit in the erosion of civil liberties simply because he chooses to abide by a deeply held and legitimate view that a President, having won a popular election, is entitled to some benefit of the doubt when it comes to judicial appointments. Like it or not, that view has pretty strong support in the Constitution’s design.

The same principle holds with respect to issues other than judicial nominations. My colleague from Illinois, Dick Durbin, spoke out forcefully – and voted against – the Iraqi invasion. He isn’t somehow transformed into a “war supporter” – as I’ve heard some anti-war activists suggest – just because he hasn’t called for an immediate withdrawal of American troops. He may be simply trying to figure out, as I am, how to ensure that U.S. troop withdrawals occur in such a way that we avoid all-out Iraqi civil war, chaos in the Middle East, and much more costly and deadly interventions down the road. A pro-choice Democrat doesn’t become anti-choice because he or she isn’t absolutely convinced that a twelve-year-old girl should be able to get an operation without a parent being notified. A pro-civil rights Democrat doesn’t become complicit in an anti-civil rights agenda because he or she questions the efficacy of certain affirmative action programs. And a pro-union Democrat doesn’t become anti-union if he or she makes a determination that on balance, CAFTA will help American workers more than it will harm them.

Or to make the point differently: How can we ask Republican senators to resist pressure from their right wing and vote against flawed appointees like John Bolton, if we engage in similar rhetoric against Democrats who dissent from our own party line? How can we expect Republican moderates who are concerned about the nation’s fiscal meltdown to ignore Grover Norquist’s threats if we make similar threats to those who buck our party orthodoxy?

I am not drawing a facile equivalence here between progressive advocacy groups and right-wing advocacy groups. The consequences of their ideas are vastly different. Fighting on behalf of the poor and the vulnerable is not the same as fighting for homophobia and Halliburton. But to the degree that we brook no dissent within the Democratic Party, and demand fealty to the one, “true” progressive vision for the country, we risk the very thoughtfulness and openness to new ideas that are required to move this country forward. When we lash out at those who share our fundamental values because they have not met the criteria of every single item on our progressive “checklist,” then we are essentially preventing them from thinking in new ways about problems. We are tying them up in a straightjacket and forcing them into a conversation only with the converted.

Beyond that, by applying such tests, we are hamstringing our ability to build a majority. We won’t be able to transform the country with such a polarized electorate. Because the truth of the matter is this: Most of the issues this country faces are hard. They require tough choices, and they require sacrifice. The Bush Administration and the Republican Congress may have made the problems worse, but they won’t go away after President Bush is gone. Unless we are open to new ideas, and not just new packaging, we won’t change enough hearts and minds to initiate a serious energy or fiscal policy that calls for serious sacrifice. We won’t have the popular support to craft a foreign policy that meets the challenges of globalization or terrorism while avoiding isolationism and protecting civil liberties. We certainly won’t have a mandate to overhaul a health care policy that overcomes all the entrenched interests that are the legacy of a jerry-rigged health care system. And we won’t have the broad political support, or the effective strategies, required to lift large numbers of our fellow citizens out of numbing poverty.

The bottom line is that our job is harder than the conservatives’ job. After all, it’s easy to articulate a belligerent foreign policy based solely on unilateral military action, a policy that sounds tough and acts dumb; it’s harder to craft a foreign policy that’s tough and smart. It’s easy to dismantle government safety nets; it’s harder to transform those safety nets so that they work for people and can be paid for. It’s easy to embrace a theological absolutism; it’s harder to find the right balance between the legitimate role of faith in our lives and the demands of our civic religion. But that’s our job. And I firmly believe that whenever we exaggerate or demonize, or oversimplify or overstate our case, we lose. Whenever we dumb down the political debate, we lose. A polarized electorate that is turned off of politics, and easily dismisses both parties because of the nasty, dishonest tone of the debate, works perfectly well for those who seek to chip away at the very idea of government because, in the end, a cynical electorate is a selfish electorate.

Let me be clear: I am not arguing that the Democrats should trim their sails and be more “centrist.” In fact, I think the whole “centrist” versus “liberal” labels that continue to characterize the debate within the Democratic Party misses the mark. Too often, the “centrist” label seems to mean compromise for compromise sake, whereas on issues like health care, energy, education and tackling poverty, I don’t think Democrats have been bold enough. But I do think that being bold involves more than just putting more money into existing programs and will instead require us to admit that some existing programs and policies don’t work very well. And further, it will require us to innovate and experiment with whatever ideas hold promise (including market- or faith-based ideas that originate from Republicans).

Our goal should be to stick to our guns on those core values that make this country great, show a spirit of flexibility and sustained attention that can achieve those goals, and try to create the sort of serious, adult, consensus around our problems that can admit Democrats, Republicans and Independents of good will. This is more than just a matter of “framing,” although clarity of language, thought, and heart are required. It’s a matter of actually having faith in the American people’s ability to hear a real and authentic debate about the issues that matter.

Finally, I am not arguing that we “unilaterally disarm” in the face of Republican attacks, or bite our tongue when this Administration screws up. Whenever they are wrong, inept, or dishonest, we should say so clearly and repeatedly; and whenever they gear up their attack machine, we should respond quickly and forcefully. I am suggesting that the tone we take matters, and that truth, as best we know it, be the hallmark of our response.

My dear friend Paul Simon used to consistently win the votes of much more conservative voters in Southern Illinois because he had mastered the art of “disagreeing without being disagreeable,” and they trusted him to tell the truth. Similarly, one of Paul Wellstone’s greatest strengths was his ability to deliver a scathing rebuke of the Republicans without ever losing his sense of humor and affability. In fact, I would argue that the most powerful voices of change in the country, from Lincoln to King, have been those who can speak with the utmost conviction about the great issues of the day without ever belittling those who opposed them, and without denying the limits of their own perspectives.

In that spirit, let me end by saying I don’t pretend to have all the answers to the challenges we face, and I look forward to periodic conversations with all of you in the months and years to come. I trust that you will continue to let me and other Democrats know when you believe we are screwing up. And I, in turn, will always try and show you the respect and candor one owes his friends and allies.

In effect, Mr. Obama is just saying, “tone it down. I’m doing it. But you will screw it up if you make it too obvious.”

Which, as many will recall, is pretty much what other Democrats were telling the radical left about withdrawing troops from Iraq around this same time.

From the Cleveland Plain Dealer:

Ohio homeless must be allowed to vote, federal judge says

Posted by Terry Oblander/Plain Dealer Reporter October 28, 2008

Homeless people cannot be denied the right to vote because the grate they sleep on doesn’t have an address, a federal magistrate has ruled.

Edmund Sargus, a U.S. District Court judge for southern Ohio, on Monday ordered Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner not to reject provisional ballots that fail to list a building address on a provisional voting envelope.

Sargus also ordered Brunner not to reject provisional ballots because of poll worker error, “including failing to sign a provisional envelope.”

The Northeast Ohio Coalition for the Homeless had asked the court for a preliminary injunction dealing with issues affecting the homeless.

Cleveland attorney Subodh Chandra, who represents the coalition, told the court that a Cuyahoga County Board of Elections training and compliance officer said in an Oct. 21 deposition that his board did not plan to count ballots for homeless people who could not list a home address.

Alas, this is not really a new development. ACORN and the ACLU have already gotten this “right” in various states like Michigan.

From an operation calling itself TheUptake.org, via MySpaceTV Videos:

No Home = No Vote

How do you vote when you don’t own a home? From Detroit we hear first hand that it’s not easy, if sometimes just impossible. What’s being done to prevent that this election? We listen in on an ACLU session and find out how people who can get legal help to vote by calling 866-OURVOTE.

Thanks to the good offices of the ACORN and the ACLU, people around the country (such as in Michigan) can vote — even if they have no address.

As the ACLU lawyer in the clip explains, all you need is a cross street.

And never mind that this ultimately means that anyone can vote in any number of different precincts.

(Click to enlarge)

You see, Uptake is just as concerned as the ACLU and ACORN is about “protecting the vote.”

But where were these people when the Democrat forces in Florida were trying to throw Ann Coulter in jail for allegedly voting in the wrong district?

By the way, 866-OURVOTE takes you to the Orwellian-named National Campaign For Fair Elections, which is a front for the radical Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law.

From Discover The Networks:

Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law

1401 New York Avenue NW, Suite 400
Washington, DC 20005

Phone: 202-662-8600

    * Uses the courts to bypass the electorate and its officials in order to gain what it perceives as desirable and “just” outcomes
    * Supports racial preferences and racially gerrymandered voting districts
    * Opposes Patriot Act and other anti-terrorism security measures

The Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law (LCCR) was established at the request of President John F. Kennedy in 1963 to eradicate race-based discrimination and the involvement of the private bar in enforcing civil rights legislation. Today LCCR uses the courts to mandate race-based affirmative action preferences in business and academia. Its “major objective” is “to use the skills and resources of the bar to obtain equal opportunity for minorities by addressing factors that contribute to racial justice and economic opportunity.” “Given our nation’s history of racial discrimination, de jure segregation, and the de facto inequities that persist,” LCCR elaborates, “the Lawyers’ Committee’s primary focus is to represent the interest of African Americans in particular, other racial and ethnic minorities, and other victims of discrimination, where doing so can help to secure justice for all racial and ethnic minorities.”

Among LCCR’s positions are the following: (a) mandating that employers be subjected to outside investigations of employment complaints, while allowing employers access only to redacted versions of those complaints; (b) interposing in the desire of a city to protect its citizens from the high levels of crime common to housing projects (City of Cuyahoga Falls v. Buckeye Community Hope Foundation; King v. City of Blakely Housing Authority); (c) suing to force communities to build low-income housing, regardless of the realities of the housing market in those communities (e.g., Huntington, NY); (d) pushing for the most radical possible reading of the Americans With Disabilities Act (e.g., Tennessee v. Lane); (e) requiring states to redraw voting districts in such a way as to guarantee minority representation (suits in Virginia, Rhode Island, and Alabama, inter alia); and (f) pushing for the broadest possible reading of “constructive discharge” in sexual harassment cases (Pennsylvania State Police v. Suders).

LCCR’s many affiliate offices have filed briefs against the Department of Homeland Security’s efforts to limit the wholesale granting of green cards and to identify potential terrorists. The organization has also opposed measures to guarantee that airport security screeners are U.S. citizens. Many individual members of LCCR are members of the Lawyers’ Committee on Human Rights, which has consistently criticized the Patriot Act and America’s handling of military prisoners at Guantanamo Bay. Other members of LCCR are affiliated with the American Civil Liberties Union (with which LCCR is often joined in amicus curiae briefs) and the Center for International Rights.

LCCR’s activities are currently divided into six major campaigns:

Voting Rights Project: This project focuses on the reauthorization of provisions of the Voting Rights Act.

Education Project: Founded on the conviction that “discriminatory educational practices” are widespread in American schools, this project “challenges discriminatory tracking programs, the disproportionate placement of minority students in special education and ‘dead end’ courses, … the biased administration of student discipline, [and] congressional initiatives that could have a detrimental impact on minority and low-income children.”

Housing, Lending, and Community Development Project: “All too often, substandard segregated housing in minority communities exacerbates economic, political and educational disparities. [This project] litigates fair housing lawsuits … to challenge discrimination in rental and private markets as well as in public and assisted housing.”

Environmental Justice: “Low-income communities and people of color are disproportionately burdened by environmental pollution and the myriad of health problems associated with poor air and water quality and toxic exposure. … Established in 1991, the Environmental Justice Project … seeks justice for people of color who are fighting to clean up contamination in their community …”

Employment Discrimination Project: This project “challenges all forms of racial, national origin, and sexual discrimination in the workplace … [and] dismantles systemic barriers faced by women and minorities in hiring and promotions.”

Minority Business Project: Launched in 2003 and based on the premise that “minorities face discrimination in establishing businesses and competing for contracts in the public and private sectors,” this project “works to advance affirmative action and implement innovative ways to ensure that minorities can compete and succeed in the marketplace.”

LCCR was a signatory to a March 17, 2003 letter exhorting members of the U.S. Congress to oppose Patriot Act II, on grounds that it “contain[ed] a multitude of new and sweeping law enforcement and intelligence gathering powers … that would severely dilute, if not undermine, many basic constitutional rights.” In addition, LCCR has given its organizational endorsement to the Community Resolution to Protect Civil Liberties campaign — a project of the California-based Coalition for Civil Liberties, which tries to influence city councils to be non-compliant with the provisions of the Patriot Act.

LCCR also endorsed the 2001 “Statement of Solidarity with Migrants,” which was drawn up by the National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights and called upon the U.S. government to “[r]ecognize the contribution of immigrant workers, students, and families, and [to] end discriminatory policies passed on the basis of legal status.” Moreover, LCCR endorsed the Civil Liberties Restoration Act of 2004, which was designed to roll back, in the name of protecting civil liberties, vital national-security policies that had been adopted after the 9/11 terrorist attacks…

Alas, it almost goes without saying that the LCCR is a 501c3 tax exempt “charity.”

As you have probably heard, many Democrats are now calling for a “Second Bill Of Rights.”

Such as Marcie Kaptur (D., Toledo, OH) noted in her welcoming remarks for Barack Obama back on October 13, 2008. (Starting about :50 seconds in to the clip.)

Alas, this is not a new idea with the Democrats. It goes back to 1944 and President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

From Wikipedia:

Second Bill of Rights

The Second Bill of Rights was a proposal made by United States President Franklin D. Roosevelt during his State of the Union Address on January 11, 1944 to suggest that the nation had come to recognize, and should now implement, a second bill of rights.

Roosevelt did not argue for any change to the United States Constitution; he argued that the second bill of rights was to be implemented politically, not by federal judges.

Roosevelt’s stated justification was that the “political rights” granted by the Constitution and the Bill of Rights had “proved inadequate to assure us equality in the pursuit of happiness.”

Roosevelt’s remedy was to create an “economic bill of rights” which would guarantee:

* A job with a living wage
* Freedom from unfair competition and monopolies
* Homeownership
* Medical care
* Education
* Recreation

Roosevelt stated that having these rights would guarantee American security, and that America’s place in the world depended upon how far these and similar rights had been carried into practice.

“The Economic Bill of Rights”

Excerpt from President Roosevelt’s January 11, 1944 message to the Congress of the United States on the State of the Union:

It is our duty now to begin to lay the plans and determine the strategy for the winning of a lasting peace and the establishment of an American standard of living higher than ever before known. We cannot be content, no matter how high that general standard of living may be, if some fraction of our people—whether it be one-third or one-fifth or one-tenth—is ill-fed, ill-clothed, ill-housed, and insecure.

This Republic had its beginning, and grew to its present strength, under the protection of certain inalienable political rights—among them the right of free speech, free press, free worship, trial by jury, freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures. They were our rights to life and liberty.

As our nation has grown in size and stature, however—as our industrial economy expanded—these political rights proved inadequate to assure us equality in the pursuit of happiness.

We have come to a clear realization of the fact that true individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence. “Necessitous men are not free men.” People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made.

In our day these economic truths have become accepted as self-evident. We have accepted, so to speak, a second Bill of Rights under which a new basis of security and prosperity can be established for all—regardless of station, race, or creed.

Among these are:

The right to a useful and remunerative job in the industries or shops or farms or mines of the nation;

The right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation;

The right of every farmer to raise and sell his products at a return which will give him and his family a decent living;

The right of every businessman, large and small, to trade in an atmosphere of freedom from unfair competition and domination by monopolies at home or abroad;

The right of every family to a decent home;

The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health;

The right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment;

The right to a good education.

All of these rights spell security. And after this war is won we must be prepared to move forward, in the implementation of these rights, to new goals of human happiness and well-being.

America’s own rightful place in the world depends in large part upon how fully these and similar rights have been carried into practice for our citizens.

Imagine, Mr. Roosevelt at the height of his powers — and socialist delusions — could not get this through.

But now it’s very possible that Mr. Obama and a powerful Democrat majority in Congress will be able to.

If we let them.

From the New York Times subsidiary, the International Herald Tribune:

Oil’s stunning retreat: How long can it last?

By Jad Mouawad
Published: October 28, 2008

ENERGY: A SPECIAL REPORT

NEW YORK: After surging to record levels this summer, oil prices have suffered a dizzying collapse in recent months, echoing the darkening prospects of the global economy.

Within three months, drastic swings drove oil prices from their peak of $147.27 a barrel to less than $65 a barrel. Oil industry analysts at Goldman Sachs, who had raised the possibility that prices could reach $200 this year, now believe that oil could drop to $50 a barrel in the event of a global recession.

While consumers can cheer the drop, producers have been alarmed at the sudden downturn in their fortunes. Fears of a global slowdown have kicked off a down cycle in the oil sector: It is unclear how long it will last and how low prices will go.

As oil gets caught in the wild gyrations of the financial meltdown, three major questions loom over the oil markets for next year.

What will happen to oil consumption in the United States and in China? How will producers respond to lower prices? Can the oil cartel OPEC stop the slide in prices?

Gosh, this is horrible. Let’s do hope that OPEC can stop this slide.

Never mind that such a reduction in energy cost is like a stimulus package/tax cut that can only help the nation and the global economy.

We don’t want all of Mr. Gore’s and the NYT’s investments in “green technology” to go down the drain.

The Los Angeles Times has had a rather large litter of kittens over the breathtaking scoop that Amazon had somehow listed an Obama Halloween mask under “terrorist”:

Amazon.com listing had Barack Obama Halloween mask under ‘terrorist’

Andrew Malcolm

October 28, 2008

You know that argument the John McCain-Sarah Palin campaign has been relentlessly making that Barack Obama “pals” around with terrorists such as ’60s ex-radical William Ayers?

And they say this reflects on his poor judgment because of other associates such as Rev. Jeremiah Wright and newly-convicted Tony Rezko? …

Anyway, a listing on Amazon.com, one of the largest and most successful online merchandisers in the world, seemed to come down even beyond the Republicans’ side — for a while anyway. With Halloween just days away, they’re making a bundle off a $49.95 Barack Obama mask.

Which was displayed on the “terrorist costume” page.

You read that right!

(UPDATE: Amazon’s listing seems to have caught itself and deleted the Obama mask from the terrorist page. However, before that happened, The Ticket captured a photo. See below.)

Click on the Read more line below and see the online display….

…picture for yourself. There’s the Democrats’ presidential candidate smiling right under the headline “Terrorist Costume.” …

Thankfully, for the good of our country and the reputation of terrorists everywhere, Amazon has righted this dreadful wrong.

(Though, judging by the comments at the LA Times site, they will never be forgiven by thousands of their sensitive customers.)

It is a bit of selective outrage, though.

For if you click on the “terrorist” link under “related sources” on the very page that the LA Times cites as having once displayed this disgraceful item, you can still find T-shirts such as these:

Which all feature this wonderful “artwork”:

Yes, those are images of our elected representatives, President Bush and Vice President Cheney.

And there is plenty more of the same:

Yet somehow this didn’t trigger any outrage from the Los Angeles Times.

Why is that?

And speaking of media bias, it’s odd but we didn’t “know” that the John McCain-Sarah Palin campaign has been “relentlessly” claiming Barack Obama “pals” around with terrorists. We thought it got mentioned exactly once. Though we wish it would be mentioned more.

Heck, we didn’t even realize that Reverend Wright and Tony Rezko were merely Obama “associates.”

The LA Times is so helpful.

From the local Virginia Galax Gazette:

Daniel Meinecke

Campaign workers attacked

By Ben Bomberger

October 28, 2008

Two people were arrested Monday afternoon after an altercation led to five Republican campaign workers being sprayed with Mace at their headquarters in Galax.

Galax Police Chief Rick Clark said officers were dispatched shortly before 1 p.m. to the Galax Republican headquarters on East Grayson Street when a caller reported someone had sprayed office workers with Mace.

Responding officers arrested Daniel Cason Meinecke, 29, and Cara Annis Hindman, 26, both of Galax.

Meinecke was charged with one count of misdemeanor assault, Hindman was charged with five counts of misdemeanor assault.

Galax Republican Chairman Mike Stevens said he was one of the volunteers sprayed. He said a man and woman came into the office and asked for campaign yard signs for the Democratic ticket of Barack Obama and Joe Biden.

After being told the Obama-Biden campaign office was up the street, Stevens said, the man said he was aware of that, but that he thought Democratic signs were being stolen and “stashed” at the Republican office.

Stevens told him that nobody there had stolen signs, not were they “stashing” any in the building.

A confrontation escalated and, Stevens said, the man began to use some four-letter words.

Stevens said there were older women in the office and he asked the couple to leave the building.

“With the ladies in the office, I said that was enough and asked them to leave,” he said. “I told them, if they had a problem with someone stealing their signs they needed to contact the police department.”

Stevens said the couple replied that they weren’t leaving, and that they didn’t have to.

“I kind of moved them towards the door and he lashed out at me,” Stevens said. “So I lashed out at him.”

No punches were thrown, but instead the two simply held each other at bay, according to Stevens.

Once outside, Stevens said, the woman sprayed Mace on him and another volunteer before turning back to the office and spraying inside the building.

“It was surreal in the fact that I’ve had people in the past couple months come in and ask for signs. But to have an altercation like that just seems strange.”

While Stevens was unsure if the couple came into the building planning to start an altercation, he said it seemed evident they were.

“There was no business that this gentleman had to do in the office. We didn’t do anything… We didn’t steal his signs. The people in the building were a 75- and 71-year-old man and their respective wives… they aren’t out there stealing signs.”

Stevens said he felt the man just came to the headquarters to agitate office volunteers and that he had no reason to enter the building.

“I can’t say they came there for that purpose. But it seemed that it was to come in and agitate. When he started cussing, that’s when I felt it was time for them to go out of the way and go on down the road.”

With the election of a new president coming in the next week, Stevens said the tension between Republican and Democrats has been elevated.

“We are more divided,” as a result, he said.

Chief Clark said in a news release that Meinecke is alleged to have physically assaulted one of the Republican campaign workers; Hindman is alleged to have sprayed Pepper Mace that contaminated five Republican campaign workers.

Both were released on a secured bond pending their arraignment in Galax General District Court.

Cara Hindman

Again, the kind of story you will only ever hear from the local media and not our watchdog mainstream media.