An Open Letter to Certain White American Women Voters--Your Whiteness is Showing

http://www.counterpunch.org/wise06072008.html

All,

Every single word in the following essay is not only TRUE but way overdue. To say I agree 100% with every single syllable by Mr. Wise is understating it by a very wide margin. There are so many white (and Latino and Asian) Americans who are completely fulla shit about the ugly reality of their heartfelt anti-African American racism that not even a massive national enema could possibly eradicate it at this very late date in our collective history.

As Sister Souljah (remember her?) once said so powerfully and accurately way back in '92 when "the first black minstrel President" (a certain blackedup and arrogant political cretin by the name of Bill Clinton) denounced her in order to publicly humiliate Jesse Jackson (he succeeded):

"IF THE TRUTH HURTS YOU'LL BE IN PAIN AND IF THE TRUTH DRIVES YOU CRAZY YOU'LL JUST BE INSANE..."

Ain't that the truth?...

Kofi



An Open Letter to Certain White Women Who Are Threatening to Withhold Support from Obama in November

Your Whiteness is Showing
By Tim Wise
June 7 / 8, 2008
Counterpunch magazine

This is an open letter to those white women who, despite their proclamations of progressivism, and supposedly because of their commitment to feminism, are threatening to withhold support from Barack Obama in November. You know who you are.

I know that it's probably a bad time for this. Your disappointment at the electoral defeat of Senator Hillary Clinton is fresh, the sting is new, and the anger that animates many of you--who rightly point out that the media was often sexist in its treatment of the Senator--is raw, pure and justified.

That said, and despite the awkward timing, I need to ask you a few questions, and I hope you will take them in the spirit of solidarity with which they are genuinely intended. But before the questions, a statement if you don't mind, or indeed, even if (as I suspect), you will mind it quite a bit.

First, for those of you threatening to actually vote for John McCain and to oppose Senator Obama, or to stay home in November and thereby increase the likelihood of McCain winning and Obama losing (despite the fact that the latter's policy platform is virtually identical to Clinton's while the former's clearly is not), all the while claiming to be standing up for women...

For those threatening to vote for John McCain or to stay home and increase the odds of his winning (despite the fact that he once called his wife the c-word in public and is a staunch opponent of reproductive freedom and gender equity initiatives, such as comparable worth legislation), all the while claiming to be standing up for women...

For those threatening to vote for John McCain or to stay home and help ensure Barack Obama's defeat, as a way to protest what you call Obama's sexism (examples of which you seem to have difficulty coming up with), all the while claiming to be standing up for women...

Your whiteness is showing.

When I say your whiteness is showing this is what I mean: You claim that your opposition to Obama is an act of gender solidarity, in that women (and their male allies) need to stand up for women in the face of the sexist mistreatment of Clinton by the press. On this latter point--the one about the importance of standing up to the media for its often venal misogyny--you couldn't be more correct. As the father of two young girls who will have to contend with the poison of patriarchy all their lives, or at least until such time as that system of oppression is eradicated, I will be the first to join the boycott of, or demonstration on, whatever media outlet you choose to make that point. But on the first part of the above equation--the part where you insist voting against Obama is about gender solidarity--you are, for lack of a better way to put it, completely full of crap. And what's worse is that at some level I suspect you know it. Voting against Senator Obama is not about gender solidarity. It is an act of white racial bonding, and it is grotesque.

If it were gender solidarity you sought, you would by definition join with your black and brown sisters come November, and do what you know good and well they are going to do, in overwhelming numbers, which is vote for Barack Obama. But no. You are threatening to vote not like other women--you know, the ones who aren't white like you and most of your friends--but rather, like white men! Needless to say it is high irony, bordering on the outright farcical, to believe that electorally bonding with white men, so as to elect McCain, is a rational strategy for promoting feminism and challenging patriarchy. You are not thinking and acting as women, but as white people. So here's the first question: What the hell is that about?

And you wonder why women of color have, for so long, thought (by and large) that white so-called feminists were phony as hell? Sister please...

Your threats are not about standing up for women. They are only about standing up for the feelings of white women, and more to the point, the aspirations of one white woman. So don't kid yourself. If you wanted to make a statement about the importance of supporting a woman, you wouldn't need to vote for John McCain, or stay home, thereby producing the same likely result--a defeat for Obama. You could always have said you were going to go out and vote for Cynthia McKinney. After all, she is a woman, running with the Green Party, and she's progressive, and she's a feminist. But that isn't your threat is it? No. You're not threatening to vote for the woman, or even the feminist woman. Rather, you are threatening to vote for the white man, and to reject not only the black man who you feel stole Clinton's birthright, but even the black woman in the race. And I wonder why? Could it be...?

See, I told you your whiteness was showing.

And now for a third question, and this is the biggie, so please take your time with it: How is it that you have managed to hold your nose all these years, just like a lot of us on the left, and vote for Democrats who we knew were horribly inadequate--Kerry, Gore, Clinton, Dukakis, right on down the uninspiring line--and yet, apparently can't bring yourself to vote for Barack Obama? A man who, for all of his shortcomings (and there are several, as with all candidates put up by either of the two major corporate parties) is surely more progressive than any of those just mentioned. And how are we to understand that refusal--this sudden line in the proverbial sand--other than as a racist slap at a black man? You will vote for white men year after year after year--and are threatening to vote for another one just to make a point--but can't bring yourself to vote for a black man, whose political views come much closer to your own, in all likelihood, than do the views of any of the white men you've supported before. How, other than as an act of racism, or perhaps as evidence of political insanity, is one to interpret such a thing?

See, black folks would have sucked it up, like they've had to do forever, and voted for Clinton had it come down to that. Indeed, they were on board the Hillary train early on, convinced that Obama had no chance to win and hoping for change, any change, from the reactionary agenda that has been so prevalent for so long in this culture. They would have supported the white woman--hell, for many black folks, before Obama showed his mettle they were downright excited to do so--but you won't support the black man. And yet you have the audacity to insist that it is you who are the most loyal constituency of the Democratic Party, and the one before whom Party leaders should bow down, and whose feet must be kissed?

Your whiteness is showing.

Look, I couldn't care less about the Party personally. I left the Democrats twenty years ago when they told me that my activism in the Central America solidarity and South African anti-apartheid movements made me a security risk, and that I wouldn't be able to get clearance to be in some parade with Governor Dukakis. Yeah, seriously. But for you to act as though you are the indispensible voters, the most important, the ones whose views should be pandered to, whose every whim should be the basis for Party policy, is not only absurd, it is also racist in that it, a) ignores and treats as irrelevant the much more loyal constituency of black folks, without whom no Democrat would have won anything in the past twenty years (and indeed the racial gap favoring the Democrats among blacks is about six times larger than the gender gap favoring them among white women, relative to white men); and b) demonstrates the mentality of entitlement and superiority that has been long ingrained in us as white folks--so that we believe we have the right to dictate the terms of political engagement, and to determine the outcome, and to get our way, simply because for so long we have done just that.

But that day is done, whether you like it or not, and you are now left with two, and only two choices, so consider them carefully: the first is to stand now in solidarity with your black brothers and sisters and welcome the new day, and help to push it in a truly progressive and feminist and antiracist direction, while the second is to team up with white men to try and block the new day from dawning. Feel free to choose the latter. But if you do, please don't insult your own intelligence, or ours, by insisting that you've done so as a radical political act.

Tim Wise is the author of: White Like Me: Reflections on Race from a Privileged Son (Soft Skull Press, 2005), and Affirmative Action: Racial Preference in Black and White (Routledge: 2005). He can be reached at: timjwise@msn.com

One Historic Night, Two Americas

All,

Still more outstanding evidence of why Frank Rich (former award winning drama critic and author of the extraordinary 2006 book "The Greatest Story Ever Sold: The Decline and Fall of Truth in Bush's America") remains one of the finest writers and most insightful political journalists in the United States.

Kofi

OP-ED COLUMNIST
By FRANK RICH
New York Times
June 8, 2008

WHEN Barack Obama achieved his historic victory on Tuesday night, the battle was joined between two Americas. Not John Edwards’s two Americas, divided between rich and poor. Not the Americas split by race, gender, party or ideology. What looms instead is an epic showdown between two wildly different visions of the country, from the ground up

On one side stands Mr. Obama’s resolutely cheerful embrace of the future. His vision is inseparable from his identity, both as a rookie with a slim Washington résumé and as a black American whose triumph was regarded as improbable by voters of all races only months ago. On the other is John McCain’s promise of a wise warrior’s vigilant conservation of the past. His vision, too, is inseparable from his identity — as a government lifer who has spent his entire career in service, whether in the Navy or Washington.

Given the dividing line separating the two Americas of 2008, a ticket uniting Mr. McCain and Hillary Clinton might actually be a better fit than the Obama-Clinton “dream ticket,” despite their differences on the issues. Never was this more evident than Tuesday night, when Mrs. Clinton and Mr. McCain both completely misread a one-of-a-kind historical moment as they tried to cling to the prerogatives of the 20th century’s old guard.

All presidential candidates, Mr. Obama certainly included, are egomaniacs. But Washington’s faith in hierarchical status adds a thick layer of pomposity to politicians who linger there too long. Mrs. Clinton referred to herself by the first-person pronoun 64 times in her speech, and Mr. McCain did so 60 times in his. Mr. Obama settled for 30.

Remarkably, neither Mrs. Clinton nor Mr. McCain had the grace to offer a salute to Mr. Obama’s epochal political breakthrough, which reverberated so powerfully across the country and throughout the world. By being so small and ungenerous, they made him look taller. Their inability to pivot even briefly from partisan self-interest could not be a more telling symptom of the dysfunctional Washington culture Mr. Obama aspires to mend.

Yet even as the two establishment candidates huffed and puffed to assert their authority, they seemed terrified by Mr. Obama’s insurgency, as if it were the plague in Edgar Allan Poe’s “Masque of the Red Death.” Mrs. Clinton held her nonconcession speech in a Manhattan bunker, banishing cellphone reception and television monitors carrying the news of Mr. Obama’s clinching of the nomination. Mr. McCain, laboring under the misapprehension that he was wittily skewering his opponent, compulsively invoked the Obama-patented mantra of “change” 33 times in his speech.

Mr. McCain only reminded voters that he, like Mrs. Clinton, thinks that change is nothing more than a marketing gimmick. He has no idea what it means. “No matter who wins this election, the direction of this country is going to change dramatically,” he said on Tuesday. He then grimly regurgitated Goldwater and Reagan government-bashing talking points from the 1960s and ’70s even as he presumed to accuse Mr. Obama of looking “to the 1960s and ’70s for answers.”

Mr. Obama is a liberal, but it’s not your boomer parents’ liberalism that is at the heart of his appeal. He never rattles off a Clinton laundry list of big federal programs; he supports abortion rights and gay civil rights with a sunny bonhomie that makes the right’s cultural scolds look like rabid mastodons. He is not refighting either side of the domestic civil war over Vietnam that exploded in his hometown of Chicago 40 years ago this summer, long before he arrived there.

He has never deviated from his much-quoted formulation in “The Audacity of Hope,” where he described himself as aloof from “the psychodrama of the baby boom generation” with its “old grudges and revenge plots hatched on a handful of college campuses long ago.” His vocabulary is so different from that of Mrs. Clinton and Mr. McCain that they often find it as baffling as a foreign language, even as they try to rip it off.

The selling point of Mr. Obama’s vision of change is not doctrinaire liberalism or Bush-bashing but an inclusiveness that he believes can start to relieve Washington’s gridlock much as it animated his campaign. Some of that inclusiveness is racial, ethnic and generational, in the casual, what’s-the-big-deal manner of post-boomer Americans already swimming in our country’s rapidly expanding demographic pool. Some of it is post-partisan: he acknowledges that Republicans, Ronald Reagan included, can have ideas.

Opponents who dismiss this as wussy naïveté do so at their own risk. They at once call attention to the expiring shelf life of their own Clinton-Bush-vintage panaceas and lull themselves into underestimating Mr. Obama’s political killer instincts.

The Obama forces out-organized the most ruthless machine in Democratic politics because the medium of their campaign mirrored its inclusive message. They empowered adherents in every state rather than depending on a Beltway campaign hierarchy whose mercenary chief strategist kept his day job as chief executive for a corporate P.R. giant. Such viral organization and fund-raising is a seamless fit with bottom-up democracy as it is increasingly practiced in the Facebook-YouTube era, not merely by Americans and not merely by the young.

You could learn a ton about the Clinton campaign’s cultural tone-deafness from its stodgy generic Web site. A similar torpor afflicts JohnMcCain.com, which last week gave its graphics a face-lift that unabashedly mimics BarackObama.com and devoted prime home page real estate to hawking “McCain Golf Gear.” (No joke.) The blogs, video and social networking are static and sparse, the apt reflection of a candidate who repeatedly invokes “I” as he boasts of his humility.

Mr. Obama’s deep-rooted worldliness — in philosophy as well as itinerant background — is his other crucial departure from the McCain template. As more and more Americans feel the pain of spiraling gas prices and lost jobs, they are also coming to recognize, as Mr. Obama does, that the globally reviled American image forged by an endless war in Iraq and its accompanying torture scandals is inflicting economic as well as foreign-policy havoc.

Six out of 10 Americans do want their president to talk to Iran’s president, according to the most-recent Gallup poll. Americans are sick of a national identity defined by arrogant saber-rattling abroad and manipulative fear-mongering at home. Mr. Obama closed his speech on Tuesday by telling Americans they “don’t deserve” another election “that’s governed by fear.” Of the three candidates, he was the only one who did not mention 9/11 that night.

Mr. Obama isn’t flawless. But it’s hard to see him hitching up with Mrs. Clinton, who would contradict his message, unite the right, and pass along her husband’s still unpacked post-presidency baggage. A larger trap for Mr. Obama is his cockiness. His own tendency to preen and to coast could be encouraged by recent events rocking the Straight Talk Express: Mr. McCain is so far proving an exceptionally clumsy candidate prone to accentuating everything that’s out-of-touch about his American vision.

Mr. McCain’s speech in a New Orleans suburb on Tuesday night spawned a cottage industry of ridicule, even among Republicans. The halting delivery, sickly green backdrop and spastic, inappropriate smiles, presumably mandated by some consultant hoping to mask his anger, left the impression that Mr. McCain isn’t yet ready for prime-time radio.

But the substance was even worse than the theatrics. Incredibly, Mr. McCain attacked Mr. Obama for being insufficiently bipartisan while speaking to the most conspicuously partisan audience you can assemble in today’s America: a small, nearly all-white crowd that seconded his attack lines with boorish choruses of boos. On TV, the audience came across as a country-club membership riled by a change in the Sunday brunch menu.

Equally curious was Mr. McCain’s decision to stage this event in Louisiana, a state that is truly safe for the G.O.P. and that he’d last visited less than six weeks earlier. Perhaps he did so because Louisiana’s governor, the 36-year-old Indian-American Bobby Jindal, is the only highly placed nonwhite Republican he could find to lend his campaign an ersatz dash of diversity and youth.

Or perhaps he thought that if he once more returned to the scene of President Bush’s Katrina crime to (belatedly) slam that federal failure, it would fool voters into forgetting his cheerleading for Mr. Bush’s Iraq obsession and economic policies. This time it proved a levee too far. The day after his speech Mr. McCain was caught on the stump misstating and exaggerating his own do-little record after Katrina. Soon the Internet was alight with documentation of what he actually did on the day the hurricane hit land: a let-us-eat-cake photo op with Mr. Bush celebrating his birthday in Arizona.

Anything can happen in politics, and there are five months to go. But Tuesday night’s McCain pratfall — three weeks in the planning by his campaign, according to Fox News — should be a clear indication that Mr. Obama must accept Mr. McCain’s invitation to weekly debates at once. Tomorrow if possible, and, yes, bring on the green!

Mr. Obama must also heed Mr. McCain’s directive that he visit Iraq — as long as he avoids Baghdad markets and hits other foreign capitals on route. When the world gets a firsthand look at the new America Mr. Obama offers as an alternative to Mr. McCain’s truculent stay-the-course, the public pandemonium may make J.F.K.’s “Ich bin ein Berliner” visit to the Berlin Wall look like a warm-up act.

The dynamics of translation

by Dr. Tyrone Williams

Long before Barack Obama secured the Democratic Party presidential nomination, long before Hillary Clinton began using him as a barometer of racial parochialism, pundits of all persuasions were overtly or covertly asking and wondering one thing: Can Obama translate a party nomination into a viable national campaign? The words translate and translation are rarely used in local campaigns but they show up frequently during statewide and national election years. Their usage presumes, from the start (actually, even before the start), that a particular candidate has “limited” appeal, which in turn presupposes a “general” consensus. And as the term translation suggests, limitation and generality are both linked to language. Despite the ritualistic appeals to “personality” and “likeability,” everyone recognizes the centrality of language during campaigns, which is why the media and voters tend to focus on what words are spoken by candidates. Of course, words do not alone constitute a language. If that were true, translations would be relatively easy. But translations are hard because of the different kinds of contexts that make words “mean.” And it is precisely certain contexts that the media excises, and certain contexts that it exaggerates (or invents), in much the way that media photographs are cropped to narrow “readings” down to incontrovertible and particular meanings. Recontextualizing words from one frame of reference to another, like cropping a photograph, is a form of translation, one which always has specific political, cultural and social—in sum, historical—effects.

The very act of translation opens up an aperture through which we glimpse the dynamics of history as an endless replaying of the slave-master dialectic—that is, the slavemaster and Master—or Mister—Slave. That is, one language, however defined, is always “master” and one language is always “slave.” One translates from one language into another for those who cannot—do not—will not—speak the language of origin. Capability, status and volition straddle the nurture/nature divide aslant—as though one “leg” were shorter than the other, as one though one language were “taller” (perhaps closer to divinity), as though one linguistic system were “normal,” another, “disabled.” One does not have to be conscious of this intrinsically unequal relationship between any two languages; inequality is the presupposition of translation.

Consider the examples of two men: Jeremiah Wright and Barack Obama. Among all the accusations and finger-pointing, I want to cite three commentaries that illustrate the ends of translation—and the beginning of the slave-master dialectic. In his New Republic essay “Cool We Can Believe In” novelist/poet Paul Beatty attempts to pin down Obama’s apparent invulnerability to closet skeletons, his anti-Tar Baby immunity, to that most ineffable of blues and jazz attitudes-sans-attitude—cool. This updated stoicism, for Beatty, is the very antithesis of translation—it does not convert, change or represent. It is before all morality, outside any ethos. It is the analogue to reading a poem in a language you do not understand. Or as Adam Clark, a theologian at Xavier University, put it: “The language of the black church that conveys this oppositionality [to empire] does not translate well into the arena of presidential politics. It was never intended to.” Cool cannot be translated—you either get it or you don’t. And so, writes Kofi Natambu, both men should have simply agreed to disagree. I concur but such a possibility depends on black men recognizing—no, remembering—that they are individual black men. But a preacher and a politician have a hard time remembering this since, in their chosen professions, they presume to speak for others, to surrender their individual selves for a larger cause. Of course, as everyone from the editors of the New York Times to FOX News has recognized, it would not have mattered much anyway since, truth to tell, in America there are no individual black men or women allowed in public. There are only translators who speak at least two languages, and those dead, as dead as Latin, as labor, so goes the story. The facts of his particular case aside, Mike Tyson’s arrest and conviction on rape charges several years ago was read by the media itself (and no doubt certain segments of the American public) as a referendum on the O.J. Simpson case, on that black man having “gotten away” with murder. I repeat: there are no individual black men or women allowed in public.

Ethnic minorities and women have known this for sometime, which is one reason why this particular presidential nomination race was so bitter. The fact is, rightly or wrongly, gender politics does figure into American public life—including elections—which does not obviate its racial politics (cf. Tyson and Simpson above). This dynamic is never easily “translated” from one sphere into the other, for as my comments above about translation in general suggest, translation between two “languages” (e.g. the black church and hegemonic “public” discourse, gender and race) is never performed on an even playing field. One language is always presumed “inferior” to the other (e.g., the American fascination with British English and royalty, the Diana cult, etc.). The Obama-Clinton campaigns thus resembled, all too cannily, the Susan B. Anthony-Frederick Douglass debates and ugly back-and-forth recriminations of the 19th century, a debate over “who” deserved the vote first—black men or white women, a debate which erased black women, as Sojourner Truth reminded both Anthony and Douglass. To argue over which was “worse”—the race-baiting or the subtle (and not so subtle) woman-baiting—is to fall into the translation trap, to assume that one has to choose one “language”(race or gender) over another.

If translation always presumes an uneven playing field, then it will not be difficult to judge which “language” plays the role of the inferior in the upcoming presidential campaign. The fact that John McCain doesn’t even have to deal with the question of “translation” speaks volumes. Obama will have to put black people and other people of color, to say nothing of working class people and young people in general, on the back burner, so goes the conventional political wisdom. But what if there is no dominant language out there? What if there are only particular ethnic, gender and economic groups all vying for their share of that ever-dwindling American pie. What if one refused to pick? What is translation in that scenario?



Dr. Williams is a poet, literary theorist, cultural critic, and Professor of English at Xavier University in Ohio.

Why Billary, Inc. is a Menace to Barack Obama and the Democratic Party--and What must be done about it

All,

The following messages were sent by me earlier today to friends and colleagues who asked me my take on the latest political debacle involving Billary, Inc. and the Obama campaign for the Presidency. If Obama doesn't want to be eternally held hostage by the divisive and destructive antics of the ruthless Billary, Inc. political machine he had better stand up to her NOW, reject her idiotic demands, assert his complete independence from her brazen bullshit, and then get on with the far more important task of winning the presidential fight against John McCain. Please read the letters and articles below.

Kofi

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/05/us/politics/04cnd-campaign.html?_r=1&nl=pol&oref=slogin&emc=pola1&pagewanted=all


Check out this article! Read the dirty details for yourselves. The vicious, ruthless, and virulently racist triangulation tactics of the Billary, Inc. machine--the dirtiest political mob in this country outside of the notorious Karl Rove and the Republican Party Dirty Tricks Division--is holding Obama and the entire Democratic Party HOSTAGE to their madness. If this madness is not completely stopped by Obama and especially the Democratic Party leadership of the DNC (e.g. Dean, Pelosi, Reid, etc.) not only will Obama lose in November but the Democratic Party will be destroyed (I know, I know some of you might think that would be a good thing but I assure you that none of us will have the dubious luxury of watching it disintegrate if the Republicans get back in office for a third term--and with a currently completely inept and clueless American Left we'll all be too busy DROWNING)...Don't believe me?--WATCH AND SEE...

Kofi



June 5, 2008

Top Democrats Press for Unity After Obama Secures Victory
By MICHAEL LUO
New York Times

With Senator Barack Obama crossing the threshold of delegates needed to win the Democratic presidential nomination, party leaders began to move on Wednesday to bring the lengthy primary battle to a close and unite the party, even as questions swirled about Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s next move.

In the morning, a group of top Democratic leaders asked all of the party’s uncommitted superdelegates, the officials and party leaders who get automatic convention seats, to make their preferences known by Friday.

While the group of leaders — including the chairman of the Democratic National Committee, Howard Dean; the Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi; the Senate Majority Leader, Harry Reid; and Gov. Joe Manchin of West Virginia — did not formally endorse Mr. Obama or urge Mrs. Clinton to exit the race, they said in a joint statement: “Democrats must now turn our full attention to the general election.” They added that the party needed to “stand united and begin our march toward reversing the eight years of failed Bush/McCain policies that have weakened our country.”

Other party leaders began to coalesce behind Mr. Obama, including Representative Rahm Emanuel, of Illinois, a former aide in the Clinton White House but also a close friend of Mr. Obama.

“Look, I’ve known him for years, and I said that as the election came to an end, I would make my endorsement, come from underneath the desk — and I did that,” Mr. Emanuel said. “The fact is, he is the nominee.”

But Mrs. Clinton’s top aides continued to sidestep questions on Wednesday morning about when she would suspend her campaign, even as some of her supporters began ratcheting up pressure on Mr. Obama to take her on as his running mate.

Robert L. Johnson, a prominent Clinton backer and the founder of Black Entertainment Television, said Wednesday on the CNN program “American Morning” that he planned to enlist members of the Congressional Black Caucus to push Mr. Obama to accept Mrs. Clinton as his vice presidential nominee. He said Mrs. Clinton had not directed his efforts, but was aware of them.

Mr. Johnson argued that an Obama-Clinton ticket would have the best chance of winning in the general election and would help unify the Democratic Party.

Lanny Davis, who was an aide in the Clinton White House, said he was circulating a petition asking Mr. Obama to pick Mrs. Clinton as his running mate. Mr. Davis said he was acting on his own.

On a conference call with members of the New York Congressional delegation on Tuesday, Mrs. Clinton was asked whether she would be open to joining a ticket headed by Mr. Obama. She replied, according to some who were on the call, that if he offered the vice presidential nod, she would accept, and would do whatever she could to help Democrats win the White House.

Terry McAuliffe, the Clinton campaign chairman, however, insisted Wednesday morning on CNN that there had been “absolutely zero discussions” about whether she would accept a vice presidential nomination. Mr. McAuliffe said that Mrs. Clinton, whose speech on Tuesday night in New York was more defiant than conciliatory, wanted to talk things over with her supporters on Wednesday.

“There is plenty of time,” Mr. McAuliffe said, continuing to argue that Mrs. Clinton had won the most popular votes, a notion disputed by the Obama campaign.

Mr. Obama and Mrs. Clinton spoke by telephone just after midnight Wednesday. He congratulated her and renewed his offer to “sit down when it makes sense for you,” according to a spokesman for Mr. Obama, Robert Gibbs. Mrs. Clinton responded positively, Mr. Gibbs said, but he added there were no immediate plans to meet on Wednesday.

The focus now is on the delicate dance between Mr. Obama and Mrs. Clinton, a relationship that has been rife with complex tensions throughout the primary battle, which was riven by accusations of racism and sexism.

Both candidates addressed the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the most prominent pro-Israel lobbying group in Washington, on Wednesday morning. Mr. Obama took the stage first, and immediately offered warm words for Mrs. Clinton, saying, “She has made history alongside me over the last sixteen months.”

A short while later, Mrs. Clinton came to the podium and plunged straight into her speech, ignoring speculation about her political intentions. She digressed, however, to offer this assurance to her audience: “I know Senator Obama will be a good friend to Israel.”

Mr. Obama has struggled to combat the wariness about him that has been harbored by some Jewish voters, a wariness evidently fueled by e-mail messages spreading false rumors about his background and positions. In his speech, he promised to be uncompromising in his defense of Israel’s security. He also revived the contentious issue of how much to engage foreign adversaries, especially Iran, which promises to be a central dispute in his general election battle with Senator John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee.

“Contrary to the claims of some, I have no interest in sitting down with our adversaries just for the sake of talking,” Mr. Obama said. “But as President of the United States, I would be willing to lead tough and principled diplomacy with the appropriate Iranian leader at a time and place of my choosing — if, and only if, it can advance the interests of the United States.”

Mr. McCain has attacked Mr. Obama for his response at a debate last year, in which he said he would be willing to sit down with the leaders of some America’s most ardent foes, including Iran, “without preconditions.”

But Mr. Obama said that a change in course was needed in the country’s diplomatic approach, and that Mr. McCain “refuses to understand or acknowledge the failure of the policy he would continue.”

For her part, Mrs. Clinton seemed to take pains to avoid bringing up issues where she and Mr. Obama have differed, including the question of when to meet with certain adversaries; during the primary campaign she, too, criticized Mr. Obama’s stance.

It was a last-minute rush of commitments by Democratic superdelegates, as well as the results from the final two primaries in Montana and South Dakota on Tuesday, that raised Mr. Obama’s total above the 2,118-delegate threshold needed to secure the nomination at the party’s convention in August. The victory for Mr. Obama, the son of a black Kenyan father and a white Kansan mother, broke racial barriers and represented a remarkable rise for a man who just four years ago was serving in the Illinois State Senate.

But to the end, the primaries reflected the party’s continuing divisions, as Mrs. Clinton won the South Dakota contest while Mr. Obama won in Montana.

The competition between Mr. McCain and Mr. Obama has been sharpening for weeks, but the close of the Democratic primary race formally raised the curtain on a five-month general election contest.

At a town-hall-style meeting in Baton Rouge on Wednesday, Mr. McCain announced that he had invited Mr. Obama to join him in a series of 10 such meetings between now and the Democratic convention in late August.

“I think Americans are tired about the ways presidential campaigns have been run in the past — all the gimmicks, the phony sound bits and photo-ops,” Mr. McCain said. “Campaigns always seemed to be more about the candidates’ interest than the public.”

Mr. McCain even proposed a date for the first event: June 12 in New York City.

Mr. Obama had earlier indicated that he might be open to such a proposal, though it is clearly to the McCain campaign’s advantage to push the concept. Mr. McCain will almost certainly be widely outspent by Mr. Obama, whose fund-raising has far outstripped his opponent’s, and joint appearances where the candidates would get equal attention could help offset the disparity.

Mr. McCain even joked about the financial aspect, suggesting that the candidates share the same airplane to the forums: “Given our expenses,” he said, “I know my campaign would agree to it.”

David Plouffe, the Obama campaign manager, later issued a statement saying the town-hall proposal was “appealing, and one that would allow a great conversation to take place about the need to change the direction of this country.”

But he said that his side would recommend a “less structured and lengthier” format, “one that more closely resembles the historic debates between Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas.”

Nevertheless, Mr. Plouffe said he looked forward to continuing the discussion over the matter with the McCain campaign.

Jeff Zeleny contributed reporting.


N,

Regardless of the present or future superdelegate tally and despite the fact that Barack is the DP nominee the Clintons are creating a major problem for Obama that he and the Democratic Party leadership in general is going to have to address and eliminate. The ruthless and insulting manuevering that Billary, Inc. is currently involved in with the truly slimy likes of Lanny Davis and that opportunist cretin from BET Robert Johnson as well as others in and out of her personal camp is seriously undermining and even sabotaging Obama's campaign for the Presidency. The mere fact that she's trying to hold him and the rest of the Party hostage to the absurd and ruinous idea of a Vice Presidential spot on the ticket is a clear signal that there is no real Party unity at this point even though a nominee has already been chosen!

This is not only unprecedented in modern Democratic Party history (the closest historical comparison I could make is the 1980 debacle incolving Jimmy Carter vs, Edward Kennedy at the DP convention that year but even that wasn't as poisonous and destructive as what the Clintons are trying to pull). Something needs to be done NOW to stop this express train of division because if not and the Clintons get the VP spot all is lost politically against McCain and I for one would never support such a move under any circumstances!

Please respond when you get a chance...

Kofi

http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2008/05/heilemann_what_hillary_wants_a.html

All,

I think the following analysis by John Heilemann from May 30 is right on target and provides the clearest and most reliable insight into precisely why and how Billary is going to try to undermine and sabotage Obama--and if she fails at that--she will simply run again for the Presidency at her earliest opportunity. Either way she's using her present support in the Democratic Party and in the primary elections as a bullying wedge to try to marginalize, dismiss, and restrict Obama's titular role as present (and future) leader of the Democratic Party. Billary, Inc. are sheer Machiavellians when it comes to politics which means that their first, last, and final "loyalties" are ALWAYS to themselves no matter what and that ALL OTHERS--supporters, opponents, friends, acolytes, and enemies alike are perceived and treated as nothing but mere cannon fodder for their self serving mercenary ventures into Politics. Billary, Inc. only runs to win and they don't give a damn as Heilemann brilliantly points out in this article who or what they have to hurt or destroy in order to achieve their goal--which in their manipulative and pathologically meglomaniacal minds always means that they are right and everyone else who disagrees with them are wrong PERIOD/ALL THE TIME/because they say so, etc.

That this fundamental attitude and value system makes them routinely dangerous and destructive goes without saying...

They are and will continue to be Obama's political enemy simply because he stands in the way of what they want, demand, and insist that they are entitled to and it will be to Barack's ultimate political peril and demise if he allows Billary, Inc. to dictate his political direction in any way...

Kofi


Heilemann: What Hillary Wants, and Why She’s Jesse Jackson ’88
May 30, 2008



There’s been a lot of talk over the past few months about whether the 2008 presidential campaign just might turn out to be 1988 all over again. The comparison has been driven by the fact that Republicans plainly intend to try to cast Barack Obama as a black Mike Dukakis — as too liberal, too inexperienced, too weak, and, crucially, insufficiently patriotic to occupy the White House. But a different analogy occurred to me the other day, one perhaps less comprehensively apt but so delightfully ironic that it would be a crime not to point it out. As anyone politically sentient in 1988 will vividly recall, the endgame of the Democratic primaries that year revolved around a challenger seen by his fans as a historic figure and his foes as a potential party-wrecker, and what concessions he might insist upon in order to fade quietly into the background. The inescapable question of the hour was, “What does Jesse Jackson want?”

Hillary Clinton, of course, is no Jesse Jackson (but neither, pace Bill Clinton’s comments on the eve of the South Carolina primary, is Obama). But the question posed by her behavior in the home stretch of this year’s nominating contest is precisely the same: “What does Hillary want?”

Whenever this query is put to me — which only takes place, oh, on the order of 100 times a day — my response is simple: She wants to be president. Duh. And if it ain’t gonna happen this year, then her central objective is to make it as likely as possible in 2012. As I’ve written many times, Hillary believes with every fiber of her being that Obama is going to lose this year. (And so does her husband.) So her aim is to put herself in the best position possible to stand up on November 5 and say, if perhaps a tad more subtly than this, “I told you so.”

From these core facts — and based on everything my reporting these past few months tells me, facts is what they are — flow plausible answers to a raft of more granular questions about Clinton’s motives and what she plans to do in the days ahead. For the purposes of brevity, let’s stick to the top five.

1. Is she going to quit sometime soon or fight on to the convention?
The former. Indeed, my guess is that she might very well be out of the race by the end of next week. For Hillary to be the Democratic nominee in 2012, she must limit the extent to which she’s seen as having caused Obama’s (in her mind, inevitable) loss this fall. And setting off on a scorched-earth march to Denver runs in diametric opposition to that goal. True, she keeps saying that she’s going all the way; true, she continues to press for the seating in full of the Florida and Michigan delegations. But Clinton has other things she might want from Obama, from a prominent speaking slot in Denver to help paying off her campaign debt. The more delegates she has in the end, the stronger her bargaining position.

2. Does she want to be offered the VP slot?
No, she does not. If it’s offered, she has to take it, because turning it down would be a signal to her supporters that she doesn’t support Obama (see above). And if she’s on the ticket and Obama goes down (again, as she’s convinced he will), she is then complicit in the loss, and her prospects in 2012 are damaged. Does Hillary want be the next John Edwards? The question answers itself.

3. So what’s with all the leaks that Bill wants her on the ticket?
He probably does. The idea of Hillary as veep must sound like a sweet deal to him: It would be history-making, it would cement the Clintons’ status as one of America’s great political dynasties, and in the second-fiddle job his wife would pose no danger of overshadowing him. But contrary to the notion that the Clintons are always in perfect sync on matters political — that they scheme together, choose a path to follow, then go charging down it together — there are many cases where their thinking diverges. And this is one of them.

4. Will she work hard for Obama or undermine him in the fall?
Implicit in all this analysis is that Hillary Clinton is a cold-eyed rationalist, and despite the occasional shard of evidence to the contrary, this is true. She’s aware that even as she’s become a much larger figure in the course of this race in one segment of the party, her reputation has taken a beating in another. She thinks it’s unfair, but she knows it’s the reality, and also that whether Obama wins or loses, it’s difficult to imagine a promising future for herself without repairing her standing among those who regard her poorly. I suspect there won’t be many louder Obama cheerleaders this autumn — or more insincere ones.

5. If Obama wins, what will she do next?
One rumor going around New York is that she’ll run for governor — an eventuality only marginally more likely than my pursuing that office. HRC cares not a whit about state government. She loves Washington, thinks of it as home, and of Albany as hell (smart gal!). Consider further that becoming governor would require taking on the incumbent, David Paterson, who has indicated no intention to be a temporary fill-in. Hillary challenging another African-American in a Democratic primary? Fat chance.

No, in all likelihood, Clinton will head back to the Senate and take her place as arguably the most powerful member of that body. There are those who say the hard feelings of this race will cripple her with her colleagues. What a crock. Having campaigned in all 50 states and won millions of votes in the process, Clinton will surely be the most sought-after fund-raiser in all of Democratic politics besides the putative President Obama. She will take the lead in the upper chamber on passing health-care reform, which will not only give her a shot at a place in history but a chance to make up for epic failure back in 1993–94. And, with the incumbent Obama sure to be the standard-bearer in 2012, she will set her sights on 2016, when, after all, she’ll be just 68 — three years younger than John McCain is now, for anyone who happens to be counting. —John Heilemann

Finally, I agree 100% with every single syllable of the following post about Billary, Inc. that appeared in the comments section after an article in today's Washington Post (see article below the quote).

Kofi


"Every time I am convinced that these despicable, mendacious frauds could not possibly sink any lower, they prove me wrong. Barack's gracious outreach was in jarring contrast to her self absorbed, delusional hypocrisy...The Clintons are an utter disgrace and if they succeed in getting McCain elected they will go down in history as the most vile, reprehensible couple ever to stain the political landscape."

Posted by: Shiva | June 4, 2008 4:49 AM


http://blog.washingtonpost.com/thefix/2008/06/obama_presumptive_nominee.html

Washingtonpost.com's Politics Blog

Obama Is the Presumptive Dem. Nominee

After 152 days of voting and more than 18 months of campaigning, Barack Obama has clinched the Democratic presidential nomination.

"Tonight I can stand here and say that I will be the Democratic nominee for President of the United States," Obama declared in a speech to a raucous crowd at the Xcel Center in St. Paul, Minn.

Obama went on to praise his Democratic opponents as "the most talented, qualified field of individuals ever to run for this office" and saved special plaudits for Hillary Rodham Clinton.

He referred to Clinton as "a leader who inspires millions of Americans with her strength, her courage and her commitment to the causes that brought us here tonight."

Obama was just getting started. "Our party and our country are better off because of her, and I am a better candidate for having the honor to compete with Hillary Rodham Clinton," he said.

Obama also made a direct appeal to those who may be unhappy about the tenor and the results of the Democratic primary campaign. "At the end of the day we aren't the reason you came out and waited in lines that stretched block after block to make your voice heard," said Obama. "You didn't do that because of me or Senator Clinton or anyone else."

Despite the seeming conclusiveness of the delegate math, Clinton was clearly not in the mood to concede tonight. In a speech to a cheering crowd at Baruch University in New York, she congratulated Obama for the "extraordinary race" he ran, although she did not acknowledge the fact that he had effectively won the nomination. "I will be making no decisions tonight," she said.

Clinton repeatedly touted her popular vote strength, noting that she had received nearly 18 million total votes. "Even when the pundits and the naysayers proclaimed week after week that this race was over, you kept on voting," she said to roars from the assembled crowd. She said her campaign won the swing states "necessary to get to 270 electoral votes."

The speech was widely seen as attempt by Clinton to keep her political leverage as she sorts out what she wants (and what she can reasonably hope to get) in her political future.

What do you think she wants? And will she get it?


June 4, 2008

OP-ED COLUMNIST

She’s Still Here!
By MAUREEN DOWD
New York Times

He thought a little thing like winning would stop her?

Oh, Bambi.

Whoever said that after denial comes acceptance hadn’t met the Clintons.

If Hillary could not have an acceptance speech, she wasn’t going to have acceptance.

“It’s never going to end,” sighed one Democrat who has been advising Hillary. “We’re just moving to a new phase.”

Barry has been trying to shake off Hillary and pivot for quite a long time now, but she has managed to keep her teeth in his ankle and raise serious doubts about his potency. Getting dragged across the finish line Tuesday night by Democrats who had had enough of the rapacious Clintons, who had decided, if it came to it, that they would rather lose with Obama than win with Hillary, the Illinois senator tried to celebrate at the St. Paul arena where Republicans will anoint John McCain in September.

But even as Obama was trying to savor, Hillary was refusing to sever. Ignoring the attempts of Obama and his surrogates to graciously say how “extraordinary” she was as they showed her the exit, she and a self-pitying Bill continued to pull focus. Outside Baruch College, where she was to speak, her fierce feminist supporters screamed “Denver! Denver! Denver!”

Even as Obama got ready to come out on stage for his victory party, the Clinton campaign announced that it had won a Wyoming superdelegate and Terry McAuliffe introduced her at Baruch as “the next president of the United States.” She gave a brief nod to Obama without conceding that he was the nominee before rushing through a variation on her stump speech. She clung to her fuzzy math about winning the popular vote, and in one last fudge she said: “Thanks so much to South Dakota. You had the last word” — even though the Montana polls still had 25 minutes to go.

“What does Hillary want?” she mused, in her most self-aware moment in some time. “I will be making no decisions tonight,” she concluded, asking fans to go to her Web site to share their thoughts.

And, even though Democrats were no longer listening, Hillary’s camp radiated the message that Obama was a sucker who had played by the rules on Florida and Michigan, and then reached an appeasing compromise, and that such a weak sister could never handle Putin or I’m-A-Dinner-Jacket.

As he was reaching the magic number of delegates, she was devilishly stealing the spotlight. First, her camp vociferously denied an Associated Press report that she would concede and then, in a conference call with the New York delegation, she gave a green light to supporters to push for her to be on the ticket.

Clintonologists know that Hillary is up to something, but they aren’t sure what. Theory No. 1 is that it’s the Cassandra “I told you so” gambit: She believes intensely that he’s too black, too weak and too elitist — with all his salmon and organic tea and steamed broccoli — to beat her pal John McCain. But she has to pretend she’ll do “whatever it takes,” even accept the vice presidency, a job she’s already had and doesn’t want again, so that nobody will blame her when he loses on Nov. 4. Then she can power on to 2012.

Theory No. 2 is that it’s a “Bad stuff happens” maneuver, exemplified in her gaffe about the R.F.K. assassination, that she figures that at least if she moves a few blocks from Embassy Row to the Naval Observatory, she’ll be a heartbeat away from the job she’s always wanted.

Either way, by broadcasting that she’s open to being Obama’s running mate, she puts public pressure on him similar to the sort of pressure Walter Mondale was under from rampaging feminists when he put Geraldine Ferraro on the ticket. Mondale ended up seeming henpecked, as Obama would seem if he caved to the women who say they will write in Hillary’s name or vote for anti-choice McCain before they’d vote for Obama.

For months, Hillary has been trying to emasculate Obama with the sort of words and themes she has chosen, stirring up feminist anger by promoting the idea that the men were unfairly taking it away from the women, and covering up her own campaign mistakes with cries of sexism. Even his ability to finally clinch the historic nomination did not stop her in that pursuit. She did not bat her eyelashes at him and proclaim him Rhett Butler instead of Ashley Wilkes.

She just urged her supporters to keep the dream alive, and talked privately about what she would settle for. She has told some Democrats recently that she wanted Obama to agree to allow a roll call vote, like days of yore, so that the delegates of states she won would cast the first ballot for her at the convention. She said she wanted that for her daughter.

Obama supporters are worried that it’s a trick and she’ll somehow snatch away the nomination. Just as Hillary supporters have hardened toward him, many of Obama’s donors and fans have hardened against the Clintons, saying it would be disillusioning to see them on a ticket that’s supposed to be about fresh politics.

“It would be,” said one influential Democrat, “like finding out there’s no tooth fairy.”


Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

MARVIN GAYE: SINGER, SONGWRITER, AND POLITICAL PROPHET, 1972-Present

All,

In the summer of 1972 the late, great Marvin Gaye (1939-1984) composed an extraordinary song entitled "You're the Man". Gaye released this powerful and prophetic song in public support of leftist Democratic Party candidate George McGovern against Richard Nixon in the presidential race of that year. In November Nixon won reelection in a landslide. Less than two years later Nixon was ousted from the Presidency when he “resigned” in disgrace facing certain impeachment as a result of the Watergate scandal.

I reprint the words of this amazing song below in unequivocal support of Barack Obama for the Presidency of the United States in 2008 and as a direct, stinging rebuke and angry repudiation of every single thing the ruthless and thoroughly corrupt Billary, Inc. political machine and the insidiously criminal Republican Party (and their insipid standard bearer John McCain) represent and stand for. Brother Marvin, as always, told the whole unvarnished truth in 1972 and in his typically prescient, dynamic, and uncanny manner his words and legacy ring louder and more truthful than ever...But isn't that precisely what truly great artists always do?

Kofi


Talking, talking to the People
Trying to get ‘em to go your way
Telling us not to worry and we won’t be led astray
So blind from signifying
Your opponents always lying
Think about the mistakes you make
I believe that America’s at stake…

Do you have a plan with you?
If, if you have a plan
If you have a Master Plan
I got to vote for you (Hey! Hey!)
Got to vote for you ‘cause
You’re the Man

We don’t want to hear no more lies
about how you plan to economize
We want our dollar value increased and employment to rise
The nation’s taxation is causing all this inflation
Don’t give us no Peace signs
Turn around and rob the People blind
Economics is the issue
Do you have a plan with you?
‘Cause if you’ve got a Master Plan
I’ve got to vote for you
You’re the Man

(CHORUS—Multilayered voices singing and scatting various interlocking harmonies and rhythms are all sung via overdubbing by Marvin(!) with a hynoptically repetitive lyrical line weaving in and out of the complex musical and vocal tapestry. Amazing & Beautiful. An utterly innovative and seamless synthesis of Jazz, Blues, R & B, and classical forms also incredibly arranged by Gaye. His somber, ominous voice is foregrounded repeatedly intoning in a much slower incantatory tempo the following words):

Don’t you understand there’s misery in the land? [Repeat X 12]

People marching on Washington
Why not hear what they have to say
‘Cause the tables might just turn against you brother come
election day

Politics and Hypocrites are turning us all into Lunatics
Can you take the guns away from our sons?
Right all the wrongs this administration’s done?
Peace & Freedom is the issue
Do you have a plan with you?
‘Cause if you have a plan
If you have a Master Plan
I got to vote for you (‘cause)
You’re the Man…


--Marvin Gaye,
“You’re the Man”, 1972
Motown Records


NOTE: THIS SONG WAS EFFECTIVELY BANNED FROM THE NATIONAL RADIO AIRWAVES IN THE UNITED STATES FOLLOWING THE FIRST TWO DAYS OF ITS APPEARANCE ON RADIO PLAYLISTS. IT IS NOW CONSIDERED TO BE AN INTERNATIONAL ‘CULT CLASSIC’ AND THE SONG CONTINUES TO BE BOTH PLAYED AND SOLD THROUGHOUT THE GLOBE…


OBAMA OR NOTHING IN 2008!
"Dare To Struggle, Dare To Win"

The Politics of Racism, Obama, and the Latino American Voting Bloc

http://www.counterpunch.org/kozloff05292008.html

All,

Refreshing and honest truth-telling from political journalist and cultural historian Nikolas Kozloff about the real politics of 'race and class' among Latino voters in Puerto Rico and throughout the United States and its continuing major impact on American politics today. This article appeared today in one of the best and most consistently hardhitting political journals in the country, Counterpunch magazine...

Kofi


May 29, 2008
It's All About Vagueness

Puerto Rico, Obama, and the Politics of Race

By NIKOLAS KOZLOFF

The longer the Democratic nominating process goes on, the more the issue of race exposes ugly fissures within the party. With his early wins in Iowa and Wisconsin, two states with a predominantly white electorate, Barack Obama hoped that he would be able to transcend racial divisions.

Then we got Jeremiah Wright and the unflattering media coverage which followed. The Illinois Senator started to lose primaries in white states like Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Kentucky. In particular, race played a critical role in the latter state, with one in five admitting that the issue affected their decision once they got into the voting booth.

At the same time, Obama has been racking up the black primary vote in record numbers: in South Carolina he got 78%, and in Virginia, Maryland, and Washington, D.C. he received nearly 90%.

The media has made much of this white- black split. But what about other racial divisions on the campaign trail?

Latinos: Obama’s Achilles Heel

In Texas Latinos made up nearly one third of the vote. According to CNN’s exit poll, they supported Clinton over Obama by a margin of two to one in the state’s primary. In the Nevada caucus, Clinton nailed the Latino vote two to one. In California, where Latino voters make up 30% of the Democratic electorate, Clinton had an even bigger blow-out: the New York Senator won 67 percent of the Latino vote to 29 percent for Obama.

Surely, Clinton benefited from high name recognition within the Latino community whereas Obama by contrast was little known. But given the lopsided numbers, it seems logical to wonder whether Latino voters, like the whites in Kentucky, may have voted at least in part on the basis of race.

These are very sensitive questions and, not surprisingly, we haven’t heard much discussion about such issues in the U.S. corporate media. While white pundits have occasionally mentioned white racism towards blacks they have ignored racial tensions between blacks and Latinos, perhaps because they feel awkward wading into the discussion. And yet, as we near the Puerto Rico primary on June 1st, Latino-black race relations could play a vital role in the nominating process.

Puerto Rico: Determined to Make an Impact

Puerto Ricans are used to feeling disenfranchised in the electoral process. Island residents are U.S. citizens but they cannot vote in the general presidential election. They have no voting representation in Washington, D.C. though the island sends a symbolic, nonvoting delegate to Congress. Because Puerto Rico is a semi-autonomous commonwealth and not a state, only Puerto Ricans living on the U.S. mainland may cast ballots for president in November.

Determined to make an impact upon the nominating process this year, Puerto Rico, an island of about 4 million people, has made some important electoral changes. The island has scrapped its traditional caucus in favor of a primary in which 55 delegates will be at stake. In addition, Puerto Rico has moved its primary up to June 1st, which means that Montana and South Dakota will vote last on June 3rd.

Puerto Rico Democratic Chairman Roberto Prats said that caucuses were fine in previous years, when the party nominee was settled by the time Puerto Rico voted and the only task was to choose delegates to the national convention. "Now it's different," he told the Democratic National Committee's rules panel in a conference call. "This is the first time in decades that Puerto Rico will be participating in an event of this magnitude."


Obama and Clinton: It’s all About the Vagueness

Puerto Rican politics largely revolves around the long-standing question about what the island’s future relationship to the U.S. mainland should be. To this day, Puerto Rico is divided between one major party advocating statehood and the other favoring a continuation of the current arrangement, known as a “free associated state.”

If Puerto Rico were to become a state, then the island would receive voting rights and equality under U.S. law. However, it would also mean that Puerto Ricans would be subject to federal income tax, a fate which statehood opponents are determined to avoid. The island has voted on and rejected statehood four times.

At a recent campaign rally on the island, Clinton said, “I believe you should have a vote in picking the president,” even before the issue of the island’s status is resolved. Taking questions in the city of Bayamón, Obama heard an array of concerns from residents who said they felt like second-class citizens. “What it comes down to is respect,” he said.

For the most part however, both Clinton and Obama have tried to remain neutral on the overall issue of Puerto Rico’s future political status.

“I believe all people are entitled to a representative form of government at all levels of government, and that the people of Puerto Rico should have the right to determine by majority vote the status you choose from among all the options,” Clinton said while campaigning. “I have no preference. My only commitment is to work with those from all factions and with the congress to give you the right to make that decision. I want that done within my first term as president.”


Advantage: Clinton

Will Clinton continue to rout Obama amongst Latino voters once Puerto Rico votes in its primary? No opinion polling has been conducted on the island so it is difficult to predict the electoral result. As the junior Senator from New York however, Clinton probably has the advantage in Puerto Rico. About four million Puerto Ricans reside in the U.S., with the largest concentration in the three-state New York City metropolitan area. While campaigning on the island, Clinton refers to herself jokingly as "the senator from Puerto Rico."

Clinton is familiar to most Puerto Ricans as a result of her stint as first lady. Under husband Bill, she got involved in disaster relief after Hurricane Georges and met with protesters seeking an end to the U.S. Navy’s use of the island of Vieques for bombing practice. In an effort to make her mark in the last stages of the campaign, Clinton has dispatched not only Bill but also daughter Chelsea to Puerto Rico.

Obama by contrast is less well known. Until his arrival this past weekend, Obama had visited just once, for a fund-raiser last year. To level the playing field, he has sent wife Michelle as well as New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson to Puerto Rico to campaign on his behalf. In seeking to appeal to Puerto Ricans, Obama emphasizes the fact that he was also born and raised on an island far from the U.S. mainland.

Meanwhile the island’s political establishment seems pretty split between Obama and Clinton. Puerto Rico’s Governor Aníbal Acevedo-Vila has endorsed Obama. However, other members of Acevedo-Vila's Popular Democratic Party, as well as politicians from the opposition New Progressive Party, are reportedly leaning towards Clinton.


Hardly a “Racial Democracy”

With no clear ideological differences between the two candidates, race may enter into the political equation. In an interesting article in the New York Times, the paper remarked that “Obama’s biracial identity is perceived as working to his advantage” in Puerto Rico. The article goes on to quote Juan Manuel García Passalacqua, a political commentator: “On the mainland, Obama is black, but not in Puerto Rico. Here he is a mulatto, and this is a mulatto society. People here are perfectly prepared to vote for someone who looks like them for president of the United States.”

On the surface at least, the New York Times would seem to be talking some sense. African slaves were imported into Puerto Rico to run the island’s sugar plantations during the colonial period and mixed with the native population. To say however that Puerto Ricans identify as blacks or mulattoes is overly simplistic and ignores the fact that racism has long characterized social life on the island.

Many scholars agree that Puerto Rico is stratified along color lines, ranging along a color continuum from white to brown to black. Puerto Ricans of darker skin color have faced racial discrimination in private schools, the University of Puerto Rico, private enterprises, voluntary associations and residential areas. Loiza, the town with the largest proportion of black people, is one of Puerto Rico's poorest and has been plagued by complaints of police brutality.

According to Jorge Duany, a leading Puerto Rican sociologist, “Although the empirical evidence on racial politics in contemporary Puerto Rico is still scanty, several studies have documented that blacks are a stigmatized minority on the Island; that they suffer from persistent prejudice and discrimination,” and that they concentrate in the lower classes.

Puerto Rico Primary and Racial Identity

Duany writes that Puerto Ricans have developed an elaborate racist vocabulary to refer to racially stereotyped characteristics. Kinky hair, for example, is referred to as “bad” (“pelo malo”). Meanwhile racial prejudice is apparent in folk humor, beauty contests, media portrayals, and political leadership. “In all these areas,” Duany says, “whites are usually depicted as more intelligent, attractive, refined, and capable than are blacks.”

All of which is not to say that racism in Puerto Rico works in the same way as the United States. However, the island is hardly a “racial democracy” as some of the island’s boosters have claimed. Indeed, many Puerto Ricans deny their cultural heritage and physical characteristics and buy into an ideology of “whitening” through intermarriage with light skinned groups. Interestingly, a whopping 81% of Puerto Ricans called themselves “white” on the 2000 U.S. census.

What does all this racial politics portend for the territory’s upcoming primary? Obama has swept U.S. states with sizable African American populations like South Carolina. Puerto Rico however could be another story however as it is by no means clear that island residents self identify as black. On June 1st, we may see Latinos continue to vote en masse for a white candidate over a black one.

Nikolas Kozloff is the author of Revolution! South America and the Rise of the New Left (Palgrave-Macmillan)

LONG LIVE MILES DAVIS: May 26, 1926-September 28, 1991

All,

In recognition of the glorious and extraordinary art of one of the greatest and most important artists of the 20th century this magazine celebrates the 82th birthday of the musical legend known as Miles Dewey Davis III. For an extended critical and celebratory examination of his life and work please consult the following links below, including this essay by myself that was originally posted on this site on February 23, 2008. The following links contain many film clips and various articles, reviews, and essays about Miles Davis as well as an extended excerpt of Miles talking about his storied life and career in his own words and voice from his acclaimed autobiography published in 1989 and co-authored by poet, critic, and cultural historian Quincy Troupe. There is also a section of some famous (and infamous quotes) by Davis, who was as well known in many circles for his erudite and insightful commentary, wicked barbs, and often caustic and witty aphorisms as he was for his visionary and highly innovative musicianship on the trumpet. HAPPY BIRTHDAY MILES!

Kofi






























http://www.milesdavis.com/bio.asp

http://www.milesdavis.com/music_discography.asp

http://www.milesdavis.com/music_various.asp

http://www.milesdavis.com/music_options.asp

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miles_Davi

http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/Valley/2822/miles_davis.html

http://www.rockhall.com/inductee/miles-davis

http://www.pbs.org/jazz/biography/artist_id_davis_miles.htm

http://www.plosin.com/milesAhead/mdBibliography.html

http://www.jazzitude.com/miles_jackjohnsoncomplete01.htm




"Sometimes you have to play a long time to be able to play like yourself."
--Miles Davis

"Don't play what's there, play what's not there."
--Miles Davis

"For me, music and life are all about style."
--Miles Davis

"I know what I've done for music, but don't call me a legend. Just call me Miles Davis."
--Miles Davis

"I'll play it and tell you what it is later."
--Miles Davis

"I'm always thinking about creating. My future starts when I wake up every morning... Every day I find something creative to do with my life."
--Miles Davis

"If you understood everything I say, you'd be me!"
--Miles Davis

"It's always been a gift with me, hearing music the way I do. I don't know where it comes from, it's just there and I don't question it."
--Miles Davis

"The thing to judge in any jazz artist is, does the man project and does he have ideas."
--Miles Davis

"It took me twenty years to be able to play that note and you want to understand everything I do in five minutes?"
--MIles Davis

"I have to change. It's like a curse"
--Miles Davis



Miles Ahead: Bibliography

Chris Albertson, "The Unmasking of Miles Davis," Saturday Review, November 27, 1971, pp. 67-87 (with interruptions).
Frank Alkyer, "The Miles Files," Down Beat, December 1991, pp. 22-24.
------ (ed.), The Miles Davis Reader. New York: Hal Leonard, 2007.
Amiri Baraka, "Miles Davis: One of the Great Mother Fuckers," in Amiri and Amina Baraka (edd.), The Music: Reflections on Jazz and Blues. New York: William Morrow, 1987, pp. 290-301.
Bob Belden and John Ephland, "Miles... What was that note?" Down Beat, December 1995, pp. 17-22.
Ian Carr, Miles Davis: A Biography. New York: Morrow, 1982.
Franck Bergerot, Miles Davis: introduction a l'ecoute du jazz moderne, editions du Seuil, Paris, 1996.
Luca Bragalini, "Miles Davis e la Disgregazione dello Standard, parts 1-2" Musica Jazz, 53/9 (Agosto-Settembre 1997) and 53/10 (Ottobre 1997). An English translation is available on this website.
Howard Brofsky, "Miles Davis and My Funny Valentine: The Evolution of a Solo," Black Music Research Journal 3, Winter 1983, pp. 23-34.
Gary Carner, The Miles Davis Companion: Four Decades of Commentary. New York: Schirmer Books, 1996.
Ian Carr, Miles Davis: A Critical Biography. New York: Morrow, 1982; London: Quartet Books, 1982.
Jack Chambers, Milestones: The Music and Times of Miles Davis. New York: Da Capo Press, 1998. Previously published by Quill/Morrow, 1989. Originally published in two volumes, 1983 and 1985.
Bill Cole, Miles Davis: The Early Years. New York: Da Capo Press, 1994.
George Cole, The Last Miles: The Music of Miles Davis, 1980-1991. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2004.
Todd Coolman, The Miles Davis Quintet of the Mid-1960s: Synthesis of Improvisational and Compositional Elements. Ann Arbor: University Microfilms, 1997.
Julie Coryell and Laura Friedman, Jazz-Rock Fusion: The People, The Music. New York: Delta Books, 1978.
Laurent Cugny, Electrique Miles Davis 1968-1975. Marseille: André Dimanche Éditeur, 1993.
Michael Cuscuna and Michel Ruppli, The Blue Note Label: A Discography. New York: Greenwood Press, 1988.
Miles Davis with Quincy Troupe, Miles: The Autobiography. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1989.
Miles Davis with Scott Gutterman, The Art of Miles Davis. New York: Prentice Hall Editions, 1991.
Scott DeVeaux, The Birth of Bebop: A Social and Musical History. Berkeley and London: University of California Press, 1997.
Chris DeVito, Yasuhiro Fujioka, Wolf Schmaler, David Wild, edited by Lewis Porter, The John Coltrane Reference. New York and London: Taylor and Francis, 2008.
Gerald Early (ed.), Miles Davis and American Culture. St. Louis: Missouri Historical Society Press, 2001.
Leonard Feather, "Miles and the Fifties" (Classic Interview), Down Beat, March 1995, pp. 36-39. (Interview originally appeared in Down Beat July 2, 1964.)
Leonard Feather and Miles Davis, "Blindfold Test." Davis did five Blindfold Tests with Feather in Down Beat magazine: September 21, 1955 (pp. 33-34); August 7, 1958 (p. 29); June 18, 1964 (p. 21); June 13, 1968 (p. 34); and June 27, 1968 (p. 33).
Larry Fisher, Miles Davis and Dave Liebman: Jazz Connections. Stroudsberg: CARIS Music Services, 1999.
Yasuhiro Fujioka, Lewis Porter, and Yoh-Ichi Hamada, John Coltrane: A Discography and Musical Biography. Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press, 1995. Rutgers University Institute of Jazz Studies, Studies in Jazz, Volume 20.
Ralph J. Gleason, "Miles Davis," Rolling Stone, December 13, 1969.
Frederic Goaty, Miles Davis, Editions Vade Retro, Paris, 1995.
Gregg Hall, "Miles Davis: Today's Most Influential Contemporary Musician," Down Beat, July 18, 1974, pp. 16-20.
Alex Haley, "The Miles Davis Interview," Playboy, September 1962.
Max Harrison, "Sheer Alchemy, for a While: Miles Davis and Gil Evans," Jazz Monthly, December 1958 and Febraury 1960.
Don Heckman, "Miles Davis Times Three: The Evolution of a Jazz Artist," Down Beat, August 30, 1962, pp. 16-19.
Michael James, Miles Davis. London: Faber and Cassell, 1961.
Ashley Kahn, Kind of Blue: The Making of the Miles Davis Masterpiece. New York: Da Capo Press, 2000.
Barry Kernfield, Adderley, Coltrane, and Davis at the Twilight of Bop: The Search for Melodic Coherence (1958-1959). Ann Arbor: University Microfilems, 1981.
Bill Kirchner (ed.), A Miles Davis Reader (Smithsonian Readers in American Music). Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1997.
Jan Lohmann, The Sound of Miles Davis: The Discography 1945-1991. Copenhagen: JazzMedia ApS, 1991.
Daryl Long, Miles Davis For Beginners. New York: Writers and Readers, 1994.
Jeffrey Magee, "Kinds of Blue: Miles Davis, Afro-Modernism, and the Blues," Jazz Perspectives vol. 1, no. 1 (May 2007): 5-27.
Howard Mandel, "Sketches of Miles," Down Beat, December 1991, pp. 16-20.
Barry McRae, Miles Davis. London: Apollo Books, 1988.
Dan Morgenstern, "Miles in Motion," Down Beat, September 3, 1970, pp. 16-17.
Yasuki Nakayama, Miles Davis Complete Discography. Tokyo: Futabasha, 2000.
------, Listen to Miles, Version 6. Tokyo: Futabasha, 2004.
------, Miles Davis: We Love Music, We Love the Earth. Tokyo: Tokyo FM, 2002.
Eric Nisenson, 'Round About Midnight: A Portrait of Miles Davis. New York: Da Capo Press, 1996.
Tore Mortensen, Miles Davis: Den Ny Jazz. Aarhus: n/a, 1976.
Chris Murphy, Miles to Go: The Later Years. New York: Thunder's Mouth Press, 2002.
Takao Ogawa a.o., Jazz Hero's Data Bank. Tokyo: JICC, 1991.
Toyoki Okajima (ed.), The Complete Blue Note Book: Tribute to Alfred Lion. Jazz Critique Special Edition, No. 3 (1987). Tokyo: Jazz Hihyo, 1987.
------, The Prestige Book: Discography of All Series. Jazz Critique Special Edition No. 3 (1996). Tokyo: Jazz Hihyo, 1996.
Harvey Pekar, "Miles Davis: 1964-69 Recordings," Coda, May 1976, pp. 8-14.
Bret Primack, "Remembering Miles," Jazz Times, February 1992, pp. 17-88 (with interruptions).
Michel Ruppli and Bob Porter, The Prestige Label: A Discography. Westport: Greenwood Press, 1980.
Michel Ruppli and Bob Porter, The Savoy Label: A Discography. Westport: Greenwood Press, 1980.
Jimmy Saunders, "An Interview with Miles Davis," Playboy, April 1975.
R.B. Shaw, "Miles Above," Jazz Journal, November 1960, pp. 15-16.
Chris Smith, "A Sense of the Possible: Miles Davis and the Semiotics of Improvised Performance", in In the Course of Performance: Studies in the World of Musical Improvisation (edd. Bruno Nett and Melinda Russell), University of Chicago Press, 1998.
John Szwed, So What: The Life of Miles Davis. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2002.
Greg Tate, "The Electric Miles: Parts 1 and 2," Down Beat, July and August 1983.
Paul Tingen, Miles Beyond: Electric Explorations of Miles Davis, 1967-1991. New York: Billboard Books, 2001.
Gary Tomlinson, "Miles Davis: Musical Dialogician," Black Music Research Journal 11/2, Fall 1991, pp. 249-64.
Ken Vail, Miles' Diary: The Life of Miles Davis, 1947-1961. London: Sanctuary Publishing, 1996.
Robert Walser, "Out of Notes: Signification, Interpretation, and the Problem of Miles Davis," Musical Quarterly, Summer 1993, pp. 343-65.
Peter Weissmüller, Miles Davis: Sein Leben, Musik, Schallplatten. Berlin: OREOS, 1988.
Richard Williams, The Man in The Green Shirt. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1993.