What’s in a Name?
By Dan | July 1, 2008
It was very exciting on Friday, seeing Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, standing for party unity, in Unity, N.H.
The location, of course, was carefully chosen to match the event. Where else but in a town called Unity could they so well display Unity?
But now the big question is: Where else should they appear together?
After Unity, to continue the winning theme, I would suggest: Magic, Idaho.
They might also consider swinging by Inspiration, Arizona, and Paradise, California.
And, while they’re at it, two cheers for Bravo, Alabama.
Among places to avoid, I would strongly suggest: Double Trouble, New Jersey; Toast, North Carolina; Liars Corner, Ohio; and Idiot Creek, Oregon.
And, if I were planning Barack and Hillary’s next joint appearances, I would absolutely veto Poopout Hill, California, Intercourse, Pennsylvania and French Lick, Indiana.
Whatever else happens, they should definitely expose the lies of John McCain in Truth and Consequences, New Mexico…
Make one last campaign stop in Climax, Kansas…
And gather together on election day in Celebration, Florida.
John McCain, meanwhile, can lick his wounds in Defeated, Tennessee.
-Bill Press
Topics: Pop Culture to Politics | 7 Comments »
YOU CAN’T LEGISLATE BY THE BIBLE
By Dan | June 27, 2008
A couple of years ago, in a book called “How The Republicans Stole Religion,” I urged Democrats to steal religion back. Today, Barack Obama is doing just that, by daring to stand up to the religious right and prove them wrong.
Hallelujah!
James Dobson, head of Focus on the Family, recently blasted Obama for his now famous “Call to Renewal” speech of 2006, in which he pointed out that there’s an inherent difficulty in attempts by evangelicals to establish the Bible as the road map for public policy. “Would we go with James Dobson’s interpretation (of the Bible),” Obama asked his audience, “or Al Sharpton’s?”
For Dobson, even raising that question is pure heresy. “I think he’s deliberately distorting the traditional understanding of the Bible to fit his own world view, his own confused theology,” Dobson told his national radio audience. He even accused Obama of having a “fruitcake interpretation of the Constitution.”
But unlike previous Democratic candidates, Obama didn’t back down. He questioned what Dobson meant by the “traditional understanding” of the Bible. “Which passages of Scripture should guide our public policy?” Obama asked. “Should we go with Leviticus, which suggests slavery is OK and that eating shellfish is an abomination? Or we could go with Deuteronomy, which suggests stoning your child if he strays from the faith? Or should we just stick to the Sermon on the Mount?”
Again, Obama tackled head-on what Dobson, Pat Robertson and the late Jerry Falwell have been saying for years: that we are a Christian nation; that public policy must be based on the Bible; and that every word of the Bible must be taken literally. In our pluralistic society, it’s not that simple. Because not all Americans are Christians, or even believers, you can’t find common ground for legislation based on the Bible. And even in the Bible, you can’t give equal weight to Old Testament prohibitions against homosexuality and New Testament admonition to “go sell your possessions, and give to the poor.”
What’s most surprising is that Barack Obama’s not alone. In his criticism of Dobson and the old-fashioned religious right, he’s joined by some prominent evangelists. No spiritual advisor, for example, is closer to President Bush than Rev. Kirbyjon Caldwell, pastor of Houston’s Windsor Village United Methodist Church. Caldwell introduced Bush to the 2000 Republican convention, offered the official benediction at both his 2001 and 2005 inaugurations, and recently presided over first daughter Jenna’s wedding to Henry Hager.
But today, Caldwell has not only endorsed Barack Obama for president, he has launched a Web site — jamesdobsondoesntspeakforme.com — which says that, when it comes to the role of faith and politics, Obama is right and Dobson is wrong.
James Dobson doesn’t speak for me “when he uses religion as a wedge to divide,” writes Rev. Caldwell on his site. “He doesn’t speak for me when he speaks as the final arbiter on the meaning of the Bible. He doesn’t speak for me when he denigrates his neighbor’s views when they don’t line up with his.”
Ouch! Dobson’s pious balloon has just been popped by Bush’s own spiritual adviser. It shows how off-base Dobson is with his attacks on Obama’s faith. But it also shows how ineffective Christian conservatives will be in this presidential campaign. In years past, they lined up lock-step behind the Republican. This year, not only can they not agree on a Republican candidate, they can’t even agree on attacking the Democratic candidate.
And that will have a significant impact in this election. It means John McCain will not be able to count on a unified block of religious right voters, 88 percent of whom voted for George Bush in 2004, giving him 26 percent of his total vote. Barack Obama, a Christian himself, very comfortable with his faith, will capture a healthy chunk of that vote. The love affair between Christian conservatives and Republicans may not be over, but it’s definitely on the rocks.
Beyond the election, it also means that Americans are beginning, once again, to put faith and politics in the proper perspective. Even though most Americans are Christians, we are not a Christian nation: never have been, never will be. Therefore, in making the laws that govern our nation, we don’t turn to the Old Testament, the New Testament, or the Koran. We turn to the only sacred text that all Americans worship: the U.S. Constitution.
Topics: Bill's Column | 15 Comments »
MCCAIN SELLS OUT TO BIG OIL
By Dan | June 20, 2008
Elections are about the future, whether for the city council or the White House. In this election for president, one candidate represents the future while the other candidate remains stuck in the past — and there’s no doubt which is which.
Just look at the difference between Barack Obama and John McCain on energy. Obama proposes a windfall profits tax on big oil companies in order to help develop wind and solar energy, research new alternative energy technologies, and wean ourselves from fossil fuels. McCain proposes drilling for oil off the coast, one of the oldest and worst ideas in the Big Oil pipeline.
Environmentalists fought the battle over offshore drilling decades ago, and won. New oil rigs in state coastal waters have been banned in California since the days of former Gov., now Attorney General, Jerry Brown. There’s a congressional ban on drilling off both the Pacific and the Atlantic coasts, in place since 1981, plus an executive ban on both coasts, originally signed by President George H. W. Bush in 1990. And there’s a good reason why.
Offshore drilling will kill the goose that lays the golden eggs: destroy our most beautiful stretches of coastline, wreck our valuable tourism and fishing industries. And it will continue our dependency on fossil fuels. Meanwhile, it won’t do anything to ease today’s energy crisis. Even if the moratorium were lifted tomorrow, it would take at least 10 years to develop the offshore rigs and onshore tanks, pipelines and roadways necessary to begin production. By that time, with a new energy policy, we could be well on our way to a new, alternative-energy future.
Offshore drilling won’t bring any relief for consumers, either. The U.S. Department of Energy estimates there are 18 billion barrels of oil in the moratorium areas. At present rates of consumption, those fields would be exhausted in less than two and a half years. Our coastline and beaches, of course, would have been lost forever. And don’t expect lower prices at the pump. According to the Campaign for America’s Future Online, lowering the price of crude by $1 per barrel saves roughly 2.5 cents per gallon. Which means that getting rid of the ban on coastal drilling would lower the price at the pump by less than 6 cents — by 2025.
After oil executives, nobody was happier with John McCain’s proposal than oilman George W. Bush, who’s wanted to lift the moratorium on offshore drilling ever since he got to the White House, but didn’t dare. But whether McCain or Bush takes the lead, proposing offshore drilling as a solution to our energy problems is nothing but a cynical attempt to exploit public anger over $4-per-gallon gasoline in order to overturn economic and environmental protections in place for the last 27 years.
Even John McCain knows that, or used to. His U-turn on offshore drilling is one of the most spectacular flip-flops in presidential campaign history. When he first ran for president, in 2000, McCain opposed drilling off the coast and attacked the “special interests in Washington” that were pushing it. As recently as three weeks ago, he told a questioner at a Greendale, Wis., town hall meeting: “With those resources, which would take years to develop, you would only postpone or temporarily relieve our dependency on fossil fuels.”
Amazing! In less than a month, McCain has had the political equivalent of a religious conversion. And he’s not the only one. Charlie Crist ran for governor of Florida on a pledge to protect the Sunshine State’s beaches from offshore drilling. Yet no sooner did McCain flip than Crist flopped. Isn’t it amazing what an inordinate ambition to become vice president can do to a shallow politician?
Florida’s Sen. Mel Martinez did a parallel back flip on offshore drilling. In fact, among Republican politicians, only California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has resisted the urge to throw principle out the window and jump on the Bush-McCain offshore drilling bandwagon.
Echoing Barack Obama, Schwarzenegger told reporters: “We are in this situation because of our dependence on traditional petroleum-based oil. The direction our nation needs to go in, and where California is already headed, is toward greater innovation in new technologies and new fuel choices for consumers. That is the way we will ultimately reduce fuel costs and also protect our environment.”
How refreshing: a Republican with both backbone and brains.
Topics: Bill's Column | 17 Comments »
A PROUD DAY FOR AMERICA
By Dan | June 6, 2008
“Tonight, we mark the end of one historic journey with the beginning of another. Tonight, I can stand before you and say that I will be the Democratic nominee for the president of the United States.”
Listening to Barack Obama say those words on the night of the last primary contests, I’ve never been so proud to be a Democrat. And I’ve never been so proud to be an American.
We made history, friends: by nominating the first African-American to carry a major party’s presidential banner, and by awarding a close second place to the first serious female candidate for president. In one exciting primary campaign, we shattered both the glass ceiling and the “black ceiling.”
What a great tribute to this county. And what a great tribute to the Democratic Party, which has proved itself — in deeds, not just in words — the party of minority rights and women’s rights, and the party of equal opportunity.
The nomination of Barack Obama, especially, is an event that should make every American — not just every Democrat, but every American — proud. Consider: Just 150 years ago, Obama and his family would have been in chains. Until 40 years ago, Obama would not have been able to attend the same school, drink from the same water fountain, worship in the same church, or shop in the same store as whites. Yet today he’s the standard bearer of the Democratic Party and could very well be the next president of the United States.
Obama’s success, of course, is due primarily to his exceptional skills as a candidate. He motivated millions of Americans who had given up on politics and inspired millions of young people to discover politics. He electrified an entire nation with his promise of change.
Yes, there were charges of racism and sexism during the primary. And, to a certain extent, they were well-founded. Sadly, some Democrats refused to vote for Obama, simply because he’s black. And some Democrats, and the media, ganged up on Hillary because she’s a woman. But that’s not why he won or she lost. Obama won because he ran a much tighter campaign.
Starting from nowhere, the Obama team crafted a winning message, developed a campaign strategy aimed at both large states and small, at both caucuses and primaries. They also set new records for raising small, repeat contributions over the Internet. The Clinton campaign, by contrast, made one blunder after another.
For starters, there was Hillary’s stubborn refusal to join John Edwards in apologizing for voting to authorize the war in Iraq. She also got off on the wrong foot by basing her campaign on “experience,” thereby letting Obama identify himself as the candidate of “change.” And her campaign failed by making no plans to win important caucus states or how to proceed if the primaries dragged on beyond Super Tuesday. As a result, they allowed Obama to win 11 contests in a row.
In the end, Clinton got stronger and Obama seemed to run out of gas. But by that time, thanks to his superior campaign organization, Obama had already built up the lead in delegates and the perception of inevitability that Clinton could never overcome.
Even though she did not prevail, Hillary Clinton proved to be one hell of a fighter. And by refusing to quit when everybody told her to get out of the race, she made Obama a stronger candidate.
But Obama’s success is more than a story about who won the Democratic primary and how. It also speaks volumes about how much progress we have made in America. An African-American woman called my radio show to talk about her 7-year old son, who stayed up late to watch Barack Obama declare himself the Democratic nominee. And there are millions more young Americans like her son, inspired to believe in America by Barack Obama, the same way we were inspired by John F. Kennedy and Bobby Kennedy.
By choosing Barack Obama as the Democratic Party’s nominee, we have demonstrated that we do, indeed, value the content of one’s character over the color of one’s skin. We’ve shown the world that we are, indeed, the land of unparalleled opportunity, where every little boy or girl can grow up to be president — even, as he describes himself, a skinny little black kid with a funny name. God bless America!
Topics: Bill's Column | 34 Comments »
SHOWING SUPPORT FOR THE TROOPS
By Dan | June 2, 2008
It’s one thing to brag about supporting the troops. It’s another to do so. And George Bush and John McCain are braggers.
The GI Bill is one of the most important government programs ever created, right up there with Social Security and Medicare. It was first passed by Congress in 1944 and signed into law by President Franklin Roosevelt, as the final program of his New Deal. FDR wanted to avoid a repeat of the Great Depression that followed World War I and did not want WWII veterans to suffer the same fate as veterans of the Great War, who were given little more than $60 and a train ticket home.
Under terms of the first GI Bill, World War II vets who had served a minimum of two years were eligible for government assistance in getting a college education, with grants covering the cost of books, fees and tuition up to $500 a year. The program was enormously successful. College enrollment exploded. In 10 years, 7.8 million of 16 million World War II vets had taken advantage of the program. And economists estimated that, for every one government dollar spent on educating GIs, seven new dollars were pumped into the American economy.
What worked so well for World War II veterans should not have been limited to them, and it wasn’t. Congress made the same educational opportunities available to veterans of the Korean War and, later, the war in Vietnam. Eventually, an even higher percentage of Vietnam vets than World War II vets took advantage of the benefits of the GI bill. And now two Vietnam vets have moved to extend the program even further.
In a rare display of bipartisanship, Sens. Jim Webb (D-Virginia) and Chuck Hagel (R-Nebraska), both decorated veterans of Vietnam, are sponsoring legislation to upgrade the GI bill and make it available to veterans of today’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. To qualify, veterans must have served since Sept. 11 in any branch of the military, including the National Guard and Reserves. Depending on their length of service, veterans could receive payments covering up to four years’ tuition at the most expensive in-state public college, plus a monthly housing stipend.
Surely most Americans agree that helping vets get a college education and start a new career is the least we can do to honor those who stepped up to defend our country in the aftermath of Sept. 11. The Webb-Hagel legislation, in fact, passed the Senate 75-22. Only the most hard-hearted could oppose it, and for only the flimsiest of reasons.
But Bush and McCain say they oppose offering benefits of the GI Bill to today’s veterans because it’s too expensive and because it will discourage troops from re-enlisting. Poppycock. True, the expanded program would cost about $2 billion a year. That’s a lot of money, but it’s less than the cost of (BEGIN ITALICS) one week (END ITALICS) of the war in Iraq.
It’s also true, as McCain regularly points out, that the Congressional Budget Office estimates that the new GI Bill would cause a 16 percent drop in re-enlistment rates across all four branches of the military. But McCain fails to mention that the very same study predicts a 16 percent uptick in new recruits, who would be attracted to join the military by the same educational opportunities. Hypocrisy, thy name is McCain.
There is simply no excuse for denying veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan the same benefits enjoyed by veterans of earlier wars. But this is not the first time that McCain, who prides himself on his family’s three generations of military service, has double-crossed his fellow veterans. In Congress, he’s voted for veterans’ benefits only 30 percent of the time, according to the scorecard of the Disabled Americans for America.
And for George Bush, this is just one more example of saying one thing and doing another. He even had the audacity to honor the troops on Memorial Day while threatening to veto the educational benefits millions of them are counting on. At least, observed the New York Times, he’s consistent: “Having saddled the military with a botched, unwinnable war, having squandered soldiers’ lives and failed them in so many ways, the commander in chief now resists giving the troops a chance at better futures out of uniform.”
One thing is for sure: If Bush and McCain have any questions about the merits of the GI Bill, they don’t have to go far for answers. McCain could ask fellow Sens. Frank Lautenberg, Ted Stevens, John Warner and Jim Webb, all of whom got their college education thanks to the GI Bill. And George Bush could ask his own father.
Had he listened to his father five years ago, Bush might not have sent young Americans to risk their lives in an unnecessary war. Had he listened to him today, he might not deny them the opportunity to improve their lives, if they’re lucky enough to come back home alive.
Topics: Bill's Column | 70 Comments »
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