What’s the Matter with Paul Krugman?

I have to admit that I was a little surprised to see read in Paul Krugman call Barack Obama “the anti-change candidate” in one of his recent columns, and then under emphasize the importance of the war in our current political climate by arguing at TPM:

I guess I’ve been going on the view that no Democrat is not going to end this war, and no Democrat is going to start another war. I have not felt that foreign policy is the defining issue in the race to the nomination.

I found this position rather odd considering what Krugman said about Obama in a column called “They Told You So” published a year ago this month. It was in that very same column that Krugman singled out Obama, along with a few others, including Al Gore, Russ Feingold, and Nancy Pelosi, as those who not only provided “antiwar arguments that now seem prescient,” but whose stance on the war he apparently found admirable. In fact, he said:

We should honor these people for their wisdom and courage. We should also ask why anyone who didn’t raise questions about the war — or, at any rate, anyone who acted as a cheerleader for this march of folly — should be taken seriously when he or she talks about matters of national security.

What a difference a year makes.
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Most Outrageous Funny Commercials

Here is a collection of the most funniest and outrageous commercials created this year. The spot featuring a father breast feeding his kid is hilarious.

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(H/T: Top Ten Videos)

Housing and Civil Rights in NOLA

Just as New Orleans became the flash point for what poverty looked like in the United States in the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, it is quickly becoming a new locus for the civil rights movement. Post-Katrina debates over education, the treatment of criminal defendants, the right to vote, and the wage theft and hazardous working conditions endured by immigrant workers have revealed an ugly stew of social inequality and systemic injustice.

But the question of housing affordable housing has become the most salient in NOLA today. I am not going to pretend I have intimate knowledge of what has transpired in NOLA before or after Katrina, but this video offers a modest glimpse into the struggle of Katrina victims seeking to assert their rights.

Watch it.

Some of the news reports have noted that many of the city’s residents are divided on the issue and that most of the units designated for demolition are in fact vacant. That said, the issue does not seem to be whether or not these particular housing units should be destroyed, but the commitment to public assisted and affordable housing in general in New Orleans, and the right of return by many of the internally displaced people.

It seems this is another indication of how from the beginning, poor people, especially poor black people, have been marginalized from the rebuilding process, and the rest of the country has thought of post-Katrina recovery as a state and local concern, not the nation’s problem.

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Borders, Identification, and Legalities: The U.S. Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative

Thanu Yakupitiyage at Race Wire, the blog companion to Colorlines magazine, has an interesting post on the impact of the U.S. Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative on Native Americans. Is it just me or does the program’s name, whether intended or not, seem to connote 19th Century territorial expansion?

The U.S. Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative, which is upping border security in 2008 by requiring all U.S. citizens to provide drivers licenses, birth certificates, and passports to reenter the country, is leaving native people anxious and worried. Native tribes on the Southwest and Northern borders that touch Mexico and Canada respectively have historically straddled these assigned territories, crossing regularly to visit and maintain traditional sites. Native tribes such as the Tohono O’odham in Arizona, the Kickapoo Band of California, and the Confederate Colville Tribes in Washington have used traditional tribal enrollment cards to cross the border for decades. Now, there is uncertainty as to whether this practice will be allowed to continue.

The thought of tribal heads having to sit with officials from the Department of Homeland Security to discuss how they will ‘legally’ be allowed to continue their traditions and visit their historical sites that have been demarcated by imaginary lines is a little too ironic in my mind. It is reminiscent of a long history of negotiation processes dating back to the arrival of European settlers that has always left Native Americans on the losing end. Even in the creation of reservations themselves, it was by the permission of the United States government that tribespeople were allowed their own land. The current travel restrictions being imposed on the Native American way of life are a continuation of this historical abuse. It is a hard-hitting reminder of the people who are time and again forgotten in the creation of U.S policies.

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On the Tancredo Effect

Marc Ambinder accurately summed up the Tom Tancredo effect earlier today.

Tancredo — and Tancredoites in Congress and millions of Americans — have forced at least four candidates — Huckabee and McCain are two — to completely change the way they talk and think about immigration. Even Democrats call for border security first.

Tancredo gave voice to a burbling reservoir of anxiety and can fairly be said to have the most effect, policy-wise, of any presidential candidate. Politically, too, some Republicans believe that Tancredo-style immigration politics may have irreparably damaged the GOP’s efforts to incorporate Hispanics into their coalition.

Tom Tancredo is an outsize figure in our politics.

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Krugman Goes After Obama

Paul Krugman has sounded off yet again on Barack Obama for his perceived conciliatory rhetoric and posture on Social Security and Medicare in a recent interview at TPM. Apparently, Obama gives Krugman the impression that he is too much of an appeaser and not ready for the partisan nastiness that will be required to get universal health care coverage passed.

It should be no surprise that Sen. John Edwards remains the darling populist that Krugman wishes to be president. But considering that the most of the labor world has given up on Edwards ever since he decided to take matching funds, Krugman’s is willing to settle for Hillary Clinton. This has led some to suggest that Krugman’s criticism of Obama a just 2 weeks away from the Iowa caucuses is really a ploy for bolstering Clinton’s chances. I have a lot of respect for Krugman and would like to believe that that is not true.

At any rate, lets examine what Krugman has said, about Obama’s plan and see if it really holds up. In a fairly recent column Krugman claimed, “In fact, the Edwards and Clinton plans contain more money for such subsidies than the Obama plan. If low-income families find insurance unaffordable under these plans, they’ll find it even less affordable under the Obama plan.” This accusation has been repeatedly by those claiming that because Obama’s plan does not include a mandate, 15 million people will be uninsured. But the extent to which it even might be true that Clinton’s plan covers more people than Obama’s is overstated.

Andrew Young Race Baiting Against Obama

Ambassador Andrew Young has clearly lost his mind. In a recent media interview (see below), Amb. Young told an audience “Hillary Clinton first of all has Bill behind her. And Bill is every bit as black as Barack.” He also went on to say and that “Bill has probably gone with more black women than Barack.”

Newsflash: Bill Clinton has already been president twice. If he is trying to gin up support for Hillary, then by all means do your thang. But just be upfront about it. Its fine if people want to support a candidate, but do you have to do it like this? If you are going to support a candidate at all, at least let it be one that is actually running. Senator Hillary Clinton is a formidable candidate in her own right let her stand or fall on her own merit.

But, more importantly, it is absolutely maddening to see a civil rights leader who organized voter drives in the South during the 60′s race bait against any Presidential candidate, but especially against the first viable black Presidential candidate.

Watch it.

(H/T: Black Bobby)

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Gallup: Obama Considered the Most Electable Candidate

Electability is an elusive quality. But people seem to know it when they see it even if it’s personified by a skinny black guy with a funny name. Well, at least that’s what Gallup seems to be telling us in the results of their new poll.

According to the Associated Press video below, in a survey of registered voters, Obama not only convincingly beats each of the top Republican candidates in head to head match-ups, including Mike Huckabee, Rudy Guiliani, and Mitt Romney, but also by greater margins than does Senator Hillary Clinton.

Interestingly enough, in a number of separate polls, Senator Clinton is still leading among all likely Democratic voters by a commanding 18 percentage points. According to Rasmussem, Madame Inevitable leads all Dems with 42%, while Barack Obama gets a respectable 24% and John Edwards hustled his way in with 15%.

Perhaps, I am jumping the gun here, but if Hillary still leads nationally among all likely Democratic voters, the new Gallup results must mean more Republicans and Independents are willing to vote for Sen. Obama than Sen. Clinton. I find even contemplating such a possibility astounding.

Now, while some Democrats might find a lot of encouraging news in these poll results, many of them should note no one has seen a real Huckabee reach his ceiling yet. As I noted in a previous post:

A few months ago, Huckabee barely registered any support in the national or early primary state polls and only raised $1 million between July 1st and September 30th. But now he is at 21 percent nationally, eclipsed Romney in Iowa for the lead, and already raised more than a million dollars in the first few days of November alone. And he achieved all of this despite having no real national network other than his fawning and increasingly motivated conservative Christian base. More importantly, his negatives are only at 16 percent, which means he could potentially amass enough support from voters that are still shopping around or willing to switch camps and become a formidable candidate.

I still think that that’s true. But these results at least suggest that even if the Huckaboon does not plateau anytime soon, Obama would still be the favorite, especially among moderates and independents.

(H/T: Think on These Things.)

Update: See an echo of the same theme written in this post here.

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Holiday Ads by the Presidential Candidates

Holiday ads do nothing for me, but I am sure some pollster or media guru out there thinks this stuff is a good idea.

Mike Huckabee, for example, wasted no time getting his Baptist hustle on with this one. And Did he really have to go there with the crucifix like image in the background too?

Umm…some people, namely voters, might give you a pass on the happy holidays theme, though many of them might be less supportive if pitched a decidedly pro-Christian message. Libertarian darling Representative Ron Paul minced no words about how he felt about Huckabee’s religious posture as a campaigner.

Of course, that did not stop Paul from doing his x-mas ad too.

And Rudy Guiliani put his $0.02 in with this loser ad. Dude lose the sweater vest.

And then not to be outdone Barack Obama made his own holiday ad too. For what its worth, at least Obama said happy holidays AND merry X-mas. You can watch it here. (I would have posted it here, but WordPress does not support bright cove video.)

Do these ads really have the humanizing affect that candidates seek? Won’t voters just see through this stuff?

Update: John Edwards also has a holiday ad. I have to admit I like this one the most.

So where is Hillary’s?

Update: Here it is.

The idea behind this add was a good one, but not very well executed. It came off as stiff and forced.

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Obama Sustains Lead in Iowa

Another poll done by ABC News/Washington Post among likely Democratic caucus goers shows Senator Barack Obama continues to lead the pack in Iowa.

33 percent support Obama, 29 percent Clinton and 20 percent Edwards, with single-digit support for the other Democratic candidates. That’s similar to the 30-26-22 percent division in the last ABC/Post poll in Iowa a month ago.

But ABC News offered this word of caution to Obama supporters.

Clinton does better with voters who’ve definitely made up their minds, while Obama is stronger with changeable voters — still a third of the electorate. He may have more work to do to close the sale in the Iowa campaign’s final weeks.

Perhaps some Obama skeptics and detractors have been influence by the opinions of certain people as evidenced in the video below.

(H/T: TPM Election Central)

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The Public Whisper Campaign Against Obama

Whisper campaigns are usually done with guile and deft. Those on the receiving end of such campaigns, however, can spot the master minders who hatch such plots. Identifying the culprits and exposing them are two different things. Besides, even when you find something close to the smoking gun all anyone remembers is the effectiveness of the smear campaign, not who perpetuated it.

Take, for example, the whisper campaign that was spread about Senator John McCain in South Carolina. On the even of South Carolina Republican primary in 2000, a push poll asked likely GOP voters if they would vote for a candidate who had a black baby out of wedlock. McCain actually has an adopted Asian daughter, but there was little doubt what the intended goal of conducting such polling, and the results were predictable enough. And while there has been little evidence to prove who was behind it, McCain sure knew who the culprints were. Few would deny that that poll contributed to the Arizona Senator’s lost in the South Carolina primary, and probably the presidency afterwards.

Senator Barack Obama is now getting the McCain treatment on the eve of the primary season. Campaign watchers know about the forwarded emails by Iowa Clinton staffers falsely accusing Obama of attending a madrassa, and the New Hampshire Clinton staffer who made a sly remark about Obama’s drug use as a college student would be a liability in the general election against Republicans, but now Senator Bob Kerrey is joining the slime machine too. And while campaign staffers practiced the dark art of smearing behind keyboards, Bob Kerrey, a Clinton supporter, is out there on television making religious appeals and spreading lies. Perhaps, there is something to be said for Kerrey promoting lies publicly, but they are still lies. Plus, the fact that Kerrey is an otherwise well-respected Senator and Vietnam veteran makes this all the more disappointing.

According to the Huffington Post, Kerrey is still perpetuating the lie that Obama attended a “secular madrassa.” This arguably a much more insidious form of misrepresentation of the facts than the other previous baseless lies. At least the previous fabrications just said madrassa. With Kerrey saying it was a “secular madrassa,” Kerrey is blurring the line between secular and religious schooling.

A madrassa is an Islamic school, which means its not secular, whereas Obama, on the other hand, attended a secular school that in Indonesia as a child period. (And while Indonesia is a Muslim majority society it also has plenty of Hindus and religious traditions as well, which means it may or may not have been even a Muslim majority school to begin with.)

This is obviously done to give the erroneous impression that Obama was somehow indoctrinated with hateful religious teaching by implying if he attended school at all in a country with Muslims, it had to be religious and backward one.

Plus, Sen. Kerrey is also out there repeating another pitiful lie that Obama was ashamed of his middle name, Hussein, and that he was not born a Christian in an effort to imply the Illinois Senator’s has some profound relationship to Islam. There was no evidence of that Obama experience such shame. Also, Obama was raised by his white Kansasan Christian mother and then his white Christian grandparents in Hawaii. Neither of whom sound particularly hateful.

But the overtones and undertones of the smearing are clear. The Clinton campaign is trying to convey the impression that Obama is not a real American, not someone voters can trust. He is foreign and unknowable.

But appealing to this type of religious intolerance is really a proxy for encourage voters to discriminate on the basis of race, especially among some skeptical voters who might be uncomfortable supporting a black man for president, but might be on the fence about Obama.

So far, the liberal white blogosphere is reluctant to recognize this point out because its something commonly thought of as a Republican tactic. Plus, they think its the Clinton campaign being dirty.

But soon enough people will recognize it for what it is: another racist whisper campaign conducted in the open. Of course, by that point people will only recall its effectiveness, not the perpetrators.

Update: Bob Kerrey has just apologized for his comments. Read the apology here.

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Huckabee Rebukes Bush and Rummy Doctrine

Huckabee watchers are buzzing about the former Arkansas upcoming piece in Foreign Affairs, largely because of his unambiguous criticism of President Bush’s foreign policy. His pointed criticism includes such blunt jabs as

American foreign policy needs to change its tone and attitude, open up, and reach out. The Bush administration’s arrogant bunker mentality has been counterproductive at home and abroad.

Those are strong words. Arrogant and counterproductive in particular are words you would normally hear from one of the Democrats. But he does not stop there. He also offers a serious rebuke of the Rumsfeldian approach to war planning, specifically the overreliance on smaller and leaner forces that lead to many of the security problems plaguing the Bush Administration in Iraq and Afghanistan.

We did not send enough troops to Iraq initially. We still do not have enough troops in Afghanistan and are losing hard-won gains there as foreign fighters pour in and the number of Iraq-style suicide attacks increases. Our current active armed forces simply are not large enough. We have relied far too heavily on the National Guard and the Reserves and worn them out….

If I ever have to undertake a large invasion, I will follow the Powell Doctrine and use overwhelming force. The notion of an occupation with a “light footprint,” which was our model for Iraq, is a contradiction in terms. Liberating a country and occupying it are two different missions. Our invasion of Iraq went well militarily, but the occupation has destroyed the country politically, economically, and socially.

This guy must have been reading Sen. Joe Biden’s floor speeches on Iraq.

Of course, once Foreign Affairs piece does not really place Huckabee firmly in the realist or liberal internationalist tradition of American foreign policy making. But it does demonstrate a willingness, nay, a real desire to draw a distinction between himself and President Bush, which is something that the other viable Republican candidates thus far have failed to do. (Rep. Ron Paul has been the only ant-war and isolationist from the very beginning, but he is unelectable.)

Mike Huckabee is making a wise move here of trying to find something that will at least keep him in the news while distinguishing himself from the other front runners. Plus, it also can potentially disguise a genuine weakness, which is his near complete ignorance of foreign policy issues. Please keep in mind that this is the same man who said he never heard of the National Intelligence Estimate just a few weeks ago, joked about his ignorance by stating that he was “not an expert… but I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night,” and was disturbingly hawkish this fall on Iran acquiring nuclear weapons.

But, politically speaking, taking positions that tell people his is not George W. Bush is indeed a smart move, considering the President’s approval ratings were 24 percent back in October and the persistent widespread unpopularity of the war in Iraq.

Of course, even doing something this sensible, and quite frankly, obvious, will still attract criticism from other Republicans. Mitt Romney chimed in on Huckabee’s criticism of the Bush administration by saying:

…we ought to be saying thank you to the president for keeping us safe these last six years,” Romney said. “And I’m the last person to say that this administration has suffered through an arrogant bunker mentality.

Former Press Secretary Ari Fleischer also added:

There is much to like about Mike Huckabee. But he will serve Republican primary voters, and our nation, better if he focused his criticisms on the Democrats who will run against our eventual nominee and not on the President who has kept us safe.

Hmm…. I am sure the surging Mike Huckbee will take his chances by going his own way.

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Obama in the Market for More Talent

Sometimes simply being a spectator of American politics can be deliciously entertaining. And this exchange between Obama and Clinton certainly qualifies as being one of those moments.

You just gotta love that laugh. And oh that cock sure response. The snipping and gritty tension is just so palpable you kinda wished primary season would just start already.

I thought Obama’s response was on point considering how Hillary Clinton’s rather loud and distracting background cackling. But Obama should have taken it a step further. He should have said the real question should be why so many former President Clinton aides choose to advise Obama instead of Hillary Clinton.

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Why Should I Care about Roids in Sports?

Perhaps, I am just too ignorant about the pervasiveness of steriod use in professional sports or don’t love baseball enough or fail to appreciate the pressures young athletes feel to take performance enhancing drugs, but I really do not care about this whole roids controversy at all.  I mean how does this affect me? Or people I should genuinely care about?

Of course, I agree those who broke the law should be punished and that reforms should be adopted to discourage anymore widespread use, but does this scandal really merit being on the home page of the New York Times or Washington Post or any other major news organization’s website?

Oh Puleeze!
We have a genocide in Darfur, the CIA destroying tapes of torturing people, Katrina victims being evicted from homes, conservative hawks politicizing intelligence reporting, a deficit that’s out of control, global climate change, millions of people without health care, and we are talking about grown men taking drugs to excel at a kids game as if its some national crisis.

Punish those who are responsible, crack down on the sellers of the drugs, and then let’s focus on more important things.

Mixed Findings in Recent Poll of Asians, Hispanics, and Blacks

We know anecdotally that racial stereotyping is not unique to any one racial or ethnic group. But a recent poll by New America Media of African Americans, Hispanics, and Asian Americans on race relations has attempted to quantify how pervasive these ideas actually are. As expected the poll contains some bad news and some good news.

The bad news is that African Americans are associated with criminality in the eyes of many of the Asian and Hispanic respondents. A majority in each of the racial groups expressed a far greater preference for doing business with whites than those who claimed to have no racial preference at all. And the vast majority of the respondents in the survey seem to have little interaction with racial groups other than their own be it in school, place of worship, or in their own neighborhood.

The good news is that most of the respondents seem optimistic about the future of race relations and agreed that all people of color across the board should work together to solve problems that they all have an interest in addressing. In other words, cooperation among and across different races seems very much a possibility, if that option is explored by the leadership in our respective communities.

Crime and Perceptions of African Americans

Not surprisingly, many people of color are just as influenced by racist stereotyping as whites are in very real ways. 44 percent of Hispanics polled said they were afraid of African Americans because they believed black folk are responsible for most of the crime in their neighborhood compared to only 50 percent who disagreed with that assertion.

Asians generally polled about the same numbers on this question with 47 percent of them saying they were afraid of blacks because they were responsible for the crime in their neighborhoods, whereas 44 percent disagreed with that proposition.

A whopping 71 percent of African Americans strongly agreed that the criminal justice system in America favors the rich and powerful, by contrast, only 45 percent of Hispanics and 27 percent concurred.

A Different Set of Racial Preferences

According to the polls findings, 61 percent of Hispanics said they preferred to do business with whites as opposed to any other racial group. While 32 percent said they had no racial preference, only four percent and three percent of Hispanics said they felt most comfortable doing business with Asians and African Americans, respectively.