Monster: Samantha Power is my New Hero

I have to admit that I didn't know anything about Samantha Power before she called Hillary Clinton a monster. Although she and the Obama campaign are slightly embarrassed by it, I'm glad she did. Before I say why, I just want to say that the video clip above is not about her remarks. It's from a fund raiser in Boston for the humanitarian crisis in Darfur. I prefer to use it, at least first, to show people that there's more to her than a slip of the tongue about someone who deserved it. It demonstrates why she should be considered a hero, what she said about Hillary notwithstanding.

Also, before I talk about Hillary and the remark, I will say something further about who Samantha Power is. She's a Pulitzer Prize winning author for her book A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide. She's a professor who works with the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government. She's an activist and a strong voice for ending the genocide in Darfur. She's an intelligent woman with a fortunate name, because she is powerful. And from what I can see, at least for me, she's a lot more likable person than Hillary Clinton.

Now I can talk about why she's my hero. She may not have meant to say it. It slipped out. She tried to take it back. Tried to make it off the record, but it was too late. And later she resigned and she apologized. Still, in view of all those things, she said what needed to be said. She was a real human being in a real moment who felt something and said it. She's not the polished, practiced and careful politician who weighs every word that comes out of her mouth. She is someone who is obviously passionate about the things she believes in. She's the anti-Clinton.

Why did it need to be said? Because Hillary Clinton recently crossed the line. Before she crossed the line she had been fighting dirty. Fighting dirty since Barack Obama first surprised her and won the Iowa Caucuses. Both her and her surrogates, including her husband, have race baited, mocked, outright lied and damned Obama with faint praise ("as far as I know").

But when she as much as endorsed the Republican nominee over the leading Democratic candidate in this race, she crossed a political line that should never be crossed. Not only did she give John McCain ammunition against Obama should he become the nominee, words that McCain can attribute to her, a Democrat, but she did so while advancing an argument that she could not win if she by some miracle turns out to be the nominee. She simply does not measure up to John McCain on the argument of experience. But Obama beats them both on the argument of judgment.

What she said is disloyal to the Democratic Party and it shows her to be someone who would rather win than do what's best for the party as a whole. And I am wondering since she said it where have the so-called leaders of the Democratic Party been? Why hasn't anyone, with the possible exceptions of Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow in the press, and those of us who are Obama supporters, cried foul? Even the Obama campaign itself has not reacted as strongly as they should have. That's why what Samantha Power said, needed to be said. Thank god for that slip that made it into the press. While the press and the Obama campaign are coming down on her, I want to be at least one voice out here, and I'm sure I'm not the only one, standing up for her. Amen and right on. Hillary Clinton is a indeed monster and she's hurting the Democrats chance of winning in November.

A lot more of us should stand up for her and we should let the party leadership know that we will not stand for the kind of disloyalty to the party that Hillary Clinton has demonstrated. I said before and will say again, if a miracle occurs and she's the nominee, I would find it very hard to vote for her. Even if she included Barack Obama on the ticket. I would have been happy to see her go on to fight until the convention and would have voted for her if she won. But not after running this kind of race.

Ok, the clip below is about the remark (I won't call it a gaffe). And I picked it because no matter how wrong he usually is, every once in a while Tucker Carlson gets something right.

Democracy is a Scary Thing

First I have to apologize for some of the editorial commentary in the titles of this video. It was the best Youtube video I could find of this clip and I didn't record the show myself so I couldn't put my own clip up. Last week I put up the second of a couple clips of an informed voter. The first one I titled, An Informed Voter is a Beautiful Thing. The scary, but absolutely necessary thing about Democracy is that everyone gets a vote, informed or not. It shouldn't be any other way, of course, but it's one of the tricky things about democracy.

Last week on the death of William F. Buckley, Keith Olbermann reminded us that Buckley once said that the uneducated shouldn't be allowed to vote. But a democracy that doesn't allow all to participate is not a real democracy. The challenge of our system of government is to find ways to engage voters in the process and to encourage people to be informed. Some may look at a voter like the one in the CBS clip and blame him for what's wrong with our system. Obviously he bears some responsibility for being informed as a voter, but the responsibility as a whole lies with all of us and with the system as a whole. I think if anything can be blamed it's an attitude. And I lay at least some of that blame on CNN.

Ok, I'm not blaming them alone, but something I call the CNN mentality. The kind of fast food, consumerist, couch potato attitude we have, as Americans, about being informed. That we can sit on our ample arses, and I include my own ample arse along with the rest of them, and believe that we can be informed. That is that someone can inform us, and all we have to do is consume it. Being informed is an active proposition. Like getting in shape, or eating healthy. You have to do something yourself in order to get your body in shape, no one can do it for you and it is the same with the mind. And you have to do it constantly, it's not something you accomplish and are finished.

The essential element of being informed is critical thinking. That we examine everything that is presented to us with a critical eye. That we question it. That we check sources and compare them with other sources. That we make sure the things we are being fed through the media make sense. I call it the CNN mentality because of their tagline which epitomizes the mindset. You don't hear it so much these days during this election season. It has largely been replaced with "the best political team on television" which I paraphrase as the best political team in show business. But their regular tag line is, or at least was, "the most trusted name in news."

What does that tell us? To sit back on our couch and relax as this trusted name tell us what's going on in the world. It's easy to be informed. Let CNN do it for us. Just pick up the remote. It is the equivalent of those scam diets that tell you that you can loose weight but you can eat what you want and you don't have to change your habits. BS. I know because I am spending way too much time sitting here doing this. The tendency then is not to think and not to question.

They have the avuncular Wolf Blitzer in the mold of the icon Walter Kronkite. Someone who is easy to listen to and easy to trust. But this my friends is the fast food of being informed. And we are all so busy and have to make a living and there are so many sources out there, many of them full of misinformation, that it's easy to grab that quick and easy McNews. We all do it. I am guilty as any.

But we all have to push ourselves to go a little further. Don't do it all at once. It's just like exercising. You can't run a marathon the first day. You don't want to get a brain cramp. Start small. Question something you hear. Find another source. Get your google and Wikipedia on. One further word of advice. People, if cable news is the SuperSize meal of being informed, email forwards are the twinkies. The are sweet, easy to consume, and addictive. But they will make you a mental lard ass. If you question everything you get on cable news, or anywhere else, doubly question anything that comes in an email forward. What's the source? Does it make sense? Check it against other sources.

Our democracy can only be as strong as the voters who participate in it. Uninformed voters make a weak democracy. Informed voters are mentally strong and therefore of necessity, make our democracy stronger. BTW, the entire video of the 60 Minutes video above is here. You can watch it online.

A Note on CBS Video:
I could have embedded the video it here, but there's one problem. And that's that CBS has such a convoluted scheme of protecting their video from download that it won't show up if you're using Internet Explorer 7 (IE7) as your browser. That's a problem because almost 30 percent of users have IE7 and I don't know if it will show up in IE6 or IE5. Amateurs at video like CBS should let their videos go on Youtube and forget about it. Instead they have geeks come up with a scheme that eliminates a good portion of the browsers on the market. Probably a sign of their commitment to allowing people to embed their videos on blogs and web sites in the first place. Ok I shouldn't blame it all in CBS. It's at least half Microsoft's fault. After all, it works in Firefox.

-Fight the powers.

Jack & Hill

First the Daily Show appearance, now this. The Clinton campaign is pulling out all the stops. Is this some kind of March surprise strategy? Actually I think the Daily Show appearance is a coup. But I don't think it will make that much of a real difference on Tuesday.

Obama v Clinton: Democratic Debate in Cleveland Ohio

The Democratic Debate in Cleveland Ohio between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton in it's entirety. Enjoy.

-Fight the powers.