The U.S. Senate passed a resolution the other day urging President Obama to pardon boxing ex heavyweight champion of the worldJack Johnson. A little background info for you: Jack Johnson was a black heavyweight boxing champ during the early part of the 20th century. He was bold, brash, & really cocky. Like they say, though, it aint bragging if you can back it up & Jack Johnson could certainly back it up. He got so good that white people wanted him stopped, including Jack London (Call of the Wild), who wanted a "great white hope" to beat Johnson. Ex champion James Jeffries came out of retirement to fight Johnson. Johnson's dismantling of Jeffries led to celebrations in black communities & retribution from police & other whites, including beatings & lynchings. Eventually, what brought down Jack Johnson was the government, who tried & convicted him for bringing a white woman over state lines for immoral purposes. The immorality, you ask? He was with white women. Johnson fled the company, but came back some years later & served a year in jail. He died 20 years later in a car accident. His story was the basis for the movie the Great White Hope, starring James Earl Jones. I do hope that President Obama finally pardons Jack Johnson. It is justice long overdue for a man who paid the price for being too good.
If you're like me, you've been rivited by the events happening on the streets of Iran. However, I've been trying to figure out what the end game of all of this is. I'm trying to look at this from both the governments & opposition side. If I'm the government, I'm going to play this from a couple of angles. My playbook would be: 1. Let my goons do my dirty work - The Basiij militia have been doing all those dirty little things that the government can't really do. They've home invaded, murdered, & arrested citizens. I'd let them continue doing it. Scaring the opposition into submission is much easier than giving in. 2. Blame the West - Already done. The government's decided to go that route by blaming the U.S. & Great Britain for the unrest. I'm not saying that we aren't pushing some buttons. We're just not doing it publically because we really can't. However, I'm pretty sure we've been doing some sneaky things behind the scenes. Whatever works, I always say. 3. Pray that the world forgets after another week - We've all seen revolts come & go. Does anybody remember the revolt in Thailand recently? How about Burma? Sri Lanka? I thought so. The world tends to get collective ADD when these things happen. If I'm the government, I just play this one out to a stalemate & the world will move onto another event like, say, a North Korean missle launch that's coming up in a couple of weeks. Now, if I'm the opposition, here's what I'd do: 1. Refine my approach & kick it up a notch- Demonstrating is all well & good but it doesn't do too much after a while. I march, they beat & kill me, repeat cycle the next day. Unfortunately, it may be time to get a little violent but make it targeted. I'd start by taking out some of those Basiij militia. I'd destroy their numerous headquarters & attack them while they try to attack me on their motorcycles. After all, there's more of me than there are of them. I'm not condoning violence but it seems that it has now come to that point, unfortunately. 2. Get some of the army on my side - The revolutionary guard backs the Supreme Leader for now. I have to believe, though, that there are some, if not most, who are sympathetic to my cause. If I make a direct & public appeal to them, maybe I can stir up a little revolt within their ranks. 3. Get things moving a little faster - Since the world tends to forget quickly, I need to keep my cause in the news. I know that the recount will be just as rigged as the first election. I need to keep giving my people hope. My leaders need to show their faces a little more even though many of them have been targeted. Maybe shame a few countries into taking sides officially. If the death of the young lady Neda can't strike a chord in world leaders, I don't know what will. So there's my game plan for both sides; at least, it's how I figure they'll try to play it out. I'm not sure how this whole thing will go. My cynical side (which is rather large) tells me that this whole thing will become another Tienanman Square & will fade into the woodwork of history. Who knows, though? We have a black president so nothing's impossible, is it?
According to the new NBC/WSJ poll, 37% of Americans believe that President Obama is dealing with too many issues. My main question is this: just what issues should he drop? Should he drop economic ones? Maybe he should forget about health care because we all know that’ll fix itself pretty soon. Maybe he can get those pesky foreign governments like Iran & North Korea to behave themselves so he won’t have to handle such little problems. People tend to have ADD when it comes to reality. We tend to forget what kind of trouble we were & still are in. We may not have that deep forboding feeling we all had in Febuary & March when it felt like the world was caving in but believe me, the problems haven’t gone away. We still have high unemployment. We have a health care system that’s going to bankrupt us. We have a regulatory system that needs serious fixing to prevent the banking crisis from theoretically happening again. The stimulus package money is just now beginning to work its way through the system. We have a swine flu pandemic, which isn’t affecting us as much right now but will once the weather starts turning colder. That’s a lot of plates to spin but you know as well as I do that if he starts dropping problems in favor of others, people will be screaming that he isn’t doing enough. These are tough times we’re in right now & there are many plates to spin. So far, the president seems to be doing a pretty good job of it.
It seems the drumbeats for President Obama to be more forceful with Iran are growing louder. Both Mitt Romney & John McCain have come out in favor of an aggressive stance concerning our relationship with the Iranian dictator. Even I on Sunday was practically screaming at the computer, wondering why Obama wasn’t saying much about the Iranian election. What I now realize is that much like Romney, McCain, & other Republicans, I would be wrong. The fact of the matter is that Obama can’t be too forceful at this moment for a few reasons. For starters, there is an extremely good chance that despite the election being rigged, the group that runs Iran now will be the same group that’s running it a year from now. Since they’re developing nuclear weapons, we’ll more than likely have to negotiate with them. Best not to get them more riled up than they already are at the moment. The second & more important reason is that if Obama says that he stands with the reformers, he’ll look like he’s meddling in Iranian politics & handing President Ahmadihijad a rather large propaganda tool to use against the reformers. The Iranian people may not like their leaders but they like America less. If we pick sides, at least at the moment, we will help to defeat the reform movement. As much as it pains me, it’s best to let the Iranians work it out for themselves right now & step in if things don’t go the way we want them to. It looks like so far, the tepid response is working. The supreme leader of Iran has switched positions & has now called for an investigation into the election. Also, we found out today that the State Department asked Twitter to postpone its maintenance shutdown so that the Iranian protesters could keep twittering so the US is helping the reformers, just behind the scenes. As far as why the Republicans want a tougher response to the crisis right now, it makes perfect sense. They’re not in power so talking tough has no political downside for them. It also makes Obama look weak in the eyes of Americans like me who would like a tougher response. I don’t envy the president right now.
Let me first state that I am an ardent supporter of President Obama. I signed the Draft Obama petition in 2006 & worked for his election through 2008. I’ve got posters, booklets, & other souvenirs from his election & inauguration. I download his speeches & appearances onto my computer so that my kids & grandkids will have something to go on other than stories & watered down versions of events, like we get when looking at 2 minute clips of Kennedy. Now that I’ve firmly established my Obama street cred, I’ve got beef with the guy. It’s got nothing to do with foreign policy, of which he’s doing a pretty good job so far. I’m not angry at him with domestic policy. I’m going with a wait & see attitude on the stimulus package, health care, & the like. My old Yes We Can attitude is fading over one major subject & that subject is transparency in government. When Obama ran for president, he said that the American people deserved to know what’s going on with their government. He started off strong by setting up websites where you could check where the money was going with regards to the stimulus package. However, there now comes word from MSNBC that the administration is blocking the news media from getting lists of visitors to the White Househttp://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/31373407/. It’s an old policy that the Bush administration had in place but had gotten them into hot water (No more secret meeting to write energy policy. Remember that campaign rally slogan?). Obama’s reasoning is that privacy needs to be in place in case important people are interviewing for administration positions, etc. I find that to be a lame excuse at best. Once the position’s been filled, they should release the names, not block the public from knowing. The second policy that I have a problem with is giving major donors to the election campaign diplomatic positions. I know that it’s a policy that’s been in place since the dawn of politics but it’s a policy that has truly run its course. It smacks of cronyism, whether these people are qualified or not. Having given lots of money should completely take them out of the running for what are mainly cushy positions (with some major exceptions). Continuing both of these policies fly in the face of his campaign promises & need to come to a halt now. True transparency in government means not continuing with the secretive politics that have been played in the past but by letting the American people know what’s being done in their name.
The republicans, lead by Utah Rep. Bob Bishop, have unveiled a new energy plan to compete with President Obama's plan. The republicans have called for 100 more nuclear power plants, expanding renewable energy sources, & more mining of oil shale & uranium. What was missing from this plan was any major explanation as to how they were eventually going to pay for it. Also, they did not address concerns about protecting the environment, other than to create a fund to invest in renewable forms of energy. Quite frankly, this plan is a complete joke. I would've liked to have seen newer ideas & long term thinking from the republicans about curbing auto emissions & other environmental protections while, at the same time, trying to lessen our dependance on foreign oil with more responsible form of energy. Instead, they've treated us to more of the old republican gifts to the nuclear & oil lobbies. Oh, did I mention that Utah Rep. Bishop would like to see a lot of the new mining of uranium & oil shale to be in Utah? Shocker. Thankfully, this plan doesn't have much of a chance of passing, since the democrats control Congress. Still, I'm disappointed in the republicans. They had a golden opportunity to come up with something truly inventive & the best they can do is to dig for more fossil fuels & a lot more nuclear plants? Epic fail on their part.
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