Attack of the water hose!

I am the Coordinator of our Neighborhood Team, "Midtown Barack and Rollers," and have been spending what other people would consider leisure time (outside of a full-time job, taking care of our 11 year old son, Kel, and volunteer responsibilities with nonprofit entities), working for Barack Obama's Movement for Change. This weekend I registered voters in front of an apartment building one block from my house (with the permission and support of management), at Home Depot, held a phone bank at our house (that was yesterday) and today I canvassed and held a Team Leaders meeting. There are only 37 days before Nov. 4. I am stressed that we need more time, but also looking forward to the celebration.

Today I was canvassing in an area not far from where we live. I am probably emboldened by the fact that what we do is close to home. One address on my walk sheet was up some rickety steps, to a door over a garage. (That was the only structure where this address could have been located, anyway). There was someone watering his plants with a hose, behind the structure where I stood at the top of the steps. He asked me what I was doing there, and I explained my purpose. I asked if he were Mr. ___, and he said, "Who wants to know?" I asked questions to try to establish if where I was standing was actually an address (as opposed to this guy's garage), if HE were the person who lived there...the whole nine yards (so I'd know whether the "door" was nonexistent, the person who lived there were not home, the person who formerly lived there had moved, the person who lived there refused to talk to me, etc.)

Well, the man with the hose was becoming increasingly impatient, to the point of becoming agitated, even though I was being as polite as I could be. He eventually started demanding that I leave the property, and, as I was moving down the rickety steps as fast as I could, he sprayed me with the garden hose. Good thing he didn't have a gun or something that could actually hurt me!

Kelvin called me as I was retreating...he asked me..."Now where is this guy located?" His protective instincts had kicked in. I told him that I was not ABOUT to tell him how to find this guy. I reminded him that he was part of THE OBAMA CAMPAIGN, and we must be kind and polite to everyone. :)

Remedial Social Skills

I started to call this post "Social Skills 101," but, upon further review, I decided that that would be too generous a characterization, with regard to Senator McCain's lack of eye contact with Senator Obama in a 90 minute exchange during last night's debate. Although I have some theories about why John McCain would not or could not look at Barack Obama, I will not assign motivation (trying to stay "on message" here). Upon ADDITIONAL reflection, I have concluded that even Remedial Social Skills training would probably not be adequate for transforming John McCain into someone who is qualified to be President of the United States. Considering John McCain's life experiences, in which he has had every opportunity to experience the kind of behaviors that I'm sure some gracious gentlemen in his social circles demonstrate, his behavior seems pathological. When my son was in pre-Kindergarten and working on his social skills, he did better than this.

fool me once, shame on you...

"There's an old saying in Tennessee — I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee — that says, fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — you can't get fooled again."

— George W. Bush
Nashville, Tenn., Sept. 17, 2002

Okay, George W., I think we got the point, even if you couldn't communicate it very effectively. We remember the fear and rush to action after 9/11/01. We bonded together, we flew our American flags or taped them to our windows. Our love for our country, our faith in our leaders' good intentions, and our affinity for kick-butt-because-they-deserve-it action movies caused most of us to follow your pronouncements for what would make us safe. The mainstream media fooled us, reporting information fed to them by the Bush administration as though it were news. We abandoned common sense and lost our moral compass. Does anyone else remember thinking, the night before we invaded Iraq--"Is it possible that we are about to attack a nation and people who have done nothing to us? Isn't there something in the Bible, and every other holy book, about that?" You know the rest...it only gets worse.

So, you can fool a bunch of us once, but, the next time you folks who got us into this economic mess through pure and selfish greed, without regard for the devastation to individual lives left in the wake of the incredible profits you reaped through deregulation and deception, you just may not be able to fool us again. This time, there are too many people asking too many questions...even those who would have had a beer with you a few short years ago. There will be no easy solutions to the problems your corporate cronies have created. But, with some people who are able to think rationally and in complex terms becoming involved in the discussion, there is room for HOPE that we won't be led down the path of destruction that we have come to know so well for the last 8 years.

Organizer/activist or blogger?

I've found that I'm not really cut out to be a blogger, because that implies some sense of timeliness in sharing my opinions, when I've got an election to win, and writing down my opinions is not at the top of my priority list! I'm still not finished writing about the Convention, or editing what I have written, though. Thanks for your patience! (This blog is becoming more like a scrap book, to preserve the memories).

Madeleine Albright

I (Sarah) had the opportunity to see the first female United States Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright, speak to an audience at the University of Missouri at Kansas City, about Barack Obama and foreign policy. It was a privilege to hear Ms. Albright talk so eloquently about foreign relations--both historically and current-day concerns.

I was inspired to tears when Ms. Albright described how President Obama will show concern for the PEOPLE of other countries, not just their rulers (including dictators), how people in other countries WANT American leadership (the Omaha Beach image of America has been replaced with images of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo), and how President Obama will restore the good name of democracy. She described our invasion of Iraq as the greatest disaster in American foreign policy. She also described Obama's running mate, Joe Biden, as the person who "has the deepest understanding of foreign policy of anyone in the United States."

Ms. Albright outlined the 5 biggest current foreign policy concerns, and gave me hope that, under President Obama's leadership, we will be best equipped to meet the challenges of these concerns.

Republican "leadership" in mortgage crisis

While my friends, colleagues in the movement, many political commentators, AND I have been somewhat preoccupied with McCain's choice of Sarah Palin as his V.P running mate, I have been reminding myself to follow Barack's lead on this, as demonstrated in Obama's interview with Keith Olberman last night. Barack's confidence and intelligence allow him to stay on course and remain gracious when delivering his message. He doesn't seem to feel threatened by the smokescreen/lies the Republicans are promoting via their use of Sarah Palin. However, I heard tonight (on TV, not from the campaign) that McCain's trifling and lying ad about Obama supporting the teaching of birth control to kindergarteners has caused Barack to give the green light to 527 groups to go after McCain's lies. (I never saw this materialize, though).

All that aside, I've been intrigued to learn how Republicans have set up the mortgage banking system in order to benefit corporate interests, leading to many Americans losing their homes, and have now succeeded in getting "welfare" for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

Everyone seems to agree that allowing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to fail could have devastating consequences for our economy.

The following is a rather long explanation about some of the causes of our financial crises.

Amy Goodman's Democracy Now, War and Peace report, brought attention to the origins of the mortgage banking crisis in her July 9, 2008 report: http://www.democracynow.org/2008/7/9/five_ways_wall_street_and_washington

Naomi Prins explained to Amy Goodman (quoting or paraphrasing here) how, in 2000, during the week that the Supreme Court was giving the election to George W. Bush--Former Texas Senator Phil Gramm (McCain advisor until he recently "stepped aside") slipped into a must-pass appropriations bill, the Commodity Futures Modernization Act. It included something called the Enron loophole, which allowed Enron to sell energy futures on a deregulated basis, which helped lead to the California energy crisis the following year and the subsequent collapse of Enron.

Wendy Gramm, the wife of Phil Gramm, had worked at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the CFTC, in the years prior to this and, at the urging of Enron, had passed a regulation—not a law, but a regulation—that had begun the deregulation process for Enron’s energy commodities. When she left the CFTC she became an Enron Board member, and she and Phil Gram received hundreds of thousands of dollors in Enron contributions.

Another portion of the Commodities Futures Modernization Act deregulated financial instruments called “swaps, which are instruments that are created by investment houses and securities firms, and they’re basically bets that cover their investments. So they get them from another firm, so if an investment they have is going to go south, going to tank, they can collect on this so-called insurance policy from somebody else. The problem is that these swaps, thanks to Phil Gramm’s bill, are totally, totally unregulated, and the swap market is something like now about four times the size of Wall Street, in terms of securities that are regulated. And it really turned a lot of the economy into a secret casino, all this action going back and forth, people betting on bets.

And how this related to the subprime crisis is, about this same time, you know, securities firms started bundling all these bad or risky mortgages and securitizing them, and then they would sell these securities or buy them and then buy swaps or sell swaps to cover the possible loss. So it really enabled a lot of firms to go hog wild on the subprime stuff and have—and the brokers who are doing this have no worry about losing, because they were passing on the possible risks of loss to somebody else who never really had to have the assets to cover those losses. And this is all sort of taking place off the books."

Democracy Now provided some excellent insights into the origins and possible consequences of the bailout. The report quoted Robert Reich, the former Labor secretary under President Bill Clinton, as calling the bailout “socialized capitalism...Along with making lots of money for investors and their executives, Fannie and Freddie corrupted our political process. They blocked any attempt to reign in the risks. Their lobbyists were and are the most sophisticated and among the most ubiquitous in Washington.”

Barack Obama seems to have demonstrated some ability to place responsibility for the mortgage crisis where it belongs, when he said, "We have to protect taxpayers, not bail out the shareholders and management of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac...We must not allow government intervention to protect investors and speculators who relied on the government to reap massive profits."

On Democracy Now, Amy Goodman interviewed Max Fraad Wolf on Amy Goodman's War and Peace Report. The implications of this mortgage crisis for the future viability of our economy are frightening. Wolf is an economist, writer, and instructor at the Graduate Program in International Affairs at New School University in New York.

Wolf: "the single biggest reason that the Treasury moved now and that Fannie and Freddie are now under conservatorship and no longer independent is that foreign central banks and foreign investors started to sell off their debt that they bought from Fannie and Freddie. And we watched this for the last three or four months, those of us who watch this. Foreign interests, particularly foreign central banks in East Asia and the Middle East, owned $1.4 trillion worth of instruments, debt, backed by Fannie and Freddie, and they began to sell it off.

AMY GOODMAN: Why?

MAX FRAAD WOLFF: Because it’s simply too risky. Owning large amounts of mortgage bonds in US dollars with a falling dollar—it’s reversed lately, but generally speaking, a falling dollar over many years—of an unknown credit quality is just not desirable.

And I think some of them are politically worried that they’re going to have to go back to their general public and tell them, 'OK, I’m sorry, folks. We lost hundreds or tens of billions of dollars supporting the American middle class, while not supporting you.'

The flipside of that, which I think no one’s mentioned, which is pretty interesting, is that the federal government is going to be in the business now of making sure to collect home mortgage payments from Americans, who are not doing so well, and take that money and give it to foreign investors, who they just bailed out. So the US government is going to take over some of the collection agency duties otherwise done by banks and other intermediaries and help make that money available to affluent investors and foreign investors.

AMY GOODMAN: How does the bailout contradict Bush’s so-called free market policies?

MAX FRAAD WOLFF: I mean, we’re watching the death of the free market ideology. It hasn’t been announced. But increasingly, the policies, the way we talk, the way we make legislation all but formally abandons the notion that the market can do it right, the government will do it wrong, and that government intervention is a bad idea. It turns out that government intervention is a bad idea, unless you want and need money from the government, in which case it becomes a fine idea, and bring on the government cash. So it might be unfortunate when somebody who’s having a tough time in their life wants a free piece of cheese, but when a bunch of executives want a free $100 billion, it turns out that’s the kind of government intervention we can all get behind, we can all believe in.

AMY GOODMAN: Where is the government intervention on behalf of struggling homeowners?

WOLF: The Treasury, the same group that did the takeover of Fannie and Freddie, has set up meetings with various creditors and has pressured banks and creditors to renegotiate and to be more flexible and more, quote-unquote, 'understanding' to allow homeowners in distress, if they meet certain criteria, to renegotiate their loans and to get temporary protection from foreclosure.

But basically, the approach we’ve had from the federal government to helping homeowners has been to help the banks and the bankers and hope and pressure them to pass that help along. And just to give you an idea of how stunningly successful that was, in the second quarter, the second three-month period of 2008, 500,000 US houses were either in foreclosure or entering foreclosure. So, a half-million households slipped through the cracks in the three-month period. One can get the idea that this is not exactly airtight, this method of help."

Obama talks about Palin

We delegates have been instructed to speak about why we support Barack Obama, and to refrain from bashing or "going negative" on the opponents, which causes me some anxiety, related to how to share my opinions in the appropriate fashion. In this A.P. story yesterday, about Barack's speech in Terre Haute, apparently Barack, once again, said so eloquently what I WOULD say, if I could put words together the way he does (and I don't think this is "bashing," it's just reporting the facts)...

Obama Rebukes Palin on Earmarks

By CHARLES BABINGTON

AP

TERRE HAUTE, Ind. (Sept. 6) - Barack Obama made his first direct criticism of Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin on Saturday, saying she pretends to oppose spending earmarks when she actually has embraced them.

Speaking to 800 people at the Wabash Valley Fairgrounds in Terre Haute, Ind., the Democratic presidential nominee ridiculed John McCain and his running mate, the Alaska governor, for describing themselves as agents of change at this week's GOP convention.

"Don't be fooled," Obama told the crowd surrounding him in a large barn. "John McCain's party, with the help of John McCain, has been in charge" for nearly eight years.

"I know the governor of Alaska has been saying she's change, and that's great," Obama said. "She's a skillful politician. But, you know, when you've been taking all these earmarks when it's convenient, and then suddenly you're the champion anti-earmark person, that's not change. Come on! I mean, words mean something, you can't just make stuff up."

McCain has vowed to wipe out earmarks, which are targeted funding for specific projects that lawmakers put into spending bills. As governor, Palin originally supported earmarks for a controversial $398 million Alaska project dubbed the "bridge to nowhere." But she dropped her support after the state's likely share of the cost rose. She hung onto $27 million to build the approach road to the bridge.

Under Palin's leadership, Alaska this year asked for almost $300 per person in requests for pet projects from one of McCain's top adversaries: indicted Sen. Ted Stevens. That's more than any other state received, per person, from Congress for the current budget year. Other states got just $34 worth of local projects per person this year, on average, according to Citizens Against Government Waste, a Washington-based watchdog20group.The state government's earmark requests to Congress in her first year in office exceeded $550 million, more than $800 per resident. Palin actually reduced the state government's requests for special projects this year in the wake of President Bush's demand for a cutback in earmarks.

Alaska also has become so accustomed to largess flowing from Congress through Stevens that most of Palin's earmark requests this year — such as studies of Alaskan fisheries,=2 0grants to combat drug trafficking, and rural airport upgrades — simply keep ongoing programs going. Among her requests was $150,000 to pay the travel bills of state and fisheries industry representatives on the boards that implement North Pacific fisheries agreements.

Until Saturday, Obama had refrained from criticizing Palin directly, saying only that she, like McCain, would continue the Bush administration's policies.

Democrats have debated how to deal with Palin. They want to avoid charges of sexism but find ways to highlight what they see as her political weaknesses.

Obama delivered some of his most withering criticisms yet of McCain, although he did so with chuckles and an air of mock disbelief. McCain has acknowledged voting with President Bush 90 percent of the time in Congress, Obama said.

"And suddenly he's the change agent? Ha. He says, 'I'm going to tell those lobbyists that their days of running Washington are over.' Who is he going to tell? Is he going to tell his campaign chairman, who's one of the biggest corporate lobbyists in Washington? Is he going to tell his campaign manager, who was one of the biggest corporate lobbyists in Washington?"

"I mean, come on, they must think you're stupid," Obama said as the crowd laughed and cheered.

The McCain campaign noted that Obama has steered numerous earmarks to his state of Illinois. However, Obama has not been the critic of earmarks that McCain and, more recently Palin, have been.

Obama said Republicans are targeting his character, and he criticized McCain for saying he would reduce the partisan rancor in Washington. Pretending to address McCain, he said, "Did you pay attention to the last two days of your convention? Were you not watching?"

"When you start just focusing exclusively on trying to tear the other person down instead of what you are going to do on behalf of the American people to deal with this economy," Obama said, "then that's not serving Democrats, that's not serving Republicans, that's not serving anybody."

Reflections on the 2008 Democratic National Convention

I have been unpacking, washing clothes, and helping our son get caught up with some missed schoolwork, as well as canvassing in our neighborhood, so I will have to edit this later, to share some more thoughts about our Denver experience. My efforts to put photos on this blog have meant with some setbacks. But I'll keep plugging away.

If you saw the convention on TV, you probably had a better view of many of the convention activities than we did. However, we would not trade this experience of actually being there and experiencing it LIVE, for anything.