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So we are well into the Obama administration now and as is pointed out in this article, Joe Biden is not the gaffe-machine everyone said he would be. To be honest, if it weren’t for that article, I don’t think I would have thought about Joe this week and that’s something the article doesn’t focus on – he’s been well out of the public eye. Whether that is because the White House wants him out of view or its because the press is bored with competence is the question though.

The article is good at showing a strong, confident leader:

Joe Biden had a question. During a long Sunday meeting with President Obama and top national-security advisers on Sept. 13, the VP interjected, “Can I just clarify a factual point? How much will we spend this year on Afghanistan?” Someone provided the figure: $65 billion. “And how much will we spend on Pakistan?” Another figure was supplied: $2.25 billion. “Well, by my calculations that’s a 30-to-1 ratio in favor of Afghanistan. So I have a question. Al Qaeda is almost all in Pakistan, and Pakistan has nuclear weapons. And yet for every dollar we’re spending in Pakistan, we’re spending $30 in Afghanistan. Does that make strategic sense?” The White House Situation Room fell silent. But the questions had their desired effect: those gathered began putting more thought into Pakistan as the key theater in the region.

… but it doesn’t show the great disappointment a great deal of people have at Joe not being a buffoon. Personally, I am glad he is disappointing people.

I noted with interest that Obama has tapped Cass Sunstein to be the head of Federal Regulation (head of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs). This is interesting to me for a couple reasons which I didn’t realize until a couple months ago when my wife told me that this was the man who married Samantha Power (a person I have great respect for). It then dawned on me that Cass had once been a guest blogger on Lawrence Lessig’s blog and had also written a book about reintroducing to the U.S. FDR’s Second Bill of Rights.

The Second Bill of Rights is something I took interest in a few years ago when I first became aware of it (I am sometimes slow on the news of these things… by decades). Its a brilliant bit of words which has influenced many other countries but never took hold here due to many people’s misinterpretation of what “social” means (in other words, thinking that all social == communist). Here simply, are the guarantees the Second Bill of Rights would provide:

• A job with a living wage
• Freedom from unfair competition and monopolies
• Homeownership
• Medical care
• Education
• Recreation

FDR framed this list of rights as a failure of the original Bill of Rights to meet the “pursuit of happiness” mandate in the Constitution. This was not introduced as a change to the constitution but was to be worked out “politically” (what great hope!) To me that was a shrewd move that still allows it to have some measure of success.

I am under no illusion that Cass Sunstein can do much about the Second Bill of Rights as the head of Federal regulation, however, for those who don’t like all the former Clinton people coming into Obama’s fold I will hold him up as a great example of an attempt to change the way we run our country.

I should point out that the above list of rights is a brief version and not how FDR put it, but it is a version I like. Below is an excerpt from the transcript of FDR’s 1944 State of the Union Address in which he introduced the idea. I always found it amazing that he was working on these during one of the most active periods of WWII.

As our nation has grown in size and stature, however—as our industrial economy expanded—these political rights proved inadequate to assure us equality in the pursuit of happiness. We have come to a clear realization of the fact that true individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence. “Necessitous men are not free men.” People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made. In our day these economic truths have become accepted as self-evident. We have accepted, so to speak, a second Bill of Rights under which a new basis of security and prosperity can be established for all—regardless of station, race, or creed.

Among these are:

The right to a useful and remunerative job in the industries or shops or farms or mines of the nation;

The right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation;

The right of every farmer to raise and sell his products at a return which will give him and his family a decent living;

The right of every businessman, large and small, to trade in an atmosphere of freedom from unfair competition and domination by monopolies at home or abroad;

The right of every family to a decent home;

The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health;

The right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment;

The right to a good education.

All of these rights spell security. And after this war is won we must be prepared to move forward, in the implementation of these rights, to new goals of human happiness and well-being. America’s own rightful place in the world depends in large part upon how fully these and similar rights have been carried into practice for our citizens.

Update: Here’s some more information on Sunstein’s appointment and why he fits into this particular job.

It seems that the English press is getting nervous about the possibility of England not getting the 2018 World Cup they already have no guarantee of getting. According to this article in the Guardian, the election of Barack Obama might swing the World Cup Stateside!

… really?

Now when you think of America, you don’t think George W Bush or war, you think of this man, Obama, who has made history and given hope to millions.

I should point out that that quote comes from “a source” ™ – but that source hasn’t done his or her math. In 2018 Barack Obama would no longer be President – this is one of the brilliant aspects of our Republic. So it is possible, though dreadful, that some Bush-like war drone could be our President then. I’m just sayin…

Local:

I walk in to my favorite coffee shop and am greeted by my favorite Barrista:

Good Morning Dave! Welcome back to America!

Global:

The first work email I open up this morning is from our Kenyan office:

Dear colleagues,

This is to inform you that Thursday Nov 6, 2008 has been declared a public
holiday in Kenya in celebration of Obama’s victory in the United States
elections.

The Kenya office joins our colleagues in the US on this remarkable victory
that we believe marks a new beginning for the American people and the world
at large.May Gob bless you all!!

Hot on the heels of the news that the iconic “Joe the Plumber” is a tax-cheat and isn’t actually licensed as a plumber, not to mention a person who probably shouldn’t have made himself so visible… I’ve actually been thinking about ol’ Joseph and his recent exchange with Obama.

If you saw the exchange, you will remember that Joe says he is getting ready to buy a company that makes $250,000 to $280,000 a year and both he and the candidate speak about that as if every dime of that money is his take-home salary. Unless I’m missing something really big about the plumbing business, there would be no need for Joe to purchase a business if it were just Joe working it and bringing home every freakin’ dime. So if the company is making that much and there is a van, an office, a phone, plumbing supplies to purchase ahead of time, etc, etc – there is no way that Joe is going to be making $250,000 a year.

So once Joe knows how much he is going to make, he should head on over to http://taxcut.barackobama.com/the Obama Taxcut Calculator and see how much of a cut he will be getting.

As to small business taxes, Obama did actually address that in his conversation with Joe – but all the way around, if Joe were actually telling the truth… and he was actually a real plumber and was actually going to be buying that business… he’d be golden.

One last point Joe, taxes are not punishment – they help pay for many, many services. From our military to pieces of cloth to cover up naked statues when our former Attorney General is in the room. Much needed services and programs that we should all be thankful for. Its a privilege to live in such a wealthy country, Joe

Update: Good thing I finally got around to looking at the New York Times today – I was correct about the flaw in Joe and Obama’s tax discussion. From the Times article, Joe in the Spotlight:

And his question to Mr. Obama about paying taxes? According to some tax analysts, if Mr. Wurzelbacher’s gross receipts from his business is $250,000 — and not his taxable income — then he would not have to pay higher taxes under Mr. Obama’s plan, and probably would be eligible for a tax cut.

I knew very little about Kathleen Parker until today. She was on the Colbert Report last night and was funny and entertaining. If you are not familiar (as I was not) she is a syndicated columnist who tends toward the conservative side… ok, not really tends… she is a conservative Republican. Last night she was on Colbert mainly because she had written a scathing article on Sarah Palin that has drawn some fire. During her interview last night, she almost admitted that she was voting for Obama. Crazy.

But I bring it up only to note that she has another, more recent, article I read this evening. Its entitled To Appalachia…. with Respect. Its about the Obama campaign’s work in the Appalachian region. Instead of going to the political hired-hands to learn about the region, she chose to go to someone who writes literature from and about it. That almost makes me a Kathleen Parker fan.

The person she went to is Ron Rash, a poet, author, and professor at Western Carolina… an N.C. man. Parker quotes Rash about what advice he would give Obama for campaigning in Appalachia to which he talks about the similarities Obama has with the people of the region:

African-Americans built this country and got nothing back, he says. So did Appalachians. What Obama may not know is that most mountain communities were pro-Union during the Civil War. These often-impoverished descendants of the Scots-Irish weren’t slaveholders, after all. In a sense, blacks and Appalachians are natural allies.

Well… I don’t know if that’s exactly what I expected from a poet, but I can kind of see his point. But despite that, I always have one big problem with people who are talking so specifically about the Appalachian region – which is a problem that is true for almost every area of the United States – its far too big to be so compartmentalized. Our impoverished N.C. mountain history has very little in common with the steel history of PA. Yet both are “Appalachian”. Its not so simple to give advice about an area so large and so diverse. Its the same just in our state – although we have a portion in Appalachia, its only a portion. I personally don’t identify with the region yet I am excited to see Parker go to someone from N.C. for her article due to my state pride.

You have to admire any campaign that can even partially recognize all these nuances.

Holy crap! I have a blog??

Ever since twitter came along (to me) I’ve been writing in 140 characters. Makes for lame blog posts. Oh yeah… there was also those weeks where my gall bladder went renegade, doubling me over in pain, and then the removal of said gall bladder. That kinda took me out of every action.

Last night’s VP debate gave me that itch again though. I think it was when my friend Shannon somehow transcribed this line from Sarah Palin when asked about Iran & Pakistan:

Nu-cu-ler is the be-all end-all of too many people, too many parts of our planet.

I could have heard it 100 times and still not been able to write it down – it confuses my weak brain far too much to even record. Good job Shannon.

So here’s the deal. Our debate process is very broken. We don’t watch debates for debating, we watch it to measure the perceived performance of each candidate. Sure, occasionally a candidate will spill some policy (thanks Joe) but mostly they are just being judged on what we expect as the worst from them.

Today the headlines and articles are all about the fact that Palin didn’t drop any amazing bombshells of idiocy and Biden didn’t take a giant crap on the stage and call it John McCain while using the N word and pissing on a flag. Were it a smarter world I would think that there would be some real analysis of what the candidates said in terms of shedding light on their policies and if the journalist wants more sensationalism they could do some fact checking on things like what the Commander of forces in Afghanistan really said (hint: Palin got it wrong.)

But I guess that’s just not who we are. A shame really.

Snuck in while the major networks were off blabbering on about other crap, Former US Representative Jim Leach gave a speech last night at the Democratic Convention. I’m afraid people didn’t see it, but even if they did his terrible delivery and “alien from Looney Tunes” voice might have overshadowed his countent. And what GREAT content is was. It was one of the better speeches I’ve hear/read this year. Beautiful in its call for real politics.

I’ve copied it here:

As a Republican, I stand before you with deep respect for the history and traditions of my political party. But it is clear to all Americans that something is out of kilter in our great republic. In less than a decade America’s political and economic standing in the world has been diminished. Our nation’s extraordinary leadership in so many areas is simply not reflected in the partisan bickering and ideological politics of Washington. Seldom has the case for an inspiring new political ethic been more compelling. And seldom has an emerging leader so matched the needs of the moment.

The platform of this transformative figure is a call for change. The change Barack Obama is advocating is far more than a break with today’s politics. It is a clarion call for renewal rooted in time-tested American values that tap Republican, as well as Democratic traditions.

Perspective is difficult to bring to events of the day, but in sweeping terms, there have been four great debates in our history to which both parties have contributed. The first debate, led by Thomas Jefferson, the first Democrat to be elected president, centered on the question of whether a country could be established, based on The Rights of Man.

The second debate, led by Abraham Lincoln, the first Republican to be elected president, was about definitions—whether The Rights of Man applied to individuals who were neither pale nor male. It took almost two centuries of struggle, hallmarked by a civil war, the suffrage and abolitionist movements, the Harlem renaissance and a courageous civil rights leadership to bring meaning to the values embedded in the Declaration of Independence.

The third debate, symbolized by the new deal of Franklin Roosevelt and the emphasis on individual initiative of Ronald Reagan, involves the question of opportunity, whether rights are fully meaningful if all citizens are not given a chance to succeed and provide for their families.

The fourth debate, which acquired grim relevance with the dawn of the nuclear age, is the question of whether any rights are possible without peace and environmental security.

The American progressive tradition reflected in these debates spans Democratic standard bearers from the prairie populist William Jennings Bryan to the Camelot statesman, John F. Kennedy. It includes Republicans like Teddy Roosevelt, who built up the National Parks system and broke down corporate monopolies, and Dwight David Eisenhower, who ran on a pledge to end a war in Korea, brought a stop to European colonial intervention in the Middle East, quietly integrated the Washington, D.C., school system and not so quietly sent the 101st Airborne to Little Rock to squash segregation in public schools throughout the country.

In models of international statecraft, progressive leadership includes Al Gore, who helped galvanize worldwide understanding of the most challenging environmental threat currently facing the planet, and our current president’s father, who led an internationally sanctioned coalition to oust Saddam Hussein from Kuwait.

In Congress, Democratic senators like Pat Moynihan and Mike Mansfield served in Republican administrations. On the Republican side, Arthur Vandenberg helped President Truman launch the Marshall Plan, and Everett Dirksen backed Lyndon Johnson’s landmark civil rights legislation.

In troubled times, it was understood that country comes before party, that in perilous moments mutual concern for the national interest must be the only factor in political judgments. This does not mean that debate within and between the political parties should not be vibrant. Yet what frustrates so many citizens is the lack of bipartisanship in Washington and the way today’s Republican Party has broken with its conservative heritage.

The party that once emphasized individual rights has gravitated in recent years toward regulating values. The party of military responsibility has taken us to war with a country that did not attack us. The party that formerly led the world in arms control has moved to undercut treaties crucial to the defense of the earth. The party that prides itself on conservation has abdicated its responsibilities in the face of global warming. And the party historically anchored in fiscal restraint has nearly doubled the national debt, squandering our precious resources in an undisciplined and unprecedented effort to finance a war with tax cuts.

America has seldom faced more critical choices: whether we should maintain an occupational force for decades in a country and region that resents western intervention or elect a leader who, in a carefully structured way, will bring our troops home from Iraq as the heroes they are. Whether it is wise to continue to project power largely alone with flickering support around the world or elect a leader who will follow the model of General Eisenhower and this president’s father and lead in concert with allies.

Whether it is prudent to borrow from future generations to pay for today’s reckless fiscal policies or elect a leader who will shore up our budgets and return to a strong dollar. Whether it is preferable to continue the policies that have weakened our position in the world, deepened our debt and widened social divisions or elect a leader who will emulate John F. Kennedy and relight a lamp of fairness at home and reassert an energizing mix of realism and idealism abroad.

The portfolio of challenges passed on to the next president will be as daunting as any since the Great Depression and World War II. This is not a time for politics as usual or for run-of-the-mill politicians. Little is riskier to the national interest than more of the same. America needs new ideas, new energy and a new generation of leadership.

Hence, I stand before you proud of my party’s contributions to American history but, as a citizen, proud as well of the good judgment of good people in this good party, in nominating a transcending candidate, an individual whom I am convinced will recapture the American dream and be a truly great president: the senator from Abraham Lincoln’s state—Barack Obama. Thank you.

So I made a statement on the Twitter the other day that I don’t fully disagree with Obama’s position on the FISA bill. Let me be clear that I think the bill is bogus and goes against the values and laws that made our country great. However, one of the things I have always loved about the Senate, and one thing I love about Obama is compromise. Democracy is compromise, and it must be. Otherwise it might as well be a dictatorship.

So here is how I see this. First of all, this does not provide full immunity to telecoms. Most importantly, it does not provide immunity from criminal activity. This bill is written to give immunity to the telecoms in civil actions. To what end, I still have not figured out.

The bigger issue here is that the President broke the law and got commercial enterprise to help. I cannot even imagine what it must have been like to sit in the HQ of some telecom company and hear that the President is now asking you to spy under the such and such Order or such and so Act. And I think most courts would dismiss immediately a case against a telecom upon hearing that the President did such a thing.

So this thing was going to pass. Obama knew that and was hoping that one of the three amendments that were attempted (one by a Republican) would pass to make it an easier bill to accept. That wasn’t a terrible idea actually and that’s the kind of thing the Senate is good at. At the same time, he thought that we in fact need a FISA bill. This is where I disagree with him – because I have never been giving any reason to believe that any intelligence gathering activity we have ever been engaged in has resulted in anything positive – and that’s the failing of a government that has no transparency. You can’t prove secrets.

The old Obama people fell in love with is still there – just read the last two paragraphs from his explanation of his vote:

I learned long ago, when working as an organizer on the South Side of Chicago, that when citizens join their voices together, they can hold their leaders accountable. I’m not exempt from that. I’m certainly not perfect, and expect to be held accountable too. I cannot promise to agree with you on every issue. But I do promise to listen to your concerns, take them seriously, and seek to earn your ongoing support to change the country. That is why we have built the largest grassroots campaign in the history of presidential politics, and that is the kind of White House that I intend to run as President of the United States — a White House that takes the Constitution seriously, conducts the peoples’ business out in the open, welcomes and listens to dissenting views, and asks you to play your part in shaping our country’s destiny.

Democracy cannot exist without strong differences. And going forward, some of you may decide that my FISA position is a deal breaker. That’s ok. But I think it is worth pointing out that our agreement on the vast majority of issues that matter outweighs the differences we may have. After all, the choice in this election could not be clearer. Whether it is the economy, foreign policy, or the Supreme Court, my opponent has embraced the failed course of the last eight years, while I want to take this country in a new direction. Make no mistake: if John McCain is elected, the fundamental direction of this country that we love will not change. But if we come together, we have an historic opportunity to chart a new course, a better course.

I’m digging the Obama campaign’s “Fight the Smears” website. Obviously we are only seeing the opening salvos from the classless swiftboater-types, and I’m not sure if a website will be able to battle their ire, but I still like it.

On the site already you can see the truth about Michelle saying “Whitey”, Barrack’s birth certificate, Barrack’s Muslim faith(the horror!), Barrack’s racist book, and the non-pledge-of-allegiance-saying Obama. Man, he is a nasty, nasty person!