Will there ever be an end?

As you may have heard South Dakota recently passed legislation to remove a woman's right to choose. The showdown between the different sides of this issue will take place in the US Supreme Court. Given the new make-up of the court, this situation could become a bit heated. Those on both sides of the issue are claiming the upper hand in this battle, but it is unclear how this all will play out. Most Democrats are hoping that Alito and Roberts will hold more loyalty to precedent than they will towards their own conservative feelings. I, the usual optimist, am actually concerned about how this will end. I hope for the best but millions have been gunning for Roe v. Wade since the decision was handed down. For many abortions are a very touchy issue, I don't think anyone approves of the actual procedure, but privacy must be protected. Opponents must realize that there are more important things in this country than what a woman chooses or does not choose to do with her body. Constitutionally, its a privacy issue.
Such other important things include the recent destabilizing activity going on in Iraq. Groups have their heart set on de-railing the democratization of their own country. This is what the country sghould focus on as well as social security and other civil issues, not an issue that was decided 35 years ago. Whoever is president when Bush leaves office is gonna have a royal mess and I hope if it's a Democrat then, he or she will be able to pull through it.
Also as a small note, there is still a debate about Katrina and the handling of it. Apparently some loans have not come through yet and the blame game continues. The Dept. of Homeland Security will now be a part of any disaster relief in the future... great more red tape.

We face some troubling times ahead and hopefully, to use a sports reference, the right people will step up to the plate.

"The Fire in Africa"

At the recent National Prayer Breakfast Bono (yes thats right, like from U2) spoke to President Bush about thw work that still needs to be done in Africa. After a year of The One Campaign putting pressure on the government and the people to pay attention to the needs of Africa, especially when it comes to poverty and HIV/AIDS, i wish to add a little personal antidote. I've spent the past 6 months in Africa, the first 4 in South Africa, a month of travel throughout Southern Africa and I am one month into a spring semster in Ghana. Sub-Saharan Africa is plagued with many problems, malaria (a preventable and treatable disease) continues to claim millions of lives a year, especially pregnant women and young children. HIV/AIDS has already killed 25 million people in Sub-Saharan Africa and nearly 26 million are currently HIV positive, with that number rising every day.
Bono spoke about the three most important things of OUR generation will be remember for in the history books
1. The response to the war on terror
2. The digital revolution
3. What we DID or DID NOT do to help put out the FIRE ragging in AFRICA

Well clearly, if your reading a blog, you are well-versed on the second topic, and media coverage bombards us with minute by minute updates on the middle-east (and I know I will never forget where I was on September 11) But how much does the third influence your daily life?

Of course, I am passionate about the third topic. I spent much of my time in South Africa researching the effects of HIV/AIDS on developing (and therefore fragile) democracies and I am now doing education in the Ghanaian community about HIV/AIDS.
The Tsunami last year killed approximentally 150,000 people, it was a global tragedy no doubt. Each month, HIV/AIDS kills as many people, and malaria more. Perhaps this will help put the depth of the problem to all of you.
Why am I telling you this?

We, as educated Americans, and as compassionate democrats (for I have very little faith in the compassion of most republicans) . Most Americans, democrats in particular, would pride themselves on being non-racist, but would they sit idly by as 6500 Europeans died every day of preventable diseases? I do not think so. Americans would be instantly mobilized to provide the life-saving medication and supplies to slow the spread of any such disease. That is what malaria is doing in countries like my beloved Ghana.
Perhaps to say it is racism is to harsh...perhaps it is ignorance. I am a firm believer that ignorance is dangerous. Educate yourself, and help make sure that the people around you are educated.

It may be cliche to say, and we have all heard it a million times, but we ARE the future. The eminant social, economic, political COLLAPSE of Africa is a realitiy that WE are going to have to deal with as the next wave of politicians, businessmen and woman and as citizens of the most powerful and influential nation in the world.

Educate yourself about Africa, please. And help Africa to educate itself...support the work of NGO's in DC and around the world that help educate. Great work has already been done, but there is so much more to do. In places like South Africa, where racial divisions have scarred generations there are so many things to overcome.

Thabo Mbeki, the current president of South Africa, has publically called into question the scientific basis of anti-retroviral drugs that help prevent Mother to Child transmission. He had to be brought to court and forced to provide these drugs to his people. International pressure is KEY to make sure that people are getting ACCURATE information from KNOWLEDGABLE sources. We were all lucky enough to have HIV/AIDS education in school. We are certainly more knowledgable as a generation then our parents are. (Ask an "average" 50 year old about HIV transmission and they may very well have wrong information, many I have spoken to do)

So I pleed with you. This is a fight that I will be fighting for decades to come, but please do your part as citizens of the global community.
1. educate yourself about Africa
2. understand the complexities of problems
3. Donate however you can to organizations doing work on the ground
4. put pressure on our government to do ANYTHING and EVERYTHING it can to help


Remember, we can move mountains

Biden '08?

Yeah, that's right... I liked what Chris had to say in the last blog post.

Joe Biden is still my favorite Democratic candidate for the next election. Why? Because he tells it like it is. Plain and simple. But I also like Mark Warner too... we'll see how things play out.

If you want to know more about Senator Biden, I can tell you that he isn't afraid to limit himself or the country. In the past week, Biden has discussed two things that no other Democrat, or for that matter no other politician, has done. He has presented a real five-point terrorism plan, and he has advocated fighting against genocide in Sudan. He has also grilled the Attorney General on the illegal executive wiretapping that has occured under Bush's watch.

These statements are gutsy in the political world, but they are also the right things to do, and that's why Biden deserves to lead.

If you like the idea of Biden '08, join the BU for Biden facebook group. For that matter, if you like America, join the apple pie group.

Dick Cheney: Oh the Things You Do

Well, we have had an interesting time on the national front this month. First, as you probably know, the Senate has passed Bush's tax cuts, and made them permanent. The USA Patriot Act also was extended. Secondly, Dick Cheney shot a guy, yes you heard me right; Cheney shot a guy in the face/neck region with a shotgun. All kidding aside, hopefully the injured man will be ok, but more importantly, everybody’s fun happy corrupt buddy, Mr. Libby has stated that he was told by superiors to release the name of the CIA agent married to a government official. This will most likely be yet another exciting week for the Bush Administration’s damage control team. The Good news on the national front is that Joe Biden is further pushing his political feelers out into the national realm. Biden ’08? It’s a possibility, after all the republicans are making our job much easier.

Flip Flop...

As much as I hate the word flip flop, I really wish that it would be applied in America like it is in Britain. Watch this video from the BBC article. Seriously, you'll love it!

No More Third Parties in Oregon?

As supporters of our Democratic Party, we are all called to the cause of rallying support for Democratic candidates nationwide. Surely we all see eye to eye on many issues, but it is also important to remember the tolerance and opportunity we must give to those with differing views from our own. Questions on this matter have recently arisen in the great state of Oregon that have propelled bipartisan politics, with a strict focus on the “bi”. Oregon, with growing Republican support, especially in the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections, has set itself up as a leader in the premeditated elimination of third parties.
House Bill 2614 makes it clear that “any voter who casts a ballot in a primary election cannot help nominate an independent candidate to the ballot”. The bill was co-sponsored by state reps Mary Nolan (D-Portland) and Derrick Kitts (R-Aloha) and passed by an overwhelming vote in both the House and the Senate and was signed into law by Governor Ted Kulongoski on July 21st, 2005. It wasn’t until a few weeks ago that the measure started making waves when The Oregonian published a story uncovering the hidden ramifications of the HB 2614. Among other things, the new law, which seems to be a response to the vote-stealing Nader incidents of 2004, effectively limits who a voter can and cannot support, as well as ending the practice of voters signing petitions for multiple would-be candidates. This news comes as a shock, especially in Oregon, where one quarter of the 2.1 million registered voters consider themselves “unaffiliated” or “independent”. While we would certainly hope that these voters “see the light”, so to speak, we as representatives of the true Party of the People, must make it our duty to sniff out acts such as these and defend a nation that thrives on democracy and choice among its voters.

West Wing Political Advice via England

Here's something I found in the Guardian the other day. I miss you guys and I miss the West Wing :)

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Ten top political tips from The West Wing

Friday February 3, 2006
The Guardian

In yesterday's papers, it was claimed that the "sleepover" episode of The West Wing - in which the Republicans are tricked into calling an important vote on the basis that there aren't many Democrats around (when in fact the Democrats are hiding out in an empty office) - provided direct inspiration for this week's "rebellion by stealth", which included an "under the radar" Tory whipping operation, against the government's religious hatred bill.

1. Wear Black-Tie for War Crimes
In arguably the finest West Wing episode, Posse Comitatus, a foreign leader is illegally assassinated on Bartlet's secret orders while the Prez, in tuxedo, attends a gala performance of The Wars of the Roses. The advantage for a leader is that this allows slick and ironic intercutting between Shakespearean and modern acts of regicide and also long, silent passages in which the top man can display magisterial moral anguish while observers reflect that civilised public dress may hide savage private actions.

2. Never Marry a Doctor
The benefit to a politician of a medical spouse is that she can administer secret injections to get him through the multiple relapsing multiple sclerosis he's keeping from the people. But the drawback is that the extreme right can use medical malpractice suits brought against the missus to discredit you, and that her quiet word to the anaesthetist before you are operated on following an assassination attempt may release the secret and threaten your career. Robin Cook's divorce from Dr Margaret Cook prevented this theory being tested in British politics but US presidential hopeful Howard Dean, a doctor married to a doctor, should pay attention.

3. How to Bring Peace to the Middle East
By courting moderate Palestinian leaders, drive a wedge between the members of the Authority. Then invite these moderates to meet Israeli leaders at Camp David during a weekend in which an attractive young female aide suffers a pulmonary embolism caused by the earlier bombing of her Jeep in the Gaza Strip. Next, arrange for your chief of staff to suffer a heart attack in the woods - after disagreeing with your Jerusalem solution - and for a young employee to agonise about completing his college qualifications. Finally, secure a two-state solution using US (yes, not UN) troops to police a Jerusalem in which Arabs have sovereignty over their holy sites but Israel is not required to surrender sovereignty over Jerusalem.

4. Speak Latin/Win a Nobel Prize
While it was once said that George W Bush thought Latin is what they speak in Latin America, Jeb Bartlet is fluent in the language of the Romans, able to silence aides with throwaway lines such as "post hoc, ergo propter hoc" and to rail against God in Latin while standing in an empty cathedral after the death of his secretary. Conservatives might like to note that Boris Johnson is the leading Latin-speaking politician in Britain, although he lacks another important element of Bartlet's authority: having won a Nobel prize for economics. The message to aspiring politicians is clear: don't think London or Washington, think ancient Rome and Stockholm.

5. Never Dye Your Hair
Despite his mastery of dead languages and supply-side models, Bartlett has a single moral weakness: the most unlikely hair-colour on a sixtysomething man this side of Paul McCartney. For the first three seasons, aficionados wore out the colour and contrast buttons on the remote until realising that he was meant to look like that. Chancellor Schroder of Germany is the only modern leader known to have followed the Bartlet barnet model and was mocked for it. Significantly, Bush and Blair are both now playing glad to be grey.

6. Stand Lobbyists in the Lobby
Political activists can perhaps learn from the season three episode The Indians in the Lobby, in which a pair of Munsee-Stockbridge Indians stand in the central thoroughfare of the White House and refuse to move until the president settles a grievance with the interior department. The drawback of this is that you have to get yourself invited first but a couple of Exmoor hunters or frustrated educationalists should certainly consider a blockade of young Leo's playroom.

7. Don't Consult Drunken Toffs on Foreign Policy
If India and Pakistan are poised to fight a nuclear war over Kashmir, it is inadvisable to seek advice from a completely pissed English aristocrat called Lord Andrew Maybury who is played by that thin one who was Nicholas Nickleby for the RSC all those years ago.

8. Choose Aides with Personal Problems
Whitehall uses "positive vetting" to eliminate employees with potential embarrassments to the administration. But forget this: the West Wing model is negative-vetting. When selecting staff, it's crucial to choose people who have - or potentially might develop - a dark personal secret. Perhaps your chief of staff could be a recovering alcoholic and gambler, while another key aide could have a brother in the military or be dating your daughter or have inadvertently slept with a call-girl or suffer the unwanted attentions of a stalker, leading to the need for a personal security guard with whom she falls deeply in love just before he gets shot. The old-fashioned political playbook says that this would cause problems in the office but the more holes in your payroll you have, the more opportunities you will be offered as a leader to demonstrate your wisdom, tolerance and compassion.

9. Walk and Talk at High Speed
All conversations in politics should be conducted at high speed while striding down corridors. This combines legislation with exercise, keeping the leader and his employees telegenic. If walk-talk became a policy in British politics, John Prescott would soon have a 32in waist and David Cameron cheekbones.

10. Prevent Successors
President Bartlet has achieved the dream of all politicians: when he leaves office later this year, he will not be replaced, because the whole show has been brought to an end due to falling public enthusiasm. Gordon Brown will just have to hope that Tony hasn't been following The West Wing too closely.

SOTU Letdown

Here are my thoughts from London on the State of the Union Address:

Coming out of his worst year yet in the White House, President Bush had a chance to rebuild his administration during the State of the Union Address last night. He squandered that chance and delivered a failure of a speech.

The president introduced nothing strikingly new for America. Instead, he reiterated plans of the past, but attempted to mask them through sugar-coated language. It’s nice that he talked about funding programs dealing with HIV, malaria, poverty, corruption, and disrepair at home and abroad. However, he has no intention of actually dealing with these issues in the real world.

This has been a common theme with Bush: he can talk (sometimes), but when it comes to walking – not so much. For example, he suggested a massive focus on poverty after Hurricane Katrina, yet a week later, it had fallen by the wayside. It must have slipped his mind last night as well.

Bush mentioned renewable energy, but cut research funds in his last budget. He emphasized science and math education, but also cut those very funds in his last budget. I applaud his support for recruiting American scientists – it will only create more experts that stand behind the evidence of stem cell research and global climate change.

Moreover, Bush pushed his usual black and white logic to justify violating the Constitution and to demand support for his faltering Iraq policies.

The eruption in the chambers surrounding social security reminded me of a scene out of the British House of Commons. While members of both parties cheered, rabbled and booed, the scenario pointed out the true decline of the Bush administration: last year he was pushing a privatization scheme, but just a year later, he was forced to abandon it in favor of a bipartisan commission to think about developing common solutions.

Bush’s biggest mistake was his lack of a vision – the same problem experienced by his father. Sure, he dreams of a world firmly in line with democracy, and thinks that America should not follow an isolationist path. Every president since WWII has shared these feelings, so that wasn’t surprising.

More significant though, Bush failed to set the stage for a stronger America at home.

To be fair, the Democratic response delivered by Virginia Governor Tim Kaine also failed to outline out a clear vision for the country. Still, it correctly highlighted a common theme surrounding Bush: mismanagement. He failed in the private sector, he failed as governor of Texas, and he has failed at dealing with Katrina, creating jobs, rebuilding Iraq, fixing the deficit, lowering healthcare costs, and solving education woes.

Bush’s 51 minute speech was sadly uninspiring, especially at a time when corruption plagues the halls of Congress and the people desperately need strength in leadership. By upholding common-sense solutions, service, and unity, the Democrats solidly proved at least one thing:

“There is a better way!”


Update: This was printed as a letter to the editor in the Daily Free Press today.