Some American racism this time...

Courtesy of many blogs [Feministing, The Questionable Authority, Feministe, Enemy Combatant Trailmix Appreciation Club, Shakesville] comes this delightful cartoon from the New York Post:



Really, New York Post? You really want to suggest that a chimp wrote the stimulus bill? The stimulus bill that is widely viewed as President Obama's. Is there really no-one working for you that saw a problem with this cartoon?

Really?

2 Images from the GeoEye1 Sattelite

The first is a picture of the Capitol Building with the crowd in front of it. Pretty impressive I think you'll agree.




If you look at the right hand side of this picture you'll see the Capitol Building again. Now compare the huge crowd in front of it to the crowds all down the Washington Mall all the way up to the Washington Monument.

Tuesday, January the 20th, 2009

A tip o' the hat to This Wheel's On Fire for the picture.

This a prayer that I can get behind

From the Friendly Atheist is the text of a prayer recited by Rt. Rev. V. Gene Robinson (Episcopal Bishop of New Hampshire).

I want to bring this to attention essentially in reply to certain misgivings that I know people have about Obama. A lot of people don't understand the fuss surrounding him; who don't see the power of his message and question whether his policies can match his rhetoric.

For me this following prayer encapsulates the values and goals that I think Obama will represent as President. It is for this reason that I personally am so excited at his victory.

O God of our many understandings, we pray that you will…

Bless us with tears — for a world in which over a billion people exist on less than a dollar a day, where young women from many lands are beaten and raped for wanting an education, and thousands die daily from malnutrition, malaria, and AIDS.

Bless us with anger — at discrimination, at home and abroad, against refugees and immigrants, women, people of color, gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people.

Bless us with discomfort — at the easy, simplistic “answers” we’ve preferred to hear from our politicians, instead of the truth, about ourselves and the world, which we need to face if we are going to rise to the challenges of the future.

Bless us with patience — and the knowledge that none of what ails us will be “fixed” anytime soon, and the understanding that our new president is a human being, not a messiah.

Bless us with humility — open to understanding that our own needs must always be balanced with those of the world.

Bless us with freedom from mere tolerance — replacing it with a genuine respect and warm embrace of our differences, and an understanding that in our diversity, we are stronger.

Bless us with compassion and generosity — remembering that every religion’s God judges us by the way we care for the most vulnerable in the human community, whether across town or across the world.

And God, we give you thanks for your child Barack, as he assumes the office of President of the United States.

Give him wisdom beyond his years, and inspire him with Lincoln’s reconciling leadership style, President Kennedy’s ability to enlist our best efforts, and Dr. King’s dream of a nation for ALL the people.

Give him a quiet heart, for our Ship of State needs a steady, calm captain in these times.

Give him stirring words, for we will need to be inspired and motivated to make the personal and common sacrifices necessary to facing the challenges ahead.

Make him color-blind, reminding him of his own words that under his leadership, there will be neither red nor blue states, but the United States.

Help him remember his own oppression as a minority, drawing on that experience of discrimination, that he might seek to change the lives of those who are still its victims.

Give him the strength to find family time and privacy, and help him remember that even though he is president, a father only gets one shot at his daughters’ childhoods.

And please, God, keep him safe. We know we ask too much of our presidents, and we’re asking FAR too much of this one. We know the risk he and his wife are taking for all of us, and we implore you, O good and great God, to keep him safe. Hold him in the palm of your hand – that he might do the work we have called him to do, that he might find joy in this impossible calling, and that in the end, he might lead us as a nation to a place of integrity, prosperity and peace.

AMEN.

I wonder how different the current political climate would be if Bush had kept some of these things in mind.




I'd like to take this opportunity to remind people about the inauguration ceremony which we will be watching in New King's 11 from half four tomorrow afternoon. I hope to see you there.

Only 5 days to go

So its only 5 days to go until the Historic Labour Club event to celebrate the inauguration of Barack Obama and to celebrate the fact that change is coming to American the BBC have been posting some interviews with a diverse mix of Americans asking what they want the President to do and here is a link to what I think is the best.

Its by John Waters and if you have no idea who he is but have seen the film Hairspray with John Travolta well he is the guy who wrote and directed the original and is now an American icon because of his out there style.

Come see history in the making.

Yes it's the time of the American Election cycle when we finally get to see how the new President of the United States does by finally assuming office.

At 12 noon in Washington D.C.(EST) on Tuesday the 20th of January Barack Obama will take the oath of office to assume the Presidency and Aberdeen University Labour Club is holding an event where we can watch, in the comfort of New Kings, live on a big screen, the swearing in ceremony.

If you want to know more then go look at our facebook group which has more information.

Throw the Gay Down the Well and My Country Will Be Free

We are now under a month away from the end of Bush's term in office, more importantly we are under a month away from the Inauguration of Barack Obama as President. Much has been made of Obama's various cabinet appointments and the plans he has made with his transition team. This short period of transition is our first chance to see the reality as Obama as President, and it is for that reason that his choice of Rick Warren to give the Invocation at the Inauguration ceremony has kicked up a storm of commentary.

The issue is covered by Greta Christina, Daylight Atheism, The Questionable Authority, ERV, Friendly Atheist, Feministe, Religion Dispatches, The Boiling Point, Blogger Interrupted, , Pam's House Blend (Those last two cover the issue of the other religious leader speaking at the Inauguration which I will address later), amongst a mulitude of others.

The general consensus (Which I agree with) is one of disapproval; this choice of a man who has compared homosexuality with bestiality and abortion to the Holocaust is seen as misguided political manoeuvre intended to bring Fundamentalist Evangelicals to his team. Obama's stated justification of it is that:

In keeping with the spirit of unity and common purpose this Inauguration will reflect, the President-elect and Vice President-elect have chosen some of the world's most gifted artists and people with broad appeal to participate in the inaugural ceremonies.
(Excerpt from released "talking points".)

Nevertheless I had an opportunity to speak, and that dialogue I think is part of what my campaign's been all about, that we're not going to agree on every single issue, but what we have to do is to be able to create an atmosphere where we can disagree without being disagreeable, and then focus on those things that we hold in common as Americans. (emphasis mine)

Essentially the argument that Obama is proposing is that in a free and tolerant society all viewpoints should be represented and everyone should be included. I think his basic position can be summed up as "we can disagree without being disagreeable", now that is usually a sentiment I agree with. In this case however it is simply not true, because Rick Warren's positions are not just talk. As we have seen just recently in California (Our coverage here and here) people's rights can be curtailed and their lives affected detrimentally by the actions of people like Rick Warren. It's good to be inclusive but sometimes it's not possible to include everyone and then you have to make a choice. By choosing Rick Warren Obama is not simply giving a pedestal to a homophobe, he is essentially endorsing his positions as being ok, he is saying that it's ok to be a bigot and to campaign against rights. It's ok to make slanderous attacks against your fellow human beings on the basis of sexuality.

And that makes me angry because those things aren't ok, and to justify it as disagreeing without being disagreeable is utterly galling. As The Questionable Authority puts it:

The problem comes with that whole "disagree without being disagreeable" thing. Rick Warren recently compared homosexuality to pedophilia, bestiality, and polygamy. That's not disagreeing without being disagreeable. That's being nasty without shouting. There's a very large difference, and it's a bit disappointing that Mr. Obama doesn't see that.

We can disagree without being disagreeable but comparing gay people to paedophiles and bestialists is very disagreeable.

From Boiling Point Blogs comes Rachel Maddow on the issue:

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

To show that I am myself trying to be fair and not just indulging in a bit of religion bashing I'd like to talk about what is pretty much the flip side of the coin, because whilst Warren's bigotry and intolerance are firmly based in his religion there are other, equally devout, Christians who disagree with his opinions. One such man is the Rev. Dr. Joseph Lowery. From Blogger Interrupted:

If I were Rick Warren, I’d have the nuts to turn down the invitation to deliver the invocation at Barack Obama’s inauguration, simply based on decency. But even further, if I were Rick Warren, in the interests of my own ego, I’d be smart enough to avoid comparison of my Celebrity Driven Life with that of the Rev. Dr. Joseph Lowery, who’ll be giving the benediction after Barack’s speech.
That comparison fails on one mere fact.

In 1965, King named Lowery to deliver the demands of a planned Selma-to-Montgomery march for voting rights to then-Alabama Governor George Wallace. In an event that shocked the nation, police tear-gassed and clubbed the peaceful marchers at Edmund Pettus Bridge.

For those, like me, not familiar with that protest here's a video of the brutal events that unfolded at what was a peaceful gathering:



The main point I would like to make is that this is a fine and great leader, a person who is able to see beyond the differences between individuals and fight against injustice not matter who it falls upon. he is just as devout as rick Warren and yet treats his fellow humans in an entirely different way. This is the kind of person that should be endorsed, and I'm glad that Obama has done so by including him in the proceedings..

He spoke at the memorial service of Coretta Scott King (Another wonderful individual) and what he said resonates with me:

Thank you, Coretta. Didn't she carry her grief with dignity? Her growing influence with humility? She secured his seed, nurtured his nobility she declared humanity's worth, invented their vision, his and hers, for peace in all the Earth. She opposed discrimination based on race, she frowned on homophobia and gender bias, she rejected on its face. She summoned the nations to study war no more. She embraced the wonders of a human family from shoulder to shoulder. Excuse me, Maya.

She extended Martin's message against poverty, racism and war. She deplored the terror inflicted by our smart bombs on missions. We know now that there were no weapons of mass destruction over there. But Coretta knew, and we know there are weapons of misdirection right down here. Millions without health insurance, poverty abound. For war, billions more, but no more for the poor.

Well, Coretta had harsh critics. Some no one could please. But she paid them no mind. She kept speaking. As we get older, or so I'm told, we listen in to heaven like the prophets of old. I heard Martin and Coretta say, "do us a favor, Joe, those four little children I spoke of in 1963, they are fine adults now, as all can see. They already know but tell them again. We love them so dear. Assure them we will always be near. Their troubles to bless and sanctify to them their deepest distress. Tell them we believe in them as we know you do. We know their faith in god and their love for each other will see them through. Assure them at the end of the tunnel awaits god's light and we are confident they will always strive for the right. Tell them don't forget to remember that we are as near as their prayer-and never as far and we can rest in peace because they know who and whose they are."

Now that is the kind of message that I want and expect from Barack Obama, and that's the kind of leader I want him to be. I believe in diversity, but if diversity in one direction curtails diversity in another we have to make a choice. In the case of gay rights that choice is between men like rick Warren who wish to curtail rights, and people who merely want to live their lives with the same freedoms as everyone else.

I don't think that that's a difficult choice.

I'd really like to hear what everyone else has to say, whether you agree or disagree please comment.

Post 100: Why History Can't Wait

Time magazine has just announced its 2008 Person of the Year (Kudos to Time for the gender neutral name.) and to the surprise of very few people it is Barack Obama.



I would recommend checking out the Time website, there are links to some very good stuff. I like the gallery of images created featuring Obama. I think my favourite has to be portrait made from a collage of photos:



You should also check out "Six Degrees of Obama", which sets out how Obama is connected to every previous Time Person of the Year.

No He Can't

I have just been reading the New Statesman online and found this story concerning David Cameron and his love fest with Barack Obama .....NOT.

It seems that He is a lightweight, well we knew that, and rather than the next generation he is nothing more than a right wing eurosceptic.

This is Obama's chance to end the Star Wars fantasy

Another well written and thought provoking article from the Independent's Johann Hari:

The US has spent $160bn, only to increase the nuclear danger to itself and the rest of us. 

The world is still pleasurably suffering from Woah-bama whiplash. Did he really win? Are we all awake? And would anybody mind if he starts a few months early? The need for decisions is rapidly piling up – and one of President-Elect Obama’s first choices is whether to bring to an end the strangest story ever told in American politics. 

It is the tale of how a man with Alzheimer’s Disease came up with a physically impossible fantasy based on a B-movie he once starred in – and how the US spent $160bn trying to make it come true. These billions succeeded only in making some defence companies very rich, and making Russia point its nukes at Poland and Britain once more. Oh, and if Obama doesn’t decide to close this long-running farce now, it will make one more contribution to world history: the number of Weapons of Mass Destruction in the world will dramatically increase.

Read the rest here.

Obama Predict-o-meter

[Edit: I decided to remove the names for privacy reasons.]

Those of you who were at the Obama night may remember (or maybe not that whisky Peter brought was pretty lethal) that we had a predict-o-meter (excel spreadsheet if you must know). Well here's how many electoral votes everyone thought Obama would get.

AB 367
PS 337
CD 305
TPD 325
DL 327
AD 335
MF 320
NM 345

The final result for Obama was 365. So the winner was.......ME!!! Yay, go me. It had seemed like Peter would win, but North Carolina turned at the last minute and gave me a memorable victory.

[Pause for applause.]

While we're on the theme of the election, here's a picture of the US electoral map if the election had been decided by young voters.



Not a happy map for the Republican Party I think you'll agree.

This guy knows a thing or two about hope.

'Your victory has demonstrated that no person anywhere in the world should not dare to dream of wanting to change the world for a better place.'


- Nelson Mandela in a letter to Barack Obama

A Dream Come True

OBAMA

The Last Battle of the American Civil War

Do you know who the last US President to call Illinois his political home was.

The Answer may change tonight with the election of Barack Obama, but at this point the last one was Abraham Lincoln.

The American people may vote for a leader who is African American, a leader who has limited experience of national politics and a leader with a young family from a poor background who has pulled himself up with hard work and represented the poor as a lawyer.

Lincoln was not African American but he was the rest, he had limited federal experience, was married with a young family who only one of his sons lived passed his childhood, was born in a log cabin in Kentucky and worked as a lawyer representing the poor.

The very fact that today America gets to vote for an African American is thanks to Lincoln and the many thousands of Americans who fought and died in the Civil War, it is thanks to the men and women who saw slavery as an abomination and it is thanks to the many people who risked their lives to help fugitive slaves stay safe.

Lincoln and Obama have one last thing in common, both in their own way are figures in the American Civil War, Lincoln President at its start and if all goes well Obama the President at its end.

Because today could be seen as the Last Battle of the American Civil War.

Quote of the day.

Obama, responds to the latest manufactured controversy from the McCain camp:

"I don't know what's next. By the end of the week, he'll be accusing me of being a secret communist because I shared my toys in kindergarten. I shared my peanut butter and jelly sandwich."



Thanks to feministing.com for this cracker.

McCain and Obama's Tax Plans

[Edit: I hade to resize it to fit it to the page so you'll have to open it in a new tab to see it properly.]

This is an interesting graphic I found linked to at Science Blogs. The height of the bars represent how many people fit into that income bracket and the width represents how big their percentage tax change will be.

[And on a side note this graph also illustrates the gulf between median male income and median female income.]



Andrew

Elitism is not a four-letter word

A lot has been made by the Republicans about Senator Obama's elitism (To be fair the sons of single working mothers who relied on food stamps to get by are nearly always more elitist than the son and grandson of Admirals married to a multimillionaire who owns a doen homes. Yeah) A lot has been said in reply to this, a lot of it trying to disparage the notion that voting for Obama is at all elitist.

Well I disagree with that. The President of the United States is quite probably the most elite, the most powerful, and the most important position in the world. And I want someone in that role who is worthy of that position. I want a man who worked his way up through Columbia and Harvard, a man who did hard graft as a community organiser and who cares about the millions of ordinary Americans who don't have health insurance .

What the US needs in not another Dubya (A man who got where he is by the fact of his wealth) but a person who values knowledge rather than denigrates it like his opponents have done on many occasions. Barack Obama worked hard to get where he is and that should not be forgotten.

To finish here's a summary of the academic qualifications of the four people on the Presidential tickets from Pharyngula at Science Blogs:

Educational Background:

Barack Obama:Columbia University -
B.A.Political Science with a Specialization inInternational Relations.
Harvard - Juris Doctor (J.D.) Magna Cum Laude

Joseph Biden:
University of Delaware - B.A. in History and B.A. in Political Science.
Syracuse University College of Law - Juris Doctor (J.D.)

vs.

John McCain:
United States Naval Academy - Class rank: 894 of 899

Sarah Palin:
Hawaii Pacific University - 1 semester
North Idaho College - 2 semesters - general study
University of Idaho - 2 semesters - journalism
Matanuska-Susitna College - 1 semester
University of Idaho - 3 semesters - B.A. in Journalism

US Election Night Party

Come and Join us at our Election night party we are starting at 11pm and going on till we get all the results in, places are limited and Labour Club Members and supporters get priority so if you fancy going then contact peter on aberdeenuniversitylabourclub@gmail.com or on 07701013620

The Bradley Effect

Talking to people recently it has come through that the main question with regards to the US election is whether Obama's seemingly intimidating lead in the polls is actually a product of the Bradley Effect.

I'm not concerned. I think Obama's not only going to win, he's going to win big.