Lubbock Left

It must be so easy and so fun to make these videos. I mean no offense to the BNF crew — y’all do great work as always — but there are so very very many McCain gaffes out there to work with. He’s got flip-flops on major issues, deer-in-the-headlights looks, outright lies, and enough just-plain-wrong statements to make 2008 the biggest landslide Republican loss in decades.

But the thumping that the Republicans will receive does not mean we Democrats can rest on our laurels. Spread this video around so everyone can see how McCain and the Republican Party have lost their way.

Onward!

The right-wing mantra of “deregulate, deregulate, deregulate” is costing America one of our most important technological and cultural advantages: ubiquitous, affordable broadband internet access.

Ars Technica has an article about how we are being left behind:

Despite the repeated claims of the current administration that our “broadband policy” is working, the US actually has no broadband policy and no aggressive and inspiring goals (think “moon shot”).

Simply put: Japan, France, Sweden, Canada, and most of Asia are out-interneting us. The main reason that they have surpassed us is because their governments view fiber optics as core infrastructure issues worthy of government investment.

Meanwhile, our government is too busy selling out the public trust to the biggest corporations it can find, all in the name of “deregulation” and “smaller government.”

My view is that regulation does not stifle competition; instead, it prevents people from hurting other people. A good business can survive in nearly any regulatory climate. In general, we only hurt ourselves when we remove regulations from industry.

Furthermore, we have seen that the politicians who ran on “small government” don’t really believe in small government. What they believe in is a very large government that benefits only them and their friends, while the majority of citizens suffer from a lack of services and public resources. (Picture Hurricane Katrina alongside record profits for military contractors and oil companies and you’ve got a snapshot of the Bush legacy.)

“Small government” plus “deregulation” equals the perfect atmosphere for corruption.

Winning the fight against this type of corruption is how we will catch up with broadband access. (Support of Net Neutrality is an enormous part of this struggle, and it ranks pretty high on my list of reasons for supporting Obama.)

If we keep the internet open — both the physical medium and the data — then we can catch up and once again become the world’s internet access leader.

Mother Jones Blog reports that a very convenient chunk of White House emails from the start of the Iraq War are missing completely:

The White House acknowledged in a court filing last night that it no longer has backup tapes of email from between March 1 and May 22, 2003, a period that includes the beginning of the Iraq war.

Meredith Fuchs from the National Security Archive comes to the logical conclusion of this dance of the missing emails:

“I honestly think they are just trying to run out the clock, and then it’s a huge mess. Maybe the court’s going to act quickly and we’ll get better preservation. That’s what we’ll hope for at this point.”

The Bush Administration legacy will be “hang on until we’re out of office and scandals can’t hurt us.”

The wunderkinds over at Brave New Films have produced a delightful animated short film about the tax loopholes used by the 21st Century robber barons out there:

Spread this video around!

warongreed.org

Sometimes one picture says it all.

“Silly Season” in the presidential election continues as the baser political animals among us try to adopt Karl Rove’s strategy of attacking your opponent’s strengths.

Ben Smith at The Politico writes that tomorrow Obama will address the larger issue of race in a speech. I look forward to a speech that addresses core concepts, not a reflex reaction. I suspect that Obama understands the politics of frames and is not foolish enough to step into the obvious trap of responding in his opponents’ terms.

Of course, Obama’s already busy using his diplomatic skills and showcasing his stance on human rights regarding the issue of Tibet:

The diplomatic condemnation was led by Barack Obama, the American Democratic presidential hopeful, who warned China’s leaders that the eyes of the world were upon them in an Olympic year.

Mr Obama said he was deeply disturbed by reports of a crackdown and arrests, and called on the Chinese government to respect the basic human rights of the people of Tibet.

“This is the year of the Beijing Olympics. It represents an opportunity for China to show the world what it has accomplished in the last several decades,” he said. “Those accomplishments have been extraordinary and China’s people have a right to be proud of them, but the events in Tibet these last few days unfortunately show a different face of China.”

Needless to say, I don’t think the Rove Strategy will work this time. Obama has walked the walk of fighting racism in America, and I imagine that he will talk circles around anyone who tries to trap him on race issues.

Good luck, Mr. Rove, but I don’t think the American People are falling for it this time.

The etymology of the word mortgage is a fascinating one:

The great jurist Sir Edward Coke, who lived from 1552 to 1634, has explained why the term mortgage comes from the Old French words mort, “dead,” and gage, “pledge.” It seemed to him that it had to do with the doubtfulness of whether or not the mortgagor will pay the debt. If the mortgagor does not, then the land pledged to the mortgagee as security for the debt “is taken from him for ever, and so dead to him upon condition, &c. And if he doth pay the money, then the pledge is dead as to the [mortgagee].”

Our contemporary adjustable rate / subprime mortgage crisis is a little bit more complicated than a simple matter of a debt that may or may not be repaid and a house that may or may not be seized. That’s why I was delighted to find this stick figure cartoon explanation called “The Subprime Primer.” It’s hilarious, educational, and worth the five minutes it takes to read.

Lastly, what happens when someone who is foreclosed on decides that they aren’t giving up without a fight?

Joe Lents hasn’t made a payment on his $1.5 million mortgage since 2002.

That’s when Washington Mutual Inc. first tried to foreclose on his home in Boca Raton. The Seattle-based lender failed to prove that it owned Lents’ mortgage note and dropped attempts to take his house. Subsequent efforts to foreclose have stalled because no one has produced the paperwork.

“If you’re going to take my house away from me, you better own the note,” said Lents, 63, the former chief executive officer of a now-defunct voice recognition software company.

Judges in at least five states have stopped foreclosure proceedings because the banks that pool mortgages into securities and the companies that collect monthly payments haven’t been able to prove they own the mortgages.

These ripoff securities were in such a hurry to rip people off that they may not have done the appropriate paperwork to transfer ownership of the mortgages they are selling to investors! The amount of deceit and dumbassedness at every stage of our modern mortgage crisis is simply staggering.

The lesson that I am learning from the mortgage crisis is this: in a culture where regulation is frowned upon, crooks will thrive.

Tonight’s Lubbock DFA “Best of the Political Internet 2007″ event went pretty well. A group of us watched a bunch of internet video clips from last year and had a good discussion after each one. Lots of Daily Show and Colbert, for sure. “Don’t tase me, bro!” made an appearance, as did a compilation video of Alberto Gonzales’ 70+ “I don’t recall” statements strung together in one memory-busting blitz. We also watched short clips about many of the current (or currently-dropping-out) presidential candidates and had a thorough discussion of the primaries so far.

It feels good not only to talk to fellow Democrats and digest the current state of things, but also to beef up the memory of our collective consciousness. American culture tends to be “in one ear, out the other,” especially when it comes to media. It’s important to remember that 2007 was a year when blogging became a big deal (again), that we ran an incompetent crony of an Attorney General out of office (although it took too long to do so), that a roomful of college students did nothing when one of their number was tasered right in front of them, that Republican primary voters cheered as their candidates advocated torture, and that we lived under an Administration that refused to face its own lies and mistakes with a Congress that failed to enforce consequences for those lies and mistakes.

In the end, one of the greatest contributions of the internet will be the ability to revisit our recent history and master it before moving on.

Many of us that support Barack Obama for President do so in part because he spoke so well, so passionately, and so truthfully at the 2004 Democratic National Convention. Now he’s done it again, with a speech that ties together what we are all feeling now: our “deficit of empathy” in the United States.

Obama’s tribute to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr’s legacy in his home church takes the lessons of that great civil rights leader and applies them to the present day.

Here’s a sample:

There is a young, twenty-three year old white woman named Ashley Baia who organizes for our campaign in Florence, South Carolina. She’s been working to organize a mostly African-American community since the beginning of this campaign, and the other day she was at a roundtable discussion where everyone went around telling their story and why they were there.

And Ashley said that when she was nine years old, her mother got cancer. And because she had to miss days of work, she was let go and lost her health care. They had to file for bankruptcy, and that’s when Ashley decided that she had to do something to help her mom.

She knew that food was one of their most expensive costs, and so Ashley convinced her mother that what she really liked and really wanted to eat more than anything else was mustard and relish sandwiches. Because that was the cheapest way to eat.

She did this for a year until her mom got better, and she told everyone at the roundtable that the reason she joined our campaign was so that she could help the millions of other children in the country who want and need to help their parents too.

So Ashley finishes her story and then goes around the room and asks everyone else why they’re supporting the campaign. They all have different stories and reasons. Many bring up a specific issue. And finally they come to this elderly black man who’s been sitting there quietly the entire time. And Ashley asks him why he’s there. And he does not bring up a specific issue. He does not say health care or the economy. He does not say education or the war. He does not say that he was there because of Barack Obama. He simply says to everyone in the room, “I am here because of Ashley.”

By itself, that single moment of recognition between that young white girl and that old black man is not enough. It is not enough to give health care to the sick, or jobs to the jobless, or education to our children.

But it is where we begin. It is why the walls in that room began to crack and shake.

The whole speech is worth reading and watching. Obama has the right message at the right time.

Video of Barack Obama’s MLK speech
Full Text of Barack Obama’s MLK speech

I know this isn’t a local issue, but I miss fresh content on The Daily Show and The Colbert Report so much.

YouTube Video

And for some yuks:
http://xkcd.com/360