Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying

The New York Times says that Muslims in America feel snubbed by Barack Obama. Well, I don’t feel snubbed. I don’t feel snubbed because I have never been courted for my "Muslimness". I am not used to being courted so I don’t know what being politically snubbed feels like.

The Muslim vote is the stealth voting bloc in American politics. It is highly likely that Muslims in 2008 will play a major role in electing Barack Obama to the presidency, yet Barack Obama stands to lose politically if he courts the Muslim vote. That is Obama’s dilemma, and that is the essence of the Muslim double-smear that has so far been used effectively against Obama.

In 2006 Muslims in Virginia came out in overwhelming numbers to help elect Jim Webb to the United States Senate. I was one of those who cast his vote for Webb. Webb won the Senate by 9329 votes out of over 2.3 million votes cast. According to the New York Times, about 86% of the estimated 60,000 registered Muslim voters turned out and voted overwhelmingly for Webb. Webb’s razor-thin margin of victory was dwarfed by the number of Muslims that voted for him. It was a constituency that was pivotal in putting him in office.

In November, Virginia will likely be the state that will hold Barack Obama’s presidential hopes in the balance. If the voting goes similar to 2006, with Northern Virginia and Richmond coming out strongly Democratic to offset the overwhelming Republican vote in southwestern Virginia, it will once again be Muslims playing a pivotal role. There’s the rub.

Muslim leaders, according to the New York Times article, are upset because Barack Obama is keeping his distance from them. He is apparently trying to avoid the inevitable photo that will play on a loop on Fox News. And he is right.

So, Muslims in America have a choice. Do you vote for a candidate whose policies are going to do the most to help restore civil liberties and change the "us versus them" mentality we have become used to, or do you vote against the candidate for not pandering to you as a religious bloc because you are radioactive? In 2000, Muslims voted overwhelmingly for the candidate that pandered to them but whose policies have brought us where we are today. The lesson has been learnt. The choice it seems is clear. In 2006, the Muslims in Virginia got it - and we voted our interests.

Muslims in America, get ready for a long summer of hate. As the general election gets more brutal what remaining distance there is between the words "Muslim" and the word "terrorist" will disappear in the political dialect. There will be more smears from the right linking Obama to us (the scary people). There will be more condescending cries from the left for us to just shut up like little children. In the end, none of it will matter. What will matter is your vote. And your vote will most likely determine who will be the next president of the United States. Now, isn’t that ironic.

 [Cross posted at the Daily Kos.]

Big news!

Today Tim Russert was laid to rest. Over the weekend the Boss dedicated "Thunder Road" to him.

For those of us of a certain age "Thunder Road" is an anthem of sorts. It is arguably one of the greatest rock and roll songs of all time. The above is an acoustic version - a perfectly performed duet with Melissa Etheridge.

Below is the original studio version from "Born to Run". Enjoy.

I had to rush home early from work today to run an errand. While sitting in traffic on my drive home a little after 4PM I pulled up politico.com on my PDA. There I saw the shocking news that Tim Russert, moderator of Meet The Press, had passed away from an apparent heart attack. That news knocked the wind out of me.

I have been watching MSNBC on and off all evening. Sometimes I have had my TV on mute when it got tough to take. I saw the video of Chuck Todd talking about Tim Russert while choking back tears. He reminded me this Sunday is Father’s Day. I walked downstairs and saw that my daughter was busy making my Father’s Day present with paper, scissors and glue.

I don’t know Tim Russert. I have never met him. Yet he feels like family today. He feels like family today because for the last seventeen years, nearly every Sunday, I have invited him into my home and listened to him discuss politics. I have sometimes agreed with him; I have sometimes screamed at him; but I have always let him back into my home the following week. He was there - almost without fail - marking the passage of time and the political events that have shaped our world. He was there, almost like clockwork. If it was Sunday, it was Meet The Press.

Not this Sunday. Suddenly, abruptly, unexpectedly, the man who was there for us last weekend will not be there this Father’s Day.

I will miss his white board. Gore v. Bush is forever etched in my mind in numbers on Russert’s white board. Florida. Florida. Florida.

My thoughts and prayers are with Mr. Russert’s family, his friends and his colleagues.

The Barack Obama campaign has launched a website to fight the right-wing smears against Barack Obama. The website is called "Fight The Smears".

Since the Obama campaign is a people powered campaign, I suggest that we the people join Barack Obama in combatting these Internet smears. With your help, we can push these smears into the Internet memory hole.

Today I am launching the "Fight The Smears" Blogroll. If you have your own blog, I urge you to join us and become part of the blogroll. By doing so, you will be helping spread the truth about Barack Obama while helping push the smears into Google search oblivion. As more people join the Blogroll and add the blogroll to their blogs the more prominent the blogroll will become. So join and do your part in stopping the smears.

To join this blogroll, follow these easy steps:

1. Write a post on your own blog about fighting smears (much like this one) with an invitation to join this blogroll.
2. Leave a comment on this post with the URL to your post or send me the URL to the post via my contact page. I will add a link to your post on the blogroll.
3. Add the following code to the sidebar of your blog to add the blogroll:
   

   <script language="javascript" type="text/javascript" src="http://rpc.blogrolling.com/display.php?r=85f5e52059597a9de3b3d92696f28530"></script>

4. Sit back and watch the blogroll grow and the smears disappear from search results.

The "Fight The Smears" website currently debunks the following smears:

• Michelle Obama Says “Whitey” On a Tape
• Barack Obama’s birth certificate
• Barack Obama is a Muslim
• Obama’s Books Contain Racially Incendiary Remarks
• Barack Obama Won’t Say The Pledge of Allegiance/Won’t Put His Hand Over His Heart

The Obama campaign has released video of Barack Obama’s pep talk to his Chicago campaign staff on June 6th. It is a rare behind-the-scenes look at the Obama campaign and the inspiration at its center.

Barack Obama is currently 12 delegates away from officially becoming the presumptive Democratic nominee for the president of the United States. Obama need 2118 delegates to secure the nomination. Thanks to a carefully choreographed rollout of super delegates, he will go over the top when primary results come out in the last two primaries of South Dakota and Montana tonight.

Today the Democratic party will have as its nominee an African American candidate. And in November we may have America’s first African American president. That in itself is history. Today also resumes a journey that was interrupted nearly 40 years ago to the day when, in the early morning hours of June 6 1968, Bobby Kennedy was taken away from America and the world.

Barack Obama carries on his shoulders the aspirations of not only the African American community of America, but of a generation who were denied their dreams four decades ago, and a new generation which now dares to dream some of those same dreams again. It is a tremendous burden on Obama’s shoulders, but it is one that we the citizenry can help him carry. The challenges lie ahead - from here to the general election in November, and beyond.

For Barack Obama and for all of us who are walking this historic journey with him, Bobby Kennedy’s words are worth remembering:

It is from numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human history is shaped. Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.

That is my hope today, on the cusp of history.

Yesterday Liz Trotta of Fox News made a dangerous mistake on air. Today she apologized. Unlike Hillary Clinton, she did not say she "regretted" if "anyone was offended". She said she was "sorry". That is how it is done. Contrast her apology with Hillary Clinton’s non-apology for the RFK assassination remarks.

Liz Trotta made a mistake. She took responsibility for it and apologized. For many the apology will not be enough. For me it is.

When I heard and saw her remarks yesterday I was stunned. Coming from a respected journalist like Trotta it was mind-boggling. So, I am glad she apologized. The permission slip that Hillary Clinton handed out with her RFK remarks will be hard to withdraw, and these moments are likely to repeat themselves this election season, but at least Liz Trotta has stepped up and tried to repair the damage she caused.

With her apology she gets the benefit of the doubt from me. She also gets the benefit of the doubt because I am familiar with her early work in conflict zones, especially Bangladesh in 1971 and 1972. She was one of the few American journalists who were on the ground in Bangladesh reporting on the genocide that killed up to 3 million people. Of her many reports from Bangladesh, one stands out to me. I provide the below NBC News report from 1972 without comment:

I was a child in 1971 when the Pakistani army and their Islamist collaborators were butchering my people by the millions and raping Bengali women by the hundreds of thousands. I am one of the lucky ones because I live today. I, like my parents’ generation before me, live with the scars of genocide. As part of my own coping mechanism I document the history of 1971 for my child and future generations. To do that, I rely on reports from Liz Trotta and others. Journalists like Liz Trotta, against very difficult odds, played a part in keeping the perpetrators of genocide from burying the truth.

For her part in telling our story, I am sincerely grateful. I know that her comments yesterday are not excused by her brave reporting from decades ago. But, still, I thought it may be worthwhile sharing with you a different view of the person who made those comments yesterday.

[Cross posted at the Daily Kos]

Liz Trotta of Fox News slips up. Hillary Clinton offered the permission slip. Others are using it.

Below is the entire segment on Fox News:

BONUS UPDATE:

Howard Wolfson, Hillary Clinton’s chief strategist, this morning on CBS’s Face The Nation circling the wagons: