Obama's Cons

While the term "Obamacon" has become a self-congratulatory term for liberal pundits to refer to conservative intellectuals who have "come over to their side" and voiced support for President-elect Obama, a more needed reference at this point is to "Obama's Cons"- the conventional Cabinet members Obama has appointed.  Obama has done a superb job of assembling a capable and experienced group of individuals to help the US recover from a historically harrowing year.  However, in doing so he has disappointed many of the progressives who helped to jump-start his campaign in its early stages.  Predictably, his early emphasis on stoking the enthusiasms of college students and grass-roots activists has given way to corporate and establishment pandering.  

But the foreseeable shift from focusing on empowering a grass-roots campaign in hopes of toppling Hillary to searching for experienced  high-level officials did not have to take as heinously conventional a form as it did.  Authority and validity in our political system are deeply enough tied to institutional experience and conventional forms of praise and reward that many people felt it would have been irresponsible not to seek such traits in Cabinet members.  Obama's lack of imagination and courage in bending those expectations was frustrating though.  His method of finding and hiring the biggest names that would give his fan base reason for recognition and support was more Brian Cashman than it was Theo Epstein (Theo would have had the courage to drag along some of the in-house organizers and difference-makers that gave us hope early on, taunts of crony-ism be damned [and if there's one area we can easily link Theo to Obama, it's how much the media loves them]).  It was more (deep breath...you can write it, Bucky...just get it over with...SOUL WRITHING IN ANGUISH!!!) Al Davis (sea creature-esque owner of the Raiders who perennially ruins his franchise's chances by signing mediocre big-name players) than Scott Pioli (savvy personnel architect of the Patriots dynasty.  

So far, things have been more The Best and the Brightest than Team of Rivals.  There is no good way to mean that, unless you are putting together a Trivia Bowl team- so maybe we can just hand Summers his t-shirt, mug, gift-certificate etc. and send him on his merry way?  Didn't think so.  

The most striking example of the "Obama's Cons" phenomenon has to be Robert Gates being retained as Secretary of Defense.  Did I miss the part during those huge campaign rallies where Obama pledged to shift our national security efforts away from the draining, unpopular occupation of Iraq by...retaining one of the men Bush chose to run the war?  Was there a mistranslation that had crowds in Germany waving their lighters at the thought of a hold-over running the department responsible for one of the most fundamental changes everyone was asked to believe in?  There should be a hue and of outcry over the pure slap-in-the-face symbolism of this decision to the majority of the country that has at least in opinion joined the anti-Iraq-war movement.  The lack thereof just shows to what an extent we have come to accept the logic of the status-quo and thereby disempower ourselves as believers in the possibility of transformative change in our country.  

...And for the sake of ending on a more upbeat note, check out this courageous and inspiring link to a story in BusinessWeek (of all places) about an act of creative disruption at which I am still marveling: http://www.businessweek.com/ap/financialnews/D958H33G1.htm?chan=top+news_top+news+index+-+temp_news+++analysis

High Holidays

Happy New Year's 5769 everybody!

High Holidays this year kicked off in a fashion with Selichot Sept. 20. "But," ye well-informed protest, "Rosh Hashanah wasn't until Oct. 1, why the extra week?" Normally, Selichot would come on the Shabbat before Rosh Hashanah, it's true; but this year that would not have left enough time to prepare to repair and repent to God and on earth. So this year, when even the folks who were fired because they wouldn't stop saying "Merry Christmas" at Kmart were scratching their heads and saying "Mid-September Selichot?", candles were being lit and passed and professions of sins sung and chanted across the world. Here, we had the first go-around of the ashamnu, my favorite song from the machzor, singing: "Who are we? We're light and truth/ And infinite wisdom, eternal goodness/ Yet we've abused, we've betrayed/ We've been cruel, yes, we've destroyed...Wipe it out! Clean it out!/ Yes, throw it all out!" It's like the Jewish Renewal movement managed to combine the Catholic acknowledgement of guilt with the Unitarian forgiveness and acceptance...um, and then travel back in time hundreds of years to claim them in their own rituals.

By Rosh Hashanah (if you are reading this out loud, you get style points for putting the emphasis on the last syllable in most cases with the Hebrew words), the observant folks have a big jump on the "twice-a-year Jews" who don't start coming until the Erev or day of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. However, "twice-a-year" Jews are a different breed than their Christian counterparts. Aside from, in most cases, having to give up a day at work to come to synagogue, we are talking about marathon worship services complete with dancing, singing and fasting. If you show up early and stay late to help, you can get in as many hours on those two days as people in many denominations rack up in six months; throw in the Erev services and you've got a year's worth of summer-skipping Unitarian attendance lined up there. I remember as a child sitting in church and looking at Mom's watch so I could think to myself, "Sweet, only fifteen minutes to go until I can listen to the Pats pregame show" (for more on this check out Things Bucky Didn't Put on His Divinity School Application, Volume XII: When Spirit and Sports Collide.) Now, I go to church and mistake the Postlude for a landmark that there's only 10 hours left until the potluck.

About 3/4 of the way through Kol Nidre/Erev Yom Kippur (or 11/4 of my original estimation of the time), Rabbi Lerner followed my favorite machzor song, "To Dwell in the House of the Lord", with an explanation that to acknowledge our sins and ask for forgiveness was the true meaning of living in the Lord's house. He preached that not just a general prayer of atonement, but rather in-depth, specific contemplation of ways to be better people in our communities and our lives was what it meant to come closer to God (whatever one's conception Thereof may be). He enjoined each of us present to spend the time before sundown the next day praying in a very specific manner of examining our shortcomings and planning ways to do better by those around us. And to help those of us who get that "who, me?!" look every time sin is brought up, there was a list of things we as a community could atone for. These ranged from "for not helping singles we know to navigate the marketplace of relationships" (Will and I, in charge of passing out the forms, took a highlighter to this one in advance and wrote down his and Dan's phone numbers next to it), to "for not speaking out against the continued occupation of Iraq as effectively as we could have" (ditto- gotta cover all your bases).

Will and I finally stumbled home in the wee hours, he burdened with enough left-over salad greens to cleanse the collective GI tracts of the greater Milwaukee area, I with the beginnings of an upper respiratory infection. Still to come, however, was the Sukkot. Marvin, the Beyt Tikkun carpenter and guitarist, and others put together the outdoor dwelling, roofed with tree branches to let in the rain and a clear view of the sky, and hung with fruits and vegetables representing the harvest and the myriad ways that God provides. Ironically, the one day during which you are not supposed to come together in it during the week-long celebration is Shabbat, right when we did it; however, that injunction is based on the assumption that people will be carrying their esrogs to the Sukkot (carrying is one of the forms of work prohibited on Shabbat), and since Rabbi Lerner was clever enough to know none was actually going to bring an esrog we went ahead with it anyways (I mean, they're basically lemons that can cost up to $60, come on!)

But next year ought to be easier- High Holidays start yet another week earlier, so there will be less to atone for.

Another Reason I'm Pumped to Move to the Bay Area

Another Reason I'm Pumped to Move to the Bay Area



Peace Action West announced on its Groundswell blog the beginning of its "No Soldier Left Behind" campaign kick-off on Thursday. This campaign has several impressive aspects. Their mission statement declares that: "Peace Action West advocates for a foreign policy that embodies the best values of the American people. As a membership organization, we foster broad-based civic activism to create a strong voice for peaceful and pragmatic solutions to global problems." As someone who has been involved in the writing of more than one anti-war mission statement, I have to admire the concision they have going there. Having the embodiment of the best values of the American people as a goal reflects not just an increased reclaiming of patriotic language by the left, but also a renewed confidence in American values as potential methods for finding solutions.



The Peace Action West (headquartered on Adeline St. in Berkeley- is that near the NSP, Will?) website also lists methods for effective letter writing, lobbying, bird-dogging and other important actions people can take to influence their legislators. The section marked "Activist Toolkit" in the "No Soldier Left Behind" part of the site highlights a few of the myriad stages and options for non-violent resistance to a bellicose and immoral government. Calvin and Hobbes once made fun of real-world methods for solving problems, where the stuffed tiger sarcastically proclaims "TO THE BATFAX!" But even Bruce Wayne's Batman toolkit doesn't have anything near the dozens or hundreds of methods employed by Gandhi alone in social justice movements. Peace Action West combines the top ten or so methods most readily available to citizens in the contemporary United States in a way that all activist groups should present them to their members.

I was disappointed by the lack of specific legislative goals on the Groundswell blog. Their main political reason for optimism was listed as the new voters and energy generated by the presidential election. But since the same post acknowledges that Obama's current plan for Iraq involves tens of thousands of troops staying in the country, at least in the medium-term, the general election doesn't seem to provide much hope for those wishing to end the occupation. According to Truthout, the House approved another $162 bn for the war, extending its funding through next June last week. The current round of funding came closer than any previous discussion to generating a firm deadline for troop withdrawal, with Rep. Pelosi's "bridge" representing an imperfect but positive step. If the pressure is maintained throughout the next year, there is a very good shot that next summer could mark the beginning of total troop withdrawals. All indications are that more favorable executive leadership will be in place, but the impetus, we know from history, must be provided by the citizenry.

I still recommend pressuring Congressional representatives to sign onto HR 1078 as co-sponsors. Currently it has nine co-sponsors, only 151 behind a resolution calling on Bush to place a naval blockade on Iran. It is in the House Foreign Affairs Committee right now. This is the legislation introduced by Keith Ellison that would go a long way in advancing the Global Marshall Plan by giving it the support of the US House for implementation. So, wherever you are, keep being pesky, and we'll get there eventually!

Father's Day-themed Update

Father's Day-themed Update

Why is this a Father's Day-themed update? Didn't you say we were getting more on Uzunöl? You're right to ask these questions- in fact, I'm flattered you were paying that much attention. The fact remains though that I still don't have any pictures to post and I've already milked May 17-20 for two long blog posts, so I think it's time to move on. More importantly, this particular theme allows me to honor the man who has always preached good writing as one of the fundamental skills in life, alongside defense and a solid wood-splitting technique: my father, Jonathan G. Rogers. To this end, I'll be writing each section with the heading of a question I wanted to ask Dad at one point or another in my life and later found out the answer to.

"Why are you driving me all the way to work when you could make more money billing someone for that time than I'll make all day potting plants and pulling weeds?"
-I came across a quote in Gandhi's autopbiography last week that resonated with where I feel like I am in life vocationally right now: "I am here to do anything that is not beyond my capacity." This was his response to a secretary in the office of the Indian National Congress who said he could give him only clerical work upon his return to India. The secretary did not know his qualificactions (over a decade at the bar at that point, not to mention the South African Satyagraha up to then) and later was ashamed to have given him that work, but Gandhi was happy to have been able to help in any way. How much less am I qualified than him, so why should I agitate for an important and prestigious post? Doing a lot of work on a farm in high school gave me a good background for gratitude and perseverence in the work sector of life, and as I try to find my place in the world of social justice, politics and religion, it is comforting to know that I can handle different kinds of work and that greater people than I have done menial work in the past.

"Why don't more people admire John McCain's b'donk-a-donk?"
-It turns out, they do! (scroll up to the 7:30 mark for the good stuff)

"Why does that football team keep running the ball right into the middle of the other team's defense?"
-I remember asking this once during a game, and on the next play they actually did run an end-around or something different, and it got like 5 yards. In a metaphorical sense, this question goes to the Democratic party, with the answer being Obama. Seeing that picture of he and Michelle up on stage on the front of the NYT website one morning was almost as anticlimactic as updating the gamecast to find out the RedSox had won the World Series, but it was awesome nonetheless. Lost in all the hype about his gang sign/terrorist fist-jab (although no one seemed to mind when Jordan and Dr. Cox did it on Scrubs last season [check out episode 15 and send me a good x-word puzzle site STAT]) was just how much he went through to get that nomination. I mean, Andy Dufresne went throught less crap getting out of Shawshank than Obama did getting the nomination. Who can't wait for the next Chapelle's Show race draft?! And while we're here, I thought David Denby's comment that "Don't Mess with the Zohan" was destined to be seen as un texte Obamiste was a bit hors de la piste. Just thought I'd drop that in there.

"Why is it so important to give something back in better shape than it was lent to you?"
-I love the people I live with here, but chasing folks down to get something back from them an be a pain in the ass. Very few things that I've lent out this year (and judging by the massive amount of emails with headings like "my dvd collection?" or "who's got the kidney I let Bucky borrow?", this holds true for other residents as well) have come back in a timely manner. While I wouldn't list this as one of the ten most stressful things about my life in the past year, I feel its definitely had an effect on the overall level of trust and mutual cooperation in the lojman. Long story short- Patrick, make sure I get my library copy of "Children of Men" back by tomorrow morning.

"Why does Ireland produce so many good writers?"
-Actually, gonna have to wait another couple months on this one, I won't be there until July, but the point is, I WILL BE THERE IN JULY!!! And in preparation, I'm tackling Ulysses, which so far makes about as much sense as McCain's plan to balance the budget by eliminating earmarks (ZING!), but I'm enjoying it nonetheless.

"Why has the anti-war movement pretty much folded just because we are electing a new president?"
-Again, not sure on this one yet, but a less-definite time frame for the answer, so you tell me. But seriously, check out that Daily Show link about McCain's derriere.