I attended a talk/book signing by Senator Chuck Hagel today at the New America Foundation today, and as usual, found Hagel to be thoughtful and engaging. Yes he is a Republican and yes, he did originally vote for the authorization for the Iraq invasion, but he is now trying to figure out the best way for the U.S. to both leave Iraq and improve its standing in the world. He admits that Congress has abdicated its responsibilities over the past 5 or 6 years, and he believes one of the biggest consequences of the actions of both Congress and the Administration is that Americans do not trust their government anymore.

When asked his advice for the next President, he first said that if the new President does not start unwinding our involvement in Iraq, then he or she will not be able to govern over the next four years. There has been a consensus among the country that getting into Iraq was the wrong move, and a majority want the U.S. out. If that isn’t at least on the way to being resolved, then the next President will not be able to get anything else done. Hagel continued that there are three other things the next President needs to do:

1. Form a bipartisan cabinet — It is necessary for the next president to bring the country together and having a bipartisan cabinet of qualified people would be a good start. (And no, he didn’t offer himself as a potential Cabinet member — yet.)
2. Reach out to Congress in a bipartisan manner– The next President will want Congress to have a stake in whatever policies need to be implemented. The president should hold 2-3 forums around the country with congressional members so that they are also connected with the public.
3. Reintroduce America to the World– Hagel noted that 40% of the world is aged 19 or under. This means that the U.S. they know is the country of Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib, not the one of the Marshall Plan and Berlin Airlift of the post- World War Two generation. Polls show that the views of the United States is much more negative than it has been in the past. The next President should , in his or her first 6 months or so, go on 2 or 3 foreign trips, enhance alliances, create coalitions, and try to rebuild what has been lost of America’s international reputation.

While I would get more specific, all three constitute good advice. While I am certainly left of Hagel and disagree with him especially on social issues, I do think that the Senate will be losing one of its better members when Hagel leaves office after this year. When he signed my copy of his book, I told him that no matter who is elected, I hoped that he would be part of the next Administration in some form.

His book, by the way, is America: Our Next Chapter — Tough Questions, Straight Answers. I will write about it when I am done reading it.

Hey, are you profiting?

Head over and jump in on the conversation.

When Reverend Wright’s comments first surfaced in March, I was watching Joe Scarborough’s program on MSNBC, and didn’t think it was much more than a two-day story that would have any real impact aside from maybe dispelling some of the lingering notions that the senator was a follower of Islam. Yes, the nature of the clips they played seemed a little outlandish, but I was willing to suspect that they were probably out of context, and to be perfectly honest, I wasn’t totally in disagreement with the concept that the terrorist attacks of 11-September-2001 were in response to abrasive American foreign policy. It wasn’t the entire motivator, sure, and they were by no means justified, but our actions in Africa and in the Middle East were a contributing factor in antagonizing al-Qaeda. Our presence there irritates them still. I don’t think that’s a secret.

Would I have used the words of Reverend Wright? Probably not. They seem sensationalist, and they too easily lose the meaning of the idea that he was trying to convey. But again, I was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt and assume that the comments were birthed out of an atmosphere of an oppressed people that I, as a European-American, will never understand.

But a month and a half later, after Bittergate and Pennsylvania, and on the doorstep of the Indiana primary, the reverend has surfaced again and presented what is, in my opinion, the greatest obstacle to Obama’s candidacy that he will face. Perhaps what is most frustrating, is that it’s not as if this was drug back out into the daylight by Glenn Beck or Rush Limbaugh (ever eager as they may seem)–but that this becoming a news story again is the sole responsibility of Reverend Wright.

Furthering the damage, Wright has compounded the problem by blowing the roof off the justifications that people like me had made. Statements that accuse the American government of implementing HIV/AIDS and suggesting that somehow we’re involved in some fascist/racist conspiracy are done in such a fashion that I can no longer give him that benefit of the doubt. I can’t try to find the root of reason in his comments, because they’re no longer leveled on some sort of coherent sociological plane, but instead have sunk to the level of 9/11 conspiracies and maniacal ravings.

When Reverend Wright mocks President Kennedy in order to make a statement on linguistic racism, he leaves the realm of the wise-but-misunderstood and enters the realm of the idiotic and ignorant. Regardless of whether or not there is a true or honorable point buried deep within his words, his profound inability to communicate makes any semblance of truth irrelevant. You don’t include–you don’t repair relations–by driving people apart. He’s spoken on a semi-public level before. He should just know better.

“If poor people don’t even have enough for bread, how will they donate milk to the gods?” he said. “This is very serious.”

Rising food prices are taking a toll all over the world. In India, the cost of food is keeping people from making food donations to temples. Donations of milk are down fifty percent, according to one priest.

Pakistan’s coalition government leaders Nawaz Sharif and Asif Ali Zardari are meeting in Dubai this week to iron out the details for the reinstatement of Pakistan’s deposed Supreme Court judges. The self-imposed deadline has passed without an agreement, but both sides are still working to resolve the outstanding issues.

According to the BBC, these negotiations the first real test of the new coalition government, and Pakistan’s Dawn is calling Sharif’s trip to Dubai a “last-ditch attempt to save the one-month-old coalition government from collapsing”.

“There (is) very, very strong evidence suggesting that Pakistan’s soil once again has been used to inflict pain on our nation.”

Recent reports claim Monday’s assassination attempt against Afghan President Hamid Karzai was planned in Pakistan. Despite these claims, little evidence has surfaced to suggest the government of Pakistan was involved.

India “got a pat on its back” for its 206-report detailing the ways in which it will “ensure foolproof safety” at its nuclear plants.

That’s what’s going on in South Asia; what’s going on in your part of the world?

A couple months ago I posted about how the EPA overruled its own experts and denied California’s plan to address greenhouse gas emissions from cars and trucks. Well this pattern of using politics, rather than science, to create rules and justify actions by the EPA has infected the agency to a dangerous degree, according to a new report. The Union of Concerned Scientists, concerned about how the EPA’s decisions “have too often led to the suppression and the distortion of the scientific findings underlying those decisions,” took on the task of investigating the treatment of EPA scientists and how their work was used. After a comprehensive survey of over 1500 EPA scientists, UCS found that 60% of the had encountered at least one instance of political interference in the previous five years. Of the scientists who had been with the EPA for at least 10 years, 43% say that the interference has gotten worse in the last half decade.

The report on the investigation, which was released last week, shows a chilling pattern of scientists’ conclusions and recommendations being edited improperly, being misrepresented by EPA officials, and being changed to weaken or transform the results. The pattern of the Bush EPA was to politicize the agency rather than allow it to perform its intended functions. Other examples of the extent of this interference include:

18 percent of scientists had “personally experienced frequent or occasional edits… that change the meaning of scientific findings”

22 percent had “personally experienced frequent or occasional selective or incomplete use of data to justify a specific regulatory outcome.”

42 percent knew of “many or some cases in which commercial interests have inappropriately induced the reversal or withdrawal of EPA scientific conclusions or decisions through political intervention”

43 percent knew of “many or some cases in which EPA political appointees were inappropriately involved in scientific decisions

31 percent personally experienced “frequent or occasional statements by EPA officials that misrepresent scientists’ findings.

The UCS went further to illustrate its survey’s findings with actual examples of political interference. The report is ripe with a number of instances in which the White House, OMB or EPA political appointees tried to influence or override the science involved in the EPA’s work.

The [Office of Management and Budget] OMB has recently stepped beyond its role in reviewing the EPA’s policies to review and manage the actual science underlying them…

In 2007 OMB analysts manipulated scientific knowledge about mortality arising from exposure to ground level ozone… The OMB has also interfered in the scientific basis for EPA policies on a rule regulating formaldehyde pollution from plywood plants… and a 2006 decision not to tighten the ambient air quality standards for fine particulate matter…

So Barack Obama went on Fox News last Sunday. It was a mistake, at least as far as the progressive movement is concerned:

Iran’s nuclear ambitions are getting some attention in the international arena, and it looks like the international community might be willing to accept the Iran’s agenda for peaceful nuclear development.

After rebuffing the United States’ request that India encourage Iran to relinquish its nuclear agenda last week, India is now encouraging Iran to work with UN inspectors while pursuing their agenda, stating:

“We have said that Iran has the right to peaceful use of nuclear energy while fulfilling her various obligations, and that the right way to do that is through the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) to assure the world that she is fulfilling her obligations”

Likewise, Switzerland has accepted Iran’s nuclear security proposal, and is encouraging the rest of the international community to do so as well.

Russia also seems to be on-board for future talks.

If the world accepts Iran’s peaceful ambitions, what will it take to get the U.S. on board?

(Thin gruel for the rest of us)

To start, I can’t believe I am even writing about this. Senator Barack Obama’s relationship with his former pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, ranks about 127th on my list of important issues this election season. Don’t get me wrong, some of the things Rev. Wright has said are worthy of discussion, but not so much in the way it “relates” to Obama (because it pretty much doesn’t).

God damn America? Now that was an interesting speech. Have you read the whole thing, or maybe heard more than a nine-second clip? Here’s the run-up to the “offending” phrase:

When it came to putting the citizens of African descent fairly, America failed. She put them in chains. The government put them on slave quarters. Put them on auction blocks. Put them in cotton fields. Put them in inferior schools. Put them in substandard housing. Put them [in] scientific experiments. Put them in the lower paying jobs. Put them outside the equal protection of the law. Kept them out of their racist bastions of higher education, and locked them into positions of hopelessness and helplessness.

The government gives them the drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes a three strike law and then wants us to sing God Bless America. Naw, naw, naw. Not God Bless America. God Damn America! That’s in the Bible. For killing innocent people. God Damn America for treating us citizens as less than human. God Damn America as long as she tries to act like she is God and she is Supreme.

I don’t know about you, but I think that there is stuff in there to talk about—and I don’t mean just talk about it as it relates to Barack Obama’s white grandmother, either.

As I’ve noted here, Sudan’s census is provoking conflict in the south and in Darfur. Today that trend continued:

Up to 170 census monitors in southern Sudan have been told to return to the capital, Khartoum, after being accused of interfering with the count. Southern officials said the monitors were not approved and were mostly from the north of the country.

[snip]

Officials in Khartoum say [the census] is going well despite some people in Darfur refusing to take part.

The BBC’s Amber Henshaw in Khartoum says these problems in themselves will not stop the census continuing, but the fear is that the results will be rejected by anyone who does not like them, which could spark more disputes further down the line.

More here.

This just isn’t looking good. High-profile but poorly run is a bad combination, especially with north-south tension simmering again.

On tonight’s NBC nightly news, Tim Russert breathlessly concluded that no candidate has ever had a spiritual advisor who has done more damage to his campaign than Rev. Wright has done to Barack Obama.

The Obama-Wright distraction isn’t unprecedented in American political history.  It’s not even unique to the 2008 election.  Televangelist Rod Parsley, the man John  McCain calls his “spiritual guide” has, like Wright, claimed the U.S. government was complicit in facilitating black genocide.  Parsley also asserts that the United States was founded, in part, to destroy the “false religion” of Islam. 

The only meaningful difference I see between Parsley and Wright is that Tim Russert doesn’t breathlessly exclaim over Parsley’s every utterance.  If Russert is right about the uniqueness of Rev. Wright, it is only because he applies one standard when it comes to Obama and another for McCain.  Can anyone shame him into doing real journalism?