From my point of view, Obama's campaign strategy is about weaving. It's so simple that it's masterful, and brilliant in it's basic call to every American to wake up and to claim our citizenship while we can. All these threads.....

When I read about Obama's outreach to the massive evangelical groups of young people, and the Joshua Project aimed at Religious Right youth for educating/suggesting and discussing that maybe - just maybe - God's work could also be served by Saving The Planet, Helping Your Neighbor, Tolerating Difference...and not just served by Save the UnBorn Child and One Man/ One Woman Marriage. Obama's strategy is the way to win the religious right. The youth is the future of that movement, and if they are inspired by Barack, what do the Church Leaders do? Not listen? To their Tithing Base?

Obama and his strategists have set the Right Intentions, I hope. If the ideas in his speeches are truly his deep convictions, we will win. He's all big ideas, that's for sure, but we can qualify him by the brilliant organization he's designed, the People he's attracted, and the superb execution. Business people, every kind of results-drivers of industry, look at Barack's campaign with the same thought - regardless if you support him, you have to respect him, and the system and the results he's created. Execution, as Warren Buffett will tell you, is The Only Game.

Imagine the concept.....Barack Obama is showing Americans how to make change by being the change. Now if he can only stay strong....... and hungry.

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The transcript of the speech at Stanford's site, is here:
http://news-service.stanford.edu/news/2008/june18/como-061808.html

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This is written by Courtney E. Martin, published on June 9, 2008 at The American Prospect . Courtney E. Martin is a writer and teacher living in Brooklyn. She is the author of Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters: The Frightening New Normalcy of Hating Your Body (Simon & Schuster's Free Press). You can read more about her work at www.courtneyemartin.com.


Dear Hillary,

I didn't vote for you in the primaries, but I want you to know how deeply appreciative I am of your campaign, your presence, and your perseverance.

Y ou have changed the landscape of politics and gender so dramatically in the last year that it is almost hard for me to remember what it was like before your campaign. I strain to remember the moment, just a few semesters ago, when one of my students said, "Miss, I gotta tell you, I just can't imagine a woman president." It was the days of Geena Davis' failed television show depicting just that, the days when your candidacy was still a pipe dream, the days when female and president were still estranged words in the American psyche.

So much has changed. While I don't agree with all of the choices you and your staff have made along the way, there isn't a pundit or political scientist who could argue that you haven't run a competitive campaign, or been taken seriously by the American public, for that matter. My former student will never again confess that he can't "imagine a woman president" because you have provided a flesh-and-blood example that the possibility exists; his anemic imagination will no longer be any match for the 54 hard-fought primary contests you engaged in--winning the most primary votes of any candidate in history! Contrary to what pundits may say in the wake of your campaign, America has proven itself ready for a woman president, plain and simple.

You've given us the opportunity to heed the call of our higher selves, our higher America. This is a nation where a woman is not deemed unfit to hold the highest office in the land simply because she is female, or because she values her role as a mother, or because she tears up when talking about this country's future. This is a nation where a mother and daughter can hit the campaign trail in tandem, talk about environmental justice, economic policy, and terrorism despite none of these being deemed "women's issues" in the antiquated style sections of most major newspapers.

You've also, sadly, given us the opportunity to highlight the ways in which too many of those in power are still heeding the call of their lower selves, our lower America. This is a nation where Chris Matthews' career is boosted, not spoiled, by his continuously sexist remarks about everything Hillary. This is a nation where Tucker Carlson sits smugly behind a desk and says, "When she comes on television I involuntarily cross my legs," suggesting that while a man can be tough, ambitious, focused, a woman is still just a ball breaker in pundits' eyes. This is a nation where the Republican candidate for president chuckles when asked how he plans on "beating the bitch." Have you seen the Women's Media Center's recent video, "Sexism Sells"? Next time someone claims your campaign wasn't affected by sexist mainstream media, send them to watch it so we can all get on with more interesting questions. Speaking of which, I have a fantasy that you might follow in the footsteps of Jimmy Carter and Al Gore, becoming an independent renegade for global education.

I thank you for weathering this storm of anxious masculinity and outright sabotage, but even more, for creating a moment where the kind of subtle sexism that women experience everyday--in boardrooms and courtrooms, in college classrooms and dining halls, on city streets and in small town bars --was brought to undeniable light. Your campaign was a perfect flashpoint to finally get us talking about the tangled knot of leadership and gender, our society's obsession with looks and youth, the double-bind that so many women in positions of power are forced to face--either you're a bitch or a doormat, no in-between. You made sexism newsworthy in a way it hasn't been since Anita Hill. No doubt young minds have been shaped and older minds have been changed by watching you over the last year.

Feminism has been strengthened by this moment; your candidacy and the issues it raised have forced us to reckon with long-standing intergenerational tensions and rearticulate our definitions of feminism and our expectations of one another. I was pushed by other feminists, rightly, to really examine my choice to vote for Barack Obama. I tried to explain that my feminism is powerfully intersectional, that I am moved by his biography, but even more, by his commitment to diplomacy, his inspirational leadership, and his vision for a more equal America. I know I've disappointed some of my feminist predecessors and even my peers, but I stand by this choice. I have grown as a citizen and a political writer by all the challenges that your candidacy has presented, especially with regards to my feminist consciousness. And I have always tried to be clear that I support you though I didn't choose to pull the lever for you.

I worry that watching how savage the media can be, seeing the ways in which your appearance, your voice, your marriage were so consistently analyzed, will discourage some women from following in your footsteps. It is as if, before your run, we had an inkling that being a serious female contender for the presidency would be tough, and now we know it is practically repellant. I wouldn't do it. As political as I am, as outraged at how this country has been led in the last decade, I would never be able to deal with all the scrutiny and pressure that you've been under.

My hope is that we are facing a tipping point in electoral politics. Right now, you are an anomaly. Much like the women who slipped into boardrooms in the early 1980s with shoulder pads and a desire to blend in, you have pioneered the first serious run for the presidency by a woman with, to put it bluntly, balls. As my friend Ellen Bravo puts it, you've played with "the big boys," used their language, fit into their paradigm of retaliatory violence and attack ad campaigning. I was disappointed, in particular, by your campaign's race-baiting tactics. When Obama made his historic speech on race, I couldn't help but wonder, "Why couldn't Hillary address these issues with the same honesty? Why can't she channel the wide-eyed 21-year-old that she once was, the one who ended her Wellesley graduation speech with the words, 'You and I must be free/Not to save the world in a glorious crusade/Not to kill ourselves with a nameless gnawing pain/But to practice with all the skill of our being/The art of making possible.'"

Sometimes I felt as if you'd forgotten about the "art of making possible," and instead, stomped a path toward power. Next time, I hope an inspiring woman candidate can follow in your footsteps with a bit more authenticity -- and face a whole lot less sexism. Just as women in the business world today are transforming the very structure within which they work--advocating for better work/life policies and collaborative, creative approaches -- I see your successors as women who might have the courage, vision, and cultural permission to question war as a whole, to transform government traditions that are classist, racist, and sexist, and to transcend party politics.

As Barack Obama said in his speech last Tuesday evening: "Our party and our country are better off because of Hillary Clinton." I couldn't agree more. I thank you for your wide-ranging influence. I hope it will inspire Obama to appoint strong women in his administration. (And a ticket starring the two of you together would be an amazing gift to America.)

You have not lost. If anything, you have fulfilled your lifelong dream of legitimizing women's rightful place in positions of public power, and in so doing, made this country a more enlightened home for all of us. Thank you so very much.

Sincerely,

Courtney E. Martin

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It was just a matter of time. Someone writes an article about how 72 minutes on a heart-and-lung machine has wracked havoc with Bill Clinton's memory and that's why he can't always remember exactly how it happened or what he said.

Summer reading at it's finest. If only I was at the pool, cerulean blue waters, on the lounge chair, with a glass of champagne...this would be exactly how I would be spedning the afternoon - reading Todd Purdum's Article in the July 2008 Vanity Fair. Dominick Dunne could not have done a better job. And thankfully for those of us not on a beach chair with the Vanity Fair magazine.... you can read the entire article HERE.

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Today I read an article in The Guardian that rattled me. It's an emotional wound and I keep circling it. They reported today a story about a international human rights campaign that is exposing the US for holding terror suspects on prison ships. Yes, you read that correctly. Floating prisons of extreme rendition.

"By its own admission, the US government is currently detaining at least 26,000 people without trial in secret prisons, and information suggests up to 80,000 have been 'through the system' since 2001. The US government must show a commitment to rights and basic humanity by immediately revealing who these people are, where they are, and what has been done to them."

and from the report,

"Little by little, the truth is coming out on extraordinary rendition. The rest will come, in time. Better for governments to be candid now, rather than later. Greater transparency will provide increased confidence that President Bush's departure from justice and the rule of law in the aftermath of September 11 is being reversed, and can help to win back the confidence of moderate Muslim communities, whose support is crucial in tackling dangerous extremism."

Reading this article is bearing witness to the dangers of neocon white men with too much power.

THE GUARDIAN June 2, 2008
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/jun/02/usa.humanrights
Written By Duncan Campbell and Richard Norton-Taylor

Details of ships where detainees have been held and sites allegedly being used in countries across the world have been compiled as the debate over detention without trial intensifies on both sides of the Atlantic. The US government was yesterday urged to list the names and whereabouts of all those detained.

Information about the operation of prison ships has emerged through a number of sources, including statements from the US military, the Council of Europe and related parliamentary bodies, and the testimonies of prisoners.

The analysis, due to be published this year by the human rights organisation Reprieve, also claims there have been more than 200 new cases of rendition since 2006, when President George Bush declared that the practice had stopped.

It is the use of ships to detain prisoners, however, that is raising fresh concern and demands for inquiries in Britain and the US.

According to research carried out by Reprieve, the US may have used as many as 17 ships as "floating prisons" since 2001. Detainees are interrogated aboard the vessels and then rendered to other, often undisclosed, locations, it is claimed.

URL for Reprieve: http://www.reprieve.org.uk/

Ships that are understood to have held prisoners include the USS Bataan and USS Peleliu. A further 15 ships are suspected of having operated around the British territory of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean, which has been used as a military base by the UK and the Americans.

Reprieve will raise particular concerns over the activities of the USS Ashland and the time it spent off Somalia in early 2007 conducting maritime security operations in an effort to capture al-Qaida terrorists.

At this time many people were abducted by Somali, Kenyan and Ethiopian forces in a systematic operation involving regular interrogations by individuals believed to be members of the FBI and CIA. Ultimately more than 100 individuals were "disappeared" to prisons in locations including Kenya, Somalia, Ethiopia, Djibouti and Guantánamo Bay.

Reprieve believes prisoners may have also been held for interrogation on the USS Ashland and other ships in the Gulf of Aden during this time.

The Reprieve study includes the account of a prisoner released from Guantánamo Bay, who described a fellow inmate's story of detention on an amphibious assault ship. "One of my fellow prisoners in Guantánamo was at sea on an American ship with about 50 others before coming to Guantánamo ... he was in the cage next to me. He told me that there were about 50 other people on the ship. They were all closed off in the bottom of the ship. The prisoner commented to me that it was like something you see on TV. The people held on the ship were beaten even more severely than in Guantánamo."

Clive Stafford Smith, Reprieve's legal director, said: "They choose ships to try to keep their misconduct as far as possible from the prying eyes of the media and lawyers. We will eventually reunite these ghost prisoners with their legal rights.

"By its own admission, the US government is currently detaining at least 26,000 people without trial in secret prisons, and information suggests up to 80,000 have been 'through the system' since 2001. The US government must show a commitment to rights and basic humanity by immediately revealing who these people are, where they are, and what has been done to them."

Andrew Tyrie, the Conservative MP who chairs the all-party parliamentary group on extraordinary rendition, called for the US and UK governments to come clean over the holding of detainees.

"Little by little, the truth is coming out on extraordinary rendition. The rest will come, in time. Better for governments to be candid now, rather than later. Greater transparency will provide increased confidence that President Bush's departure from justice and the rule of law in the aftermath of September 11 is being reversed, and can help to win back the confidence of moderate Muslim communities, whose support is crucial in tackling dangerous extremism."

The Liberal Democrat's foreign affairs spokesman, Edward Davey, said: "If the Bush administration is using British territories to aid and abet illegal state abduction, it would amount to a huge breach of trust with the British government. Ministers must make absolutely clear that they would not support such illegal activity, either directly or indirectly."

A US navy spokesman, Commander Jeffrey Gordon, told the Guardian: "There are no detention facilities on US navy ships." However, he added that it was a matter of public record that some individuals had been put on ships "for a few days" during what he called the initial days of detention. He declined to comment on reports that US naval vessels stationed in or near Diego Garcia had been used as "prison ships".

The Foreign Office referred to David Miliband's statement last February admitting to MPs that, despite previous assurances to the contrary, US rendition flights had twice landed on Diego Garcia. He said he had asked his officials to compile a list of all flights on which rendition had been alleged.

CIA "black sites" are also believed to have operated in Thailand, Afghanistan, Poland and Romania.

In addition, numerous prisoners have been "extraordinarily rendered" to US allies and are alleged to have been tortured in secret prisons in countries such as Syria, Jordan, Morocco and Egypt.

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