The Great Divides

America has always been divided to some extent by at least three factors: race, class and region. The Democratic Party convention is an opportunity to see what those divisions mean today, and where we stand as a society in dealing with those divisions.

With Barack Obama as the party's presidential candidate, race is the most obvious. In many ways this convention should show how far we've come. Obama will accept his nomination on the 45th anniversary of Martin Luther King's "I have a dream" speech. Obama was two years old that day, and he is in many ways the fulfillment of King's dream.

Author Matt Bai makes a respectable argument that Obama's perceived lack of the lead he should have in the polls isn't due primarily to race. Still, race is likely to play a role in this election, and many people seem to understand that how it plays out will test whether America is ready yet to embrace its future.

For race is still a divider, especially in relation to class. With an economy that works so outrageously for the super-rich while deepening the divide between them and most Americans, who are increasingly struggling to maintain a middle class status, the class divide should be clearly favoring a Democratic Party united for change. But old habits die hard. You only have to listen to certain cable commentators talk about "working people" and "regular people" when they are clearly talking about white and not black people, or any other people of color. However, I noted a person being interviewed, identified as a Democratic Party strategist (I hadn't seen him before) who spoke about working people in a way that clearly included black working people--who make up a large percentage of lower income workers. I don't think the host quite got it.

This is perhaps where region also comes in. Barack Obama is the best chance the Democrats have had to move this party into its future--and out of the Northeast and into the Midwest and West. Senator Ken Salazar of the convention's host state of Colorado expresses some of the hope and the frustration with the Democrats' slow realization of this.

The West represents a future that centers on environmental concerns in tandem with economic. It represents a growing diversity and new populations--which is rapidly becoming the new American majority, of many races and nationalities not only in the same community but in the same family. The opportunities and the problems of the West are where America is heading, and the Democratic Party can ensure its future by taking the lead there now.

Senator Joe Biden is a good choice for Obama's VP this year, but he is a transitional figure from the East Coast. Obama's Midwestern roots and his compatriots in the Midwestern states and in the West are the party's future. We'll see if the media, still dominated by the Bos-Wash corridor on the East Coast, begins to get it as this convention goes on.

More from Springfield Saturday

That's Michelle Obama with
Jill Biden in the second photo.

Road to Denver: Springfield, Illinois

Obama on Biden: "Joe Biden is that rare mix – for decades, he has brought change to Washington, but Washington hasn’t changed him. He’s an expert on foreign policy whose heart and values are rooted firmly in the middle class. He has stared down dictators and spoken out for America's cops and firefighters. He is uniquely suited to be my partner as we work to put our country back on track."

Biden on Obama: "These times require more than a good soldier. They require a wise leader. Barack Obama is that wise leader. He has judgment, he clearly has intellect which no one doubts, and I guarantee you he has steel in his spine."

It's Official!

It's Joe

It's not official yet, but at about 11pm Pacific,
numerous news media are reporting that
Senator Joe Biden of Delaware will be named
as Barack Obama's choice for Vice-President.
The official email confirmation is expected
Saturday morning, and Obama and Biden
are expected to appear together Saturday
afternoon in Springfield, Illinois. Check
American Dash for more.

On the Road to Denver

Obama in New Mexico and North Carolina.

Don't Forget Darfur

Refugees from Darfur. Reuters photo.

The Forgotten Genocide

While American politicians obsess about Russia and promote billions in relief for the country of Georgia, the genocide in Darfur goes on. While billions watch the Olympic Games in China, that nation remains the chief enabler of the Sudanese-sponsored rapes and murders.

The politics of the situation are complex, but limited attention span is mostly evidence, if we needed any more, that African peoples living in a drought-stricken land aren't as important as Europeans with oil. The International Criminal Court has accused the president of Sudan of crimes against humanity, and the UN peacekeeping force has been renewed for another year, although their numbers needed to be increased for them to be effective. Earlier this month, Doctors Without Borders had to withdraw staff from several areas because of persistent attacks on them, affecting the medical care of at least 65,000 refugees.

One small hope is the tactic that helped to end apartheid in South Africa: economic boycott. Today the California State Senate will consider a bill to ban any company that does business linked to supporting genocide from receiving state contracts. As the Save Darfur Coalition put it, "It will force companies to make a choice: they can either work with the genocidal government of Sudan or they can work with the state of California."

Readers in California should contact their State Senators and urge them to vote for this bill (the Darfur Contracting Act). Readers in other states should urge their legislators to consider and pass similar legislation. And candidates for Congress in this year's election should answer this question: what are you prepared to do to stop the genocide in Darfur?

Update: Although Barack Obama mentions stopping genocide in Darfur as he campaigns, it was Joe Biden--now his Vice Presidential candidate--who brought it up most passionately in the debates. That's encouraging.

Not This House for No Change McCain

The United States

“If we think that we can secure our country by just talking tough without acting tough and smart, then we will misunderstand this moment and miss its opportunities,” Mr. Obama said. “If we think that we can use the same partisan politics where we just challenge our opponent’s patriotism to win an election, then the American people will lose. The times are too serious for this kind of politics. The calamity left behind by the last eight years is too great.”

"These are the judgments I’ve made and the policies that we have to debate, because we do have differences in this election. But one of the things that we have to change in this country is the idea that people can’t disagree without challenging each other’s character and patriotism. I have never suggested and never will that Senator McCain picks his positions on national security based on politics or personal ambition. I have not suggested it because I believe that he genuinely wants to serve America’s national interest. Now, it’s time for him to acknowledge that I want to do the same.”

“Let me be clear. I will let no one question my love of this country. I love America, so do you, and so does John McCain. When I look out at this audience, I see people of different political views. You are Democrats and Republicans and Independents. But you all served together, and fought together, and bled together under the same proud flag. You did not serve a Red America or a Blue America, you served the United States of America.”

Barack Obama to a convention of the Veterans of Foreign Wars on Tuesday.

Real Things

All this political talk and arguing are important to the future, but so is what's happening right now, the real things:

Update Thursday: Mayor Bloomberg of New York City proposes using skyscrapers and bridges to site wind turbines as part of his alternative energy plan.

At the national Clean Energy Summit, Google.org announced it will invest $10 million to develop Enhanced Geothermal Systems, to tap energy from the heated granite deep in the earth, which exists pretty much everywhere.

Companies will build two new solar plants in California which together will produce twelve times as much electricity as any solar power plant today. MIT researchers say they have discovered a way to use solar energy cheaply even after the sun goes down, which could make it a mainstream source of power within the next decade.

Toyota is adding solar panels to its third generation design for the Prius hybrid, while plug-in hybrids that get their juice from a household electrical outlet will start rolling into showrooms within in 18 months. Dubbed the next step in the evolution of the car, experts say plug-in hybrids could account for about 20 percent of vehicle sales within a decade, and half of all sales by 2050.

Facing economic hardship and contraction, the town of Rock Port, Missouri stopped tilting at windmills and started building them. Today the town is entirely powered by wind--and on most days, exports energy. Now the town is starting to grow jobs."Did I ever think this would happen? Naw, not in a million years. ... This is beyond my imagination."

High energy prices and environmental concerns are prompting seven in 10 Americans saying they're trying to reduce their "carbon footprint," chiefly by driving less, using less electricity and recycling.

Tech industries are devising ways for household PCs as well as corporate tech infrastructure to conserve energy.

And yet...

While the EPA finds that global heating will cause substantial threats to human health, and humanity must prepare for a potential catastrophic increase in temperatures, a major program to help poor countries cope has been shut down for lack of funding.

The Dreaming Up Daily Image

Siamese Twin Galaxies. In ten million years or
so, they'll become one galaxy.

The Dreaming Up Daily Quote

"Let me tell you a story about a revelation.
It's not the colour of a nation that holds a nation's pride
It's imagination.
It's imagination inside."

Andrea Menard

Viral Video: Baraky II!

Number 1 with a Dagger

This report by the Obama campaign
exposes the blatant lies in the new book,
"Obama Nation," which will be #1 on the
New York Times Best Seller List, but with
a "dagger" to indicate that it got to be a
best seller because of "bulk sales," which
in this case means right wing organizations
buying up copies, just to get an anti-Obama
book on the list, and get the resulting media
coverage.

Unfit For Publication

The Obama campaign issued a 41 page rebuttal of the many deliberate lies in the book, Obama Nation, under the highly relevant title of "Unfit for Publication."

That the book, authored by a known liar who penned a similiar smear of John Kerry in 2004, is full of the most reprehensible lies and false charges, targeting the most basic fears of the uninformed, is already a matter of record. Even before the point by point refutations of the Obama document, Media Matters had debunked specific charges. Joe Klein of Time Magazine was more general but more direct--he called the book "swill," "sleaze," and "poisonous crap." Politico mentions some of the authors other whoppers.

While I am certainly concerned by the possible political effects, I am especially troubled by this book as an author and book reviewer: because it is being published by a major publishing house, Simon & Schuster, and its Threshold Editions imprint. Threshold is run by Mary Matalin, political aide to conservative Republicans, including Bush and Cheney. That she has become an editor with her own imprint is suspicious but not really the issue. What she has decided to do with that imprint, and what Simon & Schuster is allowing her to do, is to me a very basic threat to whatever is left of the integrity of American book publishing.

It's not simply that this book has not been "fact-checked," as if that means that some errors slipped in unnoticed. It is completely based on lies, from start to finish. It is, as a perceptive post called "Books That Attack and Mislead" at First Read notes, just another form of a negative political ad. After all, its author told the New York Times, “The goal is to defeat Obama,” Mr. Corsi said in a telephone interview. “I don’t want Obama to be in office.”

But no political advocacy organization is paying to print this political smear, which has no basis in fact. A legitimate major publisher, that obviously wishes its nonfiction books to be taken seriously, is paying people to write, edit and promote this book. Moreover, they are doing so with total dishonesty. Matalin told the Times the book “was not designed to be, and does not set out to be, a political book,” calling it, rather, “a piece of scholarship, and a good one at that.” She is lying, and she knows she is lying. She has no integrity whatsoever, and therefore, neither does the publisher anymore.

Yet the publisher is dressing this book up with a cover that emphasizes the author's supposed credentials (Phd), and with pages of scholarly-looking footnotes--that reportedly cite mostly right wing and hate sources, and the author's own publications or posts. Everything about this book is deceptive.

Even the book's widely reported status as a #1 Best Seller is a deception. By the NY Times own admission, this book has been bought in bulk--hundreds if not thousands of copies purchased by rabid right and GOPer organizations, in a deliberate, organized attempt to make it a "Best Seller." Those copies will be given away, and will shortly begin appearing on the shelves of Salvation Army stores. I suspect that Matalin and her bosses knew this from the moment they agreed to publish this book.

We've had plagarism scandals, and scandals about fiction being falsely claimed as non-fiction--but there apparently is no scandal, just profit, in this most morally corrupt attack on the integrity of book publishing. As Mark Murphy observed at First Read: "This is perhaps the greatest loophole for underground attacks to go mainstream. Forget blogs, the bookworld may still be the best place to push false truths about someone."

If readers cannot trust the integrity of books as a general rule, and the implied promise by major publishers that their books are what they purport to be, then publishing has become a sham, and books have lost their credibility. That affects me as an author and as a book reviewer. This book is clearly unfit for publication, and Simon & Schuster should be called to account for utter disdain for integrity and the accepted standards of legitimate publishing, however minimal they have become.

A Plan for the Future

The Obama campaign ad that will run during the Olympics next week. The first ad emphasized his energy plan and its economic benefits; this one focuses on his economic plan, which includes the benefits in jobs and economic activity of the energy initiatives.

Two Million Strong--and Counting

The number of contributors to the Obama campaign
passed two million on Wednesday, making it the
largest publicly funded campaign in American history.

Golden Spaceman

"He is just a normal person, but maybe from a
different planet." That's how a Russian competitor
described Michael Phelps of the U.S., after he won
his fifth gold medal in five events, for a total of 11
so far in his career: he's won more gold medals
than anyone in modern Olympic competition.

Distress or Mirror Universe?

Just what is Bush trying to signal at the Olympics?
Maybe that electing another warmonger will get
the country in the same mess this one did, especially
when his condemnation of Russia for invading a
sovereign nation sounds like a pathetic joke.

Unlikely Allies

Before events totally overwhelm what I still consider the most significant story of the past month in terms of the future--the Obama energy plan--a comment on one fairly odd yet possibly pretty important sideshow.

You've probably seen the ad on TV--it was running constantly on the hot air cable channels for a couple of weeks: An old white man with a familiar name you couldn't quite place, except that he's clearly Texan, and incredibly wealthy --T. Boone Pickens--talking about the need for a new energy policy to make the U.S. energy independent by turning to clean energy sources.

Around the time that he announced his energy plan (as outlined in posts below), Barack Obama complimented Pickens and these ads, and he correctly picked out the single most important phrase in them:

"I've been an oil man all my life, and this is one emergency we can't drill our way out of."

Then after Obama's energy plan was announced, Pickens returned the favor and complimented it and Obama.

What's so extraordinary about this? Almost exactly four years ago, the Swift Boat Liars, with the willing connivance of the hot air networks, were vilifying John Kerry with patently false charges about his military service. Those Big Lie ads were largely financed by a billionaire oilman and hedge fund investor: T. Boone Pickens.

This year, Pickens is touting the need for a new energy plan in television and radio ads, at a budgeted cost (according to Forbes)of some $44 million.
The ad campaign has gotten a lot of free media attention as well. The first ad is already such a big deal that when Al Gore presented his proposal for carbon-free electricity within a decade, one of the first people the news media went to for reactions was T. Boone Pickens.

The first ad in the series was quite effective. Pickens makes the case that the U.S. is importing some 70% of its oil, leading to what he calls the largest transfer of wealth in history. He is basically touting wind power to generate America's electrical power, freeing up natural gas for a new generation of cars and other vehicles. While experts find lots of problems with the second part of his prescription especially, I don't think there is sufficient recognition for the power of this ad to change the dynamic, especially in one particular way, with one particular sentence.

For as usually happens in the U.S., high gas prices lead to talk of alternatives--alternative fuels, transport systems, conservation methods. But also talk of more drilling for more oil in America. Sure enough, Republicans and some craven Democrats are once again calling for off-shore oil drilling, and they've never really given up trying to open up wilderness areas.

Everyone is wondering how the politics of this will play out in this crucial election year. Then along comes the ultra-conservative, paradigmatic capitalist billionaire, and a Bush-financing Texas oil man to boot. And in this first ad, after laying out the problem of imported oil, he looks into the camera and in his Texas drawl he says this: "I've been an oil man all my life, but this is one emergency we can't drill our way out of."

Pickens stands to make lots of money from wind power, and so does Texas, which is rich in wind farms and recently the Texas state government made what they said is the largest single investment in clean renewable energy in U.S. history--a $4.9 billion plan for new transmission lines to bring wind power from those farms to big Texas cities.

But that's part of the point for Pickens--he says he wants the private sector to lead the transformation, and though he sees a major role for government, his metaphor isn't JFK's challenge to get to the moon within a decade (Gore) but Eisenhower's federal highway building program of the 1950s.

So whatever is right or wrong about Pickens' approach and specific proposals, I am fascinated with that one sentence--and what it might do to start this transformation from another direction, or at least blunt the argument that more oil drilling is the answer. And so for the moment (even though Pickens hasn't endorsed a presidential candidate), the two unlikeliest allies of the campaign so far are Pickens and Obama.

Hands Across the Future

This is the Obama ad that will run during the Olympics, in a major ad buy. Called "Hands," it's about Obama's plan for America's energy future, the subject of several earlier posts here. This is further evidence of the Obama campaign's committment to this initiative.

Hummers Return

They actually haven't been far away--I've seen them
fly by to another range the last few months, but they're
definitely hanging out back here now as well. There was
a recent diary at Kos filled with hummer photos, and
this is one of them. There are lots more by this photographer
at Juliesmagiclightshow.com.

President of the Future

Barack Obama's energy plan outlined below is one of the most important proposals any presidential candidate has offered in a generation. It is essentially an outline for the American future.

Look at it closely. Not only does it respond in meaningful ways to the end of the oil age heralded in part by today's high prices (which have causes other than dwindling supply, but that's a factor.) Not only does it outline realistic ways of attaining energy independence and meeting future energy needs, but does so in ways that will not add to the Climate Crisis, and will reduce the causes of that crisis for the far future, avoiding catastrophe for our descendants. It provides a blueprint for combining development and use of clean energy technologies while recognizing the immense role that ending energy waste can play, not only in the future but right now.

But the brilliance of it is that it recognizes the federal government's role in leading the necessary and sweeping changes necessary for the American economy of the future. Just as Franklin D. Roosevelt fought the Depression by investing in infrastructure--in roads, bridges, parks, public buildings, as well as planting three billion trees--that enabled economic expansion; just as Dwight Eisenhower promoted the prosperity of the 50s and 60s by building the federal highway system; just as JFK invested in the new technology of the space program that supports today's high tech industries, so too does Barack Obama propose to create the energy infrastructure for the economy of the future.

Just his proposals for updating America's system of generating and distributing electricity will create jobs in the short term and will build infrastructure to enable economic growth, while increasing energy efficiency, so we can actually do more with less fuel.

Add to that proposals for weatherization and energy conservation, that will boost private as well as public spending in the short term, with almost immediate dividends.

And that's before you even get to the proposals to jump-start whole new clean energy technology enterprises, transforming the way we power everything in our lives, including our vehicles. There are vast new businesses here, and everyone in the industrialized world knows this is where we are heading, if we want to have a healthy economic and a healthy civilization in the rest of the 21st century and beyond.

This is an American vision, for America. Because we're going to be buying these technologies in the near future. Are we going to be buying them from China, like just about everything we're buying now? Or India? Or Europe? They are all moving in this direction. America has only a short time to mobilize its vast resources to seize global leadership in the new growth industries of the future: solar power, wind power, biofuels, generations of new and progressively cleaner and more efficient cars and other transportation systems. Plus energy, conservation and anti-global heating technologies beyond our current knowledge.

Look at these proposals. You could be looking at an outline of a bright and exciting future.

Obama on America's Energy Future

Barack Obama in Lansing, Michigan, presenting
a detailed energy policy for the American future.

For the Record: Obama on Our Energy Future

Lost in all of the McSmear's campaign's slurs and the TV hot air about it--which of course is part of the intent of it--was Barack Obama's actual energy plan for a future of renewable, sustainable, clean energy independence for America, as he talked about it the other day in Lansing, Michigan.

According to Mike Allen at Politico, his proposals included:

“If I am president, I will immediately direct the full resources of the federal government and the full energy of the private sector to a single, overarching goal — in 10 years, we will eliminate the need for oil from the entire Middle East and Venezuela,” Obama said. “To do this, we will invest $150 billion over the next 10 years and leverage billions more in private capital to build a new energy economy that harnesses American energy and creates 5 million new American jobs.”

— Get 1 million 150 mile-per-gallon plug-in hybrids on U.S. roads within six years. Provide a $7,000 tax incentive to drivers of advanced tech cars, $4 billion to automakers to build hybrids, and a pledge to convert the entire White House fleet of vehicles to plug-in hybrids in the first year of the Obama administration, to set an example.

— Require that 10 percent of U.S. energy comes from renewable sources by the end of his first term – more than double the current level.

—Reduce U.S. demand for electricity 15 percent by 2020, through efficiency.
— Weatherize 1 million homes annually.
— Increase the efficiency of new buildings by 50 percent in the next decade through energy-efficient roofs and better-quality windows and ventilation systems.
— Increase the efficiency of existing buildings by 25 percent over the next decade through retrofitting that includes improved insulation and ventilation systems.

What about McCain? Obama reportedly noted that McCain said that America's energy problems are thirty years in the making. "What Senator McCain neglected to mention was that during those thirty years, he was in Washington for twenty-six of them," said the Senator. "And in all that time, he did little to reduce our dependence on foreign oil. He voted against increased fuel efficiency standards and opposed legislation that included tax credits for more efficient cars. He voted against renewable sources of energy. Against clean biofuels. Against solar power. Against wind power. Against an energy bill that -- while far from perfect -- represented the largest investment in renewable sources of energy in the history of this country. So when Senator McCain talks about the failure of politicians in Washington to do anything about our energy crisis, it's important to remember that he's been a part of that failure."

"After years of inaction," said the presumptive Democratic nominee, "and in the face of public frustration over rising gas prices, the only energy proposal [McCain's] really promoting is more offshore drilling -- a position he recently adopted that has become the centerpiece of his plan, and one that will not make a real dent in current gas prices or meet the long-term challenge of energy independence."

No wonder McCain wanted to talk about tire inflation.

Environmentalist Joseph Romm praised Obama's proposals, especially from the perspective of the Climate Crisis. Here are parts of the plan he emphasizes:

"Increase Fuel Economy Standards: Obama will increase fuel economy standards 4 percent per each year while protecting the financial future of domestic automakers....

Invest in Developing Advanced Vehicles and Put 1 Million Plugin Electric Vehicles on the Road by 2015: As a U.S. senator, Barack Obama has led efforts to jumpstart federal investment in advanced vehicles, including combined plug‐in hybrid/flexible fuel vehicles, which can get over 150 miles per gallon of gas...

Partner with Domestic Automakers: Obama will also provide $4 billion retooling tax credits and loan guarantees for domestic auto plants and parts manufacturers, so that the new fuel‐efficient cars can be built in the U.S. by American workers rather than overseas.

Mandate All New Vehicles are Flexible Fuel Vehicles

Develop the Next Generation of Sustainable Biofuels and Infrastructure

Establish a National Low Carbon Fuel Standard: ... The standard requires fuels suppliers in 2010 to begin to reduce the carbon of their fuel by 5 percent within 5 years and 10 percent within 10 years.

Deploy the Cheapest, Cleanest, Fastest Energy Source--Energy Efficiency: Barack Obama will set an aggressive energy efficiency goal--to reduce electricity demand 15 percent from DOE's projected levels by 2020. Implementing this program will save consumers a total of $130 billion, reduce carbon dioxide emissions by more than 5 billion tons through 2030, and create jobs. A portion of this goal would be met by setting annual demand reduction targets that utilities would need to meet.

Set National Building Efficiency Goals: Obama will establish a goal of making all new buildings carbon neutral, or produce zero emissions, by 2030. He'll also establish a national goal of improving new building efficiency by 50 percent and existing building efficiency by 25 percent over the next decade to help us meet the 2030 goal.

Overhaul Federal Efficiency Standards: The current Department of Energy has missed 34 deadlines for setting updated appliance efficiency standards....

Reduce Federal Energy Consumption: ... He will make the federal government a leader in the green building market, achieving a 40 percent increase in efficiency in all new federal buildings within five years and ensuring that all new federal buildings are zero‐emissions by 2025. He will invest in cost‐effective retrofits to achieve a 25 percent increase in efficiency of existing federal buildings within 5 years.

Invest in a Smart Grid: ... Obama will pursue a major investment in our national utility grid using smart metering, distributed storage and other advanced technologies to accommodate 21st century energy requirements: greatly improved electric grid reliability and security, a tremendous increase in renewable generation and greater customer choice and energy affordability.

Build More Livable and Sustainable Communities....

Flip Incentives to Energy Utilities: An Obama administration will "flip" incentives to utility companies by: requiring states to conduct proceedings to implement incentive changes; and offering them targeted technical assistance. These measures will benefit utilities for improving energy efficiency, rather than just from supporting higher energy consumption. This "regulatory equity" starts with the decoupling of profits from increased energy usage, which will incentivize utilities to partner with consumers and the federal and state governments to reduce monthly energy bills for families and businesses. The federal government under an Obama administration will play an important and positive role in flipping the profit model for the utility sector so that shareholder profit is based on reliability and performance as opposed to total production. "

Romm's conclusion: "This is an aggressive, achievable, and most important of all, a necessary energy plan." He notes that it spells out more details implicit in the climate and energy plan Obama presented previously, as summarized by Climate Progress. Gristmill does an even more detailed analysis.

The response by people who know these issues deeply has been very positive. But shouldn't these issues be at least debated? This is the future that is at stake. And this is another reason why McShame's slurs, racist suggestiveness and attempts at distraction are so destructive. There seems to be only one serious person running for President this year. And then there's McBush.

Inflate This

McSmear and His Racist Campaign

We've seen this all before, but that doesn't mean it's okay to see it again.

McCain and his campaign know that the only chance they have to win this year is by making voters cynical about Obama, while at the same time making enough people afraid of Obama because he's black.

John McCain's campaign is racist. It's all led by the ad campaign, which McCain himself reinforces on the stump.

To begin with, you must understand that McCain and his campaign advisors don't make the ads. McCain "approves" them, and those running his campaign
decide what they want the ads to say and do. But the ads are made by advertising professionals--the same people who make, for instance, those Cialis ads. They know exactly what they're doing.

I mention those ads because there are overt messages and subconscious messages in TV ads, and the Viagra and Cialis ads for products that increase male sexual potency have identifiable images supporting their message. You don't have to register the images consciously or even notice them for them to work--or that's the theory. The point is, those images aren't there by accident. Professional admakers put them there.

Sometimes they are made more obvious for fun, but most of the time, you aren't supposed to consciously notice them. For example, that Cialis ad that begins with the couple who would rather be having sex but must deal instead with a broken kitchen faucet. But this faucet doesn't leak. It gushes water high in the air. The phallic symbolism is almost too literal, but the ad quickly moves on to other homey scenes, all of which contain prominent if more traditional phallic and sexual symbols.

The McShame "celebrity" ad shows Obama, and then fleeting images of two famous blond white women, then Obama. New York Times columnist Bob Herbert points out that the ad also contains traditional phallic imagery as well. The message, as Eugene Robinson said on Countdown Monday, is one of the oldest in American history to instill fear of a black man: the slave is going to rape the white daughter of the plantation.

It may seem far-fetched, but these are advertising professionals, they are used to using this kind of imagery, and nothing--not a single frame of such a short commercial is there by accident.

It is not the only attempt to tap into the underground current of subconscious racism--much of McCain's campaign is following that line of attack. Bob Herbert in his column titled "Running While Black" writes: "Gee, I wonder why, if you have a black man running for high public office — say, Barack Obama or Harold Ford — the opposition feels compelled to run low-life political ads featuring tacky, sexually provocative white women who have no connection whatsoever to the black male candidates."

Herbert links this ad to the others, and to McCain smears on Obama's patriotism, and the attempts to paint him as essentially too dumb (and maybe shiftless and lazy) to be President: "The racial fantasy factor in this presidential campaign is out of control... It’s driving the idea that Barack Obama is somehow presumptuous, too arrogant, too big for his britches — a man who obviously does not know his place."

These code words and images are a toxic tradition, and even though African Americans like Herbert are likely to be the first to identify them, they're by now so obvious that white people can recognize them. As did the centrist, sometimes-Republican, sometimes Democrat David Gergen, who said this on TV Sunday:

"There has been a very intentional effort to paint him as somebody outside the mainstream, other, 'he's not one of us,'" said Gergen, who has worked with White Houses, both Republican and Democrat, from Nixon to Clinton. "I think the McCain campaign has been scrupulous about not directly saying it, but it's the subtext of this campaign. Everybody knows that. There are certain kinds of signals. As a native of the south, I can tell you, when you see this Charlton Heston ad, 'The One,' that's code for, 'he's uppity, he ought to stay in his place.' Everybody gets that who is from a southern background. We all understand that. When McCain comes out and starts talking about affirmative action, 'I'm against quotas,' we get what that's about."

John McCain, who rose to prominence as a different kind of Republican, has sold his soul to the forces of darkness, the Lee Atwater/Karl Rove school of haters and liars. He's John McSmear now. And on the basis of his campaign, I call him a racist.

Update: Additional perspective from KNBC in Los Angeles.

Happy Birthday, Barack!

And, a little late, also to Mike.
A present to both: Washington Post poll finds
Obama leading McCain among low-wage workers--
overwhelmingly among African American and Latino
workers, but also by 10 points among white workers.
Take that, pundits! For more about what this means...

The Dreaming Up Daily Quote

"Those parts of our being that extend beyond the individual ego cannot survive unless they can be constantly articulated."

Lewis Hyde
The Gift