The Obama administration

Here’s the political editor of Huffington Post already talking about who’s gonna be in an Obama administration. Forget the polls, forget the election, it’s over for McCain, no doubt, unless some big external event were to occur between now and Nov. 4.

The McCain campaign implosion

We’re starting to hear more about the inevitable impending implosion of the McCain campaign. According to wikipedia, the media endorsements now stands at 127-46 in favor of Obama. What’s more interesting is the growing landslide of endorsements for Obama’s as compared to McCain’s. See for yourself. This is in contrast to years ago when the situation is the exact opposite. Here in the Wall Street Journal, we have the defections of Republicans to the Democratic ticket. On Karl Rove’s, the architect of the Bush presidency, site, see his electoral map. The blame game is already starting in the McCain camp, with finger-pointing, ass-covering and resignation starting to snowball. What’s worse, the McCain camp has to defend negativity generated by the press for the ridiculous amounts of money spent on Palin’s wardrobe and the mutilation hoax perpetrated by a McCain campaign worker. Then he is forced to blast Bush for the current situation without mentioning the fact that he supported Bush 90% of the time. That is all not good news in McCain-land. The implosion has begun and Obama’s campaign does not even need to lift a finger.  It will just snowball from now on to it’s foregone conclusion, an earthquake election.

What’s happening ? McCain could have been one up against Obama at any time in this campaign. Now why does Obama seem to be so impervious to any move made by McCain ? Obama’s black and that’s supposed to be a big advantage to McCain and still is. Obama is inexperienced, not very well known and an idealist which can be a double-edged sword. Every which way you dissect the 2 candidates, McCain will always start out the stronger party and Obama the weaker one. But in this case, Obama has managed to minimize his own weaknesses and maximize his opponent’s. It never cease to impress me that Obama’s team is disciplined, principled and steadfast irregardless of anything that’s thrown at them. Every move McCain makes end up backfiring. The lesson here is that the most important thing about winning is to put your own house in order first. It’s like a tree firmly anchored to the ground but adapting by swaying with the force of the wind. No matter which direction or how strong the wind blows, the tree is till standing. In my opinion, McCain has already lost from the beginning because :

1. His world view and value systems does not exactly align with the Republican’s more extreme positions. He is more centrist and moderate. This causes conflicts and infighting which is already happening.
2. There’s no central overarching moral theme of his campaign. It’s just throwing everything at the wall at any moment to see what sticks. They are too quick to abandon their main message with too much attacking and too little in solidifying their core theme.
3. He’s too much inside Washington that he’s just out of touch.

Obama’s camp is the exact opposite. In a fight, the loser always blames the opponent for being the stronger, faster, more skiIled, the weather, whatever. The perspective of the loser is never the fact that there’s something wrong with himself in the first place and needs to keep his own house in order above all else. The martial art taiji teaches us to first and foremost find our root, to be introspective, to know ourselves before we learn how to fight others. There is no firm root in McCain’s campaign. I am impressed with Obama’s campaign who seemed to have mastered this basic truth so obvious but yet so elusive to a war veteran like McCain.

The unMessiah

This comment by a conservative makes me want to say something. Oliver North says :

What I found so disturbing was seeing so many of my countrymen who apparently think — or believe — or hope — that the next president of the United States will save us from ourselves. Senator Obama has said we can not, “Wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for.” He would do well to remember that unfulfilled expectations are the greatest cause of anger on the planet. That’s true whether it is between a husband and wife, students and teacher, employers and employees, or leaders and the led. He might also recall that humility is a virtue that has distinguished our greatest leaders.

What all this means to the future of this republic, I don’t know. I’m a military historian, not a prophet. But I do know the first name of the Messiah. It’s not Mike. And it isn’t Barack, either.

Yes, the moment of reckoning is now drawing near and there is a confident, positive air about Obama’s campaign. Obama’s supporters, me included, may be euphoric over the historic election of a charismatic black president and the promise of a new age upon us all has come. But we all have to be careful. The article, coming from someone with a dubious record, is as usual trying to pour cold water over the so-called “left” side but when stripped of its rhetoric, it is right on some things. Obama’s no god. Obama’s no prophet. And Obama’s no messiah. He is just a very talented human being entrusted with an extremely difficult job of leading a country and possibly the world to better times. And he can fail like anybody else. I think Obama himself recognizes the fact that for all the ideals that he cherished, there is also the real world. There will be the inevitable opposition to his many ideals, especially from the entrenched Washington politics and the industrial-military complex which will not give up so easily, and the danger that even he may eventually cross over to the dark side himself. There will be the challenge coming outside America’s borders, testing if this man will really be true to what he stands for, whether he’ll disown decades of hypocritical American policies. There will be shortcomings and also dissatisfaction. But the true test of a Obama presidency will only come 8 years later, when we can judge whether the world around us to be better off than before. So yes, he is the best promise of change, but we must also temper our expectations, be vigilant and rational and be ready to be critical when needed. Obama is not the Messiah, not till he has proven himself.

bin Laden’s power

After reading this article, I can’t help but think that bin Laden is actually the fifth column running America. I’m sure most don’t agree but we have to recognize that bin Laden is actually a very shockingly powerful man indeed in America since he even holds the power to influence the presidential elections. Says Jonathan Alter in the article :

Should there be, God forbid, an actual terrorist attack between now and the election, all bets are off. But it’s instructive that only three days after the 2004 terrorist attack in Madrid that killed 193, the most deadly act of Islamic terrorism in European history, the Spanish socialists won national elections. We aren’t Spain, but we’re also not a country that can have a whole election thrown into disarray by terrorists. At least I hope we aren’t any more, though we won’t know for sure unless it happens.

Since 9/11, bin Laden and his gang Al Qaeda has succeeded in convincing Americans to support Bush’s misadventures in the Middle East and helped promote the kind of ignorance, fear and bigotry especially about Islam and Muslims in this country. He has helped put the neocons in power for the last 7 years. After all this time, this man still possess enormous power over Americans and we don’t even realize it ourselves. The specter of this turbaned, bearded character has remained etched in people’s minds and it has defined how some Americans think and behave. His omnipresence is such that everyone knows him, even more so than you are of your politicians. This guy did not live in the US, is not present in Capitol Hill, does not vote for bills but he has the ability to make us dismantle the constitution, caused 2 wars killing tens of thousands, give up our freedoms, break our piggy bank and alienate us from the world. The damage is not only confined to the twin towers and the lives lost there. The damage still continues to this day. And the fact that bin Laden only sacrificed 15 of his pawns to achieve this is nothing short of incredulous. How can a world superpower be so beholden to a few terrorists.

It’s now time to start purging this demon and to start the process of healing. We have to start recognizing our own vulnerabilities and that Al Qaeda’s sole tactic is mainly to instill fear, anger and irrationality in us all so that we’ll make mistakes. We have made a lot of critical mistakes the last 7 years so this should not be allowed to continue to play into his hands again. The war that bin Laden has created is not only in some battlefield in the Middle East, if not that would have been ended long time ago with overwhelming American firepower. Part of the war lies within the borders of America, within us all, within our minds and that’s where the battleground is. We are actually our own worst enemy. We owe it to ourselves to start realizing this fact. We owe it to ourselves to suppress our anger and extreme feelings, to acquire more knowledge and understanding, to unite rather than dvide and to think rationally and act rationally. We owe it to ourselves not to let bin Laden and his agents of hate win, ever.

The Chronicle endorses Obama

The Chronicle with along history of backing Republicans, has now endorsed Obama. The avalanche has now begun. The feedback loop generated by the press will start to give Obama an unstoppable momentum that McCain will find increasingly difficult to reverse. The final sprint to the finishing line has begun…

Colin Powell and the soldier Kareem R Khan

Yes, the former Secretary of State Colin Powell has endorsed Obama, saying that he’ll be an “exceptional president”. But the most memorable moment is when he mentioned the story of a soldier killed in the line of duty in Iraq, saying :

Mr. Powell mentioned Mr. Khan’s death to underscore why he was deeply troubled by Republican personal attacks on Mr. Obama, especially false intimations that he was Muslim.

Mr. Obama is a lifelong Christian, not a Muslim, he said. But, he added, “The really right answer is, what if he is?”

“Is there something wrong with being Muslim in this country? No, that’s not America,” he said.

Yes, what if he is a Muslim indeed ! If more Republicans are like him, then McCain will surely be the next president. But in the hunger for power, they sold their soul to the devil. They choose to ally with the forces of hatred, intolerance and bigotry in the country to advance their ambitions. This is what’s wrong with America today, blindfolding people’s eyes with the specter of 9/11 while they are cultivating the wrong kind of values and nobody has the backbone to sock it to them until this election. It has to wait 8 years for one of their own, a brave soldier, Colin Powell to deliver this knockout. And it takes another brave soldier, young Muslim American Kareem R Khan who sacrificed himself in the line of duty to defend America, to remind Americans what America really stands for, what America really is and what America should never tolerate. The real enemies of America lies not outside of its borders but more within. It has disguised itself among us in the form of patriotic, self-righteous defenders of America, sowing ignorance, discrimination and bigotry in our minds with their propaganda machine. They have already succeeded in splitting the country, caused thousands of deaths and breaking the piggy bank to advance their own misguided ideology. Now is the time they should be roundly defeated.

I salute Kareem R Khan, Colin Powell for reminding us what the really right answer is.

Elsheba Khan at the grave of her son, Specialist Kareem Rashad Sultan Khan.