But I will send a fire upon Judah, and it shall devour the palaces of Jerusalem. Thus saith the LORD; For three transgressions of Israel, and for four, I will not turn away the punishment thereof; because they sold the righteous for silver, and the poor for a pair of shoes; That pant after the dust of the earth on the head of the poor, and turn aside the way of the meek: and a man and his father will go in unto the same maid, to profane my holy name: And they lay themselves down upon clothes laid to pledge by every altar, and they drink the wine of the condemned in the house of their god. — Amos 2:5-8

I’ve said before that I have no horse in the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination process, but I’m certainly disappointed in Barack Obama today. Yesterday I watched his long-time pastor, the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, speak before the national press club regarding the brouhaha that has been made of a sermon he gave shortly after September 11, 2001. The press has been bending itself backwards trying to keep Rev. Wright’s comments firmly out of their original context and put them in the frame that best serves their interest in selling newspapers and drawing the eyes of television audiences. Yesterday Rev. Wright fielded questions regarding his religious views, the prophetic liberation theology of the so-called black church, and the political fallout that has been dogging his former parishioner, Senator Barack Obama.

I watched the Bill Moyers interview with Rev. Wright, with the expanded-but-still-incomplete clip of the now-famous “God damn America” sermon. I watched the reverend speak to the national press club. As I watched, I grew firmer in my belief that the more of this man people actually heard the less radical he would sound to them. Naturally, people like Dan Abrams and Tucker Carlson on MSNBC couldn’t stand such a thought, and simplified the reverend’s comments into a fabricated pissing match between the pastor and the senator. This was unfair to the reverend, unfair to the senator, and unfair to the voting public.

It was also totally expected. The press reaction to Rev. Wright was, I thought, the primary reason that Sen. Obama had gently distanced himself from the reverend’s misrepresented comments. Today that changed. Senator Obama in a press conference today has now cut his own pastor (former pastor, whatever) loose having seen the reverend’s full remarks. Regardless of what the political pundits had been saying, Wright had not done anything deserving such. The proper reaction for Senator Obama to have given, upon having seen the video, heard the audio, or read the transcripts, would be something along the lines of “I feel that Reverend Jeremiah Wright has been badly misrepresented by my opponents and by the press in this matter, and while I understand that many in the public — who have not been exposed to these remarks in their original context — are offended, he is a good man, he has nothing to be ashamed of, and I am proud to have been a part of his congregation for all those years.”

TL;DR – Barack Obama showed reprehensible political cowardice today. He may yet make an excellent president, but rolling over on a good man like this is just not right.

• Book of Amos (from a little-read religious document called the “Old Testament”)
• Rev. Jeremiah Wright full sermon (September 16, 2001 audio)
• Rev. Jeremiah Wright at the National Press Club (April 28, 2008 parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5)
• Sen. Barack Obama regarding Rev. Wright (April 29, 2008)

I keep hearing people on the radio imply that Senator Barack Obama has no experience or accomplishments to recommend him for the job of President of the United States of America. Generally this comes up in the form of a pointed question thrown at a random Obama supporter: “Can you name one legislative accomplishment of Barack Obama?”

So if you’re an Obama supporter, here are two pat answers for you to keep handy:

• Nuclear Weapons Threat Reduction Act of 2007
• Coburn-Obama Transparency Act

Maybe you don’t want to read the actual bills, that’s OK. Just remember that he’s done more for anti-proliferation than his opponents have, and has done more for ensuring that the government is answerable for the money it spends than his opponents have.

A couple more things he’s done that you may want to be prepared to fling out when challenged:

• Sponsored 280 Illinois bills that passed into law over eight years, six of which he was in the minority party.
• Ethics & campaign finance reform, welfare reform in Illinois.
• Expanded children’s health care in Illinois.
• Federal ethics reform bill currently pending reconciliation with the House of Representatives.

More importantly, the true answer to a question of “What has Barack Hussein Obama accomplished in his life that recommends him to the role of Commander in Chief,” particularly in contrast to the presumptive Republican nominee John McCain:

• He learned that Sunnis and Shias aren’t the same.

Being able to hold notions like that in your head may come in handy in the near future. Oh, and screw you, Roger Hedgecock.

It is generally accepted around these parts (Northern California) that the Democratic Party is a circular firing-squad, lacking any internal discipline in the face of the lock-step unity of the Republicans. Internal party discipline is certainly something that the Republicans talk about more openly, and their long stretches as the minority party in the federal legislature has lead to a number of impressive filibusters and procedural maneuvers requiring few or no hold-outs. The relatively recent rise of the right-wing echo chamber on talk radio and other media lend additional credibility to this perception. Even their primary process for nominating a presidential candidate ensures an early knock-out by way of winner-take-all contests rather than the slow bleeding of proportional representation.

Social Action, a tool produced by the University of Maryland, was recently used to show that this may be all perception. Taking the voting records for all US senators during 2007 and feeding these data into a social-network visualizer, you get a bit of a different story. Last year the Democratic and Independent senators voted very similarly to each other. On the other side of the aisle, four Republican senators (Collins, Smith, Snowe, and Specter) broke ranks repeatedly, dragging them out into the center of an otherwise-sharply-divided network. McCain and Brownback, both Republicans, had too few votes on record during the sample period to be meaningfully represented.

Hat tip to Visual Complexity for posting this where I’d run into it.

The Olympic torch is going to pass through San Francisco this week, and all manner of protests have been planned. Some have already been implemented. The locus of these protests has been, largely, China’s relations with Sudan in light of the situation in Darfur and their actions in Tibet suppressing the local population.

As a resident of Sonoma County, I’ve long been subjected to bumper sticker rhetoric showing the iconic red, gold, and blue Tibetan suburst with the words “FREE TIBET” emblazoned below. People ranging from west-county hippies to Beastie Boy Adam Yount express great concern that the unique cultural heritage and traditions of the Tibetan people are being systematically eradicated by the totalitarian government in Beijing.

I’ve got news for you: The uniquie cultural heritage and traditions of all the Chinese people have been under the same process for the past 49 years. Millions died in Mao Zedong’s cultural revolution. Nothing about the Tibetans makes them more important than hundreds of millions of their neighbors who are every bit as entitled to religious freedom, self-determination, and all the various civil liberties we consider basic human rights. Screw Tibet. Free China.