A handful of activists and future Republican National Convention protesters attended a Minneapolis City Council committee meeting Wednesday to support Green Party council member Cam Gordon’s June 20 proposal banning police use of rubber bullets at upcoming RNC protests this fall. Unfortunately for those planning to protest in St. Paul this fall, Gordon’s reformed motion was vastly different from what he proposed last month, which, among barring rubber bullets, would have limited police use of pepper spray and prevented targeting activists.

Gordon’s proposal was supposed to be added to a resolution that set new rules for Minneapolis police to follow during public assemblies and mass demonstrations. These new policies superseded those made in 2000 after a protest at an International Society for Animal Genetics meeting that resulted in more than 65 arrests. Gordon’s added clauses were essentially the same as those that were already in law before June 20 but left out of the resolution that superseded them.

Last month, City Council sent Gordon’s proposal down to the Public Safety and Regulatory Services Committee, where it was unanimously passed Wednesday.

But instead of sticking its original provisions, Gordon’s new resolution added three amendments:

— That MPD presence at public assemblies will be based on legitimate public safety concerns and not be based upon intent to chill First Amendment rights.

— In concurrence with state law, and city ordinance, MPD officers will not use pepper spray, tear gas, or similar substances, or projectiles except in situations where the use of force is necessary.

— That MPD officers shall not confiscate, destroy or tamper with cameras or other recording devices being used to document public assembly activities or MPD enforcement actions. This shall not apply to situations in which a) cameras or recording devices are to be used as evidence, or b) MPD officers arrest an individual in possession of cameras or recording devices.

When the committee moved to vote on it, the dozen or so activists attending the meeting — silent but stern and unable to speak out because of the closed public hearing — held up signs with various anti-brutality phrases (one of them read, “Youth Against a Police State”) and pictures of a woman covered with cuts and wounds from rubber bullets.

Future RNC protesters couldn’t describe it as a victory. In the words of one activist, the proposal was a “bullshit compromise that doesn’t even begin to address” the likely police brutality that will ensue in St. Paul this fall. “I’m really pissed,” added Michelle Gross, president of Communities United Against Police Brutality. “That’s not the same as a ban – not even close.”

In a crowded hallway exchange with Gross and other activists after the vote, Gordon contended that his proposal wouldn’t have had any support without the added amendments. “It would have gotten voted down at committee, then it also would’ve gotten voted down at Council – I guarantee that,” he told Gross and the others. Gordon said that the best bet now is to get other council members to bring initiatives forward and “pick up some of the pieces that got dropped between now and next Friday (July 25),” when the full Council plans to vote on it.

“This is maybe the fifteenth time he’s pulled this shit,” Gross, who used to like Gordon, said of him. “He’s getting tired of being beat up by reactionaries on the committee, so he’s decided that he will just join them. If you can’t beat them, join them, right?”

Minneapolis police don’t use rubber bullets and aren’t planning to, according to a statement by police spokesman Sgt. Jesse Garcia from a recent City Pages story. But this doesn’t calm the nerves of many future RNC protesters.

“Since the clauses protecting protestors were taken out of the law, there’s every reason to suspect that the police will start [using] those things to get us,” said Nathan Clough, a U of M geography graduate student. Clough, who’s concerned that the RNC is being used as an excuse to develop laws that “limit our ability to express ourselves,” agrees with Gross that Gordon’s final bill was watered down. “We should have these protections in place before the abuses happen again,” he said, citing the police brutality that occurred at the 2000 International Society for Animal Genetics protests. “The majority of the City Council is so firmly on the side of the police that they can’t see the flaws right in front of their faces.”

Many of the activists who attended the meeting plan to lobby council members to vote against the final resolution next Friday. “These are Democrats, they’re supposed to be for the people,” said Michael Lefkowitz, a member of Anti-War Committee, Minnesota and Youth Against War and Racism planning to lobby on behalf of his groups. “They let us down.”

I applied this philosophy to my daily exchanges while living abroad in London, and it led to my amassing a totally scattered and diversified social circle. I was there for a mere four and a half months, but by the time I left, I had an entirely new life started. I was playing soccer and basketball for Imperial University. I had two internships: one for a top global music promotions company, and the other for a prominent rock n’ roll booking agency. Both led to great friendships, invaluable work experience, and loads of perks. I frequented all the cities museums, and played pickup soccer in each of the major parks several times a week. I made friends with vendors at popular street markets, partiers at all night clubs, bus riders on the way home from work. I

I was freelance writing for a website, whose editor I’d been fortunate enough to befriend. He hired me the same night we met at pub called the Oxford Arms in Camden. Marco Gandolfi was his name. An Italian born, London raised man in his late 30’s. We had similar taste in music and soccer. We were to get drunk together on many occasions. By writing for the website, I saved thousands in all the free gigs I was attending.

I forged another beneficial connection at the Oxford Arms, watching endless games of passionately followed English and International Football. A mid 30’s Nigerian man named Charles struck up a conversation with me. He did so on the grounds that I was a blatant American wearing a Tottenham jersey (Tottenham being the most commonly despised club in all of England.) Fortunately, he was wearing the same jersey, and therefore took no offense. He invited me to watch several games with his rowdy friends over the span of just two weeks. I eventually offered me job bartending at the venue where he worked in Camden, The Roundhouse. This turned out to be the ultimate resource for me. It allowed me to get to know dozens of other students and music lovers around my same age. It also allowed my to finance a month long trip through Europe I had planned for after the semester was out.

While my American flat mates were off traveling at least every other weekend, I opted to stay in the city, and immerse myself in the culture and lifestyle. I left the city only three times, once to Norwich for a rave, once to Bath and Stonehenge, and once to Brighton with some friends. I used this extra time to arrange places to stay during my trip, to save and earn money, and to find discount details and seek reliable advice on where to go. The scope of my journey was to head from Madrid to Oslo by train, spending significant time in 6 countries along the way. The first half of my trip I was to be accompanied by my brother. We were to travel from Madrid to Amsterdam, at which point he would fly back to London, and then back to Minneapolis.

Before we hit Europe though, I spent two nights showing him London. My brother flew in to London on April 19th. I picked him up at Paddington station, and we walked back to my flat in Kilburn. My six flat mates and I were drinking to commemorate our last night in town together. We finished off all our nearly empty bottles that had accumulated over the semester, and reminisced about our great times. My flatmate Jim, who hailed from New York City, went out with us at 1.00 am when all the rest had went off to bed. We found ourselves in a near skirmish, and then an old persons pub. We made the best of it, singing a long with the aging minstrel in the corner playing popular british rock songs from the 90’s. The next day we were forced to move out of our flats, so I arranged for my brother and I to stay the night with my friend Jack Case. I bartended with him at the Roundhouse. He let us borrow a couple of bikes, and led us on a bike tour that afternoon. We covered a lot of ground, making a full circle around the center of London, starting and ending in Highbury and Islington. Jack bid us farewell the next day, and I was finally off on my European adventure.

Our first destination was Madrid. We landed there on the evening of the 21st, and we stayed until the 28th. We were staying there with a family friend of ours. My Mom had attended university with a woman named Becky Prieto in Duluth. Becky moved to Germany after college and met her Spanish husband, who she know lives with outside Madrid. One of her three sons was close to my age. His name is Max, and he turned out to be a real fun guy to hang out with. He took us around his area and introduced us to his friends. He was sadly leaving on the 24th, so we didn’t get to hang out with for too long. However, he is heading to the US this summer to work in Sequoia National Park in California, and I fully intend to visit him.

One of his friends went by the name Dax Santos. He was one of the more interesting characters I’ve ever met. His parents were of the Opus Die sect of Catholicism, and raised him accordingly. There were no overt repercussions of this upbringing though when we talked. He was an alternative music fan, and we spent most of our time talking about bands like Vampire Weekend and Phoenix. After Max left on the 24th, his friends would come and pick me up and take me out to parties and raves. I spent a great deal of time with the youngest sibling, Eric, who was 13 years old. He shared an enthusiasm for soccer that I possess, and we watched many games in the evenings. My brother and I also spent a great deal of time in the Parque Rietiro, the biggest and most beautiful park in the city. On our last day, Eric took us to go see two of three biggest teams in Madrid, Atletico Madrid and Getafe. It was an epic battle that ended in a 1-1 tie.

From there, we hopped on the train headed towards Barcelona. We got there around 3.00 pm and I headed straight for the beach. Our hostel was just a few blocks away. While at the hostel, my brother and I met two girls from Quebec. They were staying at the same hostel as we were, and we met down in the bar area. They’re names were extremely unique. The eldest was named Iris Gagnon-Paradis, and the youngest Cassiopeia Paradis-Gagnon. They attributed the strangeness of these first names and the difference in their surnames to the fact that their mother was into astrology. They were 27 and 25, both working full time jobs in their home city of Montreal. They weren’t originally from the big city though. They had small town roots, just like we did. We went out to the courtyard and chatted that first night. We elected to all meet up the next morning and head for the beach.

The next morning we met for some breakfast and went down to the beach. It was a toasty 24 degrees Celsius that day, a perfect day for such leisurely activity. While we laid there chatting, I mixed the last of the hash I had purchased from in Madrid into some tobacco from a cut open cigarette. I attempted to roll this all into a joint for us to smoke. The resulting product was laughed at mercilessly by the veteran rollers from Montreal. Iris re-opened it, and with-in the minute had a tightly rolled J. She ended up purchasing 20 Euros of hash herself from one of the men strolling the beach in backpacks. After several hours in the sun, we headed out for some site seeing. We took in the ambitiously modeled, half constructed, world famous church, the Sagrada Familia. It’s been under construction since the turn of the 20th century. After that, Iris took us to a market and we bought some supplies for a picnic. We ate back at a café on the roof of our Hostel. That night we went out for some drinks on the west side of town. The next morning, we woke up early and hopped a train headed towards France.

Our first night in France was extraordinarily uneventful. We stopped in a small coastal town on the way to Montpellier, called Cerbere. We checked into a cheap hotel, left our bags, and went out on a mission to find a place that would be playing the champions league semi-final set to air that night. Unfortunately, there wasn’t a single place in town that was playing this game. We headed back to our hotel to see if it was on there. It was, but right as the game started, the television went out. The people we encountered in the small town were very skeptical and distant when we talked to them. It was my first time in France, and it gave me an off impression of the people. In the restaurant we ate in, we received endless looks and were the subject of obvious French chatter. Needless to say, we were eager to take off towards Montpellier the next morning.

There were two reasons we were headed towards Montpellier. The first was that my roommate had studied abroad there last year, and knew some people we could hit the town with. The second reason was that I had a friend there named Pierre who’d been a student at the U of M twin cities in 06-07. He was as big a music nut as I was, and we met originally because kept seeing each other at the same shows in Minneapolis. It had been nearly a year since I had last seen him, but he was excited to see us, and took us on a tour of the city as soon as we got in. Montpellier is a beautiful city. Pierre is originally from Marseille, and claims it to be a slum in comparison. The same thing with Cannes and Niece he assured, “It’s a good thing you didn’t go there. There’s nothing to see or do. They are places for rich old people.” Pierre had a job working for an artist promotions company. He had gone to school in Montpellier, and seemed to be recognized everywhere we went. The first night, he took us out to a popular music venue called The Rock Store where he frequently DJ’s. He was putting on a show there the following evening. A band named Why? from California was coming in, and he was promoting the show.

On the second night we were there, we met up with some friends of my roommate who’d been studying there. I contacted them and my brother and I were invited over for some homemade Pizza. There was a dreadlocked man named Will Guyver, a student from Missoula, who was living with two girls. One was a gal named Agnus, a 20 year old from Sweden who’d started working straight out of high school. The other girl was a science student in University named Trini, who was originally from Berlin, Germany. The pizza was delicious, and we drank wine and talked for several hours. Will turned out to be a fascinating guy. We told him about our trip, and he told us about some of the traveling he had done. He introduced me to a website called, couchsurfing.com. The concept is, you create a profile, and you then have access to contacting other couch surfers from all over the world. You can either host a surfer, or become one yourself. After each exchange, you rate your counterpart and leave comments on his profile. I plan to utilize this site in the coming years as I travel the United States, and hopefully other parts of the world.

The next day, my brother and I went sight seeing. I partook largely as a formality of traveling with my older brother. As a graduate with one of his degrees in History, he desired a far more landmark and museum based agenda for our daily activities. I on the other hand, consider myself to be anthropological traveler, whose main interest is to meet and befriend as many people as possible. After the stomaching the sites for my brother, we headed off towards the beach. Later that night, I stopped by the restaurant where Agnus worked and dropped of a CD for her. It was of Minneapolis based band I work for named Radio On. She had expressed great interest after our discussions the night before. She was a tall and blonde, and possessed a confidence I had rarely witnessed in a girl her age. She had lived in several different cities around the world already, and still had no plans to attend college. Should found that “having” to attend University to further your education was an incredibly flawed notion, and she wanted no part in it. We went from there back to the Rock Store where Pierre was helping to set up for that night’s gig.

The band was good, and after their set, we went up to the artist area for the after party. My brother and I embarked upon numerous strange discussions while grazing on free snacks and free Jack Daniels. My most bizarre encounter was with a man from England. He was in the process of writing a four part radio series for the BBC. The story was about a time traveler who’d ended up in the time of fabled England. There were to be numerous run-ins with bridge guarding trolls and tree stomping giants. His personal life was equally as unbelievable. He claimed to have just returned from Barcelona, where he left his long time fiancée. He’d been staying there for a two week vacation with his fiancée, mother, and son. Things got sticky after his mother was beaten and robbed entering her hotel, and lost both she and her grandsons plane tickets and passports. To make matters worse, he was on the outs with his fiancée. “She’s back in London, but I came down here to get away. I’ve really got to start doing some major writing on this piece, and it was all too much of a distraction back there.” I talked later on with the bespectacled front man of the group. I passed along a Radio On CD to him as well. He said the last time they were in town, they’d played First Avenue, and the next time they were back touring, Radio On could open. We partied late into the evening, and took off the next morning on a 5 hour train headed towards Paris.

So what’s the point of impeaching a President who has only half a year left in office?

Perhaps it’s because the Bush administration is in the process of committing the US military to Iraq for the next administration - unconstitutionally and without congressional approval, of course - in a treaty that bleeds an all too real resemblance of the Platt Amendment - which passed in 1901 and gave our government the “right” to intervene in Cuban affairs at any given moment and establish military bases in Cuban soil (with all that the Cuban government has accomplished to reverse this law, Guantanamo Bay is still a vivid legacy of its lasting effect on Cuban affairs). Or maybe it’s because of statements he’s made in regard to the War in Iraq like, “I don’t care if I created more enemies.”

Either way, Kucinich is acting on what he thinks is best for protecting the Constitution. It’s too bad his Democratic peers - Barack Obama included - are sticking it out for the remainder of Bush’s term and focusing all their attention on January 2009. Although so many of them are in favor of ending the War in Iraq, they seem to forget that it’s difficult to stop an invasion when the last administration just forged a treaty that locks Iraq as our responsibility for the years to come.

*sniff* *sniff* Smells like another forced puppet government is here to stay.

It must be noted that this isn’t the first time Kucinich has tried to impeach the Bush administration. Last year he introduced a bill to impeach Vice President Dick Cheney, but his fellow majority Democrats weren’t having any of it.

*Update* - According to CSPAN, the House just voted to send Kucinich’s bill to their Judiciary Committee. We’ll have to just wait and see how they define “constitutional justice.”

Obama in St. Paul

It certainly was refreshing to see the never-ending Democratic Presidential candidate contest come to an end, but the most refreshing part of Obama’s Tuesday victory speech was seeing him declare it in such a localized fashion at the Xcel Energy Center. Best of all, he didn’t slip in referring to St. Paul as Minneapolis in the same way that so many Republicans are bound to this Fall.

Obama’s St. Paul Speech

Because he was acting on one of his greatest strengths, Obama’s victory speech was characteristic of the candidate at his best – echoing a stalwart voice that immediately went from praising Hillary (for doing “what no woman has done before”) to focusing on the positives of this long, dirty race for the Presidency (“Because of this primary, there are millions of Americans who have cast their ballot for the very first time”).

I couldn’t help but notice his careful mannerisms to reassure the audience that he knew who he was talking to and where he was talking at, from “That’s the change we need, Minnesota!” to “Maybe if John McCain spent some time in the schools of South Carolina, or St. Paul, Minnesota,” [crowd applause] “he’d understand that we can’t afford to leave the money behind for No Child Left Behind”. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t appreciate this name representation of my hometown.

Hillary Steps Down

Although everyone’s been waiting beyond patience for Hillary to drop out of the race, I must say that after almost a year and a half, it’s sad see a woman go. Now the dream of seeing feminism come to its political conclusion in the U.S. capitalist system in 2008 won’t be realized. And we’ll no longer hear bites of a Hillary supporter like Jack Nicholson say, “There is nothing on this Earth sexier than a woman you have to salute in the morning.”

Hillary’s Concession Speech

But as sad as it is to see Hillary go, it’s sadder to see Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer drop out of the race for the U.S. Senate in Minnesota. Today, in spite of previous tax confusions and a reputation for a big mouth, Al Franken won the DFL endorsement as candidate for U.S. Senate. I only hope to see Jack continue to run for public office in the future.

Sometimes it seems like winos run the world; they even get better movies, à la Sideways. When you see beer in popular culture, it’s a bunch of frat boys doing keg stands or sad saps in sad bars. I don’t want a wine list longer than the Yellow Pages. Hand me a Surly, Fat Cat or Mothership and bring a few friends. That’s what makes me happy.

I’m from Cudahy, Wis., This little town lies in the shadows of one of the world’s largest breweries: Miller. That certainly isn’t an argument on beer’s side; in fact, it should probably have turned me off. But somehow, the aroma of hops and barley must have permeated my subconscious, because at some point I became a devotee to many a brew, just not Miller.

When I’ve told this story in the past I’ve claimed that God spoke to me, telling me to drink a wheat beer, or Weißbier as it is known in Germany. In reality, it was a good friend from my Milwaukee days whom pointed me to one of the world’s great brews, Weihenstephaner Weißbier. Ironically, I ran into him waiting for a tour while staying in Berlin. Later that day, we decided to head over to Prater Garten, the city’s oldest beer garden.

For the five days I stayed in Berlin, I ended up there. It was part park, part pub with rows of picnic benches under ancient trees, laced with big white Christmas lights. The Weißbier was light and airy, like an Italian soda for big boys.

Looking back, it probably didn’t matter what beer I was drinking, though it didn’t hurt that it was great. It was the atmosphere, the cool spring air and the conversations, not to mention the pretzels, brats and wiener schnitzels. There was no grandstanding or swishing of glasses. You could see and taste the beauty without pretense. We drank mug after mug. The night slowly faded, but I still remember it vividly. So next time you drink a beer, find a friend and start a conversation. That’s what really makes beer great.

They’ve done it again: MinnPost is raiding former Minnesota Attorney General Mike Hatch’s political image as a public servant for the down-trodden, or, to put it another way, reaffirming Hatch’s public reputation as a hot-tempered, hypocritical bastard.

Here are some excerpts from Eric Black’s old-fashioned investigative report that give us an idea of Hatch’s would-be DFL-minded personality:

Hatch took over an office that had been known, under his predecessors, as a national model among AG offices, for striking an appropriate balance between the political needs of the elected official and the obligation of public lawyers to do high-quality, non-partisan legal work, and turned it into an office driven by Hatch’s political ambitions.

Attorneys under Hatch (with Swanson as one of his top lieutenants) felt pressured to skate on ethical thin ice. They also felt that if they pushed back, they would face consequences from verbal abuse to a sudden loss of standing in the office, up to and including being forced out.

And, of course, my favorite part of Hatch’s demeanor:

Hatch used the f-word and the mother-f’er variation. He called the deputy and his entire division the “biggest bunch of [f’ing] losers” he’d ever seen.

All of this Hatch news comes in light of his protégée and current Minnesota Attorney General Lori Swanson’s similar top-down iron hand approach to her office. Like Hatch, Swanson continues to refuse the unionization of her staffers and pit them in unethical positions.

Sure, if Nick Coleman is calling Gov. Pawlenty “Tim the Terrible,” then Pawlenty’s certainly not Minnesota’s ideal leader. But a Gov. Hatch would have been worse than a Gov. Pawlenty in the same way that a Hubert Humphrey Presidency would have been worse than a Richard Nixon Presidency in ‘68. Hatch and Humphrey are very similar in the two-edged sword retrospect. One minute Humphrey’s speaking against the Viet Nam War to a rally of college kids, the next minute he’s talking about “staying on course” in front of Big Labor leaders. One minute Hatch and Swanson are running pro-labor campaigns, the next minute they’re refusing labor support for their own staffers. But fuggit - life’s a bitch and soon we’ll all be dead.

As for Hatch’s response to Black’s report, he blames the current controversies on a “small cabal of attorneys” who are trying to unionize the office. According to Hatch, these attorneys hide behind anonymity to “throw mud at their bosses and look for any scribner to serve as their hand maiden.” Bravo, buddy, bravo.

[Note a young, sleazy Bill O’Reilly at the 1:00 minute mark]

After the bar closed, we went down to a Shisha Bar (or Hookah bar in the states) and ordered up some Strawberry flavored product. Along with that, we ordered 4 cherry and banana juices. Delicious enough on their own, they became even tastier upon Radek suggesting I empty the rest of our large carton of screwdriver into the each glass, forming an orange/cherry/banana juice and vodka hybrid. I call it The Berlin Experience, and I highly recommend trying it.

The bar was filled with mostly Turks according to Lukosh and Radek. They spoke in hushed voices, “In case any of them speak English,” he explained. They were wholly distrustful of all the other customers there.

We parted ways around 3.30am, and exchanged emails, “Incase I ever make it out to Poland,” and I told them to consider visiting the United States. They found this notion comical.

The Japanese doctor and I woke up early the next morning for breakfast. We sat down at a table with an old Australian man . His name was Aurthur. He was an avid traveler. He’d been just about everywhere, “Everywhere but China and Antarctica” he explained. He hailed from Sydney, and had been to the United States thirteen times, his first in 1971. After breakfast, we parted ways. I bumped into him again later, and asked if he’d be interested in hitting up a free tour of Berlin with me. He was, and so we reconvened later on at the Brandenburg Gate. The tour was beyond fascinating. Our lively tour guide, an American no less, relayed the complex and controversial histories of WWII and the Berlin Wall. We hit numerous landmarks along the way. My favorite stop was Humboldt College, where Lenin had attended University, and Einstein had taught. They had a book sale going on outside, and I purchased a few centuries’ old books for cheap.

After the tour, Aurthur and I headed back towards the hostel. He was great to have on the tour, because he talked to literally everyone else in the group, so we made several friends. We walked back with the tour guide, a 28 year old American from Maine. He’d been a successful advertising exec in NYC for 5 years, but he left it behind to pursue painting and photography in Berlin, giving daily tours to keep financially afloat.

Aurthur and I then hit up a pastry and coffee joint spot near Potsdamer Platz. I meant to stay for only an hour, as I had a train to catch, but we ended up chatting for over 3 hours, well hyped on caffeine by the end of it. He taught me a great deal about Australia I hadn’t known. He informed me of how voting is compulsory in Australia. I found this most impressive. He also told me about how Australia switched all their road signs to the metric system, across the entire country, on just one day. The U.S. could learn a lot from these guys. I also learned how their former Prime Minister had held office for 12 years before their current one. His approval rating was always low just before elections, but he twice found a means to scare voters into reelecting him. The first time, he’d used to fear of Muslim immigrants following the rape and murder of an Australian girl in a park by a few Muslim men. It all sounded very similar to GW using 9/11 and the threat of “organized” terrorism to get us into Iraq, pass the Patriot Act, and get himself reelected. We discussed these maters al length. He was an Obama supporter, as am I. He told me about his time in US during the race riots, and about his brother’s work with MLK. Aurthur was a cancer survivor; he’d had a tumor removed from the front of his brain just 4 years ago. I learned a great deal from him, and he told me to visit whenever.

When I got in last night, I didnt have a place to stay but this Columbian girl who´d just missed her train to Poland was crying on a bench I was sitting at. When she stopped, we chatted about my time in Venezuela, after exchanging pleasantries. We had a really intersting chat about Columbian/Venezuelan relations, as I am pro Chavez, and she´s out spoken about her disdain for his stance on Columbia´s violations in Ecuador. Venezuela has no military deployments in Columbia, rather it has only defended, verbally, the sovereignty
of Ecuador. On the other hand the US has all its fingers inside Columbia, with military bases, illegal soldiers, and billions in string-attached funding. I´ll just say we really got into it, but we both came out with a good understanding of each others views. It left quite the impression on me.

After that long chat, it had gone from 9 pm to midnight. She was able to get us both in to a hostel by charming the owners of this New Zealand run hostel she´d stayed in the night previous. We hung out in the common area, and I started playing Table Tennis with two Polish guys named Radek and Loukosh (Sp?). They were very serious about their playing, and both had the professional style of serving where you throw it really high. I felt badly, as I beat them both severly. We chatted for a long time about Polish/American relations, and how we beat them in the 2002 World Cup, and about how there are no famous Polish people. Funny guys. They mentioned that Polish people are well known for their drinking capacity. They had a little bit of the Borat accent going on. Fun guys to hang out with essentially. I checked out of that hostel the next day as there were no vacancies. I asked around the next day until I found another one.

When I checked in, there was this Japanese fellow hanging out in my room. “Bathroom is slippery. Im sorry. Be careful.” We chatted for a good while, and then went down to Pankow, a cool alternative neighborhood in the North Berlin I´d been reccommended. We wandered around, and found some cool shops, hit some fruit stands. After hearing later on in a conversation with someone at the hostel that my last name was Carpenter, he remarked, “Ahh yes, like the group.” He sang portions of several of their songs. I then called up Loukosh and Radek and we´re headed to a Karoke bar this evening. Should be an interesting night. more details to come.

It’s easy for any white person to call Jeremiah Wright’s recent actions egotistical. For whites, Wright is an easy Black target, as media coverage has proved this past week. Wednesday’s New York Times editorial claimed Wright’s recent statements were full of “racism” and “paranoia.” Both it and a Star Tribune editorial praised Sen. Obama’s moves to distance himself from his former pastor as much as he could. Steve Perry at Minnesota Monitor called Wright’s media tour a “selfish move.” In fact, I’ve only seen one positive commentary of Wright, which was published in Insight News, the Black community newspaper of the Twin Cities. Something’s not right with this picture.

While most of the press continues to play the Jesse Jackson card against Wright, I’ll offer yet another critique of the situation. Most mainstream commentary has put Wright’s statements on a political level, noting that it’s negatively affecting Obama’s campaign – which is true. But let’s not forget that Wright is a pastor and that his reason for stepping back into the spotlight was to defend the Black Church, which goes beyond traditional politics. After Wright saw his 30-plus years of preaching summed up in 30-second sound bites, who could blame him for re-addressing the issue publicly? More importantly, how many Americans were under the impression that these 30-second sound bites summed up the Black Church?

Whether he was being selfish or not, Wright’s decision to come back into the public sphere was motivated by the still-fractured race relations that exist within the U.S. We all know it’s an issue that’s going to outlast Obama’s campaign and potential presidency. And while the media moguls have repeatedly underlined Wright’s recent statements concerning AIDS, Farrakhan and U.S. terrorism, if you watch his appearances at the National Press Club or on the Bill Moyers show, you’ll see that these pseudo-controversial comments are buried underneath his main concern, which is clearing the name of the Black Church. The fact that the press focused only on these statements proves they have overtly sensational, and yes, sometimes racist tendencies.

I’d argue that Wright’s recent actions are wrongly justified not by his political views, but by his unconditional faith in God. In a Q & A at the National Press Club, Wright said (at the 3 minute mark of the video):

“If God intends for Mr. Obama to be the President, then no white racist, no political pundit, no speech can get in the way, because God will do what God wants to do.”

This type of justification assumes that God is guiding this election rather than the delegates, the superdelegates and (to a much smaller extent) the voters. Although I’m not qualified to make psychological assumptions, this is where I think Wright is blindsided. He assumes that no matter what is done or said, God will decide the overall outcome of the election. It’s not that Wright should care about Obama’s campaign, but he should at least be aware of the repercussions of his statements. But perhaps they couldn’t wait.

Here are some of the best gigs I hit:
The first show I saw in London was The Lionheart Brothers at The Social in Soho, I saw then later on in the spring at the Hoxton Square Bar in the Shoreditch area. Everyone needs to give this tune a listen. Norwegian Psych pop at its finest, “50 Souls and a Disco Bowl”

The second show I saw in London was Texan quartet, Explosions in the Sky. The show was at the Astoria, which has just been controversially shut down to make way for public transportation, read news story here.

The other band I saw at the Astoria while in London was Brooklyn´s Les Savy Fav. They´re known by many for opening part of the North American LCD Soundsystem/ Arcade Fire tour in the Fall of ´07, and also for the wild antics of their chubby frontman.

Sam Sparro is a sort of dance, lounge music singer. His song, “Black and Gold” got the crowd going pretty wild at the Electric Ballroom in Camden:

Alex Turner and Miles Kane, frontmen of the british bands Arctic Monkey and The Rascals respectively, played a surprise gig on the second night of the Camden Crawl, at the tiny Dublin Castle. This is the lead single of that album, The Age of the Understatement.

I saw an artist named Kenna, who was opening for an Australian band, called the Panics. It was at the Kings Cross area venue, Water Rats. Kenna is from Virginia and his new album has tracks produced by the Neptunes.

London band Metronomy, originally from Brighton, has been closely associated with last summer´s scene stealers, Klaxons. They play a similar style of freaked out, bass heavy synth rock, often categorized as “New Rave.” During live shows, each of the three members stands before a keyboard. They each also play either bass, guitar, or sax. They wear white, circular push lights on their chests that can be purchased for a mere pound at any Sainsburys, but add a unique element to their live shows.

I saw Bjork at the Hammersmith Apollo on April 14th. She had just recently made headlines for making pro-Tibetan rights comments at a concert in China.
Here she is performing “Earth Intruders” off her most recent release, 2007´s Volta

I saw Swedish popstar Robyn at the ultra popular Club, Koko. You might recognizer her for this tune, “Show Me Love”

I saw Chicago based rapper Lupe Fiasco at the same venue.

Brixton based reggae artist Natty put on one of the better shows I attended while in London. This is his song “Cold Town.”
I saw him at a venue in Shepards Bush called the Ginglik, which is a converted public convenience under ground that was turned into a bar.

Two shows I caught in Brixton were a Futureheads and Black Kids gig, and also a Hives concert.

I attended a rave in Norwich, where I caught DJ sets from members of Kraftwerk. Over my time here in London hitting club nights at hot spots like Turnmills and Fabric, I caught DJ sets from members of Hot Chip, DJ Yoda, and Cut Chemist.

I saw a couple of classic shows at the Jazz Café in Camden. One was Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings. Another was Tony Allen, the original drummer in Fela Kuti´s band, who most recently was featured on the Good, the Bad, and the Queen album.

Another absolutely classic artist I was able to see, Dionne Warwick in the swank London Palladium.

I saw Portland´s Menoma play in a university

theater

Method Man and Redman played the Sheperds Bush Theater just before I left. Great crowd. Brits love any member of the WU.

Initially, I was quite disappointed with the proclaimed hot new bands of the moment in London. Bands like: New Young Pony Club, Does This Offend You Yeah?, Scouting For Girls, The Hoosiers, Guillemots, Pigeon Detectives, The Enemy, Ipso Facto. They’re all either boring electro groups trying to ride that long past new wave revival, sad Libertines rip offs, weak piano soft rock, or just plain shit.

The next level is bands that are a good listen and pleasant enough, but are incredibly over blown given the quality of their tunes. Within this I would include The Wombats, The Young Knives, These New Puritans, Foals, and The Envelopes.

This is all natural, as there is of course a need for new bands to be discovered and enjoyed. It’s just that in our haste to find them, a lot of these bands get bigger than would seem appropriate, but that’s no new or passing trend.

One band who’s capitalized on the hipster dance music movement is Canada’s Crystal Castles. I saw them towards the end of April at the Camden Crawl festival. They’re one of the bands who’ve found that by merely name dropping the perfectly obscure, yet super trendy old dance group, you can vault yourself into indie stardom. The band has welcomed and reiterated any comparisons to fellow Toronto duo, Death from Above 1979. This same strategy worked wonders for Brazilian faux-band CSS, with their indie hit “Lets make love and listen to Death from Above.” I’ve seen this in many other recent success cases, like the Wombats and their song, “Let´s dance to Joy Division,” with Joy Division being a hot band to associate with at the moment.

At the forefront of the over hyped movement is an American group, from Florida, called Black Kids. They’ve been playing all the big venues, getting loads of Internet hype, and hitting all the major t.v. and radio shows over here. Their big single, “I’m not gonna teach your boyfriend how to dance with you,” has failed to sweep me off my feet into the flowing river of press love they’ve been floating on recently. Here’s my review of it.

Another group who I´d classify as over blown is Vampire Weekend. I saw them perform earlier this winter at Rough Trade Records in East London. They’re currently the biggest name in indie music. Appearances on SNL and the cover of Rolling Stone have solidified this notion. I enjoy the African influences hear in their tunes, but their lyrics are under developed and unimpressive. Two other groups I saw at Rough Trade Records, just off Brick Lane, were Pete and the Pirates and Sebastian Tellier, both of whom are garnering loads of support as of late.

There’s a group out called White Lies who are garnering loads of interest. They’re perfect for any Interpol/ Editors fans out there.

Adam Green, good friend of the Strokes, has recently put out a new album, Sixes and Sevens. Green formed the group the Moldy Peaches in 1998 with Kimya Dawson. Green is very popular in Germany, and I´ve seen a great deal of promotion for him in Madrid.
The Moldy Peaches have benefited from their inclusion in the Minnesota based movie, Juno, which was written by Diablo Cody, a former stripper and writer for City Pages in Minneapolis.
Here´s a hilarious song Green wrote about Jessica Simpson, entitled “Jessica”

Another NYC singer song writer/ vagabond is Jeffery Lewis. He travels Europe with his brother and band mates, and crashes on couches of his fans every night. He also is a comic book writer.

The Swedish Invasion has continued on. Last year it was big releases from Jens Lekman, The Knife, The Hives, and José González.
The next in this line will likely be I Was A King, Pirate Love, Maribel and Blackstrap, but most surely will be, Pacific Who come across like a goofy electronic European version of the Beach Boys

Another big group is the collaboration between Super Fury Animal’s front man Gruff Rhys, and producer Boom Bip. Their debut album, Stainless Style, is a synth heavy pop record, sure to crack college radio charts across the globe. The group is called Neon Neon

One of the best bands and acts I’ve heard here in London is Mystery Jets. They´re as famous for their music as they are for the fact that they all live on an Island on the Thames river, and have thrown some wild parties there, with sets played by many area bands such as the Noisettes, Lady Larkin, and Acoustic Ladyland among many others.

The big news over here has been of course, Amy Winehouse. She was featured on a cover of the Zutons, “Valerie” on Mark Ronson´s album, Versions, which has been played at all the clubs here in London throughout the spring.
Winehouse is covered as frequently as David Beckham and Pete Doherty here in the papers. She was a graduate of the Brit School in London. The Brit School also unfortunately produced Lily Allen, Kate Nash, and Adele, all of whom are terribly annoying.

A British female singer songwriter who I do like is Holly Golightly
, who performed on the White Stripes album closing number, “It´s True That We Love One Another” off of 2003´s Elephant.

And while we’re on the country pairings topic, M.Ward has a new album out with Zooey Deschanel (the older sister from Almost Famous). It´s called She and Him . Enjoyable stuff. It´s also been rumored that M.Ward is in the studio with Conor Oberst and Jim James of My Morning Jacket.

The Kanye produced, and featured, tune, “American Boy” by Estelle was the biggest club hit of the Spring in London

After a week of speculation, the rumors are true: according to the Star Tribune, the Minnesota Vikings have acquired defensive end and human wrecking ball Jared Allen. As this YouTube clip of the now-former Kansas City defender knocking the shit out of Jaguars QB David Gerrard illustrates, this sonofabitch Allen means business.

But the drunk-drivin’, mullet-sportin’, No. 69-wearin’ mammoth comes with a price: the Vikes’ first-round draft pick and two of their third-round picks. That’s too much, if you ask me. Allen, best known for leading the NFL in sacks last season, will also become the highest-paid defender in NFL history, racking up around $74 million in a six-year contract. It’s certainly a calculated risk for the Vikes, one that’s pretty damn big.

But hell, at least all their offseason holes are now filled (assuming the old, antiquated and unreliable Gus Frerotte is acceptable as a backup QB). What excites me most is how Allen will be a pass rusher playing for last year’s worst passing defense in the NFL. Still, I predict that Madieu Williams, a new Vikings safety who used to play for Cincinnati, will play the biggest role in turning this one-dimensional rush defense into a more well-rounded threat on both the run and pass. We’ll see how things develop.

While next Fall will be a dramatic election season, its football season will probably show more favorable results. And for the record, U.S. politics are as testosterone-induced and barbaric (if not more so) as American football. I get the same unhealthy satisfaction from downing a six-pack and watching football as I do from following the political process.

But what really puts the aches in my back is how Hillary recently denounced the “activist base” of the Democratic Party at a closed-door (meaning uber-wealthy guests only) fundraiser right after Super Tuesday. She said, and I will quote:

“We have been less successful in caucuses because it brings out the activist base of the Democratic Party. MoveOn didn’t even want us to go into Afghanistan. I mean, that’s what we’re dealing with. And you know they turn out in great numbers. And they are very driven by their view of our positions, and it’s primarily national security and foreign policy that drives them. I don’t agree with them. They know I don’t agree with them. So they flood into these caucuses and dominate them and really intimidate people who actually show up to support me.”

Listen to an audio version of her statements here.

As my first post on this blog made clear, I am no Obama fanatic; he’s probably as likely to talk shit about Democratic activists to superdelegates as you reading this. I understand, it’s the nature of the system. But Hillary, it’s clear you’ve fallen off the wagon and will do anything, including alienating the last and dying democratic core of the Democratic Party, to get elected. I just can’t take it anymore.

Word to the wise: stop wasting your time following this unhealthy, blasphemous circus of an election.

The Marilyn Monroe sex tape has finally surfaced, thank God. The media was almost running out of living celebrity faux news fodder.

It is still a mystery why Spencer thinks this “news” is “so shocking.” In her lifetime Monroe made a name for herself as one of the most sensual and seductive stars on the planet, in addition to having rumored affairs with a number of celebrities and politicians. Further, wasn’t she on the cover of Playboy? Yeah, she was.

I’m personally glad that the person who bought the foreplay tape (no sex, just oral) has more integrity than the people reporting on it. The anonymous New York businessman spent $1.5 million with a vow to never release the tape.

Hopefully the businessman’s intentions are as true as 99% of sources are reporting; well except eFluxMedia (“an online newspaper that aims to offer a public service”), who ran an article titled “Marilyn Monroe Sex Tape Won’t Remain Secret for Long,” despite the fact that the assertion is completely unfounded.

One of the saddest angles on this story comes from 2Snaps.tv (“an online community dedicated to the senseless art of following, discussing, and obsessing over America’s greatest pastimes: Celebrities and Pop Culture”). Their article “Marilyn Monroe New Sex Tape Goddess?” brings up a depressingly true point: “Hopefully someone made a third copy of that film, because if Lindsay Lohan just posing as Monroe was as huge as it was imagine how big this would be if it hit the Internet!”

It is true. This tape would get gratuitous amounts of traffic on the Internet, which reminds me of a Savage Love column from last March (which came out in the wake of Anna Nicole Smith’s death.) In response to a question about whether it’s OK to masturbate to the late Smith, Dan Savage replies, “Masturbating to the dead inspires only feelings of hopelessness and despair. Which is why no one beats off to James Dean or River Phoenix or Marilyn Monroe or Mary Todd Lincoln without feeling a little creepy, a little hopeless and a little closer to the grave himself. Knock it off.”

Well said, Mr. Savage.

FURTHERMORE, an interesting twist to this story is that the tape came out of FBI archives. Apparently the tape had been studied frame by frame in order to determine whether the unidentified man was a Kennedy. (Note: this is where our tax dollars are going—investigating a possible sex scandal of an assassinated president.)

You’re all sick.

Milwaukee beers get a bad rap, but heck don’t most of the Ameircan mega-brews. Schlitz was once at the heart of Milwaukee’s brewing powerhouse. But don’t be worried, there’s plenty of brews still being brewed in my hometown and a lot of them aren’t half bad.

The “Beer that Made Milwaukee Famous” is back and I just happened to have seen a few sightings and tasted the original recipe not to long ago. No, they’re not returning to the 1849 recipe, which would be awesome, but they have returned to the “classic” 1960’s recipe. Now I know we’re going to have detractors from both sides. Some may call the beer utter crap, but I have to say it isn’t half bad. As their other classic catchphrase put it, you get “just a kiss of hops.” It’s in the same category as American style lagers like Premium or Pabst, but I think it might just be better.

As it turns out Schlitz is under the umbrella of the Pabst Brewing Co. The Milwaukee brewer happens to own few other cheapies including Old Milwaukee, Black Label, Old Style, etc. The list just goes on and on. It seems that Pabst is using its newfound hipster cred to expand its other brands and what better beer than Schlitz. The dominance of the lite beer from 1980s onward shifted the playing field. When Schlitz and Pabst didn’t pursue this new market and dismissed mass marketing they fell from top five brands nationally to nonexistant. The emergence of Micro Breweries seems to have been the catalyst for the diversification in the marketplace. The intersting fact that lies at the end of this is that Miller is brewing its former competitors under contract and in a sense preserving “What Made Milwaukee Famous”.

So why did Schlitz fall out of the limelight, maybe this is the answer.

While most Minnesotans have stuck comedian Al Franken in their minds as the next Minnesota DFL Senate candidate, St. Thomas peace studies professor Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer is still vying for the party’s upcoming June nomination. Despite barely being mentioned in the local media, Nelson-Pallmeyer surpassed Mike Ceresi in the race and is slowly but surely winning over the most liberal sectors of the DFL. After looking into his campaign, I found out that Nelson-Pallmeyer is a more progressive, less elite alternative to Franken. Although Franken often mentions the late Sen. Paul Wellstone as his role model, Nelson-Pallmeyer’s grassroots campaign, stances on the issues, and intellectual demeanor (he’s an educator) resemble Wellstone much more than a comedian running for office does.

I stopped by Jack’s campaign office and briefly chatted with him about what he’d like to get done as Minnesota’s next U.S. Senator.

Most people describe you as the activist candidate. Let’s say you get the endorsement and you’re elected in November. Are you afraid that Washington bureaucracy will limit what you want to get accomplished as an activist?

It’s certainly difficult arena to work in on many levels, but I think the approach I’m taking to the race really helps – and that is that I see my role as helping to build the citizen movement that we need. The stronger that movement is, the stronger my voice is in Washington. I also think that by electing Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer, an activist, we’re going to shake up politics in this state and country in ways that are really important. I recognize [Washington’s] a difficult arena, but I think having an activist and candidate that gets there in the context of building a citizen movement will really help.

Sometimes it’s tough to find your name and campaign mentioned in the media. Realistically, how are you doing on delegate support?

We’re doing very well on delegate support. It’s still an open race. I think for a long time the media was focused in exactly the wrong spot, which is money. They assumed that because Al Franken and Mike Ceresi had millions of dollars, they were the two candidates they needed to watch. And that’s really unfortunate, because what they need to be watching is which candidates are resonating with people. Now that Mike Ceresi dropped out – and he dropped out because he was behind in the delegate count – that at least opened up some space for people to look much more seriously at my campaign.

Some of my friends have stated that a lot of your stances synch up more with, say, the Green Party rather than the mainstream Democrats. So why, specifically, are you seeking the DFL endorsement?

Well I think the issues that are resonating with people that I promote are held in a really wide spot in Minnesota. Everywhere I go, people are worried about health care. People want a national solution to the health care crisis. Now is absolutely the time to work for a single-payer health care system. It’s a similar with Iraq. People want to end this war. Now, they may share a concern that we have some ethical responsibility for helping a country we’ve destroyed, but people want to end the war. That’s an issue that’s very broadly held. I see my campaign as opening up the possibility of unifying a lot of Democrats, hopefully bringing in some Greens, some independents, and even some alienated Republicans around the agenda we need to do.

You’ve stated that you’ll support whoever gets the DFL endorsement. Why is that?

Both Al Franken and I, and Mike Ceresi when he was in the race, stated that we wouldn’t buck the DFL endorsement process. The reason that’s so important is because I believe Norm Coleman has been a cheerleader for the worst administration in U.S. history, and that that administration has led us to the edge of a cliff. So it’s very important that we beat Norm Coleman. If the Democratic Party had a fight that extended into a primary in September, we’d just be taking away time and money away from the core task, which is to beat Norm Coleman.

Ceresi’s out, and it’s down to you and Franken. What makes you the better choice?

I’m a candidate that’s had a lot of experience. I’ve lived overseas working in Central America for a number of years. I’ve engaged in hunger and poverty and economic issues. I’ve tracked environmental concerns for 30 years. I know the climate change issues – I understand what the science is going to require in terms of solutions. My history of being a critic of the militarized foreign policy of this country is extensive, and I think even people who may have disagreed with me at times would probably look back now and say, “He was right.” And that’s true with the Iraq War as well. I was an advisor to Paul Wellstone. I also debated Congressman Jim Ramstad before the Iraq War vote. I warned him that this was a disaster, that we were being manipulated by politics of fear. I think all those things make me a very good candidate to address those problems.

Hypothetically, again, say you get the nomination and you’re elected in November. Which Senate committees would you like to serve?

I think I would be happy on almost any committee that they put me on. Let’s say they put me on Human Services. There we could address issues of hunger and poverty and inequality and health care issues. If they want to put me on foreign policy issues, I have a lot of ideas about how we get this country transitioned from a dominant military superpower to a global partner that will help solve pressing problems. Put me on transportation and I’ll work to build the rail lines we need to connect our cities and the windmills we need to power them. Put me on an energy committee and I’ll resist nuclear power and stand up to oil companies and promote alternative energy. All these issues in my view are connected and I would be making those connections.

You’re running with a very strong message to get the U.S. out of Iraq immediately. You’ve called it the worst foreign policy disaster. What do you want to see done with the War in Afghanistan?

I think Afghanistan has also been an enormous blunder and I was opposed to the very metaphor of the War on Terror. As soon as I heard that metaphor I knew we were in deep, deep trouble, because you don’t defeat terrorism in a war. We have to address the roots of [terrorism], the anger that leads to it. In my view, the attacks of 9/11 should’ve been treated as crimes against humanity. War is a very, very dangerous instrument. By militarizing [Afghanistan], by having spilling casualties, we are creating a disaster. I know the common terminology is “Iraq is bad, Afghanistan is good, and Iraq took attention away from Afghanistan.” I think our approach in Afghanistan was wrong.

So you’d like to see troop withdrawal from that area?

Yeah, and I would like to see a fundamentally different approach. If you look at the history, any country that has tried to occupy Afghanistan has been bankrupted or defeated. You don’t occupy other countries and win. [Afghanistan has] issues, for sure, but they’re not going to be resolved by bombings that kill civilians, they’re not going to be resolved without a willingness to actually sit down and listen to people who don’t want us there. This notion that there are military solutions to this problem needs to be fundamentally challenged.

You have lots of international experience. You and your wife once lived in Nicaragua running an Augsburg study abroad program. Given all this international experience, what would you do domestically for the state of Minnesota if you’re elected?

Here’s where some of my priorities are: We need a national health care system. No other industrialized country allows the insurance industry to determine their health care system; we do. It’s ridiculous. So I would really work hard towards a national single-payer health care system, which has profound implications for back here. I would cut the U.S. military budget and use 10 percent of that cut to have a universal preschool program for 3-5 year olds, which we desperately need to help give kids a good start. I would take away tax breaks for the richest one percent and make college and university education affordable for any student who wants to attend and is qualified. I would work on establishing a progressive tax system instead of our regressive one, because we have the highest degree of inequality in any industrialized country and we’re probably at the highest level of inequality in the history of our country. It’s one of the reasons why our economy isn’t working. We have allowed the richest one to five percent to garner almost all the income and wealth in this country for the last 25 years. So, these all have domestic implications.

As a professor of peace studies, I’m assuming the student vote is important to you.

Absolutely.

A lot of my peers still haven’t heard of you. What are you doing to reach out to students in this campaign?

I will be, over the next number of months, trying to get to each college and university in this state at least once. I also have a lot of young people involved in my campaign that know a lot more than I do about things like YouTube, so I hope there’s a lot of outreach taking place at that level. This is very much a grassroots campaign that spreads word of mouth from person to person and through a lot of these networks.

In a recent Minnesota Monitor interview, you talked about your spiritual mentors. Who are some of your political mentors?

I had a lot of respect for Paul Wellstone. I knew him, I really liked his first campaign. In it, not many people gave him a chance, he was an outsider, he didn’t get a lot of institutional support, but he kept working and took a very grassroots approach. Outside of this country there are lots people I’d call mentors, including Gandhi, Oscar Romero in El Salvador, some of the Jesuit priests I met in El Salvador who had this incredibly progressive vision of what a university should be, that it should be about training people to transform their society. But my mentors have also tended to be common people who do extraordinary things. Those are the people I get my energy from.

To be fair, it’s quite an assumption to single out this one event as costing Hatch the election, but let’s not forget this was a man notoriously known for his bad temper. His bad temper was his public image, and he lost because of it. A similar argument can be made for why Sen. John Kerry lost to George W. Bush in a year when the Democrats should’ve won the Presidency by a landslide. Kerry’s public image was simply too dull to win an election of such magnitude. Now the Democrats are blessed to have Barack Obama, a man whose skills at speaking well and looking good has placed him in the lead of delegate support. If he were a white man, I bet he would’ve already locked the nomination up by now.

A lot of my friends are attracted to Obama because of his superb speaking skills. My roommate told me one of the reasons he likes Obama is because “we need a President who’s a good speaker.” The fact is we’ve had plenty of lousy Presidents with gifted speaking abilities. Bill Clinton’s public figure was as sharp as a fox and as delicious as rhubarb pie, but as President his greatest accomplishments were enacting NAFTA and limiting public welfare. And let’s not forget that he passed the Telecommunications Act of 1996, which lead to increased monopolistic ownership of the media (which Constitutionally belongs to us, the people). But he could give one hell of a speech.

As long as we’re on the topic of good public speakers, Ronald Reagan cannot be ignored. Is it an irony that Reagan, who to many is one of the worst U.S. Presidents in recent memory, was known at the time of his tenure as the Great Communicator? No one can deny Reagan’s awesome ability to hold an audience in his hands. Check out this video and see if you can’t stop yourself from smiling at how cute he is:

What a jokester.

I remember when one of my former political science professors, an old fashioned gun-lovin’ bureaucracy-hatin’ libertarian known as Sam Stanton, cynically blamed the televised 1960 Kennedy/Nixon Presidential debate for shifting the political conversation from “What’s his stances?” to “What’s he wearing?” I don’t know if that instance was the beginning of the public’s image-over-substance mentality, but I’ll bet Stanton was on to something.

I’m not going to argue that crafty speaking skills and a likable public image aren’t essential qualities in a politician, but when image clouds policies, it’s more than an issue. It’s a democratic problem.

In the letter, which started circling around the Web last month, Wright addresses Times reporter Jodi Kantor and an article she wrote titled “Disinvitation by Obama is Criticized.” The article, written in March 2007, a year before Rev. Wright came into public conscience, is about his alleged disinvitation from Obama’s Febraury 2007 campaign kickoff, in which Wright was supposed to deliver the event’s invocation. His letter claims that he spoke with Kantor for two hours about Obama’s credibility as a candidate and found none of it in the article. Wright also calls the article “one of the biggest misrepresentations of the truth I have ever seen.”

LETTER FROM REV. JEREMIAH WRIGHT TO THE NEW YORK TIMES

March 11, 2007

Jodi Kantor
The New York Times
9 West 43rd Street
New York,
New York 10036-3959

Dear Jodi:

Thank you for engaging in one of the biggest misrepresentations of the truth I have ever seen in sixty-five years. You sat and shared with me for two hours. You told me you were doing a “Spiritual Biography” of Senator Barack Obama. For two hours, I shared with you how I thought he was the most principled individual in public service that I have ever met.

For two hours, I talked with you about how idealistic he was. For two hours I shared with you what a genuine human being he was. I told you how incredible he was as a man who was an African American in public service, and as a man who refused to announce his candidacy for President until Carol Moseley Braun indicated one way or the other whether or not she was going to run.

I told you what a dreamer he was. I told you how idealistic he was. We talked about how refreshing it would be for someone who knew about Islam to be in the Oval Office. Your own question to me was, Didn’t I think it would be incredible to have somebody in the Oval Office who not only knew about Muslims, but had living and breathing Muslims in his own family? I told you how important it would be to have a man who not only knew the difference between Shiites and Sunnis prior to 9/11/01 in the Oval Office, but also how important it would be to have a man who knew what Sufism was; a man who understood that there were different branches of Judaism; a man who knew the difference between Hasidic Jews, Orthodox Jews, Conservative Jews and Reformed Jews; and a man who was a devout Christian, but who did not prejudge others because they believed something other than what he believed.

I talked about how rare it was to meet a man whose Christianity was not just “in word only.” I talked about Barack being a person who lived his faith and did not argue his faith. I talked about Barack as a person who did not draw doctrinal lines in the sand nor consign other people to hell if they did not believe what he believed.

Out of a two-hour conversation with you about Barack’s spiritual journey and my protesting to you that I had not shaped him nor formed him, that I had not mentored him or made him the man he was, even though I would love to take that credit, you did not print any of that. When I told you, using one of your own Jewish stories from the Hebrew Bible as to how God asked Moses, “What is that in your hand?,” that Barack was like that when I met him. Barack had it “in his hand.” Barack had in his grasp a uniqueness in terms of his spiritual development that one is hard put to find in the 21st century, and you did not print that.

As I was just starting to say a moment ago, Jodi, out of two hours of conversation I spent approximately five to seven minutes on Barack’s taking advice from one of his trusted campaign people and deeming it unwise to make me the media spotlight on the day of his announcing his candidacy for the Presidency and what do you print? You and your editor proceeded to present to the general public a snippet, a printed “sound byte” and a titillating and tantalizing article about his disinviting me to the Invocation on the day of his announcing his candidacy.

I have never been exposed to that kind of duplicitous behavior before, and I want to write you publicly to let you know that I do not approve of it and will not be party to any further smearing of the name, the reputation, the integrity or the character of perhaps this nation’s first (and maybe even only) honest candidate offering himself for public service as the person to occupy the Oval Office.

Your editor is a sensationalist. For you to even mention that makes me doubt your credibility, and I am looking forward to see how you are going to butcher what else I had to say concerning Senator Obama’s “Spiritual Biography.” Our Conference Minister, the Reverend Jane Fisler Hoffman, a white woman who belongs to a Black church that Hannity of “Hannity and Colmes” is trying to trash, set the record straight for you in terms of who I am and in terms of who we are as the church to which Barack has belonged for over twenty years.

The president of our denomination, the Reverend John Thomas, has offered to try to help you clarify in your confused head what Trinity Church is even though you spent the entire weekend with us setting me up to interview me for what turned out to be a smear of the Senator; and yet The New York Times continues to roll on making the truth what it wants to be the truth. I do not remember reading in your article that Barack had apologized for listening to that bad information and bad advice. Did I miss it? Or did your editor cut it out? Either way, you do not have to worry about hearing anything else from me for you to edit or “spin” because you are more interested in journalism than in truth.

Forgive me for having a momentary lapse. I forgot that The New York Times was leading the bandwagon in trumpeting why it is we should have gone into an illegal war. The New York Times became George Bush and the Republican Party’s national “blog.” The New York Times played a role in the outing of Valerie Plame. I do not know why I thought The New York Times had actually repented and was going to exhibit a different kind of behavior.

Maybe it was my faith in the Jewish Holy Day of Roshashana. Maybe it was my being caught up in the euphoria of the Season of Lent; but whatever it is or was, I was sadly mistaken. There is no repentance on the part of The New York Times. There is no integrity when it comes to The Times. You should do well with that paper, Jodi. You looked me straight in my face and told me a lie!

Sincerely and respectfully yours,

Reverend Jeremiah A. Wright, Jr., Senior Pastor
Trinity United Church of Christ

Upon NAFTA’s inception, major trade unions were immediately against it, arguing that it would result in a loss of U.S. jobs as corporations moved to cheaper countries. By 1995, economists at the Institute for Policy Studies concluded that NAFTA had already cost a loss of 10,000 U.S. jobs. Today, since NAFTA has been enacted, America’s deficit with Mexico has climbed from $10 billion to $74 billion while the U.S. has lost 3 million manufacturing jobs.

In the February’s Ohio Democratic debate, both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama spoke out against NAFTA, promising they would at least renegotiate the trade agreement with Canada and Mexico if elected to the White House. Soon after, CTV News reported that Obama’s chief economic advisor, Austan Goolsbee, told Canadian ambassador to the United States Michael Wilson this:

“Don’t worry. It’s just campaign rhetoric. Don’t take it seriously.”

While the Obama campaign claimed the story wasn’t accurate, Goolsbee refused to affirm or deny its authenticity.

What’s true is that as recently as last October, Obama was supporting a NAFTA expansion to Peru known as the United States-Peru Trade Promotion Agreement, stating:

“The Peruvian agreement contains the very labor agreements that labor and our allies have been asking for.”

Unfortunately for him, nearly all major labor unions opposed this expansion. Some of them included the Change to Win labor federation and its affiliates, the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), Oxfam and plenty AFL-CIO affiliated unions. In his 2004 Illinois Senate campaign, Obama stated that NAFTA was beneficial to the U.S. and claimed it brought great benefits to his state.

Similarly, during that same year, Hillary Clinton said NAFTA had been “good for New York and America.” It’s actually a logical statement coming from her perspective, since her husband saw it as a big accomplishment of his presidency when it was first passed. In those days, Hillary’s support of the trade agreement was evident in how she hosted a pro-NAFTA meeting, helped the White House block labor and environmental opposition, and held meetings to brainstorm means for its congressional approval.

The message from this is all too clear : Obama and Clinton are Washington politicians, nothing more, nothing less. Corporatized interests in Washington are just too great to allow a candidate like Dennis Kucinich, whose pro-labor voting record actually matched up with his pro-labor rhetoric, anywhere near the White House. My guess is that we’ll continue to see more and more decreased free trade regulations as t