• Support for state prohibition of abortion and elimination of the mental distress exception outlines in Doe v Bolton (1973), in violation of the broad right to privacy that underpins the US Bill of Rights.
• Opposition to the Supreme Court's decision in Kennedy v Louisiana (2008) overturning a state law permitting the application of the death penalty to cases that do not involve murder. (And, more generally, support for the death penalty in any case.)
• Advocacy for the expansion of the war in Central Asia (continuing a war of aggression against Afghanistan), including cross-border attacks on nations not at war with the United States (for example, Pakistan and Iran).
• Denial of basic civil rights to homosexuals, especially opposition to gay marriage, in violation of the First (religious freedom) and Fourteenth (equal protection) Amendments.
• Voting for expanding Executive Branch surveillance powers, thus weakening Fourth Amendment (right to privacy) protections, and granting retroactive immunity for telecom corporations that provide the government with private customer data (corporate-government rollback of personal sovereignty).
• Promises to make central to White House operations taxpayer-funded faith-based programs, directly violating the First Amendment (establishment clause - separation of church and state).
• Voting for the bailout of Wall Street financial institutions, which handed nearly three-quarters of a trillion dollars of taxpayer money to the Treasury to dole out to capitalists responsible for arguably the worst financial crisis in US history.
• Selection of a vice-presidential running mate of the Democrat most responsible for the war on crime that has expanded the US prison and jail populations from 200,000 in 1973 to more than 2.3 million in 2008, and increased the racial disproportionality from 30 percent minority in 1970 to more than 60 percent minority in 2008.
• Opposition to universal health care, yet for mandating poor working class parents to pay for the health care of their children.

"If Sarah Palin isn’t enough of a reason for you to get over whatever your problem is with Barack Obama, then you damn well had better pay attention," said Hastings. "Anybody toting guns and stripping moose don’t care too much about what they do with Jews and blacks. So, you just think this through." (Source)

(from Truthout.org)

    By now, we have all seen or heard the Rev. Jesse Jackson's rather crude or off-color comments about Senator Barack Obama. Jackson was waiting to be interviewed on FOX News when he made his comments to a fellow guest. He articulated a growing concern within the African-American community regarding Obama's speeches at African-American churches. Some are concerned that Obama uses these forums to lecture and "talk down to" black people. Jackson also expressed disdain for Obama's support of President Bush's faith-based initiative program by saying, "I wanna cut his nuts off."

    A few points need to be made right up front. First, it is unfortunate that what should have been a private conversation between Jackson and Obama was aired in such a public and embarrassing forum. Second, anyone as seasoned as Jesse Jackson knows that anytime, I repeat, anytime you see a microphone you must assume that it is on. Third, what Jackson did was amateurish if not stupid, and he has been in the game way too long to make such rookie mistakes.

    It is also important to understand that Jackson has dedicated his entire life to furthering the cause of civil and human rights in this country and globally. Doing what he has done over the past five decades is not for the meek or faint-hearted. Does he have a huge ego? Sure he does. Has that ego clouded his judgment at times? Sure it has. However, it was that same ego that convinced him as a college student that he, along with others, could kill Jim Crow. It's that same ego that motivated him to work to abolish apartheid in South Africa, and to bring about greater racial balance to Wall Street. Too many of Jesse Jackson's detractors (particularly those of color) refuse to recognize that it's upon his shoulders (and others) that they stand. Many African-American political pundits, as well as TV and radio hosts, would not have programs on which to express their views if it were not for the struggles, marches and boycotts that the Rev. Jesse Jackson and others have led.

    Some are accusing Jackson of being jealous of Senator Obama. Others say that Jackson just can't stay out of the limelight; he has to find a way to make himself appear to be relevant. These assessments may or may not be true. Whatever your assessments of his motives, we should not allow ourselves to be so distracted by others' views of the speaker and what was spoken that we totally miss the point of what was said.

    Jesse Jackson is not alone when he expresses concern that Obama's efforts to run a "deracialized" campaign may come at the expense of African-American issues. Some believe that as Obama competes for the center of the electorate, he is "adjusting" more liberal positions that were taken to secure his party's nomination. Some are asking, "How can a self-proclaimed 'agent of change' deliver if he uses tactics of the past?"

    One example of this is the recent vote that Senator Obama cast in support of FISA. According to The Nation, Obama voted to "amend the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to absolve George Bush of responsibility for initiating an illegal warrantless wiretapping program and to provide retroactive immunity to the telecommunications corporations that violated the privacy of their customers in order to collaborate with a lawless president." If one understands the history of wiretapping in America and how the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and other progressive leaders were spied on through J. Edgar Hoover's COINTELPRO efforts, one has to wonder how, if by his own admission Senator Obama is "somebody who is no doubt progressive," he could cast such a vote.

    There are those who believe that Obama has been "talking down" to or pandering to African-American audiences in order to gain favor with white voters. When Obama goes before an African-American congregation to speak, he goes as a politician, not a minister or a social critic. It is very dangerous when one uses a political forum to discuss social ills without putting forth solutions that he/she plans to implement or champion once elected to the office being sought.

    As a politician, don't challenge African-American men to be more responsible for their families unless you acknowledge past and present social factors that have contributed to the problem, and you also offer solutions to address the social factors that contribute to the problem. As a politician, don't talk about continuing faith-based initiative programs unless you articulate how those programs will be utilized. Challenges without solutions can appear to be shallow and patronizing. In this instance, it is important to understand the power of perception, and that perception in the minds of many is reality. It's okay for Senator Obama to run a "deracialized" campaign; he just shouldn't do it at the expense of African-Americans.

    It is also important to be consistent with those you challenge. If Obama is comfortable enough to chastise African-American men in their churches, he should cast that same ire toward Zionists and their treatment of the Palestinians when speaking before The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).

    Ironically, at times the senator has problems defending his own statements, even when they are correct. Earlier this year, he was caught attempting to explain resentment from small-town voters in the Mid-West and Pennsylvania with the following comment, "And it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations." Once challenged, he backed away from the statement, even though it is clearly understood by political scientists and sociologists to be valid.

    Will Senator Obama offer a direct challenge to the people to whom he's referring (most of whom are white) to rise above their antipathy toward people who aren't like them the next time he's in Pennsylvania? Nineteen percent of white voters in Pennsylvania said race was a factor in their candidate selection.

    Finally, too many people are getting caught up in the symbolism of Obama's candidacy and losing sight of the substance. Don't get me wrong; political symbols are very important. When I was six years old, I was told that the world was my oyster, I could be anything I wanted to be, EVEN PRESIDENT (wink, wink). I can now sit with my six-year-old son, point to Obama's image on the TV screen and say with a tear of joy in my eye, "Look, that man has the same skin color as you do, he has the same texture of hair that you have, he's a brilliant man. If you work hard, you too can be president." That symbolism means a great deal to me and many other Americans, black and white.

    But symbols in and of themselves don't get it done. If progressive people believe that merely having Barack Obama in the White House will improve their lot, they are sadly mistaken. Progressives are going to have to lobby, protest, write and call their elected officials in the same way that any other group has to if they want their agenda furthered. With that, one can only hope that the ear of a President Obama will be more in tune with the agenda being put forth.

    It is unfair to Obama to think that he alone can improve the lives of African-Americans. He is just one man; as president, he will be a functionary of the United States government. African- Americans are going to have to hold President Obama accountable, hold his feet to the fire in the same way they would have to hold President McCain accountable. That's what I heard in Jesse Jackson's statement.

In an election campaign in which not only young liberals, but also some people who are neither young nor liberals, seem absolutely mesmerized by the skilled rhetoric of Barack Obama, facts have receded even further into the background than usual.

As the hypnotic mantra of "change" is repeated endlessly, few people even raise the question of whether what few specifics we hear represent any real change, much less a change for the better.

Raising taxes, increasing government spending and demonizing business? That is straight out of the New Deal of the 1930s.

The New Deal was new then but it is not new now. Moreover, increasing numbers of economists and historians have concluded that New Deal policies are what prolonged the Great Depression.

Putting new restrictions of international trade, in order to save American jobs? That was done by Herbert Hoover, when he signed the Hawley-Smoot tariff when the unemployment rate was 9 percent. The next year the unemployment rate was 16 percent and, before the Great Depression was over, unemployment hit 25 percent.

One of the most naive notions is that politicians are trying to solve the country's problems, just because they say so-- or say so loudly or inspiringly.

Politicians' top priority is to solve their own problem, which is how to get elected and then re-elected. Barack Obama is a politician through and through, even though pretending that he is not is his special strategy to get elected.

Some of his more trusting followers are belatedly discovering that, as he "refines" his position on various issues, now that he has gotten their votes in the Democratic primaries and needs the votes of others in the coming general election.

Perhaps a defining moment in showing Senator Obama's priorities was his declaring, in answer to a question from Charles Gibson, that he was for raising the capital gains tax rate. When Gibson reminded him of the well-documented fact that lower tax rates on capital gains had produced more actual revenue collected from that tax than the higher tax rates had, Obama was unmoved.

The question of how to raise more revenue may be the economic issue but the political issue is whether socking it to "the rich" in the name of "fairness" gains more votes.

Since about half the people in the United States own stocks-- either directly or because their pension funds buy stocks-- socking it to people who earn capital gains is by no means socking it just to "the rich." But, again, that is one of the many facts that don't matter politically.

What matters politically is the image of coming out on the side of "the people" against "the privileged."

If you are a nurse or mechanic who will be depending on your pension to take care of you when you retire-- as Social Security is unlikely to do-- you may not think of yourself as one of the privileged. But unless you connect the dots between capital gains tax rates and your retirement income, you may fall under the spell of the well-honed Obama rhetoric.

Obama is for higher minimum wage rates. Does anyone care what actually happens in countries with higher minimum wage rates? Of course not.

Economists may point to studies done in countries around the world, showing that higher minimum wage rates usually mean higher unemployment rates among lower skilled and less experienced workers.

That's their problem. A politician's problem is how to look like he is for "the poor" and against those who are "exploiting" them. The facts are irrelevant to maintaining that political image.

Nowhere do facts matter less than in foreign policy issues. Nothing is more popular than the notion that you can deal with dangers from other nations by talking with their leaders.

British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain became enormously popular in the 1930s by sitting down and talking with Hitler, and announcing that their agreement had produced "peace in our time"-- just one year before the most catastrophic war in history began.

Senator Obama may gain similar popularity by advocating similar policies today-- and his political popularity is what it's all about. The consequences for the country come later.