IT'S SOLUTION, STUPID

This is the way of an opposition. Solution, Solution and solution. If Pakatan Rakyat aspires to be in the majority, offers solution rather than just attack and attack. But strangely we have a government who is an opposition, BN cling on to the power by the help of unfair electoral system and bias media and who only knows to attack the opposition. So far Pakatan Rakyat manages to behave like a government in power. But the temptation to attack is so strong, PR should be mindful of that. Offer solution whenever possible and must try hard to educate voter on range of issues so that we will be wiser and let us choose and the decision will be ours.

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich sent a rather scathing letter to Mike Duncan on Tuesday, accusing the RNC chairman of engaging in "a destructive distraction" by attempting to tie Barack Obama to Rod Blagojevich. In particular, Gingrich hit the RNC for putting out a web ad that made it seem as if the President-elect was hiding a nefarious chapter of his personal history with the embattled Illinois Governor.

"The RNC should pull the ad down immediately," Gingrich writes.
I was saddened to learn that at a time of national trial, when a president-elect is preparing to take office in the midst of the worst financial crisis in over seventy years, that the Republican National Committee is engaged in the sort of negative, attack politics that the voters rejected in the 2006 and 2008 election cycles.

The recent web advertisement, "Questions Remain," is a destructive distraction. Clearly, we should insist that all taped communications regarding the Senate seat should be made public. However, that should be a matter of public policy, not an excuse for political attack.
In a time when America is facing real challenges, Republicans should be working to help the incoming President succeed in meeting them, regardless of his Party.

From now until the inaugural, Republicans should be offering to help the President-elect prepare to take office.

Furthermore, once President Obama takes office, Republicans should be eager to work with him when he is right, and, when he is wrong, offer a better solution, instead of just opposing him.

This is the only way the Republican Party will become known as the "better solutions" party, not just an opposition party. And this is the only way Republicans will ever regain the trust of the voters to return to the majority.

This ad is a terrible signal to be sending about both the goals of the Republican Party in the midst of the nation's troubled economic times and about whether we have actually learned anything from the defeats of 2006 and 2008.
There has been, it seems, two mindsets within the GOP as to how to revitalize the party in the wake of its '06 and '08 losses: seek political blood against Barack Obama whenever possible, or focus on reaching out to moderates and minorities. In addition to Gingrich, Sen. John McCain -- appearing on "This Week" Sunday -- offered a dig at the RNC for their obsession with Obama's (apparently limited or nonexistent) links to Blagojevich.
A Republican strategist, asked about the Gingrich letter, said he agreed with the former House Majority Leader. But, he added, "I think that Newt wants a change at the RNC, and it is an intervention in the RNC race."
(h/t Ben Smith)

When Depression Economics Prevails, Prudence is Folly

Depression Economics Returns
By PAUL KRUGMAN, NYT - 14 Nov 08

The economic news, in case you haven’t noticed, keeps getting worse. Bad as it is, however, I don’t expect another Great Depression. In fact, we probably won’t see the unemployment rate match its post-Depression peak of 10.7 percent, reached in 1982 (although I wish I was sure about that).

We are already, however, well into the realm of what I call depression economics. By that I mean a state of affairs like that of the 1930s in which the usual tools of economic policy — above all, the Federal Reserve’s ability to pump up the economy by cutting interest rates — have lost all traction. When depression economics prevails, the usual rules of economic policy no longer apply: virtue becomes vice, caution is risky and prudence is folly.

To see what I’m talking about, consider the implications of the latest piece of terrible economic news: Thursday’s report on new claims for unemployment insurance, which have now passed the half-million mark. Bad as this report was, viewed in isolation it might not seem catastrophic. After all, it was in the same ballpark as numbers reached during the 2001 recession and the 1990-1991 recession, both of which ended up being relatively mild by historical standards (although in each case it took a long time before the job market recovered).

But on both of these earlier occasions the standard policy response to a weak economy — a cut in the federal funds rate, the interest rate most directly affected by Fed policy — was still available. Today, it isn’t: the effective federal funds rate (as opposed to the official target, which for technical reasons has become meaningless) has averaged less than 0.3 percent in recent days. Basically, there’s nothing left to cut.

And with no possibility of further interest rate cuts, there’s nothing to stop the economy’s downward momentum. Rising unemployment will lead to further cuts in consumer spending, which Best Buy warned this week has already suffered a “seismic” decline. Weak consumer spending will lead to cutbacks in business investment plans. And the weakening economy will lead to more job cuts, provoking a further cycle of contraction.

To pull us out of this downward spiral, the federal government will have to provide economic stimulus in the form of higher spending and greater aid to those in distress — and the stimulus plan won’t come soon enough or be strong enough unless politicians and economic officials are able to transcend several conventional prejudices.

One of these prejudices is the fear of red ink. In normal times, it’s good to worry about the budget deficit — and fiscal responsibility is a virtue we’ll need to relearn as soon as this crisis is past. When depression economics prevails, however, this virtue becomes a vice. F.D.R.’s premature attempt to balance the budget in 1937 almost destroyed the New Deal.

Another prejudice is the belief that policy should move cautiously. In normal times, this makes sense: you shouldn’t make big changes in policy until it’s clear they’re needed. Under current conditions, however, caution is risky, because big changes for the worse are already happening, and any delay in acting raises the chance of a deeper economic disaster. The policy response should be as well-crafted as possible, but time is of the essence.

Finally, in normal times modesty and prudence in policy goals are good things. Under current conditions, however, it’s much better to err on the side of doing too much than on the side of doing too little. The risk, if the stimulus plan turns out to be more than needed, is that the economy might overheat, leading to inflation — but the Federal Reserve can always head off that threat by raising interest rates. On the other hand, if the stimulus plan is too small there’s nothing the Fed can do to make up for the shortfall. So when depression economics prevails, prudence is folly.

What does all this say about economic policy in the near future? The Obama administration will almost certainly take office in the face of an economy looking even worse than it does now. Indeed, Goldman Sachs predicts that the unemployment rate, currently at 6.5 percent, will reach 8.5 percent by the end of next year.
All indications are that the new administration will offer a major stimulus package. My own back-of-the-envelope calculations say that the package should be huge, on the order of $600 billion.
So the question becomes, will the Obama people dare to propose something on that scale?
Let’s hope that the answer to that question is yes, that the new administration will indeed be that daring. For we’re now in a situation where it would be very dangerous to give in to conventional notions of prudence.

Obama wins

Obama has won the US presidency with 52% of the total popular votes and at least 349 electoral votes. America has become bluer than ever

Election result

At this point the result is just being tallied and the latest I read is Pennsylvania and Ohio (the must win states for Mccain) have already gone to Obama. So is very likely the result is going to be like this

Hey! I think I have this feeling as well

Ny TimesNovember 1, 2008
Obama Is Up, and Fans Fear That Jinxes It
By MICHAEL POWELL
In the den of his home in New Hope, Pa., a liberal Democrat sits tap-tapping at his computer.
Jon Downs works the electoral vote maps on Yahoo like a spiritualist shaking his Ouija board. He calibrates and recalibrates: Give Senator John McCain Ohio, Missouri, even Florida. But Virginia and Pennsylvania, those go to Senator Barack Obama. And Vermont, Democrats can count on Vermont, right?

Right.

Almost always, Mr. Downs, 53, ends with Mr. Obama, the Democratic presidential nominee, ahead, which should please this confirmed liberal and profound Obama fan. But just as often he feels worried.

“Look, I have this sense of impending doom; we’ve had a couple of elections stolen already,” Mr. Downs said. “The only thing worse than losing is to think that you’re going to win and then lose.”
He considers that prospect and mutters, almost involuntarily, “Oh, God.”

To talk with left-leaning Democrats in New Hope, San Francisco or Miami Beach, to drill deep into their id, is to stand at the intersection of Liberal and High Anxiety.

Right now, more than a few are having a these-polls-are-too-good-to-be-true, we-still-could-lose-this-election moment. Their consuming and possibly over-caffeinated worry is that their prayers and nightly phone calls to undecided voters in Toledo, Ohio, notwithstanding, Mr. Obama might fall short on Election Day.

To walk on Broadway, on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, is to feel their pain. “Oh, God, I’m optimistic, but I can’t look at the polls,” said Patricia Kuhlman, 54, nervously tapping her Obama/Biden ’08 button. “I’m a PBS/NPR kind of person, and, O.K., I do look at some polls.”
Ms. Kuhlman shakes her head and says, “If he doesn’t get this, I’ll be crying so hard.”

A young woman, Shana Rosen, walks by. She is from Denver and said she had told her boyfriend that their love life was on hold while she sweated out Mr. Obama’s performance in Colorado. Ask Lucy Slurzberg, an Upper West Side psychotherapist, how many of her liberal patients speak of their electoral fears during their sessions, and she answers: “Oh, only about 90 percent of them.”
Certainly, national and swing state polls suggest that Democrats might allow themselves a deep breath or two. But liberals are not inclined to relax, given the circumstances of their last two defeats. Hanging chad, the Supreme Court decisions, and Florida and Ohio’s electoral problems: it is a lifetime of agita to staunch Democrats. The prospect of success now comes scented with dread.

Conservatives, it must be said, are not immune from the worry vapors. Therapists report that Republicans are hyperventilating too. “Wealthy Republicans are very anxious about taxes,” Jamie Wasserman, a psychotherapist with a practice on the Upper West Side and in Montclair, N.J., said of her patients. “They are not pretending to vote for the black man.”

And in Ohio, evangelical radio stations feature pastors praying for God to help voters ignore these “awful” polls and vote his will.

Many liberal Democrats watch MSNBC, but some say it sounds too much like comfort food. CNN serves its election coverage with a stiff little chaser of doubt for Democrats, and many liberals say CNN and NPR are their regular evening companions. If they really want to rub the sore tooth of worry, they dial over to the “Obama’s radical friend Bill Ayers” channel, otherwise known as Fox News.

“Mostly I flip between CNN and MSNBC, but I go to Fox if I want to get enraged,” Mr. Downs said.
Richard Schrader, a senior staff member for a national environmental organization, lives in Amherst, Mass., where politics start liberal and traipse left. He is fairly liberal, but his neighbors worry that he does not worry nearly enough. “They wake up, drink that pot of coffee and hit the polling Web sites,” Mr. Schrader said. “Too much good news has to be a lie.”

Recently he sat down with a friend who was sweating about Minnesota.
“Minnesota?” Mr. Schrader told his friend. “What, are you kidding me? Obama’s up 14 points there.”
The friend shook his head sadly. Take off seven points for hidden racial animus. Subtract another five for polling error. It is down to two points, and that is within the margin of error in sampling, and that could mean Mr. Obama might be behind.
“It was perversely impressive,” Mr. Schrader said.

Another friend worries that every undecided voter will break for Mr. McCain, the Republican nominee. Mr. Schrader said, “I told him: ‘O.K., that will be the first time that has ever happened in American history, but sure.’ ”

Pre-election rituals are much the same, from Oberlin, Ohio, to San Francisco. Many liberals describe waking up in the predawn, padding to the kitchen, firing up the coffeemaker and logging on before the children wake up. Lisa Serizawa, 44, of San Francisco leaps from site to site, from national newspapers to one in Ohio to another in Pennsylvania, then a blur of CNN, polling sites, and whatever.

“I just want reassurance; or is it a heads-up?” Ms. Serizawa said. “I’m cautiously, cautiously optimistic. Though I worry: Am I going to be hurt again?”
Liberals are found in almost every corner of the United States, as are their conservative counterparts. But the tribe’s denser concentrations are along the ideological Interstate that runs from Fort Lauderdale, Fla., to the Raleigh-Durham area of North Carolina, to the Adams Morgan section of Washington, to Montclair, to Park Slope in Brooklyn, to the Upper West Side of Manhattan, to Cambridge, Mass., Burlington, Vt., and Ann Arbor, Mich., and so on until it reaches the Pacific.

And from those redoubts, how can one gauge what is going on in the fairly broad expanses of this nation that are not 94.3 percent liberal Democrat? Unfamiliarity spikes the anxiety.
“We live in a bubble,” Ms. Serizawa said. “I drove to Monterey recently, and I saw my first McCain placard ever.”

Some East Coast liberals deal with the uncertainty by volunteering to call undecided voters, in hopes that a half-hour talk with a voter in Missouri will stop the mind from yapping.
“It makes them less worried to phone the middle of the country,” said Ms. Wasserman, the psychotherapist. “Those who are anxious are becoming more so; some spend an entire session going on about what they heard on CNN.”

Still, it is not as though election is a psychiatric condition. Recent years have offered a bad run for many Democrats. The United States is fighting wars on two fronts. The global economy has pitched into recession, and many say the economic elevator has yet to reach the basement.

For many liberals, the chance to elect Mr. Obama, who would be the nation’s first black president, gives the United States a second chance to walk across the stage of world history. (Which also makes the possibility of his loss unspeakably more depressing; given his present lead in every poll, many liberals fear that race will explain any defeat.)

“The last two elections have been so disappointing, so disturbing,” said Paula Guarnaccia, an assistant dean at the University of Vermont. “The idea that we could now elect this impressive man as president, I guess it heightens the anxiety.”

And yet, sometimes, a poll, or five, can tease out a smile.
Ellen Beth Bellet, a tax lawyer in Miami and an ardent liberal, confesses to being electorally obsessed. (She recently vacationed with a friend who threatened to machine gun the hotel television if Ms. Bellet did not shut off CNN.)

But of late a curious calm has descended. “I wrote an e-mail to a friend and said, ‘I’m afraid to put this in writing, but I’m really excited about the way this is going,’ ” Ms. Bellet said.
Within minutes, the phone rang; her friend was very worried about Mr. Obama’s prospects.

“Don’t say that!” the friend said. “No, no, no. What were you thinking? We can’t go there yet!”

Dems sketch Obama staff, Cabinet

Wow, we will find out if it's true after Nov 4th.

Dems sketch Obama staff, Cabinet
By: Mike Allen, Politico
October 31, 2008 09:09 PM EST

Republican insiders close to John McCain are spending much more time in the campaign’s final days trying to pull off an upset victory on Tuesday than focusing on who might be in a McCain Cabinet. But sources close to Barack Obama have quite specific ideas about his most likely choices for a wide array of top jobs.

The list is heavy on campaign heavyweights and Washington insiders, many of them from the administration of President Bill Clinton. So while surprises can be expected to crop up — especially on any Republican members of the Cabinet — many of the selections would likely be proven hands who would provoke little controversy. Obama has not communicated his final choice on any of these posts but plans to move very quickly if he is elected, according to the sources. They point to the political price that Clinton paid for dilly-dallying on his appointments and nomination.

Obama could name his White House chief of staff within a week of his election, advisers say. Obama would also likely make a rapid announcement on an economic team in an effort to show command of the most pressing issue that would face him on moving into the Oval Office on Jan. 20.

Larry Summers, who was Clinton’s last Treasury secretary before becoming president of Harvard, is considered a favorite for Treasury secretary for Obama.

See Also
A peek at a potential McCain cabinet

Obama transition planners have been working to line up a national security team, which would also likely be named sooner rather than later.

Here is the list of names being widely discussed in Democratic circles, compiled with the help of ABC’s Jonathan Karl and Politico’s Ben Smith. Some of the names are more likely than others, but all are being seriously considered by Obama advisers. Some of the sources would be involved in decision making, and some were making educated deductions.

In any case, ask a well-positioned Democrat, and this is what you’ll hear.


White House chief of staff: Former Sen. Tom Daschle (D-S.D.); Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-Ill.); or dark horse candidate Bill Daley, Commerce secretary under President Bill Clinton and now an executive with JPMorgan Chase & Co.

Deputy chief of staff: Pete Rouse, chief of staff in Obama Senate office; Ron Klain, former chief of staff to Vice President Al Gore; longtime Obama adviser Valerie Jarrett; Jim Messina, campaign chief of staff

Senior adviser: David Plouffe, David Axelrod, Steve Hildebrand

Outside adviser: Abner Mikva

Ambassador at large on climate change: former Vice President Al Gore

National security adviser: Jim Steinberg, the deputy under Clinton; Gregory Craig, special counsel to Clinton; Susan Rice; retired Marine Gen. Anthony Zinni; Samantha Power of Harvard’s Kennedy School

White House counsel: Bob Bauer, campaign counsel; Chris Lu, Obama legislative director and member of transition staff; Heather Higginbottom, campaign senior policy strategist and longtime aide to Sen. John F. Kerry; Mike Strautmanis, congressional affairs for campaign and former chief counsel in Senate office

Chief of staff to the vice president: Tony Blinken, chief of staff, Senate Foreign Relations Committee (Biden is chairman) and senior campaign adviser for Biden; Stephanie Cutter; former Biden aides Mark Gittenstein, Alan Hoffman and Ted Kaufman.

Chief of staff to first lady Michelle Obama: Alyssa Mastromonaco, campaign director of scheduling and advance; Melissa Winter; Linda Douglass, senior spokeswoman for campaign

Counselor: Robert Gibbs; Anita Dunn; Valerie Jarrett; Jon Favreau

Communications director: Robert Gibbs; Dan Pfeiffer, who has that post in the campaign

Deputy Communications Director: Josh Earnest

Press secretary: Robert Gibbs, Linda Douglass, Bill Burton, Stephanie Cutter

Director of media affairs (regional and specialty media): Blake Zeff

Speechwriting director: Jon Favreau; Jeff Nussbaum

Deputy press secretary: Karen Dunn, currently Axelrod’s deputy

Press staff morale chief: Tommy Vietor

Assistant press secretary: Isaac Baker, Reid Cherlin, Ben LaBolt, Moira Mack, Hari Sevugan, Nick Shapiro

Press secretary to the first lady: Katie McCormick Lelyveld

White House economic adviser: Austan Goolsbee, senior policy adviser to campaign and University of Chicago economics professor; Jason Furman, director of economic policy for the campaign; Michael Froman, former Treasury chief of staff, Citigroup executive and Harvard Law classmate with Obama

Domestic policy adviser: Heather Higginbottom, Jason Furman, Neera Tanden

Director of scheduling: Marvin Nicholson

Personal aide: Reggie Love

Cabinet secretary: Christine Varney, who held that post under Clinton

White House staff secretary: Cassandra Butts

Director of legislative affairs: Chris Lu; Mike Strautmanis

Political director: Erik Smith

Defense secretary : Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.); Richard Danzig, Navy secretary under Clinton; John Hamre, president and CEO of CSIS and former deputy secretary of Defense; President Bush’s incumbent, Robert Gates — would be for at least a year so he wasn’t a lame duck.


Attorney general: Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine; Eric Holder, who was deputy AG under Clinton and is now with Covington & Burling and led Obama’s vice presidential search; Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick; Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano.

Supreme Court nominee: Washington superlawyer Robert Barnett; legal scholar Cass Sunstein; Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick; 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Sonia Sotomayor of New York; Elena Kagan, dean of Harvard Law School. Consensus is it would most likely be a woman.

Secretary of State: New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson; Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.); Sen. Richard Lugar (R-Ind.)

Deputy secretary of state: Gregory Craig

Director of State Department policy planning (internal think tank): Samantha Power

U.S. ambassador to the United Nations: Susan Rice, senior campaign national security adviser and State Department and National Security Council official under Clinton; Caroline Kennedy

Treasury secretary: former Clinton treasury secretaries Larry Summers and Robert Rubin; FDIC Chairman Sheila C. Blair; New York Fed President Timothy Geithner, former Treasury under secretary and Assistant Secretary; former Federal Reserve hairman Paul Volcker.

Deputy Treasury secretary: Jake Siewert.

Secretary of Health and Human Services: Tom Daschle; Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean, a physician; John Kitzhaber, medical doctor and former Oregon governor.

Health care czar in White House: Tom Daschle.

Education secretary: David Boren, president of the University of Oklahoma and former U.S. senator and former Sooner State governor; Former New Jersey Gov. Tom Kean (R), who was chairman of the 9/11 commission; Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.)

Environmental Protection Agency administrator: Former Sen. Lincoln Chafee (R-R.I.); Kathleen McGinty, former head of the Pennsylvania Environmental Protection Agency

Commerce secretary: Penny Pritzker; Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius; Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine).

Homeland Security secretary: Former Sen. Gary Hart (D-Col.); William Bratton, Los Angeles police chief and former New York police commissioner; former Rep. Tim Roemer (D-Ind.), a member of the 9/11 Commission; Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.); Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine)

CIA director: Former Rep. Tim Roemer (D-Ind.); Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.)

Director of National Intelligence: Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.)

Secretary of Housing and Urban Development: Longtime Obama adviser Valerie Jarrett; Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. (D-Ill.)

Secretary of Veterans Affairs: Former Sen. Max Cleland (D-Ga.); Tammy Duckworth, the director of Illinois Veterans’ Affairs, Iraq veteran and former Democratic House candidate; Bush’s incumbent, James Peake

Secretary of the Interior: Rep. Jay Inslee (D-Wash.); Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Secretary of Energy: California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R); Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.)

Secretary of Transportation: Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.); Rep. Jim Oberstar (D-Minn.)

Secretary of Labor: Former Rep. Richard Gephardt (D-Mo.); Andrew Stern, president of the Service Employees International Union; Kay Hagan of North Carolina (if she loses her challenge to U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Dole); Jeanne Shaheen, former New Hampshire governor (if she loses her challenge to U.S. Sen. John Sununu)

Secretary of Agriculture: Former Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack; Rep. Collin Peterson (D-Minn.)

Director, Office of National Drug Control Policy: William Bratton

Director, Council for Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships (Obama's renamed faith-based office): Josh DuBois, campaign's director of religious affairs

Debating the Debate

I just want to record down any news articles or reports about this election because it is going to be historic moment for all of us. Win or lose, Obama has already made history.

The Debates: No Drama but a Dramatic Effect
By Robert G. KaiserWashington Post Staff WriterFriday, October 31, 2008

"This cake looks baked," says Charlie Cook of the 2008 election. The normally cautious proprietor of the Cook Political Report, famous for its cogent and careful election analysis, is certain of the outcome: a Democratic landslide. He has lots of company among his peers.

Of course, the Charlie Cooks don't decide elections -- voters do, and they still must be heard from. So let's just say that Barack Obama has had a remarkable October. It's been quite a month -- financial collapses, Sarah Palin and Tina Fey, Joe the Plumber and more political commercials

on television than we have ever seen before.

But what if none of that was as important as four 90-minute television programs seen by more Americans than any episode of "American Idol"? Here's a brash assertion: The debates did it.
Okay, okay, this is an oversimplification. Lots of things "did it." We could fill today's Post with the details. Nor is this an obvious conclusion that is widely shared. In fact, our pundits appear to have put the debates behind them, hardly mentioning them in the past fortnight. After all, there were no zingers, no blood on the floor, no egregious goofs -- nothing happened!

Well, not exactly. There is now a lot of evidence from polls and focus groups suggesting that Sen. Obama has significantly improved his standing with a great many Americans since the first debate on Sept. 26, exactly five weeks ago. Americans find Obama more empathetic, stronger, better prepared to be president and just more sympathetic a figure than they did before the debates.

Most important, Obama has moved into the lead. In early September, the race was tied. In the Washington Post-ABC News poll on Sept. 9, soon after the Republican convention, McCain had a two-point lead among likely voters, 49 to 47 percent. By the poll taken just after the second Obama-McCain debate, released Oct. 13, Obama led 53 to 43. In the three weeks since, the race has been utterly stable. Yesterday, the Post-ABC tracking poll had Obama ahead 52 to 44 percent. (The margin of error in all of these polls is plus or minus 3 percent.)

Were the debates responsible for these developments? Probably. They attracted many more Americans than any other event or aspect of the campaign. According to Nielsen, the four debates this fall attracted a total audience of 242 million (of course, many people watched all four). "The debates had a big impact," says Andrew Kohut of the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, the dean of American pollsters. "Obama won all three by huge margins."

Curiously, the McCain and Obama campaigns shared a strong interest in avoiding any drama or surprises in the debates. They negotiated a 31-page "memorandum of understanding" to govern the debates that reeks of anxiety about unexpected developments. The moderators' roles are carefully spelled out, including instructions for Tom Brokaw on how to handle any unruly questioner in the town hall debate held in Nashville on Oct. 7. If a member of the audience who was allowed to ask a question departed from the text of the question Brokaw had previously chosen, "the moderator will cut off the questioner and advise the audience that such non-reviewed questions are not permitted." The candidates agreed to bring "no props, notes, charts, diagrams" into a debate, and to forswear "any challenges for further debates" and promised not to "address each other with proposed pledges." (These quotations come from a copy of the memo provided to The Post.)

The fulfillment of the shared desire for no surprises is just what disappointed the pundits looking for drama and points to be scored. But the sponsors of the debates were not disappointed.

Frank Fahrenkopf, chairman of the Republican National Committee during most of the Reagan era, is the Republican co-chairman of the Commission on Presidential Debates, which brings us these quadrennial spectacles. "We were extremely pleased with the way the debates turned out" this year, Fahrenkopf said this week. "I think they were very important."

Fahrenkopf offers an analysis of the debates that has historical roots:
"I analogize this election to 1980," he says, using a brand of English that suggests too many years spent in Washington. That year, he recalls, the country was in terrible shape and voters ached to make a change, but the candidate offering change was a former movie actor named Ronald Reagan. "The American people wondered, was this guy up to it?" All that uncertain voters wanted was reassurance that Reagan wasn't too risky a choice, Fahrenkopf says.

Reassurance was slow in coming. A week before Election Day, polls showed Reagan and President Jimmy Carter in a virtual dead heat. That was the date of their only televised debate. Before a huge audience, Reagan came off as everyone's lovable uncle. "There you go again!" he scoffed when Carter (quite accurately) described Reagan's past opposition to the Medicare program. At the end of the debate, in a closing statement, Reagan asked: "Are you better off now than you were four years ago?" The prime interest rate at the time was 14.5 percent; inflation was running at an unprecedented 13 percent. Almost no one in America felt "better off" than a year earlier.

With help from Iranian ayatollahs who refused to release their American hostages before the election, a landslide developed in just a few days. Reagan trounced Carter by nearly 10 percentage points. The debate made the big difference, Fahrenkopf says (and many scholars agree). "The country was reassured."

And this year has been similar, though less sudden. "I think it took Obama three debates for people to see how calm he was, how composed he was, that you couldn't get to this guy," says Fahrenkopf. "He was very well organized. By the time that final debate was over, I think he satisfied the qualms of the American people."

"Then," he adds, "when the economy went into the ditch, McCain had a really tough battle."
Another student of elections who has long been comparing this race to 1980 is Peter Hart, a Democratic pollster who, with Republican Neil Newhouse, conducts the NBC News-Wall Street Journal poll. In an interview last spring, Hart said the country was aching to make a change of party in the White House. Obama, like Reagan, was an agent of change whom the country would embrace if he could reassure voters that he was up to the job, that it wasn't too risky to elect him, Hart thought.

"But Barack Obama faced a special problem," Hart said this week. Obama is "the least credentialed" challenger for the presidency in the modern era. At the same time, expectations for his debate performance, "because of his rhetorical skills, were much higher" than for challengers in the recent past.

Obama rose to the occasion, Hart said. "In the debates, his ability to crystallize issues and present them in a cool, intellectual and reassuring way provided an important contrast to John McCain, because McCain showed such an unsteady and erratic pattern going into the first debate over the economic situation." Hart was referring to McCain's brief "suspension" of his campaign, suggested postponement of the first debate, then about-face. That first debate "was a chance for Barack Obama not only to show his skills, but also to contrast himself with the more mature but less steady John McCain," Hart said.

Looking back just weeks later, the talking heads who passed instant judgments on the presidential debates don't look too wise. From the first ("McCain won the debate," said William Kristol of the Weekly Standard) to the last ("This debate went to John McCain," said Andrea Mitchell of NBC), most of the commentary seemed out of sync with the more scientific evidence.
Those with the best seats for the debates were the moderators. Bob Schieffer of CBS, who moderated the final one, says of Obama, "I think he won on demeanor."

"The vote for a president is different," Schieffer observes. "People vote for the person they feel most comfortable with, especially in a crisis." In Obama, he speculates, "people saw somebody who seemed very composed, very sure of himself, and I think they liked that."

Research editor Alice Crites contributed to this report.

Obama Landslide ? I hope it happens

Larry Sabato at the UVA Center for Politics predicts Obama landslide - 364 vs 174. So let see this is going to happen on November 4th.

Hope

This Obama TV commercial summed up what really is Obama's plan for his country.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/10/28/obamas-prime-time-tv-comm_n_138767.html

Waiting for Obama Pt 3

I quoted the following very inspirational conversation from Daily Kos.

A white man asked his black friend, 'Are you voting for Barack Obama just because he's black?'

The black man responded by saying, 'Why not? Hell, in this country men are pulled over everyday just cause they're black; passed over for promotions just cause they're black; considered to be criminals just cause they're black; and there are going to be thousands of you who won't be voting for him just because he's black!

However, you do not seem to have a problem with that! This country was built with the sweat and whip off the black slaves' back, and now a son of Africa (the origin of those same slaves) has a chance to lead the same country, where we weren't even considered to be people, where we weren't allowed to be educated, drink from the same water fountains, eat in the same restaurants, or even vote.

So yes! I'm going to vote for him! But it's not just because he's black, but because he is hope, he is change, and he now allows me to understand when my child says that he wants to be president when he grows up, it is not a fairy tale but a short term goal. He now sees, understands and knows that he can achieve, withstand and do ANYTHING just because he's black!'

Waiting for Obama Pt 2

" Of course this is a silly proposition, unless Malaysia is USA's 52nd state! We would like to see Malaysia evolve into a country in which race nor religion matter in the appointment of prime ministers.

What matter one's moral righteousness, intellectual depth, uncompromising multiculturalist outlook, undying championing of the Constitution, prioritising of needs versus wants, and commitment to a two-term (eight year) prime ministership."

I could't agree more with Azly Rahman. And that is why I am waiting for Obama in Malaysia. Perhaps not in my generation but I hope it will happen in my grandchildren's grandchildren's generation, where skin color and religion do not matter anymore in the appointment of PM and whole lot of ministership. Some say I am dreaming, but so did some American who said so to Obama.

I believe with Obama as US president, the world would once again look towards America 's moral leadership in championing democracy, human rights and struggle against racist politics that are still alive and kicking, especially here in Malaysia. And I am going to say it again, with Obama as president, UMNO hopefully would be sent to muzium as an ancient relic for display.

YES WE CAN, YES WE CAN, YES WE CAN, YES WE CAN

Waiting for Obama

I believe Barack Obama's victory in US will bring change not only to America but the whole world. That is way I am joining million of million of people around the world waiting for the coming of Obama Age. and Yes We Can make this happen with our prayers.

Anwar's victory - The Most Meaningful Present for Our Merdeka, Hidup Ketuanan Rakyat

It's confirmed, Anwar won by a whopping 15k majority despite intimidation from the BN rudeless election machinery. At one point I thought Anwar was going to lose. But he never lose hope, instead he give us HOPE of a better Malaysia. This is the kind of fighting spirit that a PM should have, Anwar has it, he deserves to be our PM. This is the piece of good news that I have been waiting for. I think BN should just pack and leave this government to Pakatan Rakyat. After 50 years, Malaysians need a break. The current BN federal government is running out of ideas to govern. They just simply rely on dirty tactic and oppresive laws to continue their reign. Enough is enough, please leave. We have alot more to do and cleaning up might take years. You have done enough damage already, our institution just could not afford to handle anymore.

I love this country, but does this country love me

I am very disturbed by the recent event. I look at this UiTM students' demonstration and all the shouting of defending Malay rights and calling Khalid pengkhianat bangsa, I wept. I wept for this country, the country that I suppose to love unconditionally...And I look at my little Hannah, I ask whether this country still loves me and my family? Not that non-Malays will immediately accepting Uitm's offer if they open up that tiny 10% allocation, because there are so many colleges and universities around, the choices are abundant, what make them think that non-Malays would want to apply in?? For me, it's the betrayal of the promises of this country had for my family and for future generation, for my daughter Hannah and many who are born in Malaysia . I am very very disturbed and sad that after 50 years of merdake, we are still divided by race and religion. And calling your own race as pengkhianat bangsa, is actually implying that other races are invaders that these other race are out to conquer Malaysia and not fit to be in this country.. No doubt this is the saddest day of my life. Sad because realise that I am not recognised as a Malaysian no matter how good my Bahasa is, no matter how long I have stayed here, sad because my Malay friend will be called pengkhianat bangsa just because he or she is fighting for a better Malaysia.

Anwar Ibrahim's victory speech in 2012?

I was so thrilled when I read Azly Rahman's "Our Great Victory". I am imagining myself reading Anwar's victory speech in 2012. I think we cannot lose hope that the day will surely come that our dreams of better Malaysia will be realised at last. God Bless Malaysia.

Our great victory
Azly Rahman Aug 4, 08 12:57pm

[To be read not later than August 31, 2012]
The great gathering of thousands, the new leaders emerging from the elections of 2012 speak.

Praise be to God, Lord of the Universe, Just God of Humanity, Universal God of Humankind that knows even what is whispered in our hearts. Praise be to Lord of the Day of Judgment; one that made possible the change and transformation we are seeing now and we will continue to see in future.

Allow me to talk about our victory, our vision of a "Constitutional State" and our vehicle of social, cultural, and economic progress beyond the NEP: of a new economic agenda. I stand here by His Grace, with humility, thanking you Malaysians who have come to celebrate and to give us the strength, the resolve, and the will to continue to march towards victory.

This victory is already ours. We cannot underestimate our struggle – the struggle of Malaysians of regardless of race, class, gender, creed, religious background, and national origin. This victory will be a gift for our children. This will be the best gift we can leave the next generation with in a country in which "justice" is put in its proper place. This is the concept of Adil and is what we base out struggle on.

This is the concept of bersih, cekap, amanah in the truest sense of the word. We are winning. We live in an imperfect world. We live in maya, in the shadow of Plato's cave. We constantly need to make changes to our institutions, so that democracy will have its breathing space, will evolve, and will flourish in accordance to the laws of Nature. As the French philosopher Jean Jacques Rousseau once said "Everything in good in the hands of the Author of things, everything degenerates in the Hands of Man…"

We have allowed totalitarianism, corruption, repression, and hedonism to take root in our democratic institutions.In an imperfect world such as Malaysia, in which imperfection has gotten worse and making us slaves to the policies created out of our prejudices and arrogance, out of our greed and lust for power, and out of our ill-conceived idea of human liberation and economic development - this imperfect world needed more than just incremental changes and compromise.

It needed radical changes and no-compromises. We have shown that we through Fate conspiring, through the Will of God, we made that change, sudden yet peaceful and civil, on March 8 2008. It is our Velvet revolution, inspired by our own sense of non-violence, aided by technologies of cybernetics.The "revolution" - our own Malaysian styled-revolution - that ought to now be studied alongside the nature and structure of revolutions worldwide is not without its causes.

Those hard long years of battling injustices, the sacrifices of those imprisoned without trial, of those humiliated beyond recognition stripped off their dignity, those brutally beaten beyond mercy, those hunted down on the streets of our major cities, those silenced and stupefied in our universities, those sprayed with chemicals, and the voice of the little girl – a child of the Hindraf revolution who brought roses to ask for pity for his father's release - all these violent images of oppression we do not deserve have taught us to be stronger.

We shall overcome

We shall overcome.

We shall overcome the tyranny of an arrogant, ineffective, incompetent, corrupt and lazy government that does not have any more respect for the rule of law does not have any shame in showing its greed and lustdoes not have any mercy in using brutal force to silent the voices of changedoes not have much respect for the principles of human rights does not have much intelligence when it comes to parliamentary debates does not have a clue of what good governance means does not have any regard for the plight of the poor and their livelihood does not have any respect for the intelligence of the faculty and students in our universities does not have any shame in overstaying their welcome does not have any interest in controlling crime does not have any will to fight corruptionand does not have leaders that are wide awake,and does not have any idea that spoiled brats and greedy ones are running the country and finally destroying not only the party but also the nation.

That's the price of arrogance. That's the price of corruption. That' s the price of losing touch with reality and a government losing its mind as well. That is what it is paying for – big time!

It has been our remarkable years of living dangerously, swept by the tsunami of a yellow wave, under the moonlight of a blood red sky. It has been remarkable for us and the world to witness battles being fought by the rakyat against the machinery of oppression— a corrupted machine run by corrupted minds of lesser morals.

By God's grace we shall win this war against the unjust. We shall win, by the will of the people. We shall put justice in its proper place.Hold on fast to your dreams. A few days before the Malaysian tsunami that swept away the powerful machinery of the ruling regime, sweeping it to the backyard of our national history, we were battling with this feeling that the regime would still be holding power and will continue to use it to oppress, intimidate, and to rob the rakyat – for another fifty years.

The African-American poet of hope, Langston Hughes once said:"Hold on fast to your dreams. For when dreams die, life is but a broken-wing"W.S. Rendra the great poet of the Nusantara once said the "world within.. the world outside must unite" in order for meaningful change to happen; in order for leaders to be true to his or her conscience and to answer to God.We are at an exciting historical juncture. No longer are we being objects of history, but we have become makers of history.

Time awaits no man or woman. History marches on; history crafted by those oppressed by their own people intoxicated with power. No colours or barriersWho would believe that we could have achieve such victory in a time when skepticism still reigns. Who would believe that we would, in our rage against the machine, overturned it and send those who owned it scrambling in all directions bruised and still unwilling to accept the defeat orchestrated by the rakyat. Yes, the power of the rakyat, or suara keramat rakyat, the sacred voice of the people, that made victory possible. From the silent and scared voices of the rakyat we now have a sacred voice that has spoken loud and clear and will continue to speak louder.

Onwards to the march of the power of the people that have begun to know no colors and barriers of religion, class, creed, and national origin. You are the reason why I am still standing here and not looking outward from some prison cell in Perak or Selangor – two states tsunamied by the yellow wave.

What next after the revolution? The celebrations are over. We need a GPS – a geo-positioning system – to help us create a better society.We are all economic beings who need to see a better plan that will promise us a better life after what we have accomplished in this General Election. We do not have faith anymore in the New Economic Policy that has reared its ugly head in its 50 years of implementation. We cannot have faith in the NEP that is creating robber barons out of the hard work of the poor.

We can no longer be fooled by the argument that the NEP protects the rights of the Bumiputeras when only a few "sons and daughters of the soil" are plundering the wealth of this land and gradually but surely selling off our country to other robber barons from outside of this country. Is this the kind of Bumiputera hiding behind the mask of the NEP we want to have running this country? These are the Bumiputeras who make different races mistrust each other, masking the real issue of oppression and distributive injustices that know no race, ethnicity, color, creed.

These are the culprits that were created out of our own lack of understanding of what a "good society" is and what "radical multiculturalism" means and how these can offer us a sound philosophy of human development that prioritizes needs versus wants, virtue over greed, and peaceful solution versus structural violence. It is a matter of time we depose these "traitors" who call themselves defenders of this or that race, hiding behind the crumbling walls of the NEP.Who is still speaking for the New Economic Policy – one that is used for fifty years first as a programme to help the poor but no has matured as a tool of the powerful to plunder the nation and to rape the environment?. Who would have thought that the NEP once designed as a strategy to alleviate poverty and restructure society has now become an instrument to make the poor poorer and the rich filthier.

You have entrusted us to fight for a better future. You have given us the trust to chart a new Malaysia. We owe you a dawn of a new Malaysia.Our central economic principle is that "the right opportunities must be made available to every single Malaysian—opportunities to learn, opportunities to make an honest living, and opportunities to achieve our dreams". We will defend the rights of all Malaysians as guaranteed under our constitution.Let us go forth in the direction of change, with our brand new economic agenda. Let us leave the abused and outdated New Economic Policy behind. How do we do this? You and I must take charge.

Courageous Malaysian who have known truth and justice, to fight for these, and to see how these are becoming a reality,You continue to be the reason why this revolution is happening. I stand before you, with humility asking you to continue to support our struggles to be free;You have answered the call to freedom.You have risked your lives on the streets in order to demand for freedom.You have not given up.You will be free from the shackles of dominationFree from being harassed by the government the moment you want to speak upFree from having to bear the burden of this regime's incompetence and corrupt practices,Free from the being treated like second and third class citizens even though grandfather and great grandfather arrived here earlier that the fathers and mother of many of the Cabinet Ministers

Free at last we shall be

Free at last by God's Grace

Thank you. Thank you.

We shall work together to make our society better.Thank God Almighty. We shall march on. We shall be free!

Malaysiakini: BN will not give Anwar an easy run in by-election

Anwar will not be given an easy run, that is for sure. Although many said that Permatang Pauh is in Pakatan ruled states, and Anwar has a very huge advantage. I disagree, simply because the playing field is hardly even. Media for instance, is still very much under tight control. Even the usually freer Chinese newspapers are not independent and often sided with MCA-BN ruling clique. The recent issue involving a photographer and PKR security personnel will be highlighted daily in the weeks to come, thus painting a bad light on Anwar campaign. While I am not condoning such violence act and in fact I think that security personnel should be reprimanded an even be sacked, the press must be responsible in their reporting.

If we can think rationally, let say the TV station/press are independent and will give interviews, allowing Anwar campaign advertisements and open debate between candidates on policies, then there is no need for ceramah to be held, there is no need for those hassle and friction would definitely be reduced. But no, this thing would not happen, so there will be more ceramah, more friction to come and more news to be used by mainstream media to attack opposition campaign.

So when Najib said BN will not give Anwar a free ride, it's about how to use negative campaign against Anwar, not that they are suddenly more democratic as to present a choice to Permatang voters. BN will not debate Anwar on policies, there will be no independent reporting by mainstream media just yet, there will be wave of money pouring in Permatang Pauh, there will be tons of negative news attacking Anwar's personality and, characters assassination will be a norm during the campaign period. This is to be expected and indeed Anwar will not be given an easy run. But it would even be wrong to think that it's going to be an easy win for Anwar, on the contrary it's going to be a tough battle for him.

Is it wrong to have ambition?

Is the position of PM belongs to UMNO? Can I become PM one day? Is it wrong for Anwar Ibrahim to have ambition? Why can't we have PM from political party other than UMNO? For Malaysian sake, I ask that we think conscientiously and rationally. No more despaire but hope for a better Malaysia. I mean why do we have to think that only UMNO politicians can have ambition and make it a crime for others who have the same thoughts?

Unity is a 'dirty' word

The sad thing about this country is we seem to cannot break away with anything about race. We have recently alot of talks about unity among Malays and later we have MCA talks about Chinese unity, we are going no where. I mean aren't we suppose to be talking about National unity? My good friend, Ashvin has a good analysis on this whole unity thing. I am really fed up and you know what, I think UNITY IS A DIRTY WORD, we should not talk about it anymore but should actually do it and practice it in our policies, daily activities, etc. No more Bumiputra vs non Bumiputra, no more lain-lain, no more Muslim Bumiputra vs Muslim non-Bumiputra, no more quota for university, government positions, etc. Let us have unity without talking about unity, unite the people based on hope and love. Can they understand or not..?

Malay Unity or National Unity by Ashvin Raj
I refer to the Sun report where MCA Youth Chief Datuk Liow Tiong Lai was reported to have declared MCA's support for the UMNO-PAS talks. I find it retrogressive for him to state that MCA takes it with an open mind in an effort to unite the Malay community, and even urged the Chinese community to be united in support of MCA. This gives rise to parochial communal thinking and an old narrow mindset of racial politics.As a Malaysian who believes in a social contract which is enshrined in our Federal Constitution and based on the notion that ‘all Malaysians are created equal’, I am indeed puzzled by his above statement. This is because it gives rises to the implication that Malaysians are still divided along ethnic lines and that communal politics continue to dominate the political scene, rather than National Unity in the first place. The idea of Ketuanan Melayu as espoused by UMNO is going bankrupt, as the recent talks between UMNO and PAS seems to indicate they are desperate enough to go to that extent to salvage their waning support among the Malay electorate and to stem the tide of the Anwar factor. I dare say, if not for the losses suffered by UMNO in the recent March 8 Elections, where they lost 5 states to Pakatan Rakyat, UMNO would not have bothered having secret talks with PAS.Datuk Shahrir Abdul Samad’s caution against turning the dialogue into a racial issue completely misses the point. This is about putting national interest first and not party interest. All Malaysians irrespective of their race are stakeholders in the affairs of our nation, and that nation building should not solely belong to any one particular race or religion. Non-Malays are not foreigners in their own land, but that as a multi-racial nation, we should strive to achieve national unity and economic prosperity for all Malaysians, irrespective of their race, religion, status or political beliefs.All Malaysians of rational minds must make a heart-searching reappraisal as to what they conceive to be Malaysia’s destiny. If it is the common hope that our destiny lies in a multi-racial nation, where there is no discrimination on the grounds of race, then the Malaysian dream of ensuring opportunity and security for all will become a reality, as there will indeed be national unity. However, if there is no agreement on this fundamental issue, where we continue to harp on racial unity talks, instead of national unity, then clearly there is no will or determination to build a multi-racial nation, that is based on one common Malaysian dream or identity – Bangsa Malaysia.

‘It’s the economy, stupid’

Helan Ang has a good take on the debate between Anwar and Shabery. The BN government after 50 years of uninterrupted rule is out of touch with the common people. Their policies are outdated and lacking creativity. Throughout the debate Shabery did not utter a single word on how best to help the poor but he did say, "...rakyat cukup makan", which I think is clearly showing their lack of imagination in setting the policy. Anyway, I am also amazed that after 50 years, the BN government is still stuck at aiming to provide enough food for the people, that I think is very low the standard of Governance.

Anwar's got the pulse on petrol
Helen Ang Jul 17, 08 5:19pm
‘Kita bercakap mudah bila kita di luar tetapi hakikat sebenarnya tak semudah yang dapat dihayati kita dalam keadaan sebenarnya dalam negara kita pada hari ini, tetapi percayalah bila saya katakan tadi, dalam kesusahan yang ada sekarang, rakyat cukup makan.’ (It is easy for us to talk when we’re on the outside but the real situation in our country is not as clear-cut; nonetheless believe me when I said earlier that even in their hardship now, people have enough to eat) – Information Minister Ahmad Shabery Cheek in live debate with Anwar Ibrahim on July 15

Sungai Siput MP – Dr Jeyakumar Devaraj of Parti Sosialis Malaysia – posed a question in Parliament recently on household income. Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department Amirsham A Aziz responded with these figures: 8.6 percent of Malaysian families earn less than RM1,000 monthly, almost 30 percent earn between RM1,001 and RM2,000, while about 20 percent are in the RM2,001 to RM3,000 income bracket.

Altogether, two out of five Malaysian households have less than 2k a month to live on and feed their families. During the election, PAS presented its ‘Negara Kebajikan’ manifesto while DAP hammered home a simple message: BN equates ‘Barang Naik’. After the election, BN still did not get it. In an April postmortem, the MCA thinktank – Insap, Institute of Strategic Analysis and Policy Research, produced a ‘re-branding’ report which said, ‘What is painfully apparent is that we (BN, Insap CEO and like-minded) have allowed the opposition to dominate the social justice debate during the elections …’

Insap followed up it’s The Sun article by reiterating that populist thinking is not new ‘because such movements have been repeated in history many times over. Just because it happened in Malaysia it does not mean we have to fear it but to challenge the position taken by the opposition’.

Between the social justice positions taken by Pakatan Rakyat and ridiculed by the powers-that-be and their affiliates, the electorate made its preference known on March 8.
The 100 days after

Anwar in Tuesday’s debate asked why the government broke its pre-election promise not to raise oil prices, the drastic hike a heavy burden on Malaysians.

The concern of the man on the street is not really oil barrels tagged at US dollars in the international market; it’s the essentials at the wet market and sundry shop. Our select politicians are punching their calculators to tabulate billions of ringgit but Pak Long in Batu Rakit and Mak Ngah in Gong Badak are eking out their meagre ringgit to stave off inflation.

We heard Petronas CEO Mohd Hassan Marican on July 15, when releasing Petronas’ first quarter financial report, say that the state oil company paid RM67.6 billion the last financial year in taxes, royalties and dividends to the government. Petronas contributed RM52.3 billion to the federal coffers in the previous financial year.

Such staggering sums, I daresay, will be incomprehensible to 60 percent of Malaysians who are unsure how many zeros follow a billion. Anwar throws a rhetorical question: ‘Why don’t we manage our treasury better to ease the suffering of the people?’ But it’s also a straightforward query that’s uppermost in our minds; can the government give a satisfactory reply?

Anwar suggests as solutions a re-look at the IPPs (independent power producers), wiping out corruption and plugging the leakages. Gas subsidies to the power sector are RM14 billion, including RM8 billion to the IPPs, many of which are owned by companies linked to the politically-connected and wealthiest big business families.

Some schools of thought have made out ‘subsidy’ to be a dirty word or outmoded, for instance Insap’s assertion framed thus: ‘We have in existence an old system from a socialist ideology of using price controls and subsidies to ‘deliver to the poor’.

Capitalists have their ideological bias against subsidies as such but nevertheless practice ‘socialism’ for the rich and market discipline for the poor. Hence, I can well appreciate Anwar for saying, ‘What about infrastructure spending – isn’t that a form of subsidy for companies? But we call that ‘incentives’. On the other hand, aid for the people is called ‘subsidies’, which are given a negative connotation.’

Anwar could be referring to the profligacy of Petronas-funded infrastructure including a Petronas hospital - the Prince Court Medical Centre - reportedly price-tagged at RM544 million and other big ticket items as well as prestige projects.

Economic theories can come across as too abstract and not only that, some experts, for example the one who provided Insap’s analysis in The Sun, are happy to clarify ‘the fact that certain terms and expressions (the writer) used cannot be clear to every reader’. Or in other words, it’s the economy but you, dear reader, are too stupid to understand.

Joe Public unclear on jargon are naturally easier persuaded by our personal experiences, which is, having the rug pulled out from under our feet. The government claims it cannot afford the cost of oil subsidy but after the Abdullah administration’s many flip-flops, the excuse stretches our credulity.

Take the question posed to Shabery: ‘In 2006, when there was a price hike, the government said it would improve public transport. Now they are saying that they are going to use the substantial savings for the benefit of the people. Can we believe that?’

Nope. As for Shabery’s ‘believe me, people have enough to eat’; pray tell, eat what? Cake? What I’ve seen in the rural interior is that people have very little.

Penang for its small size could have had a system as good as Singapore if the authorities had been committed to public transport. As an islander, I can testify firsthand that public transport here sucks. Studies have been carried out which confirm that the bus service is terrible.

Anyway, if the government is sincere, why the removal of the monorail with no options offered for improving the transportation sector, despite plentiful suggestions from Penang’s civil society for cheaper, better public transport than the monorail?

The Abdullah administration claims it wants to discourage cars for the sake of environmental conservation; well, while they’re at it, why don’t they sell me the Brooklyn Bridge (or do I mean Petronas Twin Towers...)

What the government takes away with one hand, it throws back piecemeal with the other after the rakyat revolt. An estimated RM660 million is being returned to motorists in the form of the road tax rebate. The government has said it’ll announce another measure tomorrow to mitigate the effects of the fuel hike. Then next month’s Budget will supposedly unveil a ‘new social safety net’, which would include direct assistance for those most affected by the recent price increases.

Yet on Monday, PM Abdullah Ahmad Badawi admitted that the Consumer Price Index did not reflect true prices on the ground and would need to be reviewed.

Earlier, in February and a month before the country went to the polls, Second Finance Minister Nor Mohamed Yakcop said that inflation rate from 2004 to 2007 was 2.5 percent. Can we credit government pronouncements that do not tally with our lived reality?

Just as the 2.5 percent inflation is suspect, so too is the host of figures bandied about. Opposition leader Dr Wan Azizah Wan Ismail recounts Minister of Domestic Trade and Consumer Affairs Shahrir Abdul Samad saying the oil subsidy was RM56 billion, Nor Yakcop saying RM28 billion, and the government’s own 2007 financial report saying RM12 billion. She estimates it to be closer to RM8-10 billion.

Ours is therefore a government short on credibility and long on irresponsibility. They should have controlled petrol prices instead of allowing the ripple effects from the hike to pitch more Malaysians onto the margins of poverty.

If we added the total cost of Abdullah’s slew of firefighting measures to appease an angry public, it might just turn out that the government could have ended up with a healthier balance sheet if only they’d planned properly to begin with.

Whatever one may think of Anwar, he at least showed empathy for the marginalised whose suffering is aggravated by sharp inflation triggered by the decision to reduce oil subsidy.

The Debate

Before we judge which side won the debate, we have to look at their original objective. For Shabery, the objective is to defend Government's move on fuel rise and to win over the so called independents/sceptics. On this, Shabery failed. Those who are sceptical remain sceptical. And I think he didn't even win over Anwar's sceptics. What he did was just repeating what you can read in the mainstream media, nothing new. Whereas Anwar has done a good job in recommending many measures to justify his proposal, regardless of whether you agree or not. And he was very forward looking compared to Shabery, who kept on looking backward into 30/40 years old stories.

And it has just been confirmed, Anwar was arrested today near his house at about 12.55 noon. Another sad day of Malaysia's fragile democracy. I am convinced that Malaysia would be better off without BN.

Are Malaysians the Willing Executioners of Barisan National ? Part 2

Many of my friends may not agree to my previous notion that linked the ordinary Germans during the Nazi period and Malaysians now. Well, at least 49% of the Malaysian voters are a bit more courageous in saying no to BN as what the last election showed, they said. But, there is one group of Malaysian that nobody would disputes if I were to link them to Germans during the Nazi period. They are the mainstream news media.

Joseph Goebbels , the Nazi propagandist would be proud of what they do for the current ruling party. There is a different between news and propaganda to begin with. If you were to report the news as what it is and analyse an event or policy critically, and will not hesitate to review it if the policy is flaw, then I would say that's news. Furthermore, I think media should not take side politically. The people's interest and truth should always come first. But propaganda is different. If the news/reports are always about the ruling party's interest and would not criticize even if it's flaw and would only report views from the ruling party's officials or politicians, then that is propaganda.

Well, in reality there are no independent media. But that is a okay. Look at the developed nation. I don't think they have true independent newspapers. BUT, they have media (especially those private funded) that are free to align themselves with political interest. I repeat, FREE TO ALIGN THEMSELVES WITH POLITICAL INTEREST. They have newspapers who are aligned with Democrats, with Labour, with Republican, with Conservative, with Liberal Democrat, etc., to name a few. When you allow certain media to support certain political ideas, make sure that other media would not be striped off their right to voice out other political ideas. Because, a nation does not make up of only one political idea. There are many competing ideas that compete to win over people's heart and mind so that one day they can also form the Government to implement their ideas. That ought to be a normal process for a normal country.

Are we a normal country? Some people say, we have press freedom. The media are free to report anything. Yes, we have press who are free to report anything and everything that is positive to the ruling regime but report everything and anything that is negative to the opposition. If this is press freedom, then former Soviet was a democracy. The media are always defending their role by saying that they have the duty to report and disseminate the ruling Government's views and policy. That is good. But not copy and paste. Because Government does not belong to only one political party. It does not even belong to political party. One has to know how to differentiate between the two - political party and Government. You are governing on behalf of the citizen and citizen are tax payer. Every eligible tax payer, pays tax to the government, regardless of what ones political leaning. You may have the right to govern, but it's not exclusive. And please don't treat it as if the country is own your property.

On this fact alone, I am convinced that our Malaysian mainstream media is indeed the BN's willing executioner. Believe me, you would not miss anything without reading and watching the mainstream media. If you read and watch daily you would not gain any insight into the policies and events, but would come out even more confused and might think Nazi was right and Mugabe is lovable and that the West is out to invade Malaysia and all BN politicians are saint and all Pakatan politicians are devil's messengers. The mainstream media has a choice to say no but did not want to say it and willingly being used as a tool to continue helping BN in creating the repressive environment that we are in now.

Are Malaysians the Willing Executioners of Barisan National ?

I have been thinking of the notion that are we, ordinary Malaysians, the willing executioners of the current ruling party of Barisan National's policies? I mean, just look at all the oppresive laws that we have been living with - ISA, OSA, Printing Act, University Act, etc, are ordinary Malaysians deaf and blind to all these laws? Or are we, although well informed of its notoriety still voted for BN to rule this country, not for 5 years but for 5 decades??

It's not my intention to draw similarity in between the two - ordinary Germans during the Nazi period and ordinary Malaysian, but after reading the book, I can't help but believe that we the ordinary Malaysians have indeed knowingly and willingly contributed to the continuation of the oppresive laws by voting BN into power for so long. Nazi in Germany could not possibly carrying out the massive killing of the Jews without the help of the ordinary Germans. Goldhagen argued that these executioners were normal human being who had the capacity to disobeyed orders that he/she deemed morally objectionable and yet would not object to the "duty" entrusted by their superior to kill Jews. As a result, 6 million of the Jews were executed during the Nazi period.

Well, there were a lot of explanation that said,

1) The perpetrators were coerced. They had no choice but to follow orders.

2) They were blind followers of orders.

3) The perpetrators were under tremendous social psychological pressure by their comrades to conform.

4) They were just petty bureaucrats or soulless technocrates who persued their self-interest goal.

5) They could not understand what was the real nature of their "work" because the task was so fragmented.

The explanations can be reconceptualized in terms of their accounts of the actors' capacity for volition: The first explanation (namely coercion) says that the killers could not say "no." The second explanation (obedience) and the third (situational pressure) maintain that Germans were psychologically incapable of saying "no." The fourth explanation (self-interest) contends that Germans had sufficient personal incentives to kill in order not to want to say "no." The fifth explanation (bureaucratic myopia) claims that it never even occurred to the perpetrators that they were engaged in an activity that might make them responsible for saying "no."

Goldhagen tells us that on the contrary to these explanations, the executioners knew very well what was expected of them and they in turn willingly carried out the task. The explanations treat them as if they had been people lacking a moral sense, lacking the ability to make decisions and take stances. They do not conceive of the actors as human agents, as people with wills, but as beings moved solely by external forces. They assume and imply that the mass killing of human beings is fundamentally no different from getting them to do any other unwanted or distasteful task. The author concluded that, " Simply put, the perpetrators, having consulted their own convictions and morality and having judged the mass annihilation of Jews to be right, did not want to say "no"."

On the same token, we may ask ourselves these questions:-

1) Are we coerced to vote for BN? Knowing full well what is BN stand for on issue such as social justice, democracy, transparency, human rights, press freedom, etc. Do we left, by the threat of punishment, with no choice but to vote for BN?

2) Do you think we the Malaysian voters are all stupid followers of orders or authority?

3) Are the Malaysian voters under tremendous pressure to conform by their fellow voters to vote for BN?

4) Do you think the voters are all soulless bureaucrates that were force to vote for their sponsor - BN? Or are we free agent that have career of our own, not neccesary have to succumb to the bureaucratic procedure and pressure?

5) Is the task of voting so fragmented that we cannot comprehend what is the BN's stand on social justice? Are we pretending that the fragmentation, if there is any, of the task that we deny the importance of our own contribution and display responsibity and blame onto others?

Looking from this perspective, do we the ordinary Malaysians have a choice or do we just choose a bad leader and then comforting ourselves that we have little choice. Yes, we do have a choice of not supporting the BN regime. The answer to the above questions is a resounding NO. We are free agents that are perfectly capable of morally siding with those who are for good governance. We must remember that our leaders are a reflection of who we are, what we are and what we want to become as a nation (to borrow from Feroz Qureshi, 7 July, Malaysiakini). Let our conscience be clear on this.