[GOTFIVEONIT]

Originally Posted by MossadConspiracy

salam

dude i've been to the south many times

ws

then you should know then how stupid americans can be. we live in the north, were yankees, those hicks live in a whole different world and its those hillbillys down in southern ohio who got dubya re-elected.

[GOTFIVEONIT]

Schwarzenegger's first lady, Maria Shriver: Obama

by Michael Martinez and Mark Silva

This has always been a mixed marriage, the union of Republican California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Maria Shriver, she of the Democratic Kennedy clan.

But Shriver made it even clearer today, in Los Angeles, where she stood at a campus rally for Sen. Barack Obama to endorse the Democratic candidate for president. Shriver's husband, the GOP's own "Terminator,'' had already endorsed fellow Republican Sen. John McCain.

"I thought, if Barack Obama were a state, he’d be California,'' Shriver told the crowd jamming the rally at the University of California at Los Angeles. "I mean think about it. Diverse. Open. Smart. Independent. Bucks traditiion. Innovative. Inspiring. Dreamer. Leader.''

This, on the heels of singer and songwriter extraordinaire Stevie Wonder's testament to Obama. Standing alongside Obama's wife, after a long and emotional warmup of the crowd by televisioon's Oprah Winfrey, Wonder led the crowd in a little a capella chorus of Obama's name.

Wonder had sung at a closed-door fundraiser for Obama, but this was a very public appearance: "I now say yes to someone who I think can bring us togeith the singer,” Wonder said.

[GOTFIVEONIT]

Obama Gains on Clinton's Nationwide Lead, Polls Show

By Nadine Elsibai
Sun Feb 3, 4:59 PM ET

To contact the reporter on this story: Nadine Elsibai in Washington at nelsibai@bloomberg.net

Feb. 3 (Bloomberg) -- Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama has gained on Hillary Clinton's lead in voter support nationwide, three new polls found.

Forty-seven percent of likely Democratic voters said they back New York Senator Clinton, while 43 percent said the same for Illinois Senator Obama, a Washington Post/ABC News poll found. The difference is within the survey's margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points.

Clinton led Obama 42 percent to 37 percent in a Jan. 12 Post-ABC poll, and she was ahead of him 53 percent to 23 percent in a Dec. 9 poll.

A separate poll by the Pew Research Center for the People and Press showed that 46 percent of Democrats nationwide favor Clinton compared with Obama's 38 percent. Clinton's lead is half what she had in a similar poll in mid-January.

The surveys come two days before voters in 24 states take part in primaries or caucuses.

Among Republicans, Arizona Senator John McCain is supported by 48 percent of likely Republican voters in the Post-ABC poll, compared with 24 percent for former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, 16 percent for former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee and 7 percent for Texas Representative Ron Paul.

The Pew survey showed McCain leading nationwide among Republicans with 42 percent, a 13-point increase from a similar mid-January poll. Romney followed with 22 percent and Huckabee with 20 percent. Romney had 17 percent in January and Huckabee had 20 percent.

USA Today/Gallup Poll

A new USA Today/Gallup poll had Clinton with 45 percent support nationwide over Obama's 44 percent among likely Democratic voters, USA Today reported. The paper said she held a double-digit lead over Obama two weeks ago.

Republican voters nationwide favored McCain 42 percent to Romney's 24 percent, USA Today said. The poll, conducted Jan. 30-Feb. 2, included 867 Republicans with a plus or minus 4 percentage point margin of error and 985 Democrats with a 3- point margin of error, USA Today said.

In delegate-rich California, Romney received 33 percent over McCain's 32 percent, Huckabee's 16 percent and Paul's 8 percent among Republican voters, an American Research Group Inc. poll found. Clinton led Obama 47 percent to 39 percent among Democrats.

The ARG California poll, conducted Feb. 1-2, included 600 Republicans and 600 Democrats. Each group had an error margin of plus or minus 4 percentage points.

The Post-ABC telephone poll, conducted Jan. 30-Feb. 1, included 1,249 Americans. The margin of error among Republicans was plus or minus 5 percentage points.

The Pew nationwide telephone poll of 1,502 adults was conducted Jan. 30-Feb. 2 and had a margin of error of plus or minus 4.5 percentage points for Democrats and 5 percentage points for Republicans.

[kenneth]

to hell with this horse race

[shadha]

“Radicalism is the realization of marginalization”


Imam Zaid Shakir might seem like a rock star, but he is one of America's most influential Muslim scholars. He speaks to us at length about politics, extremism, and an emerging Muslim American identity.

By Wajahat Ali, February 2, 2008

Imam Zaid Shakir, an African American convert to Islam and one of America's most influential and popular Muslim scholars, commands a rock star following - legions of enthralled and inspired Muslims filling rooms to standing only capacity waiting to hear his words. It represents a fascinating and dynamic phenomenon illuminating the resurgent identity of an educated, spiritual, religious and political Muslim American identity emerging from the post 9-11 era. Shakir, a student of the civil rights era and an educated scholar of political science and traditional Islamic jurisprudence, casually interjects tidbits of political theory, economic reform, critical race theory, Arabic, traditional Islamic philosophy and religious didacticism within his rhetoric. altmuslim's Wajahat Ali spoke to the highly sought scholar, referred to by his students as a "new Malcolm X" for Muslim Americans, about the "Clash of Civilizations," the 2008 presidency, religious extremism, and an emerging Muslim American identity.

altmuslim: I want to repeat a section from your most recent essay regarding the presidential elections:

"As long as we politely skirt the fundamental problems plaguing our country, starting with the superficiality of our race relations, Obama’s candidacy and possible election do not represent any real change, they represent a re-entrenched status quo, and illustrate the sort of duplicity that would hound Dr. King as a traitor and communist at the end. The election of an African American, or a woman for that matter, without an associated "revolution of values" will do no more than possibly delay, but will not stave off, this country’s inevitable spiritual demise."

What exactly, in your opinion, comprises a true "revolution of values" within the modern American political and cultural climate?


SHAKIR: I think a true revolution of values would include having the ability to consider the interests of people nationally and internationally. And on the basis of that ability being able to deem certain policies that historically have been an integral part of American political life – as being unacceptable. Right now, here in California and in other states, we are facing a massive fiscal crisis. There are massive budget cuts. Immediately, there are talks of cutting education, cutting therapeutic and preventive programs for the youth and for poor people. But, there is no discussion of cutting the military budget and changing our foreign policy.

Those are clear domestic implications that accrue from billions of dollar spent on the war. If you spend that much money on the war, you have trouble finding money for other things requiring far less expenditures. The values that don’t challenge the war machine dictate that we will have an unending series of boogeyman to go after. They might be Muslim – in recent history most of them have been Muslim, but not necessarily and not all of them amongst the list of the people we’ve chosen to demonize and then justify military action against. I mean in the ‘80’s, we had Maurice Bishop – that threatening, potential superpower of Grenada.

altmuslim: (Laughs) Right.

We had Manuel Noriega of Panama. We burned an entire quarter of the city just to potentially kill him, and as to be expected, he wasn’t harmed, but a large section of Panama City was burned down. When it was over – from that misadventure – we had over 3,000 dead people. So, these boogeyman, most of whom are friends and associates and operatives and assets however you want to term it, at one point of their career might not necessarily be Muslim.

At one time it was Khomeini, then it was Maurice Bishop, then Noriega, now it’s Ahmedinajad. Who is it going to be tomorrow? Who knows? But it will be someone because of the logic of maintaining that "machine", the logic of renewing those contracts dictates that those armaments have to be used, those bombs have to be dropped, those bombs have to be dispatched, those cruise missiles have to be launched. Otherwise, those companies that make them will go out of business.

So when you have this massive business, this massive infrastructure, this massive expenditure and massive profiteering that goes on during war, then there is tremendous international and domestic consequences. So, a revolution of values would have to challenge the complacency with this arrangement. A revolution of values will have to give equal value to every human life. We can’t just determine that the lives of some people, like the lives of Muslims in Sudan might be "worth" saving [as opposed to the] lives of Muslims in Somalia – where we have almost single handedly one of the gravest humanitarian crisis in Africa today by facilitating and encouraging the Ethiopian invasion of Somalia which undermined one of the few periods of stability they had in recent history. So Somalian lives don’t matter [to us], so we can impose situations on them that will lead them to starvation and refugee status. But, the lives of Muslims in Darfur matter because the politics play out in a different matter, or, the lives of Muslims in Darfur matter, but the lives of non-Muslims in Congo don’t matter. They’ve been dying at far more horrifying rates due to that ongoing conflagration.

We need to give equal value to all human beings. Unless we do that, we will ignore some situations where there is tremendous human suffering, and address other situations where there might be suffering of a lesser magnitude. I’m not justifying that some suffering is more justified than others. It’s all bad is what I’m saying. Unless we have a view of life that it is all bad and that it is all unacceptable, and that we wont engage in policies that encourage it here but discourage that suffering there, but instead, we will do something that will discourage suffering everywhere.

This is a human project. As human beings, we must seriously challenge the idea of "the national interest." I seriously believe the whole idea of the "nation state" is an outdated and atavistic concept. It had its day, it served its purpose, but now due to the nature of the world, the shrinking of the world, globalization, integration, modern communications, we literally now live in a global village. So, now we must seriously consider a political arrangement that transcends the nation state. Right now, the nation state is for the elite who dominate the state. That might be here in US, in Saudi Arabia, in Europe, in Kenya – the elite that dominate the nation state. It’s an arrangement that the nation state monopolizes the legitimate use of force where that aspect is used to protect and advance the interest of those elites who dominate the state.

If we thought in global terms, in universal terms, we wouldn’t hesitate to begin to make serious changes in the way we do things here as it relates to the economic and ecological damage that ensues from the American way of life. Unless we can begin to think in human terms and develop ideas of human interests to replace national ideas, I think we are in for more of the same.

...


shadha-

[shadha]

altmuslim: Let’s relate these ideas to the current political climate. The Muslims came out en masse in 2000 and voted for Bush as an interest group. In 2004, they went for Kerry. Now, most are confused looking for direction. In light of what you just said, what is the best option for Muslim Americans in the 2008 election? Furthermore, is a Muslim interest group, a voting majority if you will, the next political step for Muslim Americans in flexing their cultural muscle? Is there some hope their voices will be heard and it will resonate in changed foreign and domestic policy, or are these votes simply wasted on candidates who will do nothing to change the conditions of prejudice, exclusionism, and war mongering?

I think it’s a flawed system. One of the flaws is that there is no proportional representation. That virtually eliminates minor parties and political actions no matter how attractive their message might be. Some Muslims are attracted to the policies of Ron Paul, but they know he is not electable. Some Muslims are attracted to Dennis Kucinich on principle, but they realize he is not electable. So, a lot of Muslims are attracted to Obama. In that article you quoted, I wasn’t trying to attack Obama or discourage Muslims from attacking Obama. I was making the point that this is the same attitude towards race that manifested itself in a sort of duplicity that was used to assess the career of Dr. King - of what were acceptable actions worthy of being "glorified" with a national holiday and what were unacceptable actions that we don’t even talk about in the mainstream.

That sort of duplicity determines the viability or lack of viability of Obama as a candidate. That was the main point I was trying to make. I think Muslims first of all must ask if we are going to see ourselves as a progressive, social group looking at the interests of Muslims in the progressive sense, or are we looking at ourselves as a progressive human group who are looking at the interest of humanity and then using our potential strength in the political process?

First of all we have to sit down and hammer out an agenda. If you don’t do that, then it’s meaningless. It’s meaningless for half of Muslims to vote for Clinton in one primary, and then half for Obama in another primary. Each side neutralizes the other half. Or, at end of the day, half the Muslims fear Republicans will bring more wars in Middle East, but they are attracted to conservative moral values, then half vote for McCain and other half for Romney. It becomes meaningless. So, if we’re just merely participating in the political system to fulfill one’s civic duties, then there can be other ways of doing that other than voting. Voting is not the only way. It is not the end all of political participation, and voting in national campaigns, specifically, there are other ways to be politically active and make a positive impact in someone’s life.

If we are going to participate in these national contests, the first thing is incumbent on us to do is sit down, talk, and first of all determine why are we in this: to advance a system that will ensure greater liberty and even greater freedom to practice Islam? If that is our priority then we will find ourselves making political alliances with groups whom we have fundamental differences with in terms of our core values, such as gay and lesbian groups. Our strategy would dictate we are cooperating with gay people because the same sort of liberties and constitutional guarantees that would ensure the right of gay people to do their thing and function and exist in this society without the threat of physical violence, hate speech being aired to encourage violence against their group, those sort of policies would provide us protection as Muslims.

It’s very important for us if we are saying we are specifically looking at policies that will ensure to most successfully raise our children and pass on our core values. Then, we might be inclined to vote Republican, because we can say, "Well, we don’t really care because it doesn’t immediately affect me if this is basically a vote for the perpetuation of the war machine." That’s why it’s very important to sit down and hammer out what are the core values that we want to emphasize in terms of committing ourselves to a political candidate. We might even want to exercise a punitive vote, we make sure those groups that support policies that are antithetical to Muslims, we make sure they move out and we don’t care who wins.


altmuslim: So who does Imam Zaid Shakir say is the candidate to support in 2008?

I think there is promise in Obama based on some of his pronouncements. And perhaps what I mention about race relations is that it won’t scuttle his candidacy, but that remains to be seen. I’m still honestly looking at this situation and assessing where it would be best to place a particular emphasis. But, it’s slim pickings out there.


altmuslim: A sexy term that has been used and abused for the past 10 years is the "Clash of Civilizations." We’ve seen the rise of anti-Americanism in the Muslim world, the war against Iraq, the racist diatribes of certain pundits against brown folk and Muslims, the anti Semitism and prejudice of Muslims towards certain Europeans and Jews; we see terrorists in London: Pakistani, Britain doctors; we see educated Arabs attacking the WTC; we see extremists murdering Dutch filmmakers and people violently protesting cartoons; we hear about Muslim terrorists in Spain, in Indonesia, in Pakistan; we hear Muslims say "Islam means Peace." In face of all these examples, isn’t "Islam is Peace" just empty rhetoric? How do you, or can you, if at all, convince the masses that Islam is anything but violent and reactionary, and that we are not in the throngs of a clash of civilizations?

Continue reading


shadha-

[PhDGirl]

Originally Posted by MossadConspiracy

salam

dude i've been to the south many times

ws

I had to live in the south for a bit for my husband's training, and I will say that it is different. You notice things when you live somewhere that don't come to light when you are visiting. I mean, people would stop us when out at Target or getting groceries and ask where we were from (and they didn't mean NY or NJ!). At the holiday party, one of the attendings asked us if we were US citizens. It really was a different world.

[Budmano786]

the south definitely is interesting...although I don't get too many weird questions THAT often...I think I might be a little white washed

[MuslimZ]

Absentee voting for me today.

SI, SE PUEDE!

YouTube - Yes We Can - Barack Obama Music Video

[jinnzaman]

Voting is really meaningless.

[GOTFIVEONIT]

Originally Posted by jinnzaman

Voting is really meaningless.

not if you live in battleground states where the vote is really close, then your vote means everything.

[GOTFIVEONIT]

Originally Posted by shadha

[center]“Radicalism is the realization of marginalization”

-

radicalism is your feminazi beliefs.

and being opposed to naming your kids european names, is not radicalism.

[jinnzaman]

Originally Posted by GOTFIVEONIT

not if you live in battleground states where the vote is really close, then your vote means everything.

The majority of the country's population isn't located in battleground states.

But you aren't truly voting for the candidate of your choice, but pre-selected candidates through the undemocratic means of caucuses and primaries.

What's the point of voting if the person you want to vote for isn't a candidate?

[Budmano786]

Originally Posted by jinnzaman

What's the point of voting if the person you want to vote for isn't a candidate?

Doesn't that mean they don't want to run for president then?