Operation Backtrack Begins.

Barack Obama addressed AIPAC last week, and talked real tough on Iran (emphasis added):

"My presidency will strengthen our hand as we restore our standing. Our willingness to pursue diplomacy will make it easier to mobilize others to join our cause. If Iran fails to change course when presented with this choice by the United States, it will be clear - to the people of Iran, and to the world - that the Iranian regime is the author of its own isolation. That will strengthen our hand with Russia and China as we insist on stronger sanctions in the Security Council. And we should work with Europe, Japan and the Gulf states to find every avenue outside the UN to isolate the Iranian regime - from cutting off loan guarantees and expanding financial sanctions, to banning the export of refined petroleum to Iran, to boycotting firms associated with the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, which has rightly been labeled a terrorist organization."

He also declared that the use of military force in dealing with Iran was not off the table, in either dealimg with a threat against Israel or preventing Iran's acquisition of a nuclear weapon. Yet last year when the Kyl-Lieberman Amendment to HR1585 (Defense Appropriations) came to a vote, which stated:

" (b) Sense of Senate.--It is the sense of the Senate--
(1) that the manner in which the United States transitions and structures its military presence in Iraq will have critical long-term consequences for the future of the Persian Gulf and the Middle East, in particular with regard to the capability of the Government of the Islamic Republic of Iran to pose a threat to the security of the region, the prospects for democracy for the people of the region, and the health of the global economy;
(2) that it is a vital national interest of the United States to prevent the Government of the Islamic Republic of Iran from turning Shi'a militia extremists in Iraq into a Hezbollah-like force that could serve its interests inside Iraq, including by overwhelming, subverting, or co-opting institutions of the legitimate Government of Iraq;
(3) that it should be the policy of the United States to combat, contain, and roll back the violent activities and destabilizing influence inside Iraq of the Government of the Islamic Republic of Iran, its foreign facilitators such as Lebanese Hezbollah, and its indigenous Iraqi proxies;
(4) to support the prudent and calibrated use of all instruments of United States national power in Iraq, including diplomatic, economic, intelligence, and military instruments, in support of the policy described in paragraph (3) with respect to the Government of the Islamic Republic of Iran and its proxies;
(5) that the United States should designate the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps as a foreign terrorist organization under section 219 of the Immigration and Nationality Act and place the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps on the list of Specially Designated Global Terrorists, as established under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act and initiated under Executive Order 13224; and
(6) that the Department of the Treasury should act with all possible expediency to complete the listing of those entities targeted under United Nations Security Council Resolutions 1737 and 1747 adopted unanimously on December 23, 2006 and March 24, 2007, respectively."

Mr. Obama opposed the amendment (which was cosponsored by McCain), based on a lame claim that it greases the skids to attack Iran (for example, see Marc Ambinder's analysis). Please - it's plain language that lays out what B.O. later pledged in front of AIPAC. So what does he really believe?

McCain on the Economy: The Gas Tax Holiday.

We've dissected Mr. Obama's "plan" for the economy, let us now turn to what John McCain is proposing for helping the economy. The first topic is relief for increased fuel prices by a "holiday" on gasoline diesel fuel taxes. This has been much criticized by the Obamaniacs as "not an economic plan". Of course it isn't a central point to an economic plan, but it's something tangible that can be done immediately to provide some relief: a three-month suspension of the 18-cent Federal gasoline tax, and a similar suspension of the 24-cent diesel tax.

For a two-car family, a three-month tax suspension would save folks about $100. It's a not lot of money, just an inextravagant trip to the grocery store. But another important savings is that for commericial trucking: the suspension of the federal tax on diesel is equivalent to a 5% improvement in fuel economy for a large commerical truck. This is significant to trucking companies, who transport 70% of goods to the market. The Tulsa World has recently discussed the impact of fuel costs on these companies; for example, a reduction of fuel costs of 5% would save a company with a fleet of 1500 trucks around $400K in a three-month period. This relief will slow the rising costs of food and products to consumers. It is not the principal point to McCain's plan, but it is not inconsequential.

It's interesting to note that in spite of the Dem's claims for wanting to help average Americans, they have decided that it is more important to keep raking in $65M a day from the gasoline tax - which can then be redistributed for political patronage than give the average Joe a hundred-buck break on gas.

A Meaningless Gesture.

Obamism has declared that the DNC shall no longer eat from the Tree of the Lobbyist. Well, not quite: from the AP story:

Obama's ban on lobbyists money is not ironclad. He does accept money from lobbyists who do not do business with the federal government and he also accepts money from spouses and family members of lobbyists. He has had unpaid advisers with federal lobbying clients, and some campaign officials also previously had lobbying jobs.

The new fundraising policy is not expected to hurt the party's fundraising ability because lobbyists and PACs do not constitute a major source of money.

In other words, the proclamation means nothing. Nor will he accept contributions from Tralfamadorians.

E Pluribus Pluribus.

Daniel Henninger of the Wall Street Journal comments on the legacy of forty years of identity politics in the Democratic Party. In particular, the Democrat's white liberal ruling elite had accomodated the Balkanization of the party, as long as it delivered the votes of the inner cities to their candidates. Henninger suggests that under Obamism things will not get better.

What's in the Box? Part I: The Economy.

The Left has bought the Obama Mystery Box, so let's see what's in it. We start with Obama's vision for intervening in the free market...I mean "investing in America's future". Now, the proposed plans of presidential candidates are usually worth less than the paper they are printed on, nevertheless, here are the highlights of his plan on the economy, from the Obama website:

The Problems -

• no real wage growth
• inflation in necessities, health care, housing costs, and college education
• historically low savings rate
• "tax cuts for wealthy instead of the middle class"

The Solutions -

• Taxes: $1000 tax cuts for "working families" - i.e. Bush Stimulus II, simplify tax filings for "middle class Americans", uh...that's it on taxes, folks.
• Trade: "fight for fair trade", oppose CAFTA, enforce labor and environment standards, use WTO to stop subsidies and import barriers, amend NAFTA, displaced worker training...well, good luck with all of that.
• Tech: more money for R&D, more money for education, training, and "workforce development", money for alternative energy and automakers, more money for youth jobs, and more money for many other things.
• Labor: support more expansive labor organization, increase minimum wage (which means higher labor contract wage baselines).
• Homeownership: 10% "universal mortgage credit" (huh?), crack down on crooked lendors (and borrowers?), better disclosure, create forclosure rescue fund. Credit card reform , expand small consumer loans, wipe out bankruptcies caused by medical expenses. Is your wallet feeling lighter?
• "Work - Family Balance": expand family leave to small businesses, money to expand paid leave, more money for afterschool programs, expand child and dependent care tax credit, "protect against caregiver discrimination", expand flex-time work programs.

The "plan" is a mish-mosh of noble-sounding platitudes with a generous helping of pledges to Democrat interest-groups - which means lots of increased spending. Nor is there discussion as to how "The Plan" specifically addresses "The Problems".

And the Senator's experience on this issue? He has to reach back to his state senate record in order to produce sufficient padding of accomplishment for his resume on the economy.

Obama's Heel.

John Fund writes in the Opinion section of WSJ.com about Obama's embarassing gaffes (beyond the most recent on Buchenwald) and goofball statements that would be a pillory for him in the hands of a less servile press. Fund writes: "He has large gaps in his knowledge base, and is just as likely to dig in and embrace a policy misstatement as abandon it".

Nathan Thrall and Jesse James Wilkins opine in the New York Times that Obama's enthusiasm for unconditional summits with tyrants indicates a naivete about how such high-level meetings work and the disasterous consequences that can ensue. Case in point: the Kennedy-Khrushchev Vienna Summit of 1961. There was no real agenda, no agreement nor understanding that needed to be formalized at the highest levels. It was just a "getting to know you" meeting at which Khrushchev bullied JFK and concluded that the United States was "too liberal to fight". JFK admitted that the meeting was a disaster and that the Soviets would assess that he was weak. What followed was the Berlin Crisis and the Cuban Missile Crisis, Soviet provocations that were based on their Vienna observations.

One could also discuss Jimmy Carter's numerous blunders in this manner, both official and post-official, but that is a treatise. It is sufficient to say that Mr. Carter is an addict of feel-good foreign policy gestures. Mr. Obama appears to likewise suffer this malady.

Hybrid Arithmetic.

If we are to wean ourselves from oil, the proposed solutions must make financial sense for consumers. Let's consider a hybrid vehicle, the Toyota Prius, compared to another Toyota offering with a conventional powerplant, the Yaris. The vehicle costs are based on vehicle configurations that a commuter would want (cruise control, radio, etc)*:

• Prius: Price = $24,950, Effective MPG = 46.4, 6-years fuel @ $5/gal = $10,360
• Yaris: Price = $15,600, Effective MPG = 31.7, 6-years fuel @ $5/gal = $15,140

Thus, after 6 years of use, choosing a Prius still has a premium of $4500 over the Yaris. This is also assuming that vehicle maintenance costs are equal, an assumption that probably favors the Prius.

$4500 is a stiff "green premium" to change to a hybrid vehicle. Perhaps a Prius is a hedge against an even higher gasoline price, if so, the breakeven cost of a Prius for six years of operation would require $8 a gallon gas. So is such a hybrid vehicle a realistic solution to offer consumers?

*Vehicle price also assumes: $2000 trade-in, 48 months financing @6.1%. Fuel costs assume 16,000 miles traveled per year with 45% highway travel.

The Politically Correct Mutation.


A&E presented a remake of The Andromeda Strain, the groundbreaking techno-thriller by Michael Crichton. This book has a very special place in our hearts here at Deaddrifts. We were given the book by our 7th-grade English/Social Studies (AKA "Block") teacher, the beloved Miss Wallace. It was the most captivating work of fiction that we had read, and remained so for many years. The book gives one a glimpse into the world of Apollo-era molecular biology, epidemiology, and space technology with a credible plot and engaging characters. It inspired science hobbies that lead to a career in science.


The original movie based on the novel (1971) was a quite satisfying and reasonably faithful adaptation, and achieved cult status in geekdom. A&E's promotional trailers promised an exciting update with forty years of advancement in the biological sciences, the birth and growth of "astrobiology", the maturation of computer technology, and the directorial mastery of Ridley Scott.


The remake of The Andromeda Strain does have all of that, but alas also carries such an immense weight of politically correct and conspiratorial baggage that it is a chore to watch, like a mandatory requirement of a platoon's political officer. The principal characters are so deliberately diverse (very, very diverse) it's as if A&E Market Demographics had dictated the makeup of the Wildfire Team (guys, you did miss putting a "little person" in the story somewhere). There is also the evil - really evil - invisible hand of the United States Government, working to the detriment of humanity, which appears to be a current requirement for the story of this film genre. Finally, there is the Hero Newsman, of course, fighting to Get The Truth Out.


These political ormanents are lethal to the enjoyability of this movie, because one is always being clubbed over the head by them, while precious little is shown of the process of scientific discovery, a central theme of the book. One never sees this highly talented team of scientists actually do some real science...the computer just gives them the answers. Otherwise they spend a lot of time hollering and hurling accusations, and spilling the beans to the outside world on their cell phones (or catching up with the family). What little "science" is portrayed with the typical Hollywood mangling into a grand game of "I've Gotta Hunch". The politics drags the film's pace so that any tension is anesthetized (and stretching the story into a four-hour, two-evening miniseries was a dose of Vallium on top of that).


The original movie has aged rather well, and is certainly more to the point without the ponderous ideology. Go rent it, or better yet, read the book. One observation is that there is no mention of the remake on Michael Crichton's website, and he is only credited in the remake as the author of book on which the film is based. I wonder if Dr. Crichton approved of the re-telling of his story in this manner.

Touchdown!

The Phoenix Mars Lander has landed on the polar plains of Mars! The first images of the landscape show polygonal network of depressions that are similar to arctic regions on Earth, perhaps indicating freezing and thawing cycles. Truly awe-inspiring!

Memorial Day, 2008.

...that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion... - A. Lincoln

It is very easy us on the homefront to forget the mortal threat that threatens the civilized world, and grim task of our forces that defend us. Please find time today to say thank you to our vets, and pledge to help our soldiers and their families. An excellent organization that provides such assistance is OperationHomeFront.net. Cough up a few bucks and do your part.

The Equality of Misery.

Paul Krugman is the Sad Sack of the New York Times' opinion page. In one of his recent columns he laments the American expression of freedom in on-demand personal transportation. He tells us now the Great Reckoning has arrived for such audacious behavioir. He yearns for a more European style of living for Americans: the citizenry concentrated in cities, where cars are nearly extinct and trains and buses are the principal modes of travel for the citizenry. Quoth Paul: "I have seen the future and it works...if we’re heading for a prolonged era of scarce, expensive oil, Americans will face increasingly strong incentives to start living like Europeans — maybe not today, and maybe not tomorrow, but soon, and for the rest of our lives." Do the citizens ever leave their ghettos and see Yellowstone? Perhaps with permission from Commisariat for Transportation? But is it really necessary? Can't they just take the virtual tour in 3D-HDTV?

It's a pathetic vision that Sad Sack has for America as "Oceania", and it's very telling about how the Dystopians like Krugman and the Obamaniacs view America: so much unessential and antiquated expressions of personal liberty that lead to social and economic inefficiencies and threaten the Equality of Life. The Hard-Core Dystopians believe we have approached the limits of upward development of our society; we must now face that fact and manage society to create an equality of joy and misery among the citizenry...with more misery than joy as time passes. So stop grieving for long-gone freedoms and pass the Soylent Green and turn on the Obama Worship Hour.

Perhaps we should solve the problems of fueling personal transportation without restricting it. We're not sure that the Dystopians would like such an outcome, because they either don't recognize or accept how the American expression of life is different from that of the Old World.

The phrase "I have seen the future, and it works" was first uttered by Lincoln Steffens, an American journalist and an enthusiast for the Bolshevik Revolution, upon his return from the Soviet Union in 1921. Paul Krugman has brought this statement back from the dead, hoping for a different outcome. Let the dead rest, Paul.

Government, the Market-Wrecker.

We've discussed how Uncle Sugar Daddy's "Ethanol Initiative" has caused chaos in the grain markets while providing no competitive relief to increasing gasoline prices. The current Farm Bill is an even larger example of the catastrophic results when the government manipulates markets. The New York Times analyzes the current bill, and the inescapable conclusion is that once Government starts handing money out in subsidies (in this case cash payments to farmers), it becomes permanent, regardless of market conditions. Iowa Senator Tom Harkin, the champion of the continued payouts to the farmers, admits that the political pressure to continue the handouts is insurmountable, while fact that grain prices are at record highs now appears to be irrelevant.

Big Oil on the Hill.

The nation's oil companies are being summoned by the Congerscritters to explain why the shareholders (read you and me) should keep their risk rewards, and why the Gummint shouldn't shake them down for a lot of it. Congers could put it to such productive use; for example, another $200B+ farm bill.

Is Belief a Poor Sell?

If one goes to the home page of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America home page, and try to find the name "Jesus Christ" - you will get just one hit for "Jesus", mentioning the title of this year's youth assembly "Jesus, Justice, and Jazz". Going to the "What We Believe" page, one notices a deemphasis on God and Christ - there is more on "Social Issues", "Church and Society", and "Stewardship and Money". Any substantial mention of Jesus Christ is buried deep down in the doctrinal creed pages, past the "What We Believe" page.

What gives? Why is ELCA trying to hide belief in Jesus Christ? Have ELCA's image consultants recommended downplaying the "God and Jesus stuff" in favor of social justice and humanitarian themes?

The Ron Paul Update.

(cue - Wagner's Ride of the Valkuries)

Ron Paul's presidential campaign is, for all intents and purposes, dead. So what is happening to the gazillions of dollars that Herr Doktor Paul raised? Does he have any plans to give it back? A recent visit to the Paulian Website did not uncover a "I don't have a snowball's chance, here's your money back", press release. It's ironic for a guy who is on a jihad about government spending on foolish endeavours that he doesn't train that critical eye on the guy he sees shaving every morning.

Ron Paul Secret Society Members, set your decoder pin to G14 and be sure to watch for the next Ron Paul update. And be sure to drink your Ovaltine!

Some Guyz Get All Da Breaks.

If you need an escape from the lunatic promises of the Neo-Utopians (I know that I'm not the one I've been waiting for; there's a bit of causality problem with that), then go rent Pal Joey (1957). Great Rodgers and Hart songs that became branded by Frank and Nelson Riddle, and - of course - the traffic stopping beauty of Kim Novak, Rita Hayworth, and fifties San Francisco. Frank said he did not mind giving up top billing to Rita because that made for a Hayworth - Sinatra - Novak sandwich. Amen, Pal.

Death, Taxes, and Higher Costs for a College Education.

As surprising as the Spring Peepers in the spring, the University of Michigan With The Huge Endowment has announced that room and board will increase above the rate of inflation for the 2008-2009 academic year, with the following blabber to justify it:

“Our commitment to supportive and dynamic residential experiences is at the heart of our mission for the students,” says Carole Henry, assistant vice president for student affairs and director of University Housing. “We are creating new living spaces that respond to the needs of today’s and future students — not only personal comforts, but also places for community and learning opportunities. That we can strengthen the connection of social and academic vitality for our students has tremendous value.”

Ye Gods, we are doomed. Any of that Wild Turkey left?

The Academic Circus.

Long gone are the days of a college professor relishing a vigorous debate with her students on a lecture thesis. Now you sue your students for anti-intellectualism and violating your civil rights. The Wall Street Journal has the details here. Pass us the Wild Turkey, would you please?

The Ethanol Disaster.

Does one need more evidence that government meddling in markets yields miserable consequences? Take the "ethanol initiative", a federal mandate to increase the production of the biofuel to 15 billion gallons a year by 2015. Ethanol is extremely costly in both energy and greenbacks to bring to the market, and has skewed the production and distribution of food grains causing higher prices and shortages. A political Frankenstein brought to life in the laboratories of the agribusiness and farm lobbies, it's unstoppable during the current election cycle (despite Republican intiatives to restrain it) and could very well be immortal. And the intiative's part in our energy strategy? The 15 billion-gallon target is insufficient to supply a 15% (E15) mixture to our current annual consumption of gasoline. The response of Big Ethanol of this critcism is to push for a 36 billion-gallon target by 2022. Corn-based production of this target would result in chaos in grain markets, risks to arable land management, severe inflation in food costs, no finanical relief for energy costs, and a minimal bottom-line reduction in overall oil consumption.

So are transportation biofuels a bust? Our opinion is that stupid ones like grain-based ethanol are, but others such as cellulosic ethanol, and non-farmed biodiesel and methanol sources are certainly viable. Methanol production costs are a fraction of ethanol (about a third), does not compete with food production (it can be made from coal, or natural gas from either geological deposits or from landfills and digesters). Methanol-gasoline mixtures can be used in vehicle engines that now burn ethanol-gasoline formulas. Biodiesel has more challenges, in providing economic and widescale production, as well as the changing puzzling prejudice that the American vehicle market has had against diesel passenger cars.

The Typesetter Gets the Final Word.

Michiko Kakutani produced a scathing review of Martin Amis' "The Second Plane", a collection of essays about "the global confrontation with the dependent mind" - Islamofascist terror. However, the typesetter for the Ann Arbor News (or perhaps the person at the Times that emailed the review off to subscribing papers) seems to have had the final word about Kakutani's abilities in reviewing Amis' essays, for the Kakutani's byline in this morning's paper reads "New York Times incompetent".

Perhaps Amis' book is worth a look?

Beyond "Pro-Choice".

Nat Hentoff, no Bible thumping theocrat, reviews Obama's record on abortion and renders the following observation:

...on abortion, Obama is an extremist. He has opposed the Supreme Court decision that finally upheld the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act against that form of infanticide. Most startlingly, for a professed humanist, Obama — in the Illinois Senate — also voted against the Born Alive Infant Protection Act. I have reported on several of those cases when, before the abortion was completed, an alive infant was suddenly in the room. It was disposed of as a horrified nurse who was not necessarily pro-life followed the doctors' orders to put the baby in a pail or otherwise get rid of the child.

How The Same These Unique Times Are.

...we have sunken so low where we will actually believe a nightclub comic is telling more truth about any given world situation then, say, the State Department attache'. Fascinating! - Jean Shepherd, 1963.

Dystopia Day.

Yes, it's May Day, the International Day of Socialism, where we remember Man's desires to create Heaven on Earth - with the killing, torturing, imprisoning, and impoverishing hundreds of millions. Yes We Can!

A Sound Call for Change at Exxon-Mobil.

The Rockefeller family has called for increased development of "alternative fuels" at Exxon-Mobil, citing the risk of declining profits in the future. We applaud not only this position, but also the manner of it and motive for it: speaking as shareholders, the owners-in-part of the corporation, and looking for the long-term financial reward of the shareholders, rather than some vague bloviation about excessive profits and class warfare schtick of the Left. All we are saying is - give capitalism a chance.

Brutal Opener.

Perhaps the forest fire that swept south of Grayling on Thursday was an omen; certainly the howling storm that followed on Friday night, "Opener Eve", was a precursor of what proved to be a tough and brutal Opening Day of trout fishing. The night's rain, coupled with a 25-degree drop in temperature and howling winds made The Last Saturday in April a very slow day on the Manistee. One nice fish did repeatedly rise and slash at a #8 Light Spruce, providing the only excitement for the day. The next day on the North Branch of the AuSable provided some relief, with a small ensemble of brookies and browns willing to play along.

The comraderie provided by fellow fishermen, however, was superb.

Augusta Triumphs Again.

A brutal Masters Sunday at Augusta - and the man left standing is Trevor Immelman. Swirling winds caused havoc with Immelman's rivals' plans for a last round charge. Brandt Snedeker was brought to tears during an end of tournament press conference; Augusta Sunday was particularly cruel to the lad who suffered nine bogeys and saw his two-shot deficit to Immelman explode to six shots by the 18th tee. Tiger suffered a similar fate, with a brilliant 70-foot (yes, seventy-foot) birdie putt on 11 ingiting a rally that was then snuffed out by a bogey on 14.

Rush Calls a Colin Powell VP Selection "Milquetoast".

Rush Limbaugh commented on a recent suggestion by Mort Kondracke for McCain to choose Colin Powell as his running mate (as quoted from Limbaugh's transcript):

KONDRACKE: Two new McCain veep ideas. First, he should offer the vice presidency to Colin Powell, who may well not take it. If not Powell, then Christie Todd Whitman, former governor of New Jersey. Rush Limbaugh will go Krakatoa, but independents will like it, women will like it, and so will African-Americans, the whole -- the whole package.

RUSH: Right, so let's not pick somebody for their quality and their qualifications and how decent they are and what kind of president they might make, Mort. No, no, no, no! Let's pick somebody that reshapes the Republican Party as just a bunch of milquetoasts. Let's do that. This is where the Republican Party is headed...

Colin Powell a Milquetoast? Colin Powell unqualified? Let's remind Rush of Powell's resume:

• Commission 2nd Lt. ROTC
• US Army Airborne/Ranger
• Military Advisor to ARVN
• Battalion Exec in 23rd Infantry, second tour of Vietnam
• Awarded Purple Heart and Bronze Star
• Commander 1st Battalion, 32nd Infantry
• Commander 2nd Brigade, 101st Airborne
• White House Fellow, 1972
• Senior Military Advisor to SECDEF, 1977-86
• National Security Advisor, 1987-1989
• Chairman JCS 1989-1993
• Secretary of State 2001-2004

Don't be ridiculous, Rush.

A Heinous Crime.

You know who you are. There are some acts that are beyond despicable, that are fundamental injuires and insults on God's Loving Order of the Universe. You who stole from the Saline Public Library their precious copy of Sparse Grey Hackle's "Fishless Days, Angling Nights" have committed such a crime.

A Religious Icon.

The ubiquitous Obama Symbol is giving us the creeps. It is, in our opinion, a deliberately religous symbol. Note the association with the (Easter?) sunrise over the land, and the overarching "O" of the heavens. Some serious Psy-Ops was put into designing this logo. And, as stated earlier, this thing is everywhere at the Obama website, a loving, yet watchful eye on the citizen - like HAL9000.

In this fortnight's National Review Jonah Goldberg describes the troubling symbiosis of "progressive" (statist) politics and the messianic spin of Obamism.

Peter Wehner compiles of list of essential questions that Obama needs to answer in the matter of the right Reverend Wright.

Richard John Neuhaus describes the excusing of Wright's remarks as the "soft bigotry of low expectations".

Newt's Response to Obama.

Newt Gingrinch spoke to the American Enterprise Institute last Thursday; his speech was entitled "The Obama Challenge: What Is the Right Change to Help All Americans Pursue Happiness and Create Prosperity," a reply to Obama's now-famous "race speech". Gingrich provides a list of well known problems and their solutions, mostly dealing with the disasterous confluence of bad government and bad culture, that have been historically ignored or deflected by the Left with accusations of racism. If we really want a dialogue that transcends the decades-long stalemate on improving minority communities, Newt's speech is an excellent beginning.

Dissecting "The Speech".

Here we go. As a disclaimer, we note that our focus is criticism of particular ideas that Obama put forth, since the MSM has already provided laudes in megatons. We also leave out rhetorical boilerplate (denoted by "..."):

...

The document they [The Founders] produced was eventually signed but ultimately unfinished. It was stained by this nation's original sin of slavery, a question that divided the colonies and brought the convention to a stalemate until the founders chose to allow the slave trade to continue for at least 20 more years, and to leave any final resolution to future generations.

Of course, the answer to the slavery question was already embedded within our Constitution - a Constitution that had at is very core the ideal of equal citizenship under the law; a Constitution that promised its people liberty and justice, and a union that could be and should be perfected over time.

And yet words on a parchment would not be enough to deliver slaves from bondage, or provide men and women of every color and creed their full rights and obligations as citizens of the United States.

What would be needed were Americans in successive generations who were willing to do their part -- through protests and struggle, on the streets and in the courts, through a civil war and civil disobedience, and always at great risk -- to narrow that gap between the promise of our ideals and the reality of their time.

...

I chose to run for president at this moment in history because I believe deeply that we cannot solve the challenges of our time unless we solve them together, unless we perfect our union by understanding that we may have different stories, but we hold common hopes; that we may not look the same and may not have come from the same place, but we all want to move in the same direction: toward a better future for our children and our grandchildren.

And it would be nice remind the audience that we do have a common bond - we are Americans...non-hyphenated Americans - first.

...

It's a story [Obama's biography] that hasn't made me the most conventional of candidates. But it is a story that has seared into my genetic makeup the idea that this nation is more than the sum of its parts -- that out of many, we are truly one.

Good - E Pluribus Unum.

...

This is not to say that race has not been an issue in this campaign. At various stages in the campaign, some commentators have deemed me either "too black" or "not black enough." We saw racial tensions bubble to the surface during the week before the South Carolina primary. The press has scoured every single exit poll for the latest evidence of racial polarization, not just in terms of white and black, but black and brown as well. And yet, it's only been in the last couple of weeks that the discussion of race in this campaign has taken a particularly divisive turn.

Questions about Obama's true beliefs on particular hate speech is not divisive, it's an important exercise in the vetting of a presidential candidate. And when you poll 90% of the electorate in a particular racial group, then isn't race clearly an issue in the campaign? Isn't there something going on?

On one end of the spectrum, we've heard the implication that my candidacy is somehow an exercise in affirmative action; that it's based solely on the desire of wild- and wide-eyed liberals to purchase racial reconciliation on the cheap.

Huh? What one has "heard" is a great reluctance to ignore the rhetoric and to evaluate Obama's qualifications and credentials to be President. This is a strawman set up to make Wright merely part of the spectrum of acceptable thought.

On the other end, we've heard my former pastor, Jeremiah Wright, use incendiary language to express views that have the potential not only to widen the racial divide, but views that denigrate both the greatness and the goodness of our nation and that rightly offend white and black alike.

I have already condemned, in unequivocal terms, the statements of Reverend Wright that have caused such controversy, and in some cases, pain. For some, nagging questions remain: Did I know him to be an occasionally fierce critic of American domestic and foreign policy? Of course. Did I ever hear him make remarks that could be considered controversial while I sat in the church? Yes. Did I strongly disagree with many of his political views? Absolutely, just as I'm sure many of you have heard remarks from your pastors, priests or rabbis with which you strongly disagree.

Ahem...we're talking about an order-of-magnitude difference in the persistent virulence and perniciousness of Rev. Wright's remarks and what a run-of-the-mill clergy may utter in an occasional remark. You also claimed just a few days earlier that you never heard Wright's remarks in person...

The next two paragraphs are esssential in this speech:

But the remarks that have caused this recent firestorm weren't simply controversial. They weren't simply a religious leader's effort to speak out against perceived injustice. Instead, they expressed a profoundly distorted view of this country, a view that sees white racism as endemic and that elevates what is wrong with America above all that we know is right with America; a view that sees the conflicts in the Middle East as rooted primarily in the actions of stalwart allies like Israel instead of emanating from the perverse and hateful ideologies of radical Islam.

As such, Reverend Wright's comments were not only wrong but divisive, divisive at a time when we need unity; racially charged at a time when we need to come together to solve a set of monumental problems -- two wars, a terrorist threat, a falling economy, a chronic health care crisis and potentially devastating climate change, problems that are neither black or white or Latino or Asian, but rather problems that confront us all.

The preceeding two paragraphs would have been nearly sufficient to address the Wright issue, but Obama apparently can't help himself and undercuts it all with the following:

Given my background, my politics, and my professed values and ideals, there will no doubt be those for whom my statements of condemnation are not enough. Why associate myself with Reverend Wright in the first place, they may ask? Why not join another church? And I confess that if all that I knew of Reverend Wright were the snippets of those sermons that have run in an endless loop on the television sets and YouTube, if Trinity United Church of Christ conformed to the caricatures being peddled by some commentators, there is no doubt that I would react in much the same way.

This is an attempt to trivialize the statements of Rev. Wright that have been made public, and isolating them from the context of a decades-long movement that Wright has been part of that has been criticized as being separatist. Obama knows that Wright's rants are not just an occasional deviation, but a standard doctrine of this movement. And as Newt Gingrinch has observed, this dogma goes beyond this separatist movement and is embraced as the understanding of "The Real America" by the Hard Left.

But the truth is, that isn't all that I know of the man. The man I met more than twenty years ago is a man who helped introduce me to my Christian faith, a man who spoke to me about our obligations to love one another; to care for the sick and lift up the poor. He is a man who served his country as a U.S. Marine, and who has studied and lectured at some of the finest universities and seminaries in the country, and who over 30 years has led a church that serves the community by doing God's work here on Earth -- by housing the homeless, ministering to the needy, providing day care services and scholarships and prison ministries, and reaching out to those suffering from HIV/AIDS.

Most of these observations about Wright are nice, but irrelevant to the controversy; likewise George Wallace at his political highwater was in some ways a passionate and thoughtful populist. Up to this point, Obama has never publicly repudiated or reprimanded Dr. Wright for any of his bombastic remarks, when it would have risked great political damage, and now has only done so when coerced and when it would have caused greater political damage to ignore them.

...

Like other black churches, Trinity's services are full of raucous laughter and sometimes bawdy humor. They are full of dancing and clapping and screaming and shouting that may seem jarring to the untrained ear. The church contains in full the kindness and cruelty, the fierce intelligence and the shocking ignorance, the struggles and successes, the love and, yes, the bitterness and biases that make up the black experience in America. And this helps explain, perhaps, my relationship with Reverend Wright. As imperfect as he may be, he has been like family to me. He strengthened my faith, officiated my wedding and baptized my children.

Not once in my conversations with him have I heard him talk about any ethnic group in derogatory terms or treat whites with whom he interacted with anything but courtesy and respect. He contains within him the contradictions -- the good and the bad -- of the community that he has served diligently for so many years.

More "George Wallace" defense.

I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can disown my white grandmother, a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed her by on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe. These people are a part of me. And they are part of America, this country that I love.

No, Wright is not family - you don't choose your family, but you do choose your associates, and you are running for President of the United States. Nor did your grandmother help to publicly dissemenate some very nasty ideas. And what does it say about you that you will so publicly throw your own grandmother overboard in this manner?

Now, some will see this as an attempt to justify or excuse comments that are simply inexcusable. I can assure you it is not. And I suppose the politically safe thing to do would be to move on from this episode and just hope that it fades into the woodwork. We can dismiss Reverend Wright as a crank or a demagogue, just as some have dismissed Geraldine Ferraro in the aftermath of her recent statements as harboring some deep-seated bias.


No, no, no - the politically safe thing to do is to lay down a smokescreen. Isn't the Ferraro comment pretty much a "you do it, too!" retort?


But race is an issue that I believe this nation cannot afford to ignore right now. We would be making the same mistake that Reverend Wright made in his offending sermons about America: to simplify and stereotype and amplify the negative to the point that it distorts reality. The fact is that the comments that have been made and the issues that have surfaced over the last few weeks reflect the complexities of race in this country that we've never really worked through, a part of our union that we have not yet made perfect. And if we walk away now, if we simply retreat into our respective corners we will never be able to come together and solve challenges like health care or education or the need to find good jobs for every American.

Understanding this reality requires a reminder of how we arrived at this point. As William Faulkner once wrote, "The past isn't dead and buried. In fact, it isn't even past."
We do not need to recite here the history of racial injustice in this country.

But now Obama will recite them anyway.

But we do need to remind ourselves that so many of the disparities that exist between the African-American community and the larger American community today can be traced directly to inequalities passed on from an earlier generation that suffered under the brutal legacy of slavery and Jim Crow. Segregated schools were, and are, inferior schools. We still haven't fixed them, 50 years after Brown v. Board of Education. And the inferior education they provided, then and now, helps explain the pervasive achievement gap between today's black and white students.

And after forty years of breathtaking concentration of federal power to control public education and the spending of hundreds of billions of federal dollars, public education is now worse than before. As is being shown with magnet and charter schools in inner cities, racism is not the obstacle to student achievement, it is the lack of accountability and competence in public school instruction and administration. The rot in public education extends beyond the inner cities and transcends racial groups, and for the same reasons.

Legalized discrimination, where blacks were prevented, often through violence, from owning property, or loans were not granted to African-American business owners, or black homeowners could not access FHA mortgages, or blacks were excluded from unions, or the police force, or fire department meant that black families could not amass any meaningful wealth to bequeath to future generations. That history helps explain the wealth and income gap between blacks and whites and the concentrated pockets of poverty that persist in so many of today's urban and rural communities.

A lack of economic opportunity among black men and the shame and frustration that came from not being able to provide for one's family contributed to the erosion of black families, a problem that welfare policies for many years may have worsened. And the lack of basic services in so many urban black neighborhoods -- parks for kids to play in, police walking the beat, regular garbage pick-up, building code enforcement -- all help create a cycle of violence, blight and neglect that continues to haunt us.

Thomas Sowell, Shelby Steele, Walter Williams, and Ward Connerly would vehemently differ with this unified theory of the decline of black families and communities. Are their opinions worth a mention here as illustrating the diversity of black social thought? No, Obama's theorizing here is the standard leftist boilerplate. This is not an evenhanded survey of the issue of race, this is an advocacy speech for the Left's view of the problem and their standard solutions. If we really want an objective summary of race issues we must include other these points of view - which are usually supressed because they don't parrot the Left's dogma.

This is the reality in which Reverend Wright and other African- Americans of his generation grew up. They came of age in the late '50s and early '60s, a time when segregation was still the law of the land and opportunity was systematically constricted. What's remarkable is not how many failed in the face of discrimination, but how many men and women overcame the odds; how many were able to make a way out of no way for those like me who would come after them.

But for all those who scratched and clawed their way to get a piece of the American Dream, there were many who didn't make it -- those who were ultimately defeated, in one way or another, by discrimination. That legacy of defeat was passed on to future generations -- those young men and increasingly young women who we see standing on street corners or languishing in our prisons, without hope or prospects for the future.

So the fault for the catastrophic problems that cripple today's black communities, such as the huge unemployment rate among young black men, the runaway rate of out-of-wedlock pregnancies, the drugs and violence - is that the parents were screwed? Where is personal responsibility in all of this?

Even for those blacks who did make it, questions of race, and racism, continue to define their world view in fundamental ways. For the men and women of Reverend Wright's generation, the memories of humiliation and doubt and fear have not gone away; nor has the anger and the bitterness of those years. That anger may not get expressed in public, in front of white co- workers or white friends. But it does find voice in the barbershop or the beauty shop or around the kitchen table. At times, that anger is exploited by politicians to gin up votes along racial lines or to make up for a politician's own failings. And occasionally it finds voice in the church on Sunday morning, in the pulpit and in the pews.

Yet when one maps this type of expression onto other groups or spokesmen, it becomes intolerable, such as the declamations of Falwell and Robertson about God's vengenence on America for ungodly behavior. Isn't it sauce for the gander as well?

That anger is not always productive. Indeed, all too often it distracts attention from solving real problems. It keeps us from squarely facing our own complicity within the African-American community in our condition, it prevents the African-American community from forging the alliances it needs to bring about real change. But the anger is real, it is powerful, and to simply wish it away, to condemn it without understanding its roots only serves to widen the chasm of misunderstanding that exists between the races.

The inference from this passage is that identity groups have license to advocate hateful ideas in the public square that others do not possess.

In fact, a similar anger exists within segments of the white community. Most working- and middle-class white Americans don't feel that they have been particularly privileged by their race. Their experience is the immigrant experience. As far as they're concerned, no one handed them anything, they built it from scratch. They've worked hard all their lives, many times only to see their jobs shipped overseas or their pensions dumped after a lifetime of labor. They are anxious about their futures, and they feel their dreams slipping away. And in an era of stagnant wages and global competition, opportunity comes to be seen as a zero sum game, in which your dreams come at my expense.

"Blame the Man" rhetoric . And Lester Thurow's "Zero-Sum Economy" makes a comeback...

So when they are told to bus their children to a school across town, when they hear that an African American is getting an advantage in landing a good job or a spot in a good college because of an injustice that they themselves never committed, when they're told that their fears about crime in urban neighborhoods are somehow prejudice, resentment builds over time. Like the anger within the black community, these resentments aren't always expressed in polite company. But they have helped shape the political landscape for at least a generation. Anger over welfare and affirmative action helped forge the Reagan Coalition. Politicians routinely exploited fears of crime for their own electoral ends. Talk show hosts and conservative commentators built entire careers unmasking bogus claims of racism while dismissing legitimate discussions of racial injustice and inequality as mere political correctness or reverse racism.

Ugly Racist Talk by Whites = Reaganism.

And just as black anger often proved counterproductive, so have these white resentments distracted attention from the real culprits of the middle class squeeze: a corporate culture rife with inside dealing and questionable accounting practices and short-term greed; a Washington dominated by lobbyists and special interests; economic policies that favor the few over the many. And yet, to wish away the resentments of white Americans, to label them as misguided or even racist without recognizing they are grounded in legitimate concerns, this, too, widens the racial divide and blocks the path to understanding.

This is old and tired class warfare rhetoric: it's the rich and privledged that hold both black and white poor down, and the Man uses racism to pit the poor white against the poor black.

This is where we are right now. It's a racial stalemate we've been stuck in for years. And contrary to the claims of some of my critics, black and white, I have never been so naive as to believe that we can get beyond our racial divisions in a single election cycle or with a single candidate, particularly a candidacy as imperfect as my own. But I have asserted a firm conviction, a conviction rooted in my faith in God and my faith in the American people, that, working together, we can move beyond some of our old racial wounds and that, in fact, we have no choice -- we have no choice if we are to continue on the path of a more perfect union.
For the African-American community, that path means embracing the burdens of our past without becoming victims of our past. It means continuing to insist on a full measure of justice in every aspect of American life.

But it also means binding our particular grievances, for better health care and better schools and better jobs, to the larger aspirations of all Americans -- the white woman struggling to break the glass ceiling, the white man who's been laid off, the immigrant trying to feed his family.

And it means also taking full responsibility for own lives -- by demanding more from our fathers, and spending more time with our children, and reading to them, and teaching them that while they may face challenges and discrimination in their own lives, they must never succumb to despair or cynicism; they must always believe that they can write their own destiny.

This is a palliative for very deep and serious social troubles, as expressed by Thomas Sowell, Bill Cosby, and others. Many of these same troubles transcend race and region and are caused by a decades-long attack on the ethos of personal and civic responsibilities.

Ironically, this quintessentially American -- and, yes, conservative -- notion of self-help found frequent expression in Reverend Wright's sermons. But what my former pastor too often failed to understand is that embarking on a program of self-help also requires a belief that society can change.

The profound mistake of Reverend Wright's sermons is not that he spoke about racism in our society. It's that he spoke as if our society was static; as if no progress had been made; as if this country -- a country that has made it possible for one of his own members to run for the highest office in the land and build a coalition of white and black, Latino, Asian, rich, poor, young and old -- is still irrevocably bound to a tragic past. What we know -- what we have seen -- is that America can change. That is true genius of this nation. What we have already achieved gives us hope -- the audacity to hope -- for what we can and must achieve tomorrow.

Now, in the white community, the path to a more perfect union means acknowledging that what ails the African-American community does not just exist in the minds of black people; that the legacy of discrimination -- and current incidents of discrimination, while less overt than in the past -- that these things are real and must be addressed.

...

In the end, then, what is called for is nothing more and nothing less than what all the world's great religions demand: that we do unto others as we would have them do unto us.
Let us be our brother's keeper, Scripture tells us. Let us be our sister's keeper. Let us find that common stake we all have in one another, and let our politics reflect that spirit as well.
For we have a choice in this country. We can accept a politics that breeds division and conflict and cynicism. We can tackle race only as spectacle, as we did in the OJ trial; or in the wake of tragedy, as we did in the aftermath of Katrina; or as fodder for the nightly news.
We can play Reverend Wright's sermons on every channel every day and talk about them from now until the election, and make the only question in this campaign whether or not the American people think that I somehow believe or sympathize with his most offensive words.
We can pounce on some gaffe by a Hillary supporter as evidence that she's playing the race card or we can speculate on whether white men will all flock to John McCain in the general election regardless of his policies.

So any more discussion about your association with Wright, or with former members of the Weather Underground, Lezko, etc. is just "politics of division"? Senator, you came out of nowhere and now are laying claim to the presidency. We don't know you from Adam, and we're certainly not going to take at face value the word of your campaign as to who you are. We have every right to conduct this type of scruntiny of your past, your ideas and philosophy of governance, and your ethics. The MSM has been more than fair with you, indeed, they have been fawning. So please, no whining.

We can do that. But if we do, I can tell you that in the next election, we'll be talking about some other distraction, and then another one, and then another one. And nothing will change. That is one option. Or, at this moment, in this election, we can come together and say, "Not this time."

...

P.S. - Charles Krauthammer provides additional commentary on the Obama speech.

Great Political Film.

...includes "All the King's Men", the 1949 production starring Broderick Crawford as politician Willie Stark. Unlike "The Last Hurrah", this film finds no humor in the tale of a man's descent into corruption and demagoguery. Mercedes McCambridge is superb as Stark's psuedo-cynical apparatchik.

Heavy Flak Over Obamaburg.

Questions about Barack Obama's association with the recently retired pastor of Chicago Trinity United Church of Christ, Jeremiah Wright have forced Obama's hand; he has now removed Wright from any official association with his campaign. Obama, in an interview on Fox News, has also stated the following: he never attended a sermon in which Wright made one of his now infamous statements, and if he had been he would have quit the church. These assertions may be very problematic to the Obama campaign, for given Wright's relentless stridency, it is unlikely that the publicized comments were anomalous to anything else he would have said on any given Sunday, and Obama's association with Wright is a very deep twenty year history. And apologetics for Wright by Obama proxies, requiring that one views Wright while standing on one's head, is just an insult to intelligence.

Similarly, and no less emphatically, John McCain needs to jettison Pastors Hagee and Parsley. Hagee's anti-Catholic and Parsley's anti-Islamic views are as un-American as the rants of Wright.

This Year's Templeton Prize.

...is awarded to Michael Heller, the Polish priest-cosmologist; the award committee noted his invention of "the theology of science". The New Scientist magazine recently interviewed him.

More on the Templeton Prize can be found here.

Democrat Wishful Thinking.

Clifford May writes at National Review Online about the downplay of Islamofascism by both Obama and Clinton.

Uncle Sugar Daddy Buys the Leases on the Brooklyn Bridge.

The Fed rescued the Big Banks today by buying up the Banks' rotten mortage-backed securities with treasuries, and the market soared by over 400 points. $200B worth of bad debt that will be eaten by the United States Government, and ultimately by the taxpayer.

A Solemn Read.

Our workday commute now includes the audio adaptation of Tom Ricks' "Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq". Ricks attempts a comprehensive indictment of the Bush administration, from deliberate deception in the case for war to the lack of planning of "Phase Four", establishing a functional Post-Saddam Iraq. On the first point, Ricks is not persuasive, but on the latter he successfully documents what must be considered an A-1 SNAFU by the Rumsfeld Pentagon. John McCain frequently mentions this book while on the stump, and it supports his view that Petraeus' approach in Iraq is a necessary component of success. Necessary, but not sufficient, for ultimately it is the emerging political leadership in Iraq that will win the peace or lose it to a power darker than Saddam. And the Democrats input on this critical issue is as valuable as a one-armed cymbals player.

A Tonic for Today's Politics.

If you find yourself suffering from Election 2008 Fatigue, we suggest you watch John Ford's adaptation of the Edwin O'Connor novel "The Last Hurrah". Loosely based on the adventures of legendary Boston mayor James Curley, Ford's movie will make you smile and cry and wish for the days of a simpler and "honester" politics. Pay particular attention to character actor O.Z. Whitehead, who nearly steals the film as the nitwit son of blueblood banker Basil Rathbone.

Buckley in Flint.

Stephen Rodrick, an expatriate of Flint, Michigan, provides a hilarious memoir of an encounter with WFB during his visit to the Buick City.

Analyzing Slobs.

...real philistines are not those people incapable of recognizing beauty—they recognize it only too well, with a flair as infallible as that of the subtlest aesthete, but only to pounce on it and smother it before it can take root in their universal empire of ugliness. - Simon Leys

This quote from Leys appeared in the New Criterion article by Anthony Daniels, "At the Forest's Edge", which compares two views of the Slob Motif as put forth by Sigmund Freud and Jose Ortega y Gasset. Freud's model for the Slob is an individual whose aggressiveness is constrained by society and civilization; the frustration of this state then takes the form of self-destructive behavior. Freud asserts that this condition is more or less permanent with the presence of a society, given that aggressiveness is an inherent quality of human beings, and offers no remedy for the Slob, not even a neo-primitivism.

Gasset has a very different evolutionary theory of the Slob, or as he refers to him, the "mass-man". Daniels describes the Ortega's "mass man" as

...the man who has no transcendent purpose in life, who lives in an eternal present moment which he wants to make pleasurable in a gross and sensual way, who thinks that ever-increasing consumption is the end of life, who goes from distraction to distraction, who is prey to absurd fashions, who never thinks deeply and who, above all, has a venomous dislike of any other way of living but his own, which he instinctively feels as a reproach. He will not recognize his betters; he is perfectly satisfied to be as he is.

Mass man accepts no fundamental limits on his own life. Any limits that he may encounter are purely technical, to be removed by future advance. He believes that life is and ought to be a kind of existential supermarket, that an infinitude of choices is always before him, in which no choice restricts or ought ever to restrict what is possible in the future. Life for mass man is not a biography, but a series of moments, each unconnected with the next, and all deprived of larger meaning or purpose.

Mass man does not have to be poor or stupid. He can be both highly paid and highly intelligent, in a narrow way, and he can also be very highly educated, or at least trained; indeed, as knowledge accumulates, and as it becomes more and more difficult for anyone to master more than the very smallest portion of human knowledge, so connected thought (of the kind of which mass man is incapable becomes rarer and rarer. Mankind collectively knows more than ever before, says Ortega, but cultivated men grow fewer.

Ortega's description of the Slob fits well with the "Stupid by Design" paradigm that seems to enthrall many Americans, for example the rejection of education or the hostility toward western culture and values by invoking class or race (as in the anger directed at Bill Cosby). Another ingredient to Ortega's mass-man, or the Slob, is the lack of transcendent values for human life, i.e., laws of God or even humanistic properties derived from an Ethics. The lack of an ultimate accounting for one's conduct and behavior, be it standing before a Creator or in a final measure of one's eudaimonia, is completely liberating and empowering to the Slob.

Ortega's answer to the "mass-man" problem is chilling: apparently nationalism and fascism are excellent treatments, despite his disdain for them. These movements give Slobs the illusion of transcendent meaning, but can also serve justify the desires of his old life, as in excusing the excesses of ruling vanguards. We also add that particular religous fanaticisms, with strong components of separatism, persecution of "outsiders", and divine entitlements, can likewise infatuate the Slob. Islamism, Fundamentalist Christianity, Ecofundamentalism, and Neo-Ludditism are examples.

Suffering Fools.

Video and transcript of Mac's exchange with a self-entitled Times reporter Elisabeth Bumiller*. Note the "why are you so angry?" cheap shot she makes. You'd think she'd be smart enough to understand that Mac's antibodies might be up against Times reporters, and just shut up and let the grown ups ask the questions.

A day after the assassination of JFK, a reporter asked Harry Truman to disclose the details of a private conversation between Truman and Lyndon Johnson that had just transpired. Truman served up a generous serving of condescension that the dimwitted reporter deserved. Mac dealt with Bumiller in a manner that she had earned.

*Bumiller posed the question, "Two and a half years later, do you (President Bush) feel any sense of personal responsibility for September 11th?" Sheez - talk about third rater.

Winston, TR, and Mac.

This'll get your blood up!

A Shocking Confession.

We have a growing appreciation of Hillary Clinton. OK, from epsilon to two-times epsilon. But her determination to not surrender to Obamagagapalooza and make him earn the nomination is admirable. And in the process, the Obamafacade of a "new politics" begins to crack.

Captain's Quarters Into Drydock.

Another blogger joining the Hot Air ensemble.

Meanwhile, in Paris...

The riots in the south suburbs of Paris are turning into organized attacks against the police. The perpetrators appear to be the same gangs responsible for the 2005 riots (hat tip to LGF).

Germany's Leftist Tapeworm.

Malte Lehming writes in the WSJ about the nascent DDR-style Left in German politics. They are causing serious trouble in Western Europe's struggle against Islamofascism.

Adieu.

We will leave to Mr. Buckley himself to look back on a life well spent. Charlie Rose gives a wonderful farewell. Requiescat in Pace, Dear Sir.

William F. Buckley, 1925-2008.

He was the twentieth century's Conservator of the American Idea. In a century with precious few public intellectuals whose ideas shall endure, WFB was its flower. R.I.P.

Why Hillary Clinton is Floundering.

Because she is not a strong persuasive candidate. Next question?

Still No Substance.

E.J. Dionne writes in the Post about McCain's allegedy malfeasance with lobbyists (after discarding the Iseman story):

...But McCain's denials didn't stop at sex, and the story didn't, either. The same day the Times ran its account, The Post ran a story that stayed away from the "romantic" angle but reported (as the Times also had) that McCain had written two letters to the Federal Communications Commission, urging that it vote on the sale of a Pittsburgh television station to Paxson Communications, one of Iseman's clients.

The Post wrote: "At the time he sent the first letter, McCain had flown on Paxson's corporate jet four times to appear at campaign events and had received $20,000 in campaign donations from Paxson and its law firm. The second letter came on Dec. 10, a day after the company's jet ferried him to a Florida fundraiser that was held aboard a yacht in West Palm Beach."

In denouncing the Times story, McCain's campaign denied that he had met with Lowell "Bud" Paxson, president of the firm. But Paxson later told The Post that he had met with McCain. More telling, Newsweek reported this weekend that McCain himself acknowledged in a 2002 deposition that he had met with Paxson.

As Newsweek wrote, "With his typically blunt, almost cheery way of admitting the sinfulness of man, including his own weaknesses, he acknowledged in the deposition that his relationship with Paxson . . . would 'absolutely' look corrupt to the ordinary voter."

And on Friday, The Post reported that while McCain may relish attacking lobbyists, many top officials of his campaign -- including Rick Davis, his campaign manager, and Charlie Black, his chief political adviser -- are themselves well-known lobbyists with long client lists...

Can we please be grown ups about lobbyists and lobbying? Fact: everybody lobbies - corporations, environmental, education, civil rights, and arts interest groups as well. It's a constitutional right to petition the government for the redress of grievances. Fact: lobbyists are politically active people and all three major candidates have lobbyists working on their campaigns. Many, many, many interest groups give money to candidates, for example George Soros' support of Barack Obama. The essential question is: have these public officials exchanged political, monetary, or other favors for delivery of favorable legislation, regulation, etc.? In the case of McCain, the answer is, no matter how the media attempts to slice their baloney, is no. McCain wrote letters to the FCC asking for a ruling on a rule after an excessively long waiting period, but did not ask for a particular ruling. Also, have these public officials violated ethics rules or guidelines in their interaction with advocacy groups? The Times' original story indicates McCain did violate such a rule when a representative, but repaired the error when it was pointed out.

Dionne is asking for an appearance of purity well beyond the requirement that burdened Caesar's wife, and such a requirement will bring government to a screeching halt.

This Is Getting Creepy.

We mean it - no kidding.

The Moon on a Shoestring.

Google has teamed with the X-Prize Foundation to form "The Google Lunar X Prize" whose goal is the first NGO lunar exploration: "...[an] international competition to safely land a robot on the surface of the Moon, travel 500 meters over the lunar surface, and send images and data back to the Earth". The prize: $30,000,000, about 4% of the cost of a single Shuttle launch. It's an interesting question: how much space, electronics, control, and computing technology is now generic and cheap enough to assemble into a Moon probe?

Meanwhile, NASA's Orion/Ares program continues a good pace.

A Prince of Earmark.

Michigan's very own Senator Carl Levin...Yowzers!

Presidential Pork Politics.

The Seattle Times reviews the candidates on earmarks: McCain against, Clinton for, Obama for and against.