August 12, 2008
BECAUSE THE LEFT EXISTS ONLY TO AMUSE US:
Obama Salute Creator Hits Back at Critics (Paul Bedard, 8/12/08, US News)
Rick Husong] E-mailed me last night to say that the hits on the artwork have inspired him to push even harder to build a movement around the hand signal. Here's what he wrote: "Our symbol 'O' is about much more than Barack Obama. It's a symbol of unity, hope, solidarity, and an end to the divisiveness that has plagued this country for too long. It is the peace sign of our generation; a sign for those who are tired of the fear, the hatred, the greed, and the ignorance. There will be resistance, democracy requires it, but we believe that the good in the American people will persevere."Barack Obama is a very exciting catalyst. At first we were bothered by the negative and vulgar comments made. When someone attacks something you hold dear, it hurts, but as we continued to read all the comments, we realized just how silly and frankly unimaginative most of them were. Many didn't even take the time to read the article. People came out against the peace emblem in the sixties, making accusations that it was an anti-Christian symbol, an inverted crucifix, a satanic symbol, and a Communist sign."
So why do we need two signs for the same thing?
ACTUALLY, IN THE WAKE OF THE BRECK GIRL...:
Russia's Power Play (George F. Will, August 12, 2008, Washington Post)
[B]ig events reveal smallness, such as that of New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson.On ABC's "This Week," Richardson, auditioning to be Barack Obama's running mate, disqualified himself. Clinging to the Obama campaign's talking points like a drunk to a lamppost, Richardson said that this crisis proves the wisdom of Obama's zest for diplomacy and that America should get the U.N. Security Council "to pass a strong resolution getting the Russians to show some restraint." Apparently Richardson was ambassador to the United Nations for 19 months without noticing that Russia has a Security Council veto.
...it's his womanizing that disqualifies him.
IT'S NO COINCIDENCE...:
If you've nothing to hide... (Mirko Bagaric, August 13, 2008, The Australian)
The recommendation earlier this week by the Australian Law Reform Commission to introduce an Australia-wide legally protected privacy right ismorally misguided and socially destructive. History confirms that humans don't need a strong right to privacy to flourish.Moreover, the suspicion that results from us not sharing information about ourselves may be destructive of the common good.
Although not without qualification, the principle that "if you have done nothing wrong, you have nothing to fear" has considerable merit. Privacy is often no more than code for the "right to secrecy", which is destructive of an open and free society.
If there were less privacy, criminals would find it harder to plot harmful acts (hundreds of crimes have been thwarted by closed-circuit television). We would be better placed to make informed investment decisions (no more tiresome "commercial in confidence" conversation-stoppers) and know more about the real agendas of our politicians.
...that the least effective department of our government is the intelligence services, the most secretive.
AND WHY WOULD RUSSIA WANT OIL?:
Stocks Rise as Oil Falls: Major indexes reversed earlier losses after the price of crude oil fell, at one point breaking below $114 per barrel (Ben Steverman, 8/12/08, Business Week)
Stocks rose Monday as the falling price of oil helped major indexes continue a rally that began on Friday.War between Russia and Georgia failed to rattle energy markets Monday. Oil dropped below $114 per barrel at one point on Monday before recovering a bit. On the NYMEX, crude oil for September delivery fell 60 cents to $114.60 per barrel.
To sell more of it faster, which means cheaper.
THE EFFECTIVENESS OF JEWJITSU:
Who's winning the message war, Obama or McCain?: Kathleen Hall Jamieson, a leading analyst of political advertising, dissects three commercials from Barack Obama and three from John McCain. (Alex Koppelman, Aug. 12, 2008, Salon)
Why don't we talk about specific ads now? What about the McCain Web ad "The One," in which the McCain campaign mocks Obama by comparing him to Moses?The first advantage that this ad has is that it's using Senator Obama's [own] statements in actual video clips. It heightens credibility. The second advantage to that ad is that its use of humor is effective. Charlton Heston as Moses is unexpected the first time you see the ad, and the juxtaposition with the theme of the Obama quotes on each side is effective. And so unlike the "Celeb" ad [featuring Britney Spears and Paris Hilton], in which the test of plausibility is immediate, in that you can begin to ask, what are these two women doing in this ad; you're far less likely to ask that in "The One."
Across those ads you're seeing the same basic theme: Is Obama ready to lead? The Republicans have found their theme and the question becomes, is it a theme that is ultimately disadvantageous, [if] in the debates Senator Obama establishes that he is able to hold his own with Senator McCain. Debates provide a test of that. We've seen it historically across campaigns. John Kennedy was advantaged in 1960; that was the question being asked by Richard Nixon at the time. In the first debate, Kennedy established that he was as competent, not more competent, but as competent as Richard Nixon, and he was advantaged. John Kerry was advantaged in the same way in the 2004 election because after the scare tactics that were employed by the Republicans against him had potentially gained traction, the debate gave him a chance to step beyond the caricatures. So the danger in the Republican strategy is that it sets up an argument that can be rebutted by performance of the opposing candidate in a debate. Nonetheless, the ad called "The One" is an effective ad because its use of humor works, because its use of quotations by Senator Obama works. As a result it passes the plausibility test. [...]
What about the "Celeb" ad, which features Britney Spears and Paris Hilton? [...]
The other thing that interests me about this ad is that it is visually and verbally recasting the speech in Germany. And that is important because there is a view that is offered by the Obama campaign, largely reinforced in news and in the talking-heads commentary on cable, in which that speech is a symbol of Europeans expressing support for America's role in the world and the form of leadership that Senator Obama would bring. If that is your view of the speech in Germany, then it's a very positive signal.
If, however, that visual of the 200,000 people is transformed into not an affirmation of an important U.S. role in the world and a European willingness to embrace that role, and a willingness to embrace Senator Obama, but rather a crowd chanting his name and an audience transformed into a crowd [that] just looks like a large mass, [the image has] been stripped of some of its power and now there's a vaguely menacing sense about the chant and about this undifferentiated mass audience.
That's the argument this ad is making. That is a very different visual and verbal image than the one that was conveyed by the speech itself or the interpretation of it offered in news. And that part of this ad is very effective and largely unremarked on.
When your message is our message, you're toast.
MORE:
Negative ads: They really do work (MARK J. PENN | 8/11/08, Politico)
Some negative ads crystallize voters’ opinions without presenting any new information. That’s what was behind John McCain’s recent ad equating Barack Obama’s celebrity status with that of Paris Hilton — that viewers would associate the Democrat’s leadership with mere celebrity, not substance. Fair or not, as advertising it did its job: It used humor, stuck viewers with memorable images and created a debate, just as Lyndon Johnson’s 1964 “Daisy” ad, Walter Mondale’s “Red Phone” spot 20 years later and Hillary Rodham Clinton’s “3 a.m.” commercial in 2008 did.The Paris Hilton ad also bore a Republican political trademark — attacking a candidate’s strengths rather than the candidate’s weaknesses. The spot attempted to portray Obama’s leadership for change as something fluffy and useless. Obama did not immediately hit back on the air.
Other types of negative ads use candidates’ own words against them. During Bill Clinton’s 1996 campaign, we used to devastating effect the speeches that Republican nominee Bob Dole and House Speaker Newt Gingrich gave — especially a speech in which Gingrich admitted that his balanced budget plan aimed to cut off Medicare funds so the social insurance program would “wither on the vine.”
So far in the 2008 contest, neither candidate has connected with any ads that explosive. But fresh information about their past views in their own words could shake up the race.
Another nice hint that the tapes exist, but the brader point is the GOP needn't present new information when the Unicorn Rider's (or Dukakis/Gore/Kerry's) own information actually works to his disfavor.
WE'RE SO CONFUSED...:
I'm Sigmund Freud and I Approve This Message: Sometimes, a tire gauge is just a tire gauge. But not this time. (Paul Waldman, August 12, 2008, American Prospect)
Though there was no particular evidence that the tire gauge attack was having an effect, the McCain campaign's glee was evident. Just days before, they had alleged that Obama's criticisms of their tactics constituted "fussiness and hysteria," and now here they were brandishing small, phallic objects bearing their opponent's name.Meanwhile, McCain himself was sent out to pose in front of working oil rigs, to testify to his thirst for pulling more black gold from the earth. The message couldn't be plainer: See that itty bitty little tire gauge? If you vote for Obama, that's how big your penis is. If you vote for McCain, on the other hand, your penis is as big as this rig, thrusting its gigantic shaft in and out of the ground! Real men think keeping your tires inflated is for weenies.
So, on the one hand, any time we criticize the Unicorn Rider we're subliminally portraying him as Mandingo and a threat to white women everywhere--note the horn of the unicorn?--but, on the other, when we criticize him we're calling him a sissy? Aren't the two contradictory?
[Mind you, we'd aver that it is certainly the case that the leader of the female party invites sissyfication. That's why even Al Gore and John Kerry--who served in Vietnam--ended up coming across as wusses. We're just not sure how you square that with the charge that Senator Obama is being hyper-sexualized for racist reasons.]
THE RIGHT TO SELF-DETERMINATION DOESN'T REQUIRE THE ATTENTION OF RICHARD GERE:
The city at the empire's edge: The Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous region of China has seen a series of clashes between the majority Uighurs and Han Chinese settlers since the 1980s. But it was in the city of Yining that the largest protest took place on 5 February 1997. Initially written off by the Chinese authorities as an outbreak of random violence, since 9/11 it has been cast as the work of Islamists intent on establishing an independent Islamic kingdom. (Nick Holdstock, Eurozine)
The main ethnic group in Xinjiang are the Uighurs (pronounced weegers), a Turkic people, which means that they belong to the same group of peoples who began in Central Asia and then eventually spread as far as Turkey. Their language is similar to Kazakh and Uzbek. Although many speak Mandarin Chinese, few are able to read and write Chinese with any great proficiency. The majority of Uighurs are Sunni Muslims, though there are considerable differences between religious practices in the north and south of the province, with the latter tending to be more orthodox.Before 1949 (when the People's Republic of China was founded), there were only 20,000 Han in the region, less than 5 per cent of the population. In Yining there were so few Han that a street was named Han Ren Jie ("the street of Han people").
The succeeding years witnessed a demographic explosion, as the government encouraged Han from the more populated provinces to resettle in the region. Many of these are part of the Xinjiang Production & Construction Corps (XPCC). The XPCC was created in the early 1950s as a way to utilise soldiers from the surrendered Nationalist army. Since then successive waves of migration have swelled the ranks of the XPCC, which today stands at around 2.5 million.
The XPCC has its own police force, courts, agricultural and industrial enterprises, as well as its own large network of labour camps and prisons. Its main unit of production is the state farm or bingtuan. The bingtuans have had the dual function of developing the region's economy and quelling unrest; in one of its marching songs it describes itself as "an army with no uniforms". Many towns with a Uighur majority are now encircled by bingtuans.
The most noticeable aspect of life in Yining is how Han and Uighurs live separately. They eat in different restaurants (Uighurs only eat in halal establishments, whereas pork is an essential ingredient in Han cuisine); their children go to separate schools; they rarely socialise; they virtually never marry. The only time I ever saw Han and Uighurs happily together was at a cockfight.
They are even divided temporally: the Han run on Beijing time, whereas most Uighurs use Xinjiang time, which is two hours ahead (and more accurately reflects the position of the sun). For anyone who hopes to have Han and Uighur friends, this makes arranging any kind of meeting incredibly tiresome. You will frequently be two hours early, or late, even when you think you have specified whether the time of meeting is Xinjiang or Beijing shi dian. For many Uighurs, this imposition of the wrong time zone is more than simply absurd. It sums up the arrogance and indifference of the Chinese government to the fact that Xinjiang is so markedly different to the rest of China. You could almost be forgiven for thinking it was a separate country.
The Chinese government's position on the history of Xinjiang is admirably clear. In essence, it amounts to:
One thing cannot be denied. Xinjiang has always been a part of China. Since the time of its origins, our great motherland has always been a multi-ethnic nation.
The position of some Uighurs is similarly clear:
One thing cannot be denied. Xinjiang has never been a part of China. Only in recent years have we become a Chinese colony.
THE CONFUSION OF MEANS AND ENDS:
Solzhenitsyn and the Battle for the Human Soul (Robert P. Kraynak, August 12, 2008, First Things)
[I]f Solzhenitsyn is going to be truly valued by future generations, his life and art will have to be studied for the enduring lessons they teach about the moral and spiritual dimension of politics, which Solzhenitsyn always saw as a battleground for the dignity and perfection of the human soul.This perspective is alien and frightening to contemporary people in the West, because they think about politics primarily in terms of human rights—about whether a government protects the rights and liberties of its citizens or represses them. But Solzhenitsyn never thought that the categories of Western liberalism about human rights were a sufficient guide to politics, and he upset his Western friends and admirers by stating that human rights were not the full measure of a just or healthy society. In his famous Harvard Address of 1978, he attacked communist regimes for destroying freedom, but then he criticized Western democracies for their emphasis on legalistic rights without moral self-restraint and religious foundations. He joined forces with his fellow Soviet dissident, Andrei Sakharov, in resisting Soviet leaders, but then he harshly criticized Sakharov’s “human rights activism” for its naïve liberalism. Solzhenitsyn also said jarring things like, “Human rights are a fine thing, but how can we be sure that our rights do not expand at the expense of the rights of others. . . . Human freedom includes voluntary self-limitation for the sake of others.”
Statements like these led many in the West to view Solzhenitsyn as an enemy of political freedom and democracy who sympathized with reactionary causes, like Tsarism, theocracy, and authoritarian nationalism. These portraits are unfair, however, because Solzhenitsyn had a deep appreciation for political freedom and democracy, even though he insisted that political institutions must serve the highest good of developing the human soul in all of its moral, artistic, and spiritual dimensions. To remember Solzhenitsyn properly, we have to appreciate his insistence on restoring the human soul to the center of politics while viewing political freedom as the necessary and indispensable means—but only a means—to the development of the soul.
Vital here is the corollary, that where the end that freedom renders is the stunting of souls it is an illegitimate means. As Professor Kraynak says, in his own exceptional book, "[W]e must face the disturbing dilemma that modern liberal democracy needs God, but God is not as liberal or as democratic as we would like Him to be."
PHIL GRAMM HAS YOUR NUMBER:
A big surprise on gas: You may not believe it, but fuel is more affordable than it was during the early '60s. (Indur M. Goklany and Jerry Taylor, August 11, 2008, LA Times)
[G]asoline is more affordable for American families now than it was in the days of the gas-guzzling muscle cars of the early 1960s. Prices are beginning to come down somewhat, but this was true even when the national average was at its summer peak.Two-thirds of American voters say they think that the price of gas is "an extremely important political issue," and many believe that it will cause them "serious" financial hardship, according to a recent survey by the Associated Press and Yahoo.
Although it's true that the real (inflation-adjusted) and nominal (posted) prices of gasoline are higher than at any time since World War II, even at the recent peak national average of $4.11 a gallon (California's average Friday was $4.17), gasoline is still more affordable today than it was during the Kennedy administration. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke worries that increasing fuel prices might eat up so much disposable income that it flat-lines consumer spending and tanks the economy. But it's difficult to square that worry with what we call the "affordability index" -- the ratio of the average person's disposable income to the price of gasoline.
After studying the average yearly price of gasoline from 1949 to 2007, and assigning the number "1" to the ratio in 1960, we found today's prices comparable to what they were in 1960 (1.35 today to 1.00 in 1960, with a high of 3.32 in 1998). The higher the gasoline affordability index figure, the lower the price of gasoline relative to disposable income.
No one has it harder than their old man did, though on gas prices we should.
BEING A SCIENTIST MEANS NEVER HAVING TO USE OCCAM'S RAZOR:
Michael Phelps' victory dance is innate, scientists say: A study finds that blind athletes strike the same exuberant poses as their sighted counterparts -- as do other primates. (Denise Gellene, 8/12/08, Los Angeles Times)
Jessica L. Tracy, a psychologist at the University of British Columbia and lead author of the study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, said that the hangdog look of losers also turns out to be instinctive.Blind athletes across all cultures slumped their shoulders and narrowed their chests, a posture that signals shame in humans and submission in other primates. Sighted athletes from most parts of the world did the same.
But the researchers unexpectedly found that sighted athletes from individualistic societies, such as in the U.S. and Western Europe, tended to put on a brave front, outwardly appearing to stand tall in the face of defeat and shame, the report said.
Tracy speculated that the athletes were intentionally hiding their feelings -- consciously overriding their innate urge to signal defeat -- because losing is so stigmatized in their cultures.
"We have been taught that even if we screw up in life, to hide it," she said.
This is, of course, exactly backwards. Our culture teaches that there is no shame in losing, though there is agony. The shame lies in acting defeated and petulant just because you lost. It's why Richard Nixon had less class, was less manly, than Al Gore.
MISSED ONE:
Sigmund Freud's Grand Delusion (Dinesh D'Souza, 8/12/08, AOL News)
In a way, Freud is following the downward path of that other great totem of the last couple of centuries, Karl Marx. It's hard to believe so many intelligent people spent their lives studying these two thinkers. Intellectuals, we have to conclude, are often fatally attracted to far-out theories that tease the mind but that bear little relation to what's actually going on in the world.
The third "bearded godkiller" is faring no better.
GIVEN THAT THE CANDIDATE GOT IT SO WRONG...
Indiana Senator Offers Obama Risks and Rewards (CARL HULSE, 8/12/08, NY Times)
As the Senate debate on the use of force against Iraq neared its climax in October 2002, Senator John McCain turned on the floor to Senator Evan Bayh to ask what had led him to take such “a visible, as well as important” role in seeking Congressional consent for military action.Mr. Bayh, a cautious Indiana Democrat, acknowledged it had not been an easy decision.
“There is reluctance in my heart, as I know there is in the other senators, to contemplate the use of force,” Mr. Bayh said, adding that he concluded “we were simply left with no other credible alternative to protect the safety and well-being of the American people.”
Six years later, Mr. Bayh is one of the leading candidates to be the running mate of the presumed Democratic presidential nominee, Senator Barack Obama, associates of Mr. Obama say. But Mr. Bayh’s advocacy for the war could complicate his prospects for getting on the ticket.
....doesn't it make sense to at least take a running mate who was right?
WHAT ENLIGHTENMENT?:
Purpose-driven Hype (Lauren Collins, August 11, 2008, The New Yorker)
Billed as a “Civil Forum on Leadership and Compassion,” the McCain/Obama event will occupy a prime slot: five to seven on a Saturday night. Dominating the church’s Web site is a pop-up ad in the style of an old-timey woodcut poster, the type you might see announcing a Willie Nelson stand at the Ryman. McCain and Obama face off in three-quarter profile, as if tuning up for a battle of the bands. Warren plans to introduce the presumptive nominees together and then to interview each for an hour. He determined who will go first—Obama—with a coin toss.The idea for the summit goes back to April, when Messiah College, in Grantham, Pennsylvania, invited the Presidential candidates to campus for a discussion of moral issues. Obama and Hillary Clinton showed up. McCain bagged it. “Along about June, they asked, ‘Would you be interested in helping to host a second forum?’ ” Warren recalled. “Over the next month, it became clear that there was a stalemate between the campaigns. It was pretty much dead in the water.” Warren, who doesn’t make endorsements, called McCain and Obama—“good friends,” both—on their cell phones. “I just went straight to the principals,” he said.
Two presidential candidates, a pastor and Messiah College--who will tell the Brights?
WHERE THE SIMILARITY REALLY HITS HOME...:
Brown should have learned from Hillary Clinton's defeat (James Forsyth, 8/12/08, The Spectator)
With hindsight it is clear that Hillary Clinton should have either hugged Barack Obama so close from the outset that he couldn’t wiggle free or set out to destroy him as soon as he announced his candidacy. Hillary, though, tried an odd mix of the two, giving Obama just the opening he needed.Gordon Brown had the same two options after David Miliband’s infamous Guardian op-ed. Team Brown, though, like the Clinton campaign couldn’t decide which option to choose.
...is in Hillary's need to be far Left if she was to win caucuses but Bill to win primaries. Being a parliamentary party leader is all caucus, so Mr. Brown is stuck between being anti-Blair enough to keep his post but Blairite enough to win an election, a balancing act that proved impossible once David Cameron made the Tories Blair's heirs.
HOME, SWEET GNOME:
'Itchy feet' gnome returns home (BBC, 8/12/08)
A snatched garden gnome has been returned to his owner with a photo album picturing him in 12 countries he had visited with his kidnapper.Eve Stuart-Kelso said she was stunned to see her leprechaun Murphy standing outside her Gloucester home seven months after he disappeared.
He was also carrying a note putting his world tour down to "itchy feet". [...]
Also with Murphy were immigration stamps for all the shores he had been taken to visit - South Africa, Swaziland, Mozambique, New Zealand, Australia, Singapore, Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, China, Hong Kong and Laos.
Genius.
THE OTHER TOCQUEVILLIAN POPE:
The Global Ambition of Rick Warren (David Van Biema, 8/07/08, TIME)
If [Rick] Warren were content to be merely the most influential religious figure on the American political scene, that would be significant enough. He isn't. Five years ago, he concocted what he calls the PEACE plan, a bid to turn every single Christian church on earth into a provider of local health care, literacy and economic development, leadership training and spiritual growth. The enterprise has collected testimonials from Bono, the First Couple, Hillary Clinton, Obama, McCain and Graham, who called it "the greatest, most comprehensive and most biblical vision for world missions I've ever heard or read about." The only thing bigger than the plan's sheer nerve is the odds against its completion; there are signs that in the small country Warren has made a laboratory for the plan, PEACE is encountering as many problems as it has solved.Having staked so much on his global initiative, Warren can't allow it to die. But the scale of his ambition does raise questions that confront the American Evangelical movement as a whole as it tries to graduate from a domestic political force into a global benefactor. In fact, it is easier to save souls than to save the world.
Warren grew up in Northern California. He is a fourth-generation Southern Baptist pastor, intimately familiar not just with churches but also with the spreading of them: his father was a "church planter," or serial church founder. The son, who has said that from sixth grade on he was always president of something (and told TIME he led a courthouse march for the 1960s radical group Students for a Democratic Society, or SDS), received his own call to ministry at age 19. He got a conventional theology doctorate and an unconventional education from a friend, management guru Peter Drucker, who refined Warren's organizational gift and offered a secular vocabulary with which to express it.
Two archetypes dominated 20th century Evangelicalism: the Grahamesque evangelist, and the paladin of the religious right. Warren is neither. He has always been about churches. Networks of churches. And of pastors, the CEOs of churches. He founded Saddleback in 1980 when he was just out of Baptist seminary, with neither a building nor a congregation, and grew it relentlessly to its current size. In 1995 he shared his secrets in a book called The Purpose Driven Church: Growth Without Compromising Your Message & Mission. (The "purpose" was God's.) His knack for schematization allowed almost any minister to reconfigure his church along the lines of Saddleback. Warren says that he and his staff have given "purpose-driven training" to 500,000 eager pastors worldwide and that 1 out of 20 U.S. churches has done his "40 Days of Purpose" exercises. In all, says fellow megapastor Joel Hunter, Warren's is "easily the broadest and most influential church network in the world."
But it was not until 2002 that Warren became a mainstream megastar, following the publication of The Purpose Driven Life. Beyond its striking opening assertion — "It's not about you" (it's about God and you) — the book, like its predecessor, was a crystal-clear blueprint, in this case for extending Sunday spirituality to the rest of one's life. It employed the tropes of the self-help genre (A 40-day program! Exercises!) to chart a user's guide to living midstream Evangelical doctrine. (On God's wanting believers to be a "living sacrifice": "The problem with a living sacrifice is that it can crawl off the altar. We sing Onward, Christian Soldiers on Sunday, then go AWOL on Monday.") The Purpose Driven Life shipped 40 million copies worldwide, and Warren was suddenly famous and (despite turning over 90% of his profits to his church) rich. He could try his hand at just about anything.
During the 2004 presidential election, he seemed to toy with using his new influence to become the next Jerry Falwell or James Dobson. Although he did not officially endorse George W. Bush, the mega-author made no secret of his preference. Two weeks before the election, he sent an e-mail to the several hundred thousand pastors on his mailing list, enumerating "non-negotiable" issues for Christians to consider when casting their votes: abortion, stem-cell research, gay marriage, euthanasia and human cloning. Shortly after the election, two attendees of a Washington meeting of conservative religious and political heavyweights remember Warren's actively soliciting advice on how he might increase his clout with GOP politicians.
But upon exploring the role, Warren grew uncomfortable with it. "I have never been considered a part of the religious right, because I don't believe politics is the most effective way to change the world," he says now. "Although public service can be a noble profession, and I believe it is our responsibility to vote, I don't have much faith in government solutions, given the track record. It's why I am a pastor, not a politician. None of my values have changed from four years ago, but my agenda has definitely expanded."
THE REALITY OF THOSE THREE A.M. MOMENTS...:
...is that the president isn't even likely to be conversant with the situation that erupts, nor should he necessarily be. That's why he has staff. (Think Reagan could find Grenada on a map at 2:59 on the day he decided to liberate it?)
A junior congressman has even less reason to be familiar with such matters, so Senator Obama certainly shouldn't have been expected to have any instantly coherent views about Georgia v. Russia. However, a president's or a candidate's aides shouldn't let him go out at 3pm and still look like he has no idea what the situation entails. Whoever was responsible for Senator Obama making this statement served him poorly. Better for him to have stayed at the beach.
MORE:
Obama without his script: Judging by his reaction to the Georgia-Russia crisis, Obama's make-believe presidency isn't ready for prime time. (Jonah Goldberg, August 12, 2008, LA Times)
Obama's response?First, late Thursday evening, he gave a conventional written statement calling for calm, U.N. action and "restraint" from both sides -- followed an hour later by a slightly stronger condemnation of Russian aggression and a call for a cease-fire.
The invasion of Georgia elicited a wan written communique instead of the sort of exciting rhetoric we've come to expect from his make-believe presidency. But he did make it in front of the cameras the next day for a rally celebrating his vacation in Hawaii. He promised "to go body surfing at some undisclosed location."
During Obama's make-believe presidency, we've heard about bold action, about the courage to talk to dictators. When faced with a real "3 a.m. moment," Obama -- who boasts about 200 foreign policy advisors, broken into 10 subgroups -- proclaims, "I'm going to get some shave ice."
Now, of course, this is a bit unfair in that Obama had planned his no doubt well-deserved vacation for a very long time. But presidential vacations are always well planned -- and often interrupted.
Indeed, President Bush's jaunt to the Olympics as a "sports fan" should also have been cut short the moment tanks started rolling over a country he'd proclaimed a "beacon of liberty" during his visit there in 2005. By Monday, both Bush and Obama were playing catch-up to Sen. John McCain, who seemed to have grasped the gravity from the get-go and whose support for Georgia is long-standing. He took the lead from the outset, demanding on Friday morning an emergency meeting of NATO and Western aid to the fledgling democracy.
IS THAT ALL THERE IS?:
The Galbraith Effect? (Thomas Sowell, 8/12/08, Real Clear Politics)
Many years ago, when I was a college student, I took a course from John Kenneth Galbraith. On the first day of class, Professor Galbraith gave a brilliant opening lecture, after which the students gave him a standing ovation.Galbraith kept on giving brilliant opening lectures the whole semester. But, instead of standing ovations, there were now dwindling numbers of students and some of them got up and walked out in the middle of his lectures.
Galbraith never got beyond the glittering generalities that marked his first lecture. After a while, the students got tired of not getting any real substance.
Senator Barack Obama's campaign this year reminds me very much of that course from Professor Galbraith. Many people were ecstatic during the early primaries, as each state's voters heard his glittering generalities for the first time.
Which is why Maverick's ads accusing the Unicorn Rider of being no more than a facade of glittery celebrity is cutting so deep.
OBLIGATORY NAZI REFERENCE:
More on the Clinton Convention Saga (Martin Peretz, 8/10/08, TNR: The Spine)
The poor yet-to-be-named vice presidential nominee has already gotten short shrift from what is already settled. Bill will speak on the night of, but before the veep is designated. The running-mate will be lucky If he gets into prime time. My advice to the Obama operation is not to let anyone from the Harry Thompson operation anywhere near Denver.Think back to the 2000 L.A. convention when that operation virtually stole the show from Al Gore. Clinton's majestic entrance could have been designed by Albert Speer and Leni Riefenstal.
A good indicator that Bill is too far Right for the Democrats.
THEY RELEASE TAPES, WE KILL THEM. SEEMS LIKE A GOOD DEAL:
Leading al-Qaida militant killed in north-west Pakistan clashes (Saeed Shah, 8/12/08, guardian.co.uk)
According to a Pakistani security official, fighting in the Bajaur region has resulted in the death of militant Abu Saeed al-Masri, identified in local media reports as Mustafa Abu al-Yazid, al-Qaida's commander in Afghanistan. Yazid claimed responsibility for the bombing of the Danish embassy in Islamabad earlier this year, and he has also been linked to the assassination of the former prime minister Benazir Bhutto in December.A second key al-Qaida figure, Abu Khabab al-Masri - an alleged chemical and biological weapons expert - was killed last month in a US air strike in South Waziristan, another part of Pakistan's tribal area. The presence of Yazid and Masri in Pakistan will fuel claims that the Taliban insurrection in Afghanistan is being directed from Pakistani territory and that the country is being used by al-Qaida as its global operations centre.
Claims?