Category Archives: Political Commentary

Political Commentary, Popular Culture

I’ll Second That

Derb again:

At the Olympics, the Maoists will be dealing with free people from free nations, and there is only so much they can do to control them. It’s not clear they understand this. They’ve been living for decades in a bubble of unchallenged power, and are not very imaginative. The opportunities for embarrassment are endless, and the prospect of it very delicious to anyone who loves liberty. Personally, I hope their stinking Olympics is a huge fiasco, and I see encouraging signs it may be.

I wouldn’t shed a tear if there was never another Olympics. Not that I care that much, one way or the other, because I don’t care about the Olympics, but I think that it demeans the event to hold it in dictatorships. But maybe that’s just me. Maybe we ought to have a democratic Olympics. Any country could send a team, but it would never be hosted in a place like China. Or most countries in the Middle East (not that there’s much prospect for that).

Political Commentary

Troubling Equivalences

9 Comments

Mickey Kaus dissects the Obama speech. I think that he hurt himself with it more than helped, though obviously the Obamaniacs will disagree. One way to know is to see if he recovers in Pennsylvania, where he’s down twenty-six points (before the speech).

My bottom line (still not having read the whole thing).

There would seem to be four, and only four possibilities.

  1. He didn’t understand how offensive this kind of speech was until someone pointed it out a few days ago.
  2. He understood, but didn’t have the courage to confront his pastor about it.
  3. He understood, but felt it important to his Chicago political career to go along with the racial grievance crowd.
  4. He understood, and agreed with it, until it became politically inconvenient to do so.

If (1), it seems like a political naivety that is inexcusable in a presidential candidate. If (2), what does this say about his ability or willingness to stand up to a dictator? If (3) this isn’t “new politics.” It’s the same old cynical pandering. If (4), do we really want a president that believes this kind of thing in his heart?

As I’ve said, take away this whole issue, and I’m still not going to vote for Obama, for a lot of reasons. But if I were, this would be a deal breaker for me. I pity the choices of Democrats this year (and generally, every year). But then, no one made them be Democrats.

[Update at 9 AM EDT]

Victor Davis Hanson has some related thoughts:

Two corollaries always follow the Obama victimology: moral equivalence and the subtle suggestion that any who question his thesis of despair are themselves suspect.

So we hear of poor Barack’s grandmother’s private fears in the same breath as Wright’s public hatred. Geraldine Ferraro is understood in the same context as Reverend Wright. The Reagan Coalition and talk radio are identical to Reverend Wright — albeit without similar contexts for their own purported racism. Your own pastor, priest, or rabbi are analogous to Rev. Wright.

And then, of course, your own motives are suspect if you question any of this sophistry. For Michelle it is always “they” who raised new obstacles against this deprived Ivy League couple and their quest for the Presidency; for Barack it is those who play “snippets”, or the system of “corporate culture” that has made Wright the object of anger to similarly victimized poor white pawns.

The message? Wright’s motives for espousing hatred are complex and misunderstood; your motives for worrying about Obama and his Pastor are simple and suspect.

I don’t think that Obama understands how offensive this speech was to many listeners, and listeners that he needs in a general election. A lot of people have pointed out that it was a speech to the super delegates, which is probably right. I guess he’ll worry about binding the wounds of the rest of us at or after the convention. But the bloom is definitely off the rose.

Oh, and he can’t even keep his story straight:

Barack Obama’s campaign is not premised on making history? Could have fooled me. Let’s go to the tape.

…there’s only 563 mentions of the phrase “make history” on barackobama.com and another 1,750 mentions of “making history” on the candidate’s website alone. How on earth could anyone have gotten the idea that Barack Obama was suggesting that a spectrographic analysis of his skin color proves that his mere election as president would be a positive historical event? In fact, one might say that “making history” was a successful campaign theme for Obama precisely because it used race to his advantage, making the subtle suggestion that electing a black man would make Americans feel better about the state of race relations. And isn’t this exactly what Geraldine Ferraro was eviscerated for pointing out?

[Update at 10 AM]

Obama’s double standard:

So Imus, who peddles “toxic information,” “stereotypes,” and “degrading comment[s],” should be deprived of his livelihood. While Reverend Wright, who peddles in “incendiary language,” a “profoundly distorted view of this country,” “racially charged” remarks, and views that “rightly offend white and black alike,” gets the honor of baptizing Obama’s daughters.

[Update a couple minutes later]

Stanley Kurtz writes that Obama is just a moderate Wright:

Obama’s relationship to Wright is paradigmatic. Obama’s own views are not precisely Wright’s, but Obama understands and is attracted to Wright’s radicalism and wants to win at least a gruff sort of understanding and even acceptance of it from Americans at large. What’s scary is that this is all-too-similar to the way Obama thinks about Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Bashar Asad. Obama may not agree with them either, but he feels as though he understands their grievances well enough to bridge the gap between these leaders and the American people. That is why Obama is willing to speak to Ahmadinejad and Asad without preconditions.

Can we fairly make analogies between internal American splits and differences between nations? No we cannot. But that is precisely Obama’s error-and it is pervasive on the dovish left. The world of nations is in fact a scarcely-hidden anarchy of conflicting interests and powers. Yet liberals treat the globe as if its one great big “multicultural” nation in which reasonable folks can simply sit down and rationally iron out their differences. Obama sees himself as a great global reconciler, on exactly the same pattern as he sees himself as a national reconciler-the man who bridges not only all races, but all nations. Unfortunately, what reconciliation means for Obama is getting Americans to accept folks who don’t like them, and to strike bargains (on disadvantageous terms, I would argue) with those who mean to do us serious harm.

…Obama is the appealing face of American radicalism — the man who unites the leftism of the professors with the radicalism of the Afrocentric clergy, and ties it all up in an only slightly more moderate package. And that is exactly the sort of “unity” we’ll get, when and if Barack Obama becomes president of the United States.

Yes, this is one of the many reasons that I would never vote for Obama. And the wrongs of Wright only highlight this problem.

[Update late morning]

VDH says that Obama can fix the double standard:

The new sophistic Obama, however, would recount to us all the charity work and good that Imus had once done and still does, that we don’t understand the joshing of the shock-jock radio genre that winks and nods at controversy in theatrical ways, that Imus was a legend and pioneer among talk show hosts, that Obama’s own black relatives have on occasions expressed prejudicial statements about whites similar to what Imus does, that we all have our favorite talk shows, whose hosts occasionally cross the line, and that he can’t quite remember whether he’d ever been on the Imus show, or whether he ever had heard Imus say anything that was insensitive — and therefore he could not and would not disown a Don Imus.

This is the real message of the Obama racial transcendence candidacy.

Don’t hold your breath.

Political Commentary, Popular Culture

No DiCaprio In This One

1 Comment

Lileks:

National Socialists chose the second part of their name for no particular reason – it’s anti-capitalist propaganda. The movie begins not on the dock, or on board, or in a boisterous café by the quay; no, it starts off in the White Star boardroom, where the eeeevil investors are figuring out the best way to manipulate the stock. Yes, that’s correct: insider trading sunk the Titanic. The head of White Star – a tall, dashing, cynical, cunning, selfish Bruce Ismay (snort) pushes the captain to reach New York in record speed to boost the stock, which had gyrated up and down prior to departure, and had been subject to large block purchases by other characters on the ship – oh, don’t ask. The interiors looks nothing like the Titanic, but the special effects aren’t bad, and it’s impressively shot. It’s just all wrong. Every frame is just saturated with a strong dose of Wrong.

Forgot the best part: the hero is a German. He’s a fictional officer who tries to warn everyone about the ice. He’s cool, composed, devoted to duty, and scornful of the capitalists. At least the Soviets had that Russian-soulfulness thing going, so their movies would be soaked with sloppy emotion and Slavic hymns; the Nazis were tin-eared thick-thumbed boors when it came to art. God help us if they’d won; I cannot imagine their sitcoms.

I just got my copy of Jonah’s book. It’s pretty good so far.

Humor, Political Commentary

Will Obama Be A Genius?

33 Comments

Mark Steyn:

…as things stand, Obama is damaged. If, as some folks are arguing, hanging with Uncle Jeremiah is simply the price of doing politics in black Chicago, that makes the Senator not the change you can believe in but just the same-old-same-old. And at least a sliver of the electorate will find it hard to accept that even the political realities of Illinois require a man to raise his daughters in a church led by a vulgar kook who makes humping motions from the pulpit when he discusses Bill and Monica. Jeremiah Wright is not most Americans’ idea of a pastor, and the longer he’s in the spotlight the more he distances Obama from the electorate. Accepting (as everyone assures us) that the candidate himself is not an Afrocentric liberation theologist who believes every crackpot conspiracy of the last 70 years, every other explanation as to why Barack Obama spent two decades in the company of a profane race-baiter leaves the Senator looking either weak or weird. If he can wriggle out of this tonight, he’s some kind of genius.

We’ll find out. This may be a bridge too far.

[Update a few minutes later]

More trouble for Obama:

Despite his track record of controversy, Obama appointed Sanford as a member of his Hope and Unity central advisory committee. He dismissed complaints about Sanford’s earlier statements, calling them “isolated comments of an elderly man with a heart condition who likes to speak his mind.”

Harder to dismiss were Sanford’s increasingly controversial statements directed toward Hillary Clinton, Obama’s rival for the Democratic nomination, which were caught on video and spread throughout the internet. In one speech, Sanford says “I’m gonna push her face in some dough and make some gorilla cookies,” and later says “that woman look like a fish head sandwich.” In another, Sanford holds up a clear sheet of plastic and taunts Mrs. Clinton to “wear it fo’ a Godzilla mask.”

At first Mrs.Clinton laughed off Sanford’s remarks, and even said she would “welcome Mr. Sanford’s help after I am nominated.” Mr. Sanford replied that “I’m a junkman, not a plastic surgeon.” As the campaign wore on and her lead disappeared, she began responding testily, issuing statements that “God’s gonna strike you down Fred Sanford,” and “shut up foo’.”

Will the controversy never end?

[Update late morning]

Well, if these two snippets are any indication, the speech is less than genius level, at least to me:

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 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 disagreed.

…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 and You Tube, or 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.

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; who has studied and lectured at some of the finest universities and seminaries in the country, and who for over thirty years 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.

The nagging questions remain. He’s not merely “an occasionally fierce critic of US foreign policy.” He’s a man who believes that the US government was behind 911. He didn’t merely say things that were “controversial.” He accused the US government of deliberately creating AIDS and importing cocaine, in order to kill and injure black people. He didn’t merely have political views with which one might “disagree.” He held (and as far as we know, continues to hold) views that are vile, hateful, and by most lights, insane. I find this minimization and mischaracterization of the remarks to be utterly disingenuous.

As to the last graf, so what if he was a Marine? So was Lee Harvey Oswald. Who cares what other universities and seminaries he lectured at? They are no doubt the same ones that welcome Ward Churchill and Noam Chomsky. And Ahmadinejad.

As I said previously, even if I were a church goer, there are no amounts of good works that would allow me to hold down a pew in the presence of someone who spewed such lunacy from the pulpit. There is simply some bad that cannot be balanced against the good, when it comes to being a member of and donor to a church, and exposing children (of all ages, apparently, to judge by audience reaction) to such bigotry, hatred and idiocy. It’s like praising Castro because Cuba has universal health care (ignoring the issue of how good the health care actually is in Cuba–I don’t see many people flocking down there for the clinics). But then, many of the people who get funny feelings up their legs listening to Obama are exactly the sort of people who do that, so maybe I’m not the target audience here.

I understand that it’s not the whole speech, and I understand that I’m only reacting to the actual words, and not his golden delivery with the halo above his head. (This latter “argument,” such as it is, reminds me of people who, to my great amusement, told me that I couldn’t and shouldn’t judge or criticize Michael Moore’s “masterpiece,” Farenheit 911 by the screenplay that I read, but that I should instead watch it, as though that would somehow render nonsense sane.)

I doubt it would make a difference. The question for me remains: what was he thinking? And if this is a reliable guide to his judgment, then my judgment is that he would be a disastrous president, probably Carter-like, and an eager coddler and appeaser of dictators.

[Update a few minutes later]

Some Cornerites find some things to like about the speech:

…here was Obama praising the Founders for their ideals. Here he was noting the stain of slavery, but not letting it become THE story of the Founders, but only a part of the story, not letting it press out the reverence the Founders are due.

That might be the lasting legacy of this speech. The Jeremiah Wright controversy will eventually become a footnote in American political history. But the moment of the first serious black contender for the Oval Office speaking with reverence and admiration for slave-owning Founding Fathers, and dismissing explicitly the idea that the United States is, by virtue of the nation’s Original Sin of slavery, a fundamentally racist nation, has the potential to become a turning point.

And “he’s so clever“:

By framing his Rev. Wright problem as part of the unfinished business of America’s founding principles, he makes it unpatriotic to turn away from him now. This isn’t a Barack Obama problem; it’s an American problem that only he can help solve.

Well, no one has accused him of not being a talented orator or politician. But sorry, I’m still more inclined to see it as Obama’s problem rather than America’s.

Jonah writes:

I thought it was a much better speech than I thought it would be. It had some lovely movements and he came across as a remarkably classy and decent guy. But I think there were some serious logical, philosophical and political flaws to it.

Yup.

Charlotte Hays shares my opinion about his minimization of the remarks:

Obama is no longer a post-racial candidate. In his speech (it’s still going on, but I’ve heard enough) today, he has embraced the politics of grievance. He says that the Rev. Wright has “elevated what is wrong” with America — elevated?

Not fabricated but elevated. Does that mean the Rev. Wright is correct about America’s deserving the attacks of Sept. 11 — but he just elevates it to undue prominence? Obama says that we shouldn’t “condemn without understanding the roots” of remarks like those Wright made. Whatever the roots, these remarks are to be condemned. Within what context is it correct for the Rev. Wright to say “God damn America?”

Or does it mean that he’s correct about the US government deliberately creating AIDS? And he just “elevated” that “issue”?

Sorry, just doesn’t wash, no matter in what dulcet tones it’s spoken. And it’s a good point, as Mark Hemingway expands on, that the real problem is that, no matter how good the speech, the days of Obama as a “post-racial candidate” are over.

[Update in the early afternoon]

Here’s the full text. I’m not sure I’m interested or unbusy enough to read the whole thing, but if I get around to it, I may have further comments.

[Update at 3 PM EDT]

John Derbyshire:

The speech is slippery, evasive, dishonest, and sometimes insulting.

Yes, it pays to actually read what he says, rather than just bask in the glow of the flowing oratory.

[Update a few minutes later]

Hmmmm…the Derbyshire post seems to have disappeared. Not sure why. Too bad I didn’t grab the whole thing. He provided several examples.

Political Commentary

Time To Turn The Rat?

25 Comments

Has Obama taken a torpedo below his water line? His numbers have dropped significantly through the weekend, relative to Hillary!, no doubt due to the (not so) Wright Stuff.

So what do those who wish no good for the Democrat Party, at least in its current form, do now? Many thought that the reason that Rush Limbaugh was urging people to vote for Hillary in crossover primaries was because he really wanted to see her in office in preference to McCain, which (despite all of his fulminating against him over the past months, and years) is of course silly. Others thought that if was because he thought that she would be a weaker candidate against McCain in the general election. There may have been something to that, but it’s not at all obvious who will do better in an election that is still eight months out.

No, the primary reason that he wanted to do so was the same reason that the Reagan administration provided some support to Saddam Hussein during the Iran/Iraq war. They wanted to bleed both sides, and hope that they both lost. Iraq seemed like the underdog, so they propped it up to keep it going and prevent Iran from winning, and capturing the Iraqi oil fields. As in that case, the goal is not to choose one side or the other, because Republicans (and other non-Democrats, such as myself) have no dog in the fight. The goal is to ensure that the race remains in chaos, and to keep the Dems divided right up to the election.

Unfortunately, the timing on the Wright revelations wasn’t optimal. It would have been better if it came out after the last of the voting, or (if Obama left the convention as the nominee) in the fall.

Someone over at Free Republic used an apt (albeit disgusting) metaphor. When you’re roasting a rat, you have to turn it over occasionally. Now that Obama is slipping, and potentially losing his grip on the nomination, for those who want to cause maximum mischief, it’s time to throw support to him, to prevent Hillary from somehow wrapping it up before August, as both voters in the upcoming primaries, and the super delegates panic over the Wright imbroglio and start taking a second look at electability. Thus, don’t be surprised if Rush switches to Obama this week.

[Update in the evening]

Here are some thoughts from Amy Holmes that might be of interest to my clueless commenter.

…the first black president will more likely be a conservative — someone who has already grappled with, and rejected, victim based politics. Can you picture Michael Steele, Shelby Steele, Thomas Sowell, John McWhorter, Condoleezza Rice or any number of thoughtful black conservatives listening to Pastor Wright’s sermoninzing for one afternoon let alone years on end? Maybe for research purposes.

Barack Obama is not being tied in knots by black middle-class alienation. He’s being tied in knots by left-wing grievance politics with which he chose to align himself. Moreover, plenty of black voters have been willing to vote for Obama in primary after primary on the message of unity and racial reconciliation without any particular knowledge of Obama’s association with Pastor Wright and his extreme views.

While it may be true that Obama will be more likely to heal the divide than any of the other candidates, he’s not more likely to heal the divide than a true post-racial black candidate, such as Rice, or Jindal, or Steele. That’s where my clueless commenter goes off the rails. And of course, as I point out, the country has much bigger problems right now than healing the “racial divide.” The only people being damaged by the “racial divide” are the people who continue to indulge themselves in the politics of victimhood and grievance, such as Senator Obama’s pastor.

Just as an aside, one of the reasons that I’m so hard on him (or her) is that I find the use of oh-so “clever” screen names annoying in the extreme. If you’re too cowardly to use your real name here, then just be anonymous. If you want to get any respect from me, or my other readers, don’t try to make some kind of point with a fake (and usually stupid) “handle.”

Business, Economics, Political Commentary, Space

Irrational

9 Comments

Mike Griffin is worried about losing a Shuttle crew if the program is extended:

“Given that our inherent risk assessment of flying any shuttle mission is about a 1-in-75 fatality risk, if you were to fly 10 more flights, you would have a very substantial risk of losing a crew. I don’t want to do that.”

If we accept his risk number, that translates into a 13% chance over ten flights. That doesn’t seem “substantial” to me. There are a lot of good reasons to not extend the program, but risk of crew loss isn’t one of them. I’m sure that most of the astronauts would be happy to take the risk, and the real loss wouldn’t be astronauts (of whom we have a large oversupply), but the loss of another orbiter, which would almost certainly end the program, because they probably couldn’t manage with only two left. If what they’re doing is important enough to risk an orbiter, that is almost literally irreplaceable, it’s surely important enough to risk crew, who are all volunteers, and fully informed of the risk.

When I was watching coverage of the cranewreck in Manhattan yesterday, they cited a statistic from the Bureau of Labor statistics that there were forty-three construction deaths last year (I think in New York alone). Can someone explain to me why is it acceptable to kill construction workers, but not astronauts?

On the other hand, here’s one thing that I do agree with Mike on: the last thing we need is another space race.

Political Commentary

The Meaning Of “The Statements”

Obama is being Clintonian:

What I think he’s saying here is that he didn’t hear these particular statements because he didn’t happen to be in attendance. He’s not saying that he never heard Wright say these kind of things, although he wants to leave that impression.

Well, it’s not like that’s the only thing they have in common.

[Update at 6:40 PM EDT]

Here’s a lot more from “Allahpundit”:

Now that we’re into “what did the Messiah know and when did he know it” territory, watch for the left to move the goalposts by wondering what it is, precisely, that’s so terrible about what the old man said. So he thinks America’s responsible for HIV. A lot of people think a lot of things, y’know? Can’t “an old black man have his anger in the privacy of his church”?

Looks like Obama’s in full damage-control mode.

[Late evening update]

Another Clinton parallel:

I sat in his church, but I didn’t inhale.

Heh.

[Saturday morning update]

A few weeks ago, I said that when it came to Obama’s speeches, there’s no “there there.” Now Instapunk says that’s true of Obama himself:

Regardless of how the campaign war turns out, both sides have been crippled. Obama cannot win because there is no one inside the gauzy, unreal image to battle through the contradictions to a mandate based on character rather than a mosaic of sliver identities. His white vote will shrivel as ordinary Americans discover they can’t determine where his allegiance lies, unless it’s to himself only. Women will sit on their hands because they’ve seen enough of the slick young operator who waltzes in at the last moment and swipes the opportunity from the deserving veteran female (and being half-white doesn’t help him in this respect). But Hillary can’t win, either, because of the one-drop rule. Even though Obama is not and never was an African-American, he has always been black enough to benefit from the superannuated slave culture that forgives every corruption and hypocrisy in those who have any claim on being black. If Hillary is the nominee, African-Americans will stay home in significant numbers. Unlike Jeremiah Wright, John McCain is the irascible uncle we’d go to for help in a pinch, not hide from because of the revolver he keeps in a cigar box.

At the end of the day, Reverend Wright is a self-fulfilling prophecy, the poison in the well. Like Moses, he can never accompany his chosen ones to the promised land When his people finally learn to stop following his like, they will find what they seek, as if by magic. But for now, the horse he groomed for them is scratched at the gate.

The Democrats have set themselves up for a well-deserved electoral catastrophe this fall. And it didn’t just happen this year. It’s been building for almost half a century.