South Dakota Politics

SDP TV Note: Lost is Found, sort of.

We live in a age of great television, much better than anything I watched as a kid.  I think the age of greatness began with Babylon 5 and  Buffy the Vampire Slayer, still two of the best long running shows in the medium's history.  HBO's Deadwood was, by far, the best thing I have ever seen on film, and I do not expect its equal in my lifetime.  But in the last several years we have Dr. Who from the BBC, the best example of a series revival I can think of, Heroes from NBC (best new idea), and ABC's Lost. 

Lost has had an uneven run, so far.  In its first two seasons, it was one of the most intense dramas I have seen.  I watched the first season on rented dvds, and once had to bang on the door of Block Buster at closing time to get the next four episodes.  The second season was almost as good.  The series created and nurtured a profound sense of mystery, working itself out in the lives of a number of fascinating and seductive characters.  Fans combed over the details like Monks glossing a text.  My favorite novelty was a set of numbers that could generate power and wealth, and perhaps salvation, but also carried a terrible curse.  That punched my buttons.  So did the names of the characters, several of whom were named after major modern philosophers: John Locke, Desmond Hume, Rene Rousseau. 

The third season was a disaster.  Almost all of the things that made the series wonderful, including the numbers, were forgotten.  I came very close to switching to one of those chef-war shows. 

The current season is much better than that, but hardly back to the original standard.  Part of the problem, of course, is that it is not hard to create a mystery, but very hard to develop a resolution that satisfies the longing that the mystery generated.  That requires great story telling power. Another part of the problem is that modern cinema and TV are the result of many different minds working together.  In the best case, a number of minor geniuses make up for the lack of one Shakespeare.  The easiest way to make that work is to allow different writers to offer competing script ideas.  I am guessing that that is the method behind Dr. Who.  But when it comes to laying out the story arc, too many cooks can easily spoil the broth, and that is probably what soured Lost.

I still have hopes for the series.  At least one episode has been as good as anything in the first two, and it turned on the drama of time travel and tragedy. I am a sucker for that kind of story.  But for heaven's sake, can't J. J. Abrams take a good hard look at what made the first two seasons so compelling, and bring more of it back?   If not, all is lost. 

This last bit will make sense only to those who have watched the show from the beginning.  When the show was still very hot, my son and I thought of marketing a Dharma Initiative Waffle Iron.  It would produce waffles in the image of the Swan Station insignia.  The waffle iron would include a DVD.  A vaguely Asian guy in a white lab coat would explain to you how to operate the device, and what to do if hostiles attack.  When the waffles are ready, the same alarm would sound as in the Swan Station.  To open it, you would have to punch in the mysterious series of numbers.  If you haven't watched the show, this may give you some idea of why you have been avoiding it. 

Tibet & Palestine: a Reply from a Friend in Iraq

A friend of mine who is serving in Iraq sent me this fine note in response to my last post on the attitude of the international left on Tibet and Palestine. 

Happy Good Friday to you.

I really enjoyed your post about Tibet and the Left
(I&II), but I think you could've gone even farther
than you did (with due respect, sir).

Now, that's not to say that it wasn't a good post.  It
most definitely was.

However, the post itself could've - to my mind -
brought the distinction not only that the Left doesn't
want to condemn Tibet the same way that it does
Israel, but that the distinctions made between the two
are far more drastic and different, and these should
be pointed out as well.

I know you know this, sir, I'm just reiterating it for
folks such as DakotaWomen, Cory, etc.

(1) China did colonize Tibet, and just incorporated it
into China.  Israel (originally, and again and again
and again) has tried to have, essentially a
"two-state" solution.

(2) China has never offered a UN
Resolution/Treaty/whatever passes for "legislation" in
the Communist country, to take care of the "Tibetan
Problem" (let's call it that).   Israel has negotiated
with groups that have called for its destruction,
essentially.

(3) China is really decimating the Tibetan population,
and is actively doing so.  Israel worries about the
Palestinian population (in Israel) outstripping the
Jewish one, largely because of demography.  But, that
fact alone shows that Israel is NOT engaging in
decimation of ANY kind.  Consequently, ethnic
Palestinian ISRAELIS enjoy the fruits of this
democracy.  Contrast this with Tibet.

(4) Israel largely responds to terrorism by
Palestinian radical groups.  China, fearing no
terrorism by a decimated Tibet, nevertheless continues
to FOIST state-sponsored totalitarian terror against
the peaceful Tibetan peoples.

(5) The colonialist heritage in the Middle East is of
European origin (Israel and a Palestinian state were
to be the direct by-product of an END to that true
colonialism); that in Tibet is absolutely Chinas
colonialism, and China's alone.

A person could go on-and-on.  I thought that Alan
Dershowitz's "A Case for Israel" and "A Case for
Peace" were pretty good, though he's very liberal on
other areas where I disagree with him.  There are
actually CASES there.

There's no "case" for China in Tibet, other than
outright brutality and right of conquest.  Now, if the
Left believes in attacking a defensive ally of the
west, let alone the US, while remaining silent on a
Totalitarian power doing ACTUAL colonization on an
unarmed people, well,........they come from a long
line there.

Again, great blog and take care.  I have to get back
to work.

I agree with pretty much all of this.  I would add only that I am a strong supporter of Israel (which is not to say that I always agree with her policies) and I did not mean to suggest in my posts that the left's criticisms of Israel is sound.  I argued, rather, that precisely if the anti-Israeli position were sound, the disproportionate concern with Israel and the Palestinians, at the expense of China and Tibet, is perverse.  I avoided the question of how to judge Israeli policy in order to focus on the latter point.

I thank my friend for his comments, and I am honored that he considers this blog worth reading.   

 

"Oh The Barnyard Is Busy In A Regular Tizzy..."

It's Spring, Spring, Spring! 

Tibet and the Left II

I seem to have stirred up my blogosphere colleagues by pointing out the obvious: the left invests a tremendous amount of energy in condemning the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, but little or none in condemning the much worse Chinese policy in Tibet.  No one who follows political journalism and activism can doubt that this disproportion exists.  My Keloland colleague Cory Heidelberger at Madville Times has this:

Dr. Blanchard draws attention to "China's brutal occupation and colonization of Tibet," as demonstrated by China's murderous crackdown on Tibetan dissidents this week. He then commits an odd logical stretch of Madvillian proportions, accusing the international left of spending more time criticizing Israel over Palestine than holding China accountable for its oppression of Tibet.

I don't see why I am making an "odd logical stretch."  If you think that imperialism, colonization, brutal oppression, religious persecution are bad and worth protesting about and taking action to stop, and it is clear that Case A is much worse than Case B in all these things, it does seem odd if you spend all your attention on Case B and largely ignore Case A. 

The rest of Cory's post is well-written and worth reading.  I certainly agree that the integration of the U.S. and Chinese economies limits the actions of our government with regard to Tibet, but economic realities never stopped the American or European left from pursuing any agenda! 

In my post, I pointed this out:

European scholars have called for the ostracism of their colleagues from Israel.  I missed the part where they want to punish Chinese scholars for the much worse atrocities committed by their nation.

Kelsey, at DakotaWomen, has this reply:

Certainly, if there are Chinese scholars hostile to Tibetan independence working in Europe and receiving no criticism, the(unnamed, un-cited) European scholars who have called for the ostracism of their Israeli colleagues are big hypocrites. If such Chinese scholars, European scholars, and Israeli colleagues do indeed exist, then right on, Ken.

My apologies for not providing links and specifics.  I thought that the story I had in mind was pretty well-known.  Apparently not.  Here is the story, from the BBC:

Members of the Association of University Teachers (AUT) decided to suspend all links with Haifa and Bar-Ilan universities.  They were complicit in a system of "apartheid" towards Palestinians, delegates at the AUT's council heard...

AUT delegates called for an end to all co-operation with Haifa and Bar-Ilan and to discourage UK investment in them.  Israel's policies in the occupied territories were described as "colonial and racist".

Well, if Israel's policies in the occupied territories justify such a boycott, why not a similar boycott against Chinese universities?  Don't hold your breath. 

But Kelsey assures us that "lefties love Tibet," and she provides powerful evidence:

The left doesn't care about Tibet? That must be why The Tibetan Freedom Concert was put on by notable conservatives The Beastie Boys and features right-wing staples like Rage Against the Machine. I'm sure the reported support of Tibet by Democrats is because of some vast leftist MSM conspiracy.

The Bestie Boys!  There is a powerful organ of left-wing activism.  Rep. Pelosi and Lantos meet with the Dalai Lama.  Can't ignore that.  But I did a quick search of three major national journals on the left: The Nation, The Progressive, and the Washington Monthly, from 2000 to the present.  The first mentions Israel 588 times in that period.  I got 20 hits for Tibet. The Progressive has only 129 hits for Israel with 5 for Tibet.  The Washington Monthly had 104 and 6 respectively.  Now there are all kinds of legitimate reasons why Israel commands a lot of attention.  But there is no legitimate reason why Tibet commands almost none.  I admit I didn't do a thorough vetting of all these citations, but I haven't yet seen a single article focusing on repression in Tibet.  I suspect that one would find the same pattern by a search of The New Statesman or Le Monde. 

To be fair, as China floods Tibet with troops in advance of the coming Olympics, The Nation does have a "web-only" article on the situation, by a sports writer.  He devotes most of his column not to Tibet, but to oppressive acts by the Mexico and U.S. during previous Olympics.  Tibet just can't seem to hold the average leftist's interest for more than a paragraph.  But that's more than the other two can manage.  A search of "Tibet" at The Progressive site yields nothing. There is no a hint of interest at the  Washington Monthly.  Britain's left wing press does better.  The British Guardian does have a piece that actually focuses on the present situation, as does the New Statesman. 

Allow me a couple of confessions.  One is that I have been deeply influenced by Zen Buddhism, and this gives me a personal interest in this story.   Another is that Professor Schaff is certainly right that the blame for the West's neglect of Tibet is widely shared on all sides.  It is perhaps excusable if I prefer to criticize the other side.

But it is worth noting that the international left spent decades putting pressure on South Africa and Israel.  In the former case, this produced a striking achievement.  But the fact of the matter is that both these regimes were capable of moral embarrassment, they had/have a conscience.  Regimes like China, North Korea, or Syria, do not. I think the right is more capable of dealing with that fact than the left is.   

Some Thoughts on the Olympics

John Derbyshire: 

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.

On Eloquence and Obscurity

Ron Coleman:  "It once meant a talent for powerfully, persuasively and elegantly communicating ideas. Now it is used to describe the use of pretty language to obscure meaning."  See Prof. Schaff's post below for related thoughts.

Random Thoughts

John McCain has slipped out to a slim lead in national polls.  I don't take polls too seriously at this stage.  I would think that all of the attention being paid to the Democrats would hurt McCain, but perhaps the infighting on the Democratic side is having an effect.  Not one I'd expect to last, though.

Jay Cost has a rundown of how Hillary Clinton can win the nomination.  North Carolina is the key.  Right now she is down 5.4% in the RCP average but seems to be surging somewhat.  I'd say anything within five points is a good show for her, especially if she does exceptionally well in Pennsylvania. 

NPR takes conservative seriously and then hears about it from its listeners.  Talk about playing to stereotype. 

Think Iraq and Al Qaeda had no link?  Think again.  What often confuses people is the distinction between linking Iraq to 9-11 (no link) and to Al Qaeda in general (some linkage). 

Bill Napoli is not running for his State Senate seat.  The legislature will be quieter and less interesting. 

Barack Obama's pastor gave over his column in the church news letter to the terrorist group Hamas.  Rod Dreher presents the video below, produced by Hamas for children's television. 

Obama, Jesus, and Lincoln

Various pieces worth reading on the Barack Obama speech on race.  See Mickey Kaus on the various troublesome equivalences in Obama's presentation. 

Rod Dreher considers the relationship between hate and sin and looks to the hate in his own heart. Loving one's enemies is one of the hardest of Christ's commandments. Meanwhile, Julie Lyons, aka Bible Girl, places Jeremiah Wright within a tradition of black churches and ministers and finds him sorely lacking.  She also guides us to the troublesome task of loving those who oppress us.  She concludes:

I do wonder who [Wright is] preaching to. It seems like he’s directing his inflammatory statements to whites, but in one of the widely viewed YouTube clips it’s clear that his congregation is almost entirely black. His words, then, do nothing to prick the consciences of the “rich white men” he rails against. So what is the point? To provoke a few amens, to get some of his members to slap him on the back with a hanky?

The Reverend Wright’s problem isn’t hate. He, like so many members of his Christian generation, black as well as white, suffers from something much more mundane: a failure to love.

Over at No Left Turns, David Tucker has largely positive things to say about Obama's speech.  Lucas Morel also praises Obama but concludes with a warning:

As far as I can make out, the Democrats believe the American union is not the whole that is greater than the sum of its parts, as Obama preaches in true e pluribus unum fashion, but merely a coalition of supplicant interests beholden to a national government. The notion of a common good that Democrats tout is less about the prosperity of a free, industrious, and self-governing people and more about a common condition of want, desperation, and disability. Does Obama recognize that the self-help gospel practiced by Obama and preached by the Rev. Wright would be undermined by the very policies he, as a Democrat, recommends?

This comment is on the heals of a reference to Lincoln and the notion that equality, as expressed and defined in the Declaration of Independence, is the "central idea" of the republic.  As I stated yesterday, Obama differs from Lincoln in that Obama places "toward a more perfect union" as the central idea, making the Constitutional Convention the founding moment, not the Declaration. 

This is in stark contrast to Lincoln.  In Lincoln's famous "apple of gold" metaphor, the Constitution enhances the Declaration, but does not supplant the Declaration as the central document or equality as the central idea. 

The assertion of that principle, at that time, was the word, "fitly spoken" which has proved an "apple of gold" to us. The Union, and the Constitution, are the picture of silver, subsequently framed around it. The picture was made, not to conceal, or destroy the apple; but to adorn, and preserve it. The picture was made for the apple—not the apple for the picture.

Obama confuses the picture of silver for the apple of gold.  I argue that he does so because he does not want to be limited by nature.  We wants only legalistic limits on his project to renew America, and then he will reinterpret the law (i.e., the Constitution) to mean whatever he wants it to mean.  Indeed, the Constitution itself must be read in light of the preamble's call for a "more perfect union."  If a thing leads to a more perfect union, it should be adopted without any obstacles.  Obama's nationalism would make Alexander Hamilton blush.

Idol Blogging

How about a break from politics?  Season 7 of American Idol is in full swing.  After last night's departure of Amanda Overmeyr we are now down to the final ten. 

In some ways this has been the best of seasons and the weirdest.  The judges and Ryan Seacrest seem to be on speed at times. One fears that the playful infighting amongst the gang has become something of a comedy routine.  At times this year it has even distracted from the performers.  However much we like to make fun of Randy, Paula and Simon, they are not the reason for the show.  Randy actually started this season making very insightful comments, but is now back to "Dog, that was a little pitchy at times.  It started out weak but then you pulled it together at the end.  So it was just alright for me."  Paula seems to have smoked a bale of weed before each show.  More ditzy than ever, capped off the other night when she lectured Michael Johns on how to sing with a monitor in his ear only to be told that Johns wasn't even using one.  Simon, who is usually the most astute in his comments, has been off his game at times, showing that whatever talent he possesses he doesn't really know music that well. 

The contestants.  Two weeks of Beatles songs have been fun, but also showed us the limitations of some singers.  Two of the worst offenders are gone.  David Hernandez was a glorified lounge act while Amanda Overmyer had to use a "rocker chick" persona to cover up the fact that she couldn't really sing a melody. The Beatles songs also showed something that I have observed in my viewing of Idol: singers these days, weened on bad pop music and rap, don't know how to sing a good melody.  Paul McCartney, John Lennon and George Harrison, not one of whom possessed a great voice (although McCartney was pretty good) all could sing popular song better than most Idol contestants, who usually possess more raw vocal talent. Just goes to show that there is a big difference between having a good voice and being a good singer. 

The remaining contestants have their niches.  I particularly like Brooke White and Jason Castro.  I actually downloaded White's acoustic version of "Love is a Battlefield."  Stooping to download an Idol song is something I've never done, but I was really impressed.  Jason Castro's rendition of Jeff Buckley's "Hallelujah" reached #1 on itunes downloads a couple weeks ago.  What makes these performers unique for Idol is their laid back folky kind of sensibility.  These are singers who would fit in very well in a coffee house scene.  More than most contestants, these two have taken advantage of the new rule on Idol this year allowing performers to use instruments. Unfortunately, neither of these two have the kind of commanding style and personality to make a winner. I fear they'll be voted off earlier than their talent deserves. 

I also like Chikizie simply because he is fun.  One thing you can say about him, he isn't boring. Carley Smithson is a major vocal talent, but has a bit of that "rocker" persona that has never succeeded on Idol.  The same thing goes for David Cook.  He isn't as talented vocally as Smithson, but he does the rocker thing well.  He will fall by the wayside precisely because that's all he really does well.  One of the upcoming genres, country, Broadway, or pop, will trip him up. 

This is the year of the men, unlike last year.  I suspect something like three of the next four to go will be women, including Kristie Lee Cook (our next eliminated person, I suggest), Ramiele Malubay and Syesha Mercado.

The odds on favorite to win is the wunderkind, David Archuleta. My concern at this point is that Archuleta will win more based on the fact that he is the darling of the 14 year old girls than his talent, although he is talented.  But we have also seen that he is limited.  Once he gets outside of the sappy ballad, he struggles a little.  He is not a natural performer and he lacks the charisma to sell an up-tempo song. But this is the fun of Idol.  It isn't the best music (indeed it is sometimes quite bad music), but you do get to see fairly talented people try to impress you week after week. Let's enjoy the ride.       

Moral Blindness On Cuba

Prof. Blanchard took the left to task over its dismissal of Tibet as a serious foreign policy question.  I see his point, although it'd perhaps be more accurate that no one really pays attention to Tibet, at least not enough to do anything about it.  I take Ken's point to be that the usual liberal internationalist organs of peace, namely the United Nations, are too busy doing other things (such as denouncing Israel) to pay attention to real injustice. 

Our own government is no better.  Take this story about a Cuban family escaping that hell hole of a country, found at high seas by the United States Coast Guard, who proceeded to send them back to Cuba.  They are now in a Cuba prison.  Well done, U.S. government. I got this story from Jay Nordlinger who also links to this amazing apology for Cuba by ESPN writer Andrew Hush.  Hush is dismayed that Cuban soccer players would have the temerity to defect to the United States, what with the Olympics so near!  For Hush, the police state of Cuba is simply a "unique nation" where the people are free yet at the same time should be kept under strict surveillance lest they run away to the so-called "land of the free."  See Nordlinger for an effective dissection of an apology for tyranny.

Update: Cory responds.  I am not sure Cory gets what I mean by "liberal internationalism."  This is a well understood school of thought in American foreign policy held by people such as Zbigniew Brzezinski, Anthony Lake, Jimmy Carter, etc.  This would include scholars like Ivo Daalder, James Lindsey, and Strobe Talbot, just to name a few.  I don't think any of them would reject the label "liberal internationalist" or perhaps "Wilsonian internationalist."  This school of thought holds that the major source of conflict in the world is misunderstanding and that violence is the result of poor conflict resolution.   They believe in multilateralism brokered by the  United Nations.  Take a look at the Daalder edited book Beyond Preemption.  Most authors in this tome take it for granted that the United Nations is the ultimate arbiter of legitimacy in international relations.  I have my differences with this school of thought, but think it has an internal coherence and has something to teach those who buy into the ham-fisted foreign policy of the Bush administration.  "Liberal internationalist" is not a "Sibbyesque" scapegoat, but  a school of foreign policy thought that you can find described in almost any foreign policy textbook. 

Update II: It occurs to me that Joseph Nye's defense of soft power is a good example of the above. 

The Wright Stuff is the Wrong Stuff for Obama

Michael Barone notes the damage done by the Wright controversy to Obama's current popularity.

It's starting to look like Barack Obama is paying a political price for the hate-filled rhetoric of his longtime pastor and spiritual mentor (Obama's description), the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Realclearpolitics.com's latest polls show John McCain leading Obama 46 to 45 percent, even though Obama was ahead in 14 of 16 polls taken between February 1 and March 2. Currently, Scott Rasmussen's poll has McCain leading Obama 48 to 42 percent; a week ago, he had McCain insignificantly ahead, 45 to 44 percent. Rasmussen has Obama's favorability declining from 52 percent on March 13 to 47 percent on March 17. He also shows Wright viewed favorably by just 8 percent of voters, while 73 percent consider his comments racially divisive. Note the varying responses of blacks and whites to Wright's remarks.

Rasmussen's figures no longer support the argument that Obama is a stronger general-election candidate than Hillary Clinton, at least right now. And he seems headed for a weaker showing in Pennsylvania than his 54-to-44 percent loss in Ohio.The RCP average in Pennsylvania is 52 to 36 percent.

I wouldn't count on McCain's lead to hold, if Obama is the nominee.  Moreover, none of these polls has yet had time to absorb the public reaction to Obama's big speech. But I am not sure that that reaction, which was solidly favorable in the mainstream press, will help much.  I was watching Chris Matthews yesterday as he and his Obama-besotted guests discussed the speech.  It reminded me why I stopped watching Chris Matthews.  He appeared to be weeping on camera as he declared that Obama's speech was greater than Martin Luther King's "I have a Dream" speech, and one after another his guests spoke like new converts to a strange religion.   What is wrong with these people?  Obama's speech may have been brilliant, or not; but it was a politician doing damage control, not a MLK seizing immortal greatness at a pivotal moment in history. 

My colleague, Professor Schaff, argues that Obama is American radicalism with an appealing face.  I think that is probably right, but I would add that that sort of thing is largely self-correcting in modern democracies.  Francois Mitterrand was elected President of France as a socialist, and tried radical socialism (by French standards).  It was a disaster, he reversed course, and thereafter governed as a moderate (by French standards).  Bill and Hillary Clinton tried to bring Canadian health care to America, and instead gave us twelve years of Republican control of Congress.   Obama's radicalism would probably present more problems for his administration, if he is elected, than it does for the Republic.

But first he has to get elected, and all this evidence of racialism on the part of his Church and his weepy media disciples isn't helping.  I don't know whether Obama recovers from this, but he has clearly got some recovering to do. 

 

In Flordia & Michigan: The Two Democratic Parties

It is pretty clear that the Democratic is split in a way and to a degree that we have not seen in a long time, maybe not since 1860.  Democrats in Florida and Michigan have both been trying to find some way to "redo" their primaries, so that they can get delegates to this summer's convention.  From the point of the view of the Democratic electorate in each state, this would clearly be a good thing.  In fact, if they could get primaries scheduled for June, they would likely have a disproportionate influence on the outcome.  This would be a useful corrective to the pernicious idea that going first always means more influence, which idea got these two states into the pickle jar in the first place. 

It now looks like neither state with have a redo contest.  To be certain, there were awesome problems involved in staging new events in the remaining time.  But these problems, even if they are insurmountable (and I do not believe that), are not the reason that the efforts have failed.  What has happened is that both the Barack Democrats and the Clinton Democrats are sufficiently powerful in each state to block any redo event that is not designed to produce a victory for the one or the other.  I am guessing that it is the Obama faction that is chiefly responsible for blocking any action, since he has the most to lose in either state. 

But doesn't this seem eerily familiar?  It is an echo of the 2000 election aftermath, when Al Gore was trying to get a recount designed to give him the victory, and the Bush organization successfully blocked any such move.  Only now it is happening within one party. The Clinton and Obama factions are as well organized against each other, all the way down into the state party organizations,  as the Republicans and Democrats are.  This, as Mr. Spock would have, is fascinating. 

In the past such an intra-party split would have virtually guaranteed a victory by the other side.  But just now the Republican party is so weak nationally that it is hard to believe in that.  Almost certainly the losing Democratic faction will dissolve after a candidate is finally nominated.  If that does not happen, then we are in for a period of dysfunction government.   I am not sure that the American system can work with the current two parties.  I am pretty confident it cannot work with three.   

Obama: Smart, Eloquent, Radical

Lest there be any confusion, my post yesterday was written before Barack Obama's speech on race.  I have now read the speech and now have comments to add.  First, there is plenty of other commentary out there.  I find Victor Davis Hanson, Ross Douthat, Jay Cost, and Rod Dreher the most insightful.  All but Hanson are impressed by the speech and, whatever their disagreements, think it will be a political success.  I also think it will prove a political success, although I find the content deeply troubling. 

To the speech.  Obama starts with a passage that is both historically inaccurate and theoretically disturbing:

Two hundred and twenty one years ago, in a hall that still stands across the street, a group of men gathered and, with these simple words, launched America’s improbable experiment in democracy. Farmers and scholars; statesmen and patriots who had traveled across an ocean to escape tyranny and persecution finally made real their declaration of independence at a Philadelphia convention that lasted through the spring of 1787.

It's unfortunate that a former Harvard professor of constitutional law doesn't know that the Constitutional Convention started in spring 1787 and ended in September, but that is a relatively small matter.  More importantly and disturbingly Obama rejects the Declaration of Independence as the foundation of the American regime.  Obama calls the Constitution the "real...declaration of independence."  I have written previously about the central ideas of progressivism, and Obama exhibits two of them here.  First he rejects the Declaration and, by implication, a foundation based in nature.  Second, as the rest of the speech's text demonstrates, Obama identifies with a "living constitution," one that changes with the times and rejects any notion of limited government.  Citing the Constitution, though, allows Obama to rhetorically couch his progressive policies in the founding even as he rejects the founding principles. 

Obama's discussion of his long association with the racist church of Jeremiah Wright is clever, effective, powerful, and unconvincing.  Again, while Obama goes to some lengths to explain (or explain away) Wright's hatred, he doesn't tell us why Obama, who purports to be the "post-racial" candidate, has chosen to associate himself with a church steeped in Marxism and racial identity.  If we are to move beyond the divisiveness of Rev. Wright (and note how Obama suggests that being divisive is worse than being wrong), should we not avoid teaching our children hate and resentment wrapped in the authority of God? But this Barack Obama has chosen to do.

Obama engages in sleight of hand.  He equates that which is not equal.  He equates his grandmother's private anxiety over race and occasional use of racial slurs to Jeremiah Wright's long public career of encouraging his congregates to view the world in racial terms and stoking their racial animosities and resentments.  He equates Geraldine Ferarro's recent comments about Obama with Jeremiah Wright's listing of white people as his enemies and preaching that we live in the "U.S. of KKKA."  He equates Wright's theology of racism with white people's worries about crime and schools.  Obama claims he is not excusing his pastor, but rhetorically he is by making Wright's racism just another racial anxiety people might understandably feel. Obama states, "We can dismiss Reverend Wright as a crank or a demagogue, just as some have dismissed Geraldine Ferraro...."  But there is a key difference: Reverend Wright is a crank and a demagogue while Geraldine Ferraro is not.  But Obama would prefer you not notice that. 

Obama chastises those who play upon our racial doubts and fears for political gain.  He then concludes his address by playing upon people's class based doubts and fears for political gain.  Obama's world is not that much different from the racial demagogue's, it's just that the "they" are not any specific race, they are greedy corporatists and the "special interests."  He still appeals to resentments, worries, and anger, all directed at a diabolical and vague "they."      

Barack Obama is, in Stanley Kurtz's phrase, the appealing face of American radicalism.   One can not deny the impressive tapestry his words weave, casting a kind of a spell over the audience.  Hidden in the text is a powerful critique of the American founding and effective appeals to class envy.  But his phrases are so poetic that one hardly hears the radicalism behind it.  I suggested the other day that Obama might get away with his radicalism and his close association with overt racists.  If the reaction to his speech yesterday is any indication, he has.   

The Brutality of China in Tibet

It is one of the revealing facts about the international left that it cares deeply about the fate of Palestinians under Israeli power, but next to nothing about China's brutal occupation and colonization of Tibet.  European scholars have called for the ostracism of their colleagues from Israel.  I missed the part where they want to punish Chinese scholars for the much worse atrocities committed by their nation.  But of course the Chinese are communists, and hostile the U.S.  Israel is not communist and is an ally of the United States. 

China, the country about to host the next Olympics, isn't doing much to clean up the air the athletes will breath.  But it is beating the snot out of a lot of Buddhist monks.  This from Slate:

The last week's riots began as a religious protest: Tibet's monks were demonstrating against laws that, among other things, require them to renounce the dalai lama. The monks' marches then escalated into generalized, unplanned, anti-Chinese violence, culminating in attacks on Han Chinese shops and businesses, among them—as you can see on the cell-phone videos—the Lhasa branch of the Bank of China.

However the official version evolves, in other words, make no mistake about it: This was not merely vandalism, it could not have been solely organized by outsiders, it was not only about the Olympics, and it was not the work of a tiny minority. It was a significant political event, proof that the Tibetans still identify themselves as Tibetan, not Chinese. As such, it must have significant reverberations in Beijing. The war in Algeria brought down the French Fourth Republic. The dissident movements on its periphery helped weaken the Soviet Union. Right now, I'd wager that Hu Jintao's Tibet policy is causing a lot of consternation among his colleagues.

In 1950-51 China invaded and conquered Tibet.  It has since colonized Tibet, so that, I gather, the Chinese are now a majority.  The former government of Tibet, which was at once a government and a Buddhist Church, went into exile.  Since then, the Dalai Lama, who was once the legitimate head of the Tibetan government, has become the closest thing the Buddhist world has to a Pope.  And his authority over millions in Tibet and elsewhere is what the Chinese government cannot abide. 

China is bringing its iron fist down hard on the Tibetans.  Too bad the rest of the world hardly notices. 

Obama's Speech

I take a modestly more positive view of Obama's speech than does my colleague, Professor Schaff. Obama did a lot of things I predicted in my previous post, and some of the things I recommended.  He surrounded his treatment of the issue at hand with a pious and strong treatment of the problem of race in America.  He also defended his association with Jeremiah Wright in terms that most of us can understand.  Sometimes we love people who are, in some important sense, unlovable.  I would like to have seen him deal with some of Pastor Wright's wacky views more specifically.  I would like to hear explicitly that Obama doesn't believe that the U.S. created the AIDS virus as a weapon against homosexuals and third world peoples, that indeed he regards such an assertion as loony. 

But he did pretty well in this passage:

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.

That bit about "a profoundly distorted view of this country" is strong, as is the bit about "stalwart allies like Israel."  He might have gone a bit further, to point out that these views, so unfortunately common among Black Americans, are among the obstacles to racial progress.  He might have accepted the role that is clearly part of his portfolio, first viable Black candidate for President, to speak to Black Americans and tell them that they can no longer afford to indulge in such fantasies. 

But if there was a major failing in his speech, it is that he didn't really come clean. He did not suggest that, in the twenty years he spent in Trinity United Church of Christ, he ever objected to the distorted view of America that was apparently church doctrine.  Did he ever tell Pastor Wright that he had a problem with his wacky preaching?  Probably Obama did what a lot of us do when we think that everyone else in the room agrees about something: we go along.  This is why a lot of White Americans find themselves listening to racist jokes without objecting.  Who wants to spoil the evening by making everybody feel bad? 

If he is being honest about what he believes, Barack Obama probably found himself in a similar situation.  He heard his Pastor say a lot of crazy things about America, and heard the Congregation say Amen!, and he went along.  Why make trouble with your friends?  Why alienate people whose support you need?  This is the way that racism subtly corrupts people who ought to know better.  Obama might have been more honest about this. 

ps.  I have a piece in today's Aberdeen American News on this topic. 

Aiming For The Iceberg

The Fed is poised, yet again, to cut interest rates.  I continue to argue that the real drag on our economy is inflation, the devaluing of the dollar, and massive public and private debt.  These phenomena are interrelated and cutting interest rates only exacerbates the damage.  We continue to pursue desperate policies designed to avoid a short term recession while at the same time making a long term recession more likely. 

We actually could use an increase in interest rates along with serious debt reduction on the part of the federal government.  Admittedly, those policies produce a certain amount of pain and are politically unpopular.  So the ship of state continues to float adrift. 

Obama On Hate: Let's Move On

Barack Obama is to give today a major speech on religion, race and American politics.  He would never have given such a speech were it not for the controversy surrounding the hate-filled rantings of his minister and religious mentor, Jeremiah Wright.  Obama's tactic apparently is to dismiss Wright as part of the past and to ask Americans to simply ignore him.  Here is Obama:

"Now, we benefit from that past. We benefit from the difficult battles that were taken place. But I'm not sure that we benefit from continuing to perpetuate the anger and the bitterness that I think, at this point, serves to divide rather than bring us together. And that's part of what this campaign has been about, is to say, let's acknowledge a difficult history, but let's move on," he said.

No one doubts that moving beyond anger and division is preferable to wallowing in them.  But that is not exactly the point here.  The point is why Barack Obama chose for over 20 years to associate himself with a man and a church that are so obviously drenched in racism.  Obama himself in the above quote seems to admit there was a time for "anger" and "bitterness" and division. What precisely was the right time for a racist world view?  Rod Dreher posts some language from Black Liberation theologian James Cone, who apparently is a major influence on Jeremiah Wright and Trinity United Church of Christ.  Here is Cone:

Black theology refuses to accept a God who is not identified totally with the goals of the black community. If God is not for us and against white people, then he is a murderer, and we had better kill him. The task of black theology is to kill Gods who do not belong to the black community ... Black theology will accept only the love of God which participates in the destruction of the white enemy. What we need is the divine love as expressed in Black Power, which is the power of black people to destroy their oppressors here and now by any means at their disposal. Unless God is participating in this holy activity, we must reject his love.

Dreher retorts, "Wow. Either God wants to destroy white people, or He is not worthy of worship. This is racist idolatry."  One can sympathize with Prof. Blanchard's analysis of why such views might be attractive to some African-Americans, but one must call these views what they are. 

Obama wants us to "move on" because he does not want to explain why he chose to closely align himself with a racist church and minister.  There are three possible explanations.
1. He knew what Wright believed and stayed because he endorsed it.
2. He didn't really know what Wright believed.
3. He knew what Wright believed and stayed because he found it politically expedient. 

In none of these scenarios does Obama come out looking good.  What we know of Obama suggests that #1 is unlikely.  He is not a hater.  Likewise, #2 seems unlikely because Barack Obama would have to be dense beyond belief to have not figured out that he was attending and getting his family deeply involved in a racist church.  So that leaves us with #3.  What does that tell us?  Barack Obama was content to associate himself and his family with a deeply racist man and message simply because it was helpful to his Chicago political career.  See Shelby Steele's must read in the WSJ today for some context. The upshot:

How does one "transcend" race in this church? The fact is that Barack Obama has fellow-traveled with a hate-filled, anti-American black nationalism all his adult life, failing to stand and challenge an ideology that would have no place for his own mother. And what portent of presidential judgment is it to have exposed his two daughters for their entire lives to what is, at the very least, a subtext of anti-white vitriol?

What could he have been thinking? Of course he wasn't thinking. He was driven by insecurity, by a need to "be black" despite his biracial background. And so fellow-traveling with a little race hatred seemed a small price to pay for a more secure racial identity. And anyway, wasn't this hatred more rhetorical than real?

In this sense Obama made the choice many white Southerners made in the early 20th Century.  As Jonah Goldberg argues in his best selling Liberal Fascism, the second iteration of the Klu Klux Klan that existed at the time pursued many policies aimed at social renewal, such as prohibition, while, yes, also being a racist and religiously bigoted group.  But many people joined in spite of this racism because the of the Klan's other activities and because it was a way to get ahead in a perverse form of social networking.  So someone like West Virginia Senator Robert Byrd would join the Klan, as Byrd did, not motivated by racism, but motivated by other matters.  But what does that tell us about such people?  They'd be dense not to know of the Klan's racist views and activities.  But they joined anyway.  While bigotry may not have been a primary motive for such people, clearly the bigotry of the Klan was not so offensive to them that they refused to join.  That is damnable enough.

Obama seems to have made the same calculation.  One doubts that he takes black liberation theology seriously, for, as Steele points out, Obama's own mother is denounced as evil in that theology simply based on her skin color.  But Obama was not so offended by the racist theology that it stopped him from pursuing his political ambitions through this church and its minister.  That is damnable enough.

Sen. Obama appears ready to attempt to convince us that scenario #2 listed above is the truth.  He will have to portray himself, this man who is a Harvard grad, was on Harvard Law Review, taught Constitutional Law at Harvard, and is a U.S. Senator, as being so stupid that he didn't know what was being said in his church by his religious mentor.  He didn't really know his mentor's true views until he started running for president.  One must say that anyone that naive and that thick has no business being president. 

But he might get away with it. We'll have to see. 

Obama's Pastor Disaster

Barack Obama will make a speech tomorrow in an attempt to climb out of the kettle he is in.  From The Politico:

Barack Obama will give a major speech on "the larger issue of race in this campaign," he told reporters in Monaca, PA just now.  He was pressed there, as he has been at recent appearances, on statements by his former pastor, Jeremiah Wright.

"I am going to be talking about not just Reverend Wright, but the larger issue of race in this campaign," he said.

He added that he would "talk about how some of these issues are perceived from within the black church issue for example," he said.

He also briefly defended Wright from the image that has come through in a handful of repeatedly televised clips from recent Wright sermons.

"The caricature that’s being painted of him is not accurate," he said.

This is not promising.  It is no caricature of Rev. Wright that is the problem.  It is the things that the Reverend flamboyantly said.  Worse, it sounds like Obama is going to try to bury the Wright stuff in a lot of pious reflections about race and religion.  That won't do. 

There is a possible defense of Reverend Wright's outrageous anti-Americanism, and of Obama's tolerance for it over twenty years, that may work.  If Obama is as smart as everyone says he is, he will use it.  Clarence Thomas once described how he asked a white companion to call a cab for him.  He is a member of the United States Supreme Court, but because he is Black, he has a hard time getting a cab to stop.  That sort of daily frustration must surely take its toll, especially on those Black Americans who have been most successful. 

Maybe the Trinity United Church of Christ is the place a lot of successful people, like Barack Obama, go to vent their frustration.  Sure the Pastor's rhetoric is over the top, but maybe no one in the congregation really takes it seriously.  Maybe the Sunday sermon is just a moment to vent.  Monday to Saturday the doctors and lawyers and politicians do their part to make America work, all the while suffering the ridiculous burdens of racism.  On Sunday they get to pretend that they can reject America, "middleclassness," White people, and who knows what else. 

I am not sure if this works.  Can we really risk a President who needs to believe, once a week, that America is the Great Satan?  It would also mean discrediting Pastor Wright and all he stands for, and lets face it, this is as much a part of the African American political heritage as hostility to Britain is of my Irish heritage.  But it might be Senator Obama's only solution to his problem. 

And the problem is very big.  Here is how Michael Crowley at the New Republic describes it:

[H]ow we should feel, normatively, about the fact that Obama maintained ties with Wright, even after presumably realizing that he held views Obama now calls deplorable. I'm not prepared to render judgment on that here. But I do worry that this lays bare a very grim truth: That even middle-class black American culture is more angry and alienated than most whites understand, and that our country is simply not yet at the point where even an ostensibly post-racial black candidate can escape that dynamic entirely. (Indeed not only was Wright perfectly acceptable to Obama and his Chicago circle, but it seems likely that it would have been difficult for Obama to separate himself from the preacher had he wanted to, lest he be accused of not being an "authentic" member of the south side black community.)

I am certainly in no position to say that that anger and alienation is not justified.  But the American Presidency, with its nuclear weapons and all, might not be the best place to work it out.  Tommorrow, Obama has his work cut out for him. 

Welcome to the Blogosphere

SDP would like to extend a warm welcome to Fred Deutsch of Watertown, whose blog School-of-Thought is discussing educational issues in South Dakota.  Welcome!

Progress in Iraq

Some good news in Iraq: Poll: Iraqis See Progress.

Plus this:  "News directors say they are putting more effort into covering the presidential election, and the usual stories (celebrity scandals, disasters of any sort, notorious criminals). But there are other reasons for ignoring Iraq. Since last Summer, more good news than bad news began to come back from the front. This was not useful for news organizations. Bad news makes money (by attracting larger audiences for advertisers), good news is useless. Moreover, only about five percent of Americans (military personnel and their families) have any personal interest in Iraq."  It's always about the money.

UPDATE:  Related thoughts from John Hinderaker.

Up Northern Wolves, Again!

Over the weekend the #5 nationally ranked Northern State University men's basketball team defeated the University of South Dakota and Augustana to reach the Division II regional finals.  This is the Division II version of the Sweet 16.  This year only one team has been able to beat the NSU Wolves.  That's the good news.  The bad news is that that team is NSU's next opponent, the great Winona State team, ranked #3 in the nation.  Still, NSU has showed itself to be a men's basketball powerhouse.  Go Wolves. 

Pelosi and Herseth-Sandlin Obstruct National Security Legislation

It has now been a month since certain Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act provisions expired, making it harder for our intelligence agencies to gather information on suspected terrorists overseas.  The Senate has long since reauthorized the key FISA provisions, but the House, led by Speaker Nancy Pelosi, has thwarted efforts to restore terrorist surveillance.  Clifford May nicely summarizes:

But Pelosi has continued to block House members from voting on an additional measure – a compromise bill, passed by a bipartisan 68 to 29 majority in the Senate -- to restore to American intelligence agencies the authority they formerly had to monitor foreign terrorist suspects abroad without first demonstrating “probable cause” to a judge -- a difficult standard to meet since many of those planning terrorism have not yet committed any crime.

The bill also would protect telecommunications companies from being sued for billions of dollars by plaintiffs’ lawyers for the “crime” of having cooperated with American intelligence agencies in the aftermath of 9/11/01. The telecoms provided data that could be “mined” for clues of coming attacks. 

Although quite a few Democrats in the House apparently would support this commonsense legislation, only a few have been willing to let Speaker Pelosi know, in no uncertain terms, that they want to be allowed to cast their votes.

Last week the House did pass its own version of FISA reform, but left out immunity for telecommunications companies, ensuring that neither the Senate nor the president will support the bill. Without immunity for telecommunications companies the law is moot; the government depends on the cooperation of telecoms, but without immunity the potential legal costs are too threatening for telecoms to cooperate. All but twelve Democrats voted for this weaker bill, with all Republicans voting against.  Stephanie Herseth-Sandlin voted with her leadership, as she has continuously done on this issue.

While are Nancy Pelosi, Stephanie Herseth-Sandlin and the most of the House Democratic Caucus so intransigent on this issue?  This cartoon, via Powerline, gives one possible answer:

Where We Stand: Election 2008

The beautiful mess of the 2008 presidential nomination contest proceeds unabated.  The Democrats see their fund-raisers getting grumpy over the various proposed methods of re-voting in Michigan and Florida.  One proposal for Florida, a mail-in vote, is ripe for disaster.  The DNC has no one but itself to blame for this mess: if they just would have given Michigan and Florida half delegates, as the Republicans did, then they would have punished those states for their transgressions without putting the party in peril.  Instead it seems Michigan and Florida have played a game of chicken with the DNC, and the DNC is flinching. 

Democrat voters can't decide which aggrieved victim candidate will best assuage their liberal guilt.  Is it the white woman or the black man?

This Democratic internal bickering may be the only thing saving Republicans from total disaster. 

Oh, the unbearable lightness of Barack Obama.  If only his crazy pastor had kept his big mouth shut.  How does Barack Obama finesse this?  Well, you say that Jeremiah Wright is simply like a "crazy uncle" who sometimes says weird things.  Maybe, but what if your uncle is an angry anti-American nut who is prone to wild conspiracy theories and who praises racists while he himself seems to view the world in racialist terms?  Maybe you put up with him at Thanksgiving, but you otherwise keep him away from your family.  Obama, on the other hand, has been a member of Rev. Wright's church for over 20 years.  Rev. Wright married the Obamas, baptized their kids, and the Obamas have contributed large sums of money to Rev. Wright's church.  Barack Obama got the title of his most recent book, The Audacity of Hope, from Rev. Wright.  That's not keeping the crazy uncle at a distance; that's inviting your crazy uncle to live with you.  So, as Glenn Reynolds points out, Obama is in a tough position.  Either Obama is a strong supporter of an anti-American hater, or Obama has attended the hater's church for 20 years for political expediency.   How audacious.  Victor Davis Hanson argues that Obama is a standard anti-West radical:

What continues to be so disturbing about the Obama rhetoric is that in the abstract he always talks of utopian brotherhood and idealism, but whenever he devolves into the concrete, we learn that he promotes victimhood, identity politics, and subsidizes both by his presence and his purse racial intolerance and invective.

This is what it takes for conservatives to start wondering if Hillary Clinton might be the lesser of two evils.   

Meanwhile, John McCain is in Iraq.

 

The Continuing Columbian Crisis

In case you hadn't noticed, there was a major crisis in South America in recent weeks.  Columbian troops crossed into Ecuador and killed a leader of the rebel movement known as the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Columbia, or FARC.  That may rank as one of the most infelicitous acronyms in history.  Venezuelan Clown Prince Hugo Chavez made it an issue, and brought 10 battalions to the Columbian border.  That woke up the Ecuadorans, who brought their own available troops, all forty seven of them, to their own border.  Here is how the LA Times puts it:

For several anxious days this month, the prospect of war in South America was sharp and real. Colombia's bombing of a rebel camp in the jungles of Ecuador roiled tensions not seen for decades in the Andean region. Ecuador rushed troops to its border; Venezuela sent 10 battalions to its frontier; Nicaragua broke diplomatic relations with Colombia. Today, Colombia has apologized to Ecuador for violating its sovereignty, Venezuela has pulled back its troops and the presidents of all three countries have shaken hands. The crisis, however, is far from over.

Well yes, but no.  The prospect of war was neither sharp nor real.  It was clowns riding out in a jalopy.  The entire military of Ecuador is about half as large at the population of Sioux Falls, South Dakota.  Venezuela is more impressive.  It's military is about as large as the population of Sioux Falls.  The Republic of Columbia, by contrast, has a military about four times as large as Sioux Falls.  That would be like Aberdeen vs. Groton and Ipswich in a fair fight, assuming all the students and faculty at Northern enlisted. 

Of course, numbers don't tell the whole story, even if they are part of the story.  Venezuela hasn't fought a real war in a long time.  The combined weight of their military officers is about equal to that of the  Venezuelan navy's fleet.

By contrast, the Columbian armed forces have been fighting a vicious war against the FARC for decades.  They are about as good at jungle warfare as anyone on the planet.  Having a domestic narco-terrorist threat in one's own country presents some advantages for military training.  Besides, the U.S. is backing their play.  That is what home field advantage looks like.  Oogo Chavez may shake his wee wee all he wants, but there is no way his military is going to start shooting at the Colombians. 

The point of the LA Times editorial is that the Organization of American States or the UN should step in and organize the region to put an end to the FARC mischief.  Yeah!  That is almost as good idea as flying pigs with bombs attached.    FARC exists because the jungle terrain allows it, and because the general region is as yet incapable of the kind of concerted effort one sees, say, along the U.S. Canadian border.  Don't expect big changes any time soon. 

On Leave

I will be flying out to Los Angeles tonight so blogging will be limited from me for the next week.  Hopefully I can bring some of the California sunshine back to the Midwest with me.

McCain Delegates

From the South Dakota GOP:

McCain Delegates Sen. John Thune Gov. Mike Rounds Benjamin Ready Dianne Nelson Jon Lauck Hal Wick Matt McCaulley Bill Peterson Sandye Kading Pat Costello Sue Peterson Manny Steele Priscilla Schmidt Al Novstrup Larry Rhoden Dan Lederman Dana Randall Lee Schoenbeck Ann Wullweber Patrick Powers John Teupel Josh Haeder Brock Greenfield Vern Larson

Alternates Drake Olson Jason Glodt Sophie Stevens Bill Trent Judy Trzynka Jessica Page Michael Stevens Ryan Brunner Courtney Dardis Don Greenfield Carolyn Schnose Charles Hoffman John Lang Nancee Johnson Jerry Miller Ron Ogren Kirk Chaffee Brian Crawford Darrell Davis Mark Kroontje Eric Stroeder Joyce Tidball

McCain in Iraq

While Clinton and Obama bicker over party rules, McCain is visiting Iraq.

Another point that the American media might make is that this is McCain’s eighth trip to Iraq.  He has visited in bad times and while improvements were being made.  How many trips has Barack Obama made to Iraq?  How many meetings has he had with Iraqi leadership?

Johnson And Debates

The Rapid City Journal now has online the article about whether Tim Johnson will debate his opponent in the fall.  The article includes quotes from my favorite political scientist, me. 

Jon Schaff, a professor of political science at Northern State University in Aberdeen, said debates are likely to become a major campaign issue for Johnson only if the second-term Senate incumbent has a "credible opponent" and the Senate race is reasonably close. Then, Johnson's speech challenges could loom larger in the minds of voters, Schaff said.

"Sen. Johnson has all the mental faculties he's always had. But he does have problems with his ability to speak. So articulating his thoughts might be an issue," Schaff said. "Obviously, that makes debates a big risk for him. If he has trouble speaking in public, it might raise doubts about his ability to serve, rightly or wrongly."

A challenger would be advised to handle the issue delicately, however, Schaff said.

"Yes, a Republican can score points on this, although the Republican would be a fool to draw direct attention to it," he said. "Let people draw their own conclusions."

As I said in the article, this is an issue any Republican must handle with extreme delicacy.  It is certainly questionable how hard Tim Johnson can campaign, but any Republican who indelicately tries to draw attention to Sen. Johnson's infirmities will find that effort backfire on him. 

As I have said, this is why I think the Johnson campaign came so hard after Steve Kirby, even to the point of hiring people to trail Kirby's family.  Kirby's money virtually guaranteed that he could rise to the level of a credible candidate, which I measure as someone who can get over 40% in the polls.  That kind of candidate will make Johnson campaign harder than he wants, and perhaps harder than he can. For the sake of Sen. Johnson's health I hope I am wrong about that, but that is my educated guess as of now. 

Johnson must hope that no opponent can reach 40% in the polls.  At that point Johnson must debate and must make himself very public on a daily basis.  We'll see if any Republican can reach that level and, having risen to those heights, can avoid the blowback from any attempt to draw the least attention to Sen. Johnson's physical infirmities. 

Daily Kos “Bloggers’ Strike”

Joe Gandelman: 

In yet the latest sign of how bitter the divisions in the Democratic party are getting in the epic battle between Senator Hillary Clinton and Senator Barack Obama for their party’s presidential nomination, some writers at Daily Kos have gone on “strike” due to what they charge is abuse aimed at them and Hillary Clinton. . . . This might seem to be a provincial conflict, but it is highly significant.   In political terms, it underscores the raw, angry and bitter rivalrly between supporters of Obama and Clinton.

You Think You're Sick of Hearing about Spitzer?

The lucky SIRIUS owners out there are getting a channel devoted to it:

NEW YORK, March 14, 2008 /PRNewswire-FirstCall via COMTEX News Network/ -- SIRIUS Satellite Radio (Nasdaq: SIRI) today announced that it has created Client 9 Radio, a channel that will explore the breaking news, facts, fallout, psychology, and implications of the scandal. Client 9 Radio will air March 14 at 5:00 pm ET - midnight March 17 exclusively on SIRIUS channel 126.

SDP Jazz Note: Trane's Best Seller

Jazz fans would probably rank A Love Supreme, Giant Steps, and Live At the Village Vanguard, as John Coltrane's most important albums.  Each one is certainly a masterpiece.  But his greatest commercial success was My Favorite Things, which featured a jazz interpretation of the Sound of Music hit, and sold like hot cakes.  Backing him up were McCoy Tyner on piano, Steve Davis on bass, and Elvin Jones on drums.  MFT is a compelling disc.  I put it on a couple of nights ago, when I was preoccupied by a scholarly concern.  The music made me forget the paper I have due in about six days. 

I just got Coltrane's Sound from Barnes & Noble.  It was recorded at the same time as MFT, but is a little more restrained and romantic.  I have only listened to it once, but I would be hard put to say that it ranks second to the more popular album.  It does have one of the worst examples of cover art in the history of jazz.  Trane's face is depicted in smears of paint.  It looks like he is melting.  According to lore, he was distressed by it. 

You can hear and watch the Quartet play My Favorite Things at DailyMotion. The venue is Sudwestfunk TV Studio, Baden-Baden, West Germany, November 24, 1961.  Eric Dolphy joins in.  I am not sure that Dolphy was not a bad influence on Coltrane.  He was wild at heart, and a lot of his music is incomprehensible to me.  But in this set they stick very close to the melody.  Watching the light reflect off of Trane's cheeks is worth the ticket.   

Obama's Anti-American Church

The Wacky Pastor story, as Charles Krauthamer said on Fox, has assumed the proportions of a scandal.  The proof of this is that Senator Obama has gone into panic mode (Hillary should send him flowers).  He issued a statement on the Huffington Post:

Let me say at the outset that I vehemently disagree and strongly condemn the statements that have been the subject of this controversy. I categorically denounce any statement that disparages our great country or serves to divide us from our allies. I also believe that words that degrade individuals have no place in our public dialogue, whether it's on the campaign stump or in the pulpit. In sum, I reject outright the statements by Rev. Wright that are at issue.

That is nicely done.  It looks categorical, but it doesn't mention any particular statements.  When he denounces any statements that "divide us from our allies," does that mean, maybe, Israel?   

Let us recap some of the things that Reverend Wright has proclaimed from the pulpit: 

The United States knew the Japanese were going to attack Pearl Harbor, and let them do so to justify a war.

The United States manages the drug trade to afflict Black Americans.

The United States invented the AIDS virus as an instrument of genocide. 

The United States deserved the 9/11 attack because of its sins. 

God Damn America!

Presumably, Obama has now disavowed all of these atrocious and ridiculous assertions.  Is his disavowal enough?   

Paul Mirengoff at Powerline has the best defense of Obama that I have seen. 

Here's a possible explanation, which someone acquainted with Obama in his early days in Chicago finds quite plausible, but which Obama can't proffer. Twenty years ago, Obama was trying to establish himself in Chicago with an eye (in all likelihood) towards a future run for office. Obama was an outsider. His Ivy League credentials, his having lived abroad, etc would have cut no ice on the south side of Chicago. He needed strong local connections. What better way to establish his authenticity on the south side than to affiliate with Pastor Wright and his influential church? (Obama reportedly also reached out to former terrorist and local political player Bill Ayers and, not ignoring another part of his future coalition, set himself up at the University of Chicago).

That is an explanation that I, as a political scientist, can have some sympathy with.  And it helps explain why Obama didn't leave the church.  It would have made it look like what it was: politically expedient.  But how can we be certain that it was merely expedient? 

Here is what bothers me: he didn't just get married by this full-tilt bozo of a priest.  He brought his daughters to that church.  He didn't seem to mind that they would be exposed to the ravings of a man who hates America down to the bottom of his heart. And it wasn't just Rev. Wright.  Watching the many clips of Wright's sermons, it seems pretty clear that the congregation was singing along.  Every execrable word was applauded.   

Did it never occur to Barack Obama that there was something wrong here?  That he might not want his children to grow up to be just like Rev. Wright?   Or did Barack Obama feel perfectly comfortable and at home in that environment?   

I confess that I am suddenly very concerned about what is in Senator Obama's heart.  Up till now I thought that the return of the Clintons was the great thing to fear.  I may have been wrong.   

Obama's Cherry-Picking Defense of Wright

Paul Mirengoff:  "The cherry-picking defense, even when plausible, has never been accepted when it comes to racism. Don Imus, for example, has received widespread condemnation for very occasional statements that showed racial insensitivity. Trent Lott was condemned for one statement praising Strom Thurmond's 1948 presidential campaign. Obama appears to be playing a double game here, distancing himself from Wright without really denouncing him."

Daschle Rules Out 2010 Rematch

From a Rapid City Journal  story entitled "Daschle helping state party recruiting":

Asked to respond to some political observers' musings about a political future for Daschle, he said he would not even comment on speculation that he could be a replacement candidate if Sen. Tim Johnson, who suffered a brain hemorrhage in 2006, had a medical problem during his re-election campaign this year.

"I won't answer that," Daschle said. "He's not going to have one, and I'm proud of his recovery. He's just doing a phenomenal job."

One political blog has speculated about a 2010 rematch between Daschle and Sen. John Thune, who defeated Daschle four years ago.

"That's not going to happen, either," Daschle said.

Obama's Wacky Pastor

Professor Schaff notes the Jeremiah Wright sermon available on YouTube.  Ronald Kessler at the Wall Street Journal has some fascinating quotes from another Wright sermon, this one at Howard University in 2006.  Here is an interesting tidbit from the Howard U. sermon

"No black man will ever be considered for president, no matter how hard you run Jesse [Jackson] and no black woman can ever be considered for anything outside what she can give with her body."

Now the Obama campaign was still over the horizon on January 15th,  2006, when Rev. Wright made those remarks, but Condoleezza Rice had been Secretary of State for nearly a year.  Rev. Wright is apparently a man of invincible ignorance.  No fact has enough power to penetrate the wall of prejudice he has built around himself. 

And then there are these gems: "We are deeply involved in the importing of drugs," which apparently refers to the belief that the U.S. Government intentionally allows heroin and other narcotics into the country in order to weaken Black Americans; and "We started the AIDS virus," which refers to a similar belief, that the U.S. Government created the virus in the laboratory, and then set it loose to kill undesirable populations. 

Now these views are not just stupid and hateful, they are tinfoil hat weird. To be certain, Rev. Wright has every right to believe and say such things.  It may be true, as Professor Schaff suggests, that Rev. Wright is in violation of laws preventing political advocacy on the part of tax exempt churches.  Since I regard such laws as an abomination against free speech, I have no  quarrel with Rev. Wright on that count.  But such views do identify him as a hate monger,  and a person who is about as sober and grounded in reality as your average issue of The National Enquirer.  If you can believe what Rev. Wright believes about drugs and AIDS, a two year old girl giving birth to a two-headed Elvis clone is not much of a stretch. 

I don't believe that a presidential candidate is responsible for everything his or her church has said or done in the past, or for everything his or her pastor has said. But it is not like it never matters.  If John McCain had been attending a church where the preacher regularly dished out hatred for Jews and claimed that AIDS was God's punishment for homosexuality, who believed that Catholics and Jews were in league with communists to poison our water supply, well, McCain would have some explaining to do.  And if the explanation were not pretty good, he would be in serious trouble. 

We really do need to know why Obama kept going back to this Church when it was so abundantly clear what kind of message he would hear.  Is it not possible that he liked that message?

Obama's Minister Of Hate, Part II

I previously wrote here about Barack Obama's "spiritual guide" (Obama's words) Jeremiah Wright. Check out the latest video of Rev. Wright:

What conclusions to draw? 
1. It appears that for Rev. Wright, white people are by their very whiteness his enemies.  Rev. Wright seems to have an essentially racialist view of the world.  This may explain Rev. Wright's friendliness towards Louis Farrakhan, a man who believes white people are the creation of the devil. 
2. I am not an expert in tax law, but if Rev. Wright's church is a tax exempt body, as most churches are, then he cannot advocate the election or defeat of a candidate for office.  He seems very close to doing that here. 
3. Does it not seem odd to say that Barack Obama is a poor, unprivileged man?  A man who went to Harvard as a legacy applicant and who now lives in a multi-million dollar mansion? 
4. We now know in part where Obama gets his demagoguery.  Rev. Wright makes little appeal here to anything other than anger, resentment, and pure emotion.  Obama's demagoguery goes down sweeter, but demagoguery it is. 

Along with his calls for God to damn America rather than bless her, Rev. Wright, who gave the title to Obama's book The Audaciousness of Hope, is a liability to the Obama campaign.  Obama has to cut ties with the Reverend, no matter how painful that is, or it becomes increasingly difficult to present himself as a uniter when his spiritual guide produces so much hate.

See Rod Dreher for more analysis.   

The Creature From the Black Lagoon Dies

Ben Chapman died at the age of 79.  He wore the extraordinary gill-man suit in the Creature from the Black Lagoon.  From the Economist:

THE monsters created by Universal Studios in the first half of the 20th century evolved in a backwards fashion. In the 1920s Homo erectus distorted himself a bit, and took to swinging round church towers or chandeliers as the Phantom of the Opera and the Hunchback of Notre Dame. A decade later his teeth and hair grew longer and his skin more chalky, preparatory to wallowing in human blood in “Dracula” and “Frankenstein”. The 1940s brought a coating of fur (“Wolfman”) or shrouds (“The Mummy”), the humanoid shape regressing to animal or worse. Then, in 1954, a beast who was half-man and half-fish dragged himself out of the sea.

That is better than average monster movie analysis.   There were a total of three movies man about the Gill-Man, as he was called in the movies: The Creature From the Black Lagoon; Revenge of the Creature, and The Creature Walks Among Us.   All three explored the connection between human beings and other predatory animals, without explicitly mentioning the theory evolution.  None of the movies is brilliant, but the first and second are quite good.  The real star of the show is the costume.  It cost a fortune to make, and it was unforgettable.

The creature was the basic celluloid monsters, after the Frankenstein Monster, Dracula, The Mummy, and the Wolf Man.  The Gill-Man never got near as much play on Halloween as the first four, in large part because he had very little personality.  Even the Wolf Man had Lawrence Talbot.  But the movies were a great contribution to monster lore.  Fare well, Mr. Chapman. 

 

From the Mailbag

Reader Darrin Holein writes in:

I take it from Badlands Blue that it is okay to go after someone personally that is running for Senate.  If that is true, cannot we as Republicans go after Johnson’s health? 

If Kirby’s wealth has something to do with his running for office than doesn’t Johnson’s health have something to do with his running for office?  I would argue that Johnson’s health is more serious to his running for office that Kirby’s wealth.

Why is it okay to go after Kirby’s wealth but don’t you dare talk about the wealth of Tom Daschle?  You could say that Kirby inherited his wealth and that he hasn’t worked for it.  So how is that different than Mrs. Daschle getting a great job as a lobbyist?   Both were given that position.  Don’t get me wrong Jason; I have no problem with Daschle’s or Kirby’s wealth.  Just don’t be hypocritical about it Democrats.

Geraldine Ferraro's Kinsley Gaffe

Professor Schaff's excellent post on the Spitzer resignation will suffice for that story.  Let me turn to the other moral drama of the internet day: the Ferraro resignation.  As I follow it, the story is this:

First, Ms. Ferraro was never a part of the Clinton Campaign. 

Second, she is resigning from the Clinton campaign for saying bad things about Barack Obama.

Third, what she said were true and there was nothing wrong with what she said. 

It reminds me of a Russian  joke.  A woman explains why she doesn't have to pay for her neighbor's tea pot.  First, I never borrowed the pot.  Second, when I borrowed it, it was already broken.  Third, when I gave it back, it was in perfect condition. 

Former Congressperson and second fiddle to Walter Mondale Geraldine Ferraro said this (USA Today):

"If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position. And if he was a woman (of any color) he would not be in this position. He happens to be very lucky to be who he is. And the country is caught up in the concept."

There are four assertions there.  Numbers three and four are obviously true.  Number two is highly speculative.  Obama's masculinity is surely one of his assets, but nobody can say whether the right female candidate might not have made up for it.  A Black woman with Obama's intelligence and talent might well have been a more formidable candidate. 

It's number one that forced Ms. Ferraro to resign from a job she didn't have.  Again, it is subject to doubt, but it looks pretty solid.  Would a White Obama have been able to challenge Ms. Clinton?  No.  He would not have commanded the lion's share of the Black vote in so many key states, or forced the Clintons to alienate the Black demographic and so alienate many key Democrats.  Nor would he have attracted the White voters who, for various reasons, want to vote for a Black candidate.   That surely outweighs the voters who went for Ms. Clinton because she was not Black. 

Obama's race is an asset, and he has used it with admirable prudence. He didn't run as a Black candidate, and were it not for the characteristic nastiness of the Clintons, he might have run a largely race-neutral campaign.  That would have been very good for the country.  As it is, the Democratic races is now bogged down in identity politics.  But at the very least, Ms. Ferraro's first assertion was a plausible interpretation of the facts. 

She committed what has come to be known as a "Kinsley Gaffe."  That is when a political figure gets in trouble for blurting out the truth.  It is absurd that she should be forced to resign, even from a position she didn't exactly occupy. The politics of  political correctness is strangling public discourse.  There ought to be some limits on acceptable speech.  That is necessary for civil politics.  But the limits ought to be very broad, especially when it comes to a reasonable interpretation of the facts.  Senator Clinton should have supported her ally.  She could easily have disagreed while giving Ms. Ferraro's leave to express her own opinions. In the long run, it might have served her well.  But it would have required Senator Clinton to think about something other than her own immediate situation.  That is the last thing one would expect from a Clinton. 

Thank Goodness For Hypocrites

The travails of Elliot Spitzer (which now include his resignation) spur Roger Kimball to a consideration of the notion of hypocrisy.  He gives a limited defense of hypocrisy, noting at least the hypocrite defends decency, while not always being decent.  Our modern egalitarianism has little patience with hypocrisy, which is one reason why it holds hypocrisy up as one of the few remaining sins.  It is better to be an honest lout, it is sometimes argued, than a hypocritical nobleman. We value the "authenticity" of the unapologetic vulgarian over the struggle toward holiness of the saint. 

I find myself in large agreement with Mr. Kimball, although I can't help pointing out I made a similar argument almost three years ago.  But then my name is not Roger Kimball so no one really noticed. 

Kimball writes:

[H]ypocrisy is essentially an aristocratic failing. It extols "the best" even if the best is generally unattainable.

This indeed is one reason that hypocrisy, among all the vices, is regarded with particular disdain and horror by egaliatarians. A hypocrite publicly upholds noble values and standards of behavior even though he knows he may sometimes fall short of the conduct they require. He does this because he recognizes that those values are worthy of support and commendation even if he cannot always embody them.

La Rochefoucauld's observation that "hypocrisy is the tribute that vice pays to virtue" will doubtless be trotted out early and often when in the case of Eliot Spitzer and the girls. It is a famous, though often misinterpreted, observation. The epigram has generally been presented as meaning--in the words of one journalist--that "the loudest moralizers may be most suspect." But I believe that La Rochefoucauld meant to suggest that hypocrisy was an implicit acknowledgment of the claims of virtue. Otherwise, why bother with dissimulation?

In his comments, Kimball presents an anecdote regarding German philosopher Max Scheler who apparently had a hard time living up to his own philosophy.  This puts one to mind of the introduction to C.S. Lewis's The Problem of Pain where he explains that he wanted the book published anonymously as all who knew him would easily realize that Lewis himself so poorly practiced that which he preached in the book.  Does this mean that Lewis has nothing to teach us about dealing with the reality of pain and suffering?  Surely not.  It simply proves that Lewis was a human being; flawed but striving for understanding. 

Kimball reminds us of a valuable lesson.  Defending a standard while not living up to it is unfortunate.  Not having any standards is worse. 

New SD Blog

The latest entrant to the South Dakota blogosphere is the South Dakota State Historical Society Press.  Be sure to visit often and spread the word!

Backpedaling on Kirby

SDWC:  "On Badlands Bleu (that’s a cheese joke, not a misspelling) , the Democrats are backpedaling as hard as they can on the Kirby affair. Despite previous braggadocio on knowing who was coming and going at the Kirby residence, and first-hand accounts of people out in front snapping photos, they’re actually trying to say 'well, can we be sure that we really did all of this?'"

It's A Put On?

Apparently playwright David Mamet has become a conservative.  The reasons for his move right ring true, essentially giving up an idealist view of the world for a tragic view.  But am I the only one who reads this piece and finds it a little too good to be true?  Mamet's conversion seems so thorough and his new found conservatism so conventional it sounds like, dare I say it, he's playing a part.  I mean, I like Thomas Sowell, but is Sowell really our "greatest contemporary philosopher" as Mamet claims? 

Mamet just got done writing a play in which two characters, a conservative and liberal, argue out their politics.  Could it be that Mamet, in a brilliant marketing ploy, is playing that conservative character in public?  Maybe.  And if not, Mr. Mamet, we appreciate your mugging by reality. 

When South Dakota Isn't South Dakota

Des Moines Register:

When Los Angeles-based filmmaker Bruce Isacson started scouting locations for his new movie, "South Dakota," he didn't go to Sioux Falls. Or Mount Rushmore. Or even rowdy Sturgis.

Nope, he headed for Earlham, Ia., the quiet little town 30 minutes west of Des Moines.

"After visiting Iowa, I decided it was the perfect South Dakota," he said. "It has everything I envisioned."

The West Coast writer and director, whose production team arrived last week to begin auditioning Iowans for supporting roles, was immediately charmed by Earlham's hospitality and wide-open landscapes during a visit last month.

Isacson is convinced it's the perfect setting for his story about a pair of high school lovebirds who wind up with a surprise pregnancy.

"It's that perfect Midwestern small town that Americans have fantasies about," said Isacson, who grew up in New York City.

But there's another reason he chose to film here: hefty tax incentives. Iowa leaders passed a law last May that offers 50 percent tax credits for films shot in Iowa with budgets of at least $100,000. Half of the credit amount helps producers recoup in-state expenses - hotel rooms, meals, rental vehicles - and the other half benefits the project's original investors.

"When we found out (about the incentives), we almost called twice to make sure," said the movie's production manager, Robert Gibson.

Those incentives make a big difference for the independent project's budget, which is between $2.5 million and $3 million, according to Gibson. The less they spend on taxes, the more they can pour into what audiences see on screen.

Why Criminalize Prostitution

The Elliot Spitzer story has generated some online discussion (for example) as to why we have laws against prostitution in the first place.  Lisa Schiffren has a nice summary as to why we criminalize prostitution, but there are a few related points to add. 

1. There should be a general consensus that the human body is not a thing to turn into a commodity.  Even if the entry into prostitution is consensual on the part of the woman, there are certain things to which we cannot justly consent.  Prostitution is a form of slavery, the only difference being you are renting a person instead of out right buying them.  As this story notes, the line between prostitution and conventional slavery is often very thin. 
2. It takes only the most modest powers of observation to note that most prostitutes are women servicing men.  Why that's the case is another question, but that it is the case is indisputable.  Prostitution lowers the status of women in our society be encouraging the notion that women exist merely for the gratification of male lust. 
3. Every time society weakens the connection between sexuality and marriage the family suffers.  While we do not need to criminalize every sexual act outside of marriage (and we'd be fools to try), because sex often leads to children and society should not be indifferent to the milieu in which children are raised, it should frown on the notion that sex is only an exchange of currency away. 
4. It cheapens the erotic portion of our soul that longs for completion to reduce it to a mere commodity. 

These are not the only reasons to criminalize prostitution, and perhaps no single one of them is a sufficient reason (although I think #1 is).  Most Americans would, all things being equal, prefer to simply let people live their lives and keep government intervention into our lives, particularly our sexual lives, to a minimum.  But taken as a whole, along with the reasons offered by Lisa Schiffren, we can see that this is a case when the good of society trumps individual choice. 

Another Vote For Condi Rice

Hendrik Hertzberg, writing in The New Yorker, makes a case for Condi Rice, whom I all but endorsed weeks ago. 

To deal first with the obvious: Rice may be “only” the second woman and the second African-American to be Secretary of State, but she is indisputably the highest-ranking black female official ever to have served in any branch of the United States government. Her nomination to a constitutional executive office would cost McCain the votes of his party’s hardened racists and incorrigible misogynists. They are surely fewer in number, though, than the people who would like to participate in breaking the glass ceiling of race or gender but, given the choice, would rather do so in a more timid way, and/or without abandoning their party. And with Rice on the ticket the Republicans could attack Clinton or Obama with far less restraint.

By choosing Rice, McCain would shackle himself anew to Bush’s Iraq war. But it’s hard to see how those chains could get much tighter than he has already made them. Rice would fit nicely into McCain’s view of the war as worth fighting but, until Donald Rumsfeld’s exit from the Pentagon, fought clumsily. And it would be fairly easy to establish a story line that would cast Rice as having been less Bush’s enabler than a loyal subordinate who nevertheless pushed gently from within for a more reasonable, more diplomatic approach.

Rice is already fourth in line for the Presidency, and getting bumped up three places would be a shorter leap than any of the three Presidential candidates propose to make. It’s true that her record in office has been one of failure, from downgrading terrorism as a priority before 9/11 to ignoring the Israel-Palestine problem until (almost certainly) too late. But this does not seem to have done much damage to her popularity. In a Washington Post-ABC News poll taken when opposition to the Iraq war was approaching its height, she enjoyed a “favorable-unfavorable” rating of nearly two to one. The conservative rank and file likes her. Though she once described herself as “mildly pro-choice,” she is agile enough to complete the journey to mildly pro-life. And she is a preacher’s daughter.

Choosing Rice would be a trick. Her failures would be buried in an avalanche of positive publicity for a personal story as yet only vaguely known to the broad public. (One of the little girls who died in the 1963 Birmingham church bombing was her playmate? We didn’t know that!) But the trick would not be an entirely cynical one. Her ascension, though nowhere near as momentous a breakthrough as the election of Obama or Clinton, would be a breakthrough all the same. In this connection, a kind word for George W. Bush may be in order. By appointing first Colin Powell and then Rice to the most senior job in the Cabinet, a job of global scope, Bush changed the way millions of white Americans think about black public officials. This may turn out to the most positive legacy of his benighted Presidency.

McGovern on Colbert

Here's the video of George McGovern's appearance on the Colbert Report last night:

Charles Stewart Parnell and Eliot Spitzer

It's a question that has to be asked in this modern age: why are adultery and the purchase of services from a prostitute by an elected official of any concern to the electorate?  Perhaps we should ask Parnell, the "uncrowned King of Ireland," a Protestant of English descent who came close to unifying Ireland in the late 19th century.  But it all came to naught when he unwisely allowed his adulterous affair with Kitty O'Shea to become public knowledge.  Or perhaps we should ask Bill Clinton, who wasted most of his second term as President covering up his own adulterous mischief.  Maybe adultery shouldn't matter in politics, but frequently it does.

As it happens, I heard about New York Governor Eliot Spitzer's dilemma in the steam room at the local YMCA.  A acquaintance sitting next to me recounted the story with some satisfaction.  Spitzer was forced to come before cameras with his wife (that is now days standard procedure), and confess that he has been implicated in a Federal probe of a prostitution ring.  In fact, he was a member of the "Emperor's Club VIP."  Checking into the Mayflower Hotel, he enjoyed the services of at least one very high priced call girl.  My friend in the steam room was a bit gleeful because he is in the finance business, and Spitzer earned national fame by leading high profile prosecutions of "Wall Street gluttony."  My friend thought these prosecutions largely unjustified, and saw the story as a case of self-righteousness exposed. 

I have no strong feelings about Spitzer, though I had the same view of him as my friend did.  I am not particularly interested in or especially offended by the sexual escapades of politicians.  But adultery is a bad thing.  It is destructive of families.  And prostitution is illegal in most places.  Finally, for a Democrat and Governor of New York to be part of something called "The Emperor's Club VIP," is just plain stupid.  This is what corruption looks like. There seems to be some talk of Spitzer resigning. 

Last but not least, the price tag for this lady was upwards to $5,500.  This is a high price to pay for getting screwed. 

McGovern on the Colbert Report

Seth Tupper of the Mitchell Daily Republic has the goods on George McGovern appearing on the Colbert Report tonight.  He also has a video of Tom Daschle's recent appearance Jon Stewart's The Daily Show.

Jarding Promotes "body punching" of Kirby

Rapid City Journal:

On Monday, however, Kirby said the pre-campaign attack had an impact. So did comments on a pro-Johnson Web site that led Kirby to believe his Sioux Falls home was being monitored and possibly photographed.

“You don’t have to wonder whether people are driving by your home, because they’re telling you they are on blogs,” Kirby said. “It was so creepy that I had to ask myself, ‘OK, as a father and a husband should I be protecting my family here or should I run for the U.S. Senate.’” ...

Jarding said Kirby attracted a response from DSCC because he was making serious preparations to run. Kirby should have expected a ‘little bit of body punching.”