South Dakota Politics

SDP Jazz Note: A New Blog for Jazz Collectors

The strength of a blog is also its weakness: no editorial supervision whatsoever.  I know that SDP has a lot of regular readers who are interested in the political issues we cover, but how many are interested in movies, let alone horror movies, and jazz?  I don't have to care.  Readers are certainly free to skip the zombie posts along with the reviews of Thelonious Monk records.  I get paid the same either way. 

But I have created a new blog where I will park all of my jazz posts, past, present, and future, in hopes of attracting more jazz-oriented readers.  You can find it at this address: http://jazznotesdp.blogspot.com/. 

A student of mine who is a talented musician recently asked me to recommend some jazz artists.  He was familiar with names like Miles Davis, John Coltrane, and Bill Evans, and he had heard Kind of Blue.  But he had never heard of Wayne Shorter or Art Pepper.  This got me thinking.  I listened to and loved jazz for a long time before I had any idea how to buy jazz recordings.  As a result, I walked into a jazz record store only a few years ago and came away with three really pedestrian cds, leaving behind some of the most marvelous music ever recorded.  Now I know better, and this new website, along with all my Jazz Note posts, is all about that. 

My strategy for building a jazz collection is what I like to call the "pub crawl" method.  Focus on a single recording or set of recordings, one you like but preferably one that is also recognized to be fundamental to the history of the music, and then use that as a point of orientation.  I began with the four recordings by the Miles Davis Quintet in 1956: Workin', Cookin', Relaxin', and Steamin'.  Each one is brilliant, and together they give you a good foothold in the most important period of jazz. 

Where do you go from there?  Well, the Miles Davis Quintet later became a sextet, with the addition of Cannonball Adderley.  You could look into that.  Then there is the second great quintet in the sixties, with Wayne Shorter replacing Coltrane, and Herbie Hancock on piano.  Another avenue along with to crawl is to follow the work of the various members of the original quintet in the same period.  Coltrane does a lot of brilliant work on his own, and the rhythm section consisting of Red Garland on piano, Paul Chambers on bass, and Philly Joe Jones on drums, produces its own body of work.  Then do the same with the sextet and the second quintet. 

The reason for crawling rather than jumping about is that it allows you to build a coherent map of the music, and thus you can intelligently compare different recordings.  It will also allow you to identify periods in each artist's career that you want to avoid.  During the late sixties and seventies, a lot of brilliant jazz men recorded some atrocious stuff, as most will readily admit.  But that doesn't mean you can't pick more than one artist or combo to use as points of orientation.  As you feel your way along, you will find a number of great recordings, jazz geniuses, and spectacular groups to collect and explore. 

Jazz is one of America's great contributions to world culture.  Even the French like it!  Today it is available to almost anyone who takes an interest in what is brilliant and beautiful. 

Washington Post Blasts Democrats on Trade

And so do I, in the Aberdeen American News.  Typically, the WaPo is a little bit behind my curve.  But here is what they say:

The intellectual poverty of a free-trade deal's opponents

Saturday, April 19, 2008; Page A14

HOUSE SPEAKER Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) says the Bush administration's free-trade agreement with Colombia may not be dead, even though she has postponed a vote on it indefinitely. If the White House doesn't "jam it down the throat of Congress," she said, she might negotiate. Ms. Pelosi wants an "economic agenda that gives some sense of security to American workers and businesses . . . that somebody is looking out for them" -- though she was vague as to what that entails. Nor did she specify how anyone could "jam" through a measure on which the administration has already briefed Congress many, many times.

Still, in the hope that Ms. Pelosi might in fact schedule a vote, it may be worth examining once more the arguments against this tariff-slashing deal. Perhaps we should say "argument," because there is really only one left: namely, that Colombia is "the most dangerous place in the world to be a trade unionist" and that the government of President Álvaro Uribe is to blame. As AFL-CIO President John Sweeney put it in an April 14 Post op-ed, union workers in Colombia "face an implicit death sentence."

Colombia is, indeed, violent -- though homicide has dramatically declined under Mr. Uribe. There were 17,198 murders in 2007. Of the dead, only 39 -- or 0.226 percent -- were even members of trade unions, let alone leaders or activists, according to the Colombian labor movement. (Union members make up just under 2 percent of the Colombian population.)

This hardly suggests a campaign of anti-union terrorism in Colombia. Moreover, the number of trade unionists killed has fallen from a rate of about 200 per year before Mr. Uribe took office in 2002, despite a reported uptick in the past few months. (Arrests have already been made in three of this year's cases, according to Bogota.) And evidence is sparse that all, or even most, of the union dead were killed because of their labor organizing. As Mr. Sweeney and other critics note, precious few cases have been solved, which is hardly surprising given that Colombia's judicial system has been under attack from left-wing guerrillas, drug traffickers and right-wing death squads -- a war, we repeat, that Mr. Uribe has greatly contained. But in cases that have been prosecuted, the victims' union activity or presumed support for guerrillas has been the motive in fewer than half of the killings.

An April 10 letter to the editor from Tom Malinowski of Human Rights Watch suggested that we would not make such arguments "if death squads with ties to the U.S. government were targeting Post reporters for assassination." We like to think that our criticism would be energetic but fair, especially if the government was responding aggressively to such a campaign and the number of killings was declining. No fair-minded person can fail to note that Colombian unionists are far safer today than they used to be.

There are two important countries at the north of South America. One, Colombia, has a democratic government that, with strong support from the Clinton and Bush administrations, has bravely sought to defeat brutal militias of the left and right and to safeguard human rights. The other, Venezuela, has a repressive government that has undermined media freedoms, forcibly nationalized industries, rallied opposition to the United States and, recent evidence suggests, supported terrorist groups inside Colombia. That U.S. unions, human rights groups and now Democrats would focus their criticism and advocacy on the former, to the benefit of the latter, shows how far they have departed from their own declared principles.

When Does A Human Life Begin?

Professor Schaff engages with a reader in his recent post on the question of whether an embryo is in fact a human being.  I join with my colleague on this question.

I presume that those on both sides of this question agree that there are such things as human beings; that human beings have certain inalienable rights; that among these rights are the right to life and liberty.  The right to chose would seem to rest on the latter.  Human beings are mortal creatures, each of whom comes into being and comes to an end, at least in this world. So when does a moral person, a human being with rights, first come to be?

Some defenders of abortion have argued that this happens only with the advent of a recognizable personality.  That occurs somewhere around the first or second year of life.  This solves the problem of abortion, but has the unfortunate consequence that a new born baby isn't a person and therefore can't be murdered.  The argue thus reduces to an absurdity: you or I could just as certainly have been killed when we were one day old as when were were first learning to say "want juice."  No one would have made such a silly argument if there were any way to fix the beginning of personhood at birth or some prior stage of development short of conception.

It is perfectly obvious, in light of modern biology, that an individual human being comes into being at conception.  Consider this question: what color was Sherlock Holmes hair?  I do not remember if Arthur Conan Doyle ever answered that question, but he could have answered it any way he liked because Holmes did not really exist.  I do exist, and so does Professor Schaff and his anonymous interlocutor.  And even if all three of us were died orange or shaved bald, we would still be blond or brunet or what have you because our hair color depends on our genes not on our appearance. Now: when did the question of my hair color first have an answer?  It was at the moment of my conception, when my mother's and father's genes were sorted out to produce a unique cell, with all the genetic information and the machinery to develop into fully functioning adult in time. 

So we have this single cell, back in 1957, about the time that Sputnik was launched.  It existed.  It was genetically distinct from my mom.  No one could say yet what color my eyes or hair would be, but if they had said something, it would have been true or false.  So I was in fact, at that early moment, some kind of being.  And what kind of being?  Not a canine being, or a bovine being, but a human being. 

The question then is whether I had the same rights, at that moment, as any other human being.  My ancient faith teaches me that all human beings are created equal.  That faith is frequently challenged.  It was challenged by Judge Douglas in the Lincoln-Douglas debates.  But I hold to it, as Lincoln did, and so I cannot agree with Professor Schaff's anonymous interlocutor. 

Life: A Discussion

A little over a week ago I wrote a defense of the proposition that human life begins at conception or shortly thereafter.  My argument is essentially that the embryo, even in its early stages, has the genetic make-up of homo sapiens, i.e. a human being, and is therefore justly accorded all rights that come with being a human being (what we often call "human rights"). 

A reader who wishes to remain anonymous has given an intelligent rebuttal.  I present part of it here, edited for length with his permission.

You said:  "I have yet to see the argument that it is not homo sapiens."

Agreed, presuming that there is an "it" in the first place.  But that's precisely the debate:  is it an it?  Meaning, is the fetus sufficiently separate and distinct from its mother to render it a unique individual?  Your conclusion that the fetus is a homo sapien is based upon this premise, but I don't see that it's properly accepted as a premise at all. 

Science cannot tell us when the fetus attains individuality from its mother.  Separate DNA or heartbeat does not necessarily conclude with individuality.  One can just as easily create rationalizations supporting the other side of the debate.  Nor will any future scientific discovery answer the question.  It's more of a social or cultural issue than a scientific one. 

Your conclusion that the fetus is a separate and distinct human being also relies upon another questionable premise:  if a fetus is a human being, then a fertilized egg is a chicken; or an acorn is an oak tree. Right? (snip)

I think it's a cop out to base one's abortion opinions on science.  I wish we could all just cut to the quick, and admit that something much more abstract is at the heart of it -- ethics, morality, individual philosophy, etc.  Science means nothing in the absence of a concensus on definitions.  We need to address the abstract issues first, before the scientific issues mean anything at all.  (snip)

You said:  "This would represent the rejection of the notion that unelected judges should set the abortion code for the nation without any direction from the Constitution or the traditions of the common law."

Any court or judge that has ever upheld a right to abortion has done so because of that court's understanding and interpretation of the 14th Amendment.  So it's just wrong to say that such courts have acted "without any direction from the Constitution."  It's just the opposite.  They have been directed specifically by the Constitution. (snip)

Incidentally, I too support the overruling of Roe, not because I believe the Roe court was "wrong" about the 14th Amend, but because I believe it's a state's rights issue.  Like I was saying earlier, the question of "when does life begin?" is a social or cultural question. The political process is the way we answer those sorts of questions in America.  So, ultimately, I agree with you when you say "Each state can come to its own resolution of the issue and therein respecting the diversity of opinion on the subject."  That's what federalism is all about.

I replied to the commenter on the Roe aspect thusly (edited for grammar):

Of course the Supreme Court is a bit confused as to where there is a right to privacy.  In Griswold, the founding "privacy" case, they couldn't agree whether it was in the Ninth amendment, the 14th amendment or "emanating from the penumbras" of the whole Bill of Rights.  If the Court can't even figure out where a right comes from, that suggests that it isn't really a constitutional right.  In Roe, the court essentially punts on the question of where the right to privacy comes from, arguing that both the 14th Amendment and 9th Amendment arguments have validity. 

One can base anything on the Constitution, one supposes.  But we have the ability to then judge whether that is a credible or incredible basis of argument.  The argument in Roe leans heavily towards the incredible.

Let me add that in interpreting the 14th Amendment (or most everything in the Constitution) one should consider the intention of the authors, the plain meaning of the text, and the history of the common law.  This grounds the Court's in sound judgment rather than capricious will. 

On the other matters, it is precisely my point that separate DNA and the individual potential of the embryo is enough to substantiate its individuality.  The fact that it is dependent means little as babies and those gravely sick are also dependent on others but recognizably humans with rights.  Also, a fertilized egg is a chicken in an early stage, as is the acorn for an oak tree. We give things different names for things in different stages.  We call one thing a caterpillar and another a butterfly, but they are the same being.  We call a young human a baby or a toddler.  We call an older human an adult or even elderly.  But they are all human.  Finally, it wasn't my argument that we should use science to define humanity, it was Bob Schwartz's, albeit somewhat in jest. This is why I framed the original post by writing, "I will leave aside the notion that we should leave it to the scientists to determine what it means to be human (so much for the humanities) and consider this conundrum on Mr. Schwartz's own grounds."

Dame Fortuna has smiled on us and given us this Peter Lawler essay today on precisely this subject.  Give it a read.

I commend this emailer for a smart reply. 

 

Because I Can

Canadian band Arrogant Worms:

The Party of No Policy

Here is one description of tonight's debate between Senators Obama and Clinton, by Reid Wilson at Politics Nation:

PHILADELPHIA, Pennsylvania -- For two candidates who profess to be most concerned with bringing their country and their party together, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton spent more time at last night's debate raising issues that divide the Democratic electorate than those that unite them. Last night's encounter, which marks nearly two dozen times the two have shared a stage, focused more on political questions than policy discussions, an indication, perhaps, that the intended audience was not Pennsylvania voters but rather the several hundred super delegates who have yet to publicly endorse a candidate.

Barack Obama & The Deathly Hallows

Professor Schaff posts on a current analysis of the electoral college, which appears to favor McCain over Obama.  This will please Republicans given to wishful thinking.  Something else that will please them is John Judis' article in The New Republic. 

To win in November, a Democratic presidential candidate has to carry most of the industrial heartland states that stretch from Pennsylvania to Missouri. That becomes even more imperative if a Democrat can't carry Florida--and because of his relative weakness in South Florida, Obama is unlikely to do so against McCain. Ruy Teixeira and I have calculated that in the heartland states, a Democratic presidential candidate has to win from 45 to 48 percent of the white working class vote. In some states, like West Virginia and Kentucky, the percentage is well over a majority.

Some Democrats insist that Obama need not worry about these states because he will be able to make up for a defeat in Ohio or even Pennsylvania with a victory in Virginia or Colorado. But in Virginia, McCain will be able to draw upon coastal suburbanites closely tied to the military. These voters backed Democrats like Chuck Robb and Jim Webb, who are both veterans, but they may not go for Obama. And in the Southwest, McCain will be able to challenge Obama among Hispanics. So to win in November, Obama will have to win almost all of these heartland states. Which is a problem, because even before he uttered his infamous words about these voters "clinging" to guns, religion, abortion, and fears about free trade, Obama looked vulnerable in the region.

It is a standard product warning on any electoral analysis done before the summer conventions that all of this may change at any moment.  Political analysts are very prone to predicting the results of previous elections instead of the one they are trying to game.  But it's not clear that everything has changed in recent years, and past trends do show some ominous signs for Obama.

Like or not, Obama is certainly a very liberal candidate coming out of a very radical social environment.  It is frequently said that he presents himself as a moderate, but I don't think that is true.  Up until now he has presented himself as a change agent, a breath of fresh air.  That has worked very well against a Clinton, of whom we have all see plenty.  It would work equally well against George W., if he were running for a third term.  But of course he ain't because he cain't. 

John Kerry had a shot against George W. in 2004 largely because of his war record.  That explains his bouncing up to the stage and reporting for duty.  But Kerry's war record had a flip side with a lot of long hair rock and roll on it.  Being anti-war is perfectly respectable, but it's not the same thing as being for something, and Kerry could never tell us what he was for.  Kerry couldn't win Ohio, or Florida, and so he couldn't win. 

Obama can't even carry a majority of the Democrats in those two states or, one expects, in Pennsylvania. Can he carry them against McCain, a war hero with no baggage?  Yes, if McCain collapses.  If his age or something else becomes a crippling issue, then Obama wins.  If McCain is as strong or stronger in November than he is now, if he continues to appeal to independents, I am not sure how Obama wins. 

McCain The Favorite?

Richard Baeher argues that the electoral college map favors John McCain, especially versus Barack Obama:

Barack Obama is a far weaker candidate in many of these targeted states, but in particular in Ohio, Florida., Missouri, Arkansas, and West Virginia. McCain takes Arizona off the table against either nominee. Obama is polling better than Clinton in the competitive southwestern states and Iowa, as well as in Oregon, but trails badly in Virginia, which has elected a string of Democrats in recent years to statewide office. Some Democratic Party officials have written off Florida if Obama is the nominee (in some surveys he trails in the state by 10% or more, though he only trails by 4% in the Rasmussen survey). The Rasmussen survey shows McCain with a 7% lead over Obama in Ohio. Obama lost badly in that state's Democratic primary (by 10% to Clinton) winning only 5 of 88 counties. Now having insulted rural voters for their attachment to guns and God, the state has become even less friendly turf for him.

The Electoral math looks this way: if Florida and Ohio are safe for McCain, and Virginia and Missouri are too, as they now all appear to be, then McCain has a base of 260 Electoral College votes of the 270 he needs to win. He would need to only win 10 from among the states Bush won last time that are in play this year: Colorado (currently tied), New Mexico (3 point Obama lead), Iowa (4 point Obama lead) and Nevada (4 point Obama lead), and several tempting blue states in which McCain is currently competitive: Michigan (18), Pennsylvania (21), New Jersey (15) Wisconsin (10), Minnesota (10), Oregon (7), and New Hampshire (4), among them.

Hillary Clinton may be on to something when she argues that she is the stronger candidate in November for her party.

Unfortunately, to increase his popularity John McCain is advocating silly policy, namely a moratorium on the collection of the federal gas tax.  This policy is merely a salve, making us feel better but not getting at the underlying cause of high fuel prices, namely the shortage of supply coupled with an increase in demand.  All McCain's policy will do is cause a shortfall in the federal highway fund while making no headway toward a sensible long term energy policy. 

Common Sense from the Left on Environmental Policy

Yes, you read that right.  The political left, and especially the British Left, seems to be grasping an inconvenient truth: that a lot of "green" policies are hurting the poor around the world.  Consider this by Simon Jenkins in The Guardian:

The consequences of [the government's Renewable Transport Fuel Obligation (RTFO)]  have been much trumpeted on these pages. It says enough that one car tank of bio petrol needs as much grain as it takes to feed an African for a year, or that a reported one-third of American grain production is now subsidised for conversion into biofuel. Jeremy Paxman pleaded the cause of this latest green wheeze on Monday's Newsnight, while the United Nations food expert, Jean Ziegler, screamed for it to stop: "Children are dying ... It is a crime."

The transport secretary, Ruth Kelly, said this week: "The government has consistently stressed that biofuels are only worth supporting if they deliver genuine environmental benefits." Yet she must know that, at present, the opposite is the case. Kelly pleaded that rescinding her policy might impede investment and "weaken our influence over the direction of EU policy". She did not mention biofuels' threat to rainforests, food self-sufficiency and global warming generally, through needing costly fertiliser and road transport. Nor did she mention the role in her decision of such lobbies as the British Association for Biofuels and Oils, and the National Farmers' Union.

Just in case you missed this part, let me repeat it: One car tank of bio petrol needs as much grain as it takes to feed an African for a year. It is very likely that biofuel production is already resulting in starvation in parts of the world.  And on top of that, it's bad for the environment.   Here's a helpful chart:

How's that for green policy!

And then there is this piece from Guernica:

In the spring of 2003 about 8,000 tribal people and low-caste farmers living in the Kuno area of Madhya Pradesh, India, were summarily uprooted from the rich farmlands they had cultivated for generations and moved to 24 villages on scrub land outside the borders of a sanctuary created for a pride of six imported Asiatic lions. “I’ll never forget when we left,” recalled village headman Babulal Gaur. “Even the men cried that day. Is it fair to do this to 1,600 families for a few lions?”

By then almost 500 villages occupied by a total of 300,000 families around India had experienced similar forced relocation to protect the habitat of tigers, rhinos and Asiatic lions residing in the 580 national parks and sanctuaries that have been created in India since the colonial period.

Now I like lions as much as the next guy.  But this kind of policy turns on capricious and manifestly false principle: that human beings are not part of the natural environment.  When a people has lived for centuries on a piece of land, they are as much a part of the biosystem as any of its flora and fauna, and have as much right to respect.  That doesn't mean that all habitats should be open to human dwellings, hunting, etc.  But moving 8,000 is a high cost for the fanciful idea of a pristine environment. 

Moreover, as with biofuels, there are powerful interests behind some of the policies that have nothing to do with tigers. 

While the alleged purpose of the evictions was wildlife conservation, teak and eucalyptus plantations eventually replaced more than 40 of the evacuated hamlets. As it has in Botswana, Kenya and elsewhere, conservation in India has become a convenient and respectable cover for less savory motives when the very same national government that removes native people from their land in the name of conservation has no compunctions about giving up ecologically sensitive areas to large-scale development projects.

The fig leaf of conservation was eventually spread to cover a World Bank-funded eco-tourism lodge proposed by the Taj Hotel Group. In December of 1996 Adivasis filed for an injunction with the Indian High Court and called for a general strike in the Nagar Hole to stop the Taj project. A month later the High Court found the Taj Group in violation of conservation laws, a ruling that was upheld on appeal. The half-finished, abandoned structures of the Taj in the Nagar Hole represent one of the very few Adivasi victories anywhere in India.

In The Outlaw Josey Wales, Chief Dan George's character, Lone Waite, describes the fate of his people this way: "They called us the civilized tribe.  That means that we were easy to sneak up on."  Apparently, "indigenous people" means much the same thing. 

South Dakota Poll: A Bit Premature?

The poll showing Barack Obama with a twelve point lead in South Dakota may have been a bit premature.  A couple things to note.  First, this poll was done before the "clinging to religion" controversy.  Time will tell if that effects voters here in South Dakota.  Second, when one looks at the methodology, the poll is based on a sample size of only 267 South Dakotans.  That's not awful, but it is a fairly small sample size, which explains the six-point margin of error.  The methodology does not tells us whether they screened for likely voters.

Barack Obama won the North Dakota caucuses, so it is reasonable to conclude he is favored in South Dakota.  But one should not put too much stock in this one poll. 

South Dakota Obama Campaign Says "bitter" Comment "essentially" Accurate

Argus Leader excerpt:

Since [the poll was taken], Obama has had to explain comments he made at a San Francisco fundraiser in which he characterized rural voters as "bitter" because of economic distress. Those people, he said, "cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment." Both Clinton and the presumptive Republican nominee, Arizona Sen. John McCain, have attacked Obama for the remarks.

"If everything is still in play on June 3, and Hillary Clinton comes here, she might be able to use those comments about guns and religion to her advantage," Simmons said.

Obama apologized for the remarks and said he could have chosen his words more carefully. Nathan Peterson, Obama's state director in South Dakota, said the "essence" of those remarks were accurate.

"I think many South Dakota voters understand that Washington has left them behind," he said. Peterson predicted that Clinton would suffer for trying to use the words to her advantage.

The Consequences of a Too-Rapid Withdrawal from Iraq

A must-watch video from Austin Bay, via Instapundit.

Meanwhile, Ed Morrissey writes:

Once again, the American media got caught with its pants down and their, er, aspirations showing. They wanted the military operation to represent a breakdown of the government so badly that they reported it as a defeat even as the Iraqi Army adapted and prevailed against the militia members. They still have yet to acknowledge that the Basra and Umm Qasr operations have largely met their goals, and have driven Moqtada al-Sadr even further outside the political arena.

John McCain is a Cylon!

One of the characters on SciFi's Battlestar Galactica, Col. Saul Tigh, has recently discovered that he is a Cylon, a "skin job" or biological counterfeit of a human being.  Here he is:

I think he looks disturbingly like John McCain.  Of course, if you are following BSG, you know that that is not necessarily a bad thing.  With McCain as President, the Cylons will probably have to call off the attack. 

Violent Video Games and the First Amendment

Sibby has a piece on the recent 8th Circuit Court of Appeals case, Entertainment Software Association v. Minnesota.  Doug Wiken backs Sibby up (one of the seventy signs of the apocalypse).  Both are reacting to a post by Phyllis Schlafly. 

Minnesota passed a law imposed a $25 fine on minors under 17 renting video games rated "M" or "AO", i.e., adults only.  A district court issued an injunction in 2006, and the 8th Circuit has now affirmed that injunction.  The Court held that video games are protected speech, even for children.  Therefore the State must show a compelling interest in the act, and show that the act was narrowly tailored to achieve that interest (i.e., did the least that it could have done).  Says the Court:

Whatever our intuitive (dare we say commonsense) feelings regarding the effect
that the extreme violence portrayed in the above-described video games may well
have upon the psychological well-being of minors, Interactive Video requires us to
hold that, having failed to come forth with incontrovertible proof of a causal
relationship between the exposure to such violence and subsequent psychological
dysfunction, the State has not satisfied its evidentiary burden. The requirement of
such a high level of proof may reflect a refined estrangement from reality, but apply
it we must.

Schlafly et. al. above object that there is plenty of evidence to show that violent video games are harmful to minors.  But of course, it is hard to come up with "incontrovertible proof" of anything. 

I confess that I have no opinion on the harmful effects of video games, but I am skeptical.  Having grown up watching thousands of Nazis dispatched in World War II movies, and various bad guys done in by the Lone Ranger's silver bullets, I have never come close to shooting anyone.  I grant that the violence in video games is much more graphic and real than anything I saw as a child, and that there is a danger here.  When I first fired a rifle, I was profoundly shocked by the sound and sensation of it.  Someone playing video games on a computer with a good sub woofer might be better prepared to make the jump to real violence.  Perhaps these games do "desensitize" the player, but I am doubtful that this is a major social problem.

On the other hand, I think the Court was altogether wrong to block the Minnesota law.  Video games are not the kind of expressive acts that First Amendment protections were designed for, or at least not in the case of minors.  They are examples of a kind of commerce that legislatures should be allowed to make judgment calls about. States allow adults to purchase and consume alcoholic beverages, but not persons under 21.  Why 21 and not 20 or 22?  States make similar decisions regarding tobacco and pornography.  Those are judgment calls, and they are what legislatures, and not courts, should be all about.

This is not to say that minors enjoy no first amendment protection.  But religious and political speech, art and poetry, are one kind of thing; Postal 2: Apocalypse Weekend is something else.   

In this case that the burden of proof should go the other way.  ESA should be required to show that their games are harmless to minors.  If they could meet that very high standard, then the law would be revealed to have no rational basis.  Otherwise, the Court should defer to the legislature.  I disagree with Schlafly and my blogosphere colleagues in so far as I think the harmfulness of the video games should not be a judicial question.  But then I am a judicial minimalist.  I think courts should avoid judgment calls on matters like this. 

McCain: Conservative or Moderate?

Here is an article that attempts to challenge the notion that John McCain is a political moderate.  Evidence?  His positions on abortion, same-sex marriage, and guns.  Apparently McCain is pretty bitter and clinging.  While many commentators have opined that McCain's problem is tying down his party's conservative base, this article claims that it is McCain's conservatism that may be his downfall. 

I have defended McCain's conservative credentials here.  My conclusion: McCain adopts many conservative positions while he himself is not conservative by disposition.  For conservatives, I suggest, that should be enough.  This is especially true when the conservative party, the Republican party, is not politically popular. 

Yet McCain's voting record suggests a degree of moderation, as moderation is commonly defined.  Based on his lifetime ACU rating, McCain was the 39th most conservative Senator serving in 2006.  That is approaching the middle.  Look at this Wikipedia entry.  McCain has a moderate record based on various ratings. 

• National Journal's studies of roll-call votes through 2006 assigned McCain a lifetime rating of 72 in the political spectrum, relative to the then-current Senate, with a rating of 1 being most liberal and 100 being most conservative.^[129] (McCain did not receive a National Journal ranking in 2007 due to missing too many votes because of campaigning.^[130])

• A 2004 analysis by political scientists Joshua D. Clinton of Princeton University, Doug Rivers of Stanford University, and Simon Jackman found McCain to be likely the 51st-most liberal Senator.^[131]

• The Almanac of American Politics, edited by Michael Barone and Richard E. Cohen, rates votes as liberal or conservative, with 100 as the highest rating, in three policy areas: Economic, Social, and Foreign. For 2006, McCain's ratings are: Economic = 64 percent conservative, 35 percent liberal (2005: 52 percent conservative, 47 percent liberal);^[132] Social = 46 percent conservative, 53 percent liberal (2005: 64 percent conservative, 23 percent liberal);^[132] Foreign = 58 percent conservative, 40 percent liberal (2005: 54 percent conservative, 45 percent liberal)^[132]

By most measures, McCain is a moderate with definite conservative leanings.  By contrast, Barack Obama has famously been ranked by National Journal as the most liberal member of the U.S. Senate. 

Here is a question. Tim Johnson and Stephanie Herseth-Sandlin pride themselves on their bi-partisan and moderate credentials.  So why are they endorsing the most liberal man in the U.S. Senate over someone whose moderate credentials are quite solid?  The only explanation is partisanship.  Now, party loyalty is an important value.  But is this how they will act if Obama becomes president?  Will they value partisanship over the moderation they are so proud of? 

New York Times is Bitter About Italy

Here is their headline on the Italian elections:

Economy Ailing, Frustrated Italy Picks Berlusconi

Well, it's nice to know why the Italians made such an obviously irrational choice as to put a "center-right" coalition back into power.  I supposed those bitter Italians were clinging to this "idiosyncratic billionaire," thus allowing him to "snatch" back power. 

But with a weak economy and frustration high that Italy has lost ground to the rest of Europe, it was unclear whether Italians voted for Mr. Berlusconi out of affection or, as many experts said, as the least bad choice after the nation weathered two years of inaction from the fractured center-left.

Still, Italy now returns to a singular sort of personal politics with Mr. Berlusconi as the unquestioned protagonist.

Rejecting the sober responsibility of the departing prime minister, Romano Prodi, Italians chose in a moment of national self-doubt a man whose dramas — the clowning and corruption scandals, his rocky relations with his wife and political partners, his growing hairline and ever browner hair — play out very much in public.

The "sober responsibility of the departing prime minister."  This isn't a news story.  It's venting. 

So what has the New York Times so irritated?  Well, it turns out that the bitter Italians are clinging to the idea of a less leftist political system, one more like the U.S. 

But in some basic ways, the election signaled a decisive shift in a nation whose politics have been unstable because of the narrow interests of its many small parties. Mr. Veltroni, heading the new Democratic Party, the result of a merger of the two largest center-left parties, had refused to run with far-left parties, as Mr. Prodi had done.

As a result, the ANSA news agency reported that the number of parties in the lower house of Parliament, the Chamber of Deputies, would drop to just 6 from 26. For the first time since World War II, there will be no one in Parliament representing the Communist Party, which has long played an important part in leftist politics here. Mr. Veltroni, in fact, started his political career as a Communist.

Experts on the left and the right said — and in some cases lamented — that the election had shown a shift toward a more American- or British-style system of two dominant middle-ground parties.

Well, now that is depressing.  No wonder the Times is bitter. 

Chris Matthews: Thune For VP

Chris Matthews calls the McCain VP race for John Thune:

Chris Matthews has made his call -- John Thune, a freshman senator from South Dakota, will be John McCain's running mate on the Republican presidential ticket.

Matthews informed the world -- as well as Thune himself -- of his prediction while the MSNBC commentator interviewed the senator a few minutes before President Bush delivered his latest comments on the war in Iraq.

Thune firmly established himself as a comer within the GOP when he knocked off then-Senate minority leader Tom Daschle in 2004. Telegenic and relatively youthful (he was born in 1961, just like Barack Obama, another member of the Senate's '04 class), Thune almost assuredly is on the working list that McCain recently revealed he's put together of vice presidential possibilities.

In other Thune news, the Senator is working to increase funding for law enforcement on the reservations:

In U.S. Senate action, an amendment to the 2009 federal budget by Sen. John Thune seeks an additional $200 million over the next five years to be spent on improving public safety on America’s reservations.

Those dollars include $25 million per year for tribal law enforcement, tribal court systems and tribal detention centers, plus $15 million a year for extra U.S. Attorneys to prosecute crimes on reservations.

Bored Press II

Here I described the effects of a bored press, namely the hyping of minor stories about presidential candidates. Here is a good example from a Clinton event apparently gone bad:

Hillary Clinton was forced to cut her normal stump speech short when a chatty and meddlesome crowd kept her from grasping their attention. Clinton, who was addressing the Philadelphia County Democratic Party's Jefferson-Jackson Dinner, spoke for just over five minutes, despite having the press arrive almost two hours beforehand. (snip)

Whether or not Clinton’s reception at the dinner had anything to do with her recent attacks on Barack Obama remains unclear. 

Let us ponder the sentence, "Whether or not Clinton’s reception at the dinner had anything to do with her recent attacks on Barack Obama remains unclear."  What this reporter is saying, in a news story mind you, is that there really is no evidence that there is a connection between this poor reception of Clinton and anything she might have said about Obama.  Yet he feels compelled to invent conflict where there is no evidence for it.  By even raising the issue he implies, absent any evidence, that there actually is reason to think that these two phenomena may be connected.  Why does he do this?  I guess that's what sells newspapers, or rather what generates internet hits. 

Obama: Immanentize The Eschaton.

Lots of commentary on the Barack Obama "rural people cling to religion and guns" comments in San Francisco.  You can see commentary from Rod Dreher, Tom Daschle (via Denise Ross), Mickey Kaus, Jay Reding and our own Ken Blanchard.  These are all good.  Give them a read. 

Much of the commentary has referred to Thomas Frank's book What's The Matter With Kansas.  For a solid review of that book, see James Nuechterlein.  The essential error with Frank's book, from Neuchterlein's point of view, is that it is stuck in the 1930s when economic issues dominated everything.  Frank, and by extension Obama, cannot believe that middle and lower class rural folks might actually put their cultural conservatism ahead of their economic interests (assuming voting Democrat is in their interest). 

Obama seems to believe that people turn to cultural issues not because there is a good argument that those issues are actually the most important issues.  Not because people have actual reasons for holding culturally conservative views.  No, they are simply angry, i.e., irrational.  They are trapped in a kind of Marxist false consciousness where the capitalist elite have propagated the ideologies of religion, race and xenophobia to destroy the class consciousness that would otherwise prevail.  It was wrong when Marx made this claim, and it is still wrong when Barack Obama makes it. 

Michael Young notes Obama's attempt at damage control in Indiana.  Here is what Obama said:

People don't vote on economic issues because they don't expect anybody is going to help them. So people end up voting on issues like guns and are they going to have the right to bear arms. They vote on issues like gay marriage. They take refuge in their faith and their community, and their family, and the things they can count on. But they don't believe they can count on Washington.

"But they don't believe they can count on Washington."  This is of a piece with what we know about Obama's church and his publicly stated desire to create "a kingdom of heaven on earth."   Obama's religion is of a decidedly worldly sort.  The problem, as it seems Obama diagnoses it, is that people have an inadequate faith in the power of the state to do good.  If they just put their faith in men like Barack Obama, and the power of the government, he will then lead us to a promised land where justice and right prevail.  As Lisa Schifferen intimates, Obama's own religion seems to have little to do with a personal conversion and freedom from sin and more to do with converting society and freeing us all from social sin.  Yes, Obama wants to immamentize the eschaton.

See Barack Obama counter the charges of "elitism."  He is good.  Very good. 

SDP Jazz Note: Greg Abate Coming to Rapid City

My friend Ken Laster, whose In The Groove: Jazz and Beyond is the best jazz podcast available, tips me off that Greg Abate will be appearing at The Elks in Rapid City on May 16th and 17th.  As fate would have it, I will be in New Orleans at that time.  This is a personal tragedy.  I would certainly have made the trip to see that show. 

Abate (saxophone and flute) is a modern apostle of hard bop jazz.  His CD Monsters in the Night presents a marvelous set of compositions, and some very fine playing.  You can get the CD at the link above.  If you are in the area and like good jazz, don't miss it.   

Obama's View of Small Town America II

My Keloland colleague Cory Heidelberger has a mostly reasonable defense of Barack Obama's recent incendiary comment about bitter, small town Americans.  But I think Cory sort of misses the point of the criticisms.  Mickey Kaus has identified Obama's comments as a "Category II Kensley Gaff."  A KG (first classified by Michael Kinsley) is when a politician makes the mistake of saying something that is true, but unpopular.  A Category II KG is when a politician makes the mistake of saying what he thinks, regardless of whether it is true or not.  I concur with Kaus's diagnosis. 

There are two questions here.  The first is whether Obama's comments were true.  Cory has this:

There's no hicks-and-rubes talk there, just an honest assessment of why some people feel and vote the way they do. As was the case in his March 18 speech on racism and Reverend Wright, Obama once again demonstrated his ability to see how a lot of our politics has its roots in economic issues.

Cory is surely right that a lot of politics has its roots in economic issues.  But it is a very tangled plant growing from those roots.  I would be interested to see a correlation demonstrated between small town economic problems and religion, gun ownership, anti-immigration and anti-trade sentiment.  The fastest growing neighborhoods in America are the exurbs, mall-centered communities detached from urban centers.  Churches are doing very well in these places, and I am guessing that Cabela's does a lot of business there. And I suspect that the folks who run the risk of hunting with Dick Cheney aren't really bitter about their economic prospects. 

The bigger problem with Obama's comment, taken as a serious analysis of political and economic facts, is the idea that small towns have been neglected and that, if only the elites had paid attention, the prospects of small towns would have been better.  Does any reasonable person think that if Obama is elected President that Groton and Ipswich will suddenly start to grow again?  A lot of small towns in America have economic trends going against them, but the biggest problem is very simple: the people living in them aren't having very many babies.  If Obama can fix that, I'll vote for him.

The second question is whether Obama's gaff tells us what he really thinks about small town people.  Given Obama's twenty year relationship with a man who preaches that America is the great Satan, his wife's dismal view of America, and now his view of small town Americans as clinging to religion, to guns, to prejudice, to anti-immigrant sentiment and anti-trade sentiment, I think we have a pretty good idea what Obama thinks about most of America.  Cory was right to call Obama's comments "honest."  That is precisely the problem.

And it seems pretty clear that Cory agrees with Obama. 

The plutocrats and their fundagelical tools would love nothing more than for this and every election to be about nothing more than guns, gays, and religion. As a fanciful tangent, let's imagine what would happen if we gave the Radical Rich Right its fondest wishes and then some. Instead of an economic stimulus package, have the federal government send every American a handgun and an assault rifle. Deport every homosexual. Require everyone to go to church. We could do all that, and we'd still be in a recession. We'd still have a trade deficit. We'd still have stagnant wages. We'd still have corporate welfare. Another gun in my house and fewer gays down the street won't help pay the bills.

This is what we call demonizing the opposition. The other side doesn't disagree with Cory because they are wrong, they disagree because they are wicked people.  The views described above are sheer fantasy.  They have nothing to do with any party or organized group in American politics.  Small wonder that Obama's association with Reverend Wright doesn't bother Cory. 

 

Daschle the Lobbyist

Wall Street Journal: "Barack Obama, He-Who-Does-Not-Take-Corporate-PAC-Money, is similarly conflicted. When former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle isn't recruiting superdelegates for the Illinois senator, he's advising lobbying giant Alston & Bird, with its long list of pharma and financial clients."

Obama and Rural America

Just to add one other thought to what my colleagues have already touched on below regarding Barack Obama's statement on small town Americans: what does Stephanie Herseth-Sandlin think of Obama's bashing of small towns?

Meanwhile, historian Victor Davis Hanson sees the McGovernization of Obama.

UPDATE:  A helpful photo essay.

Religion, Science, And The Problem Of Islam

Some time ago Doug Wiken passed along this article to me on science and the Islamic world.  I commend it to your attention.  The author, Pervez Hoodbhoy, himself a Pakistani scientist, documents the lack of scientific output from Muslim nations and then seeks to explain this phenomenon. 

There was a time, granted it was the Middle Ages, when Muslim peoples were at the forefront of scientific achievement.  What happened?  See Prof. Blanchard's post below for part of the answer.  See also Bernard Lewis's What Went Wrong.  Hootbhoy himself lays some of the blame on a backwards looking Islam that, one might say, seeks to merely protect the past and consolidate gains rather than promote scientific progress:

Science, in the view of fundamentalists, is principally seen as valuable for establishing yet more proofs of God, proving the truth of Islam and the Qur'an, and showing that modern science would have been impossible but for Muslim discoveries. Antiquity alone seems to matter. One gets the impression that history's clock broke down somewhere during the 14th century and that plans for repair are, at best, vague. In that all-too-prevalent view, science is not about critical thought and awareness, creative uncertainties, or ceaseless explorations. Missing are websites or discussion groups dealing with the philosophical implications from the Islamic point of view of the theory of relativity, quantum mechanics, chaos theory, superstrings, stem cells, and other contemporary science issues.

Hoodbhoy goes further.  It isn't just fundamentalist Islam that is at war with science, but religion of all kinds. 

Science finds every soil barren in which miracles are taken literally and seriously and revelation is considered to provide authentic knowledge of the physical world. (snip)

Just as important, the practice of religion must be a matter of choice for the individual, not enforced by the state. This leaves secular humanism, based on common sense and the principles of logic and reason, as our only reasonable choice for governance and progress. Being scientists, we understand this easily. The task is to persuade those who do not.

Hoodbhoy seems entirely ignorant of the role the Church historically played in developing the university and promoting the preservation and creation of knowledge (Gregor Mendel anyone?).  It is the very preservation of knowledge that allows scientific knowledge to increase, as Prof. Blanchard notes.  Understanding of the natural world necessitates a sequential increase of knowledge that builds over time.  Universities founded by the Church played an indispensable role in this mission. On a more contemporary note one may encounter a defense of reason in John Paul II's encyclical Fides et Ratio and in Benedict XVI's controversial Regensburg lecture.  What made the latter piece controversial was precisely its critique of fundamentalist Islam's antipathy to human reason. 

If there is a problem with Islam in its more vocally radical forms is its violent rejection of modernity.  Christianity in its various forms may have critiques of modernity and offer itself at times as an alternative to a thoroughgoing modernism, but even in its fundamentalist forms it is not ultimately or violently at odds with the modern world. Rejection of Darwinism does not necessarily mean the total rejection of science.  Even the most medieval of churches, the Catholic Church, has long made its peace, if sometimes an uneasy one, with the modern world.  Western Civilization, as it exists today, is produced by the meeting of Christendom and Enlightenment. 

While Christianity may have its critiques of modernity, fundamentalist Islam often defines itself in its opposition to the modern world and the Western Civilization which is defined (to a significant degree) by that modernity.  The Islamic fundamentalists do not merely wish to critique modernity or point out the short comings of modern science, they wish to supplant it, by force if necessary, with a particular form of Islam.   They believe the material success of the infidel West is an offense to Allah, and therefore they reject all that makes the West successful: its culture, its politics and its science. 

Patrick Deneen is on to something when he points to Catholicism as a kind of "middle way."  One need not buy Catholic theology to understand the wisdom of what Deneen teaches.

Catholicism represents the "middle way" between these two extremes [of rationalism and deconstructionism], holding that culture, language, history, tradition, law, interpretation, community, discourse, and finally, politics is the medium of human knowing - but holding simultaneously that there is something to be known. We "see through a glass darkly," but there is something to be seen, even if we can't be positive of its precise outlines and exact dimensions. Mediation is the means to truth and knowledge, not its obstacle, on the one hand, or all that there is, on the other. It is, finally, a sacramental vision, holding that through earthly and corporeal media we gain an access - if indirectly and still imperfectly - of the Divine. This indirectness and imperfection does not result in the call to deconstruct, but to ascend. Ritual and liturgy are ways we enact that ascent in our daily lives.

There is no reason why science, as an "earthly and corporeal media," cannot play a role in the understanding of the world.  I have yet to meet the Christian who thinks otherwise, although I am sure they exist.  Yet, as I continue to argue, science has its limits.  Science can teach me how things work, but it cannot teach me what it good.  Science can tell me what I am made out of, but it cannot tell me who I am.   For these answers I will go to the philosophers, the poets and the theologians. 

Barack Obama: Kind To Gun Owners, Religious People, And Other Dumb Animals

More fallout from Obama's remarks about rural Pennsylvania (note, in my previous post I said that these words were uttered in Pennsylvania.  Nope.  Obama was in San Francisco talking about Pennsylvania).  Here's Mickey Kaus. 

I used to think working class voters had conservative values because they were bitter about their economic circumstances--welfare and immigrants were "scapegoats," part of the false consciousness that would disappear when everyone was guaranteed a good job at good wages. Then I left college. ..

Stinging words from John Podhoretz:

Obama’s astonishing sentence offers a syllogistic string of superciliousness: Gun ownership is equated with religious fanaticism, which is said to accompany hatred of the other in the form of opposition to  immigration and support for trade barriers. It drips with an attitude  so important to the spiritual well-being of the American liberal — the paternalistic attitude that says, “Oh, well, people only do thing differently from me because they are ignorant and superstitious and backward” — that it has survived and thrived  despite the suicidal impact it has had on the achievement of liberal political goals and aims.

But perhaps the winner for best take on this story is a commenter on Tom Maguire's site:
HALP US BROK O'BOMBA-- WE R STUCK HEAR N ALTOONA.

What is Science?

On Thursday I posted a comment in response to a response to a response by Professor Schaff.  The general question was the intellectual and moral authority of science.  One of the non-obvious questions raised by this exchange is what we mean by "science." 

Tonight I happened to listen to a podcast of The Philosopher's Zone, an ABC (that's Australian Broadcast Corporation) production.  The topic was the emergence of science.  The host, Alan Saunders, interviewed Stephen Gaukroger, who has written a book on the history of science.  The interview is in two parts, and I have only listened to the first, but I highly recommend it.  You can download the audio at this web address.  The Philosopher's Zone is by far the best podcast on philosophy that I have found.  Every single episode is good. 

In part one this question was raised: "why did the great scientific revolution occur in the West and not in China or the Arab-Islamic world?"  But first Gaukroger had to explain what it meant to say that it arose here and not there.  Rational investigation into nature certainly occurred in other parts of the world.  The ancient Greeks and the ancient Chinese knew the world was round.  The Medieval Islamic scholars were, for a considerable time, more advanced in science than their smelly European counterparts.  What was different about the West?

Gaukroger put it this way: in those other parts of the world, scientific questions arose, were dealt with, and then the inquiry stopped.  That is what happens when science is primarily a way to solve practical problems.  In Europe, in the thirteenth century, a tradition began of cumulative research.  Each generation of scientists built on the work of previous generations, and the process kept going.  It was not at any point a practical enterprise.  Only recently did Western science actually begin producing useful things.  It was motivated by a desire to understand things as they are. 

That tradition is what we mean by science.  When we ask what authority it should have, we should remember what it is.    

What Must Obama Think About South Dakotans?

My friend and esteemed Keloland colleague Todd Epp is very fond of telling us about his man-crush on Obama.  But one might wonder whether the affection is returned.  What does Barack Obama think about us South Dakotans?  We get a hint from the following quote, which my NSU colleague, Professor Schaff directs our attention to. This is what Obama said in San Francisco (from Powerline):

[T]he truth is, is that, our challenge is to get people persuaded that we can make progress when there's not evidence of that in their daily lives. You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania, and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. And it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.

Wow.  Consider all the interesting ideas crawling around in that statement.  If some communities decline, it isn't just the ordinary course of economics and demographics, it must be someone's fault! Obama seems to promote the very pathology he diagnoses.  But of course the real meat of the quote is his view that  Americans "who aren't like him" are different because they suffer from some pathological state of mind. 

What are the symptoms of that pathology, from which we in the Dakotas surely suffer?  Anti-immigration and anti-trade sentiment, we learn.  Now one might have thought that a person could want the immigration laws of the United States to be enforced without for that being called a dysfunctional personality.  And as for anti-trade sentiment, apparently someone with an ivy-league education, from a boom town like Chicago, can suffer from it, as it is a major plank in Obama's platform. 

But of course the real kicker is the "guns and religion" part.  It's nice to know that those of us who "cling to guns," i.e., own guns and believe we have a right to own them, and "cling to religion," i.e., go to church on a regular basis and believe it is right to do so, are suffering from an economically induced pathology.  I am sure that a lot of folks in the Rushmore State would be interested to learn that this is Obama's opinion of them. 

I have thought for some time that Obama's twenty-year relationship with a racist, anti-American preacher, might be explained by the simple fact that, when he was in church, everyone around Obama talked the same way.  Why rock the boat?  But Obama spoke the words above in San Francisco, where he had some reason to suppose that everyone in the audience thinks like he does.  He forgot that he was on camera.  Now we know what he says about us when he thinks he can speak freely. 

Just Asking

A question for Pat Powers.  If a video is "not suitable for many listeners," why post it?  Are we less informed citizens if we don't hear Randi Rhodes say the f-word? 

Obama Nation!

I am getting email from the Obama campaign. Here is what they sent today:

Chicago, IL -- The Obama for American campaign today announced that six South Dakota Tribal Leaders have endorsed Senator Barack Obama for President, citing his call for unity to bring fundamental change to Washington. 

In an op-ed that ran in Indian Country Today,  John Yellowbird Steele, president of the Oglala Sioux Tribe; William ''Shorty'' Brewer, vice president of the Oglala Sioux Tribe; Michael Jandreau, chairman of the Lower Brule Sioux Tribe, Rodney Bordeaux, president of the Rosebud Sioux Tribe; Robert Moore, councilman of the Rosebud Sioux Tribe; and Joseph Brings Plenty, chairman of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe, endorsed Barack Obama.  The leaders will serve on Obama's Tribal Leaders Steering Committee.

Meanwhile, Barack Obama in Pennsylvania seems to think that economic uncertainty is what turns people into gun-toting, Jesus loving immigrant hating anti-trade weirdos.  Here's what Obama said:

You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them...And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not.

And it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.

Glenn Reynolds posts the following video which suggests that Barack Obama is not exactly an American original.

Pelosi's Disgraceful Deed

Don't take my word for it.  See the Washington Post:

THE YEAR 2008 may enter history as the time when the Democratic Party lost its way on trade. Already, the party's presidential candidates have engaged in an unseemly contest to adopt the most protectionist posture, suggesting that, if elected, they might pull out of the North American Free Trade Agreement. Yesterday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi declared her intention to change the procedural rules governing the proposed trade promotion agreement with Colombia. President Bush submitted the pact to Congress on Tuesday for a vote within the next 90 legislative days, as required by the "fast-track" authority under which the U.S. negotiated the deal with Colombia. Ms. Pelosi says she'll ask the House to undo that rule.

In other words, Pelosi changed the rules in the middle of our negotiations with Columbia, thus slapping a loyal and valuable ally right across the face.  And all this, to defeat a treaty that is obviously in the interests of the U.S.

Economically, it should be a no-brainer -- especially at a time of rising U.S. joblessness. At the moment, Colombian exports to the United States already enjoy preferences. The trade agreement would make those permanent, but it would also give U.S. firms free access to Colombia for the first time, thus creating U.S. jobs. Politically, too, the agreement is in the American interest, as a reward to a friendly, democratic government that has made tremendous strides on human rights, despite harassment from Venezuela's Hugo Chávez.

Why has Speaker Pelosi done this?  The San Francisco Chronicle has the answer:

Recession's in the air, American exports are enticingly cheap, and Washington could badly use a solid ally in Latin America.

These are all good reasons to support a free-trade pact with Colombia, which the White House has negotiated and brought to Congress.

But House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is playing politics by pandering to free-trade foes. Instead of accepting the usual fast-track process of voting up or down on the treaty within 90 days, she plans to rip up these rules and sidetrack the matter.

It's not hard to guess why. She's clearing the field of a painful Democratic dilemma: backing wider trade that unions fear will threaten their jobs. Remember the contorted debate on the eve of the Ohio primary between Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton over who was more hard-line in opposing the NAFTA trade treaty with Mexico?

Insulting a vital ally and defeating a treaty that would strengthen the U.S. economy and create jobs is price the Democrats are willing to pay for victory in November.  Good thing the outside world is merely an illusion created by campaign advertising.  Otherwise, we might have cause to worry. 

 

A Bored Press Is A Careless Press

Ed Morrissey spots this story over at the NYT about John McCain's foreign policy advisers.  The Times fulminates over a supposed battle for McCain's soul between competing camps comprised of realists on one side and neo-conservatives on the other.  I don't know about the merits of this story, but this observation from Morrissey caught my eye:

Life on the road covering a confirmed presidential nominee apparently bores reporters to tears. Instead of covering news, they literally make up controversy to keep themselves from falling asleep.

Folks should not dismiss Morrissey's claim out of hand.  In his book Ambling Into History, former NYT reporter Frank Bruni, who covered George Bush for the Times in the 2000 election, supports this notion that campaign reporters get bored by the road.  Bruni suggests that one reason why "Bush commits another malaprop" stories were so prevalent is that the press became so bored covering essentially the same speech every day that the only real "news" was when Bush fumbled a word.  Also, the reporters on the press bus would often talk to each other about the state of the campaign and then quote each other as "sources close to the campaign." 

We should be skeptical about press coverage of our presidential candidates. 

Obama and Farrakhan

More Farrakhan problems for Barack Obama.  Jake Tapper is unimpressed.  More thoughts from Ed Morrissey, who writes:  "Someone at the Barack Obama campaign had better start watching the hyperbole meter when Obama gets off script."

Dems Planning $40M Hit on McCain

Ben Smith at the Politico:

Wealthy Democrats are preparing a four-month, $40 million media campaign centered on attacks on Senator John McCain. And it will be led by David Brock, the former investigative reporter who first gained fame in the 1990s as a right-wing, anti-Clinton journalist.

The planned campaign is the product of a shakeup in the top ranks of the struggling independent Democratic groups. Brock, now best known as the ex-conservative founder of the liberal group Media Matters, last month quietly assumed the chairmanship of what's expected to be the main vehicle for independent Democratic attacks on McCain, now called Progressive Media USA.

...

[A]fter a dinner Tuesday night at the Manhattan apartment of liberal megadonor George Soros, at which Brock and the consultant Paul Begala laid out the group's plans, Brock said his group now has commitments worth $7.5 million – almost twice what the Fund for America is expected to report raising in the first quarter of this year. He said the group would begin running ads before it meets its $40 million goal.

Science and Human Beings

Professor Schaff has been engaged in conversation with our Keloland colleague Bob Schwartz on the question of science and the problem of abortion.  I recommend this conversation to our readers, and especially Jon's original post.  This is good blogging.

I agree with Professor Schaff on all the substantive points regarding the issue, but I am skeptical of his critique of "scientism."  This seems to me to be an attempt to draw prophylactic boundaries around "science," lest the guys in lab coats should get into the library or the chapel and ruin the carpet.  But the fact that Jon has no hesitation to call upon science to support his arguments on abortion suggests that the boundaries are not always so useful.

The word "science" means a lot of things.  Most specifically it means the modern method of forming a hypothesis and testing it by experiments.  This might be the most spectacularly successful method in the long history of methods.  But it is not often of much direct use in practical questions. More generally, science means any thinking that discovers general principles in some subject matter and/or proceeds from the same.  I don't think that Jon's reasoning on abortion is any less scientific, or "scientistic," than Al Gore's reasoning (if one can call it that) on global warming. 

I take Aristotle as my guide here (after all, he is in good with the Church).  It is useful to distinguish the questions that are appropriate to each science (how fast it moves is physics), and it is useful to distinguish practical questions, which turn on changing circumstances, from theoretical questions, which aim at more permanent truths. 

A Response To A Response

Bob Schwartz responds to my post of yesterday:

Maybe you missed the sarcasm of my post. While I believe that determining when life begins could end the debate, the science that would go into making that determination would never be accepted by many. To these folks science never trumps their belief system no matter what the evidence to the contrary might be.

See Bob's original post here.

I get Bob's point.  As I just emailed Bob, a plague on fundamentalists of all stripes; those who won't question their religious beliefs and those who won't question science.  Scientism is also a fundamentalism. 

There are many things science can teach me.  Who I am is not one of them.  See the Walker Percy video I posted a couple days ago.  If I had to choose between the scientists on one side against the theologians and poets on the other, I'd choose the theologians and poets.  Luckily I don't need to make such a choice. 

Set Them Free

The Associate School Boards of South Dakota object to charter schools.  As the post title suggests, charter schools are relatively free from "public oversight" and "public accountability."  But this is precisely the point.  What the ASBSD means by "public" is government.  What is means by "oversight" and "accountability" is bureaucracy.  Their objection is really that charter schools free educators from the government bureaucracy. 

See this story (ht Julie Ponzi) about a public schools attempt to become a charter school.  By all means watch the Drew Carey video attached and follow the links.  You will get a picture of American education which the desire of some to increase their power and protect incompetence comes at the expense of children and educators who truly care about them. Here is what the post's author writes:

Charter schools are public schools liberated from the stifling bureaucracy of the school district and the innovation-killing influence of the teachers' unions. Charter schools aren't perfect -- union partisans will be quick to cite stories like this and this -- but they offer far more opportunities for academic success in poor, crime-ridden and low-achieving areas than the standard model.

See yesterday's post for other thoughts on education.  But watch the Carey video and listen to the union rep with the goatee.  Here is a guy who just hates anything that questions the authority of education establishment.  He's the problem with American education, not the lack of funding.

If you want to see a problem with a public school, go here to see how the state of Minnesota is funding a pervasively Muslim school. 
 

Presidential Politics

Badlands Blue's very own Virginia Lowell makes a lame attack on John McCain.  Lowell, as usual, is simply repeating the talking points from this DNC overlords.  I'll post the video below, but Lowell is trying to claim, implausibly, that John McCain doesn't know the difference between Shiites and Sunnis.  Watch the video.  It seems to be clear that McCain is simply making the point that Al Qaeda is still a force in Iraq, not an obscure minor sect.  McCain is not trying to tie Al Qaeda to the Sunnis or Shiites, but is arguing that Al Qaeda is a bigger threat than a minority faction of any religious sect.  The real criticism Lowell could make is that the surge was supposed to take care of this problem.  If  the surge is still necessary to quell threats in Iraq then it isn't really a surge, is it?  It is just a troop increase.  But Lowell doesn't know what to say about that because the DNC has yet to tell him what to think.

One thing you can say about John McCain is that he knows our friends from our enemies.  You can't necessarily say that about Barack Obama. Obama thinks we should be talking to Iran without conditions.  Now the Bush administration has short shrifted diplomacy in its tenure, but Obama talks the good of diplomacy to an extreme.    What exactly does he think he can say to the Iranian regime that will stop it from pursuing nuclear weapons and supporting international terrorism?  Here is a bit of a truism: people who think they have time to not negotiate.  Until Iran faces a credible threat of force, either military or serious sanctions, it will not negotiate away its violent tendencies. 

Finally, there has been some talk on this blog and elsewhere regarding Condi Rice as a VP candidate with McCain.  Jay Cost argues that Condi is a sure loser for McCain due to her close ties to the Bush administration.  Discuss among yourselves.

Update: John Hinderaker on the McCain story. 

Argus Leader Quote of the Decade

Argus Leader:

A journalism professor at South Dakota State University said the issue is all about appearances.

"I think Larry Long is totally honest," said Jack Getz. "In my own mind, I'm sure he could write an honest and fair explanation. But I think what the situation presents is the appearance of a conflict. It's the sort of situation that, if it happened in a newsroom, the editor would put a different reporter on the story simply to avoid that appearance of conflict of interest."

You know, like the Argus Leader did with Dave Kranz during the 2004 campaign when bloggers disclosed his close ties to Tom Daschle and the Democratic Party.  Oh, wait . . .

Dem Official Says SD Will Play Part in Final Primaries

Rapid City Journal excerpt:

Even though NBC News has apparently forgotten about the June 3 primary in South Dakota, the state's Democratic Party's executive director isn't worried that the candidates will.

Last Saturday, "NBC Nightly News" aired a story by correspondent Lee Cowan about how Democratic presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are campaigning diligently in Montana. Cowan said Montana is holding the last primary in the nation, on June 3.

Cowan and NBC apparently forgot that South Dakota also has its primary on June 3.

If the presidential race isn't settled among the two Democratic candidates by the Pennsylvania primary on April 22 or by the spate of primaries in May, South Dakota -- and Montana -- could play a role.

South Dakota Democratic Party executive director Rick Hauffe expects that both Obama and Clinton will make campaign appearances in South Dakota before the June 3 primary.

"The events up in Montana and North Dakota were just tremendous for party building and raising money," Hauffe said Tuesday. "We don't want to be the one state that didn't get helped by these campaigns. I don't imagine that's going to happen."

Hauffe noted that Tom Daschle is working for Obama, and George McGovern is supporting Clinton. "They're the two premier Democrats from South Dakota. I can't imagine that their clout would be so ineffective that they wouldn't bring them (Clinton and Obama) to South Dakota," Hauffe said.

Right now, Clinton and Obama are tightly focused on winning Pennsylvania, especially Clinton, Hauffe said.

"If Pennsylvania holds for Hillary, this thing's going to run all the way to the convention," he said. "If Obama wins Pennsylvania, the math is a problem for Hillary."

Hamas in Iraq: Iran funds al-Qaeda

Jules Crittenden:  "Hamas Iraq accuses al-Qaeda in Iraq of ties to Iran, and gets specific."  More by Ed Morrissey.

North Dakota Oil

Businessweek:  "A long-awaited federal report on oil that could be recovered in parts of North Dakota, Montana and two Canadian provinces is to be released this week. The Bakken shale formation encompasses some 25,000 square miles in North Dakota, Montana, Saskatchewan and Manitoba. About two-thirds of the acreage is in western North Dakota, where the oil is trapped in a thin layer of dense rock nearly two miles beneath the surface."

Zombie Survival

In keeping with the spirit of SDP's Zombie Watch, I feel obligated to pass this along from SayUncle:

[F]irearms, other than double barrel shotguns at close range, are generally not effective against zombies. But, if you’re engaging zombies at close range, a chain saw is a much better weapon assuming you can somehow get into a position where the zombies are channeled in to you one at a time. A decapitated zombie is a friendly zombie.

An issue is that weapons that are effective against zombies tend to be heavily regulated. For instance, a zombie trap could work if you had some bait and an explosive. Getting your hand on the bait (tasty brains) is probably easier than getting your hands on a lawful explosive. After all, you could simply place the tasty brains with a trigger on them and the zombies, drawn by the brains, will blow themselves up.

Also, he observes, rather importantly, that the experts seem to agree: setting a zombie on fire is not a good idea  (via Glenn Reynolds).

A Way To End The Abortion Debate Instantly: A Response

Bob Schwartz has an intriguing suggestion that he thinks will solve the abortion debate:

Personally, I think we as a country could end the abortion debate with one determination....Why can't the same science that can cure diseases that only a generation ago used to kill us, be used to scientifically determine when life begins using similar milestones that are used for removing life support?

Once science does that we can finally put the abortion debate to bed.

I will leave aside the notion that we should leave it to the scientists to determine what it means to be human (so much for the humanities) and consider this conundrum on Mr. Schwartz's own grounds. 

Doctors use cessation of brain activity (i.e., brain death) to determine the end of life.  But that is not applicable in the case of the unborn.  Brain activity starts at about day 40, but even before that we can make a distinction between a dead human whose brain has stopped for good and an embryo that, left to its natural growth, will at some point gain brain activity.  Scientists already have a good answer as to when human life begins: conception, or soon after.  There is no doubt that what happens at conception creates a unique life.  It has its own unique genetic code and left to itself will grow into a person just like you and me.  In various online debates with defenders of abortion rights, I have asked what genus and species an embryo is.  If it is life, and it is, it can be categorized scientifically.  I have yet to see the argument that it is not homo sapiens.  If it is otherwise, please let me know.  As Robert George and Patrick Lee put it:

Human embryos are not mere clumps of cells, but are living, distinct human organisms, the same as you and I were at earlier stages of our lives. With the fusion of sperm and ovum, or with the coming to be of a distinct and complete (though immature) human organism either by (identical) twinning or by cloning, there is present a distinct organism which will (unless prevented) actively develop himself or herself to a more mature stage as a member of the human species. This new organism directs its own growth, coordinating from within all of its elements and forces toward his or her own survival and maturation.

Here is a counter-argument, but one that hardly helps those who wish to define away the humanity of the embryo.

The fact that the unborn are so obviously biologically human helps explain why so many philosophical defenders of abortion, such as Peter Singer, turn not to humanity but to "personhood," usually defined as having consciousness, as the characteristic that confers rights.  This line of argument was bought by John Kerry in the 2004 election.  Indeed, feminist author Naomi Wolf once conceded the humanity of the unborn, urging the fellow pro-choice feminists to come up with arguments as to why killing unborn humans is acceptable.   Wolf writes, "Sometimes the mother must be able to decide that the fetus, in its full humanity, must die" (my emphasis).

The best way to come to a resolution to the abortion debate, to the extent such a resolution is possible, is to overturn Roe v. Wade.  This would represent the rejection of the notion that unelected judges should set the abortion code for the nation without any direction from the Constitution or the traditions of the common law. Each state can come to its own resolution of the issue and therein respecting the diversity of opinion on the subject.

Sibby Lovin'

Despite the haranguing of Sibby by Pat Powers, Sibby is onto something in his post on education.  I don't endorse all Sibby's suggestions (such as eliminating the state education board) but education is needlessly bureaucratized and regulated.  I have previously advocated here requiring teachers to earn a four year degree in a subject field and only then taking one year in education classes. Also, alternative certification would allow those who have life experience but no education degree to teach in our schools. 

Schools spend an inordinate amount of money simply to comply with federal regulations.  If we eliminated those regulation we could take that extra money and give it to teachers.  I believe education is a national priority and requires some federal policy, but by and large I'd prefer federal education money given to states as block grants with relatively no strings attached. 

Washington Post Backs Up Blanchard on Democrats

Only a few hours after I posted my piece on the mendacity of the Democratic candidates on trade, the Washington Post does the same.  Coincidence?  We report, you decide. 

YET ANOTHER Democratic adviser is in trouble for having more common sense that his candidate -- or at least, more than his candidate has the courage to admit having. ...

This is a particular danger in the case of Colombia, since the arguments against the pact are so flimsy. Colombian exports already have access to the U.S. market, so this agreement would help U.S. exporters without harming domestic industry; and Colombia, with backing from both the Clinton and Bush administrations, has demonstrated remarkable success in quelling civil conflict and restoring order and human rights. Both Democratic candidates rest their opposition on supposed concern about assassination of trade unionists in Colombia, although such violence has fallen so much that the crime rate for them now is lower -- as we've pointed out in past editorials -- than for the population at large. Mr. Obama committed a particularly egregious libel last week when he said, referring to Colombian President Álvaro Uribe, who has taken on the violent left and the violent right at considerable risk to himself, "You've got a government that is under a cloud of potentially having supported violence against unions, against labor, against opposition."

Does Mr. Obama really believe that? Does Ms. Clinton really believe a newly elected president should adhere to a year-old timetable for troop withdrawal, regardless of circumstances? Are they each unaware of the real statistics on NAFTA's effects? Voters are left to wonder, and to ponder which would be worse: that the candidates are sincere and misguided or are insincere and lacking the courage to speak honestly.

Trade Policy Mischief Among Democrats

The Democrats have no trade policy, or at least none that they are willing to talk about.  We have already seen how Barack Obama openly campaigned against NAFTA while his campaign surrogates quietly assured the Canadians that he didn't really mean it.  Now we discover that  Hillary Clinton's own Karl Rove, Mr. Mark Penn, was hired by the Columbian Government to promote a free-trade deal with the U.S., while Senator Clinton attacked that agreement on the campaign trail. 

This pair of parallel micro-scandals suggests a deep cognitive dissonance in the party.  Cognitive dissonance is what you suffer from when you think you are driving in, say, Springfield Missouri, but are in fact turning a corner in downtown Hong Kong.  My, but there are a lot of Chinese Restaurants and architecture in this Midwestern city!  The Democrats campaign as if it were possible to protect American workers by isolating our economy from the world.  That is where a lot of Democrats want to think their party are driving. But if Senators Clinton and Obama are both shameless liars on such matters, they are not fools.  They know that any substantial moves toward protectionism will hurt more Americans than those who benefit; otherwise, why send (or allow) your agents contrary to your official positions?  I find this sort of thing rather comforting. 

Unfortunately, there is a real world out there beyond Pennsylvania.  At a time when Hugo Chavez is trying to unite Latin America against the U.S., it might not be such a good idea to insult Columbia, which is a steadfast ally of ours.  Here is John Fund at the Wall Street Journal:

Colombia is a democratic ally of the U.S. in a tough neighborhood. Alvaro Uribe, its president, has been battling a left-wing insurgency that has used kidnapping, murder and drug trafficking in an attempt to overthrow his government. An impressive body of evidence shows the insurgents, known as the FARC, have been encouraged and financed by Venezuela's strongman, Hugo Chavez. Mr. Chavez, who already has allies in charge of Bolivia, Ecuador, and Nicaragua, would love to extend his influence in Latin America.

The trade agreement shouldn't be controversial. Colombia's economy is doing well, with growth rates of some 6% a year, and more than 90% of its exports to the U.S. already are duty-free under previous agreements. The new proposed trade pact would strip dozens of high tariffs Colombia erects to restrict the flow of U.S. goods and services in.

American unions demanded that the agreement incorporate labor and environmental standards. They got their wish, but that wasn't enough for some unions, which leaned on Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton to make opposition to the agreement a theme of their presidential campaigns.

That last part is the kicker.  What is at issue is not any substantive policy, but whose view of the world will the two Democratic candidates be loyal to.  The unions don't really care about their brethren in Columbia, or the global environment; they want to know that their domestic concerns will trump any other issue. 

If Senator Obama were really interested in a new kind of politics, this would be a good opportunity to speak truth to union power.  He might say what he obviously knows: it won't do benefit either our own workers of their Columbian counterparts to keep the last few restrictions on trade between our nations.  He might point out that, as President, he would have to be concerned about supporting our allies and defeating murderous and tyrannical insurgencies in our hemisphere.  I think that such responsible words would in fact do more for his eventual election than anything else he could do right now. 

Senator Clinton cannot take such responsible positions.  No one has had reason to believe anything she says since the 1970's.  But of course, neither can Senator Obama.  His party won't let him.  It is not ready to let go of a fanciful view of the world. 

We're Not Worthy ...

This is the future of paintball!

 

Walker Percy At Notre Dame

I found this the other day at You Tube.  You can skip to 3:45 to actually hear Walker Percy speak.

It's The Family, Stupid

Back from Chicago tanned, rested, and ready (well, none of the three actually), I direct the fearless reader to two stories from Rod Dreher.  Last week Dreher commented on a story of third graders who plotted the death of their teacher.  While reports differ as to how serious the kids were, this seems to have gone beyond juvenile "I hate teacher" games.  Dreher opines:

One must be careful drawing conclusions about The Meaning Of It All without more information, but it's not hard to figure out where kids get these ideas. Violence and permissiveness is everywhere in our popular culture -- and many parents are too lazy and/or stupid to do their jobs. I've said before how undone I would routinely get as a film critic, when I would leave screenings of intensely, graphically violent films, and see parents exiting the theater with very small children in tow. (snip)

The culture is so degraded, and so all-enveloping, that it's easier to minimize the threat -- especially if you don't have the resources, financial or otherwise, to get your kid out of a school that has a destructive peer culture. Remember Caitlin Flanagan's line? "The 'it takes a village' philosophy is a joke, because the village is now so polluted and so desolate of commonly held, child-appropriate moral values that my job as a mother is not to rely on the village but to protect my children from it."

This brings to mind a conversation I had with an acquaintance a couple years ago.  This fellow has five kids and he expressed his frustration over raising these kids in a culture that undermines his values at every turn.  As he put it, he can control his own house, but he can't control all the other houses in the neighborhood or those of his kids' friends.  We live in a culture which bombards children with all sorts of violent, sexual, and generally vulgar messages.  This is a kid hostile environment. As David Tubbs argues in this book, contemporary liberalism, with its emphasis maximizing the liberty of the  autonomous individual absent the consequences of such an effort has created a culture antagonistic to childhood and children. 

Dreher comments on a second story pointing out, again, that family structure is more correlated with persistent poverty than any other variable including, remarkably, income.  In other words, a child from a poor but intact family is low risk for continuing in poverty. Nothing explains persistent poverty like family breakdown.  Thus the only way to break that chain of poverty is to combat the still sky-high illegitimacy rate among the poor generally and blacks and Hispanics specifically.  As Kay Hymowitz argues, the really caste structure is not built on economics but on marriage, which then is represented in economic success.

For the umpteenth time, spending on education means little when compared to other variables.  While we in this state should increase our spending on education, let us not be fooled that increase in teacher pay can make up for two parents who care.   

Obama Surrogate: McCain a “warmonger”

On Friday at an event in North Dakota, liberal talk radio host Ed Schultz was introducing Barack Obama to the gathered crowd and called John McCain a "warmonger," after which Obama thanked him for his speech.  Obama has now said he will not repudiate Schultz's remarks.  Compare that with John McCain's reaction to the introduction given by Bill Cunningham in Ohio, where Cunningham thought it appropriate to repeatedly use Obama's middle name.  McCain apologized for Cunningham's slur, repudiated the comments, and promised to take the high-road in the campaign.  And that was just for using Obama's actual middle name. 

Is this the "new politics" we can expect from Obama?  Obama lets his surrogates do the name calling, while he takes the stage and speaks highly of setting a new tone in politics and raising political discourse.  Obama has positioned himself as the candidate of change.  So far, we've seen the same hysterical anti-war rhetoric coming from his events.  Rather than just talking about changing the discourse, Obama should follow through and actually work to change it.

Finally, how will Obama supporter Stephanie Herseth-Sandlin react?  Will she criticize the comment made by those associated with her candidate, or stand by Obama and support it?