There are two dynamics at work here: first, contrary to rightwing paranoids, the media was always going to go after Senator Obama eventually--he's a target-rich environment and their job is blowing such up; second, while everyone gets that the Senator isn't like (and doesn't like) middle America, he isn't like these journalists either, but Ms Clinton is. There's a great bit from 30 Rock, after Tina Fey has pretended to be a drunk so she can listen in on a boyfriend's confessions at AA, where she reveals the deeper truths about herself, one of which is "I'm going to spend months pretending to support Barack Obama and then go into the booth and vote for Hillary." They like the idea that they're the kind of folks who would vote for a black guy in the abstract. They have little interest in the reality of this particular candidate, who none of them knew anything about until roughly six weeks go.
Posted by: Mike ||
04/25/2008 11:44 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[1 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
Cuz the only thing the media likes better then creating a media darling is ripping the same media darling to shreds.
It shows how "objective" they are...
#3
Whenever I read a story involving the MSM, it comes across sounding sleazy and tawdry--maybe it is because the MSM has sold their collective soul to the devil.
I was once sympathetic to the Weather Underground.
But Im not running for President.
I was also a donor to the Black Panther Party Breakfast Program
But Im not running for President.
Still, that was a long time ago. Does it matter now?
Probably not.
But I didnt stay friends with these people. I grew up and lived a life. I put away childish things, as it is written.
Now Barack Obama is younger than I am, by more than a decade, but he is running for President and he didnt, as they say, entirely put away childish things. In fact, he cleaved to some of them. . . .
I am an agnostic, so it is perhaps presumptuous of me to be quoting the Bible. But it is certainly great literature and there is no better explanation for why I would have difficulty voting for Barack Obama than those magnificent phrases from First Corinithians:
When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things. (I Cor. 13:11)
Posted by: Mike ||
04/25/2008 08:50 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[0 views]
Top|| File under:
Yesterday, Defense Secretary Robert Gates demonstrated, again, that he's the most capable Cabinet member to serve during President Bush's second term: The SecDef hit a grand-slam homer for our national security.
First, he nominated Gen. David Petraeus to move up and take over the US Central Command (CENTCOM), the headquarters directing our efforts not only in Iraq, but also in Afghanistan and throughout most of the Middle East. Employing his war-taught grasp of the Islamic heartlands and his expertise in postmodern forms of warfare, Petraeus will ensure that all our efforts are integrated and complementary, that we maximize our effectiveness in this vital theater of war. As Lincoln said of Grant, "I can't spare this man - he fights."
Gates also made it clear that the quality of the leadership transition matters: Petraeus won't leave Baghdad immediately. He'll stay long enough to oversee the withdrawal of the last surge forces and to assess the situation before he "pulls pitch." The grownups are in charge now.
Gates' second run batted in was the nomination of the New York area's own Lt. Gen. Ray Odierno to succeed Petraeus as our top gun in Baghdad. Big Ray has only been back home with his family for two months, but he's tough: He'll suck it up and do what our country asks. And there couldn't be a better choice. Not only because Odierno's a soldier's soldier, but because he's the man who had the day-to-day responsibility for executing Petraeus' command vision. Petreaus plotted the route, but Odierno drove the car. We won't turn back toward failure.
Of course, sending Odierno back to Baghdad leaves a hole in the Pentagon lineup: He'd been nominated to become the next US Army vice chief of staff and to pin on a fourth star (he'll still get that deserved promotion, but back on the front lines). That brings us to the third runner across the plate: Gates nominated another combat-tested Iraq vet, Lt. Gen. Peter Chiarelli, to take that job in Odierno's place. Chiarelli was a bright star during some of our darkest nights in Iraq. He'll clean up the Army dugout back at Pentagon Field.
Secretary Gates' determination to nominate the most qualified soldiers, rather than yes-men, is stand-up-and-cheer evidence that he's the polar opposite of his failed predecessor, the odious Donald Rumsfeld. But it was the fourth "run" yesterday that really underscored the difference between the two men.
What made the SecDef's performance a grand slam was his heartfelt thank-you to Gen. Odierno's wife and family for their sacrifice as Big Ray heads back to Baghdad - after little more than a spring break. An Army saying goes, "You enlist the soldier, but you re-enlist the family." Gates gets it: Every soldier's family, whether a junior enlisted man's or a general's, is a vital part of the team.
It's also a great thing to have a SecDef who just tells the truth: Gates noted bluntly yesterday that "Iranians are killing Americans in Iraq."
It's now up to Congress to respond to Gates' request that these nominations be approved by Memorial Day. Will the partisans on Capitol Hill create another spectacle, or will they do the right thing? Will election-year politics undercut our soldiers yet again? One Potomac ritual remained the same yesterday, as the SecDef's press session soon degenerated into spring-butt reporters asking questions revealing their miraculous ignorance of military affairs.
But the word was already out to our enemies throughout the Middle East: We're determined to win - and we've got the right men to do it, by God.
#1
Now if he takes out his pen and signs a piece of paper moving McMasters et al out of the farm team and up to the majors [by calling down to the SecArmy who has the full authority to make it happen], we may be in for a real exciting season. It'll upset the good old boys [who should be moved along to early retirement], but its nothing like the quick promotions that got Ike as commander in Europe. It's wartime, personnel actions should not be tied to peacetime box filling and non-combat records.
#3
Agree, Nimble, he's turned out to be the SecDef we should have had in 2004.
Posted by: Steve White ||
04/25/2008 11:46 Comments ||
Top||
#4
The DOD would prefer that Gen. Petraeus remain in the field. He is too valuable there to be placed anywhere else. Not every leader wants work in Operations.
#6
Not so fast guys, Gates may simply be reading the 'tea leaves' and moving Petraeus out of harms way should the DEM's sweep this November! Atleast with Hillary, I'm sure the Pentagon hasn't forgotten the stiff arm (Bird)they gave her some months back, when she wrote that letter demanding the parameters of an Iraqi 'pullout' by the US, if it came to that!
Posted by: Frank G ||
04/25/2008 18:09 Comments ||
Top||
#8
Thats right Frank G, didn't know I could 'turn on a dime' and support Queen Hillary if my man Obama succumbs to the 'knifings' everyones employing! I can even support McCain should Billy Boy continue to play the Race Card down to the Convention!
By ELI LAKE
At the moment America has disclosed to the world Israel's success in ending a North Korea-aided nuclear weapons project in the Syrian desert, the Syrians are saying Prime Minister Olmert will relinquish the Golan Heights.
The Israelis are offering no public comment. But Syria's expatriates minister, Buthaina Shaaban, told Al-Jazeera that the Israeli premier had instructed Turkey's prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, to deliver the message. "Olmert is ready for peace with Syria on the grounds of the return of the Golan Heights in full to Syria," she told the Arab satellite network.
The interview aired before the White House instructed the intelligence community to brief Congress and journalists on the details of Syria's undeclared nuclear weapons program. The briefing included a videotape of North Korean technicians building the same kind of lab reactor as the one found in North Korea's Yongbyon facility, according to congressional sources and the Washington Post.
The public disclosure of the North Korea-Syria program changes the calculus for the president's policies toward both Damascus and Pyongyang. Damascus will likely face a nuclear audit from the International Atomic Energy Agency and may be raising the Golan issue and the prospect of peace in hopes of distracting from its nuclear program. North Korea has agreed to, but has yet to deliver, a full declaration of its nuclear weapons program.
The Republican presumptive nominee for president, Senator McCain, said the disclosure of the activity, long suspected since Israeli aircraft destroyed the Syrian reactor building on September 6, should lead to the "widest possible condemnation by the international community." He attacked Senator Obama for the Democratic presidential candidate's promise to meet directly with Kim Jong Il without preconditions...
Jonah Goldberg Part of a longer article on the environmental movement.
Rather than wade into the science and economics of global warming yet again, let us instead dissipate the hot air of the liberal obsession with the moral equivalent of war. In brief: There is no such thing as the moral equivalent of war. Whatever war is, it is war. The good that comes from war is unique to war. The evil that comes from war is unique to war, too. Even natural disasters that require citizens to drop what they are doing to help those in need cannot truly be compared to war because natural disasters are never evil in intent. (If they were, we would call tornados acts of Satan, not acts of God.)
Ever since philosopher William James coined the phrase moral equivalent of war, self-described progressives have sought to galvanize the masses for collective purposes. They have loved the idea of war-without-war precisely because they want a public that follows in lockstep and individuals who will sacrifice their personal ambitions for the greater good. This is what John Dewey, Jamess disciple, called the social benefits of war. Dewey, later a famous pacifist, supported WWI because he believed it would usher in an age of collectivism and crush laissez-faire capitalism.
The yearning for a moral equivalent of war is an understandable desire, perhaps even noble in its intent. But it is not democratic. It is fundamentally authoritarian, which might explain why so many environmentalists envy Chinas ability to ban plastic bags without reference to a vote or a court or anything other than the will of the Chinas technocratic rulers. Indeed, the authors of The Climate Change Challenge and the Failure of Democracy openly question whether the crisis of climate change should render liberal democracy obsolete. For some it seems the moral equivalent of war requires the moral equivalent of a police state.
Posted by: Mike ||
04/25/2008 09:31 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[1 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
thats a good takeaway:
Environmentalism is fundamentally authoritarian.
Environmentalists want to decree changes without reference to a vote or a court or anything other than the will of their chosen technocratic elite.
#6
It is fundamentally authoritarian, which might explain why so many environmentalists envy Chinas ability to ban plastic bags without reference to a vote or a court or anything other than the will of the Chinas technocratic rulers.
Which also explains why it isn't that big a step from the environmental bandwagon to the environmental cattle-car.
#7
My local library and at least 1 supermarket, encourages re-use of plastic bags by providing containers where these can be taken up for re-use. I am a pathological blue-boxer.
Posted by: Marilyn Omerese3326 ||
04/25/2008 14:02 Comments ||
Top||
#8
"Peace is the ideal we infer from the fact that there have been occasional lulls between wars."
#9
Last Sunday, during the run-up to the Mariners ball game the radio station KOMO had an interview with a guy that said we had gone past the point of reason with this environmental crap; it was costing people their jobs and serious dollars.
He spoke rationally for a couple of minutes but then the she-host couldn't cut to commercial fast enough. For the record, and if there are any KOMO-weasels out there, I only listen to your crappy station no more than 162 days a year.
#11
Since most of the left are moral conservatives, can they have moral equivalents to anything? The left tends to think in terms of surrender, appeasement, and losing with regards to war it is tough to think of moral equivalents to war w/regards to the left.
Barack Obama complains that hes been unfairly attacked for a casual political and social relationship with his neighbor, former Weatherman Bill Ayers. Obama has a point. In the ultraliberal Hyde Park community where the presidential candidate first earned his political spurs, Ayers is widely regarded as a member in good standing of the citys civic establishment, not an unrepentant domestic terrorist. But Obama and his critics are arguing about the wrong moral question. The more pressing issue is not the damage done by the Weather Underground 40 years ago, but the far greater harm inflicted on the nations schoolchildren by the political and educational movement in which Ayers plays a leading role today.
A Chicago native son, Ayers first went into combat with his Weatherman comrades during the Days of Rage in 1969, smashing storefront windows along the citys Magnificent Mile and assaulting police officers and city officials. Chicagos mayor at the time was the Democratic boss of bosses, Richard J. Daley. The citys current mayor, Richard M. Daley, has employed Ayers as a teacher trainer for the public schools and consulted him on the citys education-reform plans. Obamas supporters can reasonably ask: If Daley fils can forgive Ayers for his past violence, why should Obamas less consequential contacts with Ayers be a political disqualification? Its hard to disagree. Chicagos liberals have chosen to define deviancy down in Ayerss case, and Obama cant be blamed for that.
What he can be blamed for is not acknowledging that his neighbor has a political agenda that, if successful, would make it impossible to lift academic achievement for disadvantaged children. As I have shown elsewhere in City Journal, Ayerss politics have hardly changed since his Weatherman days. He still boasts about working full-time to bring down American capitalism and imperialism. This time, however, he does it from his tenured perch as Distinguished Professor of Education at the University of Illinois, Chicago. Instead of planting bombs in public buildings, Ayers now works to indoctrinate Americas future teachers in the revolutionary cause, urging them to pass on the lessons to their public school students.
Indeed, the education department at the University of Illinois is a hotbed for the radical education professoriate. As Ayers puts it in one of his course descriptions, prospective K12 teachers need to be aware of the social and moral universe we inhabit and . . . be a teacher capable of hope and struggle, outrage and action, a teacher teaching for social justice and liberation. Ayerss texts on the imperative of social-justice teaching are among the most popular works in the syllabi of the nations ed schools and teacher-training institutes. One of Ayerss major themes is that the American public school system is nothing but a reflection of capitalist hegemony. Thus, the mission of all progressive teachers is to take back the classrooms and turn them into laboratories of revolutionary change.
Posted by: Fred ||
04/25/2008 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[1 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
The writer concludes, The next time Obamathe candidate who purports to be our next education presidentdiscusses education on the campaign trail, it would be nice to hear what he thinks of his Hyde Park neighbors vision for turning the nations schools into left-wing indoctrination centers. Indeed, its an appropriate question for all the presidential candidates.
Posted by: Bobby ||
04/25/2008 6:32 Comments ||
Top||
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
By ELI LAKE
