. . . I asked around the area, to see how his obvious compassion for Pennsylvanians was viewed. This is just one story, from one man in West Deer Township, but I'm sure that it's typical.
"By cracky, it's like the man sees into my very soul!
"Thirty years ago, I had a good job in the mill in Pittsburgh. I was bringing in a good income, going to jazz clubs, discussing Proust over white wine and brie, with my gay friends of all colors. I was all for free trade, so that we could sell the steel overseas, and I never bothered to go to church, let alone actually believe in God.
"But then, the plant closed down, and I couldn't get another job. I went on unemployment, and found odd jobs here and there, but they barely paid the rent on the loft, and the payment on the Bimmer. I couldn't afford the wine and brie any more, and had to shift over to beer and brats.
"Of course, as a result, I started hanging out with the wrong crowd--the beer drinkers.
"And it wasn't just the beer. Some of them actually went out in the woods in the fall, and shot animals. And kilt 'em. With real guns!
"I was shocked, of course. For all their diversity, none of my gay friends would have ever thought of doing anything like that. But with my job loss, and lack of money for pedicures and pommade, they didn't want to hang with me any more. So I borried a twelve gauge over'n'under, and went out with my new beer-drinking animal-killing friends in the woods. And I'll tell you what, when I shot down that eight-pointer, I felt a sense of power over the helpless in a way that I hadn't since I'd been looking down on the rednecks when I had that good job in Pittsburgh, driving around town in my 528i.
"But somehow the killing, and hating those two-timing nancy boys wasn't enough. I was still in despair. I started to search for answers, and I thought that I found them in Jesus. It started small, just church on Sunday, with prayers and a lecture from the preacher.
"But it didn't stop there. Soon I was attending Wednesday night revivals, and huzzahing and hossanahing, and babbling with the best of them. After a few months I'd graduated to juggling garter snakes, then rattlers.
"But it wasn't enough. Despite all the gun caressing, and animal killing, and hatred of people who weren't like me, and anger at the Colombians who were...doing something to me--I'm not entirely sure what, and the tongue speaking and snake handling, I still couldn't find a job.
"My social life continued to deteriorate. Not only was I no longer interested in those sensitive swishes, or literature, but I was starting to look with lust at my sister. And not just look, I'll tell you what. She'd been out of work, too, and was getting mighty interested, if you know what I mean.
"I have hit rock bottom.
"Please, help me, O Bama. Forgive me, O Bama. O Bama, my Bama, rescue me from this living hell in which Reagan, and Bush, and Clinton, and Bush, have consigned me. Restore unto me my loft and my teutonic status symbol. Give me back my poofter friends, and my pinot grigio and my baked gruyere, and lattes. Save me from the killing and the beer, and most of all, from Jesus. Save me, O my Bama, and I will commit my vote unto you.
This is just one story of the many lives that Barack Obama has touched, and blessed, this day in the benighted Keystone State. But with his obvious compassion, and ability to feel the pain of others so unlike him, he is sure to carry the state in a couple weeks. . . .
Posted by: Mike ||
04/13/2008 08:12 ||
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#4
"Hare Barack Hare Barack
Barack Barack Hare Hare
Hare 'Bama Hare 'Bama
'Bama 'Bama Hare Hare"
Posted by: James ||
04/13/2008 11:40 Comments ||
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#5
O Bama, who art on the campaign trail,
hallowed be thy name;
thy election come;
thy will be done,
in the US as it is in Europe.
Give us this day our daily entitlements.
And forgive us our political incorrectness,
as we forgive those bible-thumping gun-toting hicks
that trespass against us.
And lead us not into capitalism;
but deliver us from patriotism.
For thine is the STATE,
the power, and the glory,
For ever and ever (and ever).
'Magna Carta is such a Fellow he will have no sovereign,' snapped the Jacobean jurist Sir Edward Coke as he fought the arbitrary power of the Stuart monarchy. Lord Justice Moses and Mr Justice Sullivan might have lacked Sir Edward's succinctness, but last week they delivered a defence of the rule of law that was as stirring.
The Saudis' successful attempt to bully the Serious Fraud Office was a conspiracy to pervert the course of justice, they said, a conspiracy that, shamefully, the Blair government had joined. 'No one suggested to those uttering the threat that it was futile, that the United Kingdom's system of democracy forbade pressure being exerted on an independent prosecutor whether by the domestic executive or by anyone else. No one even hinted that the courts would strive to protect the rule of law and protect the independence of the prosecutor by striking down any decision he might be tempted to make in submission to the threat.'
Brave and undeniable, but Whitehall did have a cynical argument against the judges, though not one that would stand up in court. Saudi Arabia is a special case, it runs. Most despotisms are like Zimbabwe, nasty, corrupt and poor. Saudi Arabia is nasty, corrupt but fantastically rich because of its oil wealth. So when it threatens to cancel orders for Eurofighters or suspend co-operation in the war against al-Qaeda unless we obey orders, we can appease it, safe in the knowledge that the Saudi monarchy is a one-off. No one else has the strength to hurt our economy. No precedent is being set.
The judges noticed a knowing tone of voice behind the ministers' attempts to explain away the nobbling of the police investigation. Government lawyers seemed to be saying that Saudi Arabia was a regrettable anomaly whose 'threats were a part of life'.
But Saudi Arabia is no longer an anomaly and the way the world is moving, threats to the rule of law are going to become a far greater part of our lives.
Labour's more intelligent leaders know it. This year, David Miliband announced that the forward march of democracy had halted. The Foreign Secretary didn't just mean that countries such as Zimbabwe had sunk into thug-rule and penury. He meant the belief that societies could prosper only if they embraced representative government was vanishing. He could no longer reassure Aung San Suu Kyi and other dissidents that history was on their side.
Europe's most blatant example is Vladimir Putin's Russia. When its agents poisoned Alexander Litvinenko with polonium-210, the Russians were as astonished as the Saudis that Britain insisted on bringing alleged criminals to justice. 'I don't understand the position of the British government,' a foreign ministry spokesman spluttered. 'It is prepared to sacrifice our relations in trade and education for the sake of one man.'
From Leon Trotsky on, the Soviet regime has killed exiles. The difference between the old and the new Russia is that now Russia can buy the support of corporations and capitalists who will excuse their crimes.
In The New Cold War, his study of Putin's impact on Europe, Edward Lucas of the Economist argues that the Russian elite has understood that money can be used to undermine freedom because there are many in the West who believe that 'capitalism is a system in which money matters more than freedom'.
So it is proving. In Germany, Russian money now provides a lavish retirement job for Gerhard Schröder, who disgraced the honourable anti-autocratic tradition of German social democracy by taking the roubles of the Russian state energy giant. German conservatives are little better. So frightened is she of Russia's control of Germany's energy that Angela Merkel stops Georgia and other former colonies of the Soviet empire joining Nato and vetoes EU plans to free up the gas and oil markets. When the Foreign Office asked European allies for support after the Litvinenko assassination, Germany was the first to say Britain shouldn't take murder so seriously.
I could go on because it is always enjoyable being beastly to the Germans. The sad truth, however, is that among the developed democracies, Britain is the most anxious to prostitute its laws by offering near immunity from prosecution to dictatorial financial interests.
For instance, there are 20 Russian conglomerates on the London Stock Exchange, compared with just five in New York. Ken Livingstone explained why the City was the favoured destination for money not only from Russia but from autocracies the world over when he visited China in 2006. He told the regime's tycoons they wouldn't face irksome legal inquiries if they sent their profits to London. 'The Americans have overreacted to the Enron scandal and foreign executives are frightened of the new rules,' he explained. 'We want to tell Chinese businessmen that we will not put you in prison if someone down the management food-chain has forgotten to fill in a form correctly.'
So fraudsters enjoy a latitude in the City they don't enjoy on Wall Street. Why credulous voters continued to think Livingstone was left wing after that performance is beyond me, but his description of how the wealthy can escape legal interference was undeniable. The Saudis were outraged by the attention of the SFO because its investigators hardly ever threaten to prosecute. Even when they do, the courts don't back them up.
The 'light touch' regulation of the City Gordon Brown boasted about for so many years meant in effect that Britain profited from offering international finance a latitude it couldn't find in New York. We can't shake off our dependence on funny money, as Gordon Brown and David Cameron showed when they reacted to the judges' ruling by moving to curb the power of the judiciary to expose corruption and intimidation.
Coke's declarations are magnificent. So, too, are the brave sentiments of today's judges. But a more realistic appraisal was given by Jonathan Swift, who witnessed the founding of the City's money markets in the early 18th century and wrote: 'Laws are like cobwebs, which may catch small flies but let wasps and hornets break through.'
Posted by: Steve ||
04/13/2008 00:00 ||
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Saudi Arabia is an Anglo-American Frankenstein. During the period of de-colonization, reliable locals were needed. No longer. The House of Saud has roots in Negd, SA. Other peoples of the tyranny have little to do with those parasites. As for the oil fields, true title belongs to the Anglo-American interests that discovered them. Locals were wallpaper in the process.
So why do our leaders defer to Saudi savages? The Big Oil and the Military Industrial Complex earn big bucks by preserving the status quo.
Do the Saudis and their Wahabi backers recognize the sovereignty of secular states? No! To them, all sovereignty belongs to the arab tribal deity: allah. Somebody wants them as allies; not me.
#2
Ezzeddin worried the jizya trough might run empty?
Posted by: ed ||
04/13/2008 8:21 Comments ||
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#3
According to this article, it appears as if the horrific method that Sarkozy will employ to "take France back to 50 years ago when the Feudal regimes were ruling the country " AND force children into prostitution in order to get an education ............is his plan to downse the educational staff of French schools
#7
Feudalism? You mean guys in chainmail and swords? Peasants bound to the land? Subsistence farming?
Posted by: Mike ||
04/13/2008 12:36 Comments ||
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#8
Indeed. Aren't they off by a few centuries on the feudalism thing? Although that would explain alot of things about France if it was stuck in feudalism until 50 years ago.
Al
Posted by: Frozen Al ||
04/13/2008 13:41 Comments ||
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#9
Peasants bound to the land? Subsistence farming?
U mean like the USSR, Venezuela, Argentina, Nork, and the ChiComs???
#10
Sarkozy wants to take France back to 50 years ago when the Feudal regimes were ruling the country. At that time, only the children of the Feudal class had access to education.
--------------
Well, that explains a lot - so most of the great unwashed had no edumacation so their signature was an "X?"
#11
hmmm 50 years ago would be 1958..perhaps a little less "feudal" than these dipshits had in mind?
Posted by: Frank G ||
04/13/2008 19:05 Comments ||
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#12
So did Iran Press TV pull this guy out of a Paris dumpster or something because, if you Google Ezzeddin Balidi for some background, ya get about six hits...
This is not a column that discusses cinema, but this week I make an exception because of a film I have just seen, which inadvertently exposes the myth of moderate Islam. I went to see Khuda Kay Liye not just because it is the first Pakistani film to be released in Indian cinemas since anyone can remember, but because I gathered from reviews that it was a reflection of moderate Islam. This is a commodity in short supply in the subcontinent as well as across the Islamic world, where supposedly moderate Islamic countries like Indonesia and Malaysia have transformed in recent times into places where women have exchanged mini-skirts and western influence for the hijab and a return to medieval Arabia.
Khuda Kay Liye is the story of a modern Pakistani family that is destroyed when one musician son ends up in the clutches of a bad mullah and the other ends up in an American prison cell, where he is tortured till he loses his mind. The Islamist son, under the influence of the evil maulana, coerces his London-bred cousin into a marriage she does not want and forces her to live in a primitive Afghan village so she cannot escape. He rapes her because the maulana instructs him to and gives up his musical career because the maulana tells him that the Prophet of Islam did not like music. And he becomes an involuntary mujahid after 9/11, fighting on the side of the Taliban government. This is a simple story of a young man misled in the name of Islam.
The other musician sons story is more revealing of the flaws of what we like to call moderate Islam. He goes to study music in a college in Chicago, falls in love with a white girl, and generally has a good time living the American dream until 9/11 happens. Then he is arrested, locked up in a secret prison in the United States and kept naked in a filthy cell until he goes mad. The message of the film, in its essence, is that Islam is a great religion that has been misunderstood and that the United States is a bad, bad country and all talk of freedom and democracy is nonsense. Alas, this is not how we infidels see things.
What interested me most about the film was that in seeking to show Islam in a good light, it accidentally exposes the prejudices that make moderate Muslims the ideological partners of jihadis. In painting America as the villain of our times, the prejudices against the West that get exposed are no different from what Mohammad Siddique, one of Londons tube bombers, said in the suicide video he made before blowing himself up. In the video, that surfaced during the trial now on in London, he describes himself as a soldier in the war against the West: Im doing what I am for Islam, not, you know, for materialistic or worldly benefits.
In Khuda Kay Liye, the prejudices against India come through as well. The hero, when he lands in Chicago, finds that his future wife does not know that Pakistan is a country. When he tries to explain where it is geographically, he mentions Iran, Afghanistan and China before coming to India. It happens that India is the only country she knows and Taj Mahal the only Indian monument she has heard of. We built it, says our hero, we ruled India for a thousand years and Spain for 800. As an Indian, my question is: who is we? Those who left for Pakistan or the 180 million Muslims who still live in India? If we pursue this we nonsense, we must urge the Indian Government to bring back Harappa and Mohenjo-daro and Taxila. And that is only the short list.
Let us not pretend that Muslims in India do not face hostility and prejudice. They do. But some of it comes from this idea that Muslims have of themselves as being superior because they ruled India for a thousand years. The problem becomes more complex if you remember that Hindu fanatics also see Muslims as foreigners and use it to fuel their hatred.
If moderate Muslims believe that the West is the real enemy of Islam and that the free societies of modern times compare poorly with the greatness of Muslim rule in earlier times, then there is little difference between them and the jihadis. As we infidels see it, the problem is that Islam refuses to accept that in the 21st century there is no room for religionany religionin the public square. Other religions have accepted this and retreated to a more private space. Islam has not.
Posted by: john frum ||
04/13/2008 00:00 ||
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...there is no room for religionany religionin the public square. Other religions have accepted this and retreated to a more private space. Islam has not.
Separation of church and state, Philadelphia, 1787.
Posted by: Bobby ||
04/13/2008 7:05 Comments ||
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THE failure of diplomacy to stop Irans nuclear program became obvious this week, when President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad revealed the installation of 6,000 new centrifuges at the countrys main uranium enrichment complex. His announcement was accompanied by the now customary assertion that outsiders can do nothing to stop Iran from fulfilling its nuclear destiny.
Once, not so long ago, this kind of boast would elicit clear American declarations that Iran would never be allowed to develop nuclear weapons. Everything, President Bush would say ominously, is on the table. This time he has been quiet. I wish I believed that it is the quiet before a storm of laser-guided action. It seems more likely that it is the abashed silence of an American president whose bluff has been called in front of the entire world.
Washingtons performance should concern anyone who cares about long-term American influence in the Islamic world. But for Israel (and Israels supporters), this is an urgent problem. It is Israel, after all, that has been set by the Iranian leadership as the target for annihilation.
In response to the news from Iran, some supporters of Israel have started to suggest that the failed efforts at prevention be replaced by assured American deterrence: any Iranian nuclear attack on Israel would be treated as an attack on the United States. Charles Krauthammer, a Washington Post columnist, recently referred to this as the Holocaust doctrine.
From Israels perspective, the thought is tempting but its not realistic.
In 1981, Israeli planes destroyed the Iraqi nuclear reactor at Osirak. The worlds reaction was harshly critical. Even the Reagan administration, usually a close ally, denounced the operation.
Prime Minister Menachem Begin was undaunted by the fury. At a press conference in Jerusalem he announced that he felt obligated to do anything in his power to stop Israels enemies from getting their hands on means of mass killing.
Begin mentioned the Holocaust; it was never far from his mind. But his primary focus was strategic, not historical. Israel was no different from any other country. It would bear the ultimate responsibility for its own security.
Begin was right. Heres why:
First, in exchange for assistance, Washington would naturally (and rightly) demand a very strong say in Israeli policies. A misstep, after all, could embroil it in a nuclear exchange. Within a very short time, Israels sovereignty and autonomy would come to resemble Minnesotas. This is not a bad thing if your country happens to border Iowa. It works less well in Israels neighborhood.
Im not questioning American friendship. But even friendship has practical limits. Presidents change and policies change. George W. Bush, the greatest friend Israel has had in the White House, hasnt been able to keep a (relatively easier) commitment to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons. It is a good thing that Israel didnt build its deterrence on that commitment.
Whats more, it is fair to say that Israel is not a weak country. It has developed a powerful set of strategic options. In the best case, it would be able to act on its own to degrade and retard the Iranian nuclear program as it did in Iraq (and, more recently, Syria). In a worse case, if the Iranians do get the bomb, Iranian leaders might be deterred by rational considerations. If so, Israels own arsenal and its manifest willingness to respond to a nuclear attack ought to suffice.
If, on the other hand, the Iranian leadership simply cant resist the itch to wipe Israel off the map or to make such a thing appear imminent then it would be up to Israel to make its own calculations. What is the price of 100,000 dead in Tel Aviv? Or twice that? The cost to Iran would certainly be ghastly. It would be wrong for Israel to expect other nations to shoulder this moral and geopolitical responsibility.
Dont misunderstand. It would be a noble thing for the United States to support Israels efforts to stop an Iranian bomb or, if it comes to that, to back Israels response to an attack. But no country can rely on the kindness of others.
Next month Israel celebrates its 60th Independence Day. Sovereignty comes with a price. Israels willingness to pay it is the only Holocaust doctrine that it can really rely on.
Zev Chafets, who served as director of Israels government press office under Menachem Begin, is the author of A Match Made in Heaven, about American evangelical support for Israel
Posted by: john frum ||
04/13/2008 12:40 ||
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Sooner or later, this is what it will have to come down to since it really is the World against Israel.
Posted by: Jack is Back! ||
04/13/2008 12:47 Comments ||
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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.
