tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1645588079532773872023-06-20T06:17:50.759-07:00Fierce Joyfighting the Tolerance War with wordsThunderhearthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06143596557845554558noreply@blogger.comBlogger111125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-164558807953277387.post-56124819611290774782008-12-16T16:41:00.000-08:002008-12-16T17:05:38.274-08:00U.S. Entrepreneurs Addressing the Water CrisisHere's a long, extremely interesting article on the business opportunities being seized by entrepreneurs in addressing water quality, purification and simple availability issues, in <a href="http://www.inc.com/magazine/20081101/blue-is-the-new-green.html" target="new">Inc. magazine</a>:<blockquote>First, some numbers. The United Nations estimates that by 2025, two-thirds of the world's population will face periodic and often severe water shortages. And the problem is not limited to the developing world. Here in the U.S., water managers in 36 states are predicting significant shortfalls within the next decade. Even in regions that do have sufficient supplies, aging infrastructure, inadequate treatment facilities, and contamination pose more problems. No surprise, then, that battles over water rights are becoming commonplace, pitting states and sometimes nations against one another in increasingly bitter conflict.<br /><br />Analysts estimate that the world will need to invest as much as $1 trillion a year on conservation technologies, infrastructure, and sanitation to meet demand through 2030. As in the past, most of the large capital-intensive projects will be done by the usual multinational corporations and engineering firms. But the extent of the problem and the demand for new technology to address it present -- pardon the metaphor -- a kind of perfect storm for entrepreneurs. "Small companies with intellectual property, significant know-how, and a product that's scalable can stake out a niche below the radar of the large companies," says Laura Shenkar, a water expert and consultant in San Francisco. "This is an opportunity that will generate Googles."</blockquote>What follows is an impressive overview on all sorts of American companies who are way ahead of the curve on these issues, and how their markets are growing by leaps and bounds here in the United States and, even more importantly, in the rest of the world.<br /><br />This is such an excellent illustration of <a href="http://www.thomaspmbarnett.com/weblog" target="new">Thomas P.M. Barnett's</a> dictum that it will ultimately be free trade and free markets that will prove decisive in solving the really big problems, both in the developed world he calls the Core and the economically disconnected countries in what he calls the Gap. Here's a perfect illustration, again from the Inc. article:<blockquote>Moving Water Industries, an 82-year-old, family-owned manufacturer of water pumps based in Deerfield Beach, Florida, has been selling portable pumps for irrigation and flood protection in Nigeria for more than 30 years. But its mission in Africa has taken on a new focus: addressing the problem of safe drinking water in rural villages. The company's solution is the SolarPedalFlo, a solar- and pedal-powered pump that can provide filtered and chlorinated water for thousands of people a day -- three to four times the amount that can be produced from a borehole equipped with a hand pump. Each unit costs about $15,000.<br /><br />Working with local governments, nongovernmental organizations, and the U.S. Agency for International Development, MWI has been able to install hundreds of the pumps in 12 African countries. The company is just introducing the technology in Central and South America and has one unit installed in the Philippines. With the hopes of speeding adaptation in Africa, it is in discussions with Green WiFi, a U.S.-based volunteer group that is working to install solar-powered Wi-Fi networks in the developing world. Together, the companies would be able to offer a compelling infrastructure two-for-one: clean water and Internet access powered by the same set of solar panels. William Bucknam, MWI's vice president and point man in Africa, hopes that pressure to meet the U.N.'s Millennium Development Goals -- decreasing the number of people without access to safe drinking water by half by 2015 -- will encourage more of the public-private partnerships that will be needed for the technology to spread. "It's a huge problem," he says, "and we believe we have the answer."</blockquote><a href="http://www.inc.com/magazine/20081101/blue-is-the-new-green_pagen_3.html" target="new">Read the whole thing</a>, of course. Optimist that I am, I just love this stuff!<script type="text/javascript"><br />var gaJsHost = (("https:" == document.location.protocol) ? "https://ssl." : "http://www.");<br />document.write(unescape("%3Cscript src='" + gaJsHost + "google-analytics.com/ga.js' type='text/javascript'%3E%3C/script%3E"));<br /></script><br /><script type="text/javascript"><br />var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker("UA-5833794-1");<br />pageTracker._trackPageview();<br /></script>Thunderhearthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06143596557845554558noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-164558807953277387.post-85942985892293892972008-12-16T16:31:00.000-08:002008-12-16T17:08:41.866-08:00An Excellent Article on Afghanistan...... in <a href="http://www.thenation.com/doc/20081222/gopal/single" target="new">The Nation,</a> of all places!<br /><br />It taught me stuff I didn't know, for example. I knew a fair amount about the mainline Taliban, and about Hekmatyar who was the favored boy of the Pakistani ISI during the 1980s war against the Soviet occupation, but I didn't know about this gent:<blockquote>Erstwhile CIA hand Jalaluddin Haqqani heads yet a third insurgent network, this one based in the eastern border regions. During the anti-Soviet war, the United States gave Haqqani, now considered by many to be Washington's most redoubtable foe, millions of dollars, antiaircraft missiles and even tanks. Washington was so enamored of him that former Congressman Charlie Wilson once called him "goodness personified." <br /><br />Haqqani was an early advocate of the "Afghan Arabs," who in the 1980s flocked to Pakistan to join the jihad against the Soviet Union. He ran training camps for them and later developed close ties to Al Qaeda, which developed out of the Afghan Arab networks toward the end of the anti-Soviet war. After 9/11 the United States tried desperately to bring him over to its side, but Haqqani said he couldn't countenance a foreign presence on Afghan soil and once again took up arms, aided by his longtime benefactors in ISI. He is said to have introduced suicide bombing to Afghanistan, a tactic unheard of here before 2001. Western intelligence officials pin the blame for most of the spectacular attacks in recent memory--a massive car bomb that ripped apart the Indian embassy in July, for example--on the Haqqani network, not the Taliban. <br /><br />The Haqqanis command the lion's share of foreign fighters operating in the country and tend to be even more extreme than their Taliban counterparts. Unlike most of the Taliban and Hizb-i-Islami, elements of the Haqqani network cooperate closely with Al Qaeda. Moreover, foreigners associated with the "Pakistani Taliban"--a completely separate organization that is at war with the Pakistani government--and various Pakistani guerrilla groups that were once active in Kashmir also filter across the border into Afghanistan, adding to a mix that has produced what one Western intelligence official calls a "rainbow coalition" that fights US troops. The foreign connection comes naturally, as the leadership of the three main wings of the insurgency is believed to be based across the border in Pakistan, and all insurgent groups are flush with funds from wealthy Arab donors and benefit from ISI training.</blockquote>It all comes back to this -- if we're going to win in Afghanistan, we're going to need to neutralize Pakistan. And that's not going to happen if we continue the same old strategy of playing nice with a Pakistani military and ISI that is as often working against our goals as they are with us. <br /><br />So, if Obama is really serious about stablizing Pakistan, the shipping of arms and of foreign aid to Pakistan, which ends up strengthening the military and the corrupt politicians, respectively, is not a winning strategy, to put it mildly.<br /><br />My thinking is that we need a different approach, one we've not tried to this point: a full-on free-trade accord with Pakistan, wherein we reduce all our ridiculously high tariffs on their main export, which is textiles. This will have the benefit of strengthening the most free market elements of Pakistani society, instead of the feudal politicians like Zardari (Bhutto's widower), who is well-known as "Mr. Ten Percent" for the amount he skims off the top.<br /><br />This would involve some pain on the part of textile laborers here in the United States, but it would be well worth it if the long-term result is a more stable Pakistan, with reduced influence for its fanatics.<br /><br />Lastly, this might work well in confluence with a free trade accord with India and Afghanistan, so no one in that region feels left out.<br /><br />We're not going to have a lot of money for big aid packages anyway in the current environment, so trying a different tack is well worth it!<br /><br /><script type="text/javascript"><br />var gaJsHost = (("https:" == document.location.protocol) ? "https://ssl." : "http://www.");<br />document.write(unescape("%3Cscript src='" + gaJsHost + "google-analytics.com/ga.js' type='text/javascript'%3E%3C/script%3E"));<br /></script><br /><script type="text/javascript"><br />var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker("UA-5833794-1");<br />pageTracker._trackPageview();<br /></script>Thunderhearthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06143596557845554558noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-164558807953277387.post-8294982972943420282008-12-16T16:27:00.000-08:002008-12-16T16:31:20.415-08:00Let's Laugh at TerroristsI've always felt that terrorists like Al Qaeda, Hamas, Hezbollah, or Christian Identity freaks like Tim McVeigh would be laughable if they weren't such effective mass murderers.<br /><br />Still, for all their undeniable dangerousness, it's a good thing to laugh at them as the pathetic losers they are.<br /><br />Into this market niche steps Jeff Dunham, ventriloquist extraordinaire, and his puppet Achmed, the Dead Terrorist:<br /><br /><object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/wskT6YfVB6E&hl=en&fs=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/wskT6YfVB6E&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object><br /><br /><br /><script type="text/javascript"><br />var gaJsHost = (("https:" == document.location.protocol) ? "https://ssl." : "http://www.");<br />document.write(unescape("%3Cscript src='" + gaJsHost + "google-analytics.com/ga.js' type='text/javascript'%3E%3C/script%3E"));<br /></script><br /><script type="text/javascript"><br />var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker("UA-5833794-1");<br />pageTracker._trackPageview();<br /></script>Thunderhearthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06143596557845554558noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-164558807953277387.post-86650234167633709202008-11-04T19:41:00.000-08:002008-11-04T20:32:57.348-08:00Wow!Obama has just been credited as having won Virginia, and is now over the top of 270 electoral college votes. Amazing stuff, historical stuff. I just heard Obama will end up winning 53% of the popular vote, so he'll be the first Democratic President since before Jimmy Carter to have done so.<script type="text/javascript"><br />var gaJsHost = (("https:" == document.location.protocol) ? "https://ssl." : "http://www.");<br />document.write(unescape("%3Cscript src='" + gaJsHost + "google-analytics.com/ga.js' type='text/javascript'%3E%3C/script%3E"));<br /></script><br /><script type="text/javascript"><br />var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker("UA-5833794-1");<br />pageTracker._trackPageview();<br /></script>Thunderhearthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06143596557845554558noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-164558807953277387.post-1454654703949506422008-11-04T18:24:00.000-08:002008-11-04T18:41:40.143-08:00Obama Takes Ohio, and Quite Possibly the PresidencyIf some Florida-2000-style weirdness does not ensue, this election could well be over with this news -- Obama has just been called as the winner of Ohio.<br /><br />This has been an incredible, quintessentially American election, and whatever happens next, an enormous historical page has been turned. An American of African heritage, who unlike most of those Americans who share his African heritage is <i>not</i>descended from slaves, has been elected to the Presidency.<br /><br />I still have many problems with what I regard as his too far-to-the-left political ideas, but focus on this -- our new President-elect is the son of a Kenyan immigrant who came to this country for educational reasons, fell in love with an American woman from Kansas, and became the father to a child who, only 47 years later, would be elected President of this country.<br /><br />What an incredible country! Whatever happens next, I am a very proud American today.<script type="text/javascript"><br />var gaJsHost = (("https:" == document.location.protocol) ? "https://ssl." : "http://www.");<br />document.write(unescape("%3Cscript src='" + gaJsHost + "google-analytics.com/ga.js' type='text/javascript'%3E%3C/script%3E"));<br /></script><br /><script type="text/javascript"><br />var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker("UA-5833794-1");<br />pageTracker._trackPageview();<br /></script>Thunderhearthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06143596557845554558noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-164558807953277387.post-38800669217888221582008-11-04T18:12:00.000-08:002008-11-04T18:16:55.560-08:00Bush States (Mostly) Holding for McCainGeorgia, South Carolina, North Dakota, Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas, West Virginia all have gone for McCain thus far. The only exception is New Mexico and, if all the other Bush states hold for McCain, its loss is not fatal.<br /><br />We're still waiting on Florida, Virginia, Indiana, Ohio and Missouri. If McCain loses any one of those big states, though, it's all over for him. The longer and further west this race heads, the better it looks for McCain, in my book.<br /><br />In the meantime, Obama has continued the 2004-repeat theme by winning Kerry's states of New Hampshire, Maine, Vermont, Minnesota and Wisconsin. Oh, and Michigan too.<script type="text/javascript"><br />var gaJsHost = (("https:" == document.location.protocol) ? "https://ssl." : "http://www.");<br />document.write(unescape("%3Cscript src='" + gaJsHost + "google-analytics.com/ga.js' type='text/javascript'%3E%3C/script%3E"));<br /></script><br /><script type="text/javascript"><br />var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker("UA-5833794-1");<br />pageTracker._trackPageview();<br /></script>Thunderhearthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06143596557845554558noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-164558807953277387.post-82177924072125391882008-11-04T18:01:00.000-08:002008-11-04T18:02:21.982-08:00New Mexico Flips to ObamaThis is not necessarily a surprise, but it is a flip from Bush winning it in 2000 and 2004: New Mexico has gone to Obama. Bad news for McCain, but again not necessarily unexpected.<script type="text/javascript"><br />var gaJsHost = (("https:" == document.location.protocol) ? "https://ssl." : "http://www.");<br />document.write(unescape("%3Cscript src='" + gaJsHost + "google-analytics.com/ga.js' type='text/javascript'%3E%3C/script%3E"));<br /></script><br /><script type="text/javascript"><br />var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker("UA-5833794-1");<br />pageTracker._trackPageview();<br /></script>Thunderhearthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06143596557845554558noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-164558807953277387.post-24553938835892843612008-11-04T17:30:00.000-08:002008-11-04T18:02:57.578-08:00Pennsylvania Goes for ObamaBad news for the McCain campaign, the heat is really on them now. If they still hold Virginia, Ohio, Florida and Missouri, this thing will go on through the night into the Midwest and Southwestern states, but if not, it's going to be an early night in the Presidential race.<script type="text/javascript"><br />var gaJsHost = (("https:" == document.location.protocol) ? "https://ssl." : "http://www.");<br />document.write(unescape("%3Cscript src='" + gaJsHost + "google-analytics.com/ga.js' type='text/javascript'%3E%3C/script%3E"));<br /></script><br /><script type="text/javascript"><br />var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker("UA-5833794-1");<br />pageTracker._trackPageview();<br /></script>Thunderhearthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06143596557845554558noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-164558807953277387.post-67176807303952346642008-11-04T16:45:00.001-08:002008-11-04T18:03:44.214-08:00First States CalledNo surprises just yet: McCain wins <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/11/04/election.president/index.html" target="new">West Virginia and Kentucky</a>, and Obama wins Vermont.<br /><br />This is good news in particular for the McCain campaign, because it means he's holding Bush states so far. If that continues through Ohio, Virginia and Missouri in particular, there will be much joy in the McCain headquarters.<br /><br />UPDATE: (8:00 PM Eastern) McCain won <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/11/04/election.president/index.html" target="new">South Carolina</a>, Oklahoma and Tennessee, and Obama is projected to win New Jersey, Connecticut, and his home state of Illinois.<br /><br />As always, we'll see what happens next.<script type="text/javascript"><br />var gaJsHost = (("https:" == document.location.protocol) ? "https://ssl." : "http://www.");<br />document.write(unescape("%3Cscript src='" + gaJsHost + "google-analytics.com/ga.js' type='text/javascript'%3E%3C/script%3E"));<br /></script><br /><script type="text/javascript"><br />var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker("UA-5833794-1");<br />pageTracker._trackPageview();<br /></script>Thunderhearthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06143596557845554558noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-164558807953277387.post-91122421743054766542008-11-04T15:03:00.000-08:002008-11-04T18:04:55.159-08:00Early IndicationsSo far, nothing decisive, but good news for both candidates. Newly-registered voters are overwhelmingly going for Obama, but late deciders seem to be breaking for McCain in a big way.<br /><br />Some interesting news comes from Minnesota, where the Obama campaign is <a href="http://marcambinder.theatlantic.com/archives/2008/11/minnesota.php" target="new">apparently</a> finding it much closer than it expected. Given that nobody was thinking Minnesota was going for McCain, this can be only be regarded as good news for his side.<br /><br />More to come, for sure!<script type="text/javascript"><br />var gaJsHost = (("https:" == document.location.protocol) ? "https://ssl." : "http://www.");<br />document.write(unescape("%3Cscript src='" + gaJsHost + "google-analytics.com/ga.js' type='text/javascript'%3E%3C/script%3E"));<br /></script><br /><script type="text/javascript"><br />var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker("UA-5833794-1");<br />pageTracker._trackPageview();<br /></script>Thunderhearthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06143596557845554558noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-164558807953277387.post-78122086864267704442008-11-04T11:38:00.000-08:002008-11-04T11:52:09.299-08:00Election Day!Tigerhawk has an excellent post on his <a href="http://tigerhawk.blogspot.com/2008/11/my-hopes-and-fears.html" target="new">hopes and fears</a> for today. So I thought I would add my own here.<br /><br />First, the self-evident truth is that, no matter whether McCain or Obama wins, they will be my President for the next four years. I will be more pleased today in the event of a McCain victory, but I will be no less proud of my country or supportive of its President in the event of a President Obama being sworn in.<br /><br />My greatest fear is that, in the event of a McCain victory, Democrats in general and Americans of African ancestry in particular will feel that racism was the decisive cause of Senator Obama's defeat. I feel that will not be the case, that in fact the reason Senator Obama came so close is because of his incredible American journey as the first generation son of a Kenyan immigrant and his considerable personal political talents, despite a dearth of experience and a host of questionable political allies.<br /><br />My second-greatest fear is that the world will recoil even further from us in the event of an Obama defeat. We cannot control that reaction, but I hope it does not occur in the event of my candidate winning the Presidency.<br /><br />My great hope is that, no matter who wins, this election represents a tremendous chance for renewal of these United States. President Bush will be gone as of January 20 next year (while his foreign critics the Castro brothers, Hugo Chavez, and the Iranian ayatollahs continue in their ever-longer despotism), and I suspect all political sides in this country will be relieved to see him go.<br /><br />I am a tremendous optimist, and I believe still that this country's best days are ahead of her. I can't wait for the next chapter in our country's history to begin, starting with this momentous day.<script type="text/javascript"><br />var gaJsHost = (("https:" == document.location.protocol) ? "https://ssl." : "http://www.");<br />document.write(unescape("%3Cscript src='" + gaJsHost + "google-analytics.com/ga.js' type='text/javascript'%3E%3C/script%3E"));<br /></script><br /><script type="text/javascript"><br />var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker("UA-5833794-1");<br />pageTracker._trackPageview();<br /></script>Thunderhearthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06143596557845554558noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-164558807953277387.post-53235791455362926502008-10-30T17:12:00.000-07:002008-10-30T17:19:20.476-07:00Down, But Not OutThat's a good description of me, because I've been sick as a dog these past few days, and it's a good description of the McCain campaign too.<br /><br />I honestly don't know where this is all going to end up, because the polls are all over the place, but I honestly think that McCain can still pull it out. Here's why:<br /><br />1. Until the actual young voters turn out heavily for Obama, I'll doubt that they'll do so. Every four years, the youth vote is expected to turn out, only to disappoint those who, like Kerry in 2004, were counting on them.<br /><br />2. Pennsylvania is drifting toward McCain, and I think it might surprise Obama in the same way it went for Hillary during the primaries.<br /><br />3. Old people always turn out to vote, and they tend to be more conservative, so I figure this one will favor McCain overall.<br /><br />The <i>one</i> thing I don't think is working against Obama is race -- if anything, I think it's working for him. I think many people who love this country and believe in its promise are positively eager to vote for an American President who happens to have African heritage, as Obama does. For me, his far-left ideas, his lack of experience, and his profoundly anti-free trade stance work against him, but that's just me.<br /><br />Whichever way it turns out, it sure is going to be an interesting night next Tuesday!<br /><script type="text/javascript"><br />var gaJsHost = (("https:" == document.location.protocol) ? "https://ssl." : "http://www.");<br />document.write(unescape("%3Cscript src='" + gaJsHost + "google-analytics.com/ga.js' type='text/javascript'%3E%3C/script%3E"));<br /></script><br /><script type="text/javascript"><br />var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker("UA-5833794-1");<br />pageTracker._trackPageview();<br /></script>Thunderhearthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06143596557845554558noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-164558807953277387.post-55431118826496970022008-10-28T10:42:00.000-07:002008-10-28T10:58:28.389-07:00"Innocent People Have to Die in a Revolution"That's what "Billy Ayers" allegedly <a href="http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/eyewitness-to-the-ayers-revolution/" target="new">said</a> to an FBI informant, Larry Grathwohl, who had infiltrated the Weather Underground:<blockquote><b>Pajamas Media:</b> Scattered news accounts on the Internet note that you were instrumental in foiling Weather Underground attacks in February of 1970, in Detroit. The Weathermen built two bombs targeting the Detroit Police Officers’ Association (DPOA) building and the 13th Precinct. Were the goals of these attacks symbolic property damage as were some other Weathermen attacks, or were these targets selected to kill police officers?<br /><br /><b>Larry Grathwohl:</b> The instructions I received from Billy Ayers was that the bombs to be used in Detroit must have shrapnel (fence staples, specifically) and fire potential (propane bottles). The intention was to kill police officers.<br /><br /><b>Pajamas Media:</b> One of the Detroit bombs was to be placed on the side of the DPOA building, and the blast was likely to cause damage to the adjacent Red Barn Restaurant, which had mostly African-American customers. Who ordered the attack, and what did he say when you told him that innocent civilians would be killed?<br /><br /><b>Larry Grathwohl:</b> When I objected to Billy Ayers that more innocent people would be killed in the restaurant, he replied, “Innocent people have to die in a revolution.” Billy also acknowledged during a criticism session in Buffalo that Bernadine placed the bomb at the Park Police Station which resulted in the death of Police Officer McDonnell.</blockquote>This is important because it is evidence of several things: one, that Ayers intended to kill, and that it was luck and police work that prevented it, not his conscience as he would have it; two, that Bernardine Dohrn was personally responsible for the murder by bomb of a police officer.<br /><br />And here is Gratwohl discussing the Weather Underground's plans to liquidate the roughly 25 million Americans they figured would not be susceptible to re-education after their glorious Communist revolution was realized:<br /><br /><object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/NJn5b8_weUY&hl=en&fs=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/NJn5b8_weUY&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object><br /><br />From the above, it's pretty clear that Ayers and Dohrn <i>are</i> classic Stalinists, in their willingness to contemplate mass murder in order to accomplish their ideological goals. In this light, Obama's endorsement of Ayers' work as a so-called education reformer takes on all sorts of non-funny connotations.<br /><br /><a href="http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/eyewitness-to-the-ayers-revolution/" target="new">Read the whole thing!</a><br /> <br /><br /><script type="text/javascript"><br />var gaJsHost = (("https:" == document.location.protocol) ? "https://ssl." : "http://www.");<br />document.write(unescape("%3Cscript src='" + gaJsHost + "google-analytics.com/ga.js' type='text/javascript'%3E%3C/script%3E"));<br /></script><br /><script type="text/javascript"><br />var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker("UA-5833794-1");<br />pageTracker._trackPageview();<br /></script>Thunderhearthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06143596557845554558noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-164558807953277387.post-52473168390637732322008-10-25T22:03:00.000-07:002008-10-26T09:34:23.490-07:00Concrete BlondeThis is an incredible Los Angeles-based band I was fortunate enough to see in 1989 at the now-defunct Green Parrot club in Neptune, NJ. The lead singer, Johnette Napolitano, is all of 5 foot zero and man does she have a set of pipes. Given that the stage at the Parrot was all of an inch tall and I was standing right up against the stage, I towered over her and was utterly blown away.<br /><br /><object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/7B4xUf05uhk&hl=en&fs=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/7B4xUf05uhk&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object><br /><br /><b>Concrete Blonde "God is a Bullet"</b><br /><br />There's a green plaid jacket on the back of the chair<br />It's like a moment frozen forever there<br /><br />Mom and dad had a lot of big plans for their little man<br />So proud!<br />Mama's gone crazy 'cause her baby's shot down<br />By some teenage car chase war out of bounds<br />It was the wrong place wrong time wrong end of a gun.<br />Sad!<br /><br />Shoot straight from the hip, yeah.<br />Gone forever in a trigger slip<br />Well, it could have been<br />It could have been your brother.<br />Shoot straight shoot to kill, yeah.<br />Blame each other, well, blame yourselves, you know<br />God is a bullet have mercy on us everyone<br /><br />They're gonna call me sir they'll all stop picking on me<br />Well I'm a high school grad I'm over 5 foot 3<br />I'll get a badge and a gun and I'll join the P.D.<br />They'll see<br />He didn't have to use the gun they put in his hand<br />But when the guy came at him, well he panicked and ran<br />And it's a thirty long years 'fore they're givin' him another chance<br />And it's sad, sad, it's sad<br /><br />Shoot straight from the hip, yeah.<br />Gone forever in a trigger slip<br />Well, it could have been<br />It could have been your mother.<br />Shoot straight shoot to kill, yeah.<br />Blame each other, well, blame yourselves, you know<br />God is a bullet have mercy on us everyone<br /><br />Shoot straight from the hip, yeah.<br />Gone forever in a trigger slip<br />Well, it could have been<br />It could have been your mother.<br /><br />John Lennon, Doctor King, Harvey Milk<br />all for goddamn nothing<br /><br />God is a bullet have mercy on us everyone<br />God is a bullet have mercy on us everyone<br /><br /><br /><script type="text/javascript"><br />var gaJsHost = (("https:" == document.location.protocol) ? "https://ssl." : "http://www.");<br />document.write(unescape("%3Cscript src='" + gaJsHost + "google-analytics.com/ga.js' type='text/javascript'%3E%3C/script%3E"));<br /></script><br /><script type="text/javascript"><br />var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker("UA-5833794-1");<br />pageTracker._trackPageview();<br /></script>Thunderhearthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06143596557845554558noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-164558807953277387.post-48918215206689524302008-10-24T11:57:00.000-07:002008-10-24T12:23:24.398-07:00More Bill Ayers LunacyBill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn issued their revolutionary manifesto, <i>Prairie Fire</i>, on May 9, 1974. According to <a href="http://www.zombietime.com/prairie_fire/" target="new">recently-scanned pages</a> posted to the web, it contained the following tidbits:<blockquote>We are a guerilla organization. We are communist women and men, underground in the United States for more than four years.<br /><br />[...]<br /><br />We need a revolutionary communist party in order to lead the struggle, give coherence and direction to the fight, <i>seize power</i> [my emphasis] and build the new society.</blockquote>For those who continue to argue that Ayers was all about peace, he just got carried away, there's this: among the many "heroes" to whom <i>Prairie Fire</i> is dedicated is <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sirhan_Sirhan" target="new">Sirhan Sirhan</a>, the murderer of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Kennedy" target="new">Robert Kennedy</a>, who killed Kennedy because as a Palestinian militant he objected to Kennedy's support for the state of Israel.<br /><br />As the poster of the pages notes, Ayers lists himself as the <a href="http://billayers.wordpress.com/2008/05/08/books/" target="new">author</a> of <i>Prairie Fire</i> on his own blog. <br /><br />Bill Ayers was 30 when this manifesto was issued, Dohrn was 32, so please don't tell me you can chalk it up to youthful foolishness. <br /><br />Why this matters, of course, is that Senator Obama from 1995 through 2005 <i>chose</i> a political alliance with these loons, with Ayers in the 1995-2000 (at least) educational reform of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, and with Dohrn peripherally in letting the Ayers/Dohrn couple hold an introductory fundraiser for him in 1996.<br /><br />And to those who continue to argue that Ayers and Dohrn changed, and that Senator Obama could not possibly know what these thugs were really about, there is this interview they gave to Connie Chung and ABC News in 1998, as repeated on Fox News recently:<br /><br /><object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/cefpQtAQrMw&hl=en&fs=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/cefpQtAQrMw&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object><br /><br />That's not exactly hiding the fact that they're still radical, is it? How could anyone spend <i>five</i> minutes with these idiots and not realize that fact? How could someone purporting to have the intelligence and good judgement of Senator Obama not realize it, more to the point!<br /><br />I wonder what Obama's various Kennedy supporters -- Senator Ted Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, Jr., Kathleen Kennedy Townshend, and Maria Shriver -- are thinking now about Senator Obama's association with Ayers.<br /><br /><script type="text/javascript"><br />var gaJsHost = (("https:" == document.location.protocol) ? "https://ssl." : "http://www.");<br />document.write(unescape("%3Cscript src='" + gaJsHost + "google-analytics.com/ga.js' type='text/javascript'%3E%3C/script%3E"));<br /></script><br /><script type="text/javascript"><br />var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker("UA-5833794-1");<br />pageTracker._trackPageview();<br /></script>Thunderhearthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06143596557845554558noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-164558807953277387.post-76218384925493643322008-10-21T20:55:00.000-07:002008-10-26T18:44:19.957-07:00Obama Loses Chris Matthews?Kudos to <a href="http://www.suitablyflip.com/suitably_flip/2008/10/quote-of-the--1.html" target="new">Suitably Flip</a>, who says, "Who is this anchor and in whose basement is he keeping Chris Matthews?"<br /><br />But in all seriousness, when Obama loses (if only momentarily) Chris "I felt this thrill going up my leg" Matthews, maybe things are really starting to turn around for Senator McCain.<br /><br /><object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/_y0-_-0EHyE&color1=0xb1b1b1&color2=0xcfcfcf&hl=en&fs=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/_y0-_-0EHyE&color1=0xb1b1b1&color2=0xcfcfcf&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object><br /><br />Memo to poor Governor Paterson from New York: what you were trying to think of was the Lugar-Obama legislation, a pretty slam-dunk piece that Senator Lugar largely updated from the old Nunn-Lugar legislation of the 1990s. In other words, even in this sole bipartisan accomplishment in Senator Obama's 3 years, 9 months in the U.S. Senate to date, his input was basically minimal.<br /><br />ADDED: Since it is often stated that Senator Obama spent very little time indeed in the U.S. Senate before running for President, I decided to check on the precise dates involved. He spent just shy of 2 years, 4 months in the Senate before running for President, and if elected on November 4, 2008 to the Presidency it will only be 3 years, 10 months precisely since he was sworn in as a U.S. Senator.<br /><br />Obama was sworn into the U.S. Senate on <a href="http://freshpaint.blogspot.com/2005/01/barack-obama-sworn-in-to-us-senate.html" target="new">January 4, 2005</a><br /><br />On <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/02/10/obama.president/index.html" target="new">May 2, 2007</a>, Senator Obama declared he was entering into the Presidential race.<br /><br />Adding it all up, that's 28 months as a full-time U.S. Senator, followed by 18 months as a full-time Presidential candidate. But of course he's qualified! Why would anyone have any doubt?<br /><br />By contrast, the evil George W. Bush waited a full four years as Texas Governor from 1994-1998 before declaring his intent to run for President. It worked out so well the first time -- let's go for Obama and even <i>less</i> experience than the current President had!<br /><script type="text/javascript"><br />var gaJsHost = (("https:" == document.location.protocol) ? "https://ssl." : "http://www.");<br />document.write(unescape("%3Cscript src='" + gaJsHost + "google-analytics.com/ga.js' type='text/javascript'%3E%3C/script%3E"));<br /></script><br /><script type="text/javascript"><br />var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker("UA-5833794-1");<br />pageTracker._trackPageview();<br /></script>Thunderhearthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06143596557845554558noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-164558807953277387.post-20967752733181579092008-10-21T19:12:00.000-07:002008-10-21T19:25:20.827-07:00John Kerry is a DisgraceIf you recall, Senator John McCain was quite honorable in <a href="http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2004/08/06/MNGUT83SS41.DTL" target="new">defending</a> Senator John Kerry from the Swiftboat attacks on him during the latter's Presidential campaign against President George W. Bush in 2004.<blockquote>A group of veterans backing President Bush launched a direct attack this week on Democratic nominee John Kerry's war-hero biography by releasing a new TV ad accusing him of lying about his injuries in Vietnam and dishonoring fellow veterans by speaking out against the war. <br /><br />But the 60-second television commercial, being aired in three battleground states in the presidential race, sparked a furious response Thursday from Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona, a former Vietnam prisoner of war, who called the ad "dishonest and dishonorable" and urged the White House to condemn it. <br /><br />The White House declined but distanced the president from the group's critique of Kerry.</blockquote>How does Kerry repay McCain during this year's Presidential election? <a href="http://news.bostonherald.com/news/2008/view.bg?articleid=1126779&srvc=2008campnews&position=1" target="new">This</a> is how:<blockquote>The 2004 Democratic presidential candidate, addressing a business summit in Cambridge yesterday, was talking about the media’s “silly questions” to presidential candidates when he cracked his “joke,” his spokeswoman said.<br /><br />“Barack got asked the famous boxers or briefs question,” Kerry said, PolitickerMA reported. He said Obama successfully parried the question.<br /><br />“Then they asked McCain and McCain said, ‘Depends,’ ” Kerry said, referring to the brand of adult diapers. Kerry spokeswoman Brigid O’Rourke defended the Bay State senator, saying he was recycling an old joke: “The point he was making was that the press asks silly questions and jumps on ridiculous things - as evidenced by this very story.” Kerry was forced to apologize in 2006 when he “botched” a joke that poor students end up “stuck in Iraq.”</blockquote>Well, Senator Kerry, here's something I am most assuredly not joking about: you're slime, Senator, and my mild regret that I voted for you in 2004 has now solidified into complete certainty that I was mistaken in ever thinking you fit for high office. <br /><script type="text/javascript"><br />var gaJsHost = (("https:" == document.location.protocol) ? "https://ssl." : "http://www.");<br />document.write(unescape("%3Cscript src='" + gaJsHost + "google-analytics.com/ga.js' type='text/javascript'%3E%3C/script%3E"));<br /></script><br /><script type="text/javascript"><br />var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker("UA-5833794-1");<br />pageTracker._trackPageview();<br /></script>Thunderhearthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06143596557845554558noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-164558807953277387.post-55556372026951941332008-10-20T11:23:00.000-07:002008-10-20T11:25:00.298-07:00Hiding the EvidenceIt is silly, and so self-defeating, that a liberal blogger has deleted her post about first meeting Barack Obama in Bill Ayers' living room.<br /><br />I myself checked out that post last week, and can confirm it was there, but I was not as smart as Patterico who <a href="http://www.patterico.com/2008/10/20/evidence-of-obama-ayers-tie-sent-down-the-memory-hole-almost/" target="new">took a screenshot</a>, just in case:<blockquote>On Thursday, the L.A. Times claimed that there is “no recorded basis” for John McCain’s statement that Obama launched his political career in Bill Ayers’s living room. That same day, I wrote a post that proved them wrong. I linked a January 27, 2005 blog post by Maria Warren, a political liberal who attended the function. In that post, she said:<br /><blockquote>When I first met Barack Obama, he was giving a standard, innocuous little talk in the livingroom of those two legends-in-their-own-minds, Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn. They were launching him–introducing him to the Hyde Park community as the best thing since sliced bread.</blockquote>I originally read about this post at a Politico piece about the Ayers-Obama relationship in February 2008. That post identified the name of the blog, and Maria Warren as the author. But Politico did not link Warren’s post; I found it and linked it based on the evidence provided by Politico. Yesterday I sent the link to the L.A. Times as part of a request for a correction of the error in their editorial.<br /><br />As far as I know, I was the first blogger to directly link Warren’s blog entry — and I did so last Thursday.<br /><br />Now it’s Monday, and this blog entry — which had been around since January 27, 2005 — is suddenly gone. (H/t Jim Treacher.)<br /><br />I thought there wasn’t anything to the Obama-Ayers relationship. I guess somebody thinks different — and is taking pains to delete the evidence.</blockquote>But don't forget, there's nothing to hide here, Ayers is just a guy Obama knows from his neighborhood.<br /><br /><script type="text/javascript"><br />var gaJsHost = (("https:" == document.location.protocol) ? "https://ssl." : "http://www.");<br />document.write(unescape("%3Cscript src='" + gaJsHost + "google-analytics.com/ga.js' type='text/javascript'%3E%3C/script%3E"));<br /></script><br /><script type="text/javascript"><br />var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker("UA-5833794-1");<br />pageTracker._trackPageview();<br /></script>Thunderhearthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06143596557845554558noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-164558807953277387.post-61269474184041832372008-10-19T06:16:00.000-07:002008-10-19T06:48:32.122-07:00Obama and (Labor) Voter IntimidationTigerhawk has an <a href="http://tigerhawk.blogspot.com/2008/10/vote-for-barack-obama-is-vote-against.html" target="new">excellent post</a> up about Obama's support for the Card Check bill backed by labor, which Obama supports and McCain does not. Here's why it's troubling:<blockquote>Barack Obama supports Big Labor's ambition to intimidate American workers into joining unions that they would not join if they were permitted to vote in secret. This is the central idea of "card check," a program that would eliminate the need to have an election -- and the debate that precedes it -- before unionizing an American workplace. Big Labor is trying to accomplish through legislation what it cannot in the marketplace of ideas (in 2007, only 7.5 percent of private sector employees belonged to labor unions). "Card check" is such a naked power grab that even USA Today could not help but editorialize against it</blockquote>Now, just imagine if corporate management was trying a similar thing in reverse, in other words, so long as 50% of employees signed a card in public indicating that was their intention, then management could de-certify a union. Pro-union Democrats such as myself would be howling, and properly so. <br /><br />It is no different here -- unions in their desperation are willing to toss aside the critically necessary step of voting in secret AFTER a union has gathered enough signed cards (30% of the workers in a given company) to authorize having the vote in the first place. They are seeking to replace freedom of individual votes with a situation rife with possibilities for fraud and intimidation.<br /><br />Add his support for this bill to his prior support for removing the <a href="http://fiercejoy.blogspot.com/2008/10/obama-and-teamsters.html">Teamsters' federal oversight</a> and a picture of Obama supporting the worst elements of unions more clearly emerges.<br /><br />ADDED: To his great credit, Obama supporter and former 1972 Democratic Presidential candidate George McGovern parts company with Obama on this one:<br /><br /><object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/afjp4Cx-3W0&hl=en&fs=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/afjp4Cx-3W0&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object><br /><br />That pretty much says it all.<br /><br /><script type="text/javascript"><br />var gaJsHost = (("https:" == document.location.protocol) ? "https://ssl." : "http://www.");<br />document.write(unescape("%3Cscript src='" + gaJsHost + "google-analytics.com/ga.js' type='text/javascript'%3E%3C/script%3E"));<br /></script><br /><script type="text/javascript"><br />var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker("UA-5833794-1");<br />pageTracker._trackPageview();<br /></script>Thunderhearthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06143596557845554558noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-164558807953277387.post-23305405397631154942008-10-18T21:35:00.001-07:002008-10-18T21:39:22.519-07:00Times Like TheseThe more I listen to Foo Fighters, the more I think Dave Grohl is just not sufficiently appreciated for his musical talents.<br /><br /><object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/pk7jVsiWb3o&hl=en&fs=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/pk7jVsiWb3o&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object><br /><br /><b>Foo Fighters "Times Like These"</b><br /><br />I am a one way motorway<br />I'm the one that drives away<br />then follows you back home<br />I am a street light shining<br />I'm a wild light blinding bright<br />burning off alone<br /><br />it's times like these you learn to live again<br />it's times like these you give and give again<br />it's times like these you learn to love again<br />it's times like these time and time again<br /><br />I am a new day rising<br />I'm a brand new sky<br />to hang the stars upon tonight<br />I am a little divided<br />do I stay or run away<br />and leave it all behind?<br /><br />it's times like these you learn to live again<br />it's times like these you give and give again<br />it's times like these you learn to love again<br />it's times like these time and time again<br /><script type="text/javascript"><br />var gaJsHost = (("https:" == document.location.protocol) ? "https://ssl." : "http://www.");<br />document.write(unescape("%3Cscript src='" + gaJsHost + "google-analytics.com/ga.js' type='text/javascript'%3E%3C/script%3E"));<br /></script><br /><script type="text/javascript"><br />var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker("UA-5833794-1");<br />pageTracker._trackPageview();<br /></script>Thunderhearthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06143596557845554558noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-164558807953277387.post-6238718400287010302008-10-17T18:21:00.000-07:002008-10-17T18:23:16.751-07:00Obama's friend Alexi, the Mob BankerOf course, the national media has taken great interest in this story, too. Just as soon as they're done thoroughly vetting Joe the Plumber, they'll get right on it!<br /><br />So, young Alexi Giannoulias, all of 29 years old, got elected Illinois State Treasurer in 2006 with a critical endorsement by Senator Barack Obama, who has reportedly called Giannoulias his protege.<br /><br />His qualifications? Playing basketball with Obama, and for a time in Greece in a semi-pro league, and of course, making sure his family-owned Broadway Bank keeps local Mob figures well-supplied with <a href="http://www.nypost.com/seven/09052007/news/nationalnews/obamas_mob_tie_idekick.htm" target="new">easy money</a>:<blockquote> Before he promised to raise funds for Obama, Giannoulias bankrolled Michael "Jaws" Giorango, a Chicagoan twice convicted of bookmaking and promoting prostitution.<br /><br />Giannoulias is so tainted by reputed mob links that several top Illinois Dems, including the state's speaker of the House and party chairman, refused to endorse him even after he won the Democratic nomination with Obama's help.<br /><br />Giannoulias was the bank's vice president and chief loan officer for most of the more than $15 million in loans.</blockquote>And let <i>no one</i> think that this means Obama's rep as a reformer is an absolute crock, oh no!<blockquote>"Barack Obama has a long record of fighting for ethics reform from his days as a state senator," a campaign rep said.</blockquote>Because putting a mob banker like Giannoulias in charge of all the finances of the State of Illinois is the reformist thing to do, you see?<br /><br />With a record of staunch Daley Machine reform like this, it can only come as a shock that Illinois seems to be <a href="www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0611030135nov03,0,4581699.story" target="new">missing</a> $45.8 <i>billion</i> in pension funds. Thank goodness Senator Obama has helped put Alexi and his well-connected Mob friends on the case! I'm sure it will all be cleaned up in a jiffy.<br /><br />To get serious for a moment, this is not about party or ideology. This is about corruption. Obama and his Daley Machine pals in Chicago are corrupt to the core, as were Republicans Jack Abramoff and Tom DeLay, among others. We just got rid of that last bunch of corrupt hacks, let's not give another gang a crack at it, mmkay? <br /><br />McCain at least learned his lesson from being one of the <a href="" target="new">Keating Five</a> and thereafter took on his party's corrupt hacks, as did Palin in Alaska, both at considerable risk to their careers.<br /><script type="text/javascript"><br />var gaJsHost = (("https:" == document.location.protocol) ? "https://ssl." : "http://www.");<br />document.write(unescape("%3Cscript src='" + gaJsHost + "google-analytics.com/ga.js' type='text/javascript'%3E%3C/script%3E"));<br /></script><br /><script type="text/javascript"><br />var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker("UA-5833794-1");<br />pageTracker._trackPageview();<br /></script>Thunderhearthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06143596557845554558noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-164558807953277387.post-65984644638476266552008-10-16T21:17:00.001-07:002008-10-16T21:51:01.155-07:00Obama and the Reverend WrightFrom a 2007 profile of Barack Obama in <a href="http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/13390609/campaign_08_the_radical_roots_of_barack_obama/print" target="new">Rolling Stone</a>:<blockquote>The Trinity United Church of Christ, the church that Barack Obama attends in Chicago, is at once vast and unprepossessing, a big structure a couple of blocks from the projects, in the long open sore of a ghetto on the city's far South Side. The church is a leftover vision from the Sixties of what a black nationalist future might look like. There's the testifying fervor of the black church, the Afrocentric Bible readings, even the odd dashiki. And there is the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, a sprawling, profane bear of a preacher, a kind of black ministerial institution, with his own radio shows and guest preaching gigs across the country. Wright takes the pulpit here one Sunday and solemnly, sonorously declares that he will recite ten essential facts about the United States. "Fact number one: We've got more black men in prison than there are in college," he intones. "Fact number two: Racism is how this country was founded and how this country is still run!" There is thumping applause; Wright has a cadence and power that make Obama sound like John Kerry. Now the reverend begins to preach. "We are deeply involved in the importing of drugs, the exporting of guns and the training of professional KILLERS. . . . We believe in white supremacy and black inferiority and believe it more than we believe in God. . . . We conducted radiation experiments on our own people. . . . We care nothing about human life if the ends justify the means!" The crowd whoops and amens as Wright builds to his climax: "And. And. And! GAWD! Has GOT! To be SICK! OF THIS SHIT!"<br /><br />This is as openly radical a background as any significant American political figure has ever emerged from, as much Malcolm X as Martin Luther King Jr. Wright is not an incidental figure in Obama's life, or his politics. The senator "affirmed" his Christian faith in this church; he uses Wright as a "sounding board" to "make sure I'm not losing myself in the hype and hoopla." Both the title of Obama's second book, The Audacity of Hope, and the theme for his keynote address at the Democratic National Convention in 2004 come from Wright's sermons. "If you want to understand where Barack gets his feeling and rhetoric from," says the Rev. Jim Wallis, a leader of the religious left, "just look at Jeremiah Wright."<br /><br />Obama wasn't born into Wright's world. His parents were atheists, an African bureaucrat and a white grad student, Jerry Falwell's nightmare vision of secular liberals come to life. Obama could have picked any church — the spare, spiritual places in Hyde Park, the awesome pomp and procession of the cathedrals downtown. He could have picked a mosque, for that matter, or even a synagogue. Obama chose Trinity United. He picked Jeremiah Wright. Obama writes in his autobiography that on the day he chose this church, he felt the spirit of black memory and history moving through Wright, and "felt for the first time how that spirit carried within it, nascent, incomplete, the possibility of moving beyond our narrow dreams."<br /><br />Obama has now spent two years in the Senate and written two books about himself, both remarkably frank: There is a desire to own his story, to be both his own Boswell and his own investigative reporter. When you read his autobiography, the surprising thing — for such a measured politician — is the depth of radical feeling that seeps through, the amount of Jeremiah Wright that's packed in there. Perhaps this shouldn't be surprising. Obama's life story is a splicing of two different roles, and two different ways of thinking about America's. One is that of the consummate insider, someone who has been raised believing that he will help to lead America, who believes in this country's capacity for acts of outstanding virtue. The other is that of a black man who feels very deeply that this country's exercise of its great inherited wealth and power has been grossly unjust. This tension runs through his life; Obama is at once an insider and an outsider, a bomb thrower and the class president. "I'm somebody who believes in this country and its institutions," he tells me. "But I often think they're broken."</blockquote>It seems to me that the Reverend Wright is still stuck in the early 1960s, to say the least, and refuses to see the many positive strides the United States has made in race relations. It's not all good, not by a long shot, but Wright makes the typical radical mistake of dismissing the good because it's not perfect.<br /><br />News flash: this nation is <i>never</i> going to be perfect. The Founders wanted us to strive for a "more perfect union," by which they meant that for all the essential flaws of our humanity we should never stop trying to make a better nation. And so it has been: two steps forward, one step back.<br /><br />The above article alone should put to rest the facile lie Obama has told, and most have accepted, that the ravings we heard from Reverend Wright this past spring were new or unacceptable to Obama. They were the very bread and butter of the Trinity Church, and for better or worse what drew him to that church in the first place. <br /><br />Here's the full, in-context speech of the Reverend Wright, put on YouTube by the Trinity United Church itself (warning, it's nearly 7 minutes long, but worth watching):<br /><br /><object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/RvMbeVQj6Lw&hl=en&fs=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/RvMbeVQj6Lw&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object><br /><br />And, Senator Obama's first (37 minutes long!) response, when he refused to disavow Wright and compared Wright's racism to his white grandmother's, without making the obvious point that she, at least, did not preach said racism to a crowd of 5,000 strong each and every Sunday:<br /><br /><object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/pWe7wTVbLUU&hl=en&fs=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/pWe7wTVbLUU&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object><br /><br />Draw your own conclusions.<br /><br />Hat Tip: Victor Hanson, whose writing <a href="http://victorhanson.com/articles/hanson101508.html" target="new">pointed</a> me to the <a href="http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/13390609/campaign_08_the_radical_roots_of_barack_obama/print" target="new">Rolling Stone</a> article.<br /><script type="text/javascript"><br />var gaJsHost = (("https:" == document.location.protocol) ? "https://ssl." : "http://www.");<br />document.write(unescape("%3Cscript src='" + gaJsHost + "google-analytics.com/ga.js' type='text/javascript'%3E%3C/script%3E"));<br /></script><br /><script type="text/javascript"><br />var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker("UA-5833794-1");<br />pageTracker._trackPageview();<br /></script>Thunderhearthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06143596557845554558noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-164558807953277387.post-67809877991583179512008-10-16T18:15:00.000-07:002008-10-16T18:40:27.347-07:00Are You Kidding Me?!You know, as a Democrat in good standing I used to dismiss right-wingers whining about the "liberal media" as ridiculous, but then this happened: the New York Times, which assiduously stayed away from the Bill Ayers/Obama story for oh, gee, a year and a half until <a href="http://query.nytimes.com/search/sitesearch?query=Bill+Ayers&more=past_365" target="new">April 2008</a>, is after three days <a href="http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/10/16/joe-in-the-spotlight/?hp" target="new">on top</a> of reporting all about that well-known domestic terrorist Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher, better known by his sinister alias "Joe the Plumber."<br /><br />Andrew Sullivan (aka "The Conservative Soul") knows the score, and has veered only briefly from his relentless pursuit of Trig Palin's true birth parents to <a href="http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2008/10/joe-not-a-plumb.html" target="new">vet</a> this <a href="http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2008/10/joe-the-plumber.html" target="new">latest</a> threat to the <a href="http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2008/10/correction-1.html" target="new">Democrats</a>, uh, I mean the Republic.<br /><script type="text/javascript"><br />var gaJsHost = (("https:" == document.location.protocol) ? "https://ssl." : "http://www.");<br />document.write(unescape("%3Cscript src='" + gaJsHost + "google-analytics.com/ga.js' type='text/javascript'%3E%3C/script%3E"));<br /></script><br /><script type="text/javascript"><br />var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker("UA-5833794-1");<br />pageTracker._trackPageview();<br /></script>Thunderhearthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06143596557845554558noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-164558807953277387.post-11334862662344918562008-10-16T15:14:00.000-07:002008-10-16T15:21:56.938-07:00Poor OPECOil is now at $70 a barrel and our <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/17/business/worldbusiness/17oil.html?_r=2&hp=&oref=slogin&pagewanted=print">good friends in OPEC</a> are alarmed. Awww, poor OPEC! I'm sure there's nary a dry eye in the house.<br /><br />But seriously, this makes me glad that the <a href="http://cleantechnica.com/2008/10/06/bailing-out-renewable-energy-tax-credits/" target="new">tax credits for wind and solar energy</a> were passed as part of the bailout-palooza last week, because interest in alternative energy sources tends to dissipate whenever traditional energy sources get cheaper. You know, like happened during the last big recession of 1981-1983.<br /><br />This time, let's hope we've learned our lesson and don't throw away the solar, wind and nuclear baby just because the oily bathwater is temporarily cheaper. Wow, is that a deranged metaphor or is it just me?<br /><script type="text/javascript"><br />var gaJsHost = (("https:" == document.location.protocol) ? "https://ssl." : "http://www.");<br />document.write(unescape("%3Cscript src='" + gaJsHost + "google-analytics.com/ga.js' type='text/javascript'%3E%3C/script%3E"));<br /></script><br /><script type="text/javascript"><br />var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker("UA-5833794-1");<br />pageTracker._trackPageview();<br /></script>Thunderhearthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06143596557845554558noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-164558807953277387.post-36330949735276402182008-10-16T13:34:00.000-07:002008-10-16T19:14:36.225-07:00Orson Scott Card nails what bugs me about ObamaAs per usual, I'm late to the party as it was written on September 7, 2008, but I just ran across <a href="http://www.ornery.org/essays/warwatch/2008-09-07-1.html" target="new">this</a> excellent takedown of Obama by science fiction author Orson Scott Card:<blockquote>Where and when has Obama taken anybody on in his own party? Where is his vote that flew in the face of his party's discipline, like many of McCain's? Obama liked to claim that McCain voted with President Bush ninety percent of the time. But that means McCain voted against a President from his own party ten percent of the time.<br /><br />Meanwhile, Obama has voted with the extreme left of his party, right in line with the party leadership, one hundred percent of the time.<br /><br />That ten percent of McCain's votes that went against his party is actually a remarkable record of independence. One that Obama has never even attempted.</blockquote>I have nothing to add. <a href="http://www.ornery.org/essays/warwatch/2008-09-07-1.html" target="new">Just read the whole thing.</a> <br /><script type="text/javascript"><br />var gaJsHost = (("https:" == document.location.protocol) ? "https://ssl." : "http://www.");<br />document.write(unescape("%3Cscript src='" + gaJsHost + "google-analytics.com/ga.js' type='text/javascript'%3E%3C/script%3E"));<br /></script><br /><script type="text/javascript"><br />var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker("UA-5833794-1");<br />pageTracker._trackPageview();<br /></script>Thunderhearthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06143596557845554558noreply@blogger.com0