Michael Steele - the new Republican National Chairman

Michael Steele was just chosen to be the new Republican National Chairman. And I think it was a good choice.

Two years and some months ago, I voted for Steele to be the United States Senator for Maryland. And he was not elected, which was a disappointment, but not a great surprise, in a rather "blue" state. But I think he was qualified for the Senate then, and he is even more qualified for the RNC position now, since, among his past experiences, he has served as the state chairman of the GOP in Maryland.

In a country where 95% of African-Americans voted for Barack Obama, the Republican Party (which was the party that freed the slaves!) is often alleged to be hostile to anyone that is not a white Anglo-Saxon Protestant Christian. This is a fallacy; the GOP believes in equality, and has only been hostile to the idea of reserving certain government positions for specific ethnic/gender people. When African-Americans (or any other people) are good enough for a post, Republicans will endorse such people. They have shown that with such examples as former Secretaries of State Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice, and now once more with former Lieutenant Governor (and candidate for the Senate) Michael Steele. It is not true that the GOP is racist; only that it will not deliberately choose unqualified minority candidates without a reason. Michael Steele is clearly, like Condoleezza Rice, a well-qualified person, whose election will help the RNC.

Choosing someone just for his/her racial/ethnic/gender background is bad. But while I'm sure that Steele got some votes because the GOP was burned by Obama's victory and wanted to appeal to African-Americans, the difference between the parties was shown by the fact that he was chosen because he was qualified. It's not like Bill Clinton's choice of Janet Reno for Attorney General, where he was so eager to choose a woman that nothing else mattered, and as soon as one woman had problems he made sure to nominate another woman.

The new presidential cycle

Today, as happens every fourth January 20, we inaugurated a new President: Barack Obama. Those who follow this blog know that he was not our choice; if we had our way, it would have been John McCain taking the oath of office today. But the people of the United States decided differently, and ours is a constitutionally-governed nation, so for the next four years, Barack Obama will hold the office of President of the United States.


Under our constitution, a newly elected President is given four years to make his mark, and cannot be removed earlier by a vote of no confidence in the way prime ministers are in parliamentary systems. The only way to remove a President is to impeach, and no President has ever been removed that way. (Only one has even been obliged to resign due to the serious threat of an impeachment; sadly, this was someone who had actually been one of our best Presidents). So for better or for worse, the next four years will see our policy decisions made by Barack Obama.


One characteristic of our system, though, is that while the losing side does not have a lot of power, it does have the right to criticize the President. And this we promise. In the next four years, as stated just after the election over 2 months ago, we retain the right to be critical of President Obama's actions, but when he does something good, we will certainly give him the credit.


So far, Obama's done nothing much but make appointments, and he has been pretty good up to now. We will have to follow very closely what he chooses to do in that rôle— we await his actions.

The myth of "the Palestinian people"

Once more, Arabs are killing Israelis in the Middle East. And some of those Arabs are actually getting support from the outside world under the pretense of the need for the "Palestinians" for their own homeland! History tells us that there is no such thing as a "Palestinian," so who are these "Palestinians" who claim the right to a homeland?

First of all, let it be made clear that until 1948 nobody anywhere claimed to be a "Palestinian." If you had asked the ancestors of today's murderous Arab terrorists their nationality in those early days, they might have said "Arab," or perhaps "Syrian," or going back earlier, "citizen of the Ottoman (Turkish) Empire," but nobody in those days ever called himself a "Palestinian." The only people who even used the word "Palestine" to describe the territory were the British and — oddly — the Jews! (The name "Israel" had not yet been chosen, and the Jews were trying to decide on a name for it!)

There has never been an indigenous people in the area who called this territory "Palestine." The earliest people we know of in the region were the Canaanites, who lived there before Moses led the Jewish people out from Egypt. When the Jews settled there, it became "Judea." The name "Palestine" ("Palaestina" in Latin) was given to this territory by the Romans, when they defeated the Jews in battle and took over the land. (They gave the territory this name so they could claim it was not the Jews' land; the name came from the name of the Philistines, a people whose land was nearby. From the Wikipedia description of their territory, it would appear that a small portion of present-day Israel was inhabited by the Philistines; most of their territory was in today's Gaza Strip.) And from then until 1948, the territory was somebody's colony; the last two countries to control the territory before 1948 were the Turks and the British.

In 1918, the British took this territory away from the Turks, and first established a territory known as Palestine, which they governed under a mandate from the League of Nations. In August 1922, the Palestine mandate was split into two; one part was called "Transjordan," and is today the Kingdom of Jordan. So when someone speaks of "Palestine," it is not really clear whether they mean 1918-22 Palestine (which includes Jordan) or 1922-1948 Palestine (which does not).

In any case, "Palestine" in the 20^th century simply was a term for the British mandated territory. Some Arabs in the area wanted it all incorporated in one pan-Arab state that included such current nations as Iraq and Saudi Arabia. Others wanted smaller nations; most considered that this territory would belong to a greater Syria that would include today's Lebanon and Iraq. But nobody considered Palestine (in either the 1918-1922 version or the 1922-1948 version) a nation in its own right.

In 1947, the United Nation passed a resolution dividing this 1922-1948 version of Palestine (which was only a third of the 1918-1922 version!) into two parts, which it might be noted were simply referred to as a "Jewish state" and an "Arab state." Nobody envisioned, even then, the Arab state as being called "Palestine" — that was still just a name for the British colony!

But in any case, the Arabs were not satisfied with just a piece of the Palestine mandate; they wanted it all. So they started a war with the Jews, and by the time the fighting ceased, the Jews ended up with slightly more territory than the UN had awarded them in 1947. This became the State of Israel.

For a number of years, the Arabs kept picking wars with Israel; the Jews kept winning those wars. And ultimately, the Arabs invented a new myth: the myth of a "Palestinian people" evicted from their land by the Israelis. There never was such a thing; there were Arabs, no different in any way from their neighbors in Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria, who thought of themselves as one group, and since the boundaries between these nations had been created by the British and French after World War I, the national identities of these people were not very strong. But by inventing this "Palestinian" nationality, they came up with a group that needed its own homeland, or so they proclaimed.

But who are these "Palestinians"? The people of a national group have something in common. The French speak French, and differ from the French-speaking Swiss and Belgians by having had allegiance to a government that has existed for centuries. The Swiss speak four different languages, but these people signed a constitutional document that bound them together in 1848, and so they have built themselves a nation (In fact, of course, groups of what now are Swiss had bound themselves into a nation in the 13^th century, so they can be considered to have been building this nation for that long!) I challenge anyone to define a "Palestinian" for me -- neither language, nor religion, nor anything else defines a "Palestinian," except that it is an Arab who happened to have been governed by the British mandatory authority between 1922 and 1948 or a descendant of such a person. This hardly defines a nationality!

The Jews are united by religion. The Canadians are united by history; they have built a nation since 1867. But in no sense can the "Palestinians" be united as a people. Let us just avoid this word "Palestinian" — it is totally meaningless!

That time of year -- I hate it!

Right now we are in the time of year that I hate the most. I wish I could go into hibernation from the day after Thanksgiving until New Year's Eve. Why do we have to endure it?


First of all, as I've said, I'm Jewish, so Christmas is not my holiday. But I don't begrudge Christians' celebration of the birth of the founder of their faith (though, historically, it seems a matter of record that he wasn't really born in late December; the Romans simply co-opted a day that was already a holiday and renamed it). The problem is when they try to involve me in their celebration. Please leave me alone!


It seems as if at this time of year we are bombarded by three kinds of music, and I'll list them in increasing order of their unpleasantness:

1. General winter stuff, like "Winter Wonderland," "Jingle Bells," and Leroy Anderson's "Sleigh Ride." This isn't really Christmas music, so it doesn't bother me as much as the other two; I just wonder why anyone would want to be reminded that it's the winter season, with its cold, wind, and even snow!




2. Then there is the "secular Christmas" music -- things like "Silver Bells," which don't mention Jesus but keep the Christmas theme. I suppose this is the Christians' way of trying to make us feel more at home (and one can even argue that Irving Berlin, who wrote "White Christmas," was Jewish!) But my response to those people is simply this: "When you get rid of the first six letters of the name of that holiday, call me. Until then, keep away from me!"




3. And finally, the religious carols, from "Silent Night" to "Adeste Fideles," and on down the whole list. Sing them in your church, in your home, or at private gatherings. I no more want to hear them than I want to be proselytized by your clergy.

So, repeating again, Please leave me alone!

Judge Currie is right on target

U.S. District Judge Cameron McGowan Currie has ruled that the State of South Carolina must hold off its plans to issue special license plates with the words "I Believe" and a cross. Judge Currie is right on target.

When such symbols and words appear on a State-issued license plate, they constitute an establishment of Christianity by the State of South Carolina. If a driver wants to advertise his Christianity, let him buy a bumper sticker and stick it on his car. But the State has no business issuing such plates.

What part of "no establishment of religion" do the South Carolina legislators that approved such a plate not understand?

He's actually doing some things right!

Anyone reading this blog must be aware that my thoughts on Barack Obama prior to this election were extremely negative. So I have to admit that I'm surprising myself with this post, under the title "He's actually doing some things right!" Yes, President-elect Obama is actually doing some things right: I'm talking about his appointments to date.

He's made a number of appointments lately, and some of them (like Pres. Bush's Defense Secretary to continue in office) are positively mind-boggling, given Obama's remarks about Bush's war policies! But one thing they all have in common: Whether I've heard of the person or not, every one is competent for the position which he was picked for. This is quite a contrast with the last two Democratic presidents. Carter picked — to head the anti-drug program — a doctor who was reprimanded by his medical association for improperly prescribing drugs! And in general, Carter tended to appoint people he knew from Georgia, regardless of competence; of course, Carter liked to micro-manage everything, so one might say it didn't matter much who he appointed, because he'd call the shots anyway himself! Clinton was so obsessed with naming a female attorney general — regardless of qualifications — that it took him three tries, and the one who made it, Janet Reno, made a botch of the Elián Gonzalez case. Some of Obama's appointments may be questionable for some reasons, but competency isn't the reason for my doubts on any of them.

The choice of Hillary Clinton

It seems that Hillary Clinton is President-Elect Obama's choice for Secretary of State, and, to my surprise, she wants the job. If I were in her place, I wouldn't:

1. Secretaries of State used to be considered, in the 19^th century, prime prospects for the Presidency. However, there hasn't been a Secretary of State who moved up to the Presidency since James Buchanan (and there hasn't been any Cabinet secretary who moved up to the Presidency since Herbert Hoover).




2. Hillary Clinton seemed to have a promising future in the U. S. Senate. But she needs to develop some seniority there to become an important Senator. Moving into the Cabinet short-circuits this path.




3. Pres.-Elect Obama is an independent-minded man, whose ideas on foreign policy differ from Sen. Clinton's in many ways. However, in the Cabinet, she has to put forward his policies, and not proclaim her own. She will be in Obama's shadow.

I wonder what Obama is thinking in making the offer. But even more, I wonder what Hillary Clinton is thinking in accepting it!

The first actions of President-Elect Obama

Earlier, we said that when President-Elect Barack Obama does something supportable, we will support it, and when he does something bad, we retain the right to criticize him. And it seems he's done some of both in his first days since the election.

On the positive side, he's shown some definite willingness to work with those who opposed him, having meetings with President George W. Bush about the transition and with Senator John McCain to identify points of shared interest, and (the most honorable thing he's done) emphasizing that he did not want the Senate Democrats to strip Sen. Joseph Lieberman of his committee chairmanship. Sen. Lieberman, a Democrat who lost his party's nomination in Connecticut but won as an independent, has been a loyal Democrat on most issues but worked hard against Sen. Obama's candidacy, and it is a good sign that Obama did not bear a grudge.

On the negative side, his appointment of Rahm Emanuel as chief of staff is not a good sign. Emanuel is a vicious Chicago-machine politician, who once sent a campaign opponent a dead fish, and he's also associated strongly with the corrupt Bill Clinton administration.

And it's not certain how to rate Obama's choice of Eric Holder as attorney general. Holder seems to be well-qualified, but he was part of Bill Clinton's last-minute pardoning of Marc Rich and some Puerto Rican nationalists in his role as deputy attorney general. He deserves to be questioned intensely, particularly about Marc Rich. But he may be simply someone who went along with what his boss, the President, wanted. So the jury is still out on this one.

Sarah Palin's future

People are putting forth the idea that if Ted Stevens is re-elected, but expelled from the Senate because of the scandals, Gov. Sarah Palin should be put in that Senate seat. Certainly she is ideologically more religious-right that I would favor, but if she does become a Senator, by the time of the 2012 election she will be better-qualified than Barack Obama was this year, with more experience in the Senate plus some executive experience as Governor. And if she does as good a job in the Senate as she apparently has as Governor, she will be hard to beat for the nomination.


There are a lot of "if"s in that, though. I'm certainly not advocating Sarah Palin as the GOP candidate for the Presidency in 2012. I'd prefer to see someone more moderate, someone in the mold of Rudy Giuliani or John McCain this year. I do think she'd be an attractive candidate, with a lot going for her, particularly if by that time the then-sitting President Barack Obama becomes as unpopular as George W. Bush is at the moment.


In any case, Gov. Palin would bring a lot of new energy to the Senate if she is chosen. And with the low spirits of the party, perhaps we need that.

The result of the election

This will be the last post with a label "2008 election" on this blog. The election is over. and the people have spoken. And in our tradition, we have to accept the result, for the next 4 years. As John McCain said in his gracious concession speech, Barack Obama is our President, beginning in 2½ months.


As I said in my last post, the United States survived Bill Clinton; it will survive Barack Obama. I'm not going into mourning for this country; and I'm not closing this blog. (It is not intended as just a John McCain blog; I started it before I knew who the candidates would be in 2008, and my first choice wasn't even McCain, though I was happy enough to support McCain once he became the obvious front-runner for the nomination.)


I retain the right to criticize President-Elect Obama when I think he is wrong, just as many others have criticized our current President when they have thought he is wrong. I also retain the right to support him whenever I think he is doing the right thing, though I doubt that will happen very often; this is not like a Parliamentary system such as Great Britain's, where "the duty of the opposition is to oppose."


John McCain joins a group of people I have felt should have been President but didn't make it. Some, like Bob Dole, at least made it as far as their party's nomination, as McCain did this year. Others, including Arlen Spector, Bob Dole's wife Elizabeth, George Romney, Jeane Kirkpatrick, and my own political hero, Nelson A. Rockefeller, never even got the nomination. Any of these might have made an excellent President, if the American people had chosen him or her for the job. (You note that all the men and women I have mentioned were Republicans, though Kirkpatrick started her career in the Democratic Party. This is no coincidence. I've rarely seen a Democrat I could support. Jimmy Carter, one of the few Democrats who wasn't too far to the political left for me, was too politically naïve for the job, and made a most incompetent President.)


It should be obvious to all who have read this blog that I believe that the people chose wrong. It seems that the economic meltdown came at just the wrong time; McCain had been starting to move upward in the polls and if there had not been such an economic collapse, I might be today cheering the public's choice of John McCain as our President-Elect. But the 2008 election is over. I hope I will still be alive in 2012 when, I'm sure, the people will choose a new President better qualified and more worthy.

Three days from now, Election Day

... and the polls show Obama far ahead. I hope they're wrong, and it's 1948 all over again; we'll see on Wednesday. But I have to assume they're going to be right, and the American public will misguidedly vote to put in the man I feel is the worst candidate a major party has offered since George McGovern in 1972.



This country will survive. It survived the Presidency of Bill Clinton, and it will survive the Presidency of Barack Obama. (Obama will be worse, but this country has amazing strength in the face of disaster.)



One of two things will happen. Either Obama will be able to push through the radical socialist changes he wants, or he won't. If he does, the American public will see how bad his ideas are, and a new Newt Gingrich will arise in 2010, as the first one did in 1994, on a "Contract with America" type of platform, and Obama will find himself with a hostile Congress in the second half of his term. If he doesn't, the American public will see him as just another smooth-talking politician offering to change the world but unable to do so, and he will not be able to win a second term. So either in 2010 or 2012, the pendulum will swing the other way.



I just hope I'll be alive to see it!

Colin Powell and Barack Obama

Yesterday, General Colin Powell endorsed Senator Barack Obama for the Presidency. While this endorsement made me no more inclined to support Obama than beforehand, it has caused me to rethink my opinion of Gen. Powell.

I had, up to this point, thought of Gen. Powell as a fine patriotic American, who put his country first. In fact, as someone like Sen. John McCain. His endorsing someone as bad for America as Sen. Obama can only mean that Gen. Powell puts his race, not his country, first. I cannot see any other reason why Gen. Powell would back a man whose opposition to everything Gen. Powell has fought for is so patent.

On top of all, some of his reasons for rejecting McCain in favor of Obama are ludicrous — Gov. Sarah Palin may be low in qualification, but nothing that can be said about her doesn't apply to Sen. Obama just as well, and she is only running for the vice-presidency, not the presidency, so Obama's inexperience is more serious.

Up until yesterday, I might have considered a future Colin Powell candidacy for the Presidency as worthy of support; as of yesterday's endorsement, I could not consider supporting Gen. Powell for anything in the future. Anyone who can endorse Barack Obama in this way has forfeited the right to the support of anyone who is truly in favor of America's best interests.

Last night's debate

Some observations on last night's debate:

1. Obama could not get away from attacking George W. Bush. If he had been forced to avoid the phrase "failed policies of the past eight years," he would have been totally tongue-tied.


2. McCain didn't hit that point enough. Once he said ,"If you wanted to run against George Bush, you should have run 4 years ago." Major point, but he should have emphasized this more.


3. Obama needs to be pushed on his associations with Ayers, and with other questionable characters, more. Obama denies that this is an issue, but it bears on the major issue: "Can we trust Barack Obama with the Presidency of the United States?"

The UCC, and why Jeremiah Wright matters

It may seem strange to open a post entitled "The UCC, and why Jeremiah Wright matters" with a reference to Yom Kippur, but the connection is as follows: On Yom Kippur (which began the night before last and extended through most of yesterday) the congregation whose service I attended held that service at a church of the United Church of Christ, Jeremiah Wright's denomination. (They have for many years used churches as venues for their High Holiday services, because they get large attendances on those days and need places much larger than their usual service locations. For the past 20 years they've met for High Holidays at a Presbyterian church a few blocks from the White House, but that church is under renovation, so they used this UCC church this time.)

While waiting for the service to begin, I spent some time looking at the church's hymnals, which were found in the pews. The UCC hymnal turns out to contain much more than what I expected in a hymnal; it had a lot of material on the forms with which the ICC services are to be conducted and it turns out that (not surprisingly, since it was formed by the combination of a number of originally separate Protestant denominations) it tolerates a lot of diversity of doctrine. Even on the doctrine of transsubstantiation, which is generally, among Christians, a major doctrinal difference, it seems that UCC pastors are given the freedom to determine whether they will allude to it in serving the bread and wine.

And this is why I think that Jeremiah Wright matters. It is true, and nobody can deny this, that Barack Obama was essentially a secular person until Rev. Wright converted him. And it is, therefore, likely that Sen. Obama's religious views were formed by Rev. Wright. Each UCC minister clearly has the power to make his congregation over in the image of his own religious ideas, and Sen. Obama was converted by Rev. Wright, attended Rev. Wright's church for over 20 years, and remained a communicant of Rev. Wright's church until it became politically embarrassing.

So Barack Obama has to be charged with Rev. Wright's religious ideas. Wright does matter.

Last night's debate

Not surprisingly, Barack Obama still seems to be running against George W. Bush, rather than John McCain — Bush is unpopular at this point, so Obama is trying to tar McCain with whatever objections people have to Bush. But McCain is his own man, and not a Bush clone; whatever Bush's faults may be, McCain cannot be treated as if he necessarily shares them. Yes, McCain is of Bush's party, but parties include many individuals. Should Obama be considered a Carter/Clinton clone, and everything they did wrong attributed to him?

One could argue that neither Carter nor Clinton was president while Obama was in the Senate, but of course, I'm sure that as a Democrat, Obama voted for both. But actually, if anything, McCain might be well advised to run against Richard M. Daley and the Strogers (father and son). After all, Obama did their bidding in the Illinois legislature.

Obama wants to run on issues like the economy and health care. But in fact the most important issue is this:

Should Barack Obama be trusted with the Presidency of the United States?

And this is an issue for which one needs to look at Obama's associations: Jeremiah Wright, Tony Rezko, Richard M. Daley, John and Todd Stroger, William Ayres, and Frank Marshall Davis. One has to look at the people Obama has shafted, like Alice Palmer. And these count more than what Obama says about the economy or health care or anything else. They bear on the issue of Obama's fitness for the Presidency.

The Biden/Palin debate

Well, to my way of thinking, Palin did very well. Everyone expected her to be a dim bulb; she showed that even though she might have been underprepared in some of the interviews between her nomination and last night, when she gets a chance to prepare herself she can hold her own. I still would have preferred someone with more experience, but I think that Sarah Palin would be a competent Vice-President.

She made two points I wanted to see made: The Obama/Biden team seems to be forever running against George W. Bush, though he's not on the ballot, rather than against McCain and her; and Biden needs to be reminded that he had said in January that Obama was not qualified — though she let him fail to respond there (more's the pity).

Certainly, I came away from the debate with one conclusion: I was right to back the McCain team, even with Palin in the #2 spot, no matter how much I might have preferred a different VP candidate.

The financial "bailout"

Senator John McCain thought it important enough to suspend his campaign and suggest postponing the debate. Senator Barack Obama obviously didn't, so the debate went on, since McCain couldn't just let it go to Obama by default. (If I'd have been in McCain's shoes, I think I'd have sent Gov. Sarah Palin to Mississippi to debate Obama!) But both have apparently signed off on the resulting solution with reservations.


It's clear that the responsibility for following up on this process will extend long beyond Jan. 20, 2009. So the incoming President (and since we do not know who that will be, both Obama and McCain) needed to be involved in these discussions. What could possibly have been on Obama's mind when he first said he wasn't needed, then only came to Washington because President Bush gave him a personal phone call?

Is Barack Obama prepared to take on the responsibilities of the Presidency?

Last night's debate

Barack Obama is supposed to be a great orator — and perhaps he is, when reciting a prepared speech. But last night he began just about every remark with a heming and hawing that shows he cannot think on his feet.

And he seems to forget that his opponent is John McCain, not George Bush — at least he used Bush's name at least as much as he did McCain's. Perhaps he might like to be charged with every mistake of a past Democratic President?

McCain made one great point: The President to be inaugurated in January doesn't have anything to do with how we got where we are (In Iraq, which was the topic being discussed at the time, or in any other matter). He has to determine what we do from this point on, and he cannot rewind the clock and do a "do-over" from 2000.

Obama seems to think that Iraq was a distraction from fighting al-Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan. He fails to see the interconnection; perhaps because what he considers important in Iraq is that he was bankrolled by Saddam Hussein's banker, Nadhmi Auchi. We don't want Middle Eastern Arab money controlling our President.

Swiftboating?

Some of the Obama supporters seem worried by the likelihood of being "swiftboated" as John Kerry was 4 years ago. But what does that mean? The Swift Boat Veterans for Truth pointed out things about Kerry that were true, and reflected badly on Kerry. They should have been pointed out. What this meant, though, was that the people were turned away from the issues that Kerry wanted to stress to others, like Kerry's character and honesty, which reflected badly on him.

Obama, similarly, wants to pick and choose the issues that the American people will use as a basis for their votes. He is afraid that they will vote based on his character and trustworthiness, rather than on his issues.

So "swift-boating" isn't such a bad thing, really.

The women supporting Gov. Palin

I see a number of liberal Democrats taking offense at many women's switching to the McCain-Palin ticket after having supported Sen. Hillary Clinton's failed Presidential run. They object that Gov. Palin isn't someone who favors the things that Sen. Clinton did — which is true.


Actually, I have to agree that people should support a candidate based on their political positions and their qualifications, and not just their gender (or race). But I never saw those liberals disavowing the support of those women when it was going to Sen. Clinton. Now, all of a sudden, when this lock-step "support her because she's a woman" attitude turns them away from the Democratic Party and toward a (gasp!) conservative Republican, Sarah Palin, it's something reprehensible to them. And none of them seems to be complaining about the stratospheric levels of African-American support for Barack Obama!


Frankly, if I were campaign manager for McCain-Palin, I'd take all the votes I could get. And not worry about whether they are voting for Palin without studying her ideology. I bet a lot of them supported Hillary Clinton without looking at her ideology.