What is this fight all about?

Reading about the Iowa court instituting same-sex marriage made me think again about this subject. If I could get people on the various sides of this issue together into a room, and I could ask one question of each side, I know what my questions would be. So I'm asking them here, hoping that someone reads this blog and could enlighten me.


To the pro-gay-marriage side: What is so important about the word "marriage"? In Vermont, which has had "civil unions" for a number of years, they recently passed a marriage law -- what did that actually accomplish? If you have a civil union that is legally the same as a marriage, and you can call yourself "married" in all situations except that the law uses a different word, why isn't that good enough?


To the anti-gay-marriage side: Who would be hurt by allowing same-sex couples to marry? Certainly, not traditional man/woman couples; nobody would invalidate their marriages just because some other couples, who cannot marry now, would be permitted to marry. And you cannot say that the clergy in religions that do not approve of same-sex marriages would be forced to perform them, because even under current laws there are marriages that are forbidden under the rules of particular religions, and nobody forces Jewish rabbis to perform religiously mixed marriages, or Catholic priests to perform marriages involving divorced people.


If someone points to the "abomination" in the Book of Leviticus, the "establishment" clause in the Constitution can be invoked. Putting one group of people's interpretation of what God says is right and wrong is certainly an establishment of religion. (After all, there are Unitarian ministers and Reform Jewish rabbis who perform same-sex marriages, so at least some people believe that God does not disapprove.)

While I have no reason to oppose the concept of same-sex marriage, I just wonder what is so wrong with the compromise of having a status that is legally equivalent to a marriage but calling it by a different name. And since there are some people who are willing to accept civil unions but won't take that last step, it seems a far more profitable use of your effort to push for civil unions or the like in as many States as possible, rather than pushing, in states like Vermont, for this last step of adopting the word "marriage."


So please enlighten me.

Obama and stem cell research

I promised after Barack Obama's election that when he did something right I'd acknowledge it, and even though, in this case, it's a reversal of something George W. Bush did, I have to say I support his action. As much as I generally approve of the Bush presidency, it remains a fact that on issues of interest to the religious right, Bush absorbed their policies. (I don't say he "gave in to them" because I think he genuinely believed they were right.)

So, on this issue, I have to side with Obama. On anything that separates the pursuit of scientific knowledge from the dogmatism of the religious right, I must go with science. And removing the Bush restrictions on stem cell research was the right thing to do.

O'Malley and other death penalty opponents

Recently, Maryland's governor, Martin O'Malley, tried unsuccessfully to get the legislators in Maryland's General Assembly (what they call the state legislature in this state) to abolish the death penalty. Fortunately he did not get his way; the legislators made it more difficult to levy (with an eye toward preventing executions on insufficient proof of guilt) but defeated total abolition of the death penalty. (See this article.)



Frankly, I cannot understand death penalty opponents. Allowing murderers to live says to the world that the life of the murderer is more valuable than the lives of murder victims. The murderer did nothing to spare the victims' lives; why should he be considered worthy of living, when he gave no such considerations to their lives?



Martin O'Malley is a Roman Catholic, of course, and he echoes his church's position on the death penalty. But just as I oppose having the Government follow the teachings of the Catholic Church (or any other religious group) on such topics as abortion, I must take O'Malley to task for trying to install Catholic Church opinion on the death penalty as State law.



And death penalty opponents who base their opposition on moral grounds, rather than on the teachings of one or another religious denomination, simply cannot explain in any way that will convince me why they consider, as I said earlier in this post, the murderer's life more valuable than the lives of his victims.

Arlen Specter - the Senator I admire most

I must admit that I have long followed the career of Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, though I am not a constituent of his. But I did, briefly, live in Philadelphia, just as Sen. Specter was district attorney there, and I was then impressed by his uprooting of corruption there. And since then, I've seen him as a force for the things I believe in in the Senate seat he's held for many years.

I was recently impressed by his handling (together with the two Maine Senators, Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe) of the "stimulus bill" issue. Rather than just saying "no" as the other Senate Republicans did, he was able to have significant modifications to the bill. It didn't make it a bill Republicans could be really happy about, but it made it a better bill. And it agitated the Pelosi far-left Democrats no end -- that three Republicans could have more input into the bill than the Democratic majority in the House could stomach. It shows how a pragmatic approach can make even a minority a force to reckon with. And I applaud Sen. Specter for it.

"First Freedom First" - a comment on a book

Recently I began reading a book entitled "First Freedom First," by the Rev. Dr. C. Welton Gaddy and the Rev. Barry W. Lynn, the thesis of which is that it is important to maintain the constitutional separation of church and state. And this is a position which merits agreement from me. But in it, the Religious Right is castigated with the following words on p. xxvi of the Introduction:

The Religious Right claims an interest in recovering morality in America by seeking to outlaw all abortions, stem cell research, gay rights, and same-sex unions while advocating the teaching of religious doctrine as sound science. They also advocate, through a system of school vouchers often lauded as a way to help the poor, providing public tax dollars for the funding of public parochial schools. In recent years, the Religious Right has been loud in its advocacy for advancing the president's faith-based initiatives, displaying the Ten Commandments in public buildings, teaching the Bible in public schools, electing "God-chosen" leaders to public offices, and supporting the president of the United States in sopeaking and acting as the chief religious leader of the nation. However, the Religious Right has been strangely silent on the war in Iraq, increases in the numbers of people without adequate medical care and health insurance, the torture of prisoners, ... [I leave out the rest of this sentence, because it is really the part I quote here that I want to address]

When I read the first two of these sentences, I was willing to accept what Gaddy (the author of this introduction) says. But then I hit the third sentence. Obviously, Gaddy (I can't speak for Lynn, as he didn't write these words, but if he is willing to have his name on the book as co-author, I can't imagine he disavows them) seems to think that one of the purposes of his book is to advocate for our having left Saddam Hussein in power to gas the Kurds and threaten Israel with missiles, for our adoption of a socialized-medicine scheme (because most people talking about "increases in the numbers of people without adequate medical care and health insurance" seem to advocate such schemes), etc. And with this sentence he lost me.

What in the name of all that matters in this universe do "the war in Iraq" and "increases in the numbers of people without adequate medical care and health insurance" have to do with religious freedom? And what business do these points have in a book on preserving our First Amendment rights?

Up till that sentence, I might have favorably reviewed this book. But it is clear that Gaddy and Lynn have their own ideology to pursue, not merely advocating a religiously-neutral, even secular, government (with which I concur), but a left-wing, even socialistic political agenda. And with that I take issue.

Intelligent Design and Evolution: Does it have to be one or the other?

Just this morning I was reading a book in which it was clear that the author believes that the only way that evolution can have occurred is by the Darwinian mechanism of natural selection, and derides the concept of intelligent design along with creationism. I believe that it is a grievous mistake to say that you can't have both evolution and intelligent design.


For some reason, the evidence for evolution that we have has been taken to be evidence for the concept that evolution occurred via one specific mechanism: random mutations followed by survival of the fittest (i. e. natural selection). I would like to see any basis for distinguishing this mechanism from an alternative, which I maintain is firmly within the framework of intelligent design:


There is a God who controls this world, but rather than a de novo creation of new species, His mechanism is to see what His creations are like, and make modifications toward a goal. In other words, it is not blind chance, but intelligent tinkering, that drives evolution.


Now, no scientific investigation can prove my hypothesis, but in fact I believe that none can disprove it, either. I would challenge any Dawkinsian atheist to give me one piece of scientific evidence that can be used successfully to refute my hypothesis. I don't think there can be any.


Now the point can be made that science proceeds only by investigating testable hypotheses, and that the hypothesis I have formulated is not testable. I maintain that the real point is that the hypothesis of the Darwinian mechanism of random mutations followed by survival of the fittest is no more testable than mine. So, in fact, science cannot dismiss intelligent design out of hand, and the two hypotheses (intelligent design and Darwin's natural selection mechanism) are of equal status; they both have to be considered speculative philosophy rather than science.


Note that nothing that I have said here denies the factuality of evolution, so do not call me a creationist. My point is that, even given acceptance that evolution has occurred in the past and probably continues to occur, one cannot dismiss the idea of intelligent design out of hand.



So please let us have some sense here. Arguments for evolution (which I accept!) do not prelude intelligent design. And they no more prove the Darwinian mechanism than the fact that 2+2=4 proves that all numbers are even. Let's be honest about this.

Generations

A recent comment on my posts regarding Michael Steele referred to him in generational terms, and called for splitting the "baby-boomer" generation, because the generation that Steele (and Obama, Palin, etc.) belongs to is really different in kind from the baby-boomer generation of George W. Bush and Bill Clinton. I can't say this surprises me, because I've thought about this classifying of people into generations, though mostly about the earlier era where I belong. And I feel I've also been generationally misplaced.


The classic generation book is a book called "Generations" by William Strauss and Neil Howe. And in Strauss and Howe's book, I'm in the Silent Generation, just before the Boomers (Strauss & Howe just calls then by that name, not "Baby" Boomers) and just after the G. I. Generation, that fought in World War II. But this generation, according to Strauss and Howe, begins with people born in 1925. And I don't think that a person born in the late 1920s (who was a teenager in World War II, just a bit too young to fight, but old enough to be well aware of what was going on) had the same type of experiences as I had (V-J Day, when WWII ended, was just before my 3rd birthday, so I have no memories of WWII, but my teenage years were during the hottest part of the Cold War, with a prosperous economy, but shelter drills in school, and Russian spies suspected of being everywhere. Perhaps the "Cold War Generation" describes my age cohort. But it's certainly not the same as the earlier Silents in Strauss & Howe's classification.


So from right after I read Strauss & Howe's book, I thought that a shorter period, perhaps half of a Strauss & Howe generation, really defined an age cohort. And the comment about Michael Steele and his contemporaries fits my thoughts, so I feel vindicated in my classifications.

Michael Steele, and those who oppose him

Someone posted a comment to my posting about Michael Steele, in which he called Steele a RINO and linked to a site in which Steele was attacked by a certain Steve Deace, a commentator on a station in Iowa, who attacked Steele.

Trying to find out something about this Deace, I found a blog post that said:

Steve Deace, the 1040 WHO commentator, should be donning a "Religious Bigot" t-shirt soon. A few weeks ago, he said that someone should send him a shirt that says, "Religious Bigot" on it because that is what it means today to be a believing Christian.

Back in 2004, as a sports commentator, he argued that Shawn Green (who is Jewish) should convert to Christianity so that he could play baseball on Judaism's holiest day, Yom Kippur.
I don't know if he ever apologized for it. More recently, he has picked most prominently on homosexuals, referring to them crudely as people who "have anal sex."

I don't think Christianity makes anyone a religious bigot, but Deace has certainly shown that a self-described Christian certainly can be one. If Deace wants the moniker, who am I to disagree?

So, I designed and sent him a shirt with the words "Religious Bigot" emblazoned on the front and back in red with red sleeves. He says it "looks awesome." I think it looks embarrassing. If you know a religious bigot who needs one, follow the link below, and you can send them their own Steve Deace "Religious Bigot " T.

If this is Steve Deace, it is clear that he stands for everything I oppose. And if Steve Deace opposes Michael Steele, that's one more reason to support Steele!

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.

The Obama-Biden ticket

In 1988, the Democrats nominated Michael Dukakis for President and Lloyd Bentsen for Vice-President. Some people thought Bentsen was a better candidate for the Presidency than Dukakis. Even one member of the Electoral College — the only people who had the ability to do so — voted that way.



This year, it looks as if the Democrats repeated this trick (nominating a ticket with a better-qualified Presidential candidate in the #2 slot). Certainly, at least one Democrat I know thinks so; she was preparing to vote for Biden in the Presidential primary, and would have done so except for a glitch in the notices, so she was given the wrong location for her polling place. (Since Biden had already dropped out, even though he was still on the ballot in this state, she didn't try very hard to find out where her polling place really was.)



But when I asked her whether Biden's presence on the ticket might get her to vote Obama-Biden, she pointed out that it would still be Obama in charge if that ticket won, and she just can't trust him. Right now she's still expecting to vote for McCain-Palin. But it seems likely that had the Democratic ticket been Biden-Obama rather than the other way around, she would have voted that way.

On Sarah Palin

Well, I said I wasn't happy with Sarah Palin as John McCain's choice for a running mate. But it looks like an act of political genius!


McCain's poll numbers are skyrocketing, and Palin seems to be the reason. Conservatives find her someone they can enthuse over, and those women who were supporting Hillary Clinton just because they wanted to see a woman in an important position seem to be flocking to the McCain-Palin ticket. Last figure I saw was that 29% of the people who had supported Hillary Clinton will vote for McCain-Palin; quite a big number considering the political spread between the two!


I still think it undercuts the experience issue. But people see in Sarah Palin what they had been seeing in Barack Obama: a fresh face, someone who might bring about some changes in the Washington establishment. And with Sarah Palin, these characteristics are real— she actually has a record of bringing change in Alaska!


No question that Obama is running scared: How often do we see a presidential candidate deigning to train his rhetorical guns on a vice-presidential candidate? But he has been doing so lately!


It looks as if John McCain made a pretty good decision after all. And making good decisions is really what we elect a President to do.


McCain-Palin in 2008!

Is there really such a thing as "too honorable"?

The September 8 issue of Time magazine has a cover picture of John McCain, with a cover story that seems to imply that he has too much of a sense of honor to be a good President. Seeing this made my eyes blanch in disbelief. Can anyone be too honorable for the Presidency?



It's true that Jimmy Carter had a sense of propriety that went well beyond the usual — the "lust in the heart" quote, for example. But Carter's flaws were not excessive honor; they flowed from naïveté about the way the world works. And I think that McCain's sense of honor poses a refreshing contrast to his opponent's rather dishonorable past. A person who would stab his political mentor in the back, as he did Alice Palmer; a person who would favor a corrupt machine politician, like John Stroger, even against a personal friend (Forrest Claypool); a person who would steer government favors to a corrupt slumlord (Tony Rezko), even while representing a poor constituency in the Illinois State Senate; this is Barack Obama.

I for one say that John McCain's sense of honor is an unalloyed positive.

The McCain-Palin ticket

One thing I'm not going to be accused of is inconsistency. And it would be hard to hide the fact that (as noted in my post of August 1) I've never thought that Sarah Palin would be a good choice for Vice-President. So I'm not going to defend it. I think that Sen. McCain made a mistake. But hardly one that would make me re-think my endorsement of his candidacy.


The choice undercuts the experience theme; Sarah Palin makes Barack Obama seem experienced by comparison. And it was clear that Obama and his Democratic allies would pounce on that; that was hardly a surprise. And obviously they will use this to question McCain's judgment; I've already admitted in my previous post that Obama made a good choice in picking Joe Biden for his running-mate. But one somewhat unfortunate pick is hardly enough to question John McCain's judgment. Look at all the bad judgment calls that Obama has made! (Let me mention William Ayers, Jeremiah Wright, and John Stroger, just as examples!)

It would appear that the choice of Sarah Palin was made for two reasons: first, to win over disaffected supporters of Hillary Clinton (and McCain's ad talking about the Democratic Party's snubbing of Hillary Clinton might have clued me off to this announcement, if I'd read it correctly! But there were really more highly-qualified women, like Carly Fiorina), and second, to reassure conservatives that he was not going to ignore their thoughts. And given those two factors, it was understandable. But that is not the same as saying it was a good choice.

Despite it all, my vote will still be cast for the McCain-Palin ticket in November. But not as happily as if the names on the ballot were McCain-Romney or McCain-Fiorina.

Credit where credit is due!

It seems that Barack Obama actually did something right. So let’s give him proper credit for the decision.


Of all the possible vice-presidential choices, Joe Biden is certainly the best he could have chosen. Oh, Biden is certainly too liberal for me, but there aren’t any moderates highly enough placed in the Democratic Party for one to be the nominee. At least Biden has a lot of experience, and actually has made some statements on foreign policy that make sense.


Though I’ve been taken to task on this comparison, it actually reminds me of the decision in 2000 by George W. Bush to pick Dick Cheney. In both cases, we see a relatively inexperienced candidate (though Bush certainly had more experience than Obama has now) picking a highly qualified and very experienced VP candidate, and also a VP candidate that is certainly not a moderate, but one in his party’s mainstream.


No chance that I’ll come out for Obama — after all, Biden’s really too liberal for my taste anyway — but for Obama, this is a good sign.

McCain's houses

So, the Obama campaign is trying to make some political hay out of the fact that John McCain, who married into a lot of money, could not remember how many houses he and his wife own. It's funny that Barack Obama had no trouble supporting John Kerry, who married into even more money, for the Presidency in 2004.

Yes, McCain is rich. But should that disqualify him for the Presidency? I think not. Whatever you think of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, (and I am not a fan of his, but most Democrats, I believe, are!) he was also an heir to a lot of money, and I believe that Nelson Rockefeller, whose very last name suggests money, would have made an excellent President.

The real issues in this campaign should be three: Obama's great lack of experience, his radical agenda (which include his political mentors, such as Jeremiah Wright and William Ayers), and his dishonorable character, as evidenced by his treatment of Alice Palmer and his strong backing for the Daley machine in Chicago. There are no other issues that come even close to these in importance.

What "change" means to Barack Obama

We know that the big theme of Barack Obama's campaign is "change." But what really does "change" mean to Obama?

We might get some clues from his first job in Chicago, before he sought political office, working as a "political organizer." He was hired from New York by Gerald Kellman, a political disciple of Saul Alinsky, who was among other things the author of a book entitled Rules for Radicals. Alinsky was an extreme radical, who regularly used the word "change" himself, with the specific meaning of "socialist redistribution of wealth." And of course, Kellman, as Alinsky's disciple, taught Alinsky's ideas to his worker, Barack Obama. (In fact, as can easily be found from such sources as Freddoso's book and this website, Kellman clearly saw Obama as a tool to help reach African-Americans, as his own organization at the time was mostly white and ethnically Jewish. But clearly, Obama was too bright to stay merely a tool.)

Can we doubt that Obama's "change" means anything else? He talks about repealing tax cuts, and instituting more taxes, and it is clear that redistribution of wealth is an idea that resonates with him too. Can we conclude that "change" in an Obama administration could mean anything else?

Jerome Corsi's book on Obama

Recently I recommended David Freddoso's book on Barack Obama. About the same time, Jerome Corsi's book, "The Obama Nation," a pun on "abomination," came out. This book is also worth reading. The two are very different, though.

Freddoso concentrates on recent events, the past 12 years, starting with Alice Palmer. Corsi's covers Obama's whole life. You should read both, though. It is really interesting to see, in Corsi's book, just how Obama can't even tell the truth about his own life story.

This is a man who wants us to trust him with the Presidency of the United States?

Taking a break from election-related posts...

I just saw an interesting book, of which so far I've only read a small part, but which I really like and want to recommend. It is called "Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness," by Richard H. Thaler and Cass R. Sunstein. The book espouses a political philosophy that the authors call "libertarian paternalism," which can be basically defined as giving the maximum amount of freedom, while encouraging desirable behavior through incentives rather than compulsion. It's a pretty good idea to me.

He has some ideas I like very much — though the one I'm about to mention is one I'd hate to praise too extremely, because it's an idea I had myself several years ago. The authors' idea to solve the problem of disagreement over gay marriage is: Let the government get out of the role of defining marriage entirely, but just provide a sort of civil union or domestic partnership arrangement; let marriage be defined by churches and any other organizations that want to grant status as married, and keep the two separate. Thus if a church wants to deny gay couples the right to marry, they could, but some other church might marry them, and the policies of neither would matter under the law, as the legal status of a couple (same sex or different sex) would depend on a legal contract, which might set up whatever conditions the law and the couple might want to be included. It seems very sensible to me.

More about Barack Obama and his "movement for change"

In the book I recommended Monday, there are lots of great reasons to reject Senator Barack Obama and put your support behind Senator John McCain. Yesterday and the day before I featured one: his unscrupulous, machine-politician methods of eliminating his political mentor, Alice Palmer, and bulldozing his way into the Illinois State Senate. Another proof that Obama is just another corrupt Chicago-machine politician is the way he behaved in a recent election, where, after his election to the Senate, when he might have effected some change if he really wanted to, he could have but refused to, and once more stabbed a friend in the back. It was in an election for President of the County Board back home in the Chicago area.

If you can't go and get the book, at least read about it here, and here, and here.

More about some of the machine corruption which Obama has supported can be found here, too.

Read all about it!

Besides the book I recommended earlier this week, you can read about Barack Obama's gaming the rules in 1996 to stab his erstwhile mentor Alice Palmer in the back...

here, and here, and here, and here...

This is the guy who'll bring change to politics? This is simply a Chicago machine politician!

How Barack Obama got his first elective office

Barack Obama this year has shown that he is a master of gaming the rules to his advantage. It turns out he has been this from the beginning of his political career.

Alice Palmer had been an Illinois State Senator for years. Obama was one of her staff members. It seems that in 1996, the local congressman, Mel Reynolds, got into legal trouble over a charge of having sex with a minor. When he left the Congress, Palmer decided to run for the congressional seat, and Obama was her hand-picked successor.

The only trouble was, after Palmer chose to run for the congressional seat, a certain Jesse Jackson, Jr. chose to run for that same seat. With such a famous name running against her, she finished very poorly, actually coming in third after Jackson and another State Senator. So she decided to go back to her old State Senate seat — the only problem was, Obama wanted it now!

In the ensuing primary, each candidate needed to get a certain number of petition signatures to qualify for the ballot. She needed something over 700 signatures, she filed over 1700; but Obama, as machine politicians often do, managed to get around 1000 of Palmer's signatures voided, enough to rule her off. In addition, he got two other competing candidates disqualified the same way, so Obama ran unopposed. Naturally, he won the seat! (It was a solid Democratic district, so the primary was all he needed to win.)

A machine politician par excellence, Barack Obama used all the nasty tricks that the Daley machine is known for. Naturally, since Daley had thought of Alice Palmer as a rival for power, he was not too unhappy at what Obama did.

Is this person worthy of being President? Hardly.

More about Obama's past to come in later posts.

Book recommendation

If you want to learn more about what kind of politician Barack Obama is, get this book and read it:

"The Case against Barack Obama"

by David Freddoso

This has all the information you need to have: how he schemed to get elected to the Illinois Senate by getting his opponents ruled off the ballot, the story about his relationships with Jeremiah Wright and other radical types, etc.

The vice-presidential candidate

Obviously, no choice that John McCain or Barack Obama could make regarding a running mate would be likely to change my support for McCain against Obama. But McCain could make some good choices, or some bad ones, and so here are some points I would like to make.

I had previously said some favorable things about Mitt Romney as a VP nominee. Nothing has changed; Romney would still be one of the better choices. But today I saw a newspaper article saying that McCain is being recommended by some supporters to pick a female VP. Two names were given: Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska and Carly Fiorina.

I find the whole idea of picking someone purely on the basis of race or gender as somewhat repugnant, but I recognize that politics can work that way. In any case, however, if McCain does pick a woman, I would hope that it would be someone who is qualified. And while I feel that Palin is not really qualified, Fiorina would be an interesting choice.

To nominate Sarah Palin would be the equivalent of the Democrats' nomination of Geraldine Ferraro some years ago. Ferraro clearly had insufficient experience, and would never have been nominated if it weren't for her gender. (In fact, I'm certain that Barack Obama would never have been nominated this year if it weren't for his race, for the same reason.) Sarah Palin, and Bobby Jindal (another governor being talked about for VP, who would break precedent because of his ethnicity), will, I am sure, be rising stars of the Republican Party, and if they do good jobs in their States' executive mansions, they may well be tapped for high national office in future years. But neither one has been Governor for even a full term; Jindal not even for a year!

Carly Fiorina, in a sense, has even less experience; she has never held any elective or appointive office. But her experience as CEO of a major high-technology corporation is valuable. She's actually run something that is bigger than some States. And I think this gives her some of the same appeal that a Mitt Romney has. I think she'd be a good choice.