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Gasoline-Tax Demagogy
Three Presidential Candidates, Three Weird Approaches to Economic Policy
By blackhedd Posted in demagogy | Economy | Gasoline-tax | Refinery capacity — Comments (23) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
I’m going to let you in on a secret you may not have heard yet: The price of gasoline has been rising.
And since it’s a Presidential election, this is populist gold. Each of the candidates has proposed something to do about it. Of course, the high price of fuel is a complex phenomenon with a lot of causes, very few of which are responsive to policy. So the candidates are stuck talking about the thing that government actually can affect: the level of Federal taxation.
Their responses are distinct, and illuminating.
Let’s start with Senator McCain, who kicked off the gas-tax derby a few weeks ago in Pittsburgh, with his proposal for a Federal gas-tax “holiday” over the summer months. Sounds great, feels good, doesn’t do a whole lot of anything permanent, and certainly does nothing to alter the underlying market dynamics.
More…
Senator Clinton’s response? She thought it was a great idea, just what the bitter, gun-toting, Bible-thumping, pickup-truck-driving rubes who are now her base constituency wanted to hear.
But of course, she pointed out that Senator McCain wasn’t planning to “pay for” his summer gas-tax holiday. What was her solution? Right you are. Install a “windfall profits” tax and take it out of the hides of the hated, evil oil companies.
Now if you’re a shareholder of an integrated major oil company (and if you have any kind of stock mutual fund or pension plan, you are one), your immediate response will be ”WHAT windfall profits?” Just this week, Exxon-Mobil announced an ugly first-quarter report in which their revenues and earnings from operations fell below expectations, and below the levels of a year ago.
Exxon-Mobil and the other majors make a lot of extra money from the fact that they own and produce crude oil. But their daily production is falling as they fail to replace their reserves. And their refining and marketing businesses (the ones that turn crude oil into gasoline and distillates) are absolutely getting slaughtered.
Why the heck is that? Well, ask yourself how much you pay for gasoline compared to a year ago. Perhaps 20% more. (A national average of about $3.60 versus $3 or so early in 2007.) But in that time the price of crude oil has gone up more than 100%. The difference reflects the inability of oil refiners to pass their increased crude-oil costs on to gasoline consumers. The difference comes out of their hides. (Well, their shareholders’ hides.)
Senator Clinton, God bless her, is as innocent of economics as she is of the finer points of cattle-futures trading and baking cookies. She wants to make the oil-company investments in your 401(k) plan even less valuable than they are now.
And what of Senator Obama? Even more interesting. He says the tax-holiday idea is just a Shell game. Ba-DUM-pum. (Royal Dutch Shell is not an American company, Senator. It’s British and Dutch.)
What’s Obama’s reason not to cut gas taxes? He says, with a straight face, mind you, that the move will destroy construction jobs.
Say, WHAT? But he said it: 6000 jobs lost in Indiana, and 7000 in North Carolina. One presumes that construction workers in states without impending primary elections are safe.
What is the Senator thinking? Well, what’s the fig leaf that furnishes the reason for a Federal gas tax in the first place? Right. The taxes theoretically fund Federal highway construction projects.
In the first place, you won’t easily convince me that the government can more efficiently build transportation infrastructure than anyone else. That’s axiomatic. Of more direct relevance, who honestly believes the Federal DOT will actually throw people out of work? You and I both know (as does Senator McCain) that the revenue shortfall from a gas-tax holiday will come from exactly where it always does: the Treasury will borrow it.
So Senator Obama doesn’t know what he’s talking about, but that’s not news. More importantly, his response reveals yet again his hard-wired instinct to protect government spending programs at our expense. Keep that in mind as you think about what his Presidency would be like: he’s a standard-issue tax-and-spend liberal, just like McGovern and Dukakis.
What the Numbers Say
I haven’t found any mention of exactly what kind of numbers we’re talking about here, so I got out the back of an envelope and started figuring. My envelope says that federal gas-tax revenue is about $2.5 billion a month, give or take. (In the summertime, it would be somewhat more.)
Over three months, it’s a drop in the bucket. The whole issue really is just political theater.
Let me make a few additional points about gasoline prices and taxes. Over the course of a year, the federal gasoline tax comes out to $30 billion or so (by my rough calculation), which is not a small number. This tax actually is an important one, because, like the payroll tax, it’s regressive. That means it’s relatively bearable, and not large enough to affect marginal behavior.
The Democrats will find, if they increase their power this fall, that cutting taxes on the less-wealthy yields little economic benefit. Raising taxes on the wealthy, on the other hand, is economically destructive, because it does affect marginal behavior. Economic populism is ultimately self-defeating.
About Refinery Capacity
Some people have correctly commented that a gas-tax holiday will not result in a noticeable reduction of retail fuel prices. (Many people expect, of course, that prices would fall exactly 18.2 cents a gallon.)
But remember the refiners and marketers of gasoline, whose profits are under siege. They will do exactly what the free market prompts them to do: leave prices where they are and put the extra 18 cents a gallon in their own pockets.
Keep in mind that crude oil and refined products are two completely different markets. I’ve already told you a lot in previous posts about why crude oil is behaving as it is.
But unlike crude oil, gasoline and distillate prices are rising at least partly because of supply constraints. You’ve heard a lot of people say this:
If we could only build some new refineries, we’d have more gasoline, and prices would fall.
Maybe. But I have two responses: First, why on earth is the construction of refining capacity a policy decision made by the government? Shouldn’t it be a business decision made by private investors? Oh right, I forgot, the EPA has a veto over private construction.
Second: remember what I said above about the relative profitability of refined products versus crude oil (what oilers call the “crack spread”). Any businessman who seriously considers constructing a new oil refinery should be tested for brain cancer.
Even if we repealed all the environmental regulations and pre-empted all of the NIMBY lawsuits, you won’t see anyone building a new oil refinery anywhere in this country for years to come, and probably never again.
That’s because it makes no business sense to do so.
-Francis Cianfrocca
The CBO has calculated the effective Federal tax burden for different income groups from 1979 forward (1979-2002; 2004-5). The CBO includes an estimate of the effective Federal income tax, and the effect of all Federal taxes, including Social Security/Medicare and an imputed corporate tax.
For the top 1% of earners, the effective Federal income tax rate has been this:
1979 21.8%
1985 18.9%
1995 23.7%
2005 19.4%
Not quite the wild range one might have expected, given that the top Federal income tax rate was 70% when Reagan took over in 1981 and was first cut precipitously all the way down to 50%.
As to the total effective rate, here we go:
1979 37.0
1985 27.0
1995 36.1
2005 31.2
The big difference is in the imputed corporate tax rate, which is currently quite low. But that is not what Reich was talking about.
Well, he knows all this anyway.
A lot of the chat is quite sensible; I'll plug this:
Q: As an econ professor and Democrat I’m still having trouble with the protectionist talk of the two candidates. Do you think Obama is handling trade issues properly or should he be more pro-free trade?
A: While it makes sense to argue in favor of labor and environmental standards in trade deals (so long as they’re on a sliding scale, and poorer nations don’t have to reach the same standard as richer nations), I don’t think the candidates should feed the current frenzy against free trade.
Posted by T
http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/61xx/doc6133/03-01-EffectiveTaxRates.pdf
http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/88xx/doc8885/12-11-HistoricalTaxRates.pdf
Great post
"The Clinton economics produced a little extra taxation, but near the top. And we were well on our way to paying off the debt, and gearing up to face the coming demographic explosion of retirees. That was a huge dividend on a small sacrifice.
Funny how you laud to Clinton economy, but the surplus was fueled by Capital gains taxes- paid by those "rich people" you hate so much
IT was a bubble fueled by the Fed pumping money after the Mexican peso crisis and the internet boom.
IT was never sustainable and at the end of his term, the economy was already in recession
"The accumulation of wealth at the top doesn't mean the policies have benefitted them"
The liberal national anthem
Yes, there are some policies that couls be considered corporate welfare and they should be ended.
But. to jump from there to " the rich get rich only because the deck is stacked in their favor "
What to make of the small business owners who make up a big portion of the "rich" ( making over 250K/ ). What to make of the large number of hip hop artists making mega millions- was the deck stacked in their favor? Bill Gates, Mark Cuban, the Google founders??? All the silicon valley/high tech innovators who created fabulous wealth.
Yeah, it had nothing to do with their vision, it was just the stacked deck
The Constitution was designed to allow of opportunity, not guarantee results- not " from each according to ability, to each according to need"
Rather than whining about people who have succeeded, it might be more productive to spend the time thinking about ways to make yourself more productive
It's the old "pie model". You think that someone creating wealth HAS to come at the expense of someone else, rather than creating new value. It's really a pathetic view of the world. leading to the class envy you manage to hold on to
Frigid shrew is root cause of everything [Mark Steyn]
Being a supporter of neither Senator Clinton nor Senator Obama, I couldn't care less about accusations of "unfairness" and "negative campaigning". But in the matter of whether criticism of Obama is racist and criticism of Hillary is sexist, I think there's certainly more to the latter charge. Bob Ellis, an Aussie leftie and an Obama groupie, isn't an obscure blogger. This column appears on the website of the ABC, Australia's public broadcaster:
Her towering frigidity, blazing hubris, bellowing mendacity, varying accent from region to region, her high school-standard acting and ceaseless haughty impersonation of Debbie Reynolds in The Unsinkable Molly Brown have got me properly simmering... she is a stranger to consistency, sincerity and (at a guess) oral sex...
As conservative female bloggers know, it's amazing how quickly "progressive" men reach for the your-problem-is-you-don't-get-enough stuff. But, even so, it's remarkable how comfortable leftie guys are deploying the frigid-and-won't-put-out line against their own. One commenter rises to the lady's defense:
How dare you add a woman's perceived willingness to engage in oral sex as a marker of her character? You debase your own argument... Sexist scum.
But, far from being chastened, Ellis ups the ante and puts the fate of the planet on the First Lady's "unwillingness":
I wouldn't normally have raised this aspect of her private life but Hillary's failure to 'keep the dog on the porch', as the famous Arkansas phrase puts it, had this not then caused, or partly caused Monica, the impeachment, Karl Rove's 'morality politics', Gore's loss, Bush's win and, by global warming, the end of the world; like the length of Cleopatra's nose it's been, as it turns out, a big factor in everything that followed including a million deaths in Iraq and therefore probably worth noting by historians like me.
Amazing. The mouth that launched a million deaths. Bill was denied, people died.
LOL
The thought of Hillary near anyone's member is truly scary
Wright Postmortem [Victor Davis Hanson]
Why the Obama Pass?
I think we have sort of reached an impasse on Rev. Wright. Most Americans, I think, accept the following realties. Obama, by what he wrote in his memoirs, by what he said when he spoke in his early campaign speeches, by his frequent praise of Wright, and by his 20-year presence in front of, and subsidies to, Wright knew exactly the racist and anti-American nature of his odious pastor.
But many also seem to accept that they have invested too much in Obama and have come too far to accept anything that might end his candidacy. (Hence their hysteria over the Wright “smear”.)
In other words, privately they acknowledge:
—that their candidate made a devil’s bargain with a racist to create an authentic black persona in order to jump start a political career in Chicago;
—that their candidate was so inured to de rigueur anti-American speech from his church days, black-liberationist friends, assorted reverends, and former radicals like Ayers, that he never really thought things that Wright said were all that big a deal — hence his deer-in-the-headlights approach to the initial scandal and serial hedging. After all, in Obama’s adopted world, his church really isn’t “particularly controversial;”
—that their Obama messiah is hardly a new politician, but instead a very gifted and charismatic actor, who, in skillful fashion, can talk about utopian politics but then backstep, hedge, and get away with more than anyone since Bill Clinton in his prime in 1992 (one of the reasons that those two dislike each other so is that they are so much alike) — and that is not such a bad thing after all.
So while Obama is hurt in the primaries, and perhaps mortally so in the general election (the white working classes have a long memory), he will probably get the nomination, because his base will overlook all the above: they despise George Bush, will do anything to prevent another Republican in the White House, are tired of the Clintons, and feel Obama offers them symbolic capital, making them liked abroad and free of guilt at home.
Bottom line: unless Obama was caught on tape nodding as Wright screamed his obscenities at the United States, or an angry and spiteful Wright produces some letter, e-mail, etc. that reveals a kindred soul in Obama, or Michelle gives another speech “from the heart” about how hard she has struggled and how in return she has had no pride in this country, or there is another off-the-cuff, but recorded sneer at the white working class (50/50 chance on all four counts), I think he will weather the current storm and get the nomination. Obama evokes pure emotion and raw politics now, and logic, honesty, and accountability have little to do with his nomination bid.
The real Gitmo scandal
According to this report, a former Guantanamo detainee carried out a recent suicide bombing in Mosul. The former detainee is Abdullah Saleh al-Ajmi, a Kuwaiti, who we released from Gitmo in 2005. The suicide bombing killed at least seven Iraqis. Nor is this the only reported case of detainees rejoining the terrorist fray after being released
For me, the real scandal associated with Gitmo is not our treatment of the detainees (we meet the special dietary rules of Islam, go to great lengths in handling the Koran, etc.) or the fact that we don't provide detainees the right to a federal trial. Rather, it's that we have put terrorists like Abdullah Saleh al-Ajmi back in a position to wage war against us and to kill innocent people like the seven in Mosul.
Re-yawn
DO you really think he's gonna get the nomination?
"It would do you well to treat people as individuals instead of labels."
Right back at ya
We agree, while you assume we don't
Interesting video:
http://www.blog.speculist.com/archives/001722.html
The answer lies in new tech- not telling people -especially emerging economies that they should just go without
Read the article, it's based on ocean temps
Soo, you now admit that sun cycles has a huge affect on temps???
I thought the warming was because of human generated co2 exclusively?
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20080430/sc_afp/scienceclimatewarming_080430173430;_ylt=Ave1chNzVQ3tbWrfa.4mLEKs0NUE
MoveOn.org Lies Again. No wonder they support Pinocchiobama.
By Erick
MoveOn.org begins airing an attack ad against Senator John McCain today. You can help John McCain fight back by contributing to him here.
This is the same organization that launched it's "General Betray Us" advertisement against General Petraeus.
The left has consistently given aid and comfort to American enemies. Jane Fonda did it during Vietnam and MoveOn is doing it during the war against Islamofascists. It is no surprise then that MoveOn would attack Senator McCain. He was a Prisoner of War in Vietnam and has, in these past few years, been a champion of beating our enemies, instead of surrendering to them.
The idea of American military success is noxious to the left, as are those who would work to win the war.
You need to know what is happening because the media keeps reporting the left's hacked up quotes taken out of context without reporting the context or the whole statement.
Here is what MoveOn.org says McCain said:
"It's clear that the end is very much in sight."
Here is what McCain actually said:
"Well, I think John McWethy's report is very accurate. We've still got the oil fields in the north that have to be secured. Tikrit, Saddam Hussein's hometown, I would imagine there'll be some die hards there that, but I think that we, it, it's clear that the end is, is, is very much in sight. And, and today I think Americans should be very proud of their leadership, of their technology. But most of all, of the men and women in the military. We could pause just a moment and be very, very proud. There's some great challenges ahead, setting up a new government, stopping the looting that's going on right now, and the chaos that's, that, that's bound to ensue in a place where it's been in the iron grip of an oppressive dictatorship. But they're doing a marvelous job, but they've still got a ways to go."
MoveOn.org also throws in the half-quote about staying in Iraq for 100 years, while leaving off McCain's caveat of "as long as Americans are not being injured or harmed or wounded or killed." Even the Washington Post says McCain is being taken out of context.
This is an old tactic of the left -- they take ten words out of context to distort those they are opposed to. They have always done this. They will always do this. But we need to be vigilant to make sure the media does not start parroting the left.
These are dangerous times and the left will stop at nothing to take back the White House and then lay down in the face of terrorists who would gladly kill us all. Together we can stop them with the truth.
The world may continue to cool for the next decade
Posted by: McQ
Hmmm ... interesting:
Global warming could take a break in the next decade thanks to a natural shift in ocean circulations, although Earth's temperature will rise as previously expected over the longer term, according to a study published on Thursday in the British journal Nature.
Climate scientists in Germany base the prediction on what they believe is an impending change in the Gulf Stream — the conveyor belt that transports warm surface water from the tropical Atlantic to the northern Atlantic and returns cold water southwards at depth.
The Gulf Stream will temporarily weaken over the next decade, in line with what has happened regularly in the past, the researchers say.
This will lead to slightly cooler temperatures in the North Atlantic and in North America and Europe, and also help the temperatures in the tropical Pacific to remain stable, they suggest.
So let me get this straight - it has been getting cooler the last decade and now scientists theorize that it will cool for another decade, but somehow the probability that this natural shift will not effectively stop what is claimed to be an unnatural shift - caused by CO2 generated by humans - to higher global temps?
"Well heck", they say, "we told you this warming could be 'start-and-stop' stuff."
But apparently what it can't possibly be is "natural."
Tooo funny
Who is the Dr. Frankenstein of this Monstrous Situation? [Victor Davis Hanson]
"I can no more disown [Wright] than I can disown the black community."
Once Obama opened that gate, Wright was off to the races to gain national notoriety and finally cash in on the investment he made twenty years ago when he welcomed into the neighborhood a half-white, half-African Harvard Law School kid and taught him about, and protected him from, the hard-ball landscape of Chicago racial politics.
Wright won’t quit now for two reasons. First, he knows what he said for two decades, and where Obama was when he said it. So he bristles that Obama’s protestations of suddenly being “shocked” by Wright are empty and untrue, and designed to assure the very “rich white folks” whom Wright dismisses. Two, psychologically Wright resents the reversals in positions; the infant politician that he once sired and nurtured is now far better known precisely for rejecting, at least in speeches, the very mother’s milk Wright fed him for years. Wright knows he should not embarrass Obama — if for no other reason than it would be disadvantageous for him to do so — but he simply cannot resist given his pique. Obama is suddenly running now as a Colin Powell above race, but Wright chafes that race is what he once shocked a moribund Obama with to bring him to political life.
Who is to blame for all this other than Wright and Obama themselves? The elite African-American community, who, for the past months, has contextualized the hatred of Wright and the half-hearted apologies for it by Obama on the air, television, and in written commentary, shares the responsibility as well. The consequence of that moral failure and political expediency was the most embarrassing moment in recent civil rights history: an African-American receiving a standing ovation at the NAACP for confirming the old white racist slur that blacks are ‘musical’ and emotional while whites are rational and analytical, on the basis of genetically distinct brain chemistries. We haven’t heard that voiced in the public realm since the Bell Curve. The shame is that while most whites once lambasted the slur, blacks at a civil rights dinner now applaud it.
Then there are the white elites, who, in their near religious desire to elect a Kennedyesque, liberal African American, simply abandoned almost every historically-learned protocol about racial relations. So when Obama excused Wright’s racism weeks ago, they immediately declared a disturbing speech on race as the second Gettysburg Address. More interested in preserving their emotional investment in Obamism, and the alleviation of their guilt that it offers, they neglected to acknowledge that their candidate had just given all racists to come just the sort of context and rationalization they most surely will use (as we saw with Wright’s latest rants) to excuse their venom.
What is saving Obama so far? Hillary’s negatives are so high that many cannot quite jump over yet. Bush’s negatives are so high that many want to rebuke him at almost any cost. And students, blacks, and elite whites have invested so much in the long Obama campaign that they simply refuse to give up now.
So Wright goes on, Obama goes on, Hillary goes on. When they have all finished, the wife of the first “black” President, the candidate who “transcended” race, and “old uncle” Wright — and the liberal Democratic Party — will have done more to destroy racial relations than all the David Dukes in the world.
04/30 12:13 PM
The Weathermen tried to kill my family.
30 April 2008
During the April 16 debate between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, moderator George Stephanopoulos brought up “a gentleman named William Ayers,” who “was part of the Weather Underground in the 1970s. They bombed the Pentagon, the Capitol, and other buildings. He’s never apologized for that.” Stephanopoulos then asked Obama to explain his relationship with Ayers. Obama’s answer: “The notion that somehow as a consequence of me knowing somebody who engaged in detestable acts 40 years ago, when I was eight years old, somehow reflects on me and my values, doesn’t make much sense, George.” Obama was indeed only eight in early 1970. I was only nine then, the year Ayers’s Weathermen tried to murder me.
In February 1970, my father, a New York State Supreme Court justice, was presiding over the trial of the so-called “Panther 21,” members of the Black Panther Party indicted in a plot to bomb New York landmarks and department stores. Early on the morning of February 21, as my family slept, three gasoline-filled firebombs exploded at our home on the northern tip of Manhattan, two at the front door and the third tucked neatly under the gas tank of the family car. (Today, of course, we’d call that a car bomb.) A neighbor heard the first two blasts and, with the remains of a snowman I had built a few days earlier, managed to douse the flames beneath the car. That was an act whose courage I fully appreciated only as an adult, an act that doubtless saved multiple lives that night.
I still recall, as though it were a dream, thinking that someone was lifting and dropping my bed as the explosions jolted me awake, and I remember my mother’s pulling me from the tangle of sheets and running to the kitchen where my father stood. Through the large windows overlooking the yard, all we could see was the bright glow of flames below. We didn’t leave our burning house for fear of who might be waiting outside. The same night, bombs were thrown at a police car in Manhattan and two military recruiting stations in Brooklyn. Sunlight, the next morning, revealed three sentences of blood-red graffiti on our sidewalk: FREE THE PANTHER 21; THE VIET CONG HAVE WON; KILL THE PIGS.
For the next 18 months, I went to school in an unmarked police car. My mother, a schoolteacher, had plainclothes detectives waiting in the faculty lounge all day. My brother saved a few bucks because he didn’t have to rent a limo for the senior prom: the NYPD did the driving. We all made the best of the odd new life that had been thrust upon us, but for years, the sound of a fire truck’s siren made my stomach knot and my heart race. In many ways, the enormity of the attempt to kill my entire family didn’t fully hit me until years later, when, a father myself, I was tucking my own nine-year-old John Murtagh into bed.
Though no one was ever caught or tried for the attempt on my family’s life, there was never any doubt who was behind it. Only a few weeks after the attack, the New York contingent of the Weathermen blew themselves up making more bombs in a Greenwich Village townhouse. The same cell had bombed my house, writes Ron Jacobs in The Way the Wind Blew: A History of the Weather Underground. And in late November that year, a letter to the Associated Press signed by Bernardine Dohrn, Ayers’s wife, promised more bombings.
As the association between Obama and Ayers came to light, it would have helped the senator a little if his friend had at least shown some remorse. But listen to Ayers interviewed in the New York Times on September 11, 2001, of all days: “I don’t regret setting bombs. I feel we didn’t do enough.” Translation: “We meant to kill that judge and his family, not just damage the porch.” When asked by the Times if he would do it all again, Ayers responded: “I don’t want to discount the possibility.”
Though never a supporter of Obama, I admired him for a time for his ability to engage our imaginations, and especially for his ability to inspire the young once again to embrace the political system. Yet his myopia in the last few months has cast a new light on his “politics of change.” Nobody should hold the junior senator from Illinois responsible for his friends’ and supporters’ violent terrorist acts. But it is fair to hold him responsible for a startling lack of judgment in his choice of mentors, associates, and friends, and for showing a callous disregard for the lives they damaged and the hatred they have demonstrated for this country. It is fair, too, to ask what those choices say about Obama’s own beliefs, his philosophy, and the direction he would take our nation.
At the conclusion of his 2001 Times interview, Ayers said of his upbringing and subsequent radicalization: “I was a child of privilege and I woke up to a world on fire.”
Funny thing, Bill: one night, so did I.
John M. Murtagh is a practicing attorney, an adjunct professor of public policy at the Fordham University College of Liberal Studies, and a member of the city council in Yonkers, New York, where he resides with his wife and two sons.
It's just a subsidy for corporate farmers- I agree here
Why did Obama choose Trinity?
Posted by: McQ
Obama has again repudiated the words of Jeremiah Wright, this time in much stronger words that before. But, as usual, the questions about the previous extent of the relationship remain.
Noam Scheiber at TNR's "The Stump" begins to peck at one of the questions, on a deeper look at the Wright/Obama relationship, which needs to be answered and to this point hasn't.
"Why'd Obama Join Trinity in the First Place?"
We know, having read some accounts that part of it had to do with gaining street cred with his work as a community organizer among churches. It only makes sense, and he was advised by a pastor to pick church if he wanted to be truly effective.
And there's a second theory which Scheiber points to as well:
Obama, as the product of a racially-mixed marriage, in which the black father was almost entirely absent, had spent his whole life groping for an authentic identity. Wright offered Obama both the father and the identity he never had.
In fact, I'd guess it was a combination of both - but there's more, and here's where it gets interesting. Scheiber quotes a passage from David Mendell's Obama biography that is revealing. First about Wright:
Wright earned bachelor's and master's degrees in sacred music from Howard University and initially pursued a Ph.D. at the University of Chicago Divinity School before interrupting his studies to minister full-time. His intellectualism and black militancy put him at odds with some Baptist ministers around Chicago, with whom he often sparred publicly, and he finally accepted a position at Trinity. ...
So the aspect of black militancy, as we've seen it reflected in his words and, as he's admitted, is based in James Cone's "black liberation theology", was well known from the beginning. It is nothing new, just nothing talked about. Very few if any news outlets talk about this even while Wright continually touts the connection with Cone's theology.
Also note the claim to "intellectualism". Although for most, a pastor who continues to claim that AIDS was a government introduced disease meant to kill blacks, would hardly fall in the realm of an intellectual, apparently at the time he was considered more of one than most Chicago area black pastors. As you'll see in this next passage, that is one of the primary reasons Obama was attracted to the church:
Wright remains a maverick among Chicago's vast assortment of black preachers. He will question Scripture when he feels it forsakes common sense; he is an ardent foe of mandatory school prayer; and he is a staunch advocate for homosexual rights, which is almost unheard-of among African-American ministers. Gay and lesbian couples, with hands clasped, can be spotted in Trinity's pews each Sunday. Even if some blacks consider Wright's church serving only the bourgeois set, his ministry attracts a broad cross section of Chicago's black community. Obama first noticed the church because Wright had placed a "Free Africa" sign out front to protest continuing apartheid. The liberal, Columbia-educated Obama was attracted to Wright's cerebral and inclusive nature, as opposed to the more socially conservative and less educated ministers around Chicago. Wright developed into a counselor and mentor to Obama as Obama sought to understand the power of Christianity in the lives of black Americans, and as he grappled with the complex vagaries of Chicago's black political scene. "Trying to hold a conversation with a guy like Barack, and him trying to hold a conversation with some ministers, it's like you are dating someone and she wants to talk to you about Rosie and what she saw on Oprah, and that's it," Wright explained. "But here I was, able to stay with him lockstep as we moved from topic to topic. . . . He felt comfortable asking me questions that were postmodern, post-Enlightenment and that college-educated and graduate school-trained people wrestle with when it comes to the faith. We talked about race and politics. I was not threatened by those questions." ...
But more than that, Trinity's less doctrinal approach to the Bible intrigued and attracted Obama. "Faith to him is how he sees the human condition," Wright said. "Faith to him is not . . . litmus test, mouth-spouting, quoting Scripture. It's what you do with your life, how you live your life. That's far more important than beating someone over the head with Scripture that says women shouldn't wear pants or if you drink, you're going to hell. That's just not who Barack is."
So, per Mendell, having decided he needed the street cred, Obama was faced with picking a church which he would be most comfortable with. I.e. a church which would fit his liberal beliefs and, as Wright admits, most comfortably address his "postmodern, post-Enlightenment" questions.
Now I'll leave it to you to decide if this is "elitist", but it certainly is telling. It certainly confirms Billy Hollis's contention about where the left is today:
I have severe disagreements with conservatives, but I can at least find room for argument because we are both children of the Enlightenment. Today's left springs from post-modernism, and contains the internal contradictions of that philosophy as an integral component. You can't even argue with the left in a way they will accept unless you already accept the preposterous assertions of post-modernism.
That is the man described by the reverend he now denounces and claims isn't the "same man" he knew previously.
Says Scheiber:
So, if you buy Wright's account—and it rings pretty true to me—it was his intellectualism and social progressivism that won Obama over. Certainly it's hard to imagine that someone like Obama, who came from a progressive, secular background, would have felt genuinely comfortable in a socially conservative, anti-intellectual church. The problem for Obama is that the flip-side of these virtues was a minister with a radical worldview and a penchant for advertising it loudly.
Which, put another way, means that Obama's decision to join Trinity was probably the opposite of cynical. Trinity was the place where, despite the potential pitfalls—and he must have noticed them early on—Obama felt most true to himself.
Scheiber, apparently taking flak in the comment section, then tries to weasel out of it in an update:
Update: Just to clarify, by "felt most true to himself" I mean "most true to himself as a worshipper." The point is that the pastor who made him feel most welcome as a worshipper probably also made him pretty uncomfortable politically.
To which I say - nonsense. It was a fit in both areas at least at the time he joined. It is going to be extremely difficult, given Mendell's passages, for anyone to believe the fit wasn't almost perfect in both the spiritual and political areas. Because, in the beginning, Obama was exploring the spiritual, however, on the political side, he'd been acting on his beliefs for years. Wright, as anyone can see, comes as a whole package, and if Wright was indeed a father figure as well as a mentor, he pressed both the spiritual and political (again, look at the social concerns which attracted Obama to the church to begin with) with equal fervor.
He didn't show up at Trinity as a 'worshipper'. He showed up there initially to gain street cred to help him with his job. He chose a church that most comfortably fit his political beliefs before he ever began his religious journey. And that is why people continue to question his denials about not believing the things espoused by Wright when it is clear that what Wright is espousing isn't at all recent, but instead an integral part of the church Obama joined from the beginning.
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Rev. Wright's Middle East Views
By Ed Lasky
Pastor Jeremiah Wright's harsh jeremiads against America and Israel have roiled the presidential campaign of Barack Obama. Senator Obama tried to explain Wright's views towards America in a Philadelphia speech to address the controversy, by blaming Wright's bitterness on a legacy of racism that Wright's generation experienced.
A related question might be asked: Why does Wright have such harsh feelings towards Israel? After all, American Jews have been in the forefront of the civil rights struggle and have had a history of working with African-Americans to advance their rights. Israel is not perfect and has a conflict with Palestinians, but has opened its borders to Sudanese and to Ethiopians. Arab nations, by contrast, have a long history of prejudice towards black Africans (a history of Arab slavery, not to mention genocide in Sudan). Why the animus towards Israel?
We may now have an answer. Monday, during his press conference at the National Press Club, Rev. Wright's response to a question from a reporter yielded a buried nugget:
"You have likened Israeli policies to apartheid and its treatment of Palestinians with Native Americans. Can you explain your views on Israel?"
Wright replied:
"Where did I liken them to that? Whoever wrote the question, tell me where I likened them.
"Jimmy Carter called it apartheid. Jeremiah Wright didn't liken anything to anything. My position on Israel is that Israel has a right to exist, that Israelis have a right to exist, as I said, reconciled one to another.
"Have you read The Link? Do you read The Link, Americans for Middle Eastern Understanding, where Palestinians and Israelis need to sit down and talk to each other and work out a solution where their children can grow in a world together, and not be talking about killing each other, that that is not God's will?
Americans for Middle East Understanding (AMEU) is an innocuous-sounding group that is actually a harshly anti-Israel, pro-Palestinian organization that has existed for over 30 years . Edward Peck, the former Ambassador to Iraq to whom Wright attributes his "chickens have come home to roost" comment about 9/11 is a member of its Board of Directors.
The group publishes an "educational tool" (euphemism alert) called The Link -- a periodical that is distributed to 2500 churches, 2000 academicians, and 1900 public and school libraries. Teacher packets are provided for free; tours of the Middle East are also sponsored by AMEU.
On its list of books for sale at the group's online store one will find a Who's Who of fierce critics of Israel and apologists for and promoters of militant Islam. These include books by Richard Falk, who most recently speculated about his desire to prosecute neocons for being behind the 9/11 attacks, and who recently accepted a position on the UN Human Right Council where he has the Israel file; Noam Chomsky, a critic of America and Israel; James Bamford, who has alluded to the alleged dual loyalty of American Jews and blames Israel for problems in the Middle East; Paul Findley, who has written a book (They Dare Speak Out: People and Institutions confront Israel's Lobby) that presaged the publication of the Israel lobby book by Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer, and who attacks Americans who support the American-Israel relationship (Findley now heads up a group called the Council of National Interest that lobbies against Israel and publishes full-page ads in newspapers replete with anti-Semitic imagery; Norman Finkelstein, a failed academic and Holocaust denier; Edward Said, who, as a professor at Columbia University and author of books on the Arab world, corrupted the field of Middle Eastern Studies with an anti-Israel and anti-Western perspective; and a roster of Arab authors who promote anti-Israel views. Controversial Israeli historian Ilan Pappe, who blames Israel for "The Ethnic Cleansing of Israel" (the name of his book for sale) also is represented.
Another author has two books for sale through the AMEU who might strike a bell in people who have been covering Senator Obama's campaign: Rashid Khalidi. Khalidi is a historian and professor of the Middle East who came to know Barack Obama well when Khalidi taught at the University of Chicago. Obama and Khalidi were friends and dinner companions. (Allies of Palestinians see a friend in Barack Obama). Khalidi is also a well-known and very visible Palestinian activist who once worked for the Palestinian Liberation Organization. He now teaches at Columbia University. His pro-Palestinian advocacy continues since he left Chicago.
At times, Khalidi's activities have been the subject of controversy. For example, he had been a participant in the New York City teacher training program, but in 1995 his participation was ended by the city's School Chancellor who issued this statement:
"Considering his past statements, Rashid Khalidi should not have been included in a program that provided professional development for [Department of Education] teachers and he won't be participating in the future."
When Barack Obama served on the nonprofit Woods Foundation board, the foundation gave a large grant to a social services group whose board was headed by Mona Khaldi, Rashid Khalidi's wife.
The videos for sale at the website also reveals a certain point of view that comports well with the list of authors whose books are on sale through the group's website. A sample of the titles for sale:
Life in Occupied Palestine
Imagine . . . The state of Palestinian education under Israeli occupation. Excellent for discussion groups.
Beyond the Mirage: The Face of the Occupation Israeli and Palestinian human rights advocates challenge the misconceptions most Americans have about the occupation and Palestinian resistance to it
Dispatches: The Killing Zone British report on Israeli violence in Gaza against international aid volunteers and foreign reporters
Disabled for Palestine A Palestinian doctor shows cases of Palestinian civilians who have been maimed for life by Israeli bullets, beatings, and tear gas
Peace, Propaganda, and the Promised Land Excellent analysis of how the U.S. media slants its coverage of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Provides comparisons with European media
The Iron Wall Called by President Carter "the best description of the barrier, its routing and impact. (2006, DVD, 52 minutes.)
This is the material from which Pastor Jeremiah Wright has drawn his knowledge and conclusions regarding the Middle East. Barack Obama has described Jeremiah Wright not just as his "sounding board" and "moral compass" but also has described him as a "scholar".
Pastor Wright has had decades to learn the facts about the Middle East. He enjoyed a close relationship with his famous parishioner for 20 years. During Barack Obama's campaign The Senator has held himself out as being a friend of Israel and a supporter of the American-Israel relationship. He has stated that "no one's been a more stalwart ally of Israel." He has asserted that "nobody has spoken out more fiercely on the issue of anti-Semitism than I have" (scant evidence of this assertion exists) which was ridiculed by ABC News Jake Tapper and others.
Did Senator Obama, a graduate of Columbia University, Harvard Law School, and a lecturer at the University of Chicago Law School (and a favorite of academics across the nation) ever consider exposing Jeremiah Wright to other points of view of the Middle East over his 20 year close relationship? Barack Obama has said on the campaign trial that he has had a long and solid relationship with Chicago's Jewish community. Did he ever suggest that Pastor Wright sit down with members of this community, or with Middle East scholars (who abound in Chicago) to learn more about the region and the conflicts that beset it? Instead of educating Wright about the complexities of the Middle East, he was content to have Wright take his information from a group that promotes the views of anti-Israel propagandists and Holocaust-deniers.
Is that leadership or courage? Is this a man who believes in change?
Ed Lasky is news editor of American Thinker.
Free trade facts:
ATLANTA — Contrary to the rhetoric of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama — and CNN’s Lou Dobbs, for that matter — free trade continues to greatly benefit American workers.
That was some of the good news from Heritage’s Resource Bank meeting this morning as Ambassador Terry Miller, who directs our Center for International Trade and Economics, moderated a panel on trade. Other experts included CATO Institute’s Daniel Griswold, the IMANI Center for Policy & Education’s Franklin Cudjoe and the Dominican Republic Center for Export and Investment’s Eddy Martinez.
Griswold, who has faced down Dobbs on air, passed around a fact sheet that’s well worth sharing. Check out these facts:
* Trade has had no discernible, negative effect on the number of jobs in the U.S. economy. Our economy is at full employment, with 16.5 million more people working than a decade ago.
* Trade accounts for only about 3 percent of dislocated workers. Technology and other domestic factors displace far more workers.
* Average real compensation per hour paid to American workers, which includes benefits as well as wages, increased by 22 percent in the past decade.
* Median U.S. household income is 6 percent higher in real dollars than it was a decade ago at a comparable point in the previous business cycle. Middle-class households have moved up the income ladder, not down.
* The net loss of 3.3 million manufacturing jobs in the past decade has been overwhelmed by a net gain of 11.6 million jobs in sectors where the average wage is higher than in manufacturing. Two-thirds of the net new jobs created since 1997 are in sectors where workers earn more than in manufacturing.
* The median net worth of U.S. households jumped by almost one-third between 1995 and 2004, from $70,800 to $93,100.
Yawn... MCCain is the nominee- too little too late
What's the point??
The NY Times has made failed attempts to smear him and they have all backfired
Remember the rumor of a friendship with a lobbyist??
The banner headline accusing him of almost violating a campaign funding law that doesn't even exist??
IF all they have is his temper and misquoting him on his Iraq comments, then I think he'll be OK
Especially in comparison to your boy Barry whose crazy uncle is on the path to making him unelectable
BTW. thinking Roe v Wade is bad constitutional law does not mean a ban on abortion. IT rightfully should be a state decision as it is not mentioned in the COnstitution
The Scary Legacy of the 2008 Democratic Primary [Victor Davis Hanson]
One of the strangest things about the NAACP Wright pseudo-scientific speech on learning, and its enthusiastic CNN coverage and analysis, was the abject racialism of Wright. It was sort of an inverse Bell-Curve presentation, based on assumed DNA differences.
His convoluted explanation of African-American right-brain 'oral' culture as more creative, musical, and spontaneous versus European left-brain traditional analysis could never have been given by someone white to that audience without justifiably earning booing and catcalls.
Three comments: this was just the sort of racist 'genetic' difference that most Americans learned to shun, now apparently quite acceptable again, and part of the mainstream.
Second, there is no evidence that so-called Europeans could not "rap" or create an oral literature as well as Africans — remember, oral poetry as we know it , began with bards like Homer somewhere in the southeastern Aegean and continued into modern times in the Balkans.
Three, some of the most accomplished speakers of English and analytical thinkers are African-Americans, a fact everyone immediately recognizes from what they read and with whom they speak.
In short, Wright's speech on black-right brainers, white-left brainers — replete with bogus stereotypes and crude voice imitations — was about as racist as they come and at one time antithetical to what the NAACP was once all about. Again, the Obama campaign and its appendages have set back racial relations a generation. Just ten years ago, any candidate, black or white, would have rejected Wright making a speech about genetic differences in respective black and white brains. Now it's given to civil rights organizations by the possible next President's pastor and spiritual advisor — and done to wild applause for an organization founded on the idea that we are innately the same, while being gushed over by ignorant "commentators."
As I said before, between Wright's racism and hatred, and Obama's contextualization of what he has said, we have so lowered the bar that the next racist (and he won't necessarily be black) who evokes hatred of other races and then offers a mish-mash pop theory of genetic differences will have plenty of "context" to ward off public fury.
Orwellian times.
All you need to know about Jeremiah Wright
Posted by: McQ
He said it in two sentences at the National Press Club:
"I do not in any way disagree with James Cone. Jim is a personal friend of mine."
Of course, "Jim" is the founder of the black liberation theology which Jeremiah Wright has embraced as the foundation of the church he pastored for decades.
Jeremiah Wright has made that clear numerous times, to include a time he told Sean Hannity that unless he had read Cone, he had no idea of what he was talking about as it pertains to Wright and his beliefs.
James Cone, in an interview, claimed that Trinity UCC, Wright's church, was the church he found to best represent his theology.
In case you've forgotten, Cone's theology is undeniably racist.
And interestingly, as if to confirm how far outside the mainstream he is, he ran through this in an address to the Detroit NAACP:
He acted out the differences between marching bands at predominantly black and predominantly white colleges. "Africans have a different meter, and Africans have a different tonality," he said. Europeans have seven tones, Africans have five. White people clap differently than black people. "Africans and African-Americans are right-brained, subject-oriented in their learning style," he said. "They have a different way of learning."
That, apparently, is being "descriptive". However when this was said ...
One of the world's most eminent scientists was embroiled in an extraordinary row last night after he claimed that black people were less intelligent than white people and the idea that "equal powers of reason" were shared across racial groups was a delusion.
James Watson, a Nobel Prize winner for his part in the unravelling of DNA who now runs one of America's leading scientific research institutions, drew widespread condemnation for comments he made ahead of his arrival in Britain today for a speaking tour at venues including the Science Museum in London.
The 79-year-old geneticist reopened the explosive debate about race and science in a newspaper interview in which he said Western policies towards African countries were wrongly based on an assumption that black people were as clever as their white counterparts when "testing" suggested the contrary. He claimed genes responsible for creating differences in human intelligence could be found within a decade.
... it was denounced as pure old racism.
As a result of Wright's theories on race, Rachal Lucas has a bone to pick with her mother:
Mostly on the lesson that black people and white people are, in fact, genetically different (apparently the billions of Arabs, Asians, and Indians do not count in this equation). For example, white babies learn from objects hung over their cribs, while black babies learn from a person.
My mom will be disappointed to know that she didn't teach her four children the Proper White Method, since she didn't do what all the other whiteys do, which is stick a baby in a crib and hang shit over it and leave it alone. No seriously. That's what he said.
I've got to tell you, if Wright thinks he's helping Obama with this, he's only fooling himself (although, I understand he did deign to agree to accept the Vice President's job while doing Q&A at the National Press Club - for whom?). This is beyond "crazy uncle" stuff now.
If people think Obama's "Wright problem" is going to quietly fade away, they apparently don't know Wright very well. And, given this bit of fun over the last couple of days, I'm sure you can pretty much bank on the media giving the good reverend every opportunity he might seek to continue the show. They know a ratings hit when they see one.
And there's little doubt in my mind that if he continues doing what he's doing through November, there'll be a vote hit as well - and it won't be a positive one either.
Different is not deficient." It would seem there is a profound difference between the black brain and other brains after all. At least according to Reverend Wright. According to this shining exemplar of Barack Obama and the deep scholarship of black liberation theology, black people are right-brained and white people are left-brained. Asian people don't make the discussion since that would be, well, unfortunate.
If you're like me you've probably been wandering about the world babbling something about racial equality in America that affirms, "There are no differences except differences of degree between different degrees of difference and no difference." You could also say, "All men are created equal." How left-brained of you.
Now comes Reverend James Wright to set us all straight. He notes in passing that the right-brain of black people is somehow descended from the griots of Africa. The griots were people who could remember long, very long, poems; proto-rappers if you will. White people had something like that too, but then they invented ... writing. Or was it the Asians? I forget since, alas, my griot genes are slim to none.
At any rate, being descended from griots seems to me to be a lucky win in genetic lotto if you get one of the 100 top rapper slots in the world. It will probably be a bit more problematic if you want to get a job that involves actual analytic skills.
Reverend Wright's mindset is indeed fascinating. You can see the brain in fervid action above.
Full speech @ Rev Wright NAACP Speech (Video). Four segments including singing and dancing.
UPDATE: In the comments, Steve Marmer sums up what is deeply wrong and disturbing about Wright's racial theories:
Wright basically asserted that there is inborn biological difference between those of European stock and those of African stock that culture and education cannot overcome.
I believe that biology is important. I believe that culture -- deep culture -- is important. I believe that education is important. The balance among these elements is even more important. But the consequences of the view that there are innate biological differences that trump culture and education is very dangerous.
I do not believe a civil society democratically constituted can withstand such a view. Democracy as we know it in America, that goes beyond mere plebiscite and extends to freedom of speech, of association, to reliable contracts, fair courts, rule of law, and the notion that no one should, on the basis of biological characteristics alone, be excluded from full citizenship rights, cannot withstand the notion that there are innate biological differences between races that trump our common culture and our universal standards of education.
Monday morning engine-starter: Jeremiah Wright, racial phrenologist
By Michelle Malkin • April 28, 2008 07:04 AM
Good morning, people. I’ll be on Fox and Friends at around 8:15am to talk politics. Today’s engine-starter is The American Digest’s post on Jeremiah Wright’s racial brain theories.
Do you remember nutball racialist professor Leonard (Blacks are “sun people,” whites are “ice people.”) Jeffries?
Jeremiah Wright is the Leonard Jeffries of 2008.
First, watch this:
I’ll transcribe later this morning.
Gerard Van der Leun roasts Wright:
“Different is not deficient.” It would seem there is a profound difference between the black brain and other brains after all. At least according to Reverend Wright. According to this shining exemplar of Barack Obama and the deep scholarship of black liberation theology, black people are right-brained and white people are left-brained. Asian people don’t make the discussion since that would be, well, unfortunate.
If you’re like me you’ve probably been wandering about the world babbling something about racial equality in America that affirms, “There are no differences except differences of degree between different degrees of difference and no difference.” You could also say, “All men are created equal.” How left-brained of you.
Now comes Reverend James Wright to set us all straight. He notes in passing that the right-brain of black people is somehow descended from the griots of Africa. The griots were people who could remember long, very long, poems; proto-rappers if you will. White people had something like that too, but then they invented … writing. Or was it the Asians? I forget since, alas, my griot genes are slim to none.
As I noted yesterday, Wright acted out the differences between black and white marching bands. Jake Tapper mentioned it parenthetically:
“Africans have a different meter, and Africans have a different tonality,” he said. Europeans have seven tones, Africans have five. White people clap differently than black people. “Africans and African-Americans are right-brained, subject-oriented in their learning style,” he said. “They have a different way of learning. And so on.
If he’s this comfortable mocking black/white differences in front of media cameras, I can only imagine what he says in private to his faithful black liberation ideology adherents.
***
Question: If “white people clap differently than black people,” how does Barack Obama clap?
***
Double standards, anyone?
- Ed Morrissey recalls the firestorm the authors of “The Bell Curve” faced.
- Commenter crashemt writes: “Does this mean we need to apologize to Jimmy the Greek, who pointed out differences in physiology based on evolutionary upbringing?”
- Noting Wright’s expert opinion that Europeans have seven tones and Africans have five, commenter rbb answers my question about how Barack Obama claps: “Six?”
Har.
***
VDH:
Wright’s speech on black-right brainers, white-left brainers — replete with bogus stereotypes and crude voice imitations — was about as racist as they come and at one time antithetical to what the NAACP was once all about. Again, the Obama campaign and its appendages have set back racial relations a generation. Just ten years ago, any candidate, black or white, would have rejected Wright making a speech about genetic differences in respective black and white brains. Now it’s given to civil rights organizations by the possible next President’s pastor and spiritual advisor — and done to wild applause for an organization founded on the idea that we are innately the same, while being gushed over by ignorant “commentators.”
Blogger FutureMD calls Wright the new Rich Little and observes:
His negation that black people are not different (which, he suggests, is whitey short-hand for “deficient” — a topic he touched on in the Moyers interview), and then going into a long discourse on how genetically superior black people are, was just for starters.
It became too much for me when he did his John F. Kennedy impersonation (to call it mocking wouldn’t be amiss)…saying that no one criticised he and his brother, “Ed”, for having accents, but they do black kids.
I can’t believe anyone with an undamaged prefrontal cortex would suggest that poor grammar/syntax and regional accents are one and the same.
JFK asked not, not axed not…in fact, neither does Senator Obama and that’s why he’s successfully running for President.
Highlights of Wright’s white/black performance in Detroit in case you missed them:
UPDATE (See-Dubya): Hmmmmm…has Cuffy found the Ragin’ Rev’s ghost writer?
http://michellemalkin.com/2008/04/28/monday-morning-engine-starter-jeremiah-wright-racial-phrenologist/
Barack Obama has a new entanglement with unrepentant Weatherman Bill Ayers which I detail below. The gist is this - back in the mid-90's Bill Ayers was instrumental in the creation and early operation of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, an effort committed to the reform of Chicago's public schools. Barack Obama was Chairman of the Board of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, which suggests he worked closely with Ayers for several years.
Yet in his recent nationally televised appearances and at his website, Obama fails to mention this Ayers entanglement. Why so coy? It's hard to believe he actually forgot his executive role in this important foray into public policy; that said, the Chicago Challenge foundered on the hard rocks of Chicago politics and was widely viewed as ineffective, so perhaps he would prefer not to highlight his failure to bring people together and produce real change.
Or maybe Obama was a do-nothing figurehead who honestly forgot that Bill Ayers was running the show. Awkward spin, that. In any case, there is also a question of shared values. Ayers brings a highly progressive approach to education - dare we ask whether Obama shares his values?
Details and plenty of background links after the break.
With Ayers, two themes are emerging:
(1) It's not the crime, it's the cover-up - why can't Obama manage to deliver a clear answer about his relationship with Ayers? It has long been reported that they both sat on the board of the Woods Fund of Chicago. We now also know that Ayers helped found the Chicago Annenberg Challenge Fund, with Obama as the first Chairman of the Board. We also know that Obama, Thomas Ayers (Bill Ayers father) and John Ayers (Bill's brother) all served on the Leadership Council of the Chicago Public Schools Education Fund (described here as "the successor" to the Chicago Annenberg Challenge project).
That is a lot more of a connection than Obama has admitted in two recent appearances on national television or at his websites "Fact Check". At the Philadelphia debate, Ayers was described as
... a guy who lives in my neighborhood, who's a professor of English in Chicago, who I know and who I have not received some official endorsement from. He's not somebody who I exchange ideas from on a regular basis.
In Philadelphia, it was left to Hillary to mention the Woods Fund board overlap.
And on Fox News, Obama seemed utterly hazy as to what board he was on with Ayers, offering this:
Now, Mr. Ayres [Ayers] is a 60 plus year old individual who lives in my neighborhood, who did something that I deplore 40 years ago when I was six or seven years old. By the time I met him, he was a professor of education at the University of Illinois.
We served on a board together that had Republicans, bankers, lawyers, focused on education, who worked for Mayor Daley. Mayor Daley, the same Mayor Daley probably who when he was a state attorney prosecuted Mr. Ayres’s wife for those activities, I (INAUDIBLE) the point is that to somehow suggest that in any way I endorse his deplorable acts 40 years ago, because I serve on a board with him.
Baffling - neither the Woods Fund of Chicago nor the Chicago Annenberg Challenge Fund could reasonably be described as working for Mayor Daley; the Leadership Council of the Chicago Public Schools Education Fund fits that description, but it was the elder Ayers and the other Ayers who served with Obama on that board. There is a theory that Obama is pretty tight with the Ayers family, so maybe that caused his confusion.
Finally, the Obama website presents a "Fact Check on Clinton Attacks on Obama and Ayers" which makes no mention of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge Fund. OK, given the fame of Annenberg's FactCheck organization, maybe this was a subconscious cry for recognition. But where is the transparency?
(2) The second emerging theme in this Ayers drama is, what about shared values? OK, so Barack was eight years old when Ayers was blowing things up. But Ayers brings a very, hmm, progressive mindset to his educational agenda, or so I glean from the Ayers website (or this panel presentation). So, does Barack share these views? Seems like a fair question, since Ayers helped found a group Barack promptly chaired.
We have moved a long way past the notion that Ayers was just some guy from Barack's neighborhood who happened to host a fundraiser for him in 1995 and later overlapped with him on a charity board. How much farther this story will move, and how much assistance Barack will provide in moving it, remains to be seen.
C'MON - I enjoy this drollery from the hardworking and surely underpaid chaps at Hot Air:
The obvious exit question: How closely did Obama and Ayers work together at the Challenge? It may be that they had little contact, that Ayers’s role ended in setting the thing up and he was sufficiently uninvolved in day to day operations that Obama sincerely forgot he was associated with the program.
Obama is a bit young to be having memory problems; surely he anticipated an Ayers question and gave the topic some thought. And in fact, he did describe an education-related board, not the Woods Fund board.
DIG IN: Background on the Annenberg Challenge; a final report on the Chicago Annenberg Challenge experience (271 page .pdf).
THIS WILL BECOME IMPORTANT: Some history of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge:
Having secured Annenberg funding for Chicago, the working group would soon evolve into a more formal organization, albeit with strong ties to the groups that wrote the grant proposal. Initially run out of shared space in the offices of the Cross-City Campaign and administered through an existing philanthropic organization called the Donors Forum, the Chicago Challenge soon became its own new foundation with status as an independent fiscal agent. By late 1995, Ken Rolling had been named executive director, a board of directors had been established, and the first round of grants had been awarded. Rolling lacked experience in education but came from the foundation world and was well-versed in community organizing. The board, which was intended to set policy, raise matching funds, and hire an executive director, included prominent educators and business leaders. A second entity, the newly-created Chicago School Reform Collaborative, was also established. Its twenty-plus members were elected from the group of educators and advocates who had helped shape the grant proposal. Initially, at least, this offshoot of the working group functioned as the operations arm of the Chicago Challenge. However, this situation created procedural and ethical concerns and in time the Collaborative was transformed into an advisory body.
Ayers was one of the three original leaders of the working group and eventually co-chaired the Chicago School Reform Collaborative (see his resume). His early involvement:
When three of Chicago's most prominent education reform leaders met for lunch at a Thai restaurant six years ago to discuss the just-announced $500 million Annenberg Challenge, their main goal was to figure out how to ensure that any Annenberg money awarded to Chicago "didn't go down the drain," said William Ayers, a professor of education at the University of Illinois in Chicago. Ayers, who was at that lunch table in late 1993, helped write the successful Chicago grant application.
The point is that Ayers led the way in securing the Annenberg grant, then co-chaired the Collaborative, which was instrumental in the operation of the Chicago Challenge. It is not likely Barack Obama, as chair of the Board of Directors of the Challenge, was not working closely with the co-chair of the collaborative. At any rate, it is not at all plausible that he could have been unaware of Ayers' role and later forgotten it.
I see trouble in paradise as "Hope and change" morphs to "Hope we can change the subject."
Grasping at Straws: The NY Times on McCain
This is getting embarrassing. Remember the front-page story The New York Times ran about John McCain’s non-affair with a lobbyist? That was the long-held piece of non-news that the Times subtly dropped like a barbell at midnight shortly after it became clear that McCain would be the Republican nominee for President. The point of the piece was to knock Mr. McCain off his high horse and tarnish his reputation. But the effect was to further diminish the Times in the eyes of its readers. If such mean-spirited and slightly hysterical rumor-mongering is news, who needs it?
Well, they never learn. At least, that’s what I conclude from today’s non-story about Mr. McCain’s use of a corporate jet owned by a company run by his wife. “McCain Frequently Used Wife’s Jet for Little Cost” screams the headline.
“Yeah, so?” you might be asking, and you would be right. Here’s how the Times structures its non-stories about John McCain:
1. Prissy introductory sentence or two noting that Mr. McCain has a reputation [read “unearned reputation”] for taking the ethical high road on issues like campaign finance reform.
2. “The-Times-has-learned” sentence intimating some tort or misbehavior.
3. A paragraph or two of exposition that simultaneously reveals that a) Mr. McCain actually didn’t do anything wrong but b) he would have if only the law had been different and besides everyone knows he is guilty in spirit.
It’s really easy once you get the hang of it. Here’s how it looks in practice:
1. The Setup: “Given Senator John McCain’s signature stance on campaign finance reform, it was not surprising that he backed legislation last year requiring presidential candidates to pay the actual cost of flying on corporate jets. The law, which requires campaigns to pay charter rates when using such jets rather than cheaper first-class fares, was intended to reduce the influence of lobbyists and create a level financial playing field.”
The “Times-Touch” © here is in the opposition of Mr. McCain’s “signature stance” campaign finance reform and the ominous but as-yet-unstated malfeasance: Mr. McCain claims to be a reformer, but really … . The suggestion of hypocrisy is all the more potent for being left in the realm of innuendo.
2. The Execution: “But over a seven-month period beginning last summer, Mr. McCain’s cash-short campaign gave itself an advantage by using a corporate jet owned by a company headed by his wife, Cindy McCain, according to public records. For five of those months, the plane was used almost exclusively for campaign-related purposes, those records show.”
Oh dear. That’s bad, right? I mean, using your wife’s jet doesn’t sound too bad, really. Perfectly normal, in fact. Convenient that she has a spare jet he could use. But it must somehow be against the law, right? Otherwise it wouldn’t be news, would it? And if it wasn’t news, it wouldn’t be worth reporting. Right?
If you believe that, you don’t know the Times. Pay attention now:
3. The Obfuscation: Part one: “The senator was able to fly so inexpensively because the law specifically exempts aircraft owned by a candidate or his family or by a privately held company they control.”
Oh. Case closed, what? Not quite:
Part two: “The Federal Election Commission adopted rules in December to close the loophole — rules that would have required substantial payments by candidates using family-owned planes — but the agency soon lost the requisite number of commissioners needed to complete the rule making.
Because that exemption remains, Mr. McCain’s campaign was able to use his wife’s corporate plane like a charter jet while paying first-class rates, several campaign finance experts said. Several of those experts, however, added that his campaign’s actions, while keeping with the letter of law, did not reflect its spirit.”
Let’s summarize. McCain used his wife’s company’s jet. It was perfectly legal for him to do so. But some people the Times reporter talked to think it shouldn’t be legal. Therefore …
“Therefore” what? Therefore you run another several hundred words telling readers how many flights the plane made over a 7-month period, how much it costs per hour to fly the plane, what the F.E.C. rules are for “deadhead” flights, likely tax-consequences for Mrs. McCain’s company, ending with an all purpose disclaimer: “The Times analysis may be inexact for a variety of reasons.” Why? “For one, the Times suffers from crippling ideological bias that requires it to publish stories that are nothing more than a tissue of groundless insinuation and thinly veiled editorializing designed to discredit a candidate we don’t like but against whom we have no dirt, though we are digging as fast as we can …” Oops, wrong sentence: the reason the Times actually gave for its possible inexactness was “flight records do not show how many, if any, campaign travelers were aboard a plane on a given flight.” Good to know.
Update: A reader adds two additional observations:
[R]egarding the non-violation of FEC rules: the article itself states that the FEC didn’t even begin not-adopting this new non-rule until December - and the travel in question took place from August through February. Not in any conceivable universe would McCain ever to have been held to have violated in August a rule that didn’t exist before December. And presumably if the FEC had had enough members to pass this rule in December, the McCain campaign would have then stopped doing whatever it is that the Times is so indignant about.
And WHY does the commission not have enough members to conduct business as usual? The Times is unusually reticent on that point. That’s because the reason the FEC doesn’t have enough members is that Barack Obama has blocked President Bush’s nominee from being confirmed.
And they wonder why their circulation is disappearing???
Al Sharpton convenes another lynch mob
popeal.jpg
Al Sharpton is back in the news today with his vow to close New York down to protest the acquittals of three police detectives in the death of Sean Bell. The AP story somehow omits to note that two of the three NYPD detectives against whom Sharpton now seeks to lead his lynch mob are are black. So far they have been protected from the likes of Al Sharpton by due process of law.
Sharpton's long career as the race hustling leader of lynch mobs is one of the continuing disgraces of our public life. How is it that Al Sharpton has assumed this position of leadership in matters allegedly pertaining to race? Though he is accorded an absurdly respected role in the Democratic Party by politicians such as Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, he is easily one of the most vile men active in American public life.
Jay Nordlinger reviewed Sharpton's record as of early 2000 in his brilliant National Review feature article "Power Dem." Jay updated his take on Sharpton this past December in his column "Words from Pope Al." From his promotion of Tawana Brawley's hoax and his defamation of Steven Pagones and Robert Abrams, to his defense of the Central Park "wilding" rapists, to his role in the pogroms leading to the murders of Yankel Rosenbaum in Crown Heights and eight victims in Freddy's Fashion Mart in Harlem, Sharpton has compiled a record that should result in his excommunication by decent people from civil society.
Here is Pope Al on the accidental death of Gavin Cato in Crown Heights in August 1991:
The world will tell us that [Gavin Cato] was killed by accident....What type of city do we have that would allow politics to rise above the blood of innocent babies?...Talk about how Oppenheimer in South Africa sends diamonds straight to Tel Aviv and deals with the diamond merchants right here in Crown Heights....All we want to say is what Jesus said: If you offend one of these little ones, you got to pay for it. No compromise. Pay for your deeds....It’s no accident that we know we should not be run over. We are the royal family on the planet. We are the original man. We gazed into the stars and wrote astrology. We had a conversation and that became philosophy....We will win because we are right. God is on our side.
Writing in the Village Voice in December 2004, Wayne Barrett proclaimed Sharpton to have hit "a new low." And Sharpton of course contributed to the miscarriage of justice represented by the charges brought in 2006 and dismissed last year against the three Duke lacrosse players. In an April 2006 interview with Bill O'Reilly, Sharpton said (among other things):
This case parallels Abner Louima, who was raped and sodomized in a bathroom like this girl has alleged she was. That's the case and just like the Louima case, you have people saying she fabricated it. They said he fabricated it -- two guys in jail right now for that.
The only contribution Al Sharpton stands to make to American public life is the removal of himself from it.
So Shrillary has vowed to annihilate Iran
IS she the war candidate now?
It's already happened
Some insurance companies are paying for their patients to have high cost procedures in Thailand and other places
All things considered, they end up saving big time
The hospitals are of the highest standard
Not a bad idea
Hillary Hates Freedom
Maybe that’s a bit strong. Let’s just say, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton operates with reckless disregard for individual freedom and the limited government that protects and sustains it.
In her latest salvo, she dismisses the great promises of the Declaration of Independence, the founding principles of the United States, as rhetorical flourishes, mere garnishes on the real stuff of life. “We can talk all we want about freedom and opportunity, about life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, but what does all that mean to a mother or father who can’t take a sick child to the doctor?” she asked.
In her senatorial activities and her presidential campaign, Clinton has tended to propose modest, moderate programs. Even her new health care proposal is being hailed as more modest than her 1993 plan (though it would in fact impose a new government mandate on every person in the United States). But at her core, Hillary Clinton rejects the fundamental values of liberalism, values like individual autonomy, individual rights, pluralism, choice, and yes, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. She seems to see no area of life that should be free from the heavy hand of government. And to her the world of free people seems a vast nothingness. When a few Republicans proposed to eliminate the National Endowment for the Arts, which spends about $125 million of the $63 billion spent on arts in the United States, she declaimed that such a move “not only threatens irrevocable damage to our cultural institutions but also to our sense of ourselves and what we stand for as a people.”
After her first attempt at nationalizing and bureaucratizing American health care, she told the New York Times that her next project would be “redefining who we are as human beings in the post-modern age.” I’d say 300 million Americans can do that for themselves.
Her hostility to freedom is not just a left-wing attitude. In the Senate, she’s been adding the paternalistic agenda of the religious right to her old-fashioned liberal paternalism. Clinton has called for federal legislation to prohibit the sale of “inappropriate” video games to children and teens. She’s introduced a bill to study the impact of media on children, a likely prelude to restrictions on television content, and she touts the V-Chip regulation that President Bill Clinton signed. She supports federal legislation to outlaw flag desecration (though not a constitutional amendment).
In her book It Takes a Village, she insisted that 300 million free people could somehow come to “a consensus of values and a common vision of what we can do today, individually and collectively, to build strong families and communities.” She told Newsweek, “There is no such thing as other people’s children,” a claim that ought to frighten any parent. She promised to inflict on free citizens government videos running constantly in every gathering place, telling people “how to burp an infant, what to do when soap gets in his eyes, how to make a baby with an earache comfortable”—all the things that no one knew how to do until the federal government came along.
Hillary Clinton is no socialist. But when she makes her rejection of liberal values as explicit as she did on Monday – dismissing “freedom and opportunity [and] life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” as irrelevant to people’s real lives–she is far too reminiscent of some of the most authoritarian figures of the 20th century. Lenin, for instance, wrote, “Bourgeois democracy is democracy of pompous phrases, solemn words, exuberant promises and the high-sounding slogans of freedom and equality.”
And maybe it’s no surprise that Clinton cosponsored her videogame ban with Sen. Rick Santorum, who is also an articulate and determined opponent of individualism. In his book It Takes a Family and in various media appearances, he denounced “this whole idea of personal autonomy.” At least once he rejected “the pursuit of happiness” explicitly, saying, “This is the mantra of the left: I have a right to do what I want to do” and “We have a whole culture that is focused on immediate gratification and the pursuit of happiness . . . and it is harming America.” Not the mantra of the Hillary Clinton left, obviously.
We know that societies that reject bourgeois freedom – the freedom of individualism, civil society, the rule of law, and yes, you guessed it, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness – in favor of collectivism and economic goods end up with neither freedom nor prosperity. The United States has the most advanced medical care in the world — The rate of death from heart disease in the U.S. was cut in half between 1980 and 2000, for instance – because we have a mostly free and capitalist economy. Mandates and regulations make medical care more costly than it needs to be, and Hillary Clinton now proposes to pile on yet more mandates and regulations. But the really scary prospect of another Clinton presidency is not what she would do to our medical care but what she would do to the “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” that is the foundation of our free society.
What ever the method, it's the same now as it's been- making the comparison relevant
Funny how all the jobs are dissaperaing but the unemployment rate of around 5.1% is about the same as during CLintons fabulous economy
"For every guy who leaves the table with chips someone goes home without. For every guy who has a nice house on the ocean, a lot of others are hungry."
One of the liberal core fallacies.
New ideas can create worth w/o taking away from anyone else. Look at the value Gates created w/ his software. Solely through his ideas ( and cut throat marketing ) he created billions in value. It's that sort of class envy that dooms liberal thought.
'Unless you're printing money "
Ummm, isn't that what the Fed does? A lot of new ideas or technology actually help others do their own work more effectively and thus create value for the buyer and seller. Ca[italism is not rape, despite your 60's view of the world
"Remove the leveling influence of taxes (what Adam Smith called "transfer payments"
It's all a question of degree. Are you saying that the provider of value is not entitled to the fruits of their labor more than someone who is not providing value to society. In your world should all income just be divided among all citizens equally?
Again, in the real world this has never worked. THe Soviet Union crumbled for just that reason. Removing the profit motive doomed it to failure
The nanny state, explained
posted at 9:09 pm on April 25, 2008 by Ed Morrissey
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Jon Henke at QandO wonders why this particular Hillary Clinton quote from last September hasn’t received much attention:
“We can talk all we want about freedom and opportunity, about life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, but what does all that mean to a mother or father who can’t take a sick child to the doctor?” she asked.
I just finished watching the excellent HBO series John Adams last Sunday. It tells the story of our nation’s birth and the sacrifice many of our founders made to create a free nation. They wanted a nation with government limited to just enough power to keep the peace and defend the nation. They didn’t conceive of the idea that a free people would trade their fortunes and freedom to create a government that would dictate choices to them in a manner far more egregious than George III.
Of course, this quote comes as a piece with another Hillary winner, from 2004:
We’re going to take things away from you on behalf of the common good.
This came from an explanation from Hillary about canceling the Bush tax cuts. She saw the money supposedly lost in revenue as belonging to the government, rather than the people who earned it. Hillary, and the statists like her, don’t really believe in private property, at least not as a right that stands up to government authority. Further, they believe that individuals are less capable of acting in their self interest than bureaucrats. Under those circumstances, it makes sense to take more and more private property and control over American citizens.
That’s why concepts like freedom, opportunity, and liberty get discounted by statists. They see these as unreal, fantasy concepts, which is why they look elsewhere for their values. They don’t understand the basic values that serve as the foundation for the Constitution and the nation. Our founders would never have tolerated a federal government that set itself up as the dispensary of all services to all people. In fact, had they encountered one, they would have thrown a party in response — much like the one they threw in Boston just before the revolution.
That's the point, all existing systems are hybrids to some extent.
Cuba is probably as close to the book as they come, but the embargo keeps them in a box
Every newly liberated country has chose the path of more economic freedom and has prospered because of it
The market place is always more efficient than centralized govt control
Throw in intellectual freedom as well and the odds are greatly in favor of success. Look at the parts of the Arab world where women are treated as property and suppression is the norm. They'd be much better off exploring that rather than blaming everything on Israel
Planned Parenthood protest in DC: Stop targeting African-Americans
posted at 11:15 am on April 25, 2008 by Ed Morrissey
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On Wednesday, I asked whether the time had come for an investigation into the practices of Planned Parenthood. They have received millions of taxpayer dollars for their operations through federal grants while profiting off of abortion mills. In at least four incidents, they exploited racist sentiment to accrue private donations for the explicit purpose of aborting African-American babies. Yesterday, a group of pastors and activists primarily from the black community demanded an end to Planned Parenthood’s “genocide”:
The Planned Parenthood Federation of America has perpetuated a “genocide on the black community,” says a group of African-American pastors who claimed Thursday the birth control and abortion provider has had a racist agenda since its beginnings in 1921.
Holding a brief vigil and press conference in front of a Planned Parenthood clinic in Washington, D.C., the group of pastors and activists said they were incensed by the results of recent “undercover” inquiries into several Planned Parenthood clinics across the country.
“Every day … over 1,500 black babies are murdered inside the black woman’s womb,” said Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson, of Brotherhood Organization of a New Destiny (BOND). “This is a race issue.”
The pastors urged Congress to initiate an audit of the organization and have written letters demanding that money for Planned Parenthood be eliminated from federal Title X funding, of which the group got $65 million for fiscal year 2007, according to pro-life Concerned Women of America. In total, Planned Parenthood received $300 million in government contracts and grants in the current fiscal year.
The national office of Planned Parenthood provided FOX News with a lengthy statement on Thursday in which it said its role in the African-American community is widespread because the need is greater.
The need is greater? The need for what? They point to a study that shows almost half of all black teenage girls carry an STD, but that would indicate that PP hasn’t performed very effectively with the millions it gets already. PP has been targeting these communities for decades, and the problem to which it points highlights its failure — because everyone knows they’re not all that interested in STDs anyway.
People can buy condoms at Walgreens. They get abortions at Planned Parenthood.
And the Chinese got to that position by flowing Marxist economic policy???
I guess I missed the part of communist doctrine where millionaire entrepreneurs are a by product of Marxist theory
The Chinese got to the position they are in because they have moved to a capitalistic economic model
Can you actually dispute that?
Sunni Party to Re-Join Iraqi Government? [Rich Lowry]
I had an exchange with Matthew Yglesias a while ago over the Iraqi government taking on Sadr. I thought it was perverse that Yglesias didn't see any reason to take sides between the Iraqi government and a radical militia, elements of which shred American troops with sophisticated IED's. (Although Yglesias was boldly willing to say of Sadr, we shouldn't "wish him particularly well in his adventures.") Anyway, one reason I said we should support the government against Sadr is that it might help advance reconciliation by convincing Sunnis that the government is willing to go after Shia extremist groups as well as Sunni ones. Yglesias pronounced this "extremely dubious." Here's a front-page story in the New York Times today, "Top Sunni Bloc Is Set to Rejoin Cabinet in Iraq":
Iraq's largest sunni bloc has agreed to return to Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki's cabinet after a boycott of nearly a year, several Sunni leaders said Thursday. They cited a recently passed amnesty law and the government's crackdown on shiite militias as reasons for the move...the attacks on Shiite militias have apparently begun to assuage longstanding complaints that only Sunni groups blamed for the insurgency have been the targets of American and Iraqi security forces.
An apologist for Syria denies he's Obama's adviser
Yesterday Paul Mirengoff wrote here about Obama nuclear policy advisor Joseph Cirincione. Paul's post was based on Gabriel Schoenfeld's discussion of "Obama's radioactive potato." Cirincione has now responded to Schoenfeld:
“I am not a top advisor to Senator Obama. I have never met the Senator. I have written occasional memos to his campaign and publicly endorsed his candidacy, but I am afraid there is no way I could be considered ‘Barack Obama’s top expert on matters nuclear.’”
Schoenfeld comments:
With all due respect to Joseph Cirincione, I stand by my claim that he serves as Senator Obama’s top adviser on matters nuclear and I am astonished that he would deny it.
In a March 12, 2008 article in the New Republic by Michelle Cottle in which he was extensively quoted, Cottle wrote that Cirincione “agreed last spring to advise the candidate on non-proliferation.”
If that statement is true, and I see no evidence that Cirincione has disputed it, then he is their adviser on nuclear proliferation, and indeed their top adviser unless he can point to a more senior nuclear expert advising the campaign.
Cirincione has been widely identified as an Obama adviser all over the blogsphere by publications spanning the political spectrum, from National Review to the Weekly Standard to the DailyKos, where he was even given the title “Informal National Security Adviser.” I did not find a disavowal from Cirincione in the comments section of that web document.
Stephen Zunes, chairman of the program in Middle Eastern Studies at the University of San Francisco, writing in Foreign Policy in Focus, described Cirincione as a “key Obama adviser.” Once again, I did not find a disavowal from Cirincione in the comments section of that web document.
Will the real top Obama nuclear advisor please stand up.
(See Schoenfeld's post for the links.) Perhaps nuclear policy is another one of those areas, like foreign policy, in which Obama esteems his own expertise sufficiently to dispense with the need for an adviser.
Posted by Scott at 8:41 AM | Permalink | E-mail this post to a friend |
An apologist for Syria shifts his ground
Yesterday, I noted that Joseph Cirincione, Barack Obama's go-to guy on nuclear issues, insisted in September 2001 that reports of North Korean involvement in developing a Syrian nuclear facility were "nonsense" cooked up by the Bush administration and Israel for their own purposes. One might think that being this wrongheaded -- lashing out against a valid report due to dislike of its sources and implications -- would disqualify Cirincione not just from his status in the Obama campaign, but also from being a "talking head" on the issue.
One would be wrong. Cirincione apparently remains Obama's adviser. This morning, moreover, NPR turned to Cirincione in its report on the North Korea-Syria collaboration. Given the state of the record, Cirincione no longer denied the existence or weapons-based purpose of the collaboration. His fall-back position was that the existence of the project didn't mean that Syria had, or was close to having, a nuclear capability.
But Cirincione latest brief against Israel is irrelevant. Unless, of course, one believes, as Cirincione (and Obama) might well, that Israel must wait until Syria is on the verge of developing a nuclear capabililty -- and thus must rely on uncertain assessments about this -- before it acts to protect its security.
UPDATE: Not surprisingly, the Syria-North Korea connection story hardly represents the first time Cirincione has shown his bias against Israel. As usual, Ed Lasky has the details. Cirincione appears to hold the view that the key to halting Iran's development of a nuclear arsenal is for Israel to give up on nuclear weapons.
Posted by Paul at 8:32 AM | Permalink | E-mail this post to a friend |
WANT TO HELP NEW ORLEANS? Support free trade!
Is there any city for which congressional Democrats claim more concern than New Orleans? So why are they denying the Katrina-ravaged city a major opportunity for recovery by shutting out Colombian free trade? . . . The mayor of the hurricane-hit city made an impassioned plea to Congress to pass the Colombia free trade agreement for New Orleans' sake. He knows how badly his city needs every break it can get, three years after the biggest disaster to ever hit a U.S. metropolitan area. . . .
"New Orleans is becoming an even greater international city in the wake of Hurricane Katrina," Nagin wrote to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi last November, "and we are making every effort to capitalize on trade liberalization that will flow from these FTAs (free trade agreements). Our port system is ideally situated to take advantage of the Latin American FTAs."
Congress is unmoved because free trade produces less graft than massive aid projects. But it's funny that this hasn't gotten much attention from the press.