RattlerGator Blog

Doctor?

Great commentary on the push by Democrats to have government-run health care brought to America from the folks at reason.tv:

Now that's some funny stuff!

Michael Jackson: 1958-2009

Briefly, and I'm sure I'll have more later for the man walked very tall in my imagination, here is my initial reaction to the death of Michael Jackson today:

May you rest in peace, Michael. You brought excitement, joy and wonder to millions and millions. I pray that God will have mercy on your soul. I recently had a "paradoxical reaction" to a clinical procedure and I suspect Michael *lived* his life as a paradoxical reaction to juvenile stardom.

I loved the guy. Always have, always will. And I deeply mourn his death.

Are You Paying Attention, Barack?

I'm not the only one wondering if our President is paying close attention to what is happening in Iran and applying some lessons learned regarding his presumed impact on the ways of the world. So, too, is Fouad Ajami:

Days into his presidency, it should be recalled, Mr. Obama had spoken of his desire to restore to America's relation with the Muslim world the respect and mutual interest that had existed 30 or 20 years earlier. It so happened that he was speaking, almost to the day, on the 30th anniversary of the Iranian Revolution -- and that the time span he was referring to, his golden age, covered the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the American standoff with Libya, the fall of Beirut to the forces of terror, and the downing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland. Liberal opinion would have howled had this history been offered by George W. Bush, but Barack Obama was granted a waiver.

Little more than three decades ago, Jimmy Carter, another American president convinced that what had come before him could be annulled and wished away, called on the nation to shed its "inordinate fear of communism," and to put aside its concern with "traditional issues of war and peace" in favor of "new global issues of justice, equity and human rights." We had betrayed our principles in the course of the Cold War, he said, "fought fire with fire, never thinking that fire is quenched with water." The Soviet answer to that brave, new world was the invasion of Afghanistan in December of 1979.

Mr. Carter would try an atonement in the last year of his presidency. He would pose as a born-again hawk. It was too late in the hour for such redemption. It would take another standard-bearer, Ronald Reagan, to see that great struggle to victory.

Iran's ordeal and its ways shattered the Carter presidency. President Obama's Persian tutorial has just begun.

Likewise, David Warren also has some concerns:

As Amir Taheri has put it, the opposition candidate who lost the rigged election, Mir Hossein Mousavi, is just "a balloon that a section of the Iranian middle class inflated to show its anger not only at Ahmadinejad but also at the entire Khomeinist regime."

Likewise, very naive foreigners, such as Barack Obama of the United States, vested foolish hopes in him as some kind of velvet revolutionary.

But in the course of the last week, events have transformed the issue.

Ayatollah Khamenei's extremely forthright statement to the demonstrators Friday clarified the situation. The regime understands that its very existence is at stake. So do its opponents. You win, or you die.

The demands of the people in the streets -- and there have been quite literally millions of them, turned out in every significant Iranian town, invisible to western media holed up under house arrest in Tehran, but quite apparent through the Internet -- are unambiguous.

They want "regime change." They do not want an amelioration, but an end, to the morality laws, the thugs who enforce them, the secret prisons, the international brinkmanship, the terror networks, and the rest of the regime's infrastructure of power.

They explicitly want an end to the "Islamic Republic of Iran," which, as Taheri and others have long been explaining, is a triple oxymoron (it isn't Islamic in any orthodox sense, it isn't a Republic in any political sense, and it does not recognize Iran as a nation).

Now, Barack, the real testing begins. The intrusion of foreign affairs, perpetrated by people who give less than a damn about you and your presumed election as "President of the World," has only just begun. Many, many of our adversaries wait for just such a moment to make moves on the international scene. And no amount of wishing or hoping or chants of YES WE CAN! is going to change this fact.

Time for the unseriousness to go away. Time to see your skill set(s) placed in action. I pray that you are ready but, true to your blind leftist world view, you've already blinked on Iran in the early going. If President Obama allows this opening to pass withought firm leadership from him in support of freedom for the Iranaian people we'll be subjected to an odd historical fact: the left will have been indifferent to the aspirations of freedom in both Iraq and Iran.

That's noteworthy, don't you think?

Are you paying attention, President Obama?

Obama and his Malignant Narcissism

I highly recommend reading Victor Davis Hanson's piece, The Reckoning. Here's the opening:

Obama Versus the Way of the Universe

I wish the President well, but he is butting up against human nature. And that is a fight one cannot win. If one runs up nearly a $2 trillion annual deficit, and then persists in such red-ink to the point of adding another $9 trillion, all to reach an aggregate $20 trillion national debt, there are not too many options. If there were, everyone-both states and individuals-would simply spend, call it stimuli, and then find academics to offer contorted explanations why it was OK and the money need not really have to be paid back. Does Obama think his debt is like buying  a house in a down market with an up market inevitable?–that is, we borrow to the max and then count on our equity to come to bail us out? But houses do not always go up, and we can’t quite sell off the US to capture our speculative profit.

So we all know the old rules, because the universe works according to time-honored precepts: we either must tax all of us (there are not enough of those evil “they” who make between $200-500K or even enough of the noble generous rich who make over $10 million a year and think Obama should increase inheritance taxes so that their children get only $1 billion instead of $2, while the hardware store owner’s kids sell the business) in insidious ways; OR simply cut government expenditures elsewhere to pay the annual interest payments, OR print money and screw the Chinese, European, etc. , debtors, inflating our way out via the late 1970s.

Sorry, there are no other real alternatives.

It's a fantastic piece that needs to be read beginning to end. In it, he offers up a personal example that seems quite appropriate. A dispute at his farm when he was in his mid-20's and just returned from academia. I think many of us with college degrees, especially those of us with advanced degrees, have been "educated fools" at times. Obama, clearly, is showing all the signs of that dreaded deficit.

Still, it is personally disappointing that so many folks in the comments following the post seem to apparently have so little respect for the resiliency of the country or respect for the "practical" epiphanies Obama has already evidenced (wiretaps, eMail intercepts, Predator drone attacks, shutting down Guantanamo, etc.).

He clearly has a gameplan and reality will clearly overtake said gameplan (I tend to agree with another comment in the thread; namely, that Hillary will seek and find an opening by the end of Summer which will allow her to begin her subtle differentiation away from naïveté of BHO). As Hanson indicates, the only true question is: what will BHO do in the face of a mugging by reality? Specifically, "The only mystery? How the choice of payment is rhetoricized in the hope and change mode." Payment, mind you, whether foreign or domestic. For me, there is an acknowledgment in this question/statement from VDH that Obama is, first and foremost, a politician.

No,Obama doesn't understand the country. No, he doesn't know how to properly respect military service or the imperative to serve in our armed forces, nor does he know how to properly admire a corporation surviving the gauntlet of initial start-up, then finding, developing and servicing a market. Hell, the fact of the matter is that he doesn't even believe in the CIA or its mission.

But he does understand politics.

I'm going to hold onto that little nugget and believe (hope?), along with VDH, that our President is going to "get it" when the inevitable occurs. And I'm going to work to see that he's a one-term wonder because (as someone said in one of Hanson's comments) his was the most un-serious election of my lifetime. As a black man, I remain firmly convinced he NEVER should have been the first African American elected to the Presidency but . . . he was! And I have to respect that.

Additionally, I refuse to believe he is purposely trying to undermine the country any more than Jimmy Carter or Bill Clinton were. We're talking about political differences here (okay, and a malignant narcissism!) but those of us who oppose Obama should avoid the craziness of the far left. Any "American" talking about running away from the problems of the country by leaving isn't worthy of the title.

Does This Make Me A Geek?

I was completely blown away yesterday by an 80-minute presentation on YouTube from the folks at Google, talking about a new open-source product they will be releasing to the general public later this year. This is the way the product was described at TechCrunch:

Yesterday, during the Google I/O keynote, Google’s VP of Engineering, Vic Gundotra, laid out a grand vision for the direction Google sees the web heading towards with the move to the HTML 5 standard. While we’re not there yet, all the major browser players besides Microsoft are aligned and ready for the next phase, which will include such things as the ability to run 3D games and movies in the browser without additional plug-ins. But Google wants to take it one step further with a brand new method of communication for this new era. It’s called Google Wave.

Everyone uses email and instant messaging on the web now, but imagine if you could tie those two forms of communication together and add a load of functionality on top of it. At its most fundamental form, that’s essentially what Wave is. Developed by brothers Lars and Jens Rasmussen and Stephanie Hannon out of Google’s Sydney, Australia offices, Wave was born out of the idea that email and instant messaging, as successful as they still are, were both created a very long time ago. We now have a much more robust web full of content and brimming with a desire to share stuff. Or as Lars Rasumussen put it, “Wave is what email would look like if it were invented today.”

Having seen a lengthy demonstration, as ridiculous as it may sound, I have to agree.

Me too!

It was an absolutely incredible demonstration. If you've never watched an online video presentation for 80 continuous minutes, this is the time to do so. It boggles the mind to try and think of how this is going to change communications. I'm going to embed the video below:

The technological advances these days are coming in ever quicker cycles. You do have to wonder how we're going to handle it all -- or whether we can. I have faith that we can, and we will. That, too, might make me a geek.

“Duty, Honor, Country, Truth, God.”

Vanderleun! What a talented guy. With the Slipstream Media idea, he's attempting to lay out a path forward, a path many of us are seeking and have been seeking.

This needs to be remembered, I do believe:

Summary:

The Media is how America fights its civil wars. In this war at least half the country is both under-served and is painfully aware it is being under-served and lied to. In pop culture parlance, “We’re going to need bigger guns.”

Seen as the 4th branch of government, the unelected and self-selected Mainstream Media, in cultural and political collusion with the present government, knows this and – even as it dies – will do everything it can to prevent the arming of the people with more and better media.

To control the medium is to control the message. And control of the message means control of the hearts, minds, and votes of the people. To bring a better, clearer, and brighter message to the American people, we must have media that, like the Internet itself, “sees censorship as system damage and routes around it.” To accomplish this we must, in a network of small pieces loosely joined together, work to create a pervasive new media across America. Many of these pieces are already in place. Many more need to be created. All need to be joined in an affiliation. Mainstream media already knows how to do this and we must, to paraphrase Abby Hoffman, "Steal Their Book." Media not busy being born is busy dying.

This is the first in a series of articles on how to go about building a new American media; a media composed of newspapers, television, radio, film, music, publishing, and the multi-media capabilities of the Internet; an American media open to all and founded on the five bedrock principles of “Duty, Honor, Country, Truth, God.”

When dinosaurs die large opportunities for growth bloom within the ecosystem. The death of the old media is such an opportunity. It affords a wide range of possibilities to create a new media, a media that runs to the side of the mainstream media, but ultimately supplants it by slipping by it. For now I call it, The Slipstream Media.

By “The Slipstream Media” I mean the use of all forms of media currently in use to inform and persuade the public that "There is another system."

This series of articles will be composed of theoretical and practical observations on the content, forms, principles, funding, and business structures involved in creating a new media network in the rapidly changing marketplace of today and the foreseeable future. It will focus on, in Lenin’s phrase, “What is to be done,” as well as what can be done, and how the creation of the Slipstream Media might be accomplished.

What is to be done.

The Premise: Better ideas require not only better arguments, but also better means of distribution.

To survive and thrive, better ideas also require funding, a sound business model based on the realities of the present, and a path to positive cash flow.

Now, what about that -- huh? Go read the rest, and keep his website near to your thoughts. The man is on to something.

Savoring Tebow's Last Year

I'm thinking of Tim Tebow these days. Specifically, I'm thinking of how odd it will be when he completes his career as a Florida Gator. Never have I witnessed one college football player so dominate the landscape of the imagination, and seem so worthy. So, I'm trying to remember to savor his last season wearing the Orange and Blue. Savor it, even if there is a loss or two. These things happen and the man has given us so much. I'm starting my effort by appreciating a recent interview he gave to ESPN:

Some Gators have said he handled the interview just as he should have. The incredible thing is how consistent he has been in that regard. What can you say that hasn't been said about the guy? He's the most unique college football player I've ever seen.

I'll never forget coming to practice when the job was first his and his alone. It was hot as heck down on the field and I almost passed out from the heat and excitement.

Was this guy really the one?

I had read all the hype, thrilled at his first season, and watched the videos, etc. All I needed to see was could he, in my opinion and that of no one else . . .

chunk

that

ball!?!

Nearly passing out convinced me to move so I fled the field and stood atop some nearby stands and had a good conversation with GatorCountry.com photographer Tim Casey while watching the action. The breeze up there was much needed and it was a perfect view to watch Tim's ball flutter, zip, sail -- whatever -- but it invariably got where it was supposed to be.

No, he didn't throw the prettiest spiral, but I was completely satisfied. He could indeed chunk the ball! One national championship in hand for Urban Meyer, and a special QB in the lead position. Good times were coming to Gator Country and they've been so good, they're merging together in my mind. So I'm going to try and remember to savor every moment of this season. Win, lose or draw. That kid has given us so, so much.

Incredibly, I doubt if we could ever honor him enough.

Food for Thought: Third Week Into May 2009

[1] This is a pretty good parody of what would have happened to Sarah had she made the goofs BHO has made:

President Palin's First 100 Days

This helps explain Obama's surprise ranking (to some) at 7th of of the last 9 American Presidents in popularity at 100 days in office, me thinks. The earthquake looms, however. Because race is rarely far from my consciousness, this jab resonated with me:

RACE, ALL THE TIME
Eugene Robinson worried in the Washington Post about Palin’s emphasis on race. “Look, she gets 95 percent of the working-class white vote. She promises next month to talk to the ‘Christian world’ from Estonia, of all places. Hello? She goes to the Summit of the Americas and immediately puts race on the table — as if we are supposed to separate those with European heritage from those without. Then she tells al Arabiyya that she hopes to heal the rift with Europe ‘because of my own shared European heritage that seems to resonate in ways I hadn’t imagined throughout the EU.’ I guess we’re learning that those ‘gaffes’ last year on the campaign trail, like her ‘typical black person’ remark and Todd’s ‘I am finally proud of my country again’ nonsense were not gaffes at all.”

Booyah!

[2] This dude happens to get the ultimate story correct but still can’t see the forest for the trees:

Cheney Baits Dems Into Torture Trap

There are a multitude in that crowd who don't even believe we should have a CIA, Obama -- in his heart-of-hearts is one of them -- and reckless numbers of people ignored this fact in the last election cycle. Frankly, I'm still amazed at the large number of white people who made so large a mistake at such a moment in our history. My bias makes me give African Americans a pass on this issue although I recognize other Americans may have had a strong a pull to make history by selecting BHO. It was a different type of intensity, however.

[3] Mark Steyn is again right on the money

The Torture that is Nancy Pelosi

Here's a long snippet:

Alarmed by her erratic public performance, the Speaker's fellow San Francisco Democrat Dianne Feinstein attempted to put an end to Nancy's self-torture session. "I don't want to make an apology for anybody," said Senator Feinstein, "but in 2002, it wasn't 2006, '07, '08 or '09. It was right after 9/11, and there were in fact discussions about a second wave of attacks."

Indeed. In effect, the senator is saying waterboarding was acceptable in 2002, but not by 2009. The waterboarding didn't change, but the country did. It was no longer America's war but Bush's war. And it was no longer a bipartisan interrogation technique that enjoyed the explicit approval of both parties' leaderships, but a grubby Bush-Cheney-Rummy war crime.

Dianne Feinstein has provided the least worst explanation for her colleague's behavior. The alternative – that Speaker Pelosi is a contemptible opportunist hack playing the cheapest but most destructive kind of politics with key elements of national security – is, of course, unthinkable. Senator Feinstein says airily that no reasonable person would hold dear Nancy to account for what she supported all those years ago. But it's OK to hold Cheney or some no-name Justice Department backroom boy to account?

Well, sure. It's the Miss USA standard of political integrity: Carrie Prejean and Barack Obama have the same publicly stated views on gay marriage. But the politically correct enforcers know that Barack doesn't mean it, so that's okay, whereas Carrie does, so that's a hate crime. In the torture debate, Pelosi is Obama and Dick Cheney is Carrie Prejean. Dick means it, because to him this is an issue of national security. Nancy doesn't, because to her it's about the shifting breezes of political viability.

But it does make you wonder whether a superpower with this kind of leadership class should really be going to war at all. Over at The New York Times, the elderly schoolgirl Maureen Dowd riffed off Cheney's defense of waterboarding and argued that, no matter when the next terrorist attack comes, the former vice-president would be the one primarily responsible. He is, she said, "a force multiplier for Muslims who hate America".

Really? Last week, while Speaker Pelosi was preoccupied with her what-did-I-know-and-when-did-I-know-that-I-knew-it routine,The Daily Telegraph in London reported what is believed to be the second mass poisoning of Afghan schoolgirls, this time at Ura Jalili High School for Girls in Charikar. Fifty students had to be hospitalized after a mysterious "poison gas" infected the classrooms. As you may recall, under the Taliban it was illegal for girls to attend school, and Afghan insurgents have made a sustained effort to make the price of female education too high. So, in an effort to identify the poison, blood samples have been taken to Bagram air base to be analyzed by the U.S. military, taking time off its hectic schedule of mass torture.

Does waterboarding so outrage the Muslim world that it drives millions of young men into the dark embrace of al-Qaida? No. But the media fetishization of U.S. "torture" is certainly "a force multiplier" for Muslims who don't so much "hate" as despise America, not least for its self-loathing.

I'm tired of this foolishness. I was tired of it when they first politicized the war for freedom and I'm damn sure tired of it now.

[4] Hang in there, people. Things are starting to percolate around the country and folks are waking from their slumber.

Saluting Leo Linbeck III

About a week ago Wretchard announced that "Houston, we've got a problem." It was a nice little play on a familiar NASA communications phrase that simultaneously jabbed a less-than-diligent education writer who is described thusly at examiner.com, where she writes:

Caroline Grannan was an editor at the San Jose Mercury News for 12 years. Currently she contributes to a number of Internet sites dealing with education and schools. She is a San Francisco public school parent, advocate, and volunteer and has followed education politics locally and nationwide.

Unfortunately, Grannan embarrassed herself with the poorly researched write-up that sought to cast aspersions on a gentlemen named Leo Linbeck III. The Belmont Club readers do a good job of setting things right in the post and Leo himself does a great job of defending himself and his work with KIPP:Houston. I invite you to read the full thread.

As for my salute to Linbeck, I'd like to do it this way because it speaks volumes to me about the man. Here 'tis: I don't remember when I first took notice of Linbeck at the Belmont Club but Wretchard's November 2008 post, Which was made of brass, still bounces around in my brain.

The AFP describes a police raid on a baby trafficking syndicate in Nigeria. Babies were being bred for resale at a hospital “in Enugu, a large city in Nigeria’s southeast”

The doctor in charge, who is now on trial, reportedly lured teenagers with unwanted pregnancies by offering to help with abortion.

They would be locked up there until they gave birth, whereupon they would be forced to give up their babies for a token fee of around 20,000 naira (170 dollars, 135 euros).

The babies would then be sold to buyers for anything between 300,000 and 450,000 naira (2,500 and 3,800 dollars) each, according to a state agency fighting human trafficking in Nigeria, the National Agency for the Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons (NAPTIP).

What is the market for children in Africa? The BBC describes the various uses to which the traffic in humans, which may be as large as 200,000 individuals per year, are put:

In the eastern Nigerian city of Benin, girls and young women are sent to west Africa and Europe to work as prostitutes. Many go willingly, but some are tricked.

They are taken to a witch doctor, sworn to secrecy and end up in effective slavery to the middle men who smuggle them abroad. Other children are trafficked for work inside the country. Girls and boys as young as six are taken from desperately poor homes and placed as domestic workers with strangers in the city.

Those are the lucky ones. The AFP report says “In 2005, a Lagos-based orphanage suspected of ties to child trafficking rings, was shut down. There, charred baby-bones were discovered on the rubbish tip, leading to suspicion the orphanage was involved in the peddling of human body parts, possibly for use in rituals or for organ harvesting.”

In an age where strength has become synonymous with barbarism, it is important to remember that weakness is no virtue in itself. Evil is attracted to the defenseless . . . .

Well, it was a disturbing post and I highlighted Wretchard's comment at the end because so many on the left aggravate me so with their indifference to this truth. Back to my subject, click this link for a quick bio of Linbeck from Rice University. If you read the bio, it will not surprise you that the post on the baby trafficking syndicate also captured the attention of Linbeck, who offered up this compelling comment:

Good stuff. A topic worth engaging.

The philosophical core of “the concentration camp oven, the post-partum dumpster and infant trafficking” is the notion that some human beings have greater value than others. Germans are worth more than Jews, gypsies, gays, and members of the underground. Women are worth more than fetuses. Western babies with a terminal illness are worth more than Nigerian babies with healthy organs.

The Judeo-Christian culture - with elements wonderfully described above by Pascal et. al. - has always had this fundamental notion that each human stands as an equal before God. This does not mean that everyone is equal; that is absurd and clearly contradicted by our personal experience. Rather, God is infinite, and therefore as finite beings we are all equal on a comparative basis (1/infinity = 1,000,000,000,000/infinity).

The practical implications of this cultural norm are extremely important. Without equality before God, all sorts of horrible behavior is easily justified by the perpetrator, who is the only one who needs justification. It is but a small stretch to say that the belief in fundamental inequality has been the source of all the great evils: communism (vanguard>proletariat>bourgeoisie), Nazism (Aryans>everyone), Rwanda (Hutus>Tutsis), apartheid (whites>blacks), slavery (masters>slaves), the Inquisition (Catholics>Protestants), jihadism (Moslems>everyone), materialism (rich>poor), eugenics (beautiful>ugly, smart>dumb, light skin>dark skin, etc.), and so on. Add to the list as you see fit.

In all cases, it’s “Us” vs. “Them,” which always implies Us>Them.

This is why the fight is always so difficult for those of us on the Us=Them team. We’re not really saying we’re better in some ontological sense. We’re saying they’re not better than us. This is, by its nature, a defensive argument, which is why just wars are defensive. But it’s hard to win on defense, a fact that multi-cultis have turned to their advantage. And there is always the fact that the best defense is a good offense, which tempts us into buying into the same Us>Them logic. But we do so at the cost of our own soul.

Population control is an excellent example of an intellectual tradition founded upon Us>Them inequality. When “population” is determined to be a problem in need of solution, the next step is to decide who to control to solve the problem. The world is quickly divided into those who “breed responsibly” and those who need to be spayed or neutered like a dog. Initially, attempts are made to convince people that birth control is in their interest. But when these attempts fail to address the “problem,” birth control is imposed. One couple, one child. Abort or abandon.

Not much of a choice.

L3

Us greater than them inequality. Good stuff, Leo. Us=Them, a defensive argument. What a shame that Caroline Grannan, a former editor for twelve years at a major paper, couldn't be bothered to take the time to read up on you just a little bit more. All the greater is the shame that had she done so, she would still quite likely not have been able to see that Us=Them.

Reasonable Starting Point

In Saturday's Wall Street Journal, Jim DeMint offers a reasonable (to me) starting point for Republicans and like-minded voters to begin the serious effort to rein in the Obamatrons and re-establish the center-right Big Tent:

If the American people want a European-style social democracy, the Democratic Party will give it to them. We can't win a bidding war with Democrats.

Freedom will mean different things to different Republicans, but it can tether a diverse coalition to inalienable principles. Republicans can welcome a vigorous debate about legalized abortion or same-sex marriage; but we should be able to agree that social policies should be set through a democratic process, not by unelected judges. Our party benefits from national-security debates; but Republicans can start from the premise that the U.S. is an exceptional nation and force for good in history. We can argue about how to rein in the federal Leviathan; but we should agree that centralized government infringes on individual liberty and that problems are best solved by the people or the government closest to them.

Moderate and liberal Republicans who think a South Carolina conservative like me has too much influence are right! I don't want to make decisions for them. That's why I'm working to reduce Washington's grip on our lives and devolve power to the states, communities and individuals, so that Northeastern Republicans, Western Republicans, Southern Republicans, and Midwestern Republicans can define their own brands of Republicanism. It's the Democrats who want to impose a rigid, uniform agenda on all Americans. Freedom Republicanism is about choice -- in education, health care, energy and more. It's OK if those choices look different in South Carolina, Maine and California.

Of course, a European-style isn't what we want but well-intentioned dumb-asses are hell bent on forcing it down our throats.

Where Amazing Happens!

The Boston-Chicago basketball series has been an unbelievable and unexpected gift, full of big plays from a range of players on both teams. It ends tonight and one of the teams is going to be more devastated than usual. Because this has been such a fantastic set of games.

For me, however, I'm already "sassafied" because my man Joakim Noah has attained his iconic NBA play. He may go on to generate others, he may. But this one? This one is special and can never be taken away from him. This one screams to the world, "I am legit, and I can play this game!" Check it out:

There aren't many big men in the NBA who can make that play and Joakim made easily. He not only made a great steal, showing an anticipatory instinct, but he handled the rock magnificently as he raced down the court and then . . . and then . . . he finished!

Yeahhhhhhhhhhh !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

You dream about making a play that significant.

And he just did it. To close this out, how about that play in real time with network commentary? Yeah:

Wow!

And for good measure, a photo of the basket about to be scored:

Amazing !!!

Photo Op Ooops

These days I remain in limited blogging mode and reduced to relaying nuggets from Wretchard's website. Today I'd like to reference a commenter there (ElMondo) who first quotes Wretchard and then provides further quote-worthy nuggets:

[Wretchard] “Assuming that the story as told is accurate, it demonstrates the occasional inability of bureaucracies to see the logical conclusion of their own actions. Nobody asked themselves what would happen when a surprised public, kept in the dark by explicit instructions, saw the airplanes buzzing the city. But in bureaucracies it is sometimes the case that if nobody asks the question, then the question doesn’t exist.”

[ElMondo] Which is why the conservative principle of limited government is a proper one for society. “Limited” is all too often taken as a philosophy on size, but in reality, it’s one about scope. You see, a government that understands it is not free to simply act whenever it feels like is one that should (in theory) comprehend that the citizens should be in the loop on certain activities. That’s the way it limits its scope: By letting citizens judge its activities and dictate the limits of those activities.

If government was truly limited, and truly understood how it should interact with citizens, then perhaps the notion that alarm arising from low flying planes would have crossed someone’s mind well before it did (which was too far after the fact). Because someone would’ve stopped to consider how citizens would judge this act, and not how to keep the citizenry from knowing about it (which from all news reports was the operating principle of this event).

Too many people are using this event to bash Obama. Yes, the buck stops with the President; it does for all White House decisions, period, so there’s validity in holding him responsible, even if he was unaware of it. It’s still his staff. Yet, I can’t help but feel that, in targeting the President, conservatives are missing the opportunity to address the bigger issue: The degradation of the concept of limited government. Too many other, more important issues involved in that concept (Health Care, for example, or Law Enforcement) have too much legal and societal baggage associated with it, nevermind political. This event, precisely because it’s so relatively unimportant (no one died, the worst injury is that people are mad) and nonpartisan (the real failures occurred in the lower levels of the bureaucracy, and crossed party lines) makes the point of limited government in an especially forceful way, because it demonstrates the erosion of the concept in utterly mundane matters. Levels of government intrusion are expected in health care, and by definition law enforcement is a government activity. But simply informing the public of a photo-op? That’s something that should never have been in question, and only was because the people involved did not choose to act within the spirit of limited government.

Quite right.

ElMondo's comment made me realize I don't have a category, incredibly, for government. Now I do, and this is the first post in that category.

Quite fitting.

The Supremacy of Everyman

I believe in American exceptionalism.

If you've read my "about" page (and scrolled down far enough), you know that. Today I read a post from Wretchard that concluded with this line:

One of the most ironic things about American exceptionalism is that it is based, I think, on the supremacy of Everyman.

Roger that, Wretchard, roger that! That is the greatness of this unique country and it is weird in the extreme to have a President elected solely because of that exceptionalism -- and he has no appreciation of the fact. He bows to whom? He apologizes to whom? He's beholden to whom?

And . . . he has yet to explain 20 years of Jeremiah Wright!

I've been posting very lightly for months now because I'm back working in government. It has been fascinating to re-enter that world, engage in the everyday conversations we all must have (I'm not complaining, I love such things), and relish the inevitable Republican-Democrat sparring that was mostly good-natured (after they got over the shock that I seriously was a Republican!).

I'm now in the process of learning a new job with broad areas of responsibility and I'm much less able to focus on politics. I presume I'll continue blogging but who the heck knows? I am, however, becoming more convinced that our cherry-picked proxy of a President will not go un-checked and when they start tagging average, everyday Americans as out-of-the-ordinary racists -- that's simply not going to fly.

People are tired of that mess.

I don't have any illusion that we've moved beyond racism. But it's a dead-end street that ends with ever-more attempted intrusions by government into our professional and personal lives. That's not the way to go.

Eventually, the supremacy of everyman -- and no man -- (which is the core American instinct) is simply going to say . . . enough! I have a friend, also a black Republican, who thinks the party needs to do more to attract African Americans.

I believe just the opposite. On the Republican Party--African American spectrum, there has been far too much of this:

Republican Party >>> African Americans

and not nearly enough of this:

Republican Party <<< African Americans

If you talk to black people, there seems to be absolutely no conception of personal responsibility for walking away from the political party that was nominally "ours" for 100 years prior to the Sixties. Nor is there a sense of personal responsibility for engaging the party as an individual. The weirdness of that never seems to get unpacked.

There are some racial attitudes among a growing element in America that are surely hard to stomach. But when times get tough, people lose tolerance for preferences. And preferences become toxic to groups associated with them. Especially by groups who feel they are being doled out at their expense.

I don't get the sense that black people are paying any attention to these historical facts at all.

That, to say the least, is not wise.

As the Hope-ium Continues to Fade . . .

The rain has been falling all over the Florida Panhandle for what seems like days and this strikes me as good a time as any to do a quick little jab at dear ole Barack. As the hope-ium continues to fade in just enough people with each passing week, sanity looms on the horizon and real constraints on Barack's worst instincts can't be far behind.

Julie Ponzi senses this, I can tell:

As all the Obama happy talk of hope and change has finally settled back into its former status of "joke" in the minds of most thinking American adults--winked and nodded at as the necessary stuff to build fever-pitch in campaigns but unworthy of a victor now setting about to govern--the President has had to unveil a new rhetorical device for his high purposes of obfuscation in and mastery of the national conversation. Ben Shapiro cleverly (and accurately, I think) divines that this new rhetorical sword is the oft repeated and calmly delivered phrase: "false choice." When you consider the number of disputes in American political life that Obama has proclaimed boil down to "false choices," it is a wonder that such a visionary man as he would have any interest at all in governing such a stupid people.

I'll say!

Could it be that some Harvard types (or used to be Harvard types) are catching on too? Yes, it could:

That's Iris Mack, formerly of the Harvard Management Company. I can't help but wonder what she thinks of our Boy Wonder as he prostrates himself at the feet of the best and brightest crowd (who are neither, by the way). They are confused on the left, to be sure, and she is (unfortunately) probably one in their number. Just take a look at this self-proclaimed pedigree:

Dr. Mack was the second African-American female to earn a doctorate in Applied Mathematics from Harvard. Later she became a mathematics and business professor at several academic institutions (including MIT) while simultaneously running her own consulting firm. Several years ago Dr. Mack moved to Europe and completed an Executive MBA at the London Business School prior to working as an investment banker in London.

Well, damn!

But she has got to be shaking her head at much of what she's seeing from the Obama administration, don't you think? Don't you? Maybe not. But conservatives sure are. James Lewis in the American Thinker:

We know that Obama has a very conventional mind. I have not heard a single novel or even interesting idea from the man over all the months that I've listened to him. He clearly has no understanding of classical economics. He doesn't understand, as Bill Clinton did, the real harm and suffering that welfare dependency has inflicted on black people after LBJ's War on Poverty. He does not understand the elementary difference between productive and non-productive investment of scarce resources. He has no conception of the damage inflicted by inflation on the poor, more than even on the rest of the country. He has no real understanding of the dizzying complexities of foreign policy -- nor does his Secretary of State, who was hardly picked for her competence in foreign affairs.

These are not just rank amateurs, they are willfully ignorant amateurs, who also happen to be grandiose narcissists, and who now have free reign over the levers of power in the United States. We are all watching the Titanic steaming full speed ahead right before that diamond-hard iceberg tears off all the steel rivets from her skin. If you're not aghast, you're just not paying attention.

Well and good, but James Lewis was never inclined to be an Obama fan more than likely. I'm waiting for the mass in the middle to begin showing clear signs of disenchantment. That may or may not happen. Obama may still be catching lightning in a bottle. But if the mass in the middle are to become quite disenchanted with our 44th President, I think I've found a column that nails the line of attack that will do him in. It comes from a column by Peter Bronson in the Cincinnati Enquirer:

"He's not a real president, but he plays one on TV."

I heard that caustic comment on talk radio and thought: That could stick like glue.

The cartoon we draw in our minds when we think of a president is a lot like epoxy: It's made by mixing different compounds that react with each other and bond together. If you don't work with it before it sets, it hardens and you can't remove it with a hammer and chisel.

The image we're forming of Obama is still soft, but it's starting to dry. And it's beginning to look like a guy who is more infatuated with being a celebrity than a president. Someone who would rather play with the White House toys than get to work.

He is becoming the Billy Mays TV gadget geek of the White House. He's everywhere.
Some of the tacky Obama swag is beyond his control. He didn't ask for Obama dinner plates and action figures. He didn't ask to be on all the checkout magazines.

But he has aggravated the assault on our living rooms with too many town meetings, press conferences and TV appearances.

Roger that.

His budget was off the mark by $2.3 trillion, according to the Congressional Budget Office. It triples our debt to $9 trillion - enough to someday make our children envy the good old days of the Carter recession. Yet in his latest prime-time show, Obama claimed he's moving us from "borrow and spend to save and invest." That's as offensive as being lectured on charity by a guy who gave less than half of 1 percent of his income in 2001.

Ouch! Barry O, when people finally start paying attention to that kind of stuff -- look out!

But perceptions are not always tethered to policy. They are shaped by the same flocking impulse that makes birds fly off a telephone wire together.

And the image of a slacker with a crush on the camera could stick like Mighty Putty, making us wonder if being president is getting in the way of his TV career.

After two years of saturation campaigning, he's supposed to leave us alone. Instead, it's all Obama all the time.

Hope and change? I just hope to change the channel. Yes we can.

If it's going to happen, this is likely the path. As the hope-ium fades . . . "He's not a real president, but he plays one on TV," may become the epitaph for the Barack Hussein Obama administration.

However, I had an encounter at the end of February that vividly reminded me of Obama's visceral power. It was my mother's birthday weekend and her three boys had converged on Jacksonville from Miami, Orlando and Tallahassee. Pruning palmetto fronds, fixing an irritating front door, securing air conditioner window units, etc. Being of service, basically. On Sunday, both of my brothers had left town and I was preparing to leave when an old co-worker of my mother just happened to stop by. He hadn't seen her in years and I probably hadn't seen him in almost two decades. This was a hard-working, average ordinary black man that African Americans (myself included) don't believe enough white people know how to see. He came to Florida from Louisiana as a basic laborer and he has done basic labor here. He has been screwed around by women, by circumstances, by himself. But he had some children while all of that was taking place and they had to be taken care of. And he did just that. He persevered, found a way to move forward, and his children are the beneficiaries of that determination.

As we talked about his kids in college, his new house on the Westside, etc., we also talked about Obama. He had no idea I didn't vote for the man, he just assumed it. But he beamed with an intense pride that was overwhelming when he talked about his determination to make the bus ride to D.C. to witness first-hand the inauguration. And he did. Froze his ass off, but he did.

It was great to see him, and even better to hear of his success.

Obama not only has visceral power, he has lasting power. God only knows what he's going to do with it.

America's Policy in Africa in the 21st Century

I'm presenting in full an address from a few months ago on a topic of great interest to me: Africa and America. I backed away from doing an "African Roundup" on this blog many months ago after the absurd posturing with respect to the Department of Defense's Africa Command and its stand-up along with relocation to the continent became quite clear to me.

Somehow, we can have a European Command and it doesn't generate stupidity. Talk about setting up an equal command, the establishment of an Africa Command, and all manner of Africans (and African Americans) start talking stupid.

Or so it seems to me.

That said, here's the address.

U.S. Policy in Africa in the 21st Century

Phillip Carter, III

Acting Assistant Secretary

Bureau of African Affairs

The Africa Center for Strategic Studies

Washington, DC

February 9, 2009

Good morning. It is an honor to be here with you today -- I will discuss the outlines of U.S. policy in Africa, and six priorities that I see as important in the relationship between the United States and Africa. This seminar, organized by the African Center for Strategic Studies, is consistent with the US Government’s ongoing efforts to support the professionalization of Africa’s security sector, and we are proud to be part of that effort here at the Department of State. I want to leave time for your questions and comments so that we can engage in a clear dialogue about relations between the United States and Africa. I am here as much to learn from you, and to hear thoughts that may be different from those I hear everyday in Washington.

U.S.-AFRICA POLICY IN CONTEXT

Let me say up front that I believe firmly that the one foreign policy success of the previous administration is Africa, although even there we have met with challenges and frustration.

For too long Africa has been an afterthought in U.S. foreign policy interests. In World War II, Africa was a strategic stepping stone to the places that mattered in Europe. In the Cold War, Africa was a pawn in East-West struggles. Even as we Americans set in place well-intentioned economic development policies, it was too often with the idea of trying to do good for Africa, rather than to do good with Africa.

This has changed. Instead, the U.S. has implemented a strategy to operate more effectively in a world where non-state actors and illegal trans-border activity can pose major threats to even the most powerful of countries.
The goal is to develop a network of well-governed states capable through responsible sovereignty of protecting themselves and contributing to regional security. By so doing, they also protect the international system. Our new Secretary of State, Hillary Rodham Clinton, last week reaffirmed the extremely high priority of security. She said that, “…we all know that there are real threats to the United States and our friends and allies around the world. And the State Department has an important role to play…to be a good leader and a good partner…” In a word, this means partnership. This vision supports African leaders as strategic partners and seeks to build up Africa's institutional capacity. In other words, doing things with Africans, not for Africans.

We believe these sentiments coincide with Africa's own growing emphasis on the values of freedom, the rule of law, and collective security, as embedded in the African Union's New Partnership for African Development. The New Partnership for African Development (NEPAD) Peer Review mechanism reinforces African leaders' own efforts to promote democracy and good governance among their peers.

The U.S. understands that there are new, rising strategic powers around the world, including Sub-Saharan Africa. Nations such as South Africa and Nigeria have used their diplomatic, economic, and military power to shape the continent for the better. Mali, Mozambique, Liberia, Ghana, Botswana, Benin and many other African countries are leading the way as examples of the power of democratic rule of law.

We are pursuing the shared goal of ending conflict in Africa by supporting African conflict mediation and strengthening African capacities to mitigate conflict and carry out peace support operations. To do so, we work directly with lead African mediators, bilaterally with African Governments, and multilaterally with the African Union, the United Nations, and African sub-regional organizations. To put it more simply, we want to support African leadership and African solutions to African problems.

There is considerable evidence that this approach works. We've had success working with African partners in ending seven major conflicts in the past seven years: the Democratic Republic of Congo, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Cote d’Ivoire, North-South Sudan, Ethiopia-Eritrea, and Angola. Although the current peace is fragile in several of these countries -- and challenges persist in Darfur, Eastern Congo and Somalia -- Africa has demonstrated that it is committed to resolving conflict and promoting stability.

Let me now focus on four U.S. priorities in our relations with African nations:

Our first priority is providing security assistance programs that are critical to securing the objective of a peaceful African continent. We are working with our African partners to build capacity at three levels: (1) at the level of the African Union, (2) at the sub-regional level, and (3) at the level of individual states. At the level of the AU, we are supporting the Strategic Planning and Management Unit at AU headquarters in Addis Ababa with advisors and equipment. At the sub-regional level, we have provided assistance to peacekeeping training centers in Senegal, Ghana, South Africa, Mali, and Kenya. The United States provides a peace and security advisor at ECOWAS headquarters, and continues to support the ECOWAS logistics facility in Freetown, Sierra Leone.

An important step was taken in early 2007 when the decision was made to create a Department of Defense Unified Combatant Command for Africa – the U.S. Africa Command, or "AFRICOM." This decision to create AFRICOM marks the beginning of a new era where African security issues can be addressed from an Africa-centric perspective. AFRICOM is a new type of command that will focus on building African regional security and crisis response. Its objective is a more secure Africa, but it is not expected to have any assigned forces to the African continent. Rather, AFRICOM is a headquarters staff that coordinates the kind of support that will enable African Governments and existing regional organizations to have greater capacity to respond in time of need.

Through programs like the International Military Education and Training (IMET) Program and the Africa Contingency Operations Training and Assistance (ACOTA) Program, we are working to build the capacity of the African militaries to respond to African problems. Over 100,000 African peacekeepers have been trained by ACOTA or by ACOTA-trained trainers, and eight African nations are now in the top 20 of all contributors to UN peacekeeping operations. African states are contributing peacekeepers to missions not only in Africa but also to UN operations in Lebanon and Haiti. We will continue to work with the AU, sub-regional organizations, and member states as they work to stand up the Africa Standby Force. This includes civilian aspects of the African Peace and Security Architecture, such as the Continental Early Warning System and Panel of the Wise.

In Democratic Republic of Congo, Liberia, and southern Sudan, we are helping to rebuild professional military forces for these post-conflict states, and are looking to engage in similar Security Sector Reform (SSR) activities in Somalia as soon as the situation will permit.

In addition to long-term capacity building, we are working to provide logistics support and equipment for African peacekeeping units deploying to Darfur and Somalia. The United States has supported the deployment of additional infantry battalions to the UN-AU Hybrid Mission in Darfur, with more than $100 million in peacekeeping operations funding for equipment and training. The United States has made the largest contribution of any international donor to the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM), and will continue to provide equipment and logistics support to troop- contributing countries in the future.

We will continue to work with our African partners to build the necessary sustained capacity to disrupt and ultimately eliminate the ability of terrorists to operate in the region and secure safe havens, recruits, popular support, finance, and freedom of movement across borders. The Trans-Sahara Counterterrorism Partnership (TSCTP) and the East Africa Regional Security Initiative (EARSI) are two initiatives that seek to identify resources throughout the United States government to support specific areas of cooperation identified by our partners in the region.

Maritime security is gaining in importance. For example, Nigeria has now surpassed Somalia as the most dangerous maritime region in Africa, with only Indonesia registering more incidents in 2007. The US Government will continue to work with African maritime security forces to secure their maritime domains from threats such as piracy, illegal fishing, and trafficking in persons and illicit goods. Through AFRICOM’s deployment of the African Partnership Station, we are building the capacity or West and Central African states to protect their territorial waters, respond to oil spills and other disasters, and patrol vital oil and gas platforms.

Our second priority on the continent is promoting democratic systems and practices -- we are engaged in supporting the rise of freedom and democracy on the continent. It is not enough to just end wars, but we must move beyond post-conflict transformation to consolidate democracies. Moreover, we must work with African societies on the critical issues of governance, transparency, and accountability as a means of helping establish pluralistic communities where open political dialogue is the channel for reform and progress. During the past two decades, progressive democratic reform has adapted to local values, customs, and practices throughout sub-Saharan Africa. Outgrowths of democratic, well-governed states that adhere to the rule of law, support the will of their people, and contribute responsibly to the international system are developing. One U.S. think tank that has studied Africa, Freedom House, has determined that three quarters of African countries are now “free or partly free,” as opposed to less than half the states in 1990.

Despite significant progress, the recent military coups in Mauritania and Guinea and the flawed elections in Kenya and Zimbabwe have hindered these advances. The international community is urging Mauritania to restore its democratically-elected government and is pressing Guinea to hold democratic elections this year. The Kenyan and Zimbabwean elections, marked by voting irregularities, contestable results, and post-election violence, demonstrate that the path to democracy is often difficult. As a result, we must and will continue to assist and encourage our African partners in building democratic institutions, conducting free and fair elections, and governing justly. This means providing support to civil society and media, strengthen political parties and elections monitoring mechanism, providing support to legislatures, building the capacity of key ministries, and encouraging political transparency.

Our third foreign policy priority is promoting sustainable and broad-based, market-led economic growth. While sub-Saharan Africa has experienced impressive growth rates in recent years, Africa can still be characterized as a rich continent in an impoverished state. The United States must help our African partners raise income levels, promote sustainable growth that benefits all in a society, opens markets for African exports, reduces barriers to investment, and identifies opportunities and comparative advantages.

Responding to this challenge, the United States implemented the Millennium Challenge Account (MCA), a revolutionary foreign assistance program that seeks to reduce poverty through sustainable economic growth by awarding sizeable grants -- not loans -- to countries that practice good governance, seek to take responsibility for their own development, and are committed to achieving results. Of the 18 compacts signed to date, ten totaling over $3.8 billion have been signed with sub-Saharan African countries. Two other African countries, Senegal and Malawi are in the process of developing compacts.

The United States Government has also enacted the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA), a program that allows responsive and responsible partners in Africa to benefit from preferential access to American markets. With 40 countries presently qualified for this program, AGOA has become a cornerstone of our trade and investment policy in Africa. The United States has been in the forefront of efforts to forgive the debts owed by poor countries – but only if those countries’ governments first demonstrate their commitment to poverty reduction and good economic management. MCC and AGOA are important programs strengthening African economic health and underscore the cardinal interest of the United States in the continent’s economic affairs.

I should note that even in this tough time of economic recession overtaking the world, the United States does not anticipate any reduction in the support that we have provided to African nations. We want to continue to be a leader in supporting development on the African continent.

Related to this effort is our focus promoting enhanced food security and agricultural development. This means reducing poverty and hunger, raising agricultural output and reducing dependence on imported food, raising rural incomes, improving the livelihoods of women, children and families, and improving land management.

Between FY2008 and FY2009, the United States will have committed over $1 billion in food assistance worldwide, with much of this assistance focused on Africa. U.S. efforts in West Africa include programs designed to increase the productivity of staple crops, stimulate supply response, and expand the trade of staple foods. In East Africa, the United States has supported a targeted response to meet urgent food security needs and strengthen staple food markets. 

Our fourth U.S. foreign policy priority in Africa is promoting health and social development. As the leading cause of death on the continent, disease is one of the greatest challenges to Africa’s future. Rising to meet this challenge, the United States, through public health initiatives targeting the prevention, care and treatment of disease, is partnering with sub-Saharan nations to fight HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria.

The United States has responded to the severe and urgent HIV/AIDS crisis with the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief. PEPFAR is the largest commitment ever by a single nation toward an international health initiative. Through PEPFAR, the U.S. Government has already provided $18.8 billion in HIV/AIDS funding, with a reauthorization of up to $48 billion for HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria over the next five years.

Thus far, PEPFAR has provided treatment for 2.1 million people, care for more than 10 million people living with HIV/AIDS, including more than 4 million orphans and vulnerable children, and prevention of mother-to-child HIV transmission during nearly 16 million pregnancies, thus allowing nearly 240,000 children to be born HIV-free.

Responding to the malaria crisis, the United States launched the President’s Malaria Initiative (PMI) in 2005. The U.S. committed $1.2 billion in new malaria funding to reduce malaria-related deaths by 50 percent in 15 African countries. In 2007, the Malaria Initiative reached more than 25 million people with effective prevention and treatment interventions. Under this program we have virtually eradicated malaria from the island of Zanzibar and are making great strides in other places on the continent through aggressive indoor spraying, the distribution of treated bed nets, and the distribution of medication.

Through the prevention and treatment of disease, programs such as PEPFAR and PMI are touching the lives of millions. In collaboration with our regional partners, we will continue to develop sustainable healthcare infrastructure so African nations can address these challenges through their own national institutions.

CONCLUSION

I would like to now open the floor for a discussion and to answer your questions. As I have just outlined, the goal of the United States is to work with African nations to find solutions to the challenges and problems facing African nations. Working together, I believe that we will see more progress and less frustration, more peace and less conflict, and ultimately, more stability in the world.

Noemie Emery Scores!

I'm running behind but wanted to post this before yet another day passes with no sign of pulse on the blog. Noemie Emery in The Examiner:

Now that the Obama presidency is nearing the 60-day mark, it’s time to thank those fastidious scribes on the left and the right who worked so hard to warn us against Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska, and the dire things that would surely occur if she ever got close to executive power.

How right they were to insist that she was unfit for high office. Let’s just imagine what she might have done:

 

As president, she might have caused the stock market to plunge over 2,000 points in the six weeks after she assumed office, left important posts in the Treasury unfilled for two months, been described by insiders as ‘overwhelmed’ by the office, and then gone on to diss the British Prime Minister on his first state visit, giving him, as one head of state to another, a set of DVDs plucked from the aisles of Wal Mart, a tasteful gift, even if they can’t be played on a TV in Britain. (Note, the Prime Minister, who is losing his eyesight, may even be blind in one eye).

 

As vice president, she might have told Katie Couric that when the stock market crashed in 1929, President Franklin D. Roosevelt went on TV to reassure a terrified nation. Or on her first trip abroad as Secretary of State, she might have, as the AP reported, “raised eyebrows on her first visit to Europe...when she mispronounced her “EU counterparts names and claimed U.S. democracy was older than Europe’s,” then gave the Russian minister a gag “reset” button, on which the word “reset” was translated incorrectly.

 

What a good thing that Palin, whom Christopher Buckley called “an embarrassment, and a dangerous one,” wasn’t in office to cause such debacles, and that we have Barack Obama, Joe Biden, and Hillary Clinton instead.

Read the whole entry. It had to be said, and she said it quite well. Imagine the outrageous howls we'd be hearing with these set of facts under a President Sarah Palin.

Oprah and Chris Brown/Rihanna

Most everyone, I presume, has heard that Oprah is dedicating her show Thursday to the issue of Chris Brown beating up Rihanna, in general, and domestic violence, in particular. Tyra Banks, apparently, is the hook they are using to script the thing out. This may or may not be a good thing, we'll have to wait and see, but for the first time in a long, long time Oprah is going to be appointment viewing for me. I can't see the original show that afternoon but will be able to see the local 10 p.m. re-airing of her daily program.

Take this to the bank: I will have some very definite comments afterwards based on what I see.

Musiq vs. Chris Brown

Where is the shame in the game, ladies and gentlemen?

This rambling post will nominally be about two male artists (Musiq and Chris Brown) but might as well be an open question to all of African America, in particular, and all of America, in general. Years ago a line developed in the black community that you could hear all over the place; don't hate the player, hate the game. Another version that seems pulled straight from the underground economy was this: there's no shame in my game. Thus my question many years later: have we no shame, no self-respect? Have we completely tossed away everything, even admirable pretense, regarding male-female standards of conduct?

Before discussing this subject further, I attempted to test the Grooveshark widget this morning by directly posting from their site to this blog. That test, as we used to say in the Army, was a "no go." So, here's the selection I wanted to post. First, some of the lyrics from Musiq's fantastic single, Buddy:

[Verse 1:]
Pardon me, darling . . . if I alarmed you
I don't mean to bother you I just wanna
Get you to pause and slow your walk so
Maybe we can talk and I can try to charm you
(I'm) Just trying find out who you are
I don't mean to come off like a telemarketer
I ain't no hood, no crook, no robber
I just wanna part of your heart I can borrow

(sometimes)

[bridge:]
and maybe I could call you up
(sometimes)
And maybe I can take you out
(sometimes)
So let's exchange digits and later arrange visits
Either your place or mine
(yeah)
This a different type of commitment
(yeah)
I'm talking 'bout a true friendship
(yeah)
Someone I can depend on
To be down no matter what
Let me know if you with it
'cause girl-llllll

[chorus:]
It would be fly
if you were b-u-d-d-y
Don't be shy,
give it a try
I could be yours
and you could be mine
I can't lie
it would be fly
if you were my b-u-d-d-y
Don't be shy
give it a try
I could be yours
if you could be mine

And here's the actual tune:

Yep, I love this song; the guy has a great sound and is illustrative of what we have largely thrown away in the black community in the decades-long rush toward braggadocious thuggery that can only conceive of women as chickenhead service providers. We're now treated to the disheartening and somewhat sickening spectacle of Chris Brown beating up a black woman (bigtime music star, Rihanna) . . . and many ordinary black women actually defending him. For all that I know, Musiq may be just as bad in his relationships with women. Who knows? But his music has a different vibe, one that reaches back to an aspirational time when black guys weren't pressured to be so superficially callous, shallow and absolutely demeaning to women. Hell, entertainers by definition are superficially callous and shallow without any sort of inherent, internal pressure from the community that gives birth to them futher requiring that they actually live down to such an embarrassing standard. 

[1] I just shake my head at the sadness of it all; [2] personally, I had never knowingly heard of or seen Chris Brown before this incident. I hope he fades away into irrelevance.

I'm not going to castigate Rihanna (I love the chick!) for apparently taking him back; a man and a woman have to handle their business and I know that can be a very complicated thing. She's caught up in the relationship. I understand that. However, we (the outside parties) have a responsibility to attach severe shame to his behavior. I see that as our job, our role, in reinforcing what is and is not responsible behavior. What will and will not be tolerated. In my estimation, we do an incredibly poor job of this in the black community.

Yes, we are all sinners and yes, personal responsibility mandates that I put myself number one on my own personal list of known sinners. I also know there's a long history of this in our overall community. But . . . has there ever been a time where a lesser-known male star has beaten up a bigger female star and survived the shame of such a punkish act?

Could the disparity between Barack and Michelle vs. Chris and Rihanna be any greater? Is there something of substance to discuss here or nothing more than a blip on the screen? Is all of this reducible to a mathematical certainty of a young couple getting in a fight and boyfriend beats up girlfriend? Separate and apart from politics, this Rihanna/Chris Brown situation presents an instance where the Barack/Michelle coupling has to be used to change the dysfunctional dynamic now prevalent in Black America's popular culture. We'll see if this possible discussion is embraced or buried.

Music Test

The Keith Urban thing from a few days ago has me in something of a music mode. Nothing deep, nothing obsessive; I'm just amazed, though, at the technological leap that removes you from browsing used record stores and -- at the click of your mouse -- allows you to hear old favorites. Or completely removes you from any record store and allows you to sample or fully hear all kinds of new music.

I'm almost tempted to feel sorry for kids these days. Almost. How do they get work done with so many phenomenal stimuli floating around within easy reach?

Back to the music mode thing; I'm going to test out a Grooveshark Widget in this post; a selection from Darius Rucker (Don't Think I Don't Think About It) should play once clicked by you, dear reader:



My goodness, I love it when new technology works as advertised! Yes, I really do appreciate Darius Rucker and what he's trying to do with his music. This probably won't work out or, at the very least, I'll be wildly inconsistent with it, but I'm hoping to periodically post music selections via Grooveshark on this blog.

Keith Urban Earns A New Fan, And Darius Rucker Earns More Admiration

That new fan would be me.

Urban was the featured pre-race act recently at the Daytona 500. I read a story in the Orlando Sentinel on his press conference on one of their blogs, NASCAR Nuts and Bolts, and it had a link for audio of the press conference.

Wow.

To me, he seemed to have a great personality and displayed natural talent by singing to open the press conference and to close it. Plus, ladies and gentlemen, he sang well. That counts for something in these days of over-produced, little talent, music stars. If you've never heard him, check it out for yourself:

Keith Urban's Daytona 500 Press Conference

Sister Golden Hair Surprise? Fantastic! Sweet Thing? Very nice! After listening to the online mp3, I immediately eMailed one of my older sisters. She's a huge country music fan for years and years now. Natually, she was overjoyed to see me appreciate Urban's obvious talent.

Next up: Darius Rucker! I love what I've heard of his groundbreaking country music effort, especially his ballad -- It Won't Be Like This For Long. Absolutely beautiful.

Clearly, his Hootie and the Blowfish days will not be it for Darius. This Carolinian has a great future ahead of him and I was pleased to see he sang the national anthem on opening day when the Carolina Gamecocks played their first game in their new stadium.