It did not pass by unnoticed to me this week when, even before Barack Obama was inaugurated to office, Al Qaeda had produced a video denouncing him. However, it is the way that they denounced him that is most interesting because the simple fact that Al Qaeda denounces United States’ presidents is a well-known fact. In fact, the line of attack Ayman Al-Zawahiri used was rather fascinating.

Ayman Al-Zawahiri took to the videotapes (where he is at he can no longer take to the airwaves so he takes to VHS and cassette tape when he feels it sufficiently important, VHS when it is very important) to denounce Barack Obama as what best translates into American slang as an “Uncle Tom” or “house slave.” Those are some pretty heavy words from the Z-Man so he must be pretty disturbed about Obama’s election to the White House. He is and his specific criticism reveals precisely why.

Al Qaeda, for as long as it has been around, has been about terrorism as a means to fight colonialism, imperialism and all the other “-isms” that emanate from America, Israel and Western Europe but, particularly since 9/11, mostly from America. Al Qaeda thrives when the Islamic populace perceives a boot upon its neck because that is when Islam sends its sons to jihad with Osama and Co. With a groundbreaking election in the United States, Al Qaeda’s entire operating equation changed.

To us here in the United States, we elected a black man to the White House which was historic in its own right. However, things look much different outside the United States. Heretofore, Al Qaeda could count on cultural differences to work in their favor. “Look!” they would tell young Muslim men in madrassas “There is that white man Bush who is leader of the imperialists in Iraq and Afghanistan that look just like him!” The madrassa in Pakistan is to Al Qaeda what Parris Island, South Carolina is to the United States Marine Corps: where they train their soldiers. As any good general knows, to fight an effective campaign you must define your enemy to your men not as human but as inhuman, as the “other.” There are different strategies of doing this and Al Qaeda uses the strategy that identifies every American as a representative of a foreign culture trying to crush Islam into dust, urging on their young warriors to their hopeless, but well-covered by the media, deaths. They had a good thing going until November 4 because the head looked just like the beast they were describing to their young charges.

On November 4, to the most world press coverage in history, a black man whose father was from Kenya (where Islam thrives) was elected the president of the United States and created the greatest paradigm shift by a president elect since Reagan’s 1980 election announced that America was no longer the loser it was in Vietnam, it would not be playing softball on the weekends with the Soviet Union at the SALT II treaty summits and we were not going to surrender another inch in the Cold War. Electing Barack Hussein Obama (and after the campaign, they all know his middle name is Hussein) took Al Qaeda’s square peg and pneumatic hammered it through a round hole. They can no longer point to a white man and say “There is the enemy boys, go on jihad against him!” They have to point to a man with the same or darker skin color as these young men, whose father’s family hailed from an Islamic land, whose name is BARACK HUSSEIN OBAMA and then say “There’s the enemy boys, go on jihad against him!” That’s tantamount to telling them to go on jihad against themselves because Obama is far more similar to them than Bush was different. The President of the United States is no longer a recruitment tool for Al Qaeda, he is a strategic problem of monumental proportions.

Here is this man who looks like them, has a name like them and is selling hope to everyone on the globe and they have to dehumanize that? That is a tall order which calls for soaring (or lower than the gutter) rhetoric. Thus, Ayman Al-Zawahiri took to his VHS tapes this week to call Obama the ultimate “Uncle Tom.” If we apply what we know as Americans about the term, we’ll see what Zawahiri was saying. He was saying that Obama is nothing but a house slave to the departing Bush, a caricature saying “yessa massa” to the white overlords behind the scenes that are telling him what to do, essentially that he is part of this white imperialist cabal while wearing the skin of a black man. He is not similar to you, Zawahiri was saying to them, he is as much an infidel as George Walker Bush, Bill Clinton, George H. W. Bush, or Mikhail Gorbachev… all of whom Al Qaeda has previously went to war with and had varying amounts of success.

What are Ayman Al-Zawahiri’s nightmares made of now? Primarily that his chief recruitment base will look at Obama, listen to his “Only in America could my story be possible” narrative and then decide that instead of sending their son on jihad they would rather send him to Harvard and pray to Allah that their line produces a leader of the free world like Barack Obama Sr’s line did. That young Muslims abroad will look at Obama, how he assimilated into Western culture and want to be like him rather than bring harm to him. That Obama’s offer of hope, change and the interwoven story of immigrants coming to America to make it big will seduce his recruits away from sleeper cells in America and Europe and towards the mainstream of the country they live in. Ayman Al-Zawahiri’s greatest and most disturbing fear is that young Muslim men no longer want to become Osama, they want to become Obama.

This is his greatest nightmare because it is the beginning of modernization in Islam. Males aren’t hostile towards foreign cultures and religions. Females have the right to go bareheaded and drive and move in the street unaccompanied by a male relative. Some of the most adventurous Muslims might marry Christians or, God forbid, Jews and not be killed by religious enforcers because there will no longer be religious enforcers. It would be the unraveling of Ayman Al-Zawahiri’s entire world, belief system and life’s work in front of his eyes in but a few short years. That is what sent him racing through his knowledge of American culture for a way to discredit Barack Obama to his acolytes in the most petty and inglorious way possible, because as soon as they want to become Obama instead of Osama, Ayman Al-Zawahiri’s life is over.

Most folks probably wouldn’t quibble with Peter Beinart’s argument in new his piece at Time, “The New Liberal Order.” Public demands for activist goverment - a new liberal order - are high, and the public is optimistic that the coming Barack Obama administration will achieve great things in the years ahead.

But Beinart offers a flawed analysis of the cultural trends likely to shape the emerging era of American politics. Specifically, Beinart claims the culture wars are over and liberalism’s won, for example:

Culturally, liberalism isn’t that scary anymore. Younger Americans — who voted overwhelmingly for Obama — largely embrace the legacy of the ’60s, and yet they constitute one of the most obedient, least rebellious generations in memory. The culture war is ending because cultural freedom and cultural order — the two forces that faced off in Chicago in 1968 — have turned out to be reconcilable after all.

The disorder that panics Americans now is not cultural but economic. If liberalism collapsed in the 1960s because its bid for cultural freedom became associated with cultural disorder, conservatism has collapsed today because its bid for economic freedom has become associated with economic disorder ….

Starting in the 1990s, average Americans began deciding that the conservative economic agenda was a bit like the liberal cultural agenda of the 1960s: less liberating than frightening. When the Gingrich Republicans tried to slash Medicare, the public turned on them en masse. A decade later, when George W. Bush tried to partially privatize Social Security, Americans rebelled once again. In 2005 a Pew Research Center survey identified a new group of voters that it called “pro-government conservatives.” They were culturally conservative and hawkish on foreign policy, and they overwhelmingly supported Bush in 2004. But by large majorities, they endorsed government regulation and government spending. They didn’t want to unleash the free market; they wanted to rein it in.

Perhaps Beinart thought he could develop a nice thesis using neatly contrasting poles of culture and economics in making the case for a comprehensive left-wing ascendency. But even his own citation of Pew survey data undermines the argument: These “pro-government conservatives” are not abandoning the political firmament of traditional culture. They are recognizing that “privatizing” conservativism indeed exposes families to the raw instabilities of markets, and this is at a time when the economic autonomy of the American state has grown uncertain in an age of both the globalization of markets abroad and the unrestrained growth of entitlement spending at home. With the imprudent monetary policies of the Greenspan Fed, combined with the Democratic Party’s Fannie and Freddie interest-group liberalism, it’s no surprise that market conservative have become frustrated with the lost promise of laissez-faire capitalist economics.

Perhaps many traditionalists simply want to slow down the aggregation of risk that’s inherent in the current turmoil of the American economy.

To be sure, Beinart even concedes further down that in contrast to economic concerns, Republicans are “more unified on cultural issues.”

You think?

As noted previously, one of the most important outcomes of the November 4th elections was the cultural brick wall erected to preserve traditional marriage in the states as between one man and one woman. Voters in California, Arizona, and Florida all approved gay marriage bans by wide margins, and in California some the most intense anti-establishment protests on record have erupted across the state.

Indeed, it turns out now that militant same-sex marriage factions are alleged to have declared “open season” on Mormons, and not just in California. The news this morning indicates that a suspicious white powdered substance has been found in letters sent to Mormon temples in Utah and California. The investigation is ongoing, but it appears that gay rights activists are escalating from threats of violence to actual terrorist attacks.

Recall that Yes on 8 backers have been savagely beaten, and a mob attacked an elderly woman carrying a cross at a pre-election campaign rally. Moreover, activists are targeting for censure the Yes on 8 supporters employed at majority-gay businesses and secular art institutions, forcing people off the job for excercising their rights to participate in the electoral process. As Melanie Morgan notes:

I guess it’s time for Christians, Jews and African-Americans to prepare for the lions and jackbooted leftist thugs who plan to disembowel the Constitution and anybody who votes contrary to their beliefs.

But today’s culture war goes far behind the totalitarianism of the No on 8 forces.

There have been a number of reports, for example, of violence directed against conservatives by supporters of Barack Obama’s presidential campaign.

In Minneapolis, Minnesota, college student Annie Grossmann was beaten for wearing her McCain-Palin campaign button to a post-election gathering. In Illinois, 8th grader Catherine Vogt was told to just “go die” - that she “should be killed” - when she wore a “McCain Girl” shirt as part of a class experiment on political tolerance.

Across the country, we see reports of a society that’s turned its back on decency and basic values: We have a news report this morning indicating that a judge in Portland, Oregon, has ruled that cycling naked is a form of “symbolic protest.” On Wednesday, an hours-old infant was abandondoned in the restroom of a McDonald’s restaurant, a not so infrequent occurence. We have transgendered men who keep their feminine organs bearing children who will grow up confused and bewildered by the total obliteration of traditional defininitions of a man and woman. And we have a crisis in the urban schools, where, for example, a majority of high school students drop out before graduation (often because they are pregnant), and where the education of many disadvantaged students is shortchanged by a militant Afro-Centric curriculum.

The list goes on, but a final word is needed on the left’s challenge to the sanctity of life in America.

The Democratic Party’s 2008 abortion plank stated “we oppose any and all efforts to weaken or undermine” the right for a woman to obtain an abortion on demand. President-Elect Obama has pledged to pass the Freedom of Choice Act upon taking office. Of course, Obama is the most extreme pro-abortion president-elect in American history. To date, Obama has fudged the issue, hoping to join pro-choice and pro-life forces in a deathly marriage of political convenience. But as we will see, nothing more illustrates the left’s hostility to moral righteousness than its campaign to abandon the inalienable rights of the unborn.

On questions of political culture, Peter Beinart’s “new liberalism” is as scary as ever. His cookie-cutter thesis of a Democratic realignment omits the crucial place of moral values in politics. If America abandons its tradition of moral truths and cultural exceptionalism, there won’t be much point to having a two-party system anymore: The Orwellian new age will have arrived.

NOTE: Be sure to vote this article up at Newsvine!

On the afternoon of August 10, 1921 a 39 year old American man from a rich and distinguished family took three of his children out for an afternoon sail in the icy waters off Campobello Island in New Brunswick where his family maintained a summer home. His life to that point had been a charmed one. A beloved mama’s boy, handsome and carefree he’d managed to climb the political ladder based on his name despite having been a mediocre student at Harvard. When a chill came over him that evening he went to bed complaining of “lumbago”. When he would awake the next day he would find his life forever changed as the result of his being diagnosed with infantile paralysis which would rob him of the use of his legs for the rest of his life. At that point in time, Franklin Roosevelt found his character as many a man finds it — in extremis. The rest, as they say, is history.

On October 23, 1967 a young Navy flier was on his 23rd mission in the skies over North Vietnam at the controls of his A-4 Skyhawk fighter-bomber when a Soviet-made SAM missile the size of a telephone pole took the wing off his aircraft and he found himself injured and falling into a lake in enemy territory. Prior to that day this young man, also the son of a famous martial family, too had gone far on family connections. Consistently obstreperous and rebellious he had caused his admiral father considerable grief while racking up demerits at Annapolis pushing back against the academy’s powers-that-be. But on that afternoon as he floated in a lake in North Vietnam, John McCain would begin a remarkable odyssey of heroism, grit and determination that would mark him the rest of his life as an American hero. Tortured beyond human endurance after he refused early release which his captors would no doubt have used as a major propaganda victory, McCain would bear the price of this episode of pushing back against power the rest of his life every time he tried to raise his arms or comb his hair — actions the rest of us take for granted. And when the time came for his country to make peace with its old adversary, John McCain again led his party in making that peace.

After arriving on Capitol Hill in 1983, John McCain would again go against the prevailing tide in his party and advise Ronald Reagan that American Marines were serving no useful purpose in Lebanon and should be withdrawn. McCain was right and Reagan was wrong as would be borne out when a homicide bomber blew up his vehicle at the Marine barracks near Beirut killing hundreds of Marines. The Marines were then withdrawn and somewhere a young Saudi man from a wealthy background watched and saw an America that he viewed as weak. In 1990-91 McCain would find himself at the epicenter of the so-called “Keating 5″ case along with Senators John Glenn, Don Riegle, Alan Cranston and Dennis DeConcini. The five men were accused of violating Senate ethics rules by using their influence to aid savings and loan operator Charles Keating, a contributor to their campaigns, who would later go to prison for fraud. While McCain was thoroughly exonerated of any wrongdoing, unlike his other fellow accusees, he testified against Keating at his trial and from that point on would be at the forefront of those fighting against the so-called “money influences” in Washington.

When others in his party were accusing President Clinton of “wagging the dog” in going to war to stop the ethnic cleansing in Bosnia and Kosovo of Muslims undertaken by Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic, John McCain stood up and fought for Bill Clinton as doing the right thing and against the easy conventional wisdom of his own party. Likewise, when the war in Iraq was launched in March 2003 from the very beginnning of it John McCain criticized the president of his own party for not committing sufficient forces to the fight. And he continued this criticism until such time as President Bush finally saw the wisdom of that advice and doubled down in 2007 with General David Petraeus and the “surge” in Iraq that has turned the prospect of certain defeat there into a glimmer of hope for the future even though many Republicans at the time were ready to join the Democrats in abandoning Iraq.

When the conventional wisdom of his party and the Democrats was saying that everything was fine in the red hot real estate markets of 2005, John McCain stood up and fought for reform of the government sponsored entities Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac who we now know were responsible for so much of the kindling that set off the fire that is now consuming the global economy. John McCain’s was a lonely voice in the corner warning the drunks at the party that tomorrow their hangovers would be hellacious. He was right but ignored and now we’re suffering for it.

Senator McCain’s opponent in this election likes to portray himself as a reformer and a contrarian but his record in this regard consists almost entirely of “talk” with no “walk” behind it. The United States, unlike its parliarmentary cousins, does not elect just a custodian of government machinery it elects a head of state. The world in which we live today is a dangerous one and getting more dangerous by the day. The next president will inherit two wars and be faced with the prospect of a nuclear armed Iran. The Islamic extremist threat from al Qaeda might be diminished in capacity but not in intent. Character and experience matters and John McCain has it in spades while Barack Obama’s resume in this regard is filled with contradictions and little evidence that he would have the type of spine Senator McCain has exhibited since that day forty one years ago when fate would intervene to test him in the most horrific of crucibles a man is likely to face on this veil of tears.

My late father, a regular Navy veteran and in the first convoy into Pearl after December 7th, loved John McCain and gave me Faith of My Fathers, McCain’s autobiography written with Mark Salter, shortly before he would be diagnosed with the cancer that would claim his life in March 2000. My dad was a fighter and a speaker of truth to power his entire life just as has John McCain. The polls suggest that Senator McCain faces long odds on Tuesday. I agree but I will stand with Senator McCain on Tuesday as the best man to lead our nation in these troubled times and if he loses I will join with him in congratulating Senator Obama and supporting him where we can to keep our country safe and great. After all, after this election’s over it’s very simple — “Country first!”

President Bush

Although he denies it, it is often said that Karl Rove’s political idol is Mark Hanna the Ohio political boss who was the power behind the throne of William McKinley’s presidency which ushered in an era of GOP predominance in the White House that lasted from the turn of the old century to FDR’s election in 1932. What is not in dispute is the hope that Rove had for building an enduring Republican majority for the first part of the twenty-first century. This majority was to be built on holding onto the old Reagan Democrats on cultural issues and reaching out to potentially new GOP voters among more successful Latinos and he wanted to use big government to do it. This was to be the essence of “compassionate conservatism”.

McCain vs. Markets

So Rove and Bush never made any concerted effort to tackle the spending side of the equation in their budgets and Bush most tellingly never saw fit to raise his veto pen when the profligate 109th Congress was porking and corrupting its way into oblivion. The Social Security reform plan was designed to appeal (as it should have) to younger voters and move them into the GOP column by allowing them to invest a portion of their FICA withholding taxes in private accounts which over a lifetime of work would have provided the basis for real wealth as opposed to the pittance returned by Treasury securities in traditional SS. The Medicare Prescription Drug Bill, the largest expansion of a federal entitlement program since Medicare’s adoption in 1965, was likewise designed to expand government to the betterment of the GOP politically. And now the dream lies amidst the likely rubble that will be the results electorally for the GOP on Tuesday November 4th.

Now it is arguable that there are many reasons for this. The difficulty of any party retaining its dominance for a period of nearly thirty years as has been enjoyed by the Republicans since Reagan’s first term. And most importantly an economic situation that in its severity always cuts against the party holding the White House. Yet I believe the primary reason is one thing and one thing only and that is the Iraq war. Because while Iraq is now tenuously looking much better and which as a result has taken this issue (the worst for Obama) off the table for the most part as a political issue the war itself is what drove George Bush’s approval ratings into the cellar and along with them much of the GOP’s as well. As Iraq exploded in 2005 any political capital the president had would remained deployed to try and shore up support in the Congress for the war and keep Iraq from turning into another Vietnam. That he succeeded in this against long odds is to his everlasting credit but it bankrupted him for the domestic arena and the attempt to reform Social Security.

How much of the failure of US policy in Iraq prior to the turnaround in ‘06 can be placed at Rove’s feet? That’s an open question that will only be answered by historians down the round but I believe a hint might be available now. Rove assumed his position as Deputy Chief of Staff for domestic affairs shortly after the president’s second inaugural. In that position he was to have a policymaking role for all matters related to domestic affairs including the economy. While I have no proof to back up my suspicions it would seem to follow that instead of reasonably asking for some sacrifices from the American people from a financial standpoint in order to fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Rove’s idea of a “guns and butter” approach would have been wholly in keeping in what he considered to be the key to keeping voters happy with the GOP brand. Further, how much can the Fed’s disastrous cheap money policies which contributed to the inflation of the housing bubble be attributed to Rove? Again, I honestly don’t know but what I do know is that this administration’s penchant for borrowing has been enormous.

Unfortuntately for him, John McCain’s shoehorning into the Rove box has proven an uncomfortable fit. McCain, whose instincts are more Rooseveltian (Teddy) than Rovian, in order to placate GOP mossbacks, has been forced into a schizoid general election campaign that echos as a pale imitation of the same old same old standby Bush has practiced. Instead of swinging for the fences with a truly audacious plan like calling for a broadly based carbon tax to be offset by cuts in FICA taxes that would have the dual benefit of both spurring investment in alternative energy sources and giving working and middle class taxpayers real relief from the most regressive of our taxes, McCain is losing the tax issue to a Democrat which is something unheard of for a Republican. And McCain finds himself falling in the polls virtually in lockstep with the decline in the equities markets. Maybe this was simply too much for McCain to overcome but there is no denying that he missed a signal opportunity to point the party in a new direction as I pointed out nearly ten months ago in The McCain Moment and the Future of the GOP. So in this election cycle Republicans find themselves of being in a position to hope only for classic overreach on the part of Democrats that might restore their hopes in 2010’s midterm elections. It’s a far cry from the high hopes that Karl Rove and George Bush believed was theirs for the taking eight years ago.

Each morning, as I watch the news, read the papers, and write my posts, I’m reminded constantly that this is the “worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.”

It remains to be seen if we’ll ever have another crisis on par with the collapse of capitalism in the 1930s (see Nobel Prize-winning economist Gary Becker, for example, “We’re Not Headed for a Depression“).

That said, I might as well admit that I’ve been in a bit of political funk over the news. The ongoing market turmoil is killing the GOP’s chances in November. There’s no other way to spin it … no matter how damaging are Barack Obama’s ties to each and every left-wing oppositional group under the sun.

This morning’s Wall Street Journal, with yet another banner headline, captured the political implications of economic crisis: “Market’s 7-Day Rout Leaves U.S. Reeling“:

Stocks fell for the seventh straight trading day on Thursday, continuing what amounts to a slow-motion crash that has pulled the market down more than 20% over that brief period.

On its way down, the Dow Jones Industrial Average broke through another milestone, closing below 9000 for the first time since 2003, wiping out the bulk of the gains from the last bull market. The decline leaves America in one of its worst bear markets in decades, a slump that is triggering comparisons to long-running declines of the 1930s and 1970s.

Thursday’s decline - the 11th largest in percentage terms in the Dow’s history - put the stock market either in, or nearly in, a crash. A common definition of a crash is a 20% decline in a single day or several days. The Dow’s crash in 1987 was 22.6% in one day. The 1929 crash was back-to-back declines of 12.8% and 11.7%.

On my way to work each day, or after I drop off my boy at elementary school, I look around, taking in all the people hustling to their jobs, all the moms strolling the babies and kissing their little ones goodbye, and all of the beautiful landscaping on all of the fabulous homes that line the drives of nearby neighborhoods in suburban Orange County.

And then I say to myself: “A depression does not look like this.”

Indeed, some economists argue that the banking crisis will not bring down the U.S. economy - that indeed, the fundamentals are sound (see, Professor Casey Mulligan, “An Economy You Can Bank On“).

It’s mass psychology that’s going to matter, however, and people are feeling the stress. A period of three and a half weeks remains a long time in politics. But if we keep getting daily doses of market declines, while consumers and homeowners stress over inflation and dwindling balances on 401k statements, not too much else is going to matter.

Graphic Credit: Wall Street Journal

cross-posted at American Power

Well, I have to say, the more I hear about Ayers or the New Party or any of that, the less I care.  It all seems very much beside the point in light of this whole financial catastrophe and the very absurd, very scandalous bailout that has passed Congress.

These days are just insane.  For instance, The National Review just came out with an editorial praising the Frank-Dodd mortgage bill and lambasting the McCain version.

Michelle Malkin has just shrugged off the news of Obama’s apparent socialist ties, saying:

There’s a lot of blog buzz over Barack Obama’s membership in the socialist New Party. You can read about it here, here, and here.

A year ago, I might have gotten as worked up about this as everyone else seems to be.

But after watching a GOP White House and Republican collaborationists fork over billions upon billions in socialist aid to private businesses, presiding over the most massive nationalization efforts I’ve seen in my lifetime over the past year — and then watching John McCain pitch his Treasury Department-as-national loan servicer plan during the debate — it’s hard for me to muster up much more angst than I already have.

Truly, we are approaching End Times.

So it’s only fitting that we’re about to possibly elect the most inexperienced and fundamentally wrong Fundamentalist Christian to the VP slot, doesn’t it?  I mean, first its a financial meltdown of epic proportions, then it’s Malkin with statements like that, then plagues of locusts and rivers of blood…

Then what?  Nationalize the banks? We may have to.  As it stands, the lack of Federal oversight into this whole bailout may be leading us down the road to ruin:

Welcome to another aspect of banana-republicdom. In a banana republic, the members of the national legislature will be (a) largely for sale and (b) consulted only for ceremonial and rubber-stamp purposes some time after all the truly important decisions have already been made elsewhere.

Things just don’t look good, when AIG is sending its execs on $400,000 spa/retreats, and still managing to rake in another $40 billion in bailouts.

Then again, if this is the End Times, maybe AIG has it right.  Take all the taxpayer money you can get your greedy little hands on and then go spend it on lavish retreats.  Hell, that’s what this whole corrupt system has been doing for years, isn’t it?

Time to buy gold, guns, and land, I think.  Gold is a sure thing.  Land can keep you and sustain you.  And guns can make sure your gold and your land don’t disappear.  It’s the American dream, baby.

Nice of them not to do that. Although I guess they’d already torn her freedom to shambles saved us from a closet racemonger, so why gild the lily?

Via the Ottawa Citizen:

OTTAWA - The Canadian Human Rights Tribunal has upheld complaints about online hatred filed by anti-racist crusader Richard Warman in 2004.

(more…)

Via CJAD radio:

Was a Filipino boy who was disciplined for using a fork and spoon to eat lunch at school discriminated against?

The Quebec Human Rights Commission won’t be saying because it’s closed the case citing lack of evidence.

In April 2006, the boy was disciplined on ten separate occasions by the school lunchroom monitor for so-called “disgusting” and “piggish” eating habits by using a fork to push his food onto a spoon before eating it, something that’s a part of the Filipino culture.

The school board had argued that the boy was punished only for disruptive behavior.

When the boy’s mother asked the principal for a formal apology, she claims she was told that, “Madame, you are in Canada. Here in Canada you should eat the way Canadians eat.”

The story sparked international media attention: the Canadian Embassy in Manila was surrounded by protestors; Jose Brillantes, the Philippine Ambassador to Canada, issued an official condemnation, saying that it was “an affront to Filipino culture.”

Some critics saw it as a regrettable example of prejudice and culture clash.

A spokesman for the commission tells CJAD news that they didn’t have enough evidence to go on and that while comments made may have been inappropriate, they were considered isolated remarks. It’s up to the family now to decide if they’ll pursue the case before the courts.

The family of the boy and CRARR, the Center for Research Action on Racism are holding a news conference tomorrow to react to the decision.

Interesting that the Quebec Human Rights Commission was able to show that much restraint, but then again, perhaps they just don’t want another scandal on their hands.

Also interesting is how being reprimanded in an institution of education for your cultural eating habits has become the new face of racism, exclusionism, and discrimination today. To me it merely seems to cheapen the true meaning of what discrimination truly is, but maybe that’s just me.

But at the same time, that doesn’t mean that I won’t condemn that school and its’ principle as being intolerant of other cultures. Merely because you come to Canada, that doesn’t mean that you have to subscribe to the cultural norm to the extent of picking up “Canadian” eating habits, whatever those might be.

Sigh…

It’s hard to disagree with everyone sometimes…

NeoConstant has grown faster and taken shape in ways I did not think possible, or even imaginable, when I first started this site in February of this year.  We have over a dozen writers, some posting more regularly than others, from three countries (with guest authors posting from Israel as well) and writing from both sides of the aisle.  We have liberals and conservatives, centrists and independents, and a whole lot of different ideologies and perspectives in the mix.

For the most part, the Journal has maintained its vision of strong foreign policy, and this is the only direction that I am firm about holding.  NeoConstant is a hawkish publication.  The majority of writers here espouse hawkish views that range from neoconservative to strong-defense realism to classically liberal foreign policy a la Henry Jackson.  Some writers support Obama, some McCain, and some neither.  Or both.  This, to me, is immaterial. The point of this Journal is to explore politics and foreign affairs more deeply; to get a grassroots, bloggers’ perspective on current events and policy decisions.  In this respect, we are fairing quite well.

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I personally don’t have a huge amount to say about the Heather Mallick article.  Sure, I find it offensive to my sensibilities, and sure, I vehemently disagree with what she said.  But at the same time, I feel there comes a point where one must just learn to shrug their shoulders, dig to the root of the problem, and focus on what really matters. Not just some crackpot trying to desperately offend as many people as she can, in a bid to stir up some controversy. 

Why people feel that they need to do that is beyond me.  Quite frankly, I think that there are more than enough legitimate instances in which one is, can be, and should be offensive.

And now, it seems, CBC has apologised for Mallick’s article ( H/t to Bitsblog ), calling it “a classic piece of political invective“, and ” viciously personal, grossly hyperbolic, and intensely partisan“.

Well now.  That’s gotta smart, if only a little bit. 

(more…)

Conservatives are quick to discount racism in this current race.  Claims that Obama is the victim of racism, and that this systemic racism is hurting his poll numbers, are thrown out as conspiracy theories–as though America has somehow moved, en masse, beyond the age of racism.

I beg to differ.

While there may be some truth to the conservative claims that racism is not a part of the campaign–and while the Obama campaign should not use the race card as an excuse of any kind–there is more often than not an emotional, over-the-top quality to these accusations from the Right, as though any mention of racism condemns all conservatives, which is absurd.  Conservatives by and large are not racist, just as Americans by and large are not racist.  That does not mean racism doesn’t exist, however.  Obama may very well be justified in saying that racism, should he lose, played a major part in his defeat.  Similarly, Hillary Clinton was correct in her assertion that sexism played a role in her loss.  Sexism and racism are not remnants of a dark and distant past.  Things have improved, but not so much as we’d like to believe.

For instance, my wife and I, along with our daughter and my in-laws all went to dinner at a small Mexican cafe the other night.  My father-in-law brought along one of his friends, a car mechanic.  They had been working on rebuilding an old VW bug, and showed up late.  My daughter is getting her molars, and as such was in a foul mood.

In any case, we ordered, began eating, and inevitably the conversation turned to the elections.  My wife is a definite Obama supporter.  My in-laws, life-long Republicans who have never voted Democrat, are both leaning toward Obama.  See?  There are, in fact, Republicans for Obama or “Obamacons”.  They feel very disillusioned with the current administration, and, like me, with the McCain campaign and the man himself.  My mother-in-law has been a long-time fan of John McCain, but she says she barely recognizes candidate McCain.  I, too, have been a long-time fan of John McCain.

We’re all Arizonans.  We know McCain.  We’ve all voted for him.  He spoke at our local college graduation.  But this guy campaigning for President is like a stranger to us.  I’ve staunchly supported McCain until the last couple of weeks, when I realized what a foolish, reckless choice Palin was for the GOP ticket.  I feel absolutely slapped in the face by the Palin choice.

And I said as much at dinner when we were discussing the Friday debate and the upcoming VP debate.  Predictions around the table: Palin will tank, but Biden will come across as a sexist ass.  No winners.  Only losers.  Kind of like most of the debates this year.

In any case, my father-in-law’s friend finally spoke up when I said I was disturbed by Palin, and said, basically that Obama also has very little experience.

True, I said, but picking Palin betrays McCain’s commitment to national security.  It puts to lie everything he stands for, because she just isn’t ready to be President.

Well, says he, neither is Obama.

Okay, I say, but he seems to at least understand, to grasp the fundamentals of geopolitics better than Palin, who can barely get her words into coherent sentences.  Whether he’s right is one thing, but at least he seems to understand.

McCain will keep our country safer, my father-in-law’s friend says.  We’ve got nothing without our freedom.

Now this is an old line, commonly brought up when Republicans want to defeat Democrats–with the Dems perceived as weak on defense–so weak, even, that we might lose our very freedom if we should elect them.  Of course, this has never happened though there were times during the late 1970’s that the very embodiment of Democratic foreign policy ineptness came to pass–but it seems to be the perpetual threat associated with electing any and all Democrats.  I personally think Obama will take a Clintonian foreign policy approach–plenty hawkish, though perhaps not right away.  Circumstance, I believe, will force his hand.  My friend, columnist Bill Harrison predicts Obama will throw his base under the bus within two years when, he believes, the GOP will retake the Congress.

But certainly Obama is not as experienced or as knowledgeable as McCain.  McCain has an impressive, encyclopedic understanding of our relationship to other nations.

And up until the Palin pick, he displayed excellent judgment, too.  Now I’m back to undecided.

But not the gentleman at the table, who then launched into a little speech about Obama only ever having worked in the Black community for Black people and how that’s all he’d do as President, only ever doing anything to help them.

Them.

This, to me, is racism.  Plain and simple.  This is before the campaign got really ugly, too, prior to the latest Ayers attack ads.  .Maybe I’m sensitive to it because I have black friends, or because my siblings are adopted from Korea and have been subjected to racism often throughout their lives.  My father-in-law’s friend didn’t complain about any white candidates who have, more than likely, spent most of their careers around white people, helping white people and their agenda.  That’s not an issue.  But Obama having worked in a community that was Black seems to be enough to disqualify him as President.

So of course what ends up happening is my wife and the mechanic get into a big debate.  To my wife, Obama has been the more honorable of the two.  To the mechanic, Obama is a liar and a cheat.  To him Fox News is the only honest news station.  CNN, he says, which my wife and I watch, lies.

As a professed moderate, a defense conservative, a social liberal, I have to say this: All politicians lie, and all media is biased.  Including CNN and Fox.  Including McCain and Obama.  I mean, I’m an environmentalist but I don’t believe in global warming.  I’m a free-market guy, but I believe in smart oversight.  I prefer low taxes when and if possible, but I think some brand of universal health care is ethically and morally essential.  With this many conflicting beliefs and ideologies, I find very few pols or media outlets that reflect MY worldview.  It’s pretty easy for most of us to see that these people and organizations have agendas.  It’s harder when they reflect our own agenda so perfectly.

Now, my wife is no fool politically.  She’s sick and tired of the Daily Show because she thinks it’s far too liberally biased.  Then again, she can’t stand most of what she watches on Fox because it’s too conservative.  So the mechanic claiming that she was naive and that he subscribed not to any ideology but to “the truth” was laughable at best.  When anyone claims ownership of “the truth” you can bet that the debate has little distance left in it, little breath.

So here we are with a guy who claims Obama’s entire agenda is based on helping Black people and only Black people; who thinks Palin is perfectly ready to step in and take over; and who thinks Fox News is speaking the Truth.

If I were talking to an Obama supporter who believed McCain was an evil neocon, that MSNBC was the Truth and Keith Olbermann the harbinger of said truth, and who thought that Global Warming was the number one issue in the race (and that war could be solved through loving more and dancing in the streets) I would be just as perturbed.

These extremists do nothing for us.  I want more passion to come from the center.  I believe in using logic to determine what’s best for this country.  Not scripture, not unwavering ideology, not racism or homophobia, not emotive hatred of war or the unreasonable anti-logic of the hardcore green-movement and their scare tactics.  When you peel back the agenda, the fear-mongering, the irrationale of one ideology or the other, you start to see that there are reasons for everything.

There are legitimate reasons to worry over an Obama presidency and legitimate reasons to worry over a McCain presidency.  It has become less and less clear which is more worrisome after the VP’s were chosen.  At this point I feel like neither candidate brings much to the table.

One thing that will most certainly play a role in this election is racism.  That’s just a fact, and it’s obvious when you begin talking with people.  Agism will also factor in.  It does for me.  I think McCain could die in office.  The likelihood is higher due to his age.

For me, that means a Palin presidency, and I’m not sure I can vote for that possibility.  I’m not sure conservatism benefits from that possibility.

The poor bastard.

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“Last time I saw it all coming and cried aloud to my own fellow-countrymen and to the world, but no one paid any attention.”

-Sir Winston Churchill, March 5, 1946. Westminster College, Fulton, Missouri

We have always been partial to those unique individuals who are able – via their powers of observation and induction, their understanding of human nature and history, their vast experience and common sense – to “prophesy.” This involves no supernatural component. It is, however, profoundly valuable.

Such individuals and their ilk ought be regarded highly and sought out in times of turmoil and uncertainty. We are clearly in such times at present.

Thus we encourage those of you who are not familiar with the man, to acquaint yourselves to one Mr. Fred L. Smith Jr., President and Founder of the Competitive Enterprise Institute.

The Competitive Enterprise Institute is a non-profit public policy organization dedicated to advancing the principles of free enterprise and limited government. In today’s common parlance that would make them a “right-wing nuthouse.”

Not surprisingly, the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) rejects the current bailout proposal before the United States Congress and favors the alternative proposed by The Republican Study Committee, a caucus of pro-market members of the GOP Congress.

Pure partisanship? Election year hijinks? Placing politics before country? We think not.

For consider the seemingly miraculous “prophesy” (below) of CEI founder and president Fred Smith regarding the current economic fiasco spoken before a U.S. House of Representatives Subcommittee on Thursday, 15 JUNE, in the year of Our Lord, 2000!!!

We recommend you read his entire statement. For your edification and enragement, however, we have selected certain key excerpts below. (Subtitles supplied by yours truly.)

Corporate Welfare

Moral Hazard for the Amoral?

The moral hazard problem arises when we bail out investors when things go wrong, when we move toward a “profit-side capitalism/ loss-side socialism” strategy. This is what happened in the S&L crisis and the costs were massive. “Moral hazard” is always a risk when an activity is insured – but the private sector is far better at policing such induced risk. When it’s your money at stake, you’re more careful. Political money managers faces weaker market disciplines: if they fail, they only share in the loss. Government risk subsidies anaesthetize our sensitivity to risk. As Treasury Undersecretary Gary Gensler noted: “Promoting market discipline means crafting government policy so that creditors do not rely on governmental intervention to safeguard them against loss .”…

The moral hazard risks associated with government guarantees have not gone away; indeed, one might argue that they have now been concentrated in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.”

Poverty Pimps

“Other panel members will address the proposition that these agencies are anti-poverty programs – that they are a means of providing “affordable” housing to low-income and minority consumers. Housing subsidies raise the price of housing – this is a well-known phenomena that reduces the desired impact of most subsidies. As noted above, much of the estimated subsidy (about one-third according to a CBO study) benefits the management and the shareholders of these private firms.

Can anyone imagine Congress approving a $2 billion plus appropriation bill to benefit the management and shareholders of any other private sector firm? The wording of the CBO study was colorful: “As a means of funneling federal subsidies to home buyers, therefore, the GSEs are a spongy conduit – soaking up nearly $1 for every $2 delivered.” For that matter, can one imagine an honest debate about the merits of authorizing $4 billion to reduce home ownership costs for middle- and upper- income Americans?”

UPDATE: From the Competitive Enterprise Institute’s OPEN MARKET blog:

“Yeah, maybe irrational greed is a factor in the current crisis, but it is the irrationality of regulators and the greedy demands of community groups that we should be pointing fingers at. If banks had been allowed to act in their own long-term best interest, sure some ill-managed institutions would still crumble, but we would not be witnessing such a wide-spread failure that indicates a system wide error in judgment.”

For some time now–and increasingly over the past week or two–my discomfort with Palin has been increasing.  I know that by writing this, some conservatives will think me treacherous, but I have to say it: Palin is not ready to be Vice President, let alone President, and the McCain camp was wrong to pick her.

I was wrong.  From my very light vetting of her, I came away with the belief that she was an extremely savvy politician–must have been, given her meteoric rise in Alaska.  I liked her reformist image.  I liked that she’d given her own party hell in Alaska.  I liked her because she seemed smart, witty, charming, and she was (let’s face it) an attractive candidate in more ways than one.  Her portfolio was greatly assisted by her beauty.  The GOP, it seemed, needed someone like Palin.

On that front, I was right.  The GOP did need someone like Palin.  Just not Palin.  Not someone this naive about global affairs.

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If Obama wins this election, there is a turning point that I will highlight as being THE turning point in the race and that turning point came on September 15, 2008. This is the day that John McCain uttered the now infamous “the fundamentals of our economy are strong” line on the campaign trail while the campaign was collapsing around him. If Obama takes the oath of office, this is the turning point in my book.

McCain had smartly stole Obama’s thunder after Obama’s convention by choosing Sarah Palin as his VP and then having his Republican convention, thus deflating Barack Obama’s post-convention bounce and doubling his own post-convention bounce on the back of Palin’s nomination. It was an impressive political coup but the economy brought this to a screeching halt. Obama posted a 47.8% to 44.3% lead according to pollster.com, which is quite the switch considering Obama was running consistently behind McCain before this economic issue.

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I have to say, as of late I’ve been cooling to McCain, and even more so to Palin.  It has nothing to do with the smear-machine that so unabashedly has smashed Palin into a pulp.  My cooling to her is that the libertarian Alaskan I thought she was, turns out to be more of the social conservative that I am so avidly sure is sabatoging the conservative movement.  I’m not really thrilled about a President who even marginally supports creationism.  I’m certainly not thrilled about the prospect of over-turning Roe v Wade and letting abortion back into the dangerous black market.

My cooling to McCain is more of a personal issue.  I loved the 2000 McCain.  He was far better than Al Gore or George Bush, or, for that matter, the 2008 McCain.  He was honest, outspoken.  He called out the hypocricy of the religious right.  After the election he maintained his integrity.  He was fiscally sound, in that he believed we couldn’t cut taxes and go to war.  He understood the need for sacrfice, for “country first” and causes greater then ourselves.

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It’s time to really pay attention to what’s happening at the state level. National polling data are fun to watch, but presidential horse-race snapshots only tell us so much: We will have, in essence, fifty state elections on November 4, and the Electoral College outcome naturally decides the winner.

To win, Barack Obama needs to hold onto every state John Kerry won in 2004, as well as Iowa and New Mexico, two states currently leaning Democratic.

But Obama’s having trouble in Michigan and Pennsylvania, two Democratic states in 2004 that combine for 38 Electoral votes.

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Michael Steele steels the show off-camera at the RNC

~by Adam Hobson

If you were watching the RNC on television like millions of other Americans you probably noticed the crowd break out into a “drill baby, drill” chant during speeches by both Rudy Giuliani and Sarah Palin. What you didn’t see is the origination of this chant during a speech earlier that night by Michael Steele, a speech that was not televised on network television, and a speech that was probably the single best of the night.

Unlike the headlining speeches from Mitt Romney, Mike Huckabee, Rudy Giuliani and Sarah Palin, Michael Steele’s was far more positive. His message echoed the theme of the night, Country First, and he built up John McCain, not by tearing down Barack Obama, but by showing that John McCain would do just that, put country first.

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~by Shawn Gordon

It’s been interesting to hear and read the Left talk about Palin. They’ve painted an inaccurate picture of her, and ironically used the same ‘dirty smear’ tactics that the Left often condemns the Right of allegedly using.

Let’s look at a few:

PALIN OPPOSES USE OF BIRTH CONTROL PILLS AND CONDOMS, EVEN AMONG MARRIED COUPLES & SARAH PALIN OPPOSES SEX EDUCATION, ONLY ENDORSES ABSTINENCE

FALSE ON BOTH COUNTS

I’ve not found a single piece of evidence to support the claims, but it does sound rather condemning. At no point has Palin voted to teach only Abstinence nor has she made remarks on record (or off that I can find) about how she opposes birth control..

According to TIME / CNN, Palin:

…is Christian and pro-life, but also a supporter of birth control: she’s a member of Feminists For Life (FFL), an anti-abortion, pro-contraception organization.

I will say that for such a big negative deal being made about how Palin had allegedly wanted to only teach kids to abstain from sex, Biden voted YES to put 75 MILLION dollars in just that!. That’s a lot of money in teaching abstinence where compared to Palin not voting to put ANY money into it as far as I can tell. This sort of turns the argument on its head.

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The master weaver of a fairy tale.

~by Bill Harrison

“This whole thing is the biggest fairy tale I’ve ever seen…”

Former president Bill Clinton criticizing Barack Obama for what the former viewed as Obama’s distortion on Hillary’s record on the Iraq war.

Not be outdone in this regard, Bill Clinton last night offered up his own fanciful rendition of history in advocating the cause of Barack Obama, the Democratic Party and, of course, most importantly himself in a feat of historical revisionism of the like that would have made Stalin-era Soviet historians proud. So let’s take a brief stroll down memory’s lane of the 1990s courtesy of a fabulist of Brothers Grimm rank.

My fellow Democrats, 16 years ago, you gave me the profound honor to lead our party to victory and to lead our nation to a new era of peace and broadly shared prosperity. Together we prevailed in a hard campaign, in which the Republicans said I was too young and too inexperienced to be commander in chief.

Sound familiar?

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A rare moment of peace in an increasingly bitter campaign.

I have to admit, I’m growing weary of this Presidential campaign.  I’m tired of hearing Obama’s middle name uttered like a condemnation; I’m tired of hearing McCain’s name altered to describe various mental states.  I don’t want to hear about the former POW’s lack of courage, or his party days.  Nor do I want to know about Obama’s association with various fringe political figures, pseudo-terrorists, or hear implications of his supposed lack of patriotism.

I just don’t want to walk into 2009 befuddled by smears of our incoming President, haunted by rumors and allegations, forced to run to one side of a bitter fence or another.  I don’t want to be part of one slice of a divided America.

Now, don’t get me wrong–America is and always will be divided based on huge, irreconcilable political differences.  The issues at stake range from the amount of government we want intervening on our behalf to reproductive rights to the nature of our foreign policy.

An Independent’s Perspective

I find myself in the uncomfortable position of not agreeing with either candidate very much.  On social issues I tend to be very liberal, very worried of the encroachment of the State on our personal liberties–especially when the State becomes too heavily influenced by the religious rig