TUESDAY,  FEBRUARY 19, 2008

Fidel retires:  Notice the difference?

For those of you just waking up, Fidel Castro has announced his retirement.  Look, it's not as if Steve Jobs left Apple Computer, but it is important.  If the Cuban leaders were smart, they'd try to move the country toward free elections.  If our presidential candidates were smart, they'd demand just that course.  If the Bush administration were smart, they'd offer to normalize ties with any freely elected Cuban government.  Lots of "ifs" there, but, in the age of Obama, we can have hope.

The Obama time bomb

On the Obama watch, much to report today.  Michelle Obama, whose loose-cannon status has received too little attention, is building up a catalogue of quotes that would even make Teresa Kerry blush.  Get this gem:

“For the first time in my adult life, I am proud of my country,” she told a Milwaukee crowd today, “because it feels like hope is making a comeback.” 

As NewsBusters correctly asks:

Doesn't this beg the question, "when did she become an adult"? Yesterday? The question is, will the media pay attention to this gaffe? Probably not much, and that is why the bloggers have to. Will Michelle be this year's Teresa Heinz Kerry?

So her husband's run for President is the only thing she has ever been proud of America for? That sounds quite self-centered and arrogant! Nothing? Nothing like winning the Cold War, or feeding poor countries? Wow! How selfish is this?

Very.  But don't expect questions soon.  She's black, she's female, she went to Harvard Law.  In media terms, she's a goddess.  The brave ones of the press will tackle hubby first.

Is the Obama bubble bursting?

And here's an example.  David Brooks, in today's New York Times, describes what he delightfully calls Obama Comedown Syndrome.  The malady:

The afflicted had already been through the phases of Obama-mania — fainting at rallies, weeping over their touch screens while watching Obama videos, spending hours making folk crafts featuring Michelle Obama’s face. These patients had experienced intense surges of hope-amine, the brain chemical that fuels euphoric sensations of historic change and personal salvation.

But they found that as the weeks went on, they needed more and purer hope-injections just to preserve the rush. They wound up craving more hope than even the Hope Pope could provide, and they began experiencing brooding moments of suboptimal hopefulness. Anxious posts began to appear on the Yes We Can! Facebook pages. A sense of ennui began to creep through the nation’s Ian McEwan-centered book clubs.

Is your heart breaking?  Do you want to start a foundation?  Will there be a telethon to raise funds for the cure?

Maybe Bill Clinton will host that telethon.  We could see "Bill's kids," their heads drooping, their "change we can believe in" signs tattered and stained with pizza.  They can testify to what's happened to them.  Bill can raise millions.  "Feel their pain!" he'll tell us.  Even Ed McMahon might help.

Back to Brooks.  He goes on:

Obama says he is practicing a new kind of politics, but why has his PAC sloshed $698,000 to the campaigns of the superdelegates, according to the Center for Responsive Politics? Is giving Robert Byrd’s campaign $10,000 the kind of change we can believe in?

If he values independent thinking, why is his the most predictable liberal vote in the Senate? A People for the American Way computer program would cast the same votes for cheaper.

And should we be worried about Obama’s mountainous self-confidence?

These doubts lead O.C.S. sufferers down the path to the question that is the Unholy of the Unholies for Obama-maniacs: How exactly would all this unity he talks about come to pass?

Yeah.  Come to think of it...

More sanity, but is it too late?

Froma Harrop of the Providence Journal has shown herself to be an astute political reporter.  Here she adds to the doubts about Saint Barack of Chicagoland.  How, she wonders, can he appeal to centrists?

Despite the hard contest between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, party leaders keep telling Democratic-leaning voters that they have two good candidates. They are right, but one of them may well be a Republican.

Far from the pumped-up Obama rallies, centrists who voted for John Kerry last time now say they are considering John McCain -- especially if the Democrat is the vaporous Obama. At least that's what many are telling me -- and I'm telling myself.

One friend said he'd vote for the New York senator, and if she's not the candidate, then McCain. When I reminded him that he doesn't like Hillary, he shrugged. Another acquaintance e-mailed, "Hillary is to me extremely unlikable, but I do not regard likability as a qualification."

Finally, questions are being asked.  Important questions.  Harrop goes on, noting how the media bought the whole package...up to now:

That situation is about to end. "He's the fashion plate of the moment," an editorial page editor remarked, "but fashion week is over."

Sophisticated commentary now notes the growing creepiness of the Obama campaign: Its aversion to substantive policy discussions. The sermonizing -- "In the face of despair, we believe there can be hope." And the messianic bit -- "At this moment in the election there is something happening in America." (That would be he.)

Volunteer trainees at Camp Obama are told not to talk issues with voters, but to offer personal testimony about how they "came" to Obama. Makes the skin crawl.

Right.  And when the skin crawls, can the brain be far behind?

Wisconsin votes today.  Let's see what the returns show, and if Democrats are waking up.

Piling on the Saudis, goody goody

Yesterday we raised the issue of Saudi Arabian influence in American universities, and apparent Saudi threats of terrorism against Great Britain.  Pretty chilling stuff, all fueled by $3.35 gasoline.

Let's pile on.  Steve Emerson, one of our greatest experts on terrorism, probes more deeply into the Saudi operation.  He exposes the background of the guy who runs something called "The Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding" at Georgetown University, a Saudi-funded effort.  Emerson says:

The Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding is run by John Esposito. His research has not delved into aspects of Saudi society or human rights to determine why 15 of the 19 9/11 hijackers were Saudis, or why so many of the foreign fighters in Iraq have been from the Kingdom.

Why, just asking is such a multicultural turn-off.

Later, Emerson reveals this:

In 2006, Freedom House's Center for Religious Freedom issued a report on Saudi Arabian education. Despite claims that it modernized its curriculum and text books to remove intolerant and extreme references, the study found "an ideology of hatred toward people, including Muslims, who do not subscribe to the Wahhabi sect of Islam."

The issue of Saudi education was highlighted in a 2006 study by the Freedom House Center for Religious Freedom. Nina Shea, the report's author and then-director of the Freedom House center, penned an op-ed piece in the Washington Post on May 21, 2006 saying, "The texts teach a dualistic vision, dividing the world into true believers of Islam (the "monotheists") and unbelievers (the ‘polytheists' and ‘infidels').

This indoctrination begins in a first-grade text and is reinforced and expanded each year, culminating in a 12th-grade text instructing students that their religious obligation includes waging jihad against the infidel to ‘spread the faith.'"

Among the many examples Shea cited was this, from a sixth grade textbook:

"Just as Muslims were successful in the past when they came together in a sincere endeavor to evict the Christian crusaders from Palestine, so will the Arabs and Muslims emerge victorious, God willing, against the Jews and their allies if they stand together and fight a true jihad for God, for this is within God's power."

In American universities today they call that "an alternative narrative."  We used to call it hate.

Not quite the Chattanooga choo-choo

We continue on the theme of threats to our country.  (Oh, the fear mongering!  We're terrible!  Where is our quart of hope?)

There's something going on at Amtrak that, common sense tells us, may be based on information the government doesn't want to publicize:

WASHINGTON (AP) — Amtrak passengers will have to submit to random screening of carry-on bags in a major new security push that will include officers with automatic weapons and bomb-sniffing dogs patrolling platforms and trains, the railroad planned to announce Tuesday.

The initiative is a significant shift for Amtrak. Unlike the airlines, it has had relatively little visible increase in security since the 2001 terrorist attacks, a distinction that has enabled it to attract passengers eager to avoid airport hassles.

Amtrak officials insist their new procedures won't hold up the flow of passengers.

Not a bad idea.  Americans will cooperate.  The story also says:

Amtrak has received a number of federal grants aimed at boosting security, but officials said there was no specific mandate to implement the changes.

"There is no new or different specific threat," Kummant said. "This is just the correct step to take."

Well, maybe there's no specific threat.  But trains are, by definition, great targets, as Britain and Spain have learned. 

Change we can't believe in

Finally, the issue of health care is getting the usual attention in our presidential race.  It's not a bad idea to take a close look at some of the examples for "change" that are waved before us.  A really close look.  I mean, more than the five minutes we'll get from TV.  Canada is sometimes used as an example of a system that works.  Well, it works, but...

A few cautionary notes:

For defenders of Canada's government-monopoly health care system, there is only one goal that truly matters. And, no, despite their earnest insistences to the contrary, that goal is not the health of patients. It is the preservation of the public monopoly at all costs, even patients' lives.

A tribal group, it seems, wants to help in health care:

This week, the Kawacatoose First Nation, which has an urban reserve on Regina's eastern outskirts, announced it wanted to build a health centre there with its own money. Among other things, the band wants to buy a state-of-the-art MRI machine and perform diagnostic tests on Saskatchewanians -- aboriginal and non-aboriginal-- who currently face some of the longest waits for scans in the country.

The reaction from the political class?  Need we ask?

So what was the reaction of the opposition NDP in Saskatchewan? Restrained contempt and veiled fear-mongering.

The restraint was a result only of the fact that this proposal was coming from aboriginals. Had a private, non-native company suggested the same thing, Saskatchewan's opposition socialists would have been screaming from the rooftops that greedy insurance companies and health profiteers are lurking under every hospital bed ready to prey on unsuspecting patients the moment they get the green light.

The story reveals something else:

We are short 12,000 to 15,000 doctors in Canada because in the early 1990s, provincial health ministers -- Tory, Liberal and NDP -- desirous of preserving "the system," capped enrolments at medical schools. Doctors, they reasoned, are a major driver of costs with all the tests they order and treatments they perform.

The ministers knew that limiting the number of doctors would limit the amount of medical service available to patients. But they were prepared to accept that. They felt they had to limit costs to preserve "the system," so providing care Canadians needed came in second to the system's survival.

Read the story carefully.  Change we can't believe in.

Posted on February 19, 2008.