Tag Archives: Barack Obama

book reviews

New books in the mail, and on the reading stack

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The Look-It-Up Book of Presidents

One of the first “Presidents” books to be updated with a bio of Obama. No glaring red flags in the Bush & Obama write-ups. the author appears to have tried to be even-handed. Less happy with the Harding & Wilson sections. Will have to read through carefully before making a final judgement.

 

The Great Game: The Struggle for Empire in Central Asia

Originally published in 1990 in Great Britain. The Great Game was the struggle between Victorian Britain and Tsarist Russia for influence and position in Central Asia. Britain feared that the Russians would come south through Afghanistan and threaten India – which the Russias openly desired to do. I’ve run across a number of references to the book and the metaphor. Time to fill in a little corner of knowledge.

 

The Baader-Meinhof Complex

Originally published in 1985 in the Germany, translated in 1987. Re-published in 2008 in the UK – not yet available in the US, but there is a seller you can click through to from Amazon. There’s a new movie out in Germany which tells the tale, based on this book written by a reporter who knew many of them but who rejected their irrational, romantic embrace of violence. Can’t wait to dig in.

2008 Election, National Politics

Online campaign to revoke Obama’s invitation to Rick Warren

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disappointment.

outrage.

“Your invitation to Reverend Rick Warren to deliver the invocation at your inauguration is a genuine blow to LGBT Americans.”

– quoted from Obama’s Divisive Choice of Rick Warren

There’s a Facebook Group with 1,800+ members already called No Rick Warren at Obama Inauguration

Sample comments:

“We must never, never, nerver forget how Obama betrayed us.”

“Take off your shoes, America, and get ready to hurl them hard!”

“What is Obama’s obsession with fake-Christian hatemongers? He promised change, not status quo.”

Short honeymoon, eh?

2008 Election

Pray for those who are in authority

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1 First of all, then, I urge that entreaties and prayers, petitions and thanksgivings, be made on behalf of all men,

2 for kings and all who are in authority, so that we may lead a tranquil and quiet life in all godliness and dignity.

3 This is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Savior,

4 who desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.

1 Timothy, Chapter 2:1-4

2008 Election

Why have McCain & Obama spent so much time in PA?

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Because it is legitimately in play.

I am convinced the polls are faulty this year. Lots of others have analyzed them, but the basic critique boiled down is that faulty premises lead to faulty conclusions. The polls are a mathematical model. There are two ways they can err. If the data collected and input into the model is inaccurate, the model will yield inaccurate results. If the data are accurate, but the model does not accurately represent the election day total universe voter behavior, likewise the results will be inaccurate.

These two sources of error are in addition to the normal statistical problems of sampling errors and confidence limits. And the errors in both categories are biased in favor of democrats.

Data collection errors are rife this year. High refusal rates, deliberate deception by respondents, self-selection bias based on enthusiasm for a candidate, gaps between intent to vote and actual voting behavior, interviewer bias, shy voters, etc. Don’t even get me started on the Bradley effect.

Model errors won’t be known until after election day, but all of the pollsters have made changes in their turnout models because they are predicting that voter behavior will be different in 2008 from 2004. Ironically the massive numbers of ACORN fraudulent registrations tend to bias the polling results – because pollsters weight their results based upon the ratio of voters registered as democrats vs. voters registered as republicans.

The youth vote. Bottom line: youths do not vote. James Carville has been famously quoted as saying that there is a name for those candidates who depend upon the youth vote: “LOSERS!”

Back to Pennsylvania:

Gore won Pennsylvania by 3.5% in 2000 (205,000 votes).

Kerry won Pennsylvania by 2.5% in 2004 (140,000 votes)

Who in the class of readers today believes that Obama will be a stronger candidate in Pennsylvania than Gore or Kerry?

Class? Class? Anyone? Bueller?

Bitter. Clinging. Guns. Religion. Joe-the-Plumber. Bankrupting coal.

McCain takes Pennsylvania.

Game over.

Congratulations to John S. McCain, 44th President of the United States.

– RedHatRob

Hat tip to SeanMalstrom who has done a much more detailed analysis.

2008 Election

What if Obama wins? What if McCain wins?

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One of my email correspondents asked me what I feared from an Obama/Biden/Reid/Pelosi election triumph.

I still think McCain will win the election, but here’s my response:

Domestically:
My church does not ordain women, nor will we marry homosexual couples. Nor are we going to cease reading the Bible and preaching through all of the text. If Obama is elected president, I believe my church will lose its tax-exempt status and quite possibly face hate-speech/hate-crime charges within the next four years.

Obama will sign the federal freedom-of-choice act (he has pledged to do so in his first week) which will federalize the regulation of abortion, and repeal all state laws regulating abortion. There will be more abortions.

Obama will further federalize education. There will be pressure to enroll students at a younger age, and to “screen” families at risk for those in “need of services.” Nothing frightens homeschoolers more — with good reason.

Obama will seek to nationalize healthcare. This will result in higher taxes, lower to no economic growth, and a rationing of health care benefits. It works so well in Canada and the UK.

Foreign policy:
Obama will simultaneously capitulate in Iraq, abandoning everything that has been accomplished there while escalating in Afghanistan and Pakistan (partially in compensation). This will de-stabilize the region, leading to more bloodshed and more terrorism.

Obama will all-but-abandon our alliance with Israel, further emboldening the terrorist opponents of Israel. Significant loss of life and further terrorism.

Obama will appear reasonable to the Europeans and contemptible to the Russians, the Chinese, and the N. Koreans. The Europeans will continue to sneer at us behind our backs. The Russians and the Chinese will be emboldened and become more confrontational, believing they have little to fear by way of retaliation. The N. Koreans are just plain nuts. Obama’s new secretary of state will repeat Madeleine Albright’s hug of Kim Jong Il.

Obama’s reasonableness will be mistaken for weakness which will lead to power and territorial grabs by the Axis of Evil and we will be in another shooting war. In that war, the draft will be revived, “out of fairness,” and women will be included in the draft “out of fairness.” RedHatRob will go to jail attempting to resist the drafting of his daughters.

On the other Hand, if McCain wins . . .


Domestically:
McCain will not make federal hate-crime legislation a priority, thus postponing the creation of the thought-police for at least 4-8 years.

McCain will not federalize abortion regulation. Neither will the Supreme Court overturn Roe (much as I wish they would), but there will still be room for crisis pregnancy centers and adoption agencies to continue their work reducing the number of abortions.

McCain will not further federalize education (I wish he would repeal No Child Left Behind, but he probably won’t). Homeschoolers will still have to fight a never-ceasing battle to protect the right to homeschool against state legislatures, but at least the federal government won’t be leaning on the table-top tilting the playing field.

McCain will not institute nationalized healthcare. The people who pay taxes will breath a sigh of relief.

Foreign Policy:
The Europeans and the Axis of Evil won’t like McCain. But they won’t want to mess with him either. McCain will gradually withdraw combat troops from Iraq, without announcing any date certain for a complete pull-out. With a little luck, the Iraqi government will survive and the impact in the middle east will continue to be game-changing. McCain will retask the missions in Afghanistan & Pakistan, but quietly – no fanfare, no public announcements. That too has a reasonable chance to succeed.

McCain will continue US support for Israel. The Arab world won’t like it. But they won’t want to mess with him either.

N. Korea will remain nuts. Who knows?

There will be no need for a draft. Women will not be conscripted.

Oh… and we will have our first woman elected as Vice President!

Caveat:
On two issues, McCain will disappoint conservatives.

One: He will push an immigration reform package which includes amnesty for those already here.

Two: He will push an energy package which will fund research into alternative energy sources, open up drilling in limited parts of AK and the gulf & east coast, AND which will impose some sort of carbon emissions reduction scheme. Everybody will like parts of it and hate parts of it. The global warming component will be increasingly embarrassing as temperatures fall and new records are set for colder winters, more snowfall, and larger icecaps. But it will pass anyway, cause most congressman are stupid.

you asked…

– Rob Shearer (aka RedHatRob)

2008 Election

Barack Obama and the Chicago Annenberg Challenge

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It’s been difficult to find detailed information about the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, but I have long suspected that it was the best source for insights into Sen. Obama’s policy ideas and expertise.

Recall, Barack Obama was the Chairman of the Board. The Board’s responsibilities included reviewing proposals from “external partners” and making decisions about whether to fund them or not.

There’s a lengthy new piece up today at NRO by Stanley Kurtz which examines some of the “external partners” that Sen. Obama and the board of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge voted to fund.

An excerpt:

In the winter of 1996, the Coalition for Improved Education in [Chicago’s] South Shore (CIESS) announced that it had received a $200,000 grant from the Chicago Annenberg Challenge. That made CIESS an “external partner,” i.e. a community organization linked to a network of schools within the Chicago public system. This network, named the “South Shore African Village Collaborative” was thoroughly “Afrocentric” in orientation. CIESS’s job was to use a combination of teacher-training, curriculum advice, and community involvement to improve academic performance in the schools it worked with. CIESS would continue to receive large Annenberg grants throughout the 1990s.

The South Shore African Village Collaborative (SSAVC) was very much a part of the Afrocentric “rites of passage movement,” a fringe education crusade of the 1990s. SSAVC schools featured “African-Centered” curricula built around “rites of passage” ceremonies inspired by the puberty rites found in many African societies. In and of themselves, these ceremonies were harmless. Yet the philosophy that accompanied them was not. On the contrary, it was a carbon-copy of Jeremiah Wright’s worldview.

I was pleased that Kurtz characterized the “rite of passage” ceremonies as “harmless.” I would be willing to go further and endorse creative attempts to foster a “rite of passage,” especially for adolescent males. This is not, by any means, an exclusively racial problem. It is specifically a male problem. Adolescent males are responsible for most of the disruptive and criminal behavior in our culture. There has been a breakdown in the cultural traditions which “tame” the wildness and irresponsibility of adolescent males.

Having said that, the South Shore African Village Collaborative seems to have latched onto theories of separatist black identity cultural politics as the source and trappings of their particular attempt to improve the schools in Chicago. It might have been well-intentioned, but the “black identity” politics of Jeffries, Hilliard, Wright, et al contain much that is objectionable. Their approach to cultural issues has appeal to their target audience but it is simplistic and demagogic. It amounts to the adoption of a single standard – all that is wrong in our culture is white and European. All that is admirable is African, black, and “kemetic.” Don’t get me started on “Kemet” and the wisdom of Ptah-hotep. It’s the X-files version of Egyptian history. Entertaining, yes. Scholarly, not.

I think Kurtz is right that this school initiative was at its core an attempt to forge an identity for school-children from the “black separatist” movements of the 1970s & 1980s. It helps explain Obama’s longstanding membership in Wright’s church. It also explains the alliance with and involvement of Prof. of Education Bill Ayers, whose main academic focus has been “white supremacy” in American education, which he views as a persistent and pervasive problem.

Perhaps Obama has altered his views on black separatism since the 1990’s. I confess I have the nagging suspicion that he has not completely disclosed or discussed his views on this topic during the campaign.

– Rob Shearer (aka RedHatRob)

2008 Election

Obama favors drafting women – McCain is opposed

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From a story in today’s Pttsburgh Post-Gazette:

Candidates differ on female draft
Monday, October 13, 2008
By Jerome L. Sherman, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Even as the U.S. confronts two long wars, neither Sen. John McCain nor Sen. Barack Obama believes the country should take the politically perilous step of reviving the military draft.

But the two presidential candidates disagree on a key foundation of any future draft: Mr. Obama supports a requirement for both men and women to register with the Selective Service, while Mr. McCain doesn’t think women should have to register.

Also, Mr. Obama would consider officially opening combat positions to women. Mr. McCain would not.

“Women are already serving in combat [in Iraq and Afghanistan] and the current policy should be updated to reflect realities on the ground,” said Wendy Morigi, Mr. Obama’s national security spokeswoman. “Barack Obama would consult with military commanders to review the constraints that remain.”

The push to allow women to participate equally in all branches of the military in all positions leads inevitably to this result.

In the next war, women are going to be drafted.

I cannot conceive of a more misguided, more tragic policy position.

If Obama is elected president, my daughters and grand-daughters face conscription and involuntary military service.

Obama and the Democrats think this is just fine.

McCain is opposed to it.

I don’t need to know anything else about the two candidates.

– Rob Shearer (aka RedHatRob)
Dad to eight beautiful daughters. Uncle Sam can have them when you pry them from my cold dead fingers.
My sons are not happy with the prospect either . . .


2008 Election

Todd Palin, the Alaska Independence Party, and terrorists

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In its never-ending desire to secure the election of Barack Obama, the mainstream media seems willing to commit all manner of journalistic malpractice.

The latest is the attempt to deflect the attention from Senator Obama’s Illinois political allies and supporters, William Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn (founders of the 1970’s terrorist group, the Weather Underground).

To do this, they’ve resorted to the fantasy that Todd Palin associated with terrorists in Alaska. Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. posted an article on the Huffington Post attempting to do this. Kennedy’s article is a deceptive, misleading collection of half-truths. It has been accepted as gospel truth and widely circulated by defenders of Obama. It is a despicable piece of shoddy research, which even the author has to know is a falsehood.

In the article Kennedy asserts that Todd Palin joined the Alaska Independence Party and that the AIP was “rabidly and violently anti-American.”

Ironic of course, for any member of the political left to wrap themselves in the flag and profess outrage at “anti-Americanism.”

The facts in the story are simply wrong. Todd Palin didn’t “join” the AIP, and the AIP is hardly a hotbed of anti-American terrorists.

Todd Palin didn’t “join” the Alaska Independence Party – he selected it as his “party preference” when he registered to vote

This may seem like a mere technicality, but anyone who lives in a state where voters record their “party preference” knows what that means. In Alaska, voters have the option of registering their party preference. Todd Palin registered his party preference as Alaska Independence Party in October, 1995. In 2000, he changed his party preference to “undeclared,” and then a few months later changed it back to “Alaska Independence Party.” In July of 2002, he again changed his party preference to “undeclared.” See: http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/09/todd_palin_was_registered_memb.php

Note: the headline on this site is misleading. You don’t have to be a “member” of a political party to register your preference with the state division of elections. You are simply recording your party preference. There are three “third party” political groups in Alaska, the Alaska Independence Party, the Green Party, and the Patriot Party. Third parties in AK can have their nominees automatically placed on the ballot if at least 3% of the registered voters indicate the party as their “party preference” in their voter registration. This is obviously a great advantage to a third party, so they encourage as many voters as possible to select them as their party preference.

But what is the Alaska Independence Party?
I would encourage everyone who has an interest to surf over to the Alaska Independence Party website. (http://www.akip.org). It’s an opportunity for a good homeschooling moment on political science, the election process, and tracking down sources.

The Alaska Independence Party is remarkably mainstream. To characterize them as the “Weather Underground” of the frozen north is laughable. In fact, in 1990, the Alaska Independence Party nominated Walter Hickel for Governor. Hickel had been elected Governor of Alaska as a Republican in 1966, and in 1969 he was appointed US Secretary of the Interior. In 1990, he won the election for Governor of Alaska as the Independence Party Candidate, becoming one of only six third party candidates in US history to win a governor’s race (Jesse Ventura of MN, and Lowell Weicker of CT are two of the others). In 1994, the AIP nominated then Lt. Governor Coghill in the race for Governor. Coghill finished third, behind the Democratic winner Tony Knowles, and the Republican nominee Jim Campbell, but ahead of the Green Party and Patriot Party nominees.

hickel.jpg

Walter Hickel should be revered by the left.

In 1970 following the shooting of college students at Kent State University by the Ohio National Guard, Hickel wrote a letter critical of Nixon’s Vietnam War policy and urging him to give more respect to the views of young people critical of the war. This dissent garnered worldwide media attention, and on Nov 25, 1970, Hickel was fired over the letter.[1]

In 2006 Hickel endorsed Sarah Palin in her bid to become governor. In 2008, he called for the resignation of Alaska Senator Ted Stevens.

Somehow, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. managed to leave out of his Palin smear on the Huffington Post the fact that the Walter Hickel, candidate of the Alaska Independence Party, had actually been elected the Governor of Alaska in 1990.

Pretty radical stuff…

– Rob Shearer (aka RedHatRob)