Yesterday, President George W. Bush gave a speech on the War in Iraq informing us that the “reality is that retreating from Iraq would carry enormous strategic costs for the United States.” The excellent orator that he is, Mr. Bush made a very powerful case about how leaving Iraq would be bad for the U.S. both at home and abroad, as well as having negative consequences for the Middle East.
Here are the president’s arguments with my comments in italics: Continue reading
Filed under Essays
A Scottish friend just sent me an email asking why all of his American friends are so pro-Obama and why he doesn’t know any Republicans. Surely there must be some Republicans, he inquires. After thinking about, I came up with the following explanation:
I know plenty of Republicans, but they’re all in the States. In Europe, Americans won’t admit that they’re Republicans because ever since Bush took office, an American can’t get laid abroad. We have been relegated to pretending we are Canadians to get a “yes”. Now, change is in the air. There is a window of opportunity — it’s what I call the Obama Card. You tell the señoritas that you’re pro-Obama, and you can start believing in change. Yes we can!
As a matter of fact, the entire American ex-pat community’s support for Obama — he did win the Democrats Abroad primary — may be based solely on an eight year dry spell. Yes we can!
Filed under Digressions, Living la vida española, Obama 08
I am starting to get very, very bored of the primaries. I am tired of Hillary’s false experience, demeaning of Obama, devisiveness, and stone casting while looking the other way. I am also exhausted from listening to a press that does little more than try to keep the Democracy race alive for as long as possible, regardless of the facts.
Having said that, I did read this excellent piece from the Pulitzer Award winning Carl Bernstein on Hillary’s relationship with the truth: Continue reading
The mainstream media is finally catching up with reality. Today on a netcast, ABC News likened Hillary to Tonya Harding in that her only real chances of winning are to destroy Obama. I guess it is not a good week for Hillary — it’s a “Long Defeat“.
Her allegations of experience are already starting to crumble after her silly Bosnia story — oh yeah, that’s right, there were reporters there who remember the whole story. Then she excused herself as having been sleep deprived. Let’s analyze this a little. How many times in life has Hillary landed in a war stricken country with her teenage daughter, had to duck under sniper fire, and rush to safety? I don’t care how sleep deprived I could ever be, even if it were 3:00 am and I were President of the United States of America, I don’t think that I would be delusional about that kind of memory. Just how “ready for day one” has her sleep deprivation / memory loss proven?
Her former friend and now enemy, Dick Morris, is out there listing her lies. Her family’s current friend, Bill Richardson, has endorsed Obama and the Clinton camp’s Ragin’ Cajun , James Carville, has called Richardson “Judas” and won’t back down on his Easter words. Richardson has rebutted saying the obvious,
I’m not going to get in the gutter like that . . . And you know, [Carville’s comment] is typical of many of the people around Senator Clinton. They think they have a sense of entitlement to the presidency.
Finally, Politico’s “Story Behind the Story: The Clinton Myth” reiterates what I have been saying for a long time — that all Hillary has left in her playbook is to destroy Obama and her party’s chances in November. Up until now, the press sits and lets it all happen.
Yesterday I saw in the news that French president Nicolas Sarkozy’s ex-wife — the women he was married to when he was elected to office in 2007 — has just remarried in New York. This news comes after the recent story that Sarkozy himself has also just remarried after only two months of courtship with the former model and sometimes singer, Carla Bruni. This is Sarkozy’s third marriage. It is also the third marriage of his second wife. The French must love getting married!
Personally, I don’t play into those conservative games whereby we must know everything about our politicians’ pasts. I don’t care whether someone once did drugs or did something else improper while in college. Those do not determine character today. The question is: when does a leader’s management of his personal life reflect his ability to manage his professional life. My experience in life, to date, is that those who are unreliable in their personal lives are ultimately untrustworthy or instable as leaders in the workplace. Continue reading
Filed under Digressions, Essays
Isn’t it interesting how easy it is for the Supreme Court Justices to perform a full 360º “about face” on their legal principles when it is convenient for them? This is obvious in the recent Supreme Court case of The District of Columbia v. Heller. Continue reading
Filed under Essays
Either I am going mad or the country is turning upside down. I just saw a CNN online story called “Politics in the Pulpit” where CNN reporters asked the question whether politics should enter our churches at Sunday services.
Apparently since white people can now be forgiven for not voting for Obama because he belongs to an extreme anti-American, anti-White church, we need to start asking whether African Americans are improperly talking about politics in their churches. How absurd is this conversation? The all white evangelical ultra right wing Christians have spent the last decade and a half trying to impose their religion on the nation’s politics, and suddenly now politics and relgions is a question? The “Moral Majority” has turned its morality into political imperatives, and now CNN is asking whether African American church goers are doing something wrong?
I still don’t understand why the law should ever contemplate religious morality (although they may coincide by sheer coincidence). In my world view, sins are legislated and executed by your religion, laws by government, and there should be no double jeopardy. But, in the case that I was forced to choose: Poltics in church, but never church in politics. Continue reading
There is probably some truth to the fact that many white Americans feel a little bit better about themselves when they vote Obama. At least that’s what the two bit psycho-babblers out there have told us — white people can feel less guilty about America’s racist history by supporting an African American presidential candidate. “Me racist? But I voted for Obama.”
That’s one of the rationales that some African Americans had early on for being suspicious of Obama’s popularity amongst whites — maybe white men, especially, thought they were getting an “out of jail free” pass for jumping on the Obama bandwagon. Heck, even Stuff White People Like tells us that white people like supporting Obama and feeling like they understand minorites.
As mentioned, I don’t deny that there is some truth to this. But I do believe that Obama’s appeal goes far beyond his race — if it were race alone, then you’d have a dozen African American candidates running for office. Rather, Obama’s appeal has to do more with the fact that he treats voters like they’re adults and doesn’t condescend to them, a perfect example of this being his recent speech on race in America.
Ironically while some white Obama supporters may feel less racist for backing him, so now do his detractors. Since the outcries against Obama’s former pastor and his aforementioned speech, conservative white America has also found the perfect opportunity to atone for their racial sins and feel better about themselves. They have also found the perfect way to criticize Obama, taking their own pseudo-post racial highroad, without running the risk of being called racists. “We’re not racists, it’s Obama’s church that is racist”. Continue reading
John McCain is running for president of the United States and he loves all things military. As a matter of fact, it is the one major factor that distinguishes him from the other candidates. He also seems to have more principles than Hillary, and I do respect the fact that he is trying to run a clean campaign.
But McCain has a big problem, and that problem is that he needs to keep the war alive in order to use his military experience as the defining reason in this campaign for people to vote for him. Beside him being wrong on staying in the war, he is wrong on the facts of the war.
During his recent tour of the Middle East, McCain repeatedly asserted that Iran was training Al Qaeda in Iraq. I suppose that in an attempt to show himself as presidential, McCain proved that he is about as knowledgeable about the Middle East as President Bush.
Some commentators have stated that possibly McCain’s gaffe was the result of fatigue from the trip. It’s interesting that Hillary should have endorsed McCain to be the one to pick up the phone at 3:00 am. After his Mid East tour, McCain would probably still be sound asleep, dreaming.
Finally, the Clinton’s have succumbed to pressure and have released some of the White House records. Bill and Hillary have cried and cried about the unfair treatment they’ve received from the press, and yet the press really has never questioned (i) the validity of Hillary’s experience claims, (ii) why she continues to stay in the race when she cannot mathematically win and when it only hurts the party in November, and (iii) what a Bush Clinton Bush Clinton / 16 years in the White House presidency says about the state of our democracy. Continue reading
Grave Error 