Where is Jonathan Swift when we need him?

(detail) Bruegel, "The Triumph of Death" - Landesmuseum Joanneum, Graz, Austria

"Human brutes, like other beasts, find snares and poison in the provision of life, and are allured by their appetites to their destruction." Jonathan Swift

Australian grain growers are expected to benefit from greater export opportunities as rival US farmers focus on crops that can be used as biofuels. Rabobank commodities analyst Luke Chandler said crops such as corn, sugar and soybeans were increasingly linked to oil prices."Record crude oil prices will fuel further investment in ethanol and increase pressure on corn farmers to produce enough grain to meet supply," he said. ". . . (so) corn is expected to displace other crops such as wheat." Melbourne Herald Sun, Australia

Ailing leader Fidel Castro returned to the public debate — if not view — for the second time in less than a week with a column in the Communist Party newspaper denouncing U.S. promotion of using food crops for biofuels. Castro chided the Bush administration for its support of ethanol production for automobiles, a move that the 80-year-old leader said would leave the world's poor hungry. - IHT

Biofuels such as ethanol are the only alternative to crude oil, Sun Microsystems Inc. co-founder Vinod Khosla said in an interview on Bloomberg Radio yesterday. ``The only realistic option that we have, and there is none other, is to use biofuels,'' said Khosla, an investor in ethanol makers. ``There is only one choice.'' Bloomberg

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The Spanish language of Castille is a sonorous tongue. Charles the Fifth, the Holy Roman Emperor and Spain's first Hapsburg king, was said to speak French, Italian, Castillian and German. He was reported to speak French to gentlemen, Italian to Ladies, Castillian to God and German to his horse.

In the Castillian language, when something simultaneously outrages common sense and garden variety morality, then simple people call it a "contradíos", (literally, "against-God) which the The Royal Academy of the Spanish language defines as an action "absurd or vituperable."

Which brings us to ethanol, a "contradíos" if ever there was one.

I'm a wordy sort, but words fail me when trying to describe the bestial immorality, the besotted idiocy and sheer unkindness of using food to power automobiles when the world's poor are barely able to feed themselves.

It is said that nothing can be compared to the pure evil of the Holocaust, to do so is considered most offensive and outside polite discourse, but read the following and then do the math:

The World Bank has estimated that in 2001, 2.7 billion people in the world were living on the equivalent of less than $2 a day; to them, even marginal increases in the cost of staple grains could be devastating. filling the 25-gallon tank of an SUV with pure ethanol requires over 450 pounds of corn -- which contains enough calories to feed one person for a year. - Foreign Affairs Magazine

I'm sure that there are kind, decent people who tie themselves into knots over baby seals being clubbed to death, but don't ever connect their driving habits to the unspeakable suffering those habits inflict on 2.7 billion people... high minded people who censure the brutality of the filthy junta of Myanmar, but wouldn't dream of taking a bus to work in order to help feed 2.7 billion people; surely there are rapturous Obamaites that haven't ever given it the slightest thought.

This is a subject that requires satire on the level of Jonathan Swift's, "A Modest Proposal", certainly it is beyond my more than modest talents, although I'm bound to keep hammering at it. DS

Maolisa

The rapid reaction by China's government to the earthquake, along with media -- much of it state-run -- that has spotlighted the best aspects of that response to a newly unified public, have all helped enhance the central government's image as responsive and effective. The strong world-wide expression of sympathy, meanwhile, has quieted -- at least for now -- criticism of Beijing's policies in Tibet and elsewhere that had threatened to overshadow its hosting of the Summer Olympics in August.(...) overall, the government's response appears likely to give a meaningful, and potentially lasting, boost in support for China's leadership, analysts said. That is a stark contrast to the Bush administration's handling of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, which was widely criticized in the U.S. as slow and ineffective. The resulting public backlash helped send President Bush's approval ratings, already suffering from economic concerns and the war in Iraq, to their current lows. In China's response last week, the most visible figure was Premier Wen, who has become a populist hero as a result of his actions. While Mr. Bush waited until two days after Katrina made landfall to travel to stricken New Orleans -- and then flew over it without landing -- Mr. Wen arrived in quake-battered Sichuan province within hours after the quake struck on May 12. He spent the next four days traveling from one devastated town to the next, often by helicopter when roads were blocked, comforting the victims and promising more help. Wall Street Journal

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I think it's time to give some serious study and analysis as to what exactly the Communist Party of China really is.

The recent earthquake is China put this huge organization to a brutal test, it responded humanely, with efficiency, flexibility and imagination in taking care of the victims and simultaneously getting the maximum political benefit from the catastrophe both at home and abroad.

Many people, all over the world, have drawn unfavorable comparisons with the American government's handling of Katrina, a far less damaging crisis, where government at all levels: local, state and federal, showed a bumbling, autistic indifference to the suffering of their fellow countrymen. The much vaunted private sector certainly didn't "step up", not one leader emerged from that crisis, from the President on down... This in a country that prides itself as no other on the quality of its management science, techniques that are exported to every corner of the earth, to MBA students who learn them and recite them with the devotion of little Muslim boys in a madrassa.

As a management team, the Communist Party of China is obviously agile, responsive and intelligent. Anyone with experience in large collective endeavors knows how difficult it is for such a massive organization to embody any of those qualities. I truly wish that Peter Drucker was still with us to analyze this dancing elephant!

We are looking at something truly formidable: massive and yet flexible. A listening organization and a learning organization.

How does it work? How are decisions taken? How does it collect information and process it? How does information move within it?

Everything that I read about this organization is colored by politics. What I am interested in is understanding a triumph of management practice, that has taken a feudal country, overrun by foreigners, gained its independence and sovereignty, unified a thousand million people, organized them, and then has shown supreme, pragmatic, flexibility in transforming Really Existing Socialism into dizzyingly successful capitalism.... all without losing control.

What philosophy has remained constant in all of this? Certainly I am going to be looking for books to read this summer, but I don't think I'll find anything written from the angle that interests me. If any of my readers know of any text that would enlighten me I would be very grateful. DS

Clarifying

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I draw my share of flack because I don't imbibe the Kool-Aid on Obama, and I'd like to clarify this a bit.

The problem here, as I see it, isn't really Obama, as it isn't really Bush, they are just symptoms.

America and Americans give the impression at this moment of wandering through history aided only by a white cane.

On one hand the people reelect someone who was already clearly incompetent in 2004 and now they are about to elect someone without any practical experience of government.

Not just that, but a lot of things don't make sense.

Look at the reaction of the Chinese people (not just their government) to the earthquake and then look at the reaction of the American people (not just their government) to Katrina.

50 years ago, I think Americans would have responded like the Chinese. The Chinese reaction seems to me the normal reaction of a great people to a terrible tragedy, the American reaction seems to me both autistic and decadent and America didn't get to the position it occupies by being either autistic or decadent... and it certainly won't/isn't keeping that position by being autistic and decadent.

So, the problem in my view is not Obama, the problem is not the leaders.

In a Democracy, even a flawed one like America's, the leaders are only symptoms, the problem is in the society and that is where the work has to be done.

I think the country has been somehow hollowed out.

___________

Well, I posted the above over at TPM Café and I got this question,

First I'm struck by your cynicism, If there were ever a year to have some hope it's this year. We've had more young people be involved than ever before on both sides of the isle. Even Ron Paul has been huge in his groundswell of support. This is also the most educated young electorate we've ever had. Certainly you have to have a little confidence America is at least starting to head in the right direction.

Secondly I would like to know how you square Clinton's vote for the war? If you are not a Clinton supporter who do you support?

To which I replied:

First the secondly:

Secondly I would like to know how you square Clinton's vote for the war? If you are not a Clinton supporter who do you support?

And firstly the secondly of the secondly. I am not a "Hillary supporter", although I like the idea of a woman president (of any color).

I think that by far the best candidate this year would have been Al Gore: experience, vision, right on the war, great international prestige based on action, not "charisma"... It still might happen in a hung convention, but the Democrats are the Democrats...

And secondly the secondly of the firstly:

Certainly you have to have a little confidence America is at least starting to head in the right direction.

Really, do I have to?

Four years ago, in perfect good faith, the American people reelected a war criminal who had proved to be totally incompetent... even as a war criminal. Now they are ready to elect president a community organizer under the patronage of Dick Daley, with no experience relevant to managing the affairs of a superpower... pure Frank Capra, "Mr Smith Goes to Washington". Really do I have to have confidence?

And thirdly the secondly or perhaps the thirdly of the secondly.

Who do you support?

Actually I support myself, eating my bread in the sweat of my brow.

As to the presidency.

I see different scenarios:

• Obama wins and reality and the interest groups and his desire for a second term cause him to fudge. I don't think he has anything near Jimmy Carter's integrity or anything like Bill Clinton's sex drive, so he will be much duller than people think. The kids will be heartbroken.

• McCain wins and this means the end of Goldwater/Reagan Republicanism. (see Peggy Noonan's lament). This would truly transform American politics. Interesting idea: to survive, the Republicans commit ideological hara-kiri.

I really like what Obama says and I am horrified by many of the things McCain says, however, as you have noted, I am rather cynical, (the Spanish say that the devil knows more because of his age than because he is the devil) I pay little attention to anything a politician says when running for office and much attention to what he or she has actually done when in office.

In this case, as Obama has done practically nothing, I am left with what he says.

In the case of McCain, he has a very long record, some of it is quite attractive and some less. It does give you the feeling that there won't be many nasty surprises and there might even be some pleasant ones.

But, since I would have to vote absentee from Illinois, and the Land of Lincoln, will surely adorn itself with leis and hula skirts to vote massively for its favorite son, voting even for Ralph Nader would be a waste of time, so I probably will sit this one out. DS

The Corn Bomb

The US is starting to break its “addiction” to foreign oil as high prices, more efficient cars, and the use of ethanol significantly cut the share of its oil imports for the first time since 1977.(...) This new trend is likely to have domestic and international policy implications, making it harder to prove the case for drilling in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and to reverse the ambitious biofuels production targets regardless of their impact on global food prices. Financial Times

Frustrations over rising prices and poor living conditions and resentment at a flood of immigrants from other parts of Africa have sparked some of the most chilling scenes in South Africa since the end of apartheid(...) "the problem will become worse because many people are without jobs and houses and food prices are rising. I can only predict worse." Financial Times

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Above these lines are excerpts from the Financial Times. The first gives the "good news" that America is less dependent on Foreign oil, in great part thanks to Ethanol made from corn.... "regardless" of its impact on world food prices.

The second excerpt from the FT explains how the rising cost of food affects the poor of the third world and explains the horrific violence we are witnessing in South Africa.

And below these lines I have an extensive quote from an article by George Friedman of Stratfor warning of the dangers of Mexico collapsing into narco-anarchy as the drug cartels bribe and intimidate civil servants at the highest level, fueled by the high prices their wares bring in the USA, prices pushed up by America's "war on drugs".

As Mexican President Porfirio Díaz once said, "Poor Mexico, so far from God and so near to the United States". How near and how far can be illustrated by the following excerpt from Business Week,

The U.S. slowdown is compounding poverty in rural Mexico as jobless migrants struggle to pay for rent and groceries, let alone send money home.(...) Mexico accounts for more than half of all remittances from the U.S., and they represent Mexico's biggest source of foreign earnings after oil. The country's rural poor, who rely on the wire transfers for basic consumption, are reeling from the drop. "For the families who are receiving this money, it can [be] around a third of household income," says Robert Meins, an IADB remittance expert. "It's that third that helps many…stay above the poverty line."(...) In the unpaved hamlet of Los Cuachalates, subsistence corn farmer Julián Calvillo, 65, sadly surveys a roofless bare brick construction site. His son, who worked in restaurants in Kansas City, Mo., had been wiring money to build a house. But he was fired because of the slowdown, has not been rehired, and has sent nothing for months. "We're all very sad," says Calvillo. "I'm borrowing from friends so that we can eat."(...) Even a crackdown on drug trafficking has been a mixed blessing. Michoacán is a major center for methamphetamine production and traffickers used to buoy the economy by splashing out on luxury goods. But an army crackdown by President Felipe Calderón has driven them underground and curbed their spending.

It seems so long ago, that it is hard to recall that once upon a time, when he was running for president in the year 2000, Bush said a number of sensible things that he quickly forgot on being elected. One of the most sensible was defining America's relationship with Mexico as its the most important foreign policy relationship. It was true then and it is true today: what happens in and to Mexico affects Americans, their prosperity and even their physical safety, much more than what happens in and to, say, Israel... Much, much more.

9-11 and the invasion of Iraq caused Mexico to disappear from America's agenda. However while we are following events far, far away, the rise in the price of corn, the staple food of Mexico's masses, due to ethanol production in the United States combined with the corruption flowing from drug money derived from from the bottomless appetites of American addicts, has put the political stability of Mexico is in grave danger.

If we add to that the effects of massive layoffs of Mexican workers in the USA due to the recession, with waves of unemployed immigrants returning home empty handed to find corn meal priced out of their reach... combined with stringent border controls and the mass expulsions that so many US politicians are clamoring for... Add to that many armed and horribly violent cartel gunmen with money and automatic weapons.... we are looking at a potential geopolitical disaster far worse than the war in Iraq...

Mexico is not to be trifled with.

Mexico is a country of 100,000,000 people with one of the world's greatest revolutionary traditions. The legitimacy of the present government is not very great. As Professor Immanuel Walerstein observes, "the conservative government (of Felipe Calderón) won the last elections with about the same degree of legitimacy as Bush won the 2000 elections in the United States". If the drug cartels assassinated Calderón, who knows how quickly things might unravel?

In the same way that so many of the concerns we had in the golden summer of 2001 seem so frivolous and far off after 9-11, so today's disputes between Obama, Hillary and McCain may appear if Mexico explodes. All the elements are in place for disaster. And nobody seems to care very much. DS

Friedman: Mexico: On the Road to a Failed State? - Stratfor
Abstract: Violence along the U.S.-Mexican border has been intensifying for several years, and there have been attacks in Mexico City. But last week was noteworthy not so much for the body count, but for the type of people being killed. Very senior government police officials in Mexico City were killed along with senior Sinaloa cartel operatives in Sinaloa state.(...) Mexico now faces a classic problem. Multiple, well-armed organized groups have emerged. They are fighting among themselves while simultaneously fighting the government. The groups are fueled by vast amounts of money earned via drug smuggling to the United States. The amount of money involved — estimated at some $40 billion a year — is sufficient to increase tension between these criminal groups and give them the resources to conduct wars against each other. It also provides them with resources to bribe and intimidate government officials. The resources they deploy in some ways are superior to the resources the government employs. Given the amount of money they have, the organized criminal groups can be very effective in bribing government officials at all levels, from squad leaders patrolling the border to high-ranking state and federal officials. Given the resources they have, they can reach out and kill government officials at all levels as well. Government officials are human; and faced with the carrot of bribes and the stick of death, even the most incorruptible is going to be cautious in executing operations against the cartels.(...) There comes a moment when the imbalance in resources reverses the relationship between government and cartels. Government officials, seeing the futility of resistance, effectively become tools of the cartels. Since there are multiple cartels, the area of competition ceases to be solely the border towns, shifting to the corridors of power in Mexico City. Government officials begin giving their primary loyalty not to the government but to one of the cartels. The government thus becomes both an arena for competition among the cartels and an instrument used by one cartel against another.(...) It is important to point out that we are not speaking here of corruption, which exists in all governments everywhere. Instead, we are talking about a systematic breakdown of the state, in which government is not simply influenced by criminals, but becomes an instrument of criminals — either simply an arena for battling among groups or under the control of a particular group. The state no longer can carry out its primary function of imposing peace, and it becomes helpless, or itself a direct perpetrator of crime.(...) The killing of senior state police officials causes other officials to recalculate their attitudes. The state is no longer seen as a competent protector, and being a state official is seen as a liability — potentially a fatal liability — unless protection is sought from a cartel, a protection that can be very lucrative indeed for the protector. The killing of senior cartel members intensifies conflict among cartels, making it even more difficult for the government to control the situation and intensifying the movement toward failure. It is important to remember that Mexico has a tradition of failed governments, particularly in the 19th and early 20th century. In those periods, Mexico City became an arena for struggle among army officers and regional groups straddling the line between criminal and political. The Mexican army became an instrument in this struggle and its control a prize. The one thing missing was the vast amounts of money at stake. So there is a tradition of state failure in Mexico, and there are higher stakes today than before.(...) Mexico’s potential failure is important for three reasons. First, Mexico is a huge country, with a population of more than 100 million. Second, it has a large economy — the 14th-largest in the world. And third, it shares an extended border with the world’s only global power, one that has assumed for most of the 20th century that its domination of North America and control of its borders is a foregone conclusion. If Mexico fails, there are serious geopolitical repercussions. This is not simply a criminal matter. The amount of money accumulated in Mexico derives from smuggling operations in the United States. Drugs go one way, money another. But all the money doesn’t have to return to Mexico or to third-party countries. If Mexico fails, the leading cartels will compete in the United States, and that competition will extend to the source of the money as well. We have already seen cartel violence in the border areas of the United States, but this risk is not limited to that. The same process that we see under way in Mexico could extend to the United States; logic dictates that it would.(...) So long as vast quantities of goods flow across the border, the border cannot be sealed. Immigration might be limited by a wall, but the goods that cross the border do so at roads and bridges, and the sheer amount of goods crossing the border makes careful inspection impossible. The drugs will come across the border embedded in this trade as well as by other routes. So will gunmen from the cartel and anything else needed to take control of Los Angeles’ drug market.(...) One way to deal with the problem would be ending the artificial price of drugs by legalizing them. This would rapidly lower the price of drugs and vastly reduce the money to be made in smuggling them. Nothing hurt the American cartels more than the repeal of Prohibition, and nothing helped them more than Prohibition itself. Nevertheless, from an objective point of view, drug legalization isn’t going to happen. There is no visible political coalition of substantial size advocating this solution. Therefore, U.S. drug policy will continue to raise the price of drugs artificially, effective interdiction will be impossible, and the Mexican cartels will prosper and make war on each other and on the Mexican state.

Barack Gorbachev?

Durgafilms

ZO wrote me this:

Barack is going to do something ... he is going to increase our standing in the eyes of the rest of the world not only by virtue of the fact that he is articulate, charismatic and Black ... but because the old bullshitting bellicosity is so over. As a paradigm, it stinks, as a practice, it more than stinks.

And it got me thinking. (thanks for the prod ZO) She is right, absolutely right, but that isn't going to do us much good.

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My problem with Barack Obama is that my intuition tells me he is an empty suit. He is as proud, clever, gifted and as opportunistic as Lucifer, but I don't think there is really that much human content there. Sorry, but I just can't get by my feeling on this. Here is a humorous way of saying it:

“Senator Obama answered doubts about his inexperience by saying he has gained tremendous insight from his work as a community organizer, civil rights attorney, constitutional law professor, key club president, 4H treasurer, lunch room monitor, two years of jazz, and four years of tap.” –Amy Poehler

ZO says:

"he is going to increase our standing in the eyes of the rest of the world not only by virtue of the fact that he is articulate, charismatic and Black ... but because the old bullshitting bellicosity is so over."

I agree that many people will expect great changes. But really, once in the White House ", Obama would be left holding the bag... a bag that dates at least back until the 1940s and not everyone on the helm since then has been as useless as Bush, in fact some of the Presidents since then have been top class, in that group I would even include such flawed figures as Lyndon Johnson and Richard (shudder) Nixon... Nixon, hateful as he was, forgot more about geopolitics in a minute than Obama will ever know.

The USA today, contradictions and conflicts, warts and all, is what we have all made it... day by day and year by year. Paraphrasing Donald Rumsfeld, "you don't go with the country you want, you go with the country you have".

As I showed in a previous post, even a real, revolutionary genius like Lenin and a mass killer like Stalin and all of his purges couldn't change the basic, "soul" of Russian culture, how can anyone expect a minnow like Barack Obama to succeed in changing America's?

If he gets a huge mandate and a Democratic Senate and Congress, there are two possibilities that I can see, either he doesn't try to really change anything... a lot of disappointed kids and a lot of wasted time.

Second possibility, he does try to change things... and it all falls apart.

How will we know right away? In the first year?

Whatever the positive effect of his being "articulate, charismatic and Black", it will not last very long if he doesn't face down AIPAC and the Israeli government in his first year in office. There will be no peace in the Middle East until an American president implements UN-242 or something very much like it.

I don't think Obama will ever dare to do that and as for the "old bullshitting bellicosity", I agree with ZO that it more than stinks, but Karma is Karma... Maybe a rich old geezer, can get a face lift, eat Viagra like candy and leave his loyal old lady for a trophy wife, but that doesn't work for countries.

Like it or not, what is left of America's prosperity, the dollar and its influence, has come to depend on America's military presence all over the world. This is one of America's greatest tragedies. And don't forget... Nobody is waiting for moral lessons from America. America has created its role as world gendarme and that is about all it still has to sell that can't be easily bought elsewhere.

We are not talking about change, we are talking about disaster management.

Things have practically unraveled already; they were unraveling before Bush, but he has accelerated the process by about twenty years. Without military credibility and endless shopping, the USA is going to see its "way of life" implode.

What has happened?

The secret of much of what is happening today is that America was almost as badly damaged by the cold war as the Soviet Union.

Like the Soviet Union, while others were learning to build good cars and TVs, airports and roads, Americans only built 'intelligent' munitions. People are waking up to reality and in true American fashion, they are reaching for the tranquilizer... the man with a plan, the change they can believe in... Not that dumb? We are talking about the same people who reelected George W. Bush, now with buyer's remorse... Wheeee!

The USA is just waiting for an amateur to tinker with it.

Is Barack Obama to be the American Gorbachev?

Michail Gorbachev, in contrast to Barack Obama had a very rigorous ideological formation and a deep practical knowledge of his system from the bottom up and he was really tough... No choirboy ever got to the top of the CP-USSR. Obviously he should have chosen the Chinese path, but in fact he and Raisa had so much faith in Marxism that they thought it would survive his tampering.

Michail Gorbachev tried to change his system and it fell apart in his hands, everybody outside the USSR thought he was wonderful, "articulate and charismatic", he was a movie star for the whole world... In Russia they have never forgiven him. Putin calls what he did the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century and most Russians agree.

Is Barack Obama to be the American Gorbachev?

Think very carefully before you answer that... remember that after Gorbachev comes Yeltsin and Putin. DS

The Republican paternity suit

Sackcloth and ashes

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(Before going any farther, at the bottom of this post, I've put down a short manifesto of what my objectives are, because the paths I take in following them may seem a bit tortuous to my readers.)

One of my favorite bloggers, James Wolcott, over at Vanity Fair, has written a good piece about a lament-filled article by Peggy Noonan in the Wall Street Journal, yesterday I riffed on it, today I'd like to riff a little bit more.

I think that, through an understandable lack of empathy for Republicans, Mr. Wolcott perhaps missed the significance of the most important phrase in Ms. Noonan's ashes and sackcloth aria. This was the phrase:

Mr. Bush has squandered the hard-built paternity of 40 years.

What Ms. Noonan -- with a broken heart -- is saying is that the Republican Party of Goldwater and Reagan (Ms Noonan's life's work) has been destroyed by feckless Bushism. That John McCain might very well win the presidency is no consolation to Peggy Noonan, because to win it, he will have to drive a stake through Barry Goldwater's and Ronald Reagan's hearts.

This is an election that McCain can win but which Noonan's Republican Party cannot. Dick Morris, former adviser to Bill Clinton and political analyst for Fox News sums the situation up brilliantly in the Washington Post:

A candidate who cannot get elected is being nominated by a party that cannot be defeated, while a candidate who is eminently electable is running as the nominee of a party doomed to defeat.

Morris then goes on to plausibly map out McCain's possible path to victory in November. It isn't pretty, but it sure isn't Reagan redux. here are some points:

McCain needs to go after the swing voters:

Lash out at the corporate greed that landed us in the subprime mortgage crisis. Attack the golden-parachute pensions, the ill-gotten commissions and the maddening lending fees.

Go after credit card companies' interest rates, late fees and consumer gouging.

Demand action on global warming (as McCain began doing last week, including hawking "eco-friendly" campaign T-shirts).

Call for a ban on all congressional earmarks, with their inevitable waste and pork, and insist that Congress appoint a permanent ethics special prosecutor to police itself.

Attack big tobacco, and blast the movie industry for helping sell its poison.

Pledge to make hedge-fund managers pay full earned-income taxes on their incomes, rather than the undeserved capital-gains treatment they currently get.(...)

McCain need not depart from long-held principles to wage any of these battles. He has always embraced these causes as a senator, and he needs to do so ever more forcefully as a candidate for president. The danger for McCain is that he will forget that he has already won the Republican nomination and retreat to safe GOP positions, which will alienate precisely the Democrats and independents whom he is uniquely positioned to attract.

I would add that only other Republican that could sell this convincingly with McCain is the populist, Mike Huckabee.

It is easy to see why Ms. Noonan, like Job, is sitting in the ashes scraping her sores with a pottery shard, but where I differ from James Wolcott is to think that Peggy Noonan's discomfort holds any comfort for Barack Obama or the Democrats this year. DS

---

Full disclosure (a declaration of principals)
I want to make it clear, where I am coming from so that what I say from now on can be correctly interpreted.

What I would like for the USA is first: a federal, universal, obligatory, public health system that would be so good that the private system would be reduced to preforming silicon breast implants on precocious 12 year old Valley girls. This would mean that a little black girl in Tupelo Mississippi would have the same medical care as a rich little white boy in Lake Forest Illinois.

Next I would like a free, federal, universal, public education system, from cradle through post graduate, that would be so good that only people belonging to strange sects, would think it worth the money to send their kids to a private school. Like the French Lycée system: the same all over the country, same courses, same exams, same standards for all students, so that the little black girl in Tupelo Mississippi would get exactly the same, quality education, as the rich little white boy in Lake Forest Illinois. All of this with a free public university system, so good that Harvard, Yale and Princeton would be reduced to diploma mills for rich kids that didn't want to study hard.

And a good pension system, of course. This what I consider the minimum a "progressive" should demand from the state.

You might have a few questions.

Does this mean big government?

You bet. It would mean a huge, unionized, bureaucracy.

Wouldn't that be very expensive?

Horribly expensive.

How would you pay for it?

To start with I would reduce US military spending to make it only more powerful than the combination of China and Russia and not more powerful than the next 19 countries on the list all together. I would be grateful to see the numbers, but I imagine that setting up my version of America would cost a lot less than the war in Iraq.

Now it is easy to understand that from my viewpoint the Democratic Party of the USA is the greatest bunch of wankers since Tommy Chong's definitive, "Harry Palms". I am not sure that the Democrats are a path to the kind of America I would like, in fact they might be the greatest obstacle standing in the way. So while generally feeling more comfortable traveling in the company of Democrats, I am not rooting for them.

Having read and understood this, you may understand why I am often crueler to Democrats than to Republicans. With them, what you see is what you get, while with the Democrats we may be looking at nothing more than a Judas goat to neutralize the appearance of any social movement in America that might bring about social justice.

I think that all of this is something that the politicians really cannot be expected to do. The civil rights movement came from the African-American community's political agitation, the politicians bowed to that pressure. I think it will require mass movements, even a classic general strike to get my agenda taken care of. Barack Obama is not going to do any of this... people are fooling themselves if they think he ever will.

Bush's "appeasment" remark... What is he up to?

This is and will be the great challenge for John McCain: The Democratic argument, now being market tested by Obama Inc., that a McCain victory will yield nothing more or less than George Bush's third term. Peggy Noonan - Wall Street Journal (tip of the hat to James Wolcott)

David Seaton's News Links
George Bush has made so many mistakes in the last eight years attempting to run the country, that it is easy to forget that there is something that he is actually very, very good at: campaigning.

For if Barack Obama has managed to turn a vacuum, a veritable empty space, where others have a CV filled with achievement, into a serious bid for the presidency, George W. Bush has gone much, much farther and has turned a quite nasty CV, filled with misadventures, into two terms in the White House.

The President of the United States of America may have little idea about what to do after winning an election, but he sure knows how to win elections. Democrats, having experienced this in their own flesh, would be foolish to misunderestimate George W. Bush the politician. A cornered Bush should cause them some healthy respect.

Here is the problem: Bush the President is radioactive. Peggy Noonan puts it this way,

The Democratic argument, now being market tested by Obama Inc., that a McCain victory will yield nothing more or less than George Bush's third term.

A McCain victory will, in many senses, be a vindication of George W. Bush.

For McCain there is no way around this. There is no way that a Republican candidate can completely disown a sitting Republican president. Everybody knows that McCain is not Bush, but a McCain victory would, in a sense, be a plus for Bush's tattered, miserable legacy... in fact it would be a triumph under these circumstances.

Since Bush exists and even if McCain were Harry Potter there is no way that he could conjure him away and at the same time, without a McCain victory, Bush faces being ridden out of Washington on a rail... a pariah.. it is obvious that Bush and McCain have to work together...

Bush is going to campaign for McCain as if his life depended on it... in a sense the rest of his life does. No one has ever failed as publicly and totally as George W. Bush, this is his last chance to pull it out...

All that is standing between George W. Bush and a decent place in history is Barack Obama... Knowing what Bush is capable of, if I were Obama, this would make me very nervous.

This does not mean that the President will be out on the hustings making speeches for McCain, because having Bush speaking for you is every Republican's present nightmare. No, he will be too busy in the White House being the President of the United States.

George W. Bush is going to use the Presidency of the United States of America, with all its power to control the news cycle, to create an environment where Barack Obama's perceived weaknesses: inexperience, naiveté and strangeness, will be shown off to his greatest disadvantage. Bush will attack Obama's position with acts and words. In unscrupulous hands the White House can create an environment of unbearable tension. In this effort Bush may have the inestimable help of Osama bin Laden, who has done so well with the Republicans and would have no reason to desire a change.

The vast resources of the White House and the government of the country will be focused almost entirely on this till November.

While Bush uses the office of the President to play dirty, McCain will simply float above it all, the steady American hero, the maverick, plain speaker of vast experience... feisty, Scotch-Irish against a callow youth of uncertain background. I think he'll pick Huckabee as his VP, a great campaigner, a populist, evangelical, southerner. Here Hillary has clearly pointed the way. Neither McCain or Huckabee will stoop to any dirty stuff. That will be left to the 527s and POTUS. McCain will simply be who he is and Bush will use the power of the presidency to define Obama.

Good cop, bad cop.

I am a hundred percent sure that this is going to be the dirtiest campaign in the history of the United States. DS

America and the "tragic sense"

"My religion is to seek for truth in life and for life in truth, even knowing that I shall not find them while I live." Miguel de Unamuno

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The above quote is from one of Spain's greatest literary and intellectual figures, Miguel de Unamuno. Unamuno is perhaps best known for his book, "Del Sentimiento Trágico de la Vida" (The Tragic Sense of Life).

Richard L. Rubens, Ph.D. wrote of Unamuno's philosophy,

The central, defining characteristic of the tragic sense of life is its insistence on the balance between the striving for rationality on the one hand, and the recognition of the underlying irrationality of existence on the other.

Nothing is more foreign to most Americans than the idea that we struggle in vain and that the struggle itself is the meaning of life. Another great Spanish poet and contemporary of Unamuno's, Antonio Machado wrote and I'll make a clumsy attempt to translate,

Caminante son tus huellas
Traveler the path is your footprints and nothing more
El camino nada más;
caminante no hay camino
Traveller, there is no path
se hace camino al andar.
You make the path by walking
Al andar se hace camino
y al volver la vista atrás
se ve la senda que nunca
se ha de volver a pisar.
When walking you make the path
And when you turn to look back
You see the path that you will never trod again
Caminante, no hay camino
sino estelas sobre el mar.
Traveler, there is no path
Only sparkling reflections on the sea
¿Para que llamar caminos
A los surcos del azar...?
Why call paths,
That which are only the furrows of fortune
Todo el que camina anda,
Como Jesús sobre el mar.
Every traveler walks,
Like Jesus on the sea

I put this under a photo of LBJ and MLK because I think that somehow they illustrate both Unamuno and Machado's philosophy. The tragedy of the American left: how justice defeated justice... how basic decency and democratic values condemned millions of Americans of all colors to poverty and illness.

Hegel wrote:

"The heroes of ancient classical tragedy encounter situations in which, if they firmly decide in favor of the one ethical pathos that alone suits their finished character, they must necessarily come into conflict with the equally justified ethical power that confronts them."

Making equal citizens of the descendants of slavery: descendants of both master and slave, was the inescapable duty, dharma, of American progressives. This situation made and still makes a mockery of the Declaration of Independence, which was written by a slaveholder and seconded by slaveholders... This injustice could not be allowed to stand

Lyndon Johnson, perhaps the closest thing to a man of the left that has ever sat in the White House, knew that this was his duty and although a southerner carried out that duty unflinchingly.

Master politician that he was, I'm sure he knew what was to follow: Nixon's "Southern Strategy", that opened the door to Reagan, Bush-I and Bush-II, a movement that strived mightily to undo all that Johnson tried to achieve with his "Great Society"... and largely succeeded in destroying it and gave a political base to all those whose philosophy has deprived generations of Americans of decent public health care and decent public schools.

This contradiction is America's original sin and its tragedy, its eternal fate. DS

West Virginia and the babushkas

Social engineering is a concept in political science that refers to efforts to influence popular attitudes and social behavior on a large scale, whether by governments or private groups.(...) The most effective way for "social engineering" is through mass media and especially television.(...) Political conservatives in the United States have accused their opponents of social engineering through the promotion of political correctness, insofar as it may change social attitudes by defining "acceptable" and "unacceptable" language or acts. Wikipedia

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"The word god is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honorable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. No interpretation no matter how subtle can (for me) change this." Albert Einstein

"Religion is the opium of the people: this saying of Marx is the cornerstone of the entire ideology of Marxism about religion. All modern religions and churches, all and of every kind of religious organizations are always considered by Marxism as the organs of bourgeois reaction, " V.I. Lenin

Marxism-Leninism has consistently advocated the control, suppression, and, ultimately, the elimination of religious beliefs. Within about a year of the revolution the state expropriated all church property, including the churches themselves, and in the period from 1922 to 1926, 28 Russian Orthodox bishops and more than 1,200 priests were killed (a much greater number was subjected to persecution). In the 1920s and 1930s, such organizations as the League of the Militant Godless ridiculed all religions and harassed believers. Atheism was propagated through schools, communist organizations (such as the Young Pioneer Organization), and the media. Wikipedia

Twenty years ago, any KGB officer found practicing religion would have been promptly sacked. Now, according to the “committed Christian” and Russian leader Vladimir Putin, religion “has a big place” in 21st-century Russia. That place has stretched deep into Russian Intelligence. As a former KGB foreign intelligence officer, Putin has more direct control of intelligence than any Russian leader since Joseph Stalin. One of the distinguishing characteristics of the KGB was its militant atheism. In March 2002, however, the FSB (Putin’s domestic security and intelligence service) at last found God. The Times

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"The profound mistake of Reverend Wright's sermons is not that he spoke about racism in our society. It's that he spoke as if our society was static; as if no progress has been made; as if this country - a country that has made it possible for one of his own members to run for the highest office in the land and build a coalition of white and black; Latino and Asian, rich and poor, young and old -- is still irrevocably bound to a tragic past. But what we know -- what we have seen - is that America can change. That is the true genius of this nation. What we have already achieved gives us hope - the audacity to hope - for what we can and must achieve tomorrow." Barack Obama

Victoria Switzer, a retired social studies teacher, was on phone-bank duty one night during the Pennsylvania primary campaign. One night was all she could take: "It wasn't pretty." She made 60 calls to prospective voters in Susquehanna County, her home county, which is 98 percent white. The responses were dispiriting. One caller, Switzer remembers, said he couldn't possibly vote for Obama and concluded: "Hang that darky from a tree!" Washington Post

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To avoid confusion, I'll put what I think is the moral of this story right up front.

It is important to fight for change, because in the process of fighting you may change yourself, but changing others even for the their own and for the general good may have unforeseen consequences... for them and for you.

Cultures change over time, but it is difficult to intervene in them to change them. It is like a neurosurgeon operating on a deadly brain tumor, a little slip and "oops! There go the piano lessons."

I started out this post with four photos and a slew of quotes about the Soviet Union's effort to eradicate religion. Contrary to what most people in America would think, this was not done out of "evil" intent, but rather with the best intentions imaginable.

Scientific opinion was largely that expressed in Einstein's recently discovered letter: religion was, "primitive and childish". Czarist Russia was a primitive, superstitious and priest-ridden society, well symbolized by the photo of the "mystic" at the top, Rasputin. Therefore Lenin's view was logical: religion existed solely for the "protection of the exploitation and the stupefaction of the working class" and Lenin was the man of action par excellence: Vladimir Ilyich was mister "see snake, kill snake".

The third quote from Wikipedia's article on Soviet atheism, gives a brief outline of the logical measures he and his successors took to effectively rid Russia of such a plague of ignorance and alienation.

Or so it seemed.

During the years of glasnost, before the collapse of the USSR, I was much surprised to learn from Spanish friends who were dealing on a daily basis with Soviet officials that all these loyal Communist apparatchiks confessed that they had been baptized and indoctrinated in the forbidden Christian practices from childhood.

I think that was when I first realized that the Soviet system's goose was really cooked.

This is where the lady in the third photo comes in: the eternal Russian granny, the "babushka".

The babushkas had kept religion alive in Russia.

Now as we see in the last photo, as far as Vladimir Putin, a former KGB colonel, is concerned, "that old time religion" is good enough for him.

All of this just goes to prove that Barack Obama is not the only one with a granny that makes her grandsons cringe.

Over the last 50 years or so, American institutions, especially the armed forces and Hollywood, have moved heaven and earth to change American racial attitudes root and branch, but like with religion in Soviet Russia, I'm afraid that in the USA too, the babushkas have it.

That there is and has been a racist backlash against the effort to eradicate such ignorant and hateful injustice is no secret. Barack Obama himself analyzed it very well in his historic, 'A More Perfect Union' speech.

"(...) these resentments aren't always expressed in polite company. But they have helped shape the political landscape for at least a generation. Anger over welfare and affirmative action helped forge the Reagan Coalition." Barack Obama

And all of this anger has been directed heretofore against surrogates: the Jimmy Carters, the Ted Kennedys, the Walter Mondales, the Dukakises, the Gores and the Kerrys; and all the racism was disguised in euphemisms like "state's rights" or "liberal" or "elitist" or "un-American".

Now for the first time the Reagan Democrats are going to get the chance to actually vote against a real black man who incarnates all the euphemisms, instead of a surrogate.

It won't even need any Rovian sulphur and brimstone, all the thing will have to do is sit there and be: the babushkas have already taken care of it.

I think McCain is going to win this thing if he doesn't have a stroke or a heart attack during the campaign.

That is the bad news.

The good news is that I think that there is going to be a massive splitting of ballots and that the Democrats are going to get comfortable majorities in both houses despite losing the White House. If they had run Al Gore, I think the Democrats might have had their biggest victory since Roosevelt, but being post-60s Democrats they had to blow it. DS

Yes we can't... A belief we can change in

Speaking of the dogs that do not bark, the most conspicuous silence maintained during the Democratic primary campaign was on the subject of Iraq and how, or how not, to leave it. As the greatest single issue in the 2006 American congressional election was, by general acknowledgment, ending the war in Iraq, and the public delivered a powerful mandate to the U.S. government to end the war and get out of Iraq, why has so little been said about this by the Democratic candidates? William Pfaff

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The New York Review of Books is a treasure trove of goodies and like Forrest Gump's chocolate box, you never know what you are going to pull out. The present edition has a marathon book review-bibliography of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan by Thomas Powers, entitled: "Iraq: Will We Ever Get Out?", where, after an exhaustive review of ten books on the subject he comes to the following conclusions:

There is a working assumption among the American people that a new president enters the White House free of responsibility for the errors of the past, free to set a new course in any program or policy, and therefore free—at the very least in constitutional theory, and perhaps even really and truly free—to call off a war begun by a predecessor. No one would expect something so dramatic on the first day of a new administration but it remains a fact that the president is the commander in chief of the armed forces, and the power that allowed one president to invade Iraq would allow another to bring the troops home.

Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton in the current presidential campaign have promised to do just that—not precipitously, not recklessly, not without care to give the shaky government in Baghdad time and the wherewithal to pick up the slack. But Obama and Clinton have both promised that the course would be changed on the first day; ending the American involvement in the Iraqi fighting would be the new goal, troop numbers would be down significantly by the middle of the first year, and within a reasonable time (not long) the residual American force would be so diminished in size that any fair observer might say the war was over, for the Americans at least, and the troops had been brought home.

The presumptive Republican candidate, John McCain, has pledged to do exactly the opposite—to "win" the war, whatever that means, and whatever that takes. Politicians often differ by shades of nuance. Not this time. The contrast of McCain and his opponents on this question is stark, and if they can be taken at their word, Americans must expect either continuing war for an indefinite period with McCain or the anxieties and open questions of turning the war over to the Iraqi government for better or worse with Obama or Clinton. Which is it going to be?

Getting out of Iraq will require just as much resolution as it took to get in—and the same kind of resolution: a willingness to ignore the consequences. The consequence hardest to ignore will be the growing power and influence of Iran, which Bush has described as one of the two great security threats to the US. Israel shares this view of Iran. No new president will want to run the risk of being thought soft on Iran. This is where the military error exacts a terrible price. A political conflict transformed into a military conflict requires a military resolution, and those, famously, come in two forms—victory or defeat. Getting out means admitting defeat.

Is it possible that the new president will have that kind of resolution? I think not; to my ear Clinton and Obama don't sound drained of hope or bright ideas, determined to cut losses and end the agony. Why should they? They're coming in fresh from the sidelines. Getting out, giving up, admitting defeat are not what we expect from the psychology of newly elected presidents who have just overcome all odds and battled through to personal victory. They've managed the impossible once; why not again? Planning for withdrawals might begin on Day One, but the plans will be hostage to events.

At first, perhaps, all runs smoothly. Then things begin to happen. The situation on the first day has altered by the tenth. Some faction of Iraqis joins or drops out of the fight. A troublesome law is passed, or left standing. A helicopter goes down with casualties in two digits. The Green Zone is hit by a new wave of rockets or mortars from Sadr City in Baghdad. The US Army protests that the rockets or mortars were provided by Iran. The new president warns Iran to stay out of the fight. The government in Tehran dismisses the warning. This is already a long-established pattern. Why should we expect it to change? So it goes. At an unmarked moment somewhere between the third and the sixth month a sea change occurs: Bush's war becomes the new president's war, and getting out means failure, means defeat, means rising opposition at home, means no second term. It's not hard to see where this is going.

We are committed in Afghanistan. We are not ready to leave Iraq. In both countries our friends are in trouble. The pride of American arms is at stake. The world is watching. To me the logic of events seems inescapable. Unless something quite unexpected happens, four years from now the presidential candidates will be arguing about two wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, one going into its ninth year, the other into its eleventh. The choice will be the one Americans hate most—get out or fight on.

That is about the best summing up of the situation that I have read yet. The entire article is well worth looking at.

We are at the Rubicon and suddenly all the politicians have taken out poles and started to fish.

As William Pfaff, for me the best foreign affairs columnist in the English language, writes:

If a new American government – an Obama administration, let us say – wanted to end the war it would also need to negotiate with the regional actors who are sponsors or defenders of Iraqi factions and have their own national interests bound up in the outcome. Iran is the most important. Until now, one of its interests has been to make life as hellish as possible for the Americans in Iraq, up to a certain point. I say this interest prevails only up to a point because Iran presumably does not want chaos next door, nor on the other hand, a war with America.

Otherwise the Turks, Saudi Arabians, Jordanians, Lebanese and Syrians all have their own stakes in the affair. To unknot this diplomatic conundrum a genuine ceasefire and compromise must be fostered among the Iraqis, with American and regional involvement. This – it must be noted – is true only if a future Obama government really wants to end the war and leave.

Would it really wish to do so? This remains to be confirmed. The Bush administration has always opposed leaving Iraq, and the Republican candidate, John McCain, proclaims his certainty that “victory” is possible. In both cases this means maintaining the huge permanent American military bases that have been built in Iraq, and a gigantic and permanent American political presence, radiating its influence (and military threat) throughout the Middle East. It also requires an Iraqi government which is a satellite of Washington.

This is the expectation or objective today in most of the American foreign policy community. It would seem to be accepted, as well, by Hillary Clinton.

It makes it plain why nobody during the Democratic primary campaign dared say anything of substance about withdrawal from Iraq. Even if the vast majority of Americans want peace and troop withdrawal, a large and powerful part of the American government and political and policy communities does not. It is a dynamite subject. It will remain one.

My opinion is that the United States won't be able to leave either war without relinquishing its role as the world's defining power. The incredible living standard of Americans that have a living standard depends in great part on the ability to define the world. This power will not be surrendered willingly.

Staying in the war will mean, however, such a drain on America's resources and influence that hegemonic power will slip through its fingers anyway and America will fade out of the Middle East like the Turks and the English before us.

The contradictions of power destroy power. The desire to dominate, dominates the dominator.

An uncannily apt historical example of what is happening to the USA would be the story of the Spain's wars in the Netherlands during the reign of the Hapsburgs. What broke the world's greatest power of the time was the "Thirty Years War". Before now, it is hard to find a better example of how a dominant position was pissed away than how the Hapsburgs ran Spain into the ground.

Only thirty years? Bush, Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Robert Gates and many others speak of a war without end. Here is Secretary of Defense Gates speaking to the cadets of West Point on April 21rst of this year:

A drawdown of U.S. forces in Iraq is inevitable over time – the debate you hear in Washington is largely about pacing. But the kind of enemy we face today – violent jihadist networks – will not allow us to remain at peace. What has been called the “Long War” is likely to be many years of persistent, engaged combat all around the world in differing degrees of size and intensity. This generational campaign cannot be wished away or put on a timetable. There are no exit strategies. To paraphrase the Bolshevik Leon Trotsky, we may not be interested in the long war, but the long war is interested in us.

He even quotes Trotsky!

Americans have trouble believing in the iron laws of karma and the inevitable remorse of, "we have left undone those things which we ought to have done; and we have done those things which we ought not to have done."

The die is cast. DS

Dick Daley's favorite Hawaiian

Obama (on the left) with Chicago's Mayor Daley, son of Chicago's Mayor Daley, pictured in the "Urbs in Horto".

Obama the reformer is backed by Mayor Richard M. Daley and the Daley boys. He is spoken for by Daley's own spokesman, David Axelrod. He was launched into his U.S. Senate by machine power broker and state Senate President Emil Jones. John Kass - Chicago Tribune

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Feeling lonely, I'd love to drink the Kool-Aid with y'all, but every time I try it my gag reflex kicks in. It's time to talk about Obama's most powerful patron, Chicago's "mayor for life", Richard M. Daily.

Pictured with Obama above, is Chicago's Mayor Daley, son of Chicago's Mayor Daley... for over 50 years father and son have run one of America's most powerful and corrupt political machines. I am originally from Chicago and like John Kass, I am amazed at the free pass a Chicago pol like Obama is getting by the besotted American media.

My mother was on the Cook County Council of the League of Women Voters in the 1950s, struggling with political reform; I get my views from those ancient overheard dinner table conversations. Everything I've read or heard over the years I've been away confirms that Chicago is still Chicago, that "toddling town, the town that Billy Sunday couldn't shut down"... AKA "da Chill".

Now, let's do nuances. Richard M. Daley is a very efficient mayor and good administrator as was his father, Richard J, but nobody in what is known as greater "Chicagoland", who calls themselves a "reformer", would want the endorsement of any Dick Daley. The term "Daley-Reformer" is an oxymoron (to distinguish it from ordinary morons).

And amazingly enough for a Chicago machine pol, there are millions of people out there who believe that Barack Obama will bring them "Change We Can Believe In". In fact there is nothing in Obama's record as a law maker that isn't pure "sweet home Chicago". Check this from the Boston Globe:

(Obama) worked with lobbyists as an Illinois legislator and US senator, even as he distances himself from them as a presidential candidate. The Republican National Committee sent out a press release Thursday, noting that a former lobbyist, Antill E. Trotter, held a fund-raiser for Obama that night in Washington. Trotter specialized in telecommunications, transportation, and environmental issues from 2000-2004. The RNC release also contained reminders of an ABC News report that Obama introduced nine bills to make certain chemicals tax-exempt at the request of some corporate lobbyists; and a Boston Globe report about Obama's work with an insurance lobbyist to make healthcare legislation more acceptable to insurance companies. Joan Vennochi - Boston Globe

Another thing that I find curious, as someone who spent his Chicago childhood freezing on windy street corners catching pneumonia (several times), is why anyone born in a certified paradise like Hawaii would want to live in Chicago. The minute I saw the Mediterranean, there was no way you could get me back to Chicago... In all these years, I've only been back to Chicago once... In actual fact, I would be in favor of returning Chicago to the Native-Americans.

Leaving Hawaii, Barack Obama went to college in New York and Boston, as a child in Chicago, those cities seemed as far off and sophisticated as Rome or Paris... Why would anyone in their right mind leave Hawaii, Boston or especially New York and go to Chicago?

My theory: Barack Obama conceived the notion of being President of the United States of America a long time ago and he is very impatient to fulfill what he believes to be his destiny. He is extraordinarily intelligent, crafty too, and a thinker and a planner.

He looked upon his skill set and saw that it was good. Thinking deeply he saw that he had a quality that was both an asset and a liability: he was a white man in a black skin. Why do I say that Obama is "white" when anyone in America with even a drop of African blood is called "black"? To call Obama "black" as if his mother counted for nothing, is racism, pure and simple.

Mothers define our culture and our tribe. We call the language we dream in our "mother tongue", the Halacha considers anyone born of Jewish mother a Jew, no matter who his father was. The examples are endless. Raised by a white mother and grandparents in a white home, attending white schools, Barack Obama is culturally white. Things have changed since Fats Waller wrote, "I'm white inside, But that don't help my case.'Cause I can't hide what is on my face." What once would have been a tragic and crippling liability can now be an asset if properly played.

There are quite a few white former editors of the Harvard Law Review, but Barack Obama is the first black one: being "black" has much to recommend it for a brilliant Harvard Lawyer... to be perfect Obama would have to also be a woman... But like Joe E. Brown says at the end of Billy Wilder's 'Some Like It Hot', "nobody's perfect."

His problem, his asset/liability, would be to fall between two stools, too white for blacks and too black for whites... A clear identity had to be constructed. He had to be black enough for blacks, but not too black for whites. He has done this brilliantly, right down to choosing his wife. Marrying what is probably his greatest asset, the lovely and brilliant Michelle Robinson is the "whitest" thing that Barack Obama has ever done.

Huh?

Michelle Obama is an extraordinarily attractive woman, if she finally makes it to the White House, she will easily be the most attractive First Lady since Jackie Kennedy, but she has darker skin than Obama. Now, I have white, German, French, English and Spanish men friends who have all married beautiful African-African women from Africa: Senegalese, Nigerians, etc who are bluish black. but I cannot recall ever seeing a prosperous African-American man, whose wife's skin wasn't at least a tone lighter than his own.

So why Chicago?

What does Chicago have that so multiplies all of Barack Obama's assets and cancels his liabilities and takes decades off his journey to the pinnacles of power?

The Daley "machine", is what.

In what other city have the the political machine, the African-American community, the business community and (subsidy hungry) cultural community been so deeply entwined and organized for so many years? Think Ceausescu's Romania, then add money and funk it up. A political career can be made or broken with a phone call.

Is Chicago that cynical?

I'm the last person to ask, Chicago is where I got my attitude.

The Clintons will never play this card, no matter how desperate they get, because no Democrat in his right mind would ever want to make an enemy of Dick Daley or any future Daleys, but certainly, when and if Obama is finally the candidate, make no mistake, McCain and the Republican 527s are going to begin to dig into all this rich mother load. DS

John Kass: Obama magically unstained by grime of Chicago Way - Chicago Tribune
Abstract: Will Barack Obama's presidential candidacy serve his state and city by finally drawing national attention to the sleazy and corrupt politics of Illinois and Chicago? It is all about context. The presumptive Democratic presidential candidate's politics were born in Chicago. Yet he is presented to the nation as not truly being of this place, as if he floats just above the political corruption here, uninfected, untouched by the stain of it or by any sin of commission or omission. It is all so very mystical. Perhaps viewing Obama as a Chicago political creature would conflict with the established national media narrative of Obama as a reformer. Actually, there's no "perhaps" about it.(...) Obama the reformer is backed by Mayor Richard M. Daley and the Daley boys. He is spoken for by Daley's own spokesman, David Axelrod. He was launched into his U.S. Senate by machine power broker and state Senate President Emil Jones (D-ComEd). (...) My argument is not with him—but with the national political media pack that refuses to look closely at what Chicago is. They're fixated on what it was, and they think it's clean now. And they've spent years crafting, then cleaving to their eager and trembling Obama narrative, a tale of great yearning, almost mythic and ardently adolescent, a tale in which Obama is portrayed as a reformer, a dynamic change agent about to do away with the old thuggish politics. It's as if Axelrod channeled it, wearing a peaked Merlin hat. Obama is a South Sider and does not hail from Camelot or Mt. Olympus or the lush forests of mythical Narnia. I've joked that reporters feel compelled to hug him, in their copy, as if he were the cuddly faun, the Mr. Tumnus of American politics. But I was only kidding. The real Mr. Tumnus never had Billy Daley or Ted Kennedy carving up Cabinet appointments. READ IT ALL