adamyoshida.com

Hurrah, the Death Penalty is Back!

Adam Yoshida — Wed, 07 May 2008 01:27:00 +0000

Georgia today had the honour of being the first state to execute a criminal following the Supreme Court's lifting of a temporary death penalty moratorium. I realize that some here have religious or ideological objections to capital punishment but, I suspect it goes without saying that I am not among those individuals.

Indeed, I am for the death penalty not only on practical grounds ("no dead criminal re-offends") but on philosophical grounds as well. The refusal to use the death penalty to punish criminals - a tool used by pretty much all known human societies since the beginning of time - is a sure sign of civilizational decadence and decline. The death penalty isn't merely about the offender and the victim - it is the recognition that there exist absolute and unforgivable offenses which are not merely against human law, but against natural law as well.

No one will miss this sub-human trash:

Lynd, 53, was sentenced to die for kidnapping and shooting his live-in girlfriend, Ginger Moore, three times in the face and head two decades ago. After he buried Moore's body in a shallow grave near a south Georgia farm, authorities said Lynd fled to Ohio, where he shot and killed another woman who had stopped along the side of the road to help him.

When we kill a criminal such as this, we reaffirm our own belief in humanity and civilization. Killing someone like this is a way of expressing our own self-confidence - it is a way of saying, "yes, we are certain enough of ourselves and our collective morality that we are going to write you out of the human race." It is the judgement of civilization that such people should die.

The real pity is that we can't use the death penalty for more offenses. Look, for example, to the case of Josef Fritzl in Austria. It is regrettable that Europe has abolished the death penalty - and that the death penalty has been more-or-less abolished for crimes other than murder in the United States because, quite frankly, I can think of few creatures who deserved to die more than this... thing... does. Killing him would be a collective reaffirmation of our own humanity.

Now, of course, there are many - and I'm sure many here - who aren't comfortable with such power being in the hands of the state. I thoroughly disagree here. Given that the death penalty would - even if I was allowed to extend it to rapists, child molesters, and some other criminals - be fairly narrowly applied. It is a power which will only touch upon the vilest things which walk the Earth. The use of the death penalty - as authorized by the will of a jury of one's peers - is one of the narrow powers that the state ought to have.

After all, the state - at least in a libertarian state - is a repository for those functions - contracts, law enforcement, national defense, international relations - which cannot (or should not) be exercised on an individual level. If you assume that, in the state of nature, mobs would simply kill rapists, child molesters, murderers, and the like then it is fair to say that the obligation of the state to carry out this function is implicit in the social contract.

Deport This Man, Today

Adam Yoshida — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 04:58:00 +0000

Naeem Muhammad Khan has a Facebook account. He lives in Toronto. He is unemployed. He’s also an avid Jihadist who arrived in this country less than two years ago.

Why is he still here?

While this nation is at war, he posts a banner on his Facebook page encouraging support for the Taliban and al-Qaeda. He says that Osama Bin Laden is a “hero.” He says that the reason that he’s here is because he’s free here to preach the Jihadist creed in a way that he wouldn’t be in most of the Moslem world.

Why is he still here?

The man is of no value to this country. Given that he is unemployed, he is a drain on the Treasury. He is worthless. He is scum. If we were a culture with the self-confidence to do what is morally right we would… Well, I’ll stop there – lest I draw the scrutiny of the self-appointed defenders of the “rights” of our murderous enemies.

If you want to know why I have so little regard for this nation’s government, even under the present Administration, take a look at this man. A nation so degraded, so enervated, that it cannot properly dispose of as odious a “man” as this isn’t worthy of respect. A nation whose people so happily accept such a state of affairs is, in the words of Alexander Hamilton, “prepared for a master – and deserves one.”

So, I’m issuing a challenge to the Immigration Minister, Diane Finley. One that I am hoping that others will pick up and echo: deport this man, today.

I realize that government doesn’t normally move at that pace. But, of course, if can – if the appropriate fire is lit. I am calling on the Immigration Minister – and for that matter the Prime Minister – to make people jump. Go. Arrest this man. Put him on a plane. Send him back to Pakistan. There are other courses of action which would also be morally right and emotionally satisfying, but this one happens to be legal, so I’ll settle for that.

Prove me wrong. Show me that this is still a country. Tell the world that this is something more than an international flop-house for terrorists, criminals, the shiftless, and other assorted miscreants. Honour those who do come here to make better lives by removing from their presence – as well as ours – such a wretched creature.

Not that I believe that they will. As I have said before, this country is too far-gone for that. Even under this, supposedly right-wing government, we don’t have the guts to face down the left. Even if they did summon the courage to do something, he’d probably win in some damned court and be back here in a few years with $25 Million and an apology.

Speaking of odious individuals with a Facebook page, have you ever wondered what happened to Abdulkareem Khadr, the member of the famed Khadr al-Qaeda family who was badly wounded in a shoot-out with Pakistani forces where his father, a senior member of al-Qaeda, was killed?

Yes, for the record, the man I linked to is one and the same. I corresponded with him briefly in the past, before he, if I were to guess, probably Googled my name and guessed that my intentions towards him were other-than-benign. This member of the self-proclaimed al-Qaeda family, wounded while on the other side of the war that we are fighting, would seem to have spent the last few years enjoying the full benefits of my tax dollars – recovering his health through our health care system. He attends Birchmount Park Collegiate in Toronto, where he is scheduled to graduate in a few months. I’ll note that it’s a public school, as well. Given his family’s unique background and that his father is dead, one wonders how they support themselves. It wouldn’t be shocking to find that the boy is a leech on the taxpaying public in a third way as well.

He would seem to have friends. One supposes that they’re ignorant or – given his notoriety it seems difficult to believe that they would be – they, like to many people in this country, view being on the other side as simply another lifestyle choice. I thought about going up and down the list and asking the people if they know that they’re linked with Canada’s al-Qaeda family but, in the end, that would seem to be an empty exercise. In all probability those people are lost just as this country is lost.

If no one in this country could rouse themselves to act against him – and the rest of his family – than Khan is probably perfectly safe. One more step towards all of our graves.

As I have said before, leftism is AIDS for civilization. All of that touchy-feely nonsense, all of those false doctrines – none of them is fatal in and of themselves. Socialism is difficult to counter because, on the surface, the proposals are not directly harmful. But, like HIV/AIDS, leftism attacks the immune system and wrecked the ability of the body to defend itself from what, under normal circumstances, would be minor irritants.

Can this country be saved? Not, I think, without a drastic change. If our leaders – if our Conservative leaders – cannot rise to such a simple and obvious challenge, than how shall we ever save ourselves? We’ll just continue our long process of bleeding out under the Liberals being alternated with the tourniquet of the Conservatives.

Indeed, we lack even the hope of other endangered lands – such as France – that we might, in an hour of supreme emergency, turn back to other, darker traditions. We are already too weak and divided for that. Instead, our hopes must rest upon events – that some event or individual will bring about an awakening in this country which may once again give us the hope of brighter days.

McCain: 313, Obama: 230

Adam Yoshida — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 02:40:00 +0000

I’ve updated my chart with a raft of new polls. We end up with the lead changing in just two states – New York and New Mexico. New York, of course, was probably to be expected.

The new batch of polls – including the Massachusetts one I already discussed – provide further proof of the emerging trend that I was talking about earlier. Namely – Obama appears to be doing better-than-expected in affluent and mostly-white states. I don’t think (barring a national landslide) that McCain will take from him many of the states that a “moderate” Republican might have expected to put into play – states in the Pacific Northwest and Upper Midwest. He might lose a state or two in the Southwest as well.

However, Obama continues to show a fascinating degree of weakness in the Rust Belt, the Mid-Atlantic States, and even in parts of New England. Interestingly, he’s also weak in the areas where the Democrats have gone looking for gains in recent years – in the Border States and the Upper South. There’s absolutely no chance, looking at the polls, that he’ll take Virginia, West Virginia, or Tennessee – all states that the Democrats have considered to be targets or possible targets in recent races.

As I’ve said in the past, I think that Obama is going to lose by a fairly big margin – and I think that the media is going to miss it for a long, long time. His problem, one amplified by the debate last night, is that he’s culturally alien to the great silent majority of Americans.

In places with a lot of “educated” (scare quotes used advisedly) voters, a man named Barack Hussein Obama who seems more a citizen of the world than of America might well be seen as transgressive and innovative. But, in the rest of the country, he – and his increasingly cult-like followers – look like Visigoths.

And, yes, there’s probably a racial factor here. That’s regrettable, but it’s also reality. The truth – pointed out during the early primaries but carried over to today, is that Obama seems to do well in two kinds of areas:

a) Places with a large black population (a factor which doesn’t matter nearly so much in a General Election since the black vote is already a bloc vote there).

b) Places which have very few black people.

Mixed places – like the big coastal and industrial states – seem to be troublesome for Obama.

Looking at the numbers – and seeing no fundamental shift from 2004 – we’re faced with a fixed reality. The Democrats have to win Ohio and every single other state that they won in 2004 in order to win in 2008. If they lose Michigan, which seems quite possible, then they have to win Ohio, Colorado, New Mexico, and Nevada – and hold every single other state they won in 2004. The math is much more problematic for the Democrats than for the Republicans at this point.

Right now Obama is underperforming in Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, California, and Pennsylvania. He’s actually losing the latter. A Democrat who loses even one of those states cannot possibly win a Presidential election at this point in history.

The shape of the battlefield for the Democrats is very grim. The “50 State Strategy” that the nutroots and Howard Dean forced on the DNC is plainly a bust. There’s no chance of the Democrats winning even a single state that Bush carried by more than a few points in 2004. All of those resources that were thrown into Deep Red states have been wasted. Florida is off the table. Many of the other target states from 2004 and 2000 – Louisiana, Arkansas, Tennessee, West Virginia, Virginia, North Carolina – are off the table. They have been reduced to a single path to victory – win Ohio and hold everything else. Anything else is going to end in their defeat.

McCain, on the other hand, has many paths of victory. At a minimum, he can win by winning every Bush state except for Ohio – but winning New Hampshire. Or Michigan. Or Pennsylvania. Or New Jersey. Or New York. Or Massachusetts. Or California. The last three are less realistic, but possible at this point in time.

When you consider what lies ahead for the Democrats, it’s perhaps even worse for them than it sounds.

If Hillary wins Pennsylvania big – and every sign points to yet on that score now – there’s no way she’s getting out before the convention. The Barone scenario, where she wins the popular vote, now appears quite possible. They’re going to spend all of their money and time up until then shredding eachother.

I don’t think that Hillary will win the nomination. But, I do think that she’s going to destroy Obama. One disclosure after another thrown at him for months. Racial and gender animosities pitched to new levels of fury.

If I were a Democrat, I’d be thinking about a third candidate. Not, I should add, that I think that a third candidate – foisted on a reluctant party at the last minute – would have more than a 25% chance of winning. But, I think that the Democrats have to begin considering what a broad national GOP victory – with a strong performance in a number of deep blue states – means for their Congressional delegations.

Could McCain Win Massachusetts?

Adam Yoshida — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 01:59:00 +0000

Over at RealClearPolitics Anil Adyanthaya poses a question that I’ve been musing on – can John McCain win Massachusetts in November? Polling and other indicators suggest that the answer to the question is yes, he can.

A new poll out from SurveyUSA shows the race as Obama 48, McCain 46. I don’t think that this is an outlier. The last poll featured them tied 47-47. As well, the Clinton-McCain numbers show Clinton ahead by a sizable margin.

How do we explain this? Massachusetts, after all, is among the deepest of deep blue states. Hell, it was the only state to vote for McGovern.

Part of it, of course, is probably McCain’s appeal to independents. Part of it might well also be a gradual shift in the states. Bush performed better there in 2004, especially given Kerry’s home-field advantage, than most people thought he would. The GOP did well in a special election there last year.

And it’s not an impossible place for Republicans. It elected mostly Republican Governors over the last two decades – and Reagan won it twice.

Indeed, look at the Governor’s office for a reason for this. In 2006 the Democrats elected a black man full of hopeful words and not much else. He’s proven to be a disaster in office – with a negative approval rating. Perhaps that makes residents of the Bay State immune to Obama’s peculiar charms.

There’s another thing to think about. If John McCain can win Massachusetts – or even win close to 50% of the vote, he might well knock down John Kerry who, even in this very liberal states, has never been a popular Senator and who will probably be facing Jim Ogonowski, who ran that strong House race I mentioned earlier.

The State of the Race: The Culture War (April 13, 2008)

Adam Yoshida — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 02:57:00 +0000

I’ve begun a new chart – which I intend to maintain for the rest of the Election.

As I’ve been saying in the past, I don’t think that the national polls and the state polls are really in synch this year. I think that, on the ground level, we’re beginning to see signs of the Dukakis transformation which Obama is undergoing.

So, what I’ve done, is to track and consolidate the single most recent poll from every single state. The only entity that I’m missing is the District of Columbia which, in any case, is going to vote for Obama.

You can find the chart here. I’ll be updating it regularly – and providing new commentary on it.

So, what does this chart tell us today? I wouldn’t pay attention to the top-line numbers. Yes, McCain’s ahead 339-204, but those numbers (on both sides) are built on some interesting polls. For example, according to the most recent state polling, Obama is winning North Dakota and McCain is winning New York. I don’t think that either outcome is very likely. Indeed, the March 6th SurveyUSA polls which are the most recent for a number of the states less likely to be contested seem somewhat dubious to me. Also, it’s worth noting that I’ve decided to award ties to whichever party won in 2004.

But, here’s what the polls tell us.

First of all – they all but rule out the “transformational election” scenario for Obama. Obama’s chances of winning depend upon a narrow band of states. In order to win, Obama has to win at least eighteen Electoral Votes that Bush won in 2004 – and to hold on to every single state that John Kerry won. This is going to be an extremely difficult task.

The standard scenario for the Democrats is to hold the Kerry states and then to win Ohio. But this scenario is harder than it appears from the outside. Obama has led McCain in just one Ohio poll in two months – and then by a single point. There’s a reason why Obama was thumped by Clinton there, after all.

Looking across the map, Ohio appears to be the only large state which Obama has a chance of winning away from the Republicans. While polls in North Carolina are tied at the moment, McCain has held a lead there in most other polls. The current poll is likely influenced by the heavy one-sided Obama advertising barrage in the state which is tied to the upcoming primary. The effect will fade.

Beyond that, the Red States where Obama looks like he can win are all smaller: New Mexico, Nevada, Colorado, and the like. But he would have to win all three of those states and hold on to every other Kerry vote in order to win (by a single electoral vote).

The problem is that Obama tends to perform best in regions of the country where he’s already going to win (the most progressive parts of New England, the Northwest, and mostly-white Deep Red states where Democrats tend to be affluent and upscale). In contrast, the area where he is underperforming is in what might be called “Old America.” Current polls have McCain winning in Michigan, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and New York. They have him within the margin of error in New Jersey and, of all places, Massachusetts.

McCain is winning by very large margins in Red States which the Democrats have long believed to be potential battlegrounds – Virginia, Tennessee, West Virginia, Louisiana, and Missouri.

Ignore the exact numbers. They’re probably not very relevant. Instead, look at the broader picture that they paint – and what they suggest about Obama’s recent “small towns” comments.

Obama performs better than expected in places which might be described as culturally “modern.” In many ways, he’s well-suited to somewhere like Nevada – a place which is multi-cultural in a friendly and harmless sort of way. But, these numbers – and the states which he is losing – point towards a persistent level of opposition to Obama among working class “Reagan Democrats” in the Rust Belt and Mid-Atlantic states. This is an important trend to note because the sorts of people who are being swept up in it are the sort of people who the media ignores or patronizes. They’re also the people who Obama just insulted.

I believe that this reinforces what I said yesterday: when you have polls showing the Republican in the lead in New York (and one which showed him tied in Massachusetts) the Democrats have a very serious problem. I believe that Obama is going to lose, that he is going to lose big, and that the media is going to miss it – possibly until the very last moment due to the Pauline Kael syndrome (“I can’t believe it! I don’t know anyone who voted for Nixon”). When it’s over, they’ll blame it on American racism.

The core problem that Obama has – and the one which has been amplified by Wright and the “Small Town” fiasco – is that he is culturally alien to traditionalist Americans. I don’t think that it’s a racial thing. Instead, it has far more to do with his name, his upbringing, and the spreading sense that he – in his beliefs and values – is somewhat un-American. In a Los Angeles nightclub, a Chicago City Council meeting, or New York City Boardroom Obama belongs. But, in the rest of America, they have no idea what a “Community Organizer” does or why service as one should be considered as a virtue. In the rest of America, they have no idea why a Vice-President for “Community Affairs” of a hospital should be paid a third of a million dollars a year, as Michelle Obama was. In elite communities they hear “God Damn America” and make excuses for it. In the rest of the country, they see something threatening, menacing.

Indeed, the end result is going to surprise a lot of people – since most Republican pundits and experts come from the same elite communities as the Democrats do and, deep down, they often share many of their post-national assumptions and values. Like the Democrats, a lot of them condescend to the rest of the country.

World Peace Journey Ends in Brutal Murder

Adam Yoshida — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 06:36:00 +0000

This story illustrates pretty well the fundamental dangers posed by the basic stupidity and naivete of the left.

In short - European woman goes on a journey with the explicit purpose of demonstrating the goodness of mankind and is promptly murdered. It would be funny if it wasn't so sad.

Ok. Ok. It's still a little funny. I'm pretty sure we're looking at a Darwin Award winner here.

Hero v. Emo – It’s No Contest

Adam Yoshida — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 06:25:00 +0000

Noon – January 20th, 2009:

CHIEF JUSTICE ROBERTS: Please raise your right hand, place your left hand on the Bible, and repeat after me. I, John Sidney McCain, do solemnly swear…

Yeah, get ready for it – barring catastrophe (possible, always, I’ll admit) John McCain is going to be the 44th President of the United States. I said it last year, when all hope seemed to be lost, and I’m going to repeat it again now. So far as anything in politics is a certainty this is one.

How can it be? Doesn’t everyone hate George Bush? Isn’t the economy going into the tank? Isn’t Barack Hussein Obama the Messiah? The short answer is this: don’t believe everything that you read, see, or hear.

It didn’t have to be this way, of course. We just have to cross ourselves and thank the Lord that the average Democratic primary voter is colossally stupid.

Let’s begin with a basic fact.

There have been ten Presidential elections in the last forty years. The Democrats have won three of them. They won under the following circumstances:

1976: Watergate, “newcomer” Democratic nominee, slightly inept Republican President.

1992: 1990’s recession. “Young” Democratic nominee. End of Cold War takes foreign policy off the table. Major third party challenge.

1996: Beginning of economic boom (much-hyped by the media). Terrible Republican nominee and strategy. Overreaching by new GOP Congress.

In other words, Democrats have only taken the White House when several major factors have been working in their favour. On these grounds alone, 2008 ought to be an auspicious year for them. Until we consider another factor.

Of the seven Presidents in the last forty years, only two have been Democrats. And those Democrats were both Southern Governors who went to great lengths to project a moderate image and remain in the cultural mainstream.

As a side note, in those forty years, the Democrats have followed this formula twice in a contested primary race and won both times. In other words – in this the Democrats have found a sound and winning strategy that manages to reverse the slightly Republican tilt of the nation at the Presidential level by peeling off enough culturally conservative (but otherwise liberal or moderate) voters to put themselves over the top.

If the Democrats had followed that formula this time and nominated, say, Governor Brad Henry of Oklahoma or Phil Bredesen of Tennessee, this race would already have been decided in their favour. Instead, however, the deranged and hyper-liberal Democratic base insists upon a nominee that meets with their unconditional approval. Thus, as a result, we end up with a Democratic race for the nomination that drives their party to the ideological fringe – sort of like what would happen if the Republican nomination was decided by a Free Republic poll.

Senator Obama – who is going to be the Democratic nominee at this point – was voted the single most liberal member of the Senate. And, it should be noted, he’s been far more moderate as a national figure than he was in the past.

Let’s think past the hype and the ranting of Barack Hussein Obama’s cult of personality and consider it. The Democrats are about to nominate for President – against a war hero popularly known as the most respected Republican moderate in the country – an ultra-liberal black Senator who has served barely half a term and whose highest experience prior that was as a member of the Illinois State Senate.

Think about that for a second.

This is going to be one of those things which are much clearer in retrospect – and awfully hard to explain to people who weren’t there at the time.

What about money and turn-out? We keep on hearing that the Democrats are having record turn-out and that they’re raising so much more money than the Republicans. Both of these things are true. But, again, you have to step back and think about it.

The fact that Senator McCain doesn’t inspire a large segment of the Republican base is a virtue in a General Election. Those voters, who represent a very small share of the actual electorate but a disproportionate share of Republican Primary voters, are a drag on a national ticket. Plenty of people who are natural Republicans on taxes, spending, and national defense refuse to vote for the GOP because they believe that most Republicans are theocrats who’ve just stepped out a Margaret Atwood novel. The idea that members of the religious right are automatons under the influence of their zealot leaders is a stupid myth – most members of the religious right will vote for Senator McCain as the lesser evil. Those few that won’t – and will loudly proclaim their unwillingness – will surely belong to the most odious components of our coalition. For the most part, they won’t be missed.

More to the point – if the Republican Presidential Primary had been a contest between Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter it would have attracted record numbers of voters to the polls as well. That would hardly be a sign of health. Indeed, in general, it’s fair to say that the more taken the base of a party is with a candidate, the more difficult road that the party will have to follow in a General Election.

After all, thinking back, the only Presidential candidate of the modern era who truly excited party activists and regulars was Ronald Reagan – and it took something approaching a perfect storm to get him elected.

Sometimes smarter Democrats, in attempting to justify their leftist v. leftist race, argue that the conventional rules don’t apply because this election offers an opportunity for a realignment. They point to the then widely-held belief that Reagan was unelectable and his subsequent landslide victory. What they forget is that Reagan won against President Carter – and that his win was a closer-run thing than is now remembered. If he’d been facing a popular moderate Democrat with some distance from the Carter Administration (though I struggle to think of a name at the moment), he probably would have lost.

As to the money issue – what money? Reports are that Obama is outspending Hillary at a significant rate in Pennsylvania. The odds are that the money is going out as soon as it’s coming in. Poorly-managed Presidential campaigns (and both the Clinton and Obama campaigns appear to fall into that category) blow their money faster than Michael Jackson. Do you really think, after a race that lasts until June or even into August, there’s going to be much more in that well to tap?

And, in any case, as we’ve already seen, in the Dean campaign and the Paul campaign, how these campaigns can raise bucket-loads of money and then spend it all without visible effect. If you want a good demonstration of that, compare the Romney and Huckabee campaigns this year. As old-fashioned advertising has lost its power, most fundraising and ad campaigns have become little more than an exercise in genital measurement. In 2004, the few million dollars spent by the Swift Boat Vets had many times the effect of the hundreds of millions spent by the Democratic 527’s. People have short attention spans. They tune out saturation-level advertising. The only time that we’ve seen ads move numbers in this whole election cycle has been during one-sided media wars relating to an upcoming primary

Not only is McCain going to win – I suspect that he’s going to win big. Perhaps by up to ten points. Indeed, the major effect of the various anti-Republican factors will be to reduce Obama’s defeat from McGovern or Mondale-sized to merely Dukakis-sized. For God’s sake, it’s April and we have polls showing McCain winning in New York.

Dukakis-Bush is actually a good campaign to study for reference because it provides a very good guide for how Barack Obama is going to be destroyed (indeed, is being destroyed) by the Republican attack machine. Forget the Moslem stuff. Forget also, though I think that it’s very revealing, the Red past of his parents. Instead, consider the narrative that’s being written.

We begin with a candidate with a foreign-sounding name. I regret that that will raise some eyebrows, given my own name, but it does. We add in, merely as background material, the rumours about his past.

Now we add to that the “God Damn America” stuff. Powerful, damning stuff. It was the first serious blow inflicted upon Obama.

Pile onto that the “small-town Americans are bitter, bigoted, religious morons” comment. A picture begins to emerge.

What is that picture? It’s one of a man who is vaguely un-American. Elite, effete, and unpatriotic. It is indelible and will leave upon him a stench like that of a month-old corpse in a Baltimore basement.

It’s just the beginning. Obama’s background must be full of this stuff. His mostly-unexplored past is full of radicalism and ties to anti-American individuals and organizations. This is going to be a drip-drip-drip process which last for six months. It will destroy the man.

Indeed, if one wants to understand how this is going to play out – and why – I recommend that you read both Senator McCain’s book “Faith of My Fathers” and Senator Obama’s book “Dreams from My Father.” The former is the rousing memoir of a happy warrior, recounting how (combined) his Grandfather, his father, and himself served in three different wars – and doing so with good humour and grace. In contrast, Senator Obama’s book is a catalogue of the frustrations and resentments of a racially-confused man who was abandoned both of his parents.

In the end, this race is hero v. emo. It’s no contest.

Test

Adam Yoshida — Sat, 12 Apr 2008 05:59:00 +0000

Folow this

The Hunger Opportunity

Adam Yoshida — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 01:24:00 +0000

Forget everything that you’ve heard in the last few years about “peak oil”, the credit crunch, and the falling dollar. Instead, I have one word for you: food.

People are finally beginning to wake up to the real crisis: a global food shortage. Already, there are reports of food riots around the world. Nervous governments are imposing restrictions upon the export of food, in the hope of controlling prices and supplies.

It’s just the beginning. Just wait and see how the harvest turns out in the Northern Hemisphere this year and see where food stocks are by the time we hit fall. That’s when the real panic is going to set in.

A few years ago, I remember having a conversation with several people who insisted that the United States was doomed because they “don’t produce anything that anyone wants to buy anymore.” I pointed out that the United States was the world’s leading producer of pretty much every single key foodstuff. “Anyone can grow food,” they replied. “Yeah, we’ll see,” I said. And so we shall.

Of course, people could have produced their own food. But, for various reasons, they didn’t. Instead, they listened to environmentalists who ranted about the dangers of genetically-modified seed. Foolishly (including here in North America) millions of tons of corn were converted to biofuel in order appease both the farm lobby and environmentalist howls. Europe insisted on continuing to lavishly subsidize their inefficient and under-producing farms.

The net result of all of this is that the United States produces 33% of the world’s wheat exports, 12% of its rice exports, nearly 58% of the world’s coarse grains, and 39% of the world’s soybean exports. Oh, yes, and the U.S. also accounts for 24% of the world’s meat production.
If one adds in other Anglosphere nations (mainly Canada and Australia) the Anglosphere accounts for 53% of total global wheat export and 64% of the world’s coarse grain exports.

In other words, when it comes to food, the United States is Saudi Arabia and then some.

The policy implications of this are multi-fold.

First of all, as I’ve already suggested, the connected bubbles that have developed in Gold, Oil, and the Euro, are going to pop. All three have run up, in large measure, as a reaction the decline in the U.S. Dollar. Remember – one of the main reasons for the appreciation in the Canadian Dollar has been the rise in oil prices which, in turn, has been driven (in part) by a decline in the U.S. Dollar. You have all of these forces working in one direction. But they can shift as swiftly as the wind – and will do just that. Food prices soar, therefore people need to buy more U.S. Dollars in order to buy food (especially when higher prices are combined with high demand and lagging production) which, in turn, will set off declines elsewhere. It really is a beautiful system.

Second, it’s clear to me that our politicians are going to have to get to thinking about agriculture – and quickly. It’s the least glamorous and most un-sexy of subjects, I realize. Many of us are pretty far removed from the farm. It’s been at least four generations since anyone in my family was a farmer. I don’t think I’m that rare. All of us are going to have to do some reading on the area.

This second point is especially true since, like most sudden panics, this one has been obviously coming down the road for several years – it’s just that none of us have been paying real attention. The obvious end result of the massive demand for oil and other raw materials – materials being used to produce things in China, India, and elsewhere – was always going to be an increase in the standards of living for people in those lands and the obvious result of a higher standard of living for those people was always going to be them eating more. I attribute the fact that so few of us thought this through until recently (if even by now) to how far we’re removed from rural life. Honestly, I’ve never given much thought to how food gets to the supermarket – I’ll generally skip agricultural stories when reading the business pages.

We need to understand how this works – and quickly – so that we can figure out how to best profit from one of the best opportunities that I’ve seen in years. Think about it – we’re facing a massive global shortage of a universally essential commodity for which not only are we a major supplier but where, in many cases, we already control the majority of the marker and where we have the capacity for further expansion of production which others lack.

For example, it occurs to me that one area where this might obvious effect is the settlement of the illegal immigration question. Don’t get me wrong – I continue to despise illegal immigrants for the reasons that I’ve set out before – but it looks like we might be soon facing an all-hands-on-deck situation so far as agricultural labor is concerned. Perhaps this will be the time to hurry some sort of guest worker program into being. After all, someone’s going to need to harvest all of those crops – and it’s sure not going to be me (and probably not 99%+ of you folks, either).

As well, at first blush, we might also reconsider our biofuel policy, since it consumes valuable grains. On the other hand, we might well choose to maintain (or even increase) that policy since there’s always going to be more than enough food in North America and continuing to divert all of that corn to Ethanol production will constrict global supplies and, therefore, increase prices.

This is not going to be a quick crisis. Food production is limited not only by land – but also by equipment, manpower, and other materials. You can’t turn people into farmers overnight. Indeed, in general, history shows that it’s pretty hard to turn people into farmers in any case. As the dimensions of this crisis become clearer, we’re going to have all sorts of frantic attempts to respond put into practice and most of them are going to fail because most of them are going to be conceived and implemented by New Class global elite types who are at least as far removed from the farm as I am.

If you think I sound slightly amused by this, that’s because I am. In their haste to run American down, a lot of people forgot that America just happens to feed most of the world. In their haughty rejection of genetically-modified foods, environmentalists forgot that, in the end, people were going to have to be fed from somewhere. Other governments which adopted unwise policies such as land redistribution or enacted lavish subsidies which denuded production are going to pay too. Proof, perhaps, that there is a God.s

Tom Lukiwski: Two Words, Seven Letters

Adam Yoshida — Sat, 05 Apr 2008 22:36:00 +0000

After watching all of the nonsense over Tom Lukiwski's seventeen year-old comments, my entire response is two words and seven letters long. I'll let you guess at what that is, since this is a family blog.

For some reason, this video seems appropriate

Seriously, folks.

It was seventeen years ago. Anyone who has watched the video can clearly see that it was in jest. Are the lives of the Canadian left really so empty that they can be so agitated about something that an MP that I never even heard of before the day before yesterday said nearly two decades ago, beer in hand - seemingly in good humour?
Get a life, people.

The Year Zero Problem

Adam Yoshida — Sat, 05 Apr 2008 02:43:00 +0000

Personally, I don’t have any real problem with drug legalization – in general, most morals legislation (drug and alcohol prohibition, anti-gambling laws, prostitution laws, and so forth) is a hangover from the 19th and early 20th Century progressives, of whom I am not particularly fond in any case.

The problem that I have with drug legalization TODAY is what I like to call the “Year Zero Problem.”

Put simply, I think that if we were to ONLY legalize drugs today – while leaving all other elements of our present social, political, and economic arrangements intact – it would be a fiasco. We’d have human rights tribunals ruling that drug abuse is a human right (see the case of the man hauled before the tribunal for telling someone not to smoke pot in front of his bar), we’d be forced – especially now that drug use was legal – to expand social spending to cope with its consequences. Especially since, of course, we wouldn’t have nearly so many options for putting drug users in jail then. More than that, drugs are at least as destructive to human health as tobacco – the only way that people who produced drugs would be able to stay in business would be if we provided them with total immunity from lawsuits. What do you think that a contemporary jury would award to the family of a sympathetic former honour-student who died of a Heroin overdose if there was some big, evil corporation that a lawyer could point to and excoriate?

The problem with most libertarian solutions is that they require something like a clean slate to be implemented. One cannot get rid of large-scale social programs (on a permanent basis, at any rate) without first ensuring that people have the tools to survive without them. You can’t transform the currency, banking, and trade systems without first untangling the existing mess. You can’t legalize drugs without a civil society which is strong enough to control the results.

Too many libertarians think that we can simply declare it to be Year Zero and that we’d suddenly rediscover self-reliance and full individual liberty. I think that’s a grossly optimistic assessment. I think that, in reality, most people would end up like those people in the Ghetto after the 1992 LA Riots, lined up in front of the destroyed post office waiting for welfare cheques which weren’t coming that week. Or like the people in the path of Hurricane Katrina who just sat there and waited for the government to help them.

And even if you are as cold-blooded as I am accused of being and dismiss such people as simply the collateral damage in the course of the construction of paradise (an attitude which inches dangerously close to Whittaker Chambers’ comment that, “From almost any page of Atlas Shrugged, a voice can be heard, from painful necessity, commanding: "To a gas chamber — go!"), do you really believe that our fellow citizens feel the same way? The result of a botched attempt at libertarianism is likely to be more socialism, not less.

Say, by magic, Ron Paul were to be elected President of the United States and to, by some further magic, do away with the Federal Reserve and then return to some form of the Gold Standard? What do you think happens next? Those who’ve thought beyond that know what happens next: next there’s a global depression, because the reforms implemented – whatever their merits – have just destroyed the entire world financial and banking systems.

The end result of Ron Paul – or anyone else with similar views – ever getting power would be the exact reverse of the desired result since a reform as radical as what he and his friends propose would result in an economic collapse and catastrophe so severe that the other side would take power with a vengeance.

Indeed, for my libertarian friends, I would suggest to you that that is the implication of what Ms. Rand writes in Atlas Shrugged. Rand wants to turn the clock back to the imagined Garden of Eden which existed before socialism, and she proposes to do that by triggering the collapse of the socialistic society which she imagines. Note that her heroes don’t do it by winning elections or convincing people – they do it by engineering the destruction of society and then afterwards stepping in to rule the remainder of the proles as some kind of technocratic (and thoroughly un-democratic) clique. Call her proposals “Libertarian Fascism” if you will.

In reality, of course, the “looters” and the masses are not nearly so stupid or incompetent as Rand and her modern-day acolytes seem to believe. If given the chance, by the sort of cascading collapse that a shoddy attempt to turn the clock back to year zero would create, they would take charge in an instant – and plenty of people of creativity and industry would be willing to collaborate with them, especially having seen the disorder caused by the alternative.

One also calls to mind Robert Graves’ magnificent books I, Claudius and Claudius the God. In them the reluctant Roman Emperor Claudius wishes to restore the old Republic, only to discover that the Romans themselves – having lived for so long under his own benign tyranny – have no desire to follow him in it. In order to change things, he resolves to restore the Republic through what might be termed a Randian solution – putting Nero and his abominable mother in charge in order that tyranny may burn so hot as to awaken then Roman people in order that Claudius’ son, Britannicus, may return and restore the Republic. The plan fails because even Claudius’ own son has no use for the Republic – he wishes to be Emperor himself. Nero’s tyranny fails to result in the return of the Republic but, instead, leads to his overthrown and the creation of a new line of Caesars who will perpetuate the Empire for centuries more.

Liberty cannot be imposed on a people who don’t want it. Indeed, the result of granting liberty to those who are unprepared for it – those who live, as we do in the West, so far removed from its consequences, is certain to be disaster.

In an ideal world, ending the drug war would eliminate a waste of resources, end the crime that revolves around the drug trade, and help to clean up the streets.

In our world, however, ending the drug war would do none of these things. Legalizing drugs would not end the waste of resources, since we’d have to put more money into social services. It would also probably increase drug use, as the availability of drugs increased and more people tried them.

It won’t even end most of the drug-related crime that plagues us, since most drug crime – and in particular most drug crime which touches you or me – involves property theft to pay for drugs. I doubt, even, if it would put an end to drug trafficking since taxes and regulations are likely to result in legal drug prices higher than street ones – and since legal drugs are likely to be adulterated and of inferior potency when compared with illicit ones.

If we want to turn the clock back to a time of freedom, we have to do it one minute – one second even – at a time. Among the first battles in such a war will be to end the use of our school system as a propaganda conduit for socialism and reforming our social services – especially Medicare – in such a way as to begin to restore the principles of individual responsibility and choice.

Barack Hussein Obama is a Sissy

Adam Yoshida — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 21:37:00 +0000

I'm surprised that the New York Times actually published this revealing story:

Mr. Obama, it turns out, was a weak centrist. His balls rolled down the center of the lane, but much too slowly to knock over more than a half dozen or so pins.

If you can think of a better way to define a Girlie Man, I'd like to hear it.

Earth Hour: My Response

Adam Yoshida — Sat, 29 Mar 2008 22:36:00 +0000

I object to this "Earth Hour" nonsense. I believe it to be fundamentally wrong-headed to begin with, arising from a belief that humanity and human ingenuity is a cause of problems rather than the solution to them, but I particularly object to the coercive and bullying sort of fashion in which the media has covered this event. The obvious implication, of course, in all of this is that if you don't fall in - if you don't accept the socialistic view that we ought to reduce our standard of living rather than improving it through technology (though, I should note, I don't expect that any of the rich backers of this sort of stuff will be reducing their own standard of living anytime soon).

Thus, my response to Earth hour is as follows. When I finish this post, I am going to get into my car and drive first to Bellingham, WA, then to Lynnwood, WA, then possibly to Seattle. Before I leave, I am going to turn on every single light in my apartment (most of which, by the way) are incandescent 100w bulbs. I am also going to leave my television on (though with the volume muted, in a concession to my neighbours) and I am going to leave all three of my computers running, specifically encoding video files.

Yeah, it'll cost me a few bucks. But, frankly, just for the pure joy of going against the grain - and of doing it while it's still legal - I'm going to do it.

Also, while I'm in Washington, I'm going to purchase expensive clothes, doubtlessly produced by Asian child labourers. Needless to say, I feel good right now.

Where Did Ron Paul's Money Go?

Adam Yoshida — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 21:20:00 +0000

If I was a Ron Paul donor, I’d be feeling pretty ripped off these days. Plenty of guys (and they were mostly guys) were wandering around forums bragging about how they were scrimping and saving in order to ship money off to help fund the “Revolution.” While, as I’ve said before, I despise Paul and most of what he stands for, one can’t help but feel a degree of admiration for such ardent enthusiasm. Of course, when you scrimp and save to win, it’s empowering. When you do it to lose every single primary and caucus that you compete in, it’s got to be disheartening.

Some of the people who donated to the Paul campaign are surely wondering what happened to all of that money. Frankly, I’ve been wondering the same thing - $30 Million is a lot of money to blow through without visible effect. Sure, Mitt Romney blew through far more than that – but I saw plenty of evidence of where that money went. I don’t recall a single flashy ad campaign from Paul – certainly none that could have cost even a fraction of that amount.

After a discussion on this the other night, I decided to go and do some digging in Ron Paul’s finance reports. I didn’t expect to find anything too shocking. I figured that, well, the same thing probably happened to Paul as happened to Howard Dean in 2004 – he wasn’t prepared to run a national campaign and, when he did, expenses spiralled out of control, with plenty of unscrupulous consultants cashing in at the expense of a candidate in way over his head and, beyond that, with plenty of money being wasted on essentially improvising a Presidential campaign.
Certainly, there appears to be some of that. A lot of Ron Paul’s advertising dollars went to what seem to be second-tier companies with shoddy websites (something I’ve learned, over the years, is the be suspicious of any company which claims to be a modern firm but which has a website which appears to be at least ten years old).

For example, one wonders what exactly Paul’s donors got for the $120,000 paid to MPrinting Graphics, a firm controlled by Paul’s Congressional campaign manager which doesn’t even appear to have a website, for television advertising production in the week after Super Tuesday. I’m not suggesting that anything illegal or immoral occurred here, of course. One just wonders what ads those paid for and what experience that firm had in the field.

Indeed, paying $162,051 in the space of six days to a business controlled by your Congressional campaign manager in the week after Super Tuesday creates, at the very least, an appearance of impropriety. Especially when one recalls that, between Super Tuesday and the March Texas Primary, there was speculation that Paul was in trouble in his home district.
Nothing illegal about hiring your friends, of course, but one has to wonder how the people who donated money that they needed themselves to Ron Paul because they believed so strongly in the cause feel about their money being spent in such a fashion.

Even more interesting is the $994,339 that the Paul campaign spent – roughly 3.5% of all the money that the Paul campaign spent – at a firm known as “Campaign Marketing Strategies Inc.” based in Alexandria, Virginia. The firm has no website. It appears to have no phone number. I can find no description of what it does. The address provided by the campaign – and in what records of the company I could find – it for what appears to be a private home.
A Campaign Marketing Strategies Inc. was registered in Virginia on July 17th of last year. According to Virginia records, the firm’s registered agent is one “Chris Cupit.” I have no idea if this is the same Chris Cupit who was tied to the 2002 New Hampshire phone jamming scandal – and who was seemingly connected with the Constitution Party's 2004 candidate - but it seems possible.

The money is generically listed as being for “telecommunications” with no further elaboration. The other large expenses made under this heading appear to have been for robo-calling. Though, in the other examples I examined, the companies all had the basics of business – you know, things like offices, phone numbers, web sites, and so forth.

So, what was that $1 Million for? I don’t know. I couldn’t call up Campaign Marketing Strategies Inc. to ask what they do, since they don’t have an office, a web site, an e-mail address, or a phone number.

Now, let’s be very clear – I’m no t suggesting, hinting, or even implying that Ron Paul ran off with the money or that he blew it as a patron of the Emperor’s Club VIP or whatever else. I’m quite convinced that’s not the case. What I’m suggesting is, from a libertarian viewpoint, probably worse: I’m suggesting that he squandered it.
Caveat emptor, as the Romans used to say.

Paul’s personal history – marketing ghost-written ultra-right newsletters whose contents he disavowed as soon as they became inconvenient – ought to have been taken as a sign by his supporters. First, that he’s not a man above attempting to enrich himself through populist opportunism. Second, that someone whose entire life up until this point was strictly small-time might not be up to the challenge of effectively managing tens of millions of dollars.

Where did the money go? It evaporated. Some of it went to his friends. The rest of it – most of it probably – went to smooth-talking consultants who bamboozled him as effectively as Lyle Lanley did when he sold the people of Springfield a used Monorail.

None Dare Call it Treason

Adam Yoshida — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 02:36:00 +0000

The sad part is that today's news that a 2002 trip to Baghdad by three Democratic Congressman was paid for by Saddam Hussein is hardly a surprise to anyone with more than a third of a brain. There's a reason why I casually - but justifiably - refer to the Democrat Party as "the party of treason."

After all, seriously, how long has it been since the left was on our side in a major international conflict? They're not on our side in the present war. They weren't during the Gulf War. They certainly weren't during the later half of the Cold War.
The moderate left was onside for the World Wars and the first half of the Cold War - until they bailed and/or were annexed by the far-left. But the far left, well, I think you'd have to go back to the Second World War to find a time when they didn't take the side of our enemies during a dispute. And that, I submit to you, is directly correlated to the fact that we were allied with the USSR during that conflict.

I'm not suggesting, even that these Democratic Congressmen were actually knowingly in the pay of Saddam Hussein. He was a practical man. Why would he have paid them for what they were clearly willing to give away for free? The left, for reasons which can only be described as psychologically demented, has been whoring itself out to anyone who wants to weaken, kill, or destroy us for as long as anyone reading this has been alive.

These three were, like most Democrats, against America by default. I believe them when they say that they didn't think much at all about where the money was coming from. After all - the shadowy agent of Saddam they were dealing with was on the same side as them. One doesn't ask too many questions of friends. In any case, I'm sure the left will claim that there's nothing to see here. It's certainly not something to get worked up about, like oil companies paying for research into oil!
The same, of course, applies to this country as well. The late, great James Jesus Angleton thought that Lester Pearson and Pierre Trudeau were Soviet agents. Well, I don't know if that's true - but I do know that they couldn't have done much more damage if they were. They destroyed our culture. They gutted our military. They shackled our economy. Whatever else they were, they were wreckers.

One wonders if we - or the Americans - will ever awake to the dangers of the enemy within.

Is Obama a Foreign Citizen?

Adam Yoshida — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 17:04:00 +0000

Over at the National Review, Jim Geraghty wonders, given that passport records don't contain travel records, just what the people snooping in Obama's file were looking for.

Let me offer a suggestion.

Obama was born on August 4th, 1961 - before Kenya became an independent nation. However, when Kenya became independent two years later the Kenyan Constitution provided the following:

Every person who, having been born outside Kenya. is on llth December, 1963 a citizen of the United Kingdom and Colonies or a British protected person shall. if his father becomes. or would but for his death have become, a citizen of Kenya by virtue of subsection (1). become a citizen of Kenya on 12th December. 1963.

In plainer English, it's quite possible that Obama acquired Kenyan Citizenship at birth. More than that, I've been wondering - and it's possible that the people who were looking at these files were wondering the same thing - how Obama travelled to Kenya in the late 1980's.

Kenya isn't a Visa Waiver country now, and I doubt if it was in 1988. Presumably, as is the case in any other country, he'd have had to go to the Kenyan Embassy or consulate for a Visa to travel. However, I imagine that it's quite possible that, once there, he might have had a conversation with the consular official which went something like this:

OFFICIAL: Why do you want to travel to Kenya?

OBAMA: My father was Kenyan. I want to go and visit his family and see where I came from.

OFFICIAL: Oh. You don't need a Visa then. Do you have your birth certificate?
(Obama hands it over)

OFFICIAL (Con't): Yes, yes. If your father was Kenyan, then you're a citizen as well.

OBAMA: Really? Neato.

But, if you add to that, there's actually another potential issue here.
In what status did the "Barry Soetoro" of the late 1960's and early 1970's reside in Indonesia? I can't find an exact copy of the 1958 Indonesian Nationality Law online, but a brief review suggests that it's possible, especially given that Obama's step-father was an Indonesian government official, that Obama might have taken Indonesian nationality.

After all, if one reads about his background, it seems to be fairly clear that his stay in Indonesia (where he attended local schools and was taught in the local language) was intended to be permanent.

Obama: Typical Whites Are Racist

Adam Yoshida — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 00:58:00 +0000

So, some people were upset because, the other day, Obama essentially claimed that his Grandmother being afraid of an aggressive black panhandler and the deranged ravings of the Rev. Wright were morally equivalent. Now, trying to back-pedal from that position, he's said something far, far dumber than that.

He said that the point he was making, in drawing such a comparison, is that his Grandmother is a "typical white person." To be clear, here's what he said about his Grandmother (who, by the way, raised him and is still alive). He described her as:

...a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe.

In other words, in Obama's world, all white people are afraid of black people and go around spitting out ethnic and racial stereotypes. Good to know.

Obama's Mother and Father Met in Russian Class

Adam Yoshida — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 06:11:00 +0000

An interesting tidbit from this article in The New York Times:

In a Russian class at the University of Hawaii, she met the college’s first African student, Barack Obama.

While, of course, plenty of people have learned Russian over the years - and it's a fine language - surely I'm not the only one who finds it interesting that a woman described as a "fellow traveller" met a member of a communist-inspired movement in a Russian class in 1960?

Elsewhere, the Times describes her as an "idealist" and a friend describes her as someone who, "cared about the core issues" and, "was not afraid to speak truth to power." Euphemisms like that can only be hiding a red-tinged past for Senator Obama.

What's Next on Wright?

Adam Yoshida — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 03:45:00 +0000

Over at the Campaign Spot, Jim Geraghty quotes a Republican source as speculating that there's more to come on the Jeremiah Wright front:

One Republican strategist told me this afternoon he cannot imagine that the Clinton camp doesn't already have something in this vein. This strategist is speculating, but he's been around the block a few times

I agree. Not for anything that I know - as my critics will attest to, I don't know very much - but because Obama just appeared in person on MSNBC, CNN, and Fox News in the space of three hours. Presidential campaigns time media appearances carefully - and conduct themselves in a certain way. You don't throw your guy on all three cable news networks on a moment's notice on a Friday night unless you're in something approaching a blind panic.

Though, I don't think that Hillary even needs more footage of Obama at these services to stick the knife in. Imagine the following ad, perhaps coming from a 527:

FADE IN: A frozen image of Jeremiah Wright speaking.

NARRATOR: Jeremiah Wright has been Barack Obama's pastor and mentor for two decades.

(The image begins moving)

WRIGHT: No! No! No! Not "God Bless America" - God Damn America!

CUT TO: A still black and white image of Barack Obama in a happy pose, seated. The camera zooms in.

NARRATOR: Obama was married by Wright. His children were baptized by him. He has attended his church regularly for twenty years. The title of his second book is a quote of Wright's.

CUT TO: Wright, speaking.

WRIGHT: ...for killing innocent people, God Damn America!

CUT TO: The same picture of Barack Obama.

NARRATOR: God Bless America or God Damn America: Your Choice.

(Quickly) Paid for by (name of random 527)

For that matter, given that there are apparently DVD's of this stuff, they don't need to find Obama in the crowd the day when Wright shrieks "God Damn America" - they just need to find him somewhere and splice the footage together. After all, it'll keep the story in the news and, though they'd be sputtering with rage, what are Obama's supporters going to say?

"Hey, that's not fair! Obama wasn't there the day that he screamed "God Damn America" - he was just there all of the other days that he shouted racist lies. Oh, and he gave him $25,000 the other year. But that's it."

Can We Trust Obama?

Adam Yoshida — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 07:57:00 +0000

Shall we take this moment to take stock of the evidence that Barack Hussein Obama is, in some fashion, fundamentally anti-American and therefore a threat to the people of the Western world?

Let's briefly review what we know about Barack Hussein Obama.

1) He was raised by a mother who was described by her own friends as a "fellow traveller" and who expatriated herself and would later, when asked by her husband to go to business functions in Indonesia where Americans would be President, angrily denied that they were "her people."

2) Frank Marshall Davis, who Obama describes as a mentor in his autobiography was a member of the Communist Party.

3) Obama refuses to wear a flag pin because, he claims, true patriotism consists of opposing the Iraq War. The colliery to this, of course, is that Obama must therefore believe that people who support the war are not "true patriots" a position which is, to say the least, odd.

4) One of Obama's friends is William Ayers, a man who unsuccessfully attempted to blow up an Army dance and, when asked about this terrorist activities after September 11th, said, "I don't regret setting bombs; I feel we didn't do enough."

5) His wife infamously recently claimed that the fact that her husband was doing well in the Presidential election made her feel proud of America for the first time in her adult life.

6) He belongs to a radical Church whose Pastor - a man who he is close to and who provided the title of his second book - says that we should sing "God Damn America" instead of "God Bless America" and says that American got what it deserved on September 11th.

All of this, I should add, is leaving aside the Moslem issue, his connections with radical Palestinians, and so forth. I'm not even getting into the Islamic doctrine of al-Taqiyya, which permits the faithful to conceal their true faith from infidels. I am simply offering facts here, not suppositions.

What do we know, then, about Barack Hussein Obama?

We know that he's the child of a mother with radical and seeming anti-American views. He was mentored by a communist and claims that "true patriotism" consists of trying to ensure that America loses wars. He likes to hang around with unrepentant terrorists. His wife has never been proud of American in her whole adult life. The man who married him, whose Church he has attended for two decades, and who baptized his children hates America.

Can we trust this man to defend our civilization? Should we?

Ferraro Was Right

Adam Yoshida — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 04:57:00 +0000

While some might say that it takes one affirmative action candidate to know another, I don't see how there's any denying that Geraldine Ferraro was absolutely right when she said that Barack Hussein Obama is where he is today more or less entirely because of his race.

Let's get real for a minute here, folks. Do you really think that, if instead of Barack Hussein Obama, he was Barry Harold O'Brien he would even be a United States Senator, let alone a candidate for the Presidency?

Hell, do you think that - if he was a white Irish-American - Obama would have been the President of the Harvard Law Review? Who knows? I certainly don't. His sterling record of legal accomplishment doesn't exactly suggest that he was one of the nation's outstanding legal minds - surely a prerequisite for being the President of the Harvard Law Review most of the time, other factors notwithstanding.

It's a question worth asking, given how little Obama has actually accomplished. His career is mostly an extended list of places that he's been - it's very light on the things that he's actually done.

Indeed, read closely, Obama's entire career path seems to have been paved by his living his life surrounded by guilty white liberals who, like his supporters today, are enchanted by the idea of Obama as a refined black man. I'm free to note this on the grounds that I am not guilty, white, or liberal.

Leave aside his Red past. Leave aside the Moslem issue. Leave aside his radical liberalism. Leave aside his relative inexperience. The core question, which Ferraro was groping towards but couldn't quite ask is this: can America (and the world!) afford an affirmative action President?

L’Affaire Cadman: A Theory of How it Went Down

Adam Yoshida — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 06:26:00 +0000

After a week of careful reading, I have a pretty good theory as to the exact origins of the Chuck Cadman “bribe.” It’s going to take a few steps, so read carefully. Imagine this, if you’d like, as being kind of like the ending of one of those Jerry Bruckheimer crime dramas that the public adores for some bizarre reason – flashing to differently-lit moments from the past.

Let’s begin with an agreed summary of the facts.

1) Before he died, Chuck Cadman told his wife, his daughter, and his son-in-law that he was offered a $1 Million life insurance policy as a “bribe” for him voting to bring down the Liberal Government of Paul Martin.

2) On May 19th, 2005 two individuals, Doug Finley and Tom Flanagan, met with Cadman to discuss obtaining his vote for the no-confidence motion against the Liberal Government.

3) The Prime Minister has stated (and Liberals have seized upon him for stating) that an offer was made to Cadman to, “replace financial considerations he might lose due to an election.”

These are universally agreed-upon facts. Stripped of context – or twisted by those with a partisan agenda – they can be slanted to sound absolutely damning (well, depending upon your view of the world). However, once we inject two other very relevant facts into the conversation, a very different picture begins to emerge.

First – no insurance company was going to write a life insurance policy for Chuck Cadman on 19 May. The premiums for a $1 Million policy for a man with terminal cancer would be in excess of $1 Million, due upon signature of the documents.

Yet, all of the reports of what Cadman said have been very specific. He claimed that he was offered a life insurance policy as a “bribe.” He – and every other statement made – has been very particular on that point. This makes no sense at all. The whole idea of a bribe is that it should be untraceable. Yet, as anyone with even a passing familiarity with insurance ought to know, a life insurance policy – especially one with odd conditions – is the exact opposite of that. It must be thoroughly documented. In triplicate. Backed up on tape drives. With multiple signatures. Bribing someone with an insurance policy would be the white collar equivalent of the criminal trying to run away from the police in the night wearing those sneakers with blinking red lights.

The second fact – about which the media and the government have been oddly silent – is this: there was a large and pre-existing insurance policy which was in play at the time.

As a Member of Parliament, Cadman would have been entitled to a death benefit equal to two years salary – for an MP an amount which would be in the range of over $300,000. Indeed, since Cadman eventually did die in office, it stands to reason that his family did receive that money. It was remarked upon at the time as a reason why Cadman, knowing he didn’t have long to live, might have voted to preserve a government he had so long opposed – to keep that death benefit for his family.

Ralph Goodale has suggested that perhaps the offer to Cadman was to cover the difference between what he’d get in death benefits as an MP or as a private citizen. I think that, at the very least, he’s closer to the truth than most others have been. But I have a slightly different theory.

Commentators have dismissed as “absurd” the notion that what the Tories offered Cadman was help in running a campaign for re-election. I think that’s probably a mistake – since I believe that it was exactly what Cadman was offered and what he considered to be a “bribe.”

Remember, even in 2005, there were rumours circulating to the effect that Cadman would vote with the Liberals in order to preserve his Parliamentary life insurance. It’s not unthinkable – it’s likely, even, that those rumours would have gotten back to Cadman. It’s also likely – if I heard about them in Coquitlam, British Columbia – that they were all over Ottawa.

Hearing this, Cadman is approached a receives an offer: if he votes to bring down the government, the Tories will ensure that his is easily re-elected to Parliament so that, when the inevitable arrives, he will be able to collect his Parliamentary Death Benefits in full.

Think about it for a second. This is the one way in which everything that everyone has been saying can be taken as basically true. The Tories offer Cadman, as they’ve claimed, election assistance in order to “replace financial considerations he might lose due to an election.” Cadman, on the other hand, is deeply offended by the notion that he would vote to retain a corrupt government in power in order to collect on his Parliamentary life insurance and goes around telling his family that he was offered a life insurance policy as a “bribe.” However, he makes no public statement to this effect for the simple reason that to do so would inject into the public sphere the idea that his vote in favour of the Liberals was a vote to retain his own life insurance benefits.

It all makes sense. The original offer. Cadman’s rejection of it. The later statements made by multiple individuals. Then, once the story falls into the hands of other people, it’s transformed into a weapon to be used against the government.

Who Were Those "Gringos"?

Adam Yoshida — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 04:54:00 +0000

Over at the Campaign Spot, the most bizarre news yet to come from the South American crisis.

The following came from a memo recovered from the terrorist leader that the Colombian military killed in Ecuador:

The gringos called for a meeting with the minister to ask him to tell us they are interested in talking about several topics. They claim they new president in their country will be Obama and that these people are interested in their fellow citizens. Obama will support neither Plan Colombia nor the signature of the Free Trade Agreement.

So, this begs the question - who are these "Gringos" who are dealing with FARC, a terrorist organization, and how do they know (or why do they claim to know) how Obama would act as President?

For some reason, it brings to mind the story of Ron Dellums and Grenada.

Hillary Can Still Win This

Adam Yoshida — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 03:10:00 +0000

Hillary's won Ohio. The networks haven't called it - but it's done. She's going to win there.

Looking at these numbers - the early voting and the exits - I think that she has a good chance at winning Texas. (In the interests of full disclosure: I stand to win $300 on Intrade if Hillary wins Texas).

But, even if she wins both: does she still have a chance?

I think that she does. Going into tonight, Obama has a 113 delegate lead. Coming out - if Hillary wins Ohio by a fair margin and wins Texas, it'll be a sub-100 delegate lead.

So, for the sake of argument - let's say that we come out of tonight with Hillary winning narrowly - 52% of the delegates to 48% for Obama. That means that, after tonight, Obama would have a ninety-nine delegate lead.

After tonight, Obama would then need 455 delegates to win the nomination - Clinton would need 554.

But, after tonight, there are only going to be 611 delegates, in total, left to be elected. In other words, from here, Obama will need 75% of the elected delegates to win. Clinton would need 90%.

It's mathematically impossible for either to win this just through the voters at this point.
Assuming Hillary pulls this out, there's simply no reason for her not to stay in to the bitter end. Especially as the battlefield begins to favour her.

Suppose that Hillary wins narrowly among the remaining primaries (possible, since the primaries are in territory which she ought to do well in - Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Indiana, Puerto Rico). Say 52% to 48%. That would leave the total going into the convention something like Obama 1863, Clinton 1789.

Once again, the conventional wisdom is turned on its head. This is far from Obama's.

The McCain-Obama Race: Trending in the Right Direction

Adam Yoshida — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 09:29:00 +0000

A strange note - the state polls that we see with Obama v. McCain don't seem to mesh with the national polls.

On state polls, we get Obama and McCain tied, or within a few points of eachother. But then we get all of these polls with McCain leading in New Jersey, close in New York, etc.

I'm not sure what to make of that, yet. Though, my gut feeling - beyond simply hope here - is that the state polls probably don't have the funny weighting games going on that the national ones do.

It's notable that Rasmussen, the only ones running a tracking poll, have McCain opening up a five point lead on Obama now.

Like here are some recent state numbers:

New Jersey:
McCain: 45
Obama: 43

Florida:
McCain: 47
Obama: 37

Arizona:
McCain: 49
Obama: 38

New Jersey:
McCain: 38
Obama: 43

Tennnessee:
McCain: 50
Obama: 36

Pennsylvania:
McCain: 40
Obama: 42

The trend is very promising for McCain.