Shake Hands and Head to Corners - I'll be on the Right

We can analyze on the first Wednesday in November. Time to pick sides. Sarah Palin on Sen Obama:

And though both Senator Obama and Senator Biden have been going on lately about how they are always, quote, "fighting for you," let us face the matter squarely.

There is only one man in this election who has ever really fought for you ... in places where winning means survival and defeat means death ... and that man is John McCain. In our day, politicians have readily shared much lesser tales of adversity than the nightmare world in which this man, and others equally brave, served and suffered for their country.

In the case of Sen Obama, I would go further and make the case that his conflicted feelings about America's discriminatory past would prevent him from ever serving his country in that way. More from Palin:

I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a "community organizer," except that you have actual responsibilities. I might add that in small towns, we don't quite know what to make of a candidate who lavishes praise on working people when they are listening, and then talks about how bitterly they cling to their religion and guns when those people aren't listening.

We tend to prefer candidates who don't talk about us one way in Scranton and another way in San Francisco.

See her complete speech below.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
September 03, 2008
Sarah Palin's Address to the RNC
By Sarah Palin

St. Paul, Minnesota

Mr. Chairman, delegates, and fellow citizens: I am honored to be considered for the nomination for Vice President of the United States...

I accept the call to help our nominee for president to serve and defend America.

I accept the challenge of a tough fight in this election... against confident opponents ... at a crucial hour for our country.

And I accept the privilege of serving with a man who has come through much harder missions ... and met far graver challenges ... and knows how tough fights are won - the next president of the United States, John S. McCain.

It was just a year ago when all the experts in Washington counted out our nominee because he refused to hedge his commitment to the security of the country he loves.

With their usual certitude, they told us that all was lost - there was no hope for this candidate who said that he would rather lose an election than see his country lose a war.

But the pollsters and pundits overlooked just one thing when they wrote him off.

They overlooked the caliber of the man himself - the determination, resolve, and sheer guts of Senator John McCain. The voters knew better.

And maybe that's because they realize there is a time for politics and a time for leadership ... a time to campaign and a time to put our country first.

Our nominee for president is a true profile in courage, and people like that are hard to come by.

He's a man who wore the uniform of this country for 22 years, and refused to break faith with those troops in Iraq who have now brought victory within sight.

And as the mother of one of those troops, that is exactly the kind of man I want as commander in chief. I'm just one of many moms who'll say an extra prayer each night for our sons and daughters going into harm's way.

Our son Track is 19.

And one week from tomorrow - September 11th - he'll deploy to Iraq with the Army infantry in the service of his country.

My nephew Kasey also enlisted, and serves on a carrier in the Persian Gulf.

My family is proud of both of them and of all the fine men and women serving the country in uniform. Track is the eldest of our five children.

In our family, it's two boys and three girls in between - my strong and kind-hearted daughters Bristol, Willow, and Piper.

And in April, my husband Todd and I welcomed our littlest one into the world, a perfectly beautiful baby boy named Trig. From the inside, no family ever seems typical.

That's how it is with us.

Our family has the same ups and downs as any other ... the same challenges and the same joys.

Sometimes even the greatest joys bring challenge.

And children with special needs inspire a special love.

To the families of special-needs children all across this country, I have a message: For years, you sought to make America a more welcoming place for your sons and daughters.

I pledge to you that if we are elected, you will have a friend and advocate in the White House. Todd is a story all by himself.

He's a lifelong commercial fisherman ... a production operator in the oil fields of Alaska's North Slope ... a proud member of the United Steel Workers' Union ... and world champion snow machine racer.

Throw in his Yup'ik Eskimo ancestry, and it all makes for quite a package.

We met in high school, and two decades and five children later he's still my guy. My Mom and Dad both worked at the elementary school in our small town.

And among the many things I owe them is one simple lesson: that this is America, and every woman can walk through every door of opportunity.

My parents are here tonight, and I am so proud to be the daughter of Chuck and Sally Heath. Long ago, a young farmer and habber-dasher from Missouri followed an unlikely path to the vice presidency.

A writer observed: "We grow good people in our small towns, with honesty, sincerity, and dignity." I know just the kind of people that writer had in mind when he praised Harry Truman.

I grew up with those people.

They are the ones who do some of the hardest work in America ... who grow our food, run our factories, and fight our wars.

They love their country, in good times and bad, and they're always proud of America. I had the privilege of living most of my life in a small town.

I was just your average hockey mom, and signed up for the PTA because I wanted to make my kids' public education better.

When I ran for city council, I didn't need focus groups and voter profiles because I knew those voters, and knew their families, too.

Before I became governor of the great state of Alaska, I was mayor of my hometown.

And since our opponents in this presidential election seem to look down on that experience, let me explain to them what the job involves.

I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a "community organizer," except that you have actual responsibilities. I might add that in small towns, we don't quite know what to make of a candidate who lavishes praise on working people when they are listening, and then talks about how bitterly they cling to their religion and guns when those people aren't listening.

We tend to prefer candidates who don't talk about us one way in Scranton and another way in San Francisco.

As for my running mate, you can be certain that wherever he goes, and whoever is listening, John McCain is the same man. I'm not a member of the permanent political establishment.

And I've learned quickly, these past few days, that if you're not a member in good standing of the Washington elite, then some in the media consider a candidate unqualified for that reason alone.

But here's a little news flash for all those reporters and commentators: I'm not going to Washington to seek their good opinion - I'm going to Washington to serve the people of this country. Americans expect us to go to Washington for the right reasons, and not just to mingle with the right people.

Politics isn't just a game of clashing parties and competing interests.

The right reason is to challenge the status quo, to serve the common good, and to leave this nation better than we found it.

No one expects us to agree on everything.

But we are expected to govern with integrity, good will, clear convictions, and ... a servant's heart.

I pledge to all Americans that I will carry myself in this spirit as vice president of the United States. This was the spirit that brought me to the governor's office, when I took on the old politics as usual in Juneau ... when I stood up to the special interests, the lobbyists, big oil companies, and the good-ol' boys network.

Sudden and relentless reform never sits well with entrenched interests and power brokers. That's why true reform is so hard to achieve.

But with the support of the citizens of Alaska, we shook things up.

And in short order we put the government of our state back on the side of the people.

I came to office promising major ethics reform, to end the culture of self-dealing. And today, that ethics reform is the law.

While I was at it, I got rid of a few things in the governor's office that I didn't believe our citizens should have to pay for.

That luxury jet was over the top. I put it on eBay.

I also drive myself to work.

And I thought we could muddle through without the governor's personal chef - although I've got to admit that sometimes my kids sure miss her. I came to office promising to control spending - by request if possible and by veto if necessary.

Senator McCain also promises to use the power of veto in defense of the public interest - and as a chief executive, I can assure you it works.

Our state budget is under control.

We have a surplus.

And I have protected the taxpayers by vetoing wasteful spending: nearly half a billion dollars in vetoes.

I suspended the state fuel tax, and championed reform to end the abuses of earmark spending by Congress.

I told the Congress "thanks, but no thanks," for that Bridge to Nowhere.

If our state wanted a bridge, we'd build it ourselves. When oil and gas prices went up dramatically, and filled up the state treasury, I sent a large share of that revenue back where it belonged - directly to the people of Alaska.

And despite fierce opposition from oil company lobbyists, who kind of liked things the way they were, we broke their monopoly on power and resources.

As governor, I insisted on competition and basic fairness to end their control of our state and return it to the people.

I fought to bring about the largest private-sector infrastructure project in North American history.

And when that deal was struck, we began a nearly forty billion dollar natural gas pipeline to help lead America to energy independence.

That pipeline, when the last section is laid and its valves are opened, will lead America one step farther away from dependence on dangerous foreign powers that do not have our interests at heart.

The stakes for our nation could not be higher.

When a hurricane strikes in the Gulf of Mexico, this country should not be so dependent on imported oil that we are forced to draw from our Strategic Petroleum Reserve.

And families cannot throw away more and more of their paychecks on gas and heating oil.

With Russia wanting to control a vital pipeline in the Caucasus, and to divide and intimidate our European allies by using energy as a weapon, we cannot leave ourselves at the mercy of foreign suppliers.

To confront the threat that Iran might seek to cut off nearly a fifth of world energy supplies ... or that terrorists might strike again at the Abqaiq facility in Saudi Arabia ... or that Venezuela might shut off its oil deliveries ... we Americans need to produce more of our own oil and gas.

And take it from a gal who knows the North Slope of Alaska: we've got lots of both.

Our opponents say, again and again, that drilling will not solve all of America's energy problems - as if we all didn't know that already.

But the fact that drilling won't solve every problem is no excuse to do nothing at all.

Starting in January, in a McCain-Palin administration, we're going to lay more pipelines ... build more nuclear plants ... create jobs with clean coal ... and move forward on solar, wind, geothermal, and other alternative sources.

We need American energy resources, brought to you by American ingenuity, and produced by American workers. I've noticed a pattern with our opponent.

Maybe you have, too.

We've all heard his dramatic speeches before devoted followers.

And there is much to like and admire about our opponent.

But listening to him speak, it's easy to forget that this is a man who has authored two memoirs but not a single major law or reform - not even in the state senate.

This is a man who can give an entire speech about the wars America is fighting, and never use the word "victory" except when he's talking about his own campaign. But when the cloud of rhetoric has passed ... when the roar of the crowd fades away ... when the stadium lights go out, and those Styrofoam Greek columns are hauled back to some studio lot - what exactly is our opponent's plan? What does he actually seek to accomplish, after he's done turning back the waters and healing the planet? The answer is to make government bigger ... take more of your money ... give you more orders from Washington ... and to reduce the strength of America in a dangerous world. America needs more energy ... our opponent is against producing it.

Victory in Iraq is finally in sight ... he wants to forfeit.

Terrorist states are seeking nuclear weapons without delay ... he wants to meet them without preconditions.

Al Qaeda terrorists still plot to inflict catastrophic harm on America ... he's worried that someone won't read them their rights? Government is too big ... he wants to grow it.

Congress spends too much ... he promises more.

Taxes are too high ... he wants to raise them. His tax increases are the fine print in his economic plan, and let me be specific.

The Democratic nominee for president supports plans to raise income taxes ... raise payroll taxes ... raise investment income taxes ... raise the death tax ... raise business taxes ... and increase the tax burden on the American people by hundreds of billions of dollars. My sister Heather and her husband have just built a service station that's now opened for business - like millions of others who run small businesses.

How are they going to be any better off if taxes go up? Or maybe you're trying to keep your job at a plant in Michigan or Ohio ... or create jobs with clean coal from Pennsylvania or West Virginia ... or keep a small farm in the family right here in Minnesota.

How are you going to be better off if our opponent adds a massive tax burden to the American economy? Here's how I look at the choice Americans face in this election.

In politics, there are some candidates who use change to promote their careers.

And then there are those, like John McCain, who use their careers to promote change.

They're the ones whose names appear on laws and landmark reforms, not just on buttons and banners, or on self-designed presidential seals.

Among politicians, there is the idealism of high-flown speechmaking, in which crowds are stirringly summoned to support great things.

And then there is the idealism of those leaders, like John McCain, who actually do great things. They're the ones who are good for more than talk ... the ones we have always been able to count on to serve and defend America. Senator McCain's record of actual achievement and reform helps explain why so many special interests, lobbyists, and comfortable committee chairmen in Congress have fought the prospect of a McCain presidency - from the primary election of 2000 to this very day.

Our nominee doesn't run with the Washington herd.

He's a man who's there to serve his country, and not just his party.

A leader who's not looking for a fight, but is not afraid of one either. Harry Reid, the Majority Leader of the current do-nothing Senate, not long ago summed up his feelings about our nominee.

He said, quote, "I can't stand John McCain." Ladies and gentlemen, perhaps no accolade we hear this week is better proof that we've chosen the right man. Clearly what the Majority Leader was driving at is that he can't stand up to John McCain. That is only one more reason to take the maverick of the Senate and put him in the White House. My fellow citizens, the American presidency is not supposed to be a journey of "personal discovery." This world of threats and dangers is not just a community, and it doesn't just need an organizer.

And though both Senator Obama and Senator Biden have been going on lately about how they are always, quote, "fighting for you," let us face the matter squarely.

There is only one man in this election who has ever really fought for you ... in places where winning means survival and defeat means death ... and that man is John McCain. In our day, politicians have readily shared much lesser tales of adversity than the nightmare world in which this man, and others equally brave, served and suffered for their country.

It's a long way from the fear and pain and squalor of a six-by-four cell in Hanoi to the Oval Office.

But if Senator McCain is elected president, that is the journey he will have made.

It's the journey of an upright and honorable man - the kind of fellow whose name you will find on war memorials in small towns across this country, only he was among those who came home.

To the most powerful office on earth, he would bring the compassion that comes from having once been powerless ... the wisdom that comes even to the captives, by the grace of God ... the special confidence of those who have seen evil, and seen how evil is overcome. A fellow prisoner of war, a man named Tom Moe of Lancaster, Ohio, recalls looking through a pin-hole in his cell door as Lieutenant Commander John McCain was led down the hallway, by the guards, day after day.

As the story is told, "When McCain shuffled back from torturous interrogations, he would turn toward Moe's door and flash a grin and thumbs up" - as if to say, "We're going to pull through this." My fellow Americans, that is the kind of man America needs to see us through these next four years.

For a season, a gifted speaker can inspire with his words.

For a lifetime, John McCain has inspired with his deeds.

If character is the measure in this election ... and hope the theme ... and change the goal we share, then I ask you to join our cause. Join our cause and help America elect a great man as the next president of the United States.

Thank you all, and may God bless America.
Sarah Palin, the Governor of Alaska, is the presumptive Republican vice presidential nominee.

Read more!

Think You're A Trader? IRS May Disagree

WSJ Tax article
------------------------------------------------------------------
Think You're A Trader? IRS May Disagree

SEPTEMBER 3, 2008

By TOM HERMAN

Even if you make hundreds of stock-market trades a year, that doesn't automatically make you a trader -- at least in the eyes of tax collectors. And that means you wouldn't be eligible for certain breaks that traders can take.

This point is underscored by a recent Tax Court decision involving a Florida couple who formed a trading company and made more than 660 trades over two years. The court decided the couple were investors, not traders, and thus were subject to tough limits on deducting net losses and trading-related expenses.
More
[Go to tax court case]

* The Tax Court case
* IRS Tax Topic 429

While the Tax Court decision doesn't break new legal ground, tax analysts say it shows how difficult it can be to qualify as a trader and emphasizes the line between individual investor and professional trader. Calling yourself a trader on your tax return isn't enough, as the Tax Court decision points out. In addition to doing "substantial" trading with "continuity and regularity," the Internal Revenue Service says you must also be trying to profit from daily market price moves.

"The decision shows it's very, very difficult" to be considered a trader, says Bob Trinz, senior tax analyst at the tax and accounting business of Thomson Reuters.

Securities-industry officials say they don't know how many traders there are out of the many people who buy and sell stocks and other securities. But in case someone thinks he or she has what it takes to be a successful trader and is tempted to try, the Tax Court case provides a reminder of how exceedingly tough it is to qualify based on tax law -- and why the distinction can be so important.

"The court reminded taxpayers that it's not enough just to call yourself a trader and to make numerous trades throughout the year," says Tim Hanford, a tax consultant in Bethesda, Md.
[Trading-Stocks] Getty Images

The latest Tax Court decision, written by Judge Juan Vasquez, involves William Holsinger and Joann Mickler, who married in 1999. In 2000, they began buying and selling stocks from a room in their house, making about $280,000 that year, the judge's decision said.

Early in 2001, the couple set up Alpha Trading Co. of Sarasota, Fla., and formally chose to be treated as traders, using what's known as the mark-to-market method of accounting on their tax return. That generally means securities, whether actually sold or unsold, are considered sold at year end for tax purposes and give rise to ordinary income or losses. They had accounts with several firms. In 2001, they conducted about 289 trades. The following year, they executed about 372 trades. In both years, they had losses, which they deducted as ordinary losses as a trader would. The IRS decided they were investors, not traders, and that they owed about $98,000 in taxes.

As an individual investor, you can offset capital gains with capital losses on a dollar-for-dollar basis. But if your losses exceed your gains, you typically can deduct only as much as $3,000 a year of net capital losses. The limit is $1,500 for someone married and filing separately. Additional losses are carried over into future years. (There has been talk for many years of raising the annual net capital loss limits, but Congress hasn't taken action.)

If you qualify as a trader and use the mark-to-market method, you aren't bound by those annual net-loss limits, or by certain limits that apply to itemized deductions. "Traders can treat their losses as ordinary losses, rather than capital" losses, says David Hariton, a tax partner at the law firm Sullivan & Cromwell in New York City. But Mr. Hariton points out there also are drawbacks to being a trader: "They cannot treat their net trading gains as long-term capital gains eligible for lower rates." (The top capital gains rate on long-term gains from securities sales is 15%, while the top federal income-tax rate on ordinary income is 35%.)

Judge Vasquez's decision says a taxpayer's activities qualify as "a trade or business" only if two requirements are met: First, your trading activity must be "substantial." Also, you must be trying to catch "swings in the daily market movements" and trying to profit from these short-term changes, rather than from long-term holdings.

After studying the Florida couple's records, Judge Vasquez decided that their trading activity wasn't substantial. He said they traded on only 63 days in 2001 and 110 days in 2002. "We find it doubtful whether the trades were conducted with the frequency, continuity and regularity indicative of a business," he concluded. The judge also ruled that the couple failed to prove they were trying to capture daily swings in the market and to profit from them. A list of their trades shows "they rarely bought and sold on the same day," the judge said. Furthermore, he said, a significant amount of their holdings was held for more than 31 days.
[tax facts]

"We find that they were not traders, but investors," Judge Vasquez wrote. "Petitioners' trading pattern is consistent with that of an investor, not of a trader."

The judge also concluded that trading-related expenses the couple had deducted as business expenses were subject to limits that apply to itemized deductions.

V. Jean Owens, a lawyer who represented the Florida couple, said he was "disappointed" by the decision. Mr. Owens said his clients haven't yet decided whether to appeal.

The IRS offers more details in "Topic 429" on its Web site (irs.gov). It cites various "facts and circumstances" that should be considered in determining whether your activity is a securities-trading business: typical holding periods for securities bought and sold; the frequency and dollar amount of your trades; the extent to which you pursue the activity to produce income for a livelihood; and how much time you devote to it.

The IRS points out the tax treatment of securities sales depends on whether a trader had previously chosen to use the mark-to-market method of accounting through what's known as a "section 475(f) election." In general, this "election" must be made by "the due date (not including extensions) of the tax return for the year prior to the year for which the election becomes effective," the IRS says. You make it by "attaching a statement either to your income tax return or to a request for an extension of time to file your return."
* * *

More stimulus payments flowed from the Treasury this summer.

As of the end of August, the Treasury had distributed a total of about 114.8 million economic-stimulus payments, the department said. Those payments totaled nearly $93.4 billion.

Those figures include about 2.4 million payments totaling $1.5 billion since July 11, the Treasury said.

The department also said Americans, especially seniors and veterans who don't normally file tax returns, should file a return by the Oct. 15 filing deadline to receive a stimulus payment this year.
* * *

Senators back legislation to adjust charitable-mileage rate.

Under current law, you can deduct unreimbursed expenses, such as the cost of gas and oil, directly related to using your car to provide services to a charitable organization. You can deduct your actual expenses or use a standard mileage rate of 14 cents a mile.

Sen. Chuck Grassley, ranking member of the Finance Committee, is teaming up with several other senators in an effort to give the IRS the authority to adjust that 14-cents-a-mile rate, which now is set by law.

"People who volunteer for charity aren't out to make money, but they shouldn't lose a lot of money in the process," said Sen. Grassley, an Iowa Republican. "Driving a car is more expensive than ever, and driving is critical to a lot of volunteer activities."

Sen. Grassley says "it makes sense" to give the IRS "the flexibility to set mileage rates for charity work." He notes that the IRS "already has the authority to set mileage rates for business, medical, or moving expenses."
* * *

Interest rates will rise next quarter on underpayments to the IRS.

For example, the rate will increase to 6% on underpayments by individuals in the fourth quarter, the IRS says.

That's up one percentage point from 5% this quarter.
* * *

BRIEFS: Reminder -- Sept. 15 is the deadline for people who owe estimated taxes for the June 1-Aug. 31 period. ... William J. Wilkins, a partner in the law firm of WilmerHale in Washington, D.C., takes over as head of the American Bar Association tax section, the nation's largest group of tax lawyers. He will serve a one-year term and will be succeeded by Karen L. Hawkins of the Oakland, Calif., firm of Taggart & Hawkins.
-----------------------------------------------------------

Read more!

Personal Judgement About Presidential Qualifications

I was watching a focus group on CSPAN - sponsored by AARP and conducted by Frank Luntz. I catch these now and then; I find them interesting and maddening. One 'undecided' was asked why Palin's lack of experience was more troubling than Obama's, given that he's at the top of the ticket as opposed to her, his response was that it just was, no facts to buttress his argument.

The last time I was undecided was the Florida Governor's race in 1976 - Graham vs. Shevin, so I just can't relate to the 'undecided-types.' I'd rather have a burger with those who want to impeach Bush as opposed to 'undecideds' any day of the week. But watching the focus group did reinforce how personal a decision deciding what constitutes qualifications for political office is. Both on the right and left of the political spectrum, it closely correlates with whom you support. For example, I believe that Obama does not have the necessary experience to be president and I have no problem with Palin as VP. I think I could defend that over a beer, but will accept that if hypocrites had a school, this would earn me an honor roll citation.

If Obama is elected, I don't think he would automatically be a disaster, and has an outside chance to be very good with some foreign policy luck - Supreme Court appointments aside. I did think that Sen Clinton would have been a disaster under any circumstance.

Senators McCain and Biden, as well as Gov Palin, all have children either serving or about to serve in the military, and Iraq in particular. Sen Obama has two young daughters. Having stated all that, here's my one very personal litmus test regarding presidential qualifications -- love of country:

If Obama had a son, I don't believe that young man would ever consider military service, let alone serve during time of war.

The why I believe that is based on the following in order of importance:

1. Sen. Obama's associations with the Rev Wright and William Ayers. I do not have to ascribe their views to him to deem the fact that he would befriend them as disqualifying for someone seeking to lead our country.
   
2. Remarks made during the campaign [Kinsley gaffe's], from both Obama and his wife, regarding how they perceive middle-class America. I believe that those comments are more revealing than one terabyte of position papers on the campaign website.
3. Personal and anecdotal experience with well-educated elites and how comfortable, or uncomfortable, they are with what constitutes loving your country. When those well-educated people are minorities, Hispanic or African-American, and real and perceived identity-politics aggrievements are included in the mix, the result is an attitude towards their country which is not as patriotic as I would want for someone serving in the office of the presidency -- which I see as a privilege, not a right.

[Post-post Sept 7] - OK given that it's at the end of the post and likely only 4 people will read this - I'm patting myself on the back. Today I read that Sen Obama 'confessed' that he was considering military service, but rejected the idea because we were not at war. Reread that -- he doesn't enlist because we are not at war. If he had said he considered it because we were not at war, that at least would ring true. When you combine it with the fact that this Obama-thought escaped mention in his thirty-something hyper-introspective autobiography. That makes it literally unbelievable.

Read more!

Anima Christi

This beautiful prayer, often said after receiving Communion, dates from the early 14th century. St. Ignatius Loyola, the founder of the Jesuits, was particularly fond of this prayer. The translation given below is by John Henry Cardinal Newman, one of the great converts to Roman Catholicism in the 19th century.

The prayer takes its name from its first two words in Latin. Anima Christi means "the soul of Christ."

Anima Christi

Soul of Christ, be my sanctification;
Body of Christ, be my salvation;
Blood of Christ, fill all my veins;
Water of Christ's side, wash out my stains;
Passion of Christ, my comfort be;
O good Jesu, listen to me;
In Thy wounds I fain would hide;
Ne'er to be parted from Thy side;
Guard me, should the foe assail me;
Call me when my life shall fail me;
Bid me come to Thee above,
With Thy saints to sing Thy love,
World without end. Amen.

Read more!

McCain Gets In The Game With Sarah Palin

The game is practicing identity politics. For the past year the Clinton's, Biden and McCain have been making the case that Obama does not have the experience to be president. Despite the evidence and criticism, Obama won his party's nomination and is likely to win the general election. William Kristol on Fox does a great job of explaining why that strategy has failed to date and would likely fail in the general election as well:

Obama has no experience, obviously. He was a state Senator. Sarah Palin has much more executive experience. She has been governor of the state while Obama has been pretty much an absentee senator running for the presidency.

But why do we think, actually, whether you agree or not, that Obama has the stature to be president? Because of the campaign he's run, which has been awfully impressive. He has been in debates and given speeches, and you think this is a serious person.

That is why for Palin, these next two months, it's all win or all lose. We will see whether she is up to it. She will give a major speech here. She will obviously do interviews over the course of the next month or two.

And, above all, she will have that debate with Joe Biden. People will not be able to say--if she holds her own with Joe Biden, I don't think people with a straight face can say it is a horrifying thought that Sarah Palin is going to be a heartbeat away from the presidency.

Pretty good analysis.

So for better or worse, the voting public equates the ability to campaign effectively as a determinant of the candidates qualifications for the office. McCain could have continued to beat his head against that wall to get voters to change their way of judging qualifications or get in the identity politics game. Conservatism is supposed to be the politics of reality. The conservative move is to get in the game, not to argue how the game should be played -- especially two months out from an election.

I hear president's love legacies, but probably not what 'W' had in mind. But the real, and imagined, incompetencies of the Bush administration's impact on this election is to denigrate the value of experience, given that if he had it and still performed so poorly, what's the point?

Kristol had a written an earlier column touting Palin. His latest Weekly Standard column predicts how they [Barzini?] will be coming after her.

[Post-post Sept 2] - A few days later, confirming Kristol's analysis, the Obama campaign itself makes the argument that the campaign is evidence of his ability to govern.

[Post-post Sept 5] - Even a few more days later, confirming Kristol's analysis, John Harris & Jim Vandehei of Politico, state exactly his point in a post titled, 'How Palin Changed the Race' - excerpt below:

• Republicans can play identity group politics too

This brand of politics — voters who support a candidate not because of what that person has done in public life but because of the symbolism of the candidate's personal story — is a big part of why Obama is the Democratic nominee. With Palin, the GOP showed that it, too, can play this game.

Tom DeLay, the former House majority leader, told us this week that his wife, who is even more conservative than he is, doesn’t think much of McCain. But she loves Palin, perhaps enough to get her to now back the GOP ticket. He said he was astonished how Palin has woken “the sleeping giant: Republican women.”

It is the talk of the hallways, in the convention and nationwide. Women, especially Republican women, were thrilled by the Palin speech. Already, the campaign is reporting a huge surge in fundraising. The bigger question is whether this will translate into a huge surge at the polls. Republicans get clobbered in national elections when it comes to the women’s vote. One way to narrow the gender gap is to juice turnout among your own people. Palin could do that. Another way is to juice turnout among female swing voters.

[Post-post Sept 15] This from Joe Trippi, Democratic consultant of Howard Dean pedigree:

But the McCain campaign learned something from watching the Democratic primary fight. Throughout the 2008 primary season no matter how many polls said that Hillary Clinton had more experience to be President, no matter how wide her margin over Obama on "ready to be President on day one" it did not matter. Obama and his message of change won.

The Clinton campaign kept seeing in their polling and research that Hillary's experience trumped change and could not understand why she was losing the nomination with her substantial experience advantage,

The hunger for change was that powerful. The hunger for a different kind of post-partisan politics that would shake up Washington was overpowering "experience" and "more of the same".

Now it seems so obvious. It is amazing that so few (including the Obama campaign) saw it coming.

Leave Kristol off that list. See various complete columns below.

----------------------------------------------------------------------
Let Palin Be Palin
Why the left is scared to death of McCain's running mate.
by William Kristol
09/08/2008, Volume 013, Issue 48


A spectre is haunting the liberal elites of New York and Washington--the spectre of a young, attractive, unapologetic conservatism, rising out of the American countryside, free of the taint (fair or unfair) of the Bush administration and the recent Republican Congress, able to invigorate a McCain administration and to govern beyond it.

That spectre has a name--Sarah Palin, the 44-year-old governor of Alaska chosen by John McCain on Friday to be his running mate. There she is: a working woman who's a proud wife and mother; a traditionalist in important matters who's broken through all kinds of barriers; a reformer who's a Republican; a challenger of a corrupt good-old-boy establishment who's a conservative; a successful woman whose life is unapologetically grounded in religious belief; a lady who's a leader.

So what we will see in the next days and weeks--what we have already seen in the hours after her nomination--is an effort by all the powers of the old liberalism, both in the Democratic party and the mainstream media, to exorcise this spectre. They will ridicule her and patronize her. They will distort her words and caricature her biography. They will appeal, sometimes explicitly, to anti-small town and anti-religious prejudice. All of this will be in the cause of trying to prevent the American people from arriving at their own judgment of Sarah Palin.

That's why Palin's spectacular performance in her introduction in Dayton was so important. Her remarks were cogent and compelling. Her presentation of herself was shrewd and savvy. I heard from many who watched Palin--many of them not predisposed to support her--about how moved they were by her remarks, her composure, and her story. She will have a chance to shine again Wednesday night at the Republican convention.

But before and after that, she'll be swimming in political waters infested with sharks. Her nickname when she was the starting point guard on an Alaska high school championship basketball team was "Sarah Barracuda." I suspect she'll take care of herself better than many expect.

But the McCain campaign can help. The choice of Palin was McCain's own. Many of his staff expected, and favored, other more conventional candidates. The campaign may be tempted to overreact when one rash sentence or foolish comment by Palin from 10 or 15 years ago is dragged up by Democratic opposition research and magnified by a credulous and complicit media.

The McCain campaign will have to keep its cool. It will have to provide facts and context, and to hit back where appropriate. But it cannot become obsessed with playing defense. It should allow Palin to deal with the charges directly and resist the temptation to try to shield her from the media. Palin is potentially a huge asset to McCain. He took the gamble--wisely, we think--of putting her on the ticket. McCain's choice of Palin was McCain being McCain. Now his campaign will have to let Palin be Palin.

There will be rocky moments. But they will fade if the McCain campaign lets Palin's journey take its natural course over the next two months. Millions of Americans--mostly but not only women, mostly but not only Republicans and conservatives--seemed to get a sense of energy and enjoyment and pride, not just from her nomination, but especially from her smashing opening performance. Palin will be a compelling and mold-breaking example for lots of Americans who are told every day that to be even a bit conservative or Christian or old-fashioned is bad form. In this respect, Palin can become an inspirational figure and powerful symbol. The left senses this, which is why they want to discredit her quickly.

A key moment for Palin will be the vice presidential debate, to be held at Washington University in St. Louis on October 2. One liberal commentator--a former U.S. ambassador and not normally an unabashed vulgarian--licked his chops Friday afternoon: "To steal an old adage of former Secretary of State James Baker .  .  . putting Sarah Palin into a debate with Joe Biden is going to be like throwing Howdy Doody into a knife fight!"

Charming. And if Palin holds her own against Biden, as she is fully capable of doing? McCain will then have succeeded in combining with his own huge advantage in experience and judgment, a politician of great promise in his vice presidential slot who will make Joe Biden look like a tiresome relic. McCain's willingness to take a chance on Palin could turn what looked, after Obama's impressive speech Thursday night in Denver, like a long two months for Republicans and conservatives, into a campaign of excitement and--dare we say it?--hope, which will culminate on November 4 in victory.

--William Kristol

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
September 15, 2008

It's Not Just Palin -- Its the Message

By Joe Trippi

There is no question that John McCain's pick of Alaska Governor Sarah Palin has changed the dynamic of the 2008 Presidential campaign, moved the current wave of polling to the GOP's favor, and altered the terrain the rest of the election will likely be fought on.

The Obama campaign's ability to recognize the shifting ground, understand that it is real, and adjust accordingly will determine the outcome. And the outcome, for the first time, is in doubt.

The Obama campaign went into the Democratic National Convention believing that the race would be fought out on Washington experience and "more of the same" vs change. This was essentially the same frame of the race the Obama camp had sustained for the first 16 months or so of the nominating fight with New York Senator Hillary Clinton. It worked in the primaries until the Clinton campaign shifted from "35 years of experience" to a much more "woman for change" oriented message in the later stages of the fight and nearly came back to win the nomination.

But the McCain campaign learned something from watching the Democratic primary fight. Throughout the 2008 primary season no matter how many polls said that Hillary Clinton had more experience to be President, no matter how wide her margin over Obama on "ready to be President on day one" it did not matter. Obama and his message of change won.

The Clinton campaign kept seeing in their polling and research that Hillary's experience trumped change and could not understand why she was losing the nomination with her
substantial experience advantage,

The hunger for change was that powerful. The hunger for a different kind of post-partisan politics that would shake up Washington was overpowering "experience" and "more of the same".

Now it seems so obvious. It is amazing that so few (including the Obama campaign) saw it coming.

John McCain and his team had to make a decision. Run as the more experienced ticket, and run smack into Barack Obama's trap of change vs more of the same just as Clinton had. Or pick Sarah Palin and run as the original mavericks that really will shake up Washington.

If you are an advisor to McCain. Faced with that choice, you urge McCain to pick Palin.

But now its the Obama campaign's turn to learn the lesson of the Clinton campaign. The Obama campaign looks at all its polling data and research and in a race between change and four more years of George Bush, change wins big. So it keeps trying to frame the race as four more years of George Bush and more of the same vs change and cannot understand why it isn't pulling away.

It's not just Palin.

The brilliance of the McCain strategy and messaging is that it includes a trap for Obama. To push back on the McCain claim of "country first" and "the original mavericks who will shake up Washington" the Obama campaign's attack of "four more years of George Bush" becomes a problem. In a country that yearns for post-partisan change the Obama campaign risks sounding too partisan and like more of the same.

It would not surprise me if in one of the debates Obama or Biden uses the "You voted with George Bush and supported him 93% of the time" and its John McCain that retorts "that's the kind of partisan attack the American people are sick of....".

What worked for Obama is now working for McCain. The important lesson for the Obama campaign is that the Clinton campaign kept looking at its research, kept stressing experience and did not adjust until it was too late. The McCain campaign has not only adjusted to the Obama message, they have changed the terrain.

Now the Obama campaign and its allies need to understand that in arguing that John McCain represents a third term of George Bush and the GOP agenda it is the Obama campaign that risks sounding partisan in a country that yearns for the post-partisanship of "country first" and "shaking things up in Washington".

One last point. Hamilton Jordan, who passed away recently at the age of 63, was among a brilliant group of Democrats who plotted the strategy behind Jimmy Carter's campaign for the White House. Carter was the only true insurgent candidate on the Democratic side to make it to the Presidency in the modern era.

Carter was running against Gerald Ford in 1976. The Watergate babies, a large group of reform minded Democrats, had been swept into office in the change election of 1974. Carter who ran as an outsider throughout the primaries looked like he would beat President Ford going away. But Ford who had pardoned Nixon and was a joke machine for Saturday Night Live, came back and nearly won the election holding Carter to just 50.1% of the vote. Ford received 48% after a debate gaff that probably cost him an outright win.

I remember Hamilton Jordan saying something I will never forget. He said the mistake that had cost Carter his big lead, and nearly cost him the election was that after Carter won the nomination the campaign started to listen too much to Washington Democrats and lost much of its outsider thinking that made it different.

The Obama campaign needs to get back to the basics that got it here. Stop listening to the Democrats who are wringing their hands and fighting the last war.

Clinton adjusted too late, McCain may have adjusted in the nick of time. Will Obama's campaign make the right adjustment now? Get back to being an outsider. And get there fast.

McCain is the one running against Washington now. Obama can't just run against Bush. That's my take.

Joe Trippi is a Democratic political consultant. He writes at JoeTrippi.com.

Read more!

The Fruits of Victory

I'm no fan, but a lot of my fellow citizens are very happy today and I think that is a good thing. Last night at the University of Miami college football game, a black woman who was selling me something, said the following after pleasantries; "My heart's not here, I wish I was watching Obama, but I gotta work." As I was leaving, I grabbed [gently] her arm and told her, 'enjoy tonight and all that's coming' - hard not to feel good for someone like her.

Read more!

The Logic of Political Extremism

Sometimes we can over-analyze these things. Why is Hollywood so predominantly liberal? Just look at who they are and what they do. That's what Richard Posner does below.

But why should actors and other creative workers in the Hollywood film industry, and indeed "cultural workers" more generally, be drawn to political extremes? The nature of their work, which combines irregular employment with high variance in income, an engagement with imaginative rather than realistic concepts, noninvolvement in the production of "useful" goods or service, and, traditionally, a bohemian style of living (a consequence of the other factors I have mentioned), distances them from the ordinary, everyday world of work and family in a basically rather conservative, philistine, and emphatically commercial society, which is the society of the United States today.

See his, as well as Gary Becker's, complete post below.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Why Is Hollywood Dominated by Liberals? Posner

A recent article in the Washington Times by Amy Fagan, entitled “Hollywood’s Conservative Underground,
www.washingtontimes.com/news/2008/jul/23/hollywoods-conservative-underground/ (visited Aug. 23, 2008), is a reminder of the curious domination of the American film industry by left liberals. The industry’s left-wing slant drives the Right crazy (if you Google "Hollywood Liberals," you'll encounter an endless number of fierce, often paranoid, denunciations by conservative bloggers and journalists of Hollywood's control by the Left). Fagan's article depicts Hollywood conservatives as an embattled minority, forced to meet in secret lest the revelation of their political views lead to their being blacklisted by the industry. The conservatives' complaint is an ironic echo of the 1950s, when communists and fellow travelers in Hollywood--who were numerous--were blacklisted by the movie studios.

We need to distinguish between actors, actresses, set designers, scriptwriters, directors, and other "creative" (that is, artistic) film personnel, on the one hand, and the business executives and shareholders of the film studios, on the other hand. (Producers are closer to the second, the business, echelon than to the creative echelon.) The creative workers, I think, are not so much magnetized by left-wing politics as drawn to political extremes--for there have been a number of extremely conservative Hollywood actors, such as Ronald Reagan, John Wayne, Charlton Heston, Mel Gibson, and Jon Voight--Voight recently wrote a fiercely conservative op-ed in the Washington Times, where Fagan's article was published. The left end of the political spectrum in this country is still somewhat more respectable than the right end, and so if one finds a class of persons who are drawn to political polarization, more will end up at the far liberal end of the political spectrum than at the far conservative end, yet it will be polarization rather than leftism as such that explains the imbalance. No one has a good word for Stalin and Mao nowadays, but socialism is not a dirty word, as fascism is.

But why should actors and other creative workers in the Hollywood film industry, and indeed "cultural workers" more generally, be drawn to political extremes? The nature of their work, which combines irregular employment with high variance in income, an engagement with imaginative rather than realistic concepts, noninvolvement in the production of "useful" goods or service, and, traditionally, a bohemian style of living (a consequence of the other factors I have mentioned), distances them from the ordinary, everyday world of work and family in a basically rather conservative, philistine, and emphatically commercial society, which is the society of the United States today.

The choice of a political ideology, which is to say of a general orientation that guides a person's response to a variety of specific political and ethical issues, is less a matter of conscious choice or weighing of evidence than of a feeling of comfort with the advocates and adherents of the ideology. An ideology attractive to solid bourgeois types is unlikely to be attractive to cultural workers as I have described them. So we should not expect those workers to subscribe to the conventional political values, and apparently a disproportionate number of them do not. Moreover, though most actors and other creative film workers are not particularly intellectual, as cultural producers much in the public eye they have a natural affinity with public intellectuals, who I found in my book Public Intellectuals: A Study of Decline (2001) split about 2/3 liberal 1/3 conservative.

The situation of Hollywood's business executives, including investors in the film business, is different. They are not cultural workers, and one expects their focus to be firmly on the bottom line. It is true that the Hollywood film industry was founded largely by Jews and has always been very heavily Jewish, and that Jews of all income levels are disproportionately liberal. But if Hollywood based its selection of movies to produce and sell on the political views of the studios' owners and managers, that would be commercial suicide, as competitors would rush in to cater to audiences' desires. The idea that Hollywood is a propaganda machine for the Left is not only improbable as theory but empirically unsupported. Hollywood produces antiwar movies during unpopular wars and pro-war movies during popular ones (as during World War II), movies that ridicule minorities when minorities are unpopular and movies that flatter them when discrimination becomes unfashionable, movies that steer away from frank presentation of sex when society is strait-laced and movies that revel in sex when the society, or at least the part of the society that consumes films avidly, society turns libertine. The Hollywood film industry follows taste rather than creating taste, as one expects business firms to do.

What troubles conservatives about Hollywood is less the promotion in movies of left-liberal policies than the breakdown of the old taboos. Those taboos were codified in the Hays Code, which was in force between 1934 and 1968 with the backing of the Catholic Church. The code forbade disrespect of religion and marriage, obscene and scatological language, sexual innuendo, and nudity. The code was abandoned because of changing mores in society rather than because leftwingers suddenly took over Hollywood. If conservatives bought the studios and reinstituted the Hays Code they would soon be out of business. But what is true is that when movie audiences demand vulgar fare, then given that conservatives are more disturbed by vulgarity than liberals are, the film industry becomes less attractive to conservatives as a place to work in. This may be an additional reason for the left-liberal slant of the industry. But as long as the industry is an unregulated competitive industry, market forces will prevent studio heads and owners from trying to impose their own values on audiences, rather than trying to create movies that are in sync with those values.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Hollywood and Liberals-Becker


For every Ronald Reagan Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jon Voight, Charlton Heston, and a few other prominent conservative Hollywood stars, there are probably more than 50 strongly liberal actors, directors, producers, and other "above the line" categories of filmmakers. The top "below the line" categories of cinematographers and production designers are also heavily liberal.Less creative crew members, such as grips, have political views that are closer to those of the general American voting population.

Posner gives several explanations of the liberality of filmmakers, including their engagement in fantasy projects, their irregular employment, and the prominence of Jews, who are mainly liberal, in the industry. There is an additional consideration of great importance. Whereas most actors and other filmmakers have little interest in tax policy, approaches to Medicare and social security, other domestic economic and political questions, and even in many foreign policy issues (except wars), they are very much concerned about policies regarding personal morals. I believe the single most important reason why so many of these Hollywood creative personnel are opposed to the Republican party, especially to the more conservative members of this party, is that the personal morals of many filmmakers deviate greatly from general norms of the American population.

Creative contributors to films divorce in large numbers, often several times. Many have frequent affairs, often while married, they have children without marriage, they have significant numbers of abortions, have a higher than average presence of gays, especially in certain of the creative categories, who are open about their sexual preferences, they take cocaine and other drugs, and generally they lead a life style that differs greatly from what is more representative of the American public. By contrast, an important base of the Republican Party is against out of wedlock births, strongly pro life and against abortions, against gays, especially those who adopt an publicly gay lifestyle, against affairs while married, and very much oppose the legalization of drugs like cocaine and even marijuana.

It becomes impossible for Hollywood types who adopt these different lifestyles to support a political party that is so openly and prominently critical of important aspects of their way of living. That the majority of the relatively few conservative filmmakers lead more ordinary lifestyles confirms this hypothesis: they tend to be heterosexual, married, have children while married, are less into drugs, and in other ways too have more conventional lifestyles. True, some of the most prominent conservative member of Hollywood, such as Reagan and Voight, have been divorced, but divorce is now more accepted even by most conservative Republicans. After all, Ronald Reagan was a darling of conservative Republicans, and John McCain also has been divorced. Note that below the line members of crews lead more conventional life styles, and so they are less likely to be anti conservatives and against Republicans.

When other issues affect filmmakers more than attacks on their morals, their views often become very different. So while many of the more creative filmmakers consider themselves to be socialists, filmmakers, writers, and other creative types in communist countries were typically very strongly opposed to their governments. The obvious reason is that these governments imposed substantial censorship on the type of films that could be made, and so directly interfered with what filmmakers and writers wanted to do.

Another important factor stressed to me by Guity Nashat Becker is that members of the print and visual media who generally have strongly liberal political views surround actors and other creative contributors to films. Since it is well established that political views are greatly affected by the attitudes of people one interacts with closely, it is not surprising that some of the liberality of the media rub off on actors and others in the filmmaking industry. In addition to their concern about political approaches to personal morality, their association with the media helps make filmmakers anti-business, especially big business, and strongly pro-union.

Do the liberal views of Hollywood stars and leaders have a big affect on the opinions of others? I do not know of any evidence on this, but I suspect they only have a small indirect effect. This is not the result of speeches or other statements of their views-since they usually are not articulate in their extemporaneous comments- but their entertainment at various political functions can help generate enthusiastic audiences. More important probably is that whereas audiences do not go to films unless they enjoy them, anti-business and other liberal views will often be an underlying message of popular films. I doubt of these messages have a large permanent effect on the opinions of the audiences, but some affect is surely possible. So all in all, I believe Hollywood is a very minor contributor to general political views, but I do not think their influence can be fully dismissed.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Read more!

Spies in Our Opinion Section

A Cuban spy who is an FIU professor and an editorial page contributor to the Miami Herald sounds Tom Clancy-ish. But unfortunately, it apparently belongs in the non-fiction section. The scenario is laid out in detail on a post from a local blogger, Henry Gomez of Babalu, and is featured in RealClearWorld - an offshoot of the very popular political web site, RealClearPolitics, owned by Time Inc.

That means that this story has now gone mainstream, which should prove to be an interesting time to watch how the Miami Herald handles this. The supposed spy, Marifeli Pérez-Stable, was outed publicly by Chris Simmons, who has been a Counterintelligence Officer since 1987 and worked on cases involving Cuba.

Read more!

Ayers Today, Gone [Presidency] Tomorrow?

Barack Obama is making Dan Uggla's slump look mild.

His steady decline in the polls culminated today, on the second day of his Convention, to show him dropping behind McCain [by 2 points], for the first time since March. That's not the bad news.

William Ayer's is the bad news. An unrepentant terrorist with ties to Obama. A writer from National Review [a conservative] magazine was trying to research those ties. John Kass from the Chicago Tribune documents his difficulties - an excerpt below, entire article copied at end of post:

Kurtz's research was to be done in a special library run by the University of Illinois at Chicago. The library has 132 boxes full of documents pertaining to the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, a foundation vested heavily in school reform.

Kurtz believes the documents may show Obama and Ayers were close—far closer than Obama has acknowledged—over oodles of foundation gifts on education projects the two worked on together.

First the librarians told Kurtz yes, come look. But by the time Kurtz landed in Chicago, the librarians changed their minds. The donor of the documents hadn't cleared his research. Perhaps they'll let him look at the documents on Nov. 5.

The relationship between the ambitious Obama and the unrepentant Ayers is a subject that excites Republicans, who haven't really thwacked that pinata as hard as they might. It really irritates Obama and his political champion, Chicago's sovereign lord, Mayor Richard M. Daley.

"This is a public entity," Kurtz told us Wednesday. "I don't understand how confidentiality of the donor would be an issue."

You don't understand, Mr. Kurtz? Allow me to explain. The secret is hidden in the name of the library:

The Richard J. Daley Library.

Aug 28 - Funny what a little publicity can do. A few days later the files were available. Here's how the Obama campaign is handling it - by intimidation.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Michael Barone of US News & World Report and Fox, weighs-in:

Which leads us back to Barack Obama, who is now a U.S. senator and will shortly become the Democratic nominee for an office that even Chicago regards as more important than mayor. And the question presents itself: How did this outsider from Hawaii and Columbia and Harvard become a somebody? His wife, Michelle Robinson Obama, had some connections: Her father was a Democratic precinct committeeman; she baby-sat for Jesse Jackson's children; and she worked as a staffer for the current Mayor Daley. Obama made connections on the all-black South Side by joining the Rev. Jeremiah Wright's church. But was Obama's critical connection to le tout Chicago William Ayers? That's the conclusion you are led to by Steve Diamond's blog. And by the fact that the National Review's Stanley Kurtz was suddenly denied access to the records of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge by the Richard J. Daley Library at the University of Illinois-Chicago Circle. (Kurtz had already been given an index to the records.) Presumably the CAC records would show a closer collaboration between Ayers and Obama than was suggested by Obama's response at the debate that Ayers was just a guy "in the neighborhood."

The increasingly sharp McCain campaign had the wit to ask the University of Illinois to open up the CAC records. But it didn't seem likely the university will open them up; as John Kass puts it in a characteristically pungent column in the Chicago Tribune, "Welcome to Chicago, Mr. Kurtz." Now the University says the archives are open. But Kurt's friends wonder if they have been flushed of inconvenient documents in the meantime.

Does it matter if William Ayers was the key somebody who made Barack Obama a somebody? I think it does. Not that Obama shares all of Ayers's views, which surely he does not. Or that he endorses Ayers's criminal acts, which, as he has pointed out, were committed while he was a child in Hawaii and Indonesia. But his willingness to associate with an unrepentant terrorist is not the same as Daley's.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Chicago Tribune article
When Daley says shhh, library is quiet on Obama

John Kass

August 21, 2008

Conservative writer Stanley Kurtz—researching an article for the National Review about connections between Barack Obama and former Weather Underground terrorist William Ayers—made a big mistake.

The poor man took a wrong turn on the Chicago Way. Now he's lost.

Kurtz's research was to be done in a special library run by the University of Illinois at Chicago. The library has 132 boxes full of documents pertaining to the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, a foundation vested heavily in school reform.

Kurtz believes the documents may show Obama and Ayers were close—far closer than Obama has acknowledged—over oodles of foundation gifts on education projects the two worked on together.

First the librarians told Kurtz yes, come look. But by the time Kurtz landed in Chicago, the librarians changed their minds. The donor of the documents hadn't cleared his research. Perhaps they'll let him look at the documents on Nov. 5.

The relationship between the ambitious Obama and the unrepentant Ayers is a subject that excites Republicans, who haven't really thwacked that pinata as hard as they might. It really irritates Obama and his political champion, Chicago's sovereign lord, Mayor Richard M. Daley.

"This is a public entity," Kurtz told us Wednesday. "I don't understand how confidentiality of the donor would be an issue."

You don't understand, Mr. Kurtz? Allow me to explain. The secret is hidden in the name of the library:

The Richard J. Daley Library.

Eureka!

The Richard J. Daley Library doesn't want nobody nobody sent. And Richard J.'s son, Shortshanks, is now the mayor.

Obama, wearing the reformer's mantle, has generously offered to extend that reform to Washington, even to Kenya, but not Chicago, because he knows Shortshanks would be miffed.

Ayers, a former left-wing radical accused of inciting riots during the anti-war protests in the 1960s, is now also under Shortshanks' protection. After Ayers finally resurfaced in 1980, he got a job the Chicago Way, as a professor at UIC.

The Tribune's City Hall reporter, Dan Mihalopoulos, asked Daley on Wednesday if the Richard J. Daley Library should release the documents. Shortshanks didn't like that one. He kept insisting he would be "very frank," a phrase that makes the needles on a polygraph start jumping.

" Bill Ayers—I've said this—his father was a great friend of my father," the mayor said. "I'll be very frank. Vietnam divided families, divided people. It was a terrible time of our country. People didn't know one another. Since then, I'll be very frank, [Ayers] has been in the forefront of a lot of education issues and helping us in public schools and things like that."

The mayor expressed his frustrations with outside agitators like Kurtz.

"People keep trying to align himself with Barack Obama," Daley said. "It's really unfortunate. They're friends. So what? People do make mistakes in the past. You move on. This is a new century, a new time. He reflects back and he's been making a strong contribution to our community."

Mr. Kurtz finally got his answer. It should grace the cover of the National Review, with a cartoon of Shortshanks, dressed like a jolly Tudor monarch, holding a tiny Obama in his right paw, a tiny Ayers in his left:

They're friends. So what?

Welcome to Chicago, Mr. Kurtz.

The Republican National Committee lost no time in demanding that Obama personally defy Shortshanks and call for the documents to be released from their dungeon.

"The American people have a right to know more about Barack Obama's relationship with unrepentant terrorist William Ayers," said RNC spokesman Danny Diaz in a statement. "Will Barack Obama step forward and call on the university to immediately release all the records?"

No chance, Danny.

"It leads me to have tremendous fear for the documents," Kurtz said. "What if they are going through them right now and deciding which names to take out? I'm completely alarmed. I think public scrutiny is the only way to save the documents."

He should be worried. Though national pundits get thrills running up their legs when Obama speaks, it's when Daley says "I'll be very frank" that you've got to worry.

Kurtz fears "they'll manage to take this all the way past the election."

You think?

Even before Shortshanks, when Chicago had a true reform mayor, his freedom of information officer was Clarence McClain, a former pimp with a bad wig who ended up in federal prison for taking bribes. Now that the Daleys run things, forget about it.

It's obvious that Mr. Kurtz and the National Review didn't have the special Chicago Democratic machine library card:

The mayor's smiling face on one side. And your voting record on the other.

jskass@tribune.com
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Michael Barone column

Obama Needs to Explain His Ties to William Ayers
By Michael Barone

It doesn't help the Obama campaign that William Ayers is back in the news. Ayers, you'll recall, was the Weather Underground terrorist in the late 1960s and '70s whose radical group set bombs at the Pentagon and U.S. Capitol. During the April 16 Democratic debate, Barack Obama explained his past association with Ayers by saying he was just a guy "in my neighborhood," meaning the University of Chicago enclave known as Hyde Park. But is that end of it? This is, after all, Chicago we're talking about; where political patronage and nepotism are the only ways one moves up the power ladder.

Decades after his radical youth, Ayers was one of the original grantees of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, a school reform organization in the 1990s, and was co-chairman of the Chicago School Reform Collaborative, one the two operational arms of the CAC. Obama, then not yet a state senator, became chairman of the CAC in 1995. Later in that year, the first organizing meeting for Obama's state Senate campaign was held in Ayers's apartment.

You might wonder what Obama was doing working with a character like this. And you might wonder how an unrepentant terrorist got a huge grant and cooperation from the Chicago public school system. You might wonder--if you don't know Chicago. For this is a city with a civic culture in which politicians, in the words of a story often told by former congressman, federal judge, and Clinton White House counsel Abner Mikva, "don't want nobody nobody sent."

That's how William Ayers got where he was. When he came out of hiding after the federal government was unable to prosecute him (because of government misconduct), he got a degree in education from Columbia and then moved to Chicago and got a job on the education faculty of the University of Illinois-Chicago Circle. How did he get that job? Well, it can't have hurt that his father, Thomas Ayers, was chairman of Commonwealth Edison (now Exelon) and a charter member of the Chicago establishment. As Mayor Richard M. Daley said recently, in arguing that the Ayers association should not be held against Obama, "His father was a great friend of my father."

In none of our other major cities is genealogy so important. The voters of Chicago and Illinois respect family ties in a way that voters in no other state or city do. Mayor Daley is, of course, the son of the late Mayor Richard J. Daley. The two Daleys have been mayors, and effective and competent mayors, of Chicago for 40 of the last 53 years. The attorney general of Illinois is the daughter of the Speaker of the Illinois House of Representatives. The governor of Illinois is the son-in-law of the Democratic ward committeeman in Chicago's 33rd Ward. The congressman from the 2nd Congressional District is Jesse Jackson Jr. Jackson's predecessor-but-one in the district was Morgan Murphy Jr., whose father was chairman of (get this) Commonwealth Edison.

But my favorite example of the importance of family ties is 3rd District Rep. Dan Lipinski, who was first elected in 2004 to replace his father, Bill Lipinski, who was first elected in 1982. Bill Lipinski won the Democratic nomination in the March 2004 primary. But on Aug. 13, he announced he would not seek re-election and would resign the Democratic nomination. The deadline for replacing him was Aug.26, and a meeting was set on Aug. 17 for the 19th Ward and township Democratic committeemen to choose a new candidate. Lipinski announced his support for his son, who was then a professor of political science at the University of Tennessee and had not lived in Chicago for many years. Among the committeemen making the decision were: 11th Ward committeeman and County Commissioner John Daley, son of the late mayor and brother of the current mayor; 13th Ward committeeman Michael Madigan, Speaker of the Illinois House and father of Attorney General Lisa Madigan; 14th Ward committeeman Edward Burke, who succeeded his father as a council member in his 20s and was longtime chairman of the Finance Committee, and whose wife is a justice of the Illinois Supreme Court; 19th Ward committeeman Tom Hynes, former Cook County Assessor and father of Illinois Comptroller Dan Hynes; and 23rd Ward committeeman Bill Lipinski. An electorate more averse to an argument against nepotism cannot be imagined. Lipinski advanced his son's name and said, "I'm optimistic, but one never knows in politics until the votes are counted." It did not take long to count them: Dan Lipinski was nominated without opposition. To the charge that the nomination was rigged, one participant dryly noted that anyone could have run.

One reason that Chicago and Illinois voters have acquiesced to the politics of nepotism is that its products--or many of them--are quite competent. Mayor Richie Daley, if I can call him that, has on the whole been an excellent mayor. Edward Burke is a cultured man of high intellect. Michael Madigan seems to be a solidly competent sort, and for all I know his daughter is, too. Dan Rostenkowski was a highly competent chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee for 14 years, until he was laid low by a bit of cheap chiseling; at that point he and his father had been the 32nd Ward committeemen for just about 60 years. (The younger Rostenkowski got his seat in the House in 1958 because his father, Joe Rostenkowski, had supported the late Mayor Daley in the 1955 Democratic primary against fellow Polish-American Benjamin Adamowski.) There are exceptions. Many political observers would put Rod Blagojevich, the son-in-law of 33rd Ward committeeman Dick Mell, on the top of the list of the nation's dumbest governors. But then, for Chicago, it has always been more important who is mayor than who is governor (not to mention out-of-town jobs like U.S. senator).

Which leads us back to Barack Obama, who is now a U.S. senator and will shortly become the Democratic nominee for an office that even Chicago regards as more important than mayor. And the question presents itself: How did this outsider from Hawaii and Columbia and Harvard become a somebody? His wife, Michelle Robinson Obama, had some connections: Her father was a Democratic precinct committeeman; she baby-sat for Jesse Jackson's children; and she worked as a staffer for the current Mayor Daley. Obama made connections on the all-black South Side by joining the Rev. Jeremiah Wright's church. But was Obama's critical connection to le tout Chicago William Ayers? That's the conclusion you are led to by Steve Diamond's blog. And by the fact that the National Review's Stanley Kurtz was suddenly denied access to the records of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge by the Richard J. Daley Library at the University of Illinois-Chicago Circle. (Kurtz had already been given an index to the records.) Presumably the CAC records would show a closer collaboration between Ayers and Obama than was suggested by Obama's response at the debate that Ayers was just a guy "in the neighborhood."

The increasingly sharp McCain campaign had the wit to ask the University of Illinois to open up the CAC records. But it didn't seem likely the university will open them up; as John Kass puts it in a characteristically pungent column in the Chicago Tribune, "Welcome to Chicago, Mr. Kurtz." Now the University says the archives are open. But Kurt's friends wonder if they have been flushed of inconvenient documents in the meantime.

Does it matter if William Ayers was the key somebody who made Barack Obama a somebody? I think it does. Not that Obama shares all of Ayers's views, which surely he does not. Or that he endorses Ayers's criminal acts, which, as he has pointed out, were committed while he was a child in Hawaii and Indonesia. But his willingness to associate with an unrepentant terrorist is not the same as Daley's:

"Bill Ayers, I've said this, his father was a great friend of my father. I'll be very frank. Vietnam divided families, divided people. It was a terrible time of our country. It really separated people. People didn't know one another. Since then, I'll be very frank, (Ayers) has been in the forefront on a lot of education issues and helping us in public schools and things like that.

"People keep trying to align himself with Barack Obama. It's really unfortunate. They're friends. So what? People do make mistakes in the past. You move on. This is a new century, a new time. He reflects back and he's been making a strong contribution to our community."

For Daley, family is paramount, and Ayers is admitted into le tout Chicago because his father is one of its pillars. And electoral politics is also paramount: In a city that is roughly 40 percent (and falling) white ethnic and 40 percent black, with an increasing gentrified white population, the current Mayor Daley has maintained very strong support from lakefront liberals, including the Hyde Park/Kenwood leftists like Ayers who were the original movers behind Obama's 1996 state Senate candidacy. It's in Daley's interest to work with these people and against his interest to do anything that seems like disrespecting them. As Bill Daley told me when I asked him some years ago whether his father would have approved of Richie marching in the gay rights parade, "Our father always told us when a group was big enough to control a ward; we should pay attention to them." Staying mayor is real important to Daley, and Daley staying mayor is real important to le tout Chicago. An unrepentant terrorist? Hey, we know your dad. And you control the 5th Ward.

For Obama, the outsider who gained the trust of the insiders, the position is different. He was willing to use Ayers and ally with him despite his terrorist past and lack of repentance. An unrepentant terrorist, who bragged of bombing the U.S. Capitol and the Pentagon, was a fit associate. Ayers evidently helped Obama gain insider status in Chicago civic life and politics--how much, we can't be sure. But most American politicians would not have chosen to associate with a man with Ayers's past or of Ayers's beliefs. It's something voters might reasonably want to take into account.
Page Printed from: http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2008/08/obamas_ayers_ties_are_relevant.html at August 26, 2008 - 10:43:12 AM PDT
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
New York Times
September 11, 2001
No Regrets for a Love Of Explosives; In a Memoir of Sorts, a War Protester Talks of Life With the Weathermen
By DINITIA SMITH

''I don't regret setting bombs,'' Bill Ayers said. ''I feel we didn't do enough.'' Mr. Ayers, who spent the 1970's as a fugitive in the Weather Underground, was sitting in the kitchen of his big turn-of-the-19th-century stone house in the Hyde Park district of Chicago. The long curly locks in his Wanted poster are shorn, though he wears earrings. He still has tattooed on his neck the rainbow-and-lightning Weathermen logo that appeared on letters taking responsibility for bombings. And he still has the ebullient, ingratiating manner, the apparently intense interest in other people, that made him a charismatic figure in the radical student movement.

Now he has written a book, ''Fugitive Days'' (Beacon Press, September). Mr. Ayers, who is 56, calls it a memoir, somewhat coyly perhaps, since he also says some of it is fiction. He writes that he participated in the bombings of New York City Police Headquarters in 1970, of the Capitol building in 1971, the Pentagon in 1972. But Mr. Ayers also seems to want to have it both ways, taking responsibility for daring acts in his youth, then deflecting it.

''Is this, then, the truth?,'' he writes. ''Not exactly. Although it feels entirely honest to me.''

But why would someone want to read a memoir parts of which are admittedly not true? Mr. Ayers was asked.

''Obviously, the point is it's a reflection on memory,'' he answered. ''It's true as I remember it.''

Mr. Ayers is probably safe from prosecution anyway. A spokeswoman for the Justice Department said there was a five-year statute of limitations on Federal crimes except in cases of murder or when a person has been indicted.

Mr. Ayers, who in 1970 was said to have summed up the Weatherman philosophy as: ''Kill all the rich people. Break up their cars and apartments. Bring the revolution home, kill your parents, that's where it's really at,'' is today distinguished professor of education at the University of Illinois at Chicago. And he says he doesn't actually remember suggesting that rich people be killed or that people kill their parents, but ''it's been quoted so many times I'm beginning to think I did,'' he said. ''It was a joke about the distribution of wealth.''

He went underground in 1970, after his girlfriend, Diana Oughton, and two other people were killed when bombs they were making exploded in a Greenwich Village town house. With him in the Weather Underground was Bernardine Dohrn, who was put on the F.B.I.'s 10 Most Wanted List. J. Edgar Hoover called her ''the most dangerous woman in America'' and ''la Pasionara of the Lunatic Left.'' Mr. Ayers and Ms. Dohrn later married.

In his book Mr. Ayers describes the Weathermen descending into a ''whirlpool of violence.''

''Everything was absolutely ideal on the day I bombed the Pentagon,'' he writes. But then comes a disclaimer: ''Even though I didn't actually bomb the Pentagon -- we bombed it, in the sense that Weathermen organized it and claimed it.'' He goes on to provide details about the manufacture of the bomb and how a woman he calls Anna placed the bomb in a restroom. No one was killed or injured, though damage was extensive.

Between 1970 and 1974 the Weathermen took responsibility for 12 bombings, Mr. Ayers writes, and also helped spring Timothy Leary (sentenced on marijuana charges) from jail.

Today, Mr. Ayers and Ms. Dohrn, 59, who is director of the Legal Clinic's Children and Family Justice Center of Northwestern University, seem like typical baby boomers, caring for aging parents, suffering the empty-nest syndrome. Their son, Malik, 21, is at the University of California, San Diego; Zayd, 24, teaches at Boston University. They have also brought up Chesa Boudin, 21, the son of David Gilbert and Kathy Boudin, who are serving prison terms for a 1981 robbery of a Brinks truck in Rockland County, N.Y., that left four people dead. Last month, Ms. Boudin's application for parole was rejected.

So, would Mr. Ayers do it all again, he is asked? ''I don't want to discount the possibility,'' he said.

''I don't think you can understand a single thing we did without understanding the violence of the Vietnam War,'' he said, and the fact that ''the enduring scar of racism was fully in flower.'' Mr. Ayers pointed to Bob Kerrey, former Democratic Senator from Nebraska, who has admitted leading a raid in 1969 in which Vietnamese women and children were killed. ''He committed an act of terrorism,'' Mr. Ayers said. ''I didn't kill innocent people.''

Mr. Ayers has always been known as a ''rich kid radical.'' His father, Thomas, now 86, was chairman and chief executive officer of Commonwealth Edison of Chicago, chairman of Northwestern University and of the Chicago Symphony. When someone mentions his father's prominence, Mr. Ayers is quick to say that his father did not become wealthy until the son was a teenager. He says that he got some of his interest in social activism from his father. He notes that his father promoted racial equality in Chicago and was acceptable as a mediator to Mayor Richard Daley and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in 1966 when King marched in Cicero, Ill., to protest housing segregation.

All in all, Mr. Ayers had ''a golden childhood,'' he said, though he did have a love affair with explosives. On July 4, he writes, ''my brothers and I loved everything about the wild displays of noise and color, the flares, the surprising candle bombs, but we trembled mostly for the Big Ones, the loud concussions.''

The love affair seems to have continued into adulthood. Even today, he finds ''a certain eloquence to bombs, a poetry and a pattern from a safe distance,'' he writes.

He attended Lake Forest Academy in Lake Forest, Ill., then the University of Michigan but dropped out to join Students for a Democratic Society.

In 1967 he met Ms. Dohrn in Ann Arbor, Mich. She had a law degree from the University of Chicago and was a magnetic speaker who often wore thigh-high boots and miniskirts. In 1969, after the Manson family murders in Beverly Hills, Ms. Dohrn told an S.D.S. audience: ''Dig it! Manson killed those pigs, then they ate dinner in the same room with them, then they shoved a fork into a victim's stomach.''

In Chicago recently, Ms. Dohrn said of her remarks: ''It was a joke. We were mocking violence in America. Even in my most inflamed moment I never supported a racist mass murderer.''

Ms. Dohrn, Mr. Ayers and others eventually broke with S.D.S. to form the more radical Weathermen, and in 1969 Ms. Dohrn was arrested and charged with resisting arrest and assaulting a police officer during the Days of Rage protests against the trial of the Chicago Eight -- antiwar militants accused of conspiracy to incite riots at the 1968 Democratic National Convention.

In 1970 came the town house explosion in Greenwich Village. Ms. Dohrn failed to appear in court in the Days of Rage case, and she and Mr. Ayers went underground, though there were no charges against Mr. Ayers. Later that spring the couple were indicted along with others in Federal Court for crossing state lines to incite a riot during the Days of Rage, and following that for ''conspiracy to bomb police stations and government buildings.'' Those charges were dropped in 1974 because of prosecutorial misconduct, including illegal surveillance.

During his fugitive years, Mr. Ayers said, he lived in 15 states, taking names of dead babies in cemeteries who were born in the same year as he. He describes the typical safe house: there were usually books by Malcolm X and Ho Chi Minh, and Che Guevara's picture in the bedroom; fermented Vietnamese fish sauce in the refrigerator, and live sourdough starter donated by a Native American that was reputed to have passed from hand to hand over a century.

He also writes about the Weathermen's sexual experimentation as they tried to ''smash monogamy.'' The Weathermen were ''an army of lovers,'' he says, and describes having had different sexual partners, including his best male friend.

''Fugitive Days'' does have moments of self-mockery, for instance when Mr. Ayers describes watching ''Underground,'' Emile De Antonio's 1976 documentary about the Weathermen. He was ''embarrassed by the arrogance, the solipsism, the absolute certainty that we and we alone knew the way,'' he writes. ''The rigidity and the narcissism.''

In the mid-1970's the Weathermen began quarreling. One faction, including Ms. Boudin, wanted to join the Black Liberation Army. Others, including Ms. Dohrn and Mr. Ayers, favored surrendering. Ms. Boudin and Ms. Dohrn had had an intense friendship but broke apart. Mr. Ayers and Ms. Dohrn were purged from the group.

Ms. Dohrn and Mr. Ayers had a son, Zayd, in 1977. After the birth of Malik, in 1980, they decided to surface. Ms. Dohrn pleaded guilty to the original Days of Rage charge, received three years probation and was fined $1,500. The Federal charges against Mr. Ayers and Ms. Dohrn had already been dropped.

Mr. Ayers and Ms. Dohrn tried to persuade Ms. Boudin to surrender because she was pregnant. But she refused, and went on to participate in the Brink's robbery. When she was arrested, Ms. Dohrn and Mr. Ayers volunteered to care for Chesa, then 14 months old, and became his legal guardians.

A few months later Ms. Dohrn was called to testify about the robbery. Ms. Dohrn had not seen Ms. Boudin for a year, she said, and knew nothing of it. Ms. Dohrn was asked to give a handwriting sample, and refused, she said, because the F.B.I. already had one in its possession. ''I felt grand juries were illegal and coercive,'' she said. For refusing to testify, she was jailed for seven months, and she and Mr. Ayers married during a furlough.

Once again, Chesa was without a mother. ''It was one of the hardest things I did,'' said Ms. Dohrn of going to jail.

In the interview, Mr. Ayers called Chesa ''a very damaged kid.'' ''He had real serious emotional problems,'' he said. But after extensive therapy, ''became a brilliant and wonderful human being.'' .

After the couple surfaced, Ms. Dohrn tried to practice law, taking the bar exam in New York. But she was turned down by the Bar Association's character committee because of her political activities.

Ms. Dohrn said she was aware of the contradictions between her radical past and the comforts of her present existence. ''This is where we raised our kids and are taking care of our aging parents,'' she said. ''We could live much more simply, and well we might.''

And as for settling into marriage after efforts to smash monogamy, Ms. Dohrn said, ''You're always trying to balance your understanding of who you are and what you need, and your longing and imaginings of freedom.''

''Happily for me, Billy keeps me laughing, he keeps me growing,'' she said.

Mr. Ayers said he had some of the same conflicts about marriage. ''We have to learn how to be committed,'' he said, ''and hold out the possibility of endless reinventions.''

As Mr. Ayers mellows into middle age, he finds himself thinking about truth and reconciliation, he said. He would like to see a Truth and Reconciliation Commission about Vietnam, he said, like South Africa's. He can imagine Mr. Kerrey and Ms. Boudin taking part.

And if there were another Vietnam, he is asked, would he participate again in the Weathermen bombings?

By way of an answer, Mr. Ayers quoted from ''The Cure at Troy,'' Seamus Heaney's retelling of Sophocles' ''Philoctetes:'' '' 'Human beings suffer,/ They torture one another./ They get hurt and get hard.' ''

He continued to recite:

History says, Don't hope

On this side of the grave.

But then, once in a lifetime

The longed-for tidal wave

Of justice can rise up

And hope and history rhyme.

Thinking back on his life , Mr. Ayers said, ''I was a child of privilege and I woke up to a world on fire. And hope and history rhymed.''
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Read more!

C.S. Lewis on How to Not Fool Yourself

Thanks to Tico Herrera for reminding me about this quote from Mere Christianity:

I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: "I'm ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don't accept His claim to be God." That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic-on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg-or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.

Text version of Mere Christianity
C.S. Lewis BBC radio address.
C.S. Lewis audiobook reading of introduction to Mere Christianity.

Read more!

Greatest Swimmer, Si -- Greatest Athlete, ... please

Great to see an American athlete, Michael Phelps, dominating his sport. But why isn't the title of greatest swimmer ever enough? No way a swimmer belongs in the greatest athlete debate. Whoever that is needs to be able to hit above at least the Mendoza line at the MLB level and be dominant in another sport. Bo Jackson and Deion Sanders types come to mind, not swimmers, other than Joe Frazier of course.

Read more!

Just One Please, Just One Right-Wing Priest

The Economist reported on a papal dispensation and then profiled Paraguay's new leader, Fernando Lugo:

But it will not be easy for Mr Lugo. He is a former missionary who embraced a school of theology that blended Marx with St Peter. He spent more than ten years as bishop of San Pedro, one of the poorest regions of Paraguay, peopled by Guaraní Indian peasant farmers and landless labourers. He backed invasions of large rural estates by radical movements, becoming known as the “bishop of the poor”.

He ran for president at the head of a coalition including the centrist Liberal Party and a dozen small far-left groups. Though he won handily, he got only 42% of the vote and he may not command a legislative majority. As a priest he was a radical, but as president he may have to be pragmatic. His choice of ministers was a balancing act, mixing centrists, leftists and reformers such as the finance minister, Dionisio Borda. He has said that he will not renew Paraguay’s expiring agreement with the IMF; he also wants to attract private capital to state companies.

Which generated one of the great all-time letters to an editor:

SIR – Your round-up of the week’s news reported that the papal dispensation given to Fernando Lugo in order that he become Paraguay’s president was the first time that the Vatican allowed a bishop to resign (Politics this week, August 2nd). Cesare Borgia was made a bishop at the age of 15 and a cardinal at 18 by his father Pope Alexander VI. On August 17th 1498 he resigned both positions and on the same day the French king, Louis XII, made him Duke of Valentinois.

A few observations:

1. I pray the letter writer had to look that one up.
2. I also pray for an epiphany on Lugo's economics.
3. I love the fact that 'Cesare Borgia' searches on this blog no longer come up empty.
   
4. What accounts for the dearth of right-wing priests?

Are economics courses only electives at Seminaries? I can understand how working with the poor would cause a priest to advocate a more aggressive role for governments, but at some point you would think that facts would affect, even priestly, thinking on how best to help the poor.

Read more!

Rove Electoral Map -- August 2008 -- Obama +66

Please click on map to enlarge or print.

Read more!

Prayer is Not About Getting What You Want

The Rev. Vallee, a priest and philosophy professor at the local seminary, St. John Vianney, distributes his upcoming homilies through e-mail. I try to read them regularly and they are a source of great comfort to me. Excerpts from one of his homilies:

Being healthy and pragmatic modern people, we tend to think that prayer works when we get what we want. I fear it is not so simple as that. Sometimes God answers our prayers and the answer is “no.” Sometimes God is silent. Sometimes prayer is not about getting what we want but about learning to reach down deeper for our faith when we don’t get what we want....

Prayer is not about arguing with God, influencing God, convincing God or getting what we want from God. Prayer is something much simpler than that. Prayer is simply about trusting, no more and no less. In the end we are, each one of us, very like the little boy Bishop Noonan saw in the Irish restaurant. We don’t always get what we want. But in the end all that matters is that our trust in the Father remains unbroken.

Aside from the Catholic teachings, for which I need all the lessons and reminders I can get, I trust the source completely, which allows me to focus on the message itself. In contrast, I enjoy reading Garry Wills, but since he is such a critic of the Vatican, and of the late John Paul II in particular, I'm always weighing how that bias influences his views on the Gospels. On a secular level, it's the equivalent of watching NBC's political coverage.

The email address to request to be put on Vallee's email distribution list is Cioran262@aol.com. See the entire homily from 8/17/08 below.


I. The bishop in Ireland Bishop Noonan told me a story today of a little boy he saw in Ireland who, all through a meal, was pestering his father for something. Finally the father said,”Enough of this foolishness, eat your meal and don’t be a brat.” When the meal was over the boy snuggled up next to his father and the father gave him a big hug. If you are Irish, you realize what a big deal this is. I used to joke with Bishop Noonan that the basic principle of Irish morality is: “Never touch another man, except in anger.”

II. Cannanite woman
Today’s Gospel gives rise to similar questions as the story: How do you deal with the silence God? What do you do when God says, “no.” In this today’s Gospel, Jesus encounters a Caananite woman with a very reasonable request: She wants her daughter cured. Not only does Jesus, at first, refuse to help her but he is downright rude. He calls her and her sick daughter, “dogs.” “It is not right to take the bread of the children and cast it to the dogs.” The woman responds with an extraordinary acclamation of faith, “Even the dogs eat what falls from the master’s table.” Jesus cures her daughter and concludes, “what great faith you have.”

III. Prayer is not about getting what you want
I think there is important message about prayer contained in this little passage. Being healthy and pragmatic modern people, we tend to think that prayer works when we get what we want. I fear it is not so simple as that. Sometimes God answers our prayers and the answer is “no.” Sometimes God is silent. Sometimes prayer is not about getting what we want but about learning to reach down deeper for our faith when we don’t get what we want.

IV. How would I respond?
Imagine you are this poor woman, who has not only been told no by Jesus, but has been called a dog by Jesus. How would you respond? As for myself, I fear that I would get angry or be hurt but I pray that I would respond as the woman did, with a deeper and more trusting faith. No wonder Jesus tells her, “what great faith you have.” Pray for faith like the faith of this woman. It is easy to believe and trust when you get what you want. It is much harder to believe and to trust when God is silent or when God says, “no.”

V. The illogic of prayer
This woman is extraordinary on all accounts. The dramatic heart of the dialogue comes when we wait to see how she will respond to being called a dog by Jesus:. She says: “Truth, Lord, but even the dogs eat the scraps that fall from the master’s table.” There is a certain lack of logic here. The woman admits that Jesus has no responsibility to help her with the “truth, Lord.” Then, she proceeds to beg Jesus to help her. I think this bit of illogic is the whole secret of prayer. Notice that in the Our Father we pray that God’s will be done at the same time that we pray for our daily bread and a bunch of other things. How do we explain the contradiction? As I said, this is the deepest mystery of prayer.

VI. Prayer is about trust
Prayer is not about arguing with God, influencing God, convincing God or getting what we want from God. Prayer is something much simpler than that. Prayer is simply about trusting, no more and no less. In the end we are, each one of us, very like the little boy Bishop Noonan saw in the Irish restaurant. We don’t always get what we want. But in the end all that matters is that our trust in the Father remains unbroken.

Read more!