Can Obama pay the pump price?
The meeting was depressing, sometimes frightening. True believers are always a bit grim and these anti-nuclear energy zealots were no exception. They refused to listen to anyone who suggested that nuclear power could be part of the solution to America's continuing energy crisis.
Several times, they cited Presidential Candidate Barack Obama as a friend in their campaign to prevent not just expansion of nuclear energy but also to prevent increased production of oil and natural gas. They loudly opposed any further drilling in Alaska or off the coasts and in the Gulf of Mexico. They called for excess profits taxes on oil companies and the automobile industry.
Three Cheers for the U.S. Supreme Court
I believe the U.S. Supreme Court is to be applauded for its last three major decisions. I'm referring to its recent decisions to guarantee habeas corpus rights to detainees at Guantanamo Bay, strike down the death penalty for child rapists in Louisiana, and invalidate the handgun ban in the District of Columbia. In each of these cases, it has sided with common sense over zealotry.
Denying habeas corpus rights to anyone is un-American, even when it's being done to foreigners suspected of committing acts of terrorism against the United States or conspiracy to commit such acts. And according the Supreme Court's ruling, it's also unconstitutional. What did it accomplish anyway? It certainly didn't make us any safer. The only thing I see that it did is make the rest of the world hate us. Is that what we wanted?
On Religion & Politics in America
Few issues in America are as contentious and divisive as religion, and the recently released study by the Pew Foundation on religion and public life is sure to reanimate the nation's differences. Some of the findings merely confirm what most people intuitively know, for example, that overwhelming majorities have a belief in God, or, to characterize it in the parlance of our cultural cognoscenti, a supernatural being.
More nuanced are the findings that about seven in ten believe that many religions can lead to eternal life and that there is more than one interpretation of the teachings of their own religion. Of course, those beliefs fundamentally clash with the precepts of those religions, which is only to say that if all religions are equal, by what standard would one choose one over another. Moreover, it casts one's thoughtfulness in a poor light if, after a lifetime of study and reflection, choosing Catholicism over a protestant religion is a difference without a distinction.
Who Will Be the Next Moderator of "Meet the Press"?
The unfortunate and untimely death of Tim Russert means that NBC will soon have to pick someone to succeed him at its long-running Sunday morning interview program, Meet the Press. While the general consensus seems to be that retired NBC Nightly News anchor Tom Brokaw will take the job on an interim basis (probably until after the presidential election in November), it is anyone's guess who the new permanent moderator might be.
NBC has many potential candidates -- including a lot of young talent -- within its own network and its cable affiliates MSNBC and CNBC that it could consider. Of those, I believe longtime correspondent Andrea Mitchell (no relation this writer) is an early favorite to be selected. There is precedent for a female moderator on the program. Martha Rountree, who was also the show's founder, was the original host when it debuted in 1947.
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Could Obama get more votes but lose?
Now that Senator Barack Obama has clinched the Democratic nomination, the pundits and political professionals are looking backward, explaining the inexplicable as best they can. We need to look back at what happened but then we should consider one aspect of the November voting that has the Obama team concerned but preparing.
We also can examine which states might be in play so we can follow the polls in those states to get a better idea of who might win. The national polls have difficulty discounting for the fact that Democratic presidential candidates run up lopsided majorities in some big states while Republican candidates win narrowly in other states. In effect, the Democrats waste votes while the Republicans are more efficient in securing electoral college votes.
Eleven Days That Doomed Clinton’s Campaign
Now that Barack Obama has become the presumptive presidential nominee of the Democratic Party, let's take a look back at how Hillary Clinton lost. Last year at this time, it seemed inevitable that she was going to win the nomination. What went wrong?
She finished the primary season on a very strong note, winning primaries in Ohio, Texas, Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, Indiana, West Virginia, Kentucky, Puerto Rico, and South Dakota. But, unfortunately for Clinton, the nomination had already been lost at that point. The hole that she had so deeply dug herself into guaranteed that her late rally would be all for naught.
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Republican dog food
"The Republican brand is in the trash can. I've often observed that if we were a dog food, they would take us off the shelf." So said Rep. Tom Davis (R-Va.)
David Ogilvy, called the father of modern advertising, once had a client who sold dog food. Ogilvy created a campaign that other ad executives called brilliant. He redesigned the cans and labels. The new design won awards. His print and television ads tested at the top of the approval charts and won more awards. The campaign was rolled out and sales boomed. Then, in a few weeks, sales fell back to the old level.
Memorial Day: What's Truly At Stake
As is fitting the occasion, today we can read about distant and contemporary heroes, people whose sacrifices range from the common to the extraordinary, in battles of at once ferocious and horrifying. Beyond the heroic actions of our military personnel are the broader themes that infuse Memorial Day, and those include freedom and its corollary, responsibility.
However, when we venture into those areas we inevitably find ourselves outside the political Demilitarized Zone of individual heroism, a place where we can all agree that individuals who have served, been wounded or killed, deserve our deepest respect and thanks. That's because we often don't find universal agreement on whether a given war was justified, at least until it's over and the implications of the sacrifice are more apparent.
Why Obama Can Rightfully Claim Victory
Barack Obama is not quite ready to claim victory yet in the race for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination. However, he would be justified in doing so -- and that's even if the results from Michigan and Florida are figured into the equation. All one has to do is crunch a few numbers to see why.
Including the results from yesterday's Kentucky and Oregon primaries, Obama now leads Hillary Clinton in pledged delegates by approximately 155. Not counting Florida and Michigan yet, there are three nominating contests remaining -- in Puerto Rico on June 1st, and in South Dakota and Montana on June 3rd.
Ethanol's roadkill
The corn-ethanol lobby is well organized, aggressive and nasty. Last year, I wrote three articles saying that corn-ethanol production takes farmland out of food production, uses huge amounts of increasingly scarce water, and leaves poor people in countries such as Mexico hungry because their cost of food increases beyond their means as corn and other grains are diverted to fuel.
After the second article, a biofuels executive threatened that I might become "roadkill" if I did not change the subject. Another corn-ethanol advocate accused me of siding with "an enemy of America" when I wrote that Venezuela's Hugo Chavez accused the U.S. of starving the poor to "feed automobiles." Even enemies can be correct sometimes. Beside, India's finance minister called ethanol "a crime against humanity." So it was not just Chavez who linked higher Mexican tortilla prices with American corn that was diverted to fuel.
War, Peace and Oil
I have read of it in various publications, had the merits of it explained to me by many distinguished speakers, have been induced to believe that it is of common acceptance, and for the better part of my early life on earth I actually believed that the essence was doable:
That doable was that peace was indeed a realistic goal; that this nation's policy, in scope and function, both domestic and international should be to establish peace. I thought that peace was universally desirous and was a shared commonality for all of humankind. But, with the passing of years, as with all things child-like, I put such beliefs aside and dealt with the world as it is rather than as I wish it was.
"Obama doesn't like me"
I am neither bitter nor cynical but I do wish there was less immaturity in political thinking.
- Franklin D. Roosevelt
Beyond Conservatism: Freedom in a Godless Future
That the GOP is experiencing an identity crisis is self-evident. Over the last few months the Party cannibalized herself as one candidate after another tripped over their feet trying to climb on top of her shaky political pedestal. No one can convincingly say what Republican voters were looking for, but it looks like they've pretty much found it in John McCain. Yet there is restiveness in the so-called Conservative sector, once hailed as the core ideological constituency of the Right but now finding itself marginalized to the peripheries of the Republican Party whose political headquarters are being rebuilt Leftwards.
Most Conservative icons have criticized the Arizona senator's controversial Conservative credentials, but some have gone as far as to boycott the Party over his nomination, thus translating the Conservative tantrum into a highly leveraged ultimatum. So Conservatives indeed feel betrayed by the GOP's leadership, but have they ever scrutinized their faithfulness to their own principles? Most importantly, have they ever coherently articulated what Conservative principles represent? ...Can they?
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For the Love of Despots
For reasons that defy both common sense and reason, modern liberals are drawn to despots and tyrants. The most notable, read egregious, example is former president Jimmy Carter, who this week met with Nasser Shaer, a senior leader of the Hamas terrorist organization.
Carter's history of this kind of madness dates to more than thirty years ago. Recall that during some of the most tense years of the Cold War, when the Soviet Union had thousands of nuclear missiles trained on the United States, Carter dismissed those who demanded that America take the threat seriously, calling them alarmists. He also had a hand in propping up the Pahlevi dictatorship in Iran, and, of course, left office with U.S. hostages in Iran--a shameful legacy.
Will anyone help Morgan Tsvangirai?
It may be necessary to use methods other than constitutional ones.
- Robert Mugabe