Miss Kelly

Barack Osama and Deval Patrick - Deja Vu All Over Again

Obama supported MA governor Deval Patrick's campaign, Patrick is endorsing Obama as president. Obama seems to be using Patrick's play book. Sound positive and idealistic and positive, get people to feel good about themselves by voting for you! 

Patrick's campaign slogan was "Together We Can."  (What??) Obama's campaign slogan is "Yes We Can!"

Both are charming people, inspiring and charismatic. 

Deval Patrick swore that he would not be beholden to the lobbyists or special interests.   (Oopsy, didn't keep that promise, did he?)  Obama swears that he will not allow corporate lobbyist into the White House.

Patrick had zilcho experience as a legislator or regulator, and it shows in his first year that has achieved not much.  But hey, maybe he'll come through on his promise to bring casinos to Massachusetts.  Whoo-hoo, now there's some idealism for ya. Together we can bring gaming to Massachusetts! 

Obama has the least governing experience of any of the candidates, except for Hillary.  His statements on Iraq (he'll start withdrawing troops as soon as he becomes president) and Pakistan (we'll invade Pakistan if we find out Osama is there) indicate he is a dangerous and unschooled on foreign affairs.  (FYI, Osama is pining for the fjords.)

They both sound wonderful - I was uplifted by Obama's DNC speech back in 2004 - but there's just not much substance there. And not remotely enough for Obama to be leader of the Free World. What are people thinking to vote for this young pup?  Is it mostly anti-Hillary/anti-Clinton sentiment?   

In England, Melanie Phillips says "Welcome to Plant Diana", to characterize the shift in politics there from reason, stoicism and responsibility to sentimentality and self-obsession.  "Warm fuzzy feelings win hands down because they anesthetize reality and blank out altogether those difficult issues which require difficult decisions." In the U.S., it's "Welcome to Planet Oprah."

One thing thing that Patrick and Obama don't share is allegiance to a problematic church, the Trinity United Church of Christ of Chicago (TUCC), IL , where Obama is a member.   Sounds rather like a Black separatist church organization to me.  Imagine the outcry if a White candidate belonged to a church that espoused "The White Value System."  It would be simply unthinkable and unacceptable. In December 2007, the TUCC awarded its highest social achievement award to Louis Farrakhan, the head of the Nation of Islam, someone who is widely considered racist, homophobic and anti-Semitic.  This was published in the church's publication Trumpet (excerpts here).

If a White candidate had similar associations to racists and racial supremacists, any presidential aspirations would be over in a hurry. (Although maybe Ron Paul proves me wrong here....) When will the reporters (besides Tucker Carlson) pay attention to this?

UPDATE:  Pajamas Media asks the same questions. Burt Prelutsky concludes:

"I have no idea how a member of a black church that apparently feels it owes greater allegiance to Africa than to America and that pays homage to a bigot like Farrakhan, has the gall to present himself as the one candidate who can bring us all together."

A Sickening Silence in Burma

Thousands of Buddhist monks have been slaughtered and dumped in the jungles of Burma.  There's been coverage in the blogosphere of this horrible crisis, some newspaper coverage, but I've seen nothing on the evening news. Deafening Silence (very apropos name for this) has written about the thwarted rebellion against Myanmar's military government here:

  "On Friday (9-28-07) , the government of Myanmar (originally known as Burma) attempted to cut all internet and news communication with the outside world.  Under this cloak of silence it began to strike at the peaceful protesters, led by Buddhist monks, who had been demonstrating against the military government.  Government troops stormed and occupied monasteries, siezed and beat civilians, and- if this NPR report is accurate, are burning and terrorizing rural villages."

That's the "before" picture.  Below is the "after" picture.  Pajamas Media has reports of the slaughter of thousands of unarmed, saffron-robed monks here. The BBC reports that thousands of monks that were rounded up in Burma's main city of Rangoon are being sent to prisons in the north:

"About 4,000 monks have been rounded up in the past week as the military government has tried to stamp out pro-democracy protests. They are being held at a disused race course and a technical college."

"Sources from a government-sponsored militia said they would soon be moved away from Rangoon. The monks have been disrobed and shackled, the sources told BBC radio's Burmese service. There are reports that the monks are refusing to eat."

"The country has seen almost two weeks of sustained popular unrest, in the most serious challenge to the military leadership for more than two decades."

Some people in the world are watching.  Whether the world will do anything about this brutal oppression is another thing. Pray for the people of Burma, and for the souls of the the hundreds - possibly thousands of monks who sacrificed their lives.

Friday Miscellania - Tennis, Dr. Seuss, Pope, Global Warming

Pretty amazing tennis game last night between Andre Agassi and Marcus Baghdatis.  Good write-up at a TNR tennis blog.  Mr. Baghdatis is way sexy.

Sissie knits together a Dr. Seuss political cartoon with Don Rumsfeld's recent American Legion speech, and she lobs a few at the Boston Globe and CNN for their analysis of the speech.  It's a goodie! 

Pope Benedict puts a stop to the Vatican's "traditional" Chrisrmas concert .  The Pope apparently prefers Mozart and Bach to 'pop' music.  The Vatican says that “Benedict XVI is a very sober pope and is not inclined toward variety shows. He is more concerned about leading the faith of Catholics to its spiritual essence.”  Love that guy a lot.

Alex Beam of the Boston Globe pens a great little article about freedom of speech, heresy in the scientific community, and global warming.  Beam speaks with Richard Lindzen, MIT's Alfred P. Sloan professor of meteorology.  Dr. Lidzen isn't following the party line about global warming.   Good to see this in the Globe.

I'm a Slimy Mollusc in the TTLB ecosystem!  Yippee!! Working my way up there, taxon by taxon. 

Should US Airlines Screen Like El Al Does?

OK, everybody, take off your shoes, no knitting needles, no corkscrews, no bottled water.  It's not just that air travel is so bloody annoying nowadays that bugs me.  It's that screening targets everybody instead of targeting terrorists, and could probably be done far more effectively.  U.S. airlines are screening for weapons, and we should be screening people for intent.  Screening for weapons is a losing battle, unless we all fly naked after having cavity searches.  (Yuckk.)  We can't seem to get ahead of terrorists' thinking, we can only react to their latest ploy and pile on more restrictions to millions of passengers. 

Domenico at Bettnet.com blogs about how El Al profiles and screens it passengers, and asks if the U.S. couldn't adopt these practices.  I've not traveled to Israel (yet), but several friends have, and every passenger is questioned before boarding a flight.  It's serious, no small talk or joking.   If there's anything funny or suspicious about your answers, you're not boarding that flight, you're taken aside for interrogation.  A 2001 USA Today article describes the steps that El Al takes to ensure that terrorists don't get on board, including profiling passengers, lugagge handling, and the flight crew capabilities.

"Despite their current anxieties, Americans also might balk at El Al-style ethnic profiling. Staff scrutinize the passengers' names, dividing them into low-risk (Israeli or foreign Jews), medium-risk (non-Jewish foreigners) and extremely high-risk travelers (anyone with an Arabic name). These people automatically are taken into a room for body and baggage checks and lengthy interrogation. Single women also are considered high-risk, for fear they might be used by Palestinian lovers to carry bombs."

"A lot happens behind the scenes, too. Once luggage moves from the check-in desk to the conveyer belt, it is put in a pressurized box that detonates any explosive before the bag is loaded on the plane."

Nifty idea.  As Domenico notes,

"By contrast, our new government bureaucracy has given us pat-downs of 10-year-old girls, grandmothers forced to remove their shoes, mothers forced to taste test their own bottled breast milk, and hundreds of thirsty passengers forced to sit through transcontinental flights without books, music, or movies to pass the time."

The El Al screening apparently takes considerable time, and their airline makes 40 flights a day to 50 locations (2001 info), compared to thousands of flights a day from American airports. I don't know if El Al's tactics can be scaled up.  But I'm left with the nagging sense that we need to figure out how to screen intent (some sort of psychological screening?), not prohibit lip gloss and Gatorade. 

Sissie ruminates similarly, and then some (as always!).

Wow, the Wall Street Journal also ruminated similarly today!  Must be on to something here!

"Bad people can, theoretically, be identified once they are at the airport. By assessing a person's body language and travel details, screeners can make a quick judgment on the threat level. The TSA has a program in place in a few airports to do that now. Called Spot, or Screening Passengers by Observation Technique, it involves specially trained security officers scrutinizing people in security lines and elsewhere in the airport."

Let's get going with that program, shall we?

Krauthammer Nails It Twice - Aussies and Gaza Beach

Two recent columns by Charles Krauthammer were (IMHO) exceptional and must be read!  The first appeared today over at Real Clear Politics, where Krauthammer writes about America's staunch ally Australia. Aussie Aussie Aussie Oy Oy Oy!  We've written affectionately about the brave, no-BS Aussies too, here. And don't they have a way with words:

In the Australian House of Representatives last month, opposition member Julia Gillard interrupted a speech by the minister of health thusly: "I move that that sniveling grub over there be not further heard.''

Last week, Krauthammer asked and answered the question: Why would Israel deliberately shell a peaceful family on a beach?  He's of course referring to the death of seven people at a Gaza beach earlier in June, an act which was falsely attributed to the Israeli Defense Force (mais oui).  As usual, the incident was followed by world-wide distibution of staged photos of grief.  It was quickly determined that Palestinians were launching rockets into Israel from that beach. Krauthammer asks some other questions, which few reporters bothered to ponder:

• Who is to blame if Palestinians are setting up rocket launchers to attack Israel -- and placing them 400 yards from a beach crowded with Palestinian families on the Muslim Sabbath?
• Why are the Gazans launching any rockets at Israel in the first place -- about 1,000 in the last year?
• What would the U.S. do if rockets were raining into San Diego from across the border with Mexico?

There's more critical analysis of the Gaza Beach incident by Solomonia here and here , and by Aegean Stables over here.  Even the Human Rights Watch isn't buying the Palestinians' story.  That should tell you something.

Miscellania from Past Few Days

How on earth does anyone stay on top of news/blogs/current events?!?!??!  A few things that caught my eye in the past few days:

Double amputee Iraq veteran from Massachusetts sues Michael Moore for $75 MM for using an interview with him without his permission, and for using it out of context to make it seem the soldier was anti-war.  Not Michael Moore!!

Stanley Kurtz's article about the link between democracy and monogamy Kurtz manages to find  connections between marriage (between one man and one woman) and all kinds of social goods. Plan to blog more about this one.

Although the Boston Globe and plenty of other media would have you believe that Catholics have left the Church in droves, a survey of U.S. Catholics from 1965 to 2005 shows otherwise.  Yes, churches are closing (almost entirely in cities, very few in the 'burbs), and yes, there are far fewer priests.  But weekly Mass attendance at 31% of all Catholics remains unchanged for the past five years.   The Catholic population at almost 65 million is 23% of the U.S. population, that percentage is unchanged for the past 40 years. 

The Houston Chronicle has an editorial about Ayaan Hirsi Ali.  Excerpt:

Pro-woman, pro-West and intellectually fearless, Ali is sure to thrive here. But as challenging as this self-described "Muslim atheist" has been for the Dutch, she may be more so for Americans. A colleague of Ali's, for instance, told Time magazine that Ali sharply opposes Christianity's incursions into U.S. public life. America will be the better with Ali's bold, original voice. And it should brace for some uncomfortable ideas.

Bring her on!