THURSDAY,  FEBRUARY 28,  2008

A NOMINATION

Forget the Democratic and Republican nominations for president.  This is far more urgent:  A nomination for dumbest story of the year. 

The newspaper?  Need you ask?  The New York Times.

The story?  John McCain may not be eligible to run for president.

Why, you ask?  You are shocked and dismayed.  Well, The Times breathlessly tells us that this son and grandson of fighting admirals, this American war hero, was born in the Panama Canal zone while his father was stationed there.  The Constitution requires the president to be "natural-born."

Oh, this is getting juicy.  The Times drags out the usual legal scholars to discuss the issue. While the story slants in the direction of McCain being qualified - The Times doesn't want to be completely scalped - it leaves the question open.  Hmm, wonder why the thing wasn't important enough to be discussed before McCain was assured the nomination.  Oh, never mind.  It's The New York Times.  We all know why.

We are ready for our Clint Eastwood moment.  Go ahead, make McCain's day.

I do hope someone brings this to a federal court, if he can show that he has the standing to do so.  Now, that someone would probably try to find an ultra-liberal judge who'll decide against McCain and will not be overturned by an appeals court (think Ninth Circuit, California), throwing the case into the Supreme Court before the election. 

The Supreme Court will not, once again, be accused of deciding a presidential election, as it was in 2000.  It would never vacate a presidential nomination.  You've got Thomas, Scalia, Alito, Chief Justice Roberts.  That's four.  You need one more, and I can't believe any of the judges, including Ruthie, would be on the other side.  Certainly Anthony Kennedy would go the right way.

I want to see it happen.  It would call attention to John McCain's story.  It would make the other guys look smaller than they actually are, if possible. 

Obama's shrewd move would be publicly to disassociate himself from the case, declare McCain eligible, but do nothing to stop the legal moves.  That's Obama's style.  You saw it in Tuesday's debate:  I didn't seek Farrakhan's endorsement, but I can't stop him, can I?

Come on, crackpots!  Get to a judge.  Here's a list of federal courts.  You can download driving directions from Yahoo. 

As FDR used to say, I love it, I love it, I love it.

THE UNSPEAKABLE ISSUE 

The issue is race.  I've long held that this will be the secret, or maybe not so secret, issue in this campaign.  But who will bring it up?

The conventional wisdom is that the Clintons injected race into the Democratic primary battle, and were hurt by it.  I've never bought that line, which was delivered to us by the largely Obama-ized press.  I have felt that it was Obama who managed to work it in, primarily to motivate his logical supporters.  Now there comes a piece by Sean Wilentz, certified liberal, professor at Princeton.  In The New Republic, Wilentz analyzes the race issue and how it was brought into play, coming down hard on Obama:

After several weeks of swooning, news reports are finally being filed about the gap between Senator Barack Obama's promises of a pure, soul-cleansing "new" politics and the calculated, deeply dishonest conduct of his actually-existing campaign. But it remains to be seen whether the latest ploy by the Obama camp--over allegations about the circulation of a photograph of Obama in ceremonial Somali dress--will be exposed by the press as the manipulative illusion that it is.

And...

To a large degree, the campaign's strategists turned the primary and caucus race to their advantage when they deliberately, falsely, and successfully portrayed Clinton and her campaign as unscrupulous race-baiters--a campaign-within-the-campaign in which the worked-up flap over the Somali costume photograph is but the latest episode. While promoting Obama as a "post-racial" figure, his campaign has purposefully polluted the contest with a new strain of what historically has been the most toxic poison in American politics.

It's a long piece, but well worth reading.  It's the best reporting on the use of the race issue that I've seen.  Wilentz concludes:

It may strike some as ironic that the racializing should be coming from a black candidate's campaign and its supporters. But this is an American presidential campaign--and there is a long history of candidates who are willing to inflame the most deadly passions in our national life in order to get elected. Sadly, it is what Barack Obama and his campaign gurus have been doing for months--with the aid of their media helpers on the news and op-ed pages and on cable television, mocked by "SNL" as in the tank for Obama. They promise to continue until they win the nomination, by any means necessary.

This will not get better.  It will get worse.  We are in for some real racial politicking from the Obama side once the general-election campaign gets going.  It won't be directed only at bringing out the black vote.  It will be aimed at whites, and it will be intimidating:  If Obama loses, folks will be angry.  Folks might do things.  Let's keep the peace.

That's coming.  I'll be writing more about it in future posts.

REALLY IN THE TANK FOR OBAMA

Exhibit B of the press being in the tank for Obama - right behind the A-ranked New York Times - is David Ignatius of The Washington Post.  Last week Ignatius waxed glorious on how wonderful it would be to see world reaction to an Obama presidency.  Now the illustrious writer suggests, as a clear means of undercutting McCain's strength, that the threat of terror may be exaggerated.  Naturally, Ignatius quotes a book written by a former CIA man, Marc Sageman.  There seems to be an endless supply of former CIA guys with book contracts, ready at a moment's notice to ridicule American policy:

The heart of Sageman's message is that we have been scaring ourselves into overexaggerating the terrorism threat -- and then by our unwise actions in Iraq making the problem worse. He attacks head-on the central thesis of the Bush administration, echoed increasingly by Republican presidential candidate John McCain, that, as McCain's Web site puts it, the United States is facing "a dangerous, relentless enemy in the War against Islamic Extremists" spawned by al-Qaeda.

The numbers say otherwise, Sageman insists. The first wave of al-Qaeda leaders, who joined Osama bin Laden in the 1980s, is now down to a few dozen people on the run in the tribal areas of northwest Pakistan. The second wave of terrorists, who trained in al-Qaeda's camps in Afghanistan during the 1990s, has also been devastated, with about 100 hiding out on the Pakistani frontier. These people are genuinely dangerous, says Sageman, and they must be captured or killed. But they do not pose an existential threat to America, much less a "clash of civilizations."

Boy, that was close.  I really thought all those terrorist acts committed around the world in the last seven years, since 9-11, actually happened.  I should have known they were all part of the Bush-McCain lie machine.  Pay no attention to those explosions.  London?  Madrid?  Attempt to bring down 20 airliners over the Atlantic?  Pinpricks! 

And if a terror-sponsoring regime gets nuclear arms?  If nuclear-equipped Pakistan falls into chaos?  Well, we'll think about it.

The genius author tells us that the terrorist threat is diminishing, but that the United States is making the threat worse.  Say what?  That's like people who say that we should stop filling the prisons because the crime rate is going down.  Apparently, had we done very little to fight terror after 9/11, the threat would have faded away. 

Like it did on 9/11, when we weren't doing much of anything.

IN THE REAL WORLD

A more realistic Washington Post report on terror tells of an American-born imam and his excellent adventures:

Even before the 2001 terrorist attacks, American-born imam Anwar al-Aulaqi drew the attention of federal authorities because of his possible connections to al-Qaeda. Their interest grew after 9/11, when it turned out that three of the hijackers had spent time at his mosques in California and Falls Church, but he was allowed to leave the country in 2002.

New information later surfaced about his contacts with extremists while in the United States. Now, U.S. officials are saying for the first time that they believe that Aulaqi worked with al-Qaeda networks in the Persian Gulf after leaving Northern Virginia. In mid-2006, Aulaqi was detained in Yemen at the request of the United States. To the dismay of U.S. authorities, Aulaqi was released in December.

Pay no attention to reports like this.  These people are misunderstood.  Even if they get nuclear arms, how much damage could they actually do?  A few million people here, a few million there?  Why, that's thinning the herd.

Nothing to see, folks.  Nothing to see.

Oh, there's also this, on the same guy:

Weeks after leaving the United States in the spring of 2002, he posted an essay in Arabic titled "Why Muslims Love Death" on the Islam Today Web site, lauding the fervor of Palestinian suicide bombers. Months later he praised them in English at a lecture in a London mosque that was recorded on videotape.

Isn't it disgraceful that people bring video recorders into mosques?  No respect, no respect.

A GUY TO WATCH

That's Bobby Jindal, the new governor of Louisiana, who replaced the former Katrina-scarred "I didn't know it was raining" chief executive of the state.  Jindal is off to a roaring start.  Even The New York Times - yes, yes, even The Times - has noticed, and reported:

BATON ROUGE, La. — Downstairs, legislators gnashed their teeth, while upstairs at the Capitol here this week, the new governor claimed victory against the old customs down below.

Six weeks into the term of Gov. Bobby Jindal, an extensive package of ethics bills was approved here this week, signaling a shift in the political culture of a state proud of its brazen style. Mr. Jindal, the earnest son of Indian immigrants, quickly declared open season on the cozy fusion of interests and social habits that have prevailed among lobbyists, state legislators and state agencies here for decades. Mostly, he got what he wanted.

Mr. Jindal, an outsider to that rollicking if sometimes unsavory banquet, a Republican with a missionary’s zeal to smite Louisiana’s wickedness at one of its presumed sources, called on the Legislature to reform itself and its high-living ways.

Grudgingly, pushed by public opinion and business pressure, it went along.

Politics of accomplishment.  Future president. 

WARNING - THIS IS SERIOUS!

This column always warns readers of clear and present dangers.  Please read this carefully.  it could save your life, or the life of a favorite aunt. 

There is a new threat.  You know what I'm talking about.  You've heard the whispers.

It's robots.

Look, I'm not anti-robot.  Robots have rights.  But their rights end where my nose begins.  And frankly, I'm worried:

Increasingly autonomous, gun-totting robots developed for warfare could easily fall into the hands of terrorists and may one day unleash a robot arms race, a top expert on artificial intelligence told AFP.

"They pose a threat to humanity," said University of Sheffield professor Noel Sharkey ahead of a keynote address Wednesday before Britain's Royal United Services Institute.

Intelligent machines deployed on battlefields around the world -- from mobile grenade launchers to rocket-firing drones -- can already identify and lock onto targets without human help.

There are more than 4,000 US military robots on the ground in Iraq, as well as unmanned aircraft that have clocked hundreds of thousands of flight hours.

The first three armed combat robots fitted with large-caliber machine guns deployed to Iraq last summer, manufactured by US arms maker Foster-Miller, proved so successful that 80 more are on order, said Sharkey.

But up to now, a human hand has always been required to push the button or pull the trigger.

It we are not careful, he said, that could change.

Okay, okay, I'm scared.  I'll keep my cell phone on.  If I see a Buick without a driver, I'll know the worst has happened. 

And you keep your eyes open too.   You know those little round vacuum cleaners that bounce around your living room, cleaning your floor without you doing a thing?  Don't turn your backs on them.  I have information.

I'm going outside today.  If I survive, I'll be back later.

Posted on February 28, 2008.