We live in a society that relies more on technology than trusting others. It treasures materialism more than people that matter. It revels in gossip over grace. It honors achievement over altruism and celebrates takers over givers. That is why it is refreshing when you meet an incredible human being who goes against the flow of selfishness and gives her life daily for those less fortunate. Unfortunately, I should have written went against the flow because since this past week she is no longer with us. She is no longer making this world a better place because of her love and sacrifice. She was taken from us as abruptly as an arrow piercing the heart of a people who are mourning the loss of someone they deeply respected and looked up to on an every day basis. She is gone…
For months now, newspaper columnists and bloggers have been uncomfortable about one aspect of their favorite : Yes, Obama is sincere, they concede. Deeply, persuasively sincere. But is he tough enough for the big time? Can he be as ruthless as his opponent?
A new CNN poll ranks President George W. Bush the most unpopular president in modern American history. The key figure is not Bush’s 28 percent approval rating, which, though dismal, is not as poor as all-time lows set by Harry S Truman (22 percent) and Richard Nixon (24 percent), but his disapproval rating, which has soared to 71 percent. No president had ever cracked the 70-percent ceiling. The previous record in CNN or Gallup polling was set by Truman, who reached 67 percent disapproval in January 1952.
Politicians often say stupid things. But every once in a while, one says something so colossally stupid, so unintentionally revealing of their ignorance and prejudice it takes your breath away. Democratic Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi: “Drilling is the failed energy policy of yesterday that has brought us record gas prices today.”
In the course of researching the organ-harvesting story, for a moment my eye fell upon the first comment in the comments section on each of two news sites. In the case of the first site, I ignored the comment, merely making a mental note of how predictably barbaric it was, and I soon forgot what that site was. But when I came upon yet another site with yet another comment expressing the same view, I decided to share what that view is, since it reveals a general pattern among Albanians. So here is the second comment:
As I have warned several times over the past year, and many articles later, Hezbollah has indeed waged its expected blitzkrieg against the democratically elected Government of Lebanon. Within 24 hours, the pro-Iranian super militia blocked all accesses to the Beirut International Airport, established an exclusive security zone around the organization’s headquarters in south Beirut, deployed its forces into several Sunni neighbourhoods in the capital and erected check points across the country. Within 48 hours or more the “Party of Allah” may be in control of large areas of the Lebanese Republic. In short, this could mutate into a slow motion coup d’Etat. What’s behind the blitz?
In an interview with USA Today, Hillary Clinton said this: “I have a much broader base to build a winning coalition on.” She then cited an Associated Press article that said “how Senator Obama’s support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again, and how whites in both states who had not completed college were supporting me.” And then: “There’s a pattern emerging here.”
According to the media, Americans are trading in their gas guzzling SUVs, et al, for more fuel-efficient vehicles. Question: why isn’t government “restructuring” their car loans or otherwise bailing them out? Sound stupid? Why? Just change the word “SUV” to “house” and suddenly you have a lot of people who think it’s “reasonable” to subsidize greed, irresponsibility or stupidity.
In all the discussion of Barack Obama as the potential savior of our nation, there’s been relatively little attention to the idea that, rather than behaving like a person of strong leadership, Barack Obama seems to have been acting like a real follower for the past twenty years.
Divorce and the breakup of a family are still seen as their own social tragedies, and unwed childbearing and cohabitation can still provoke religious and/or moral objections. For the most part, however, our nonjudgmental age leaves it at that. The citizens of “Whatever” America either say nothing about the broken American family, lest somebody’s feelings get hurt, or take the view that it ain’t nobody’s business but my own or their own. It’s all so very civilized or so very tolerant. And so very wrongheaded.
As Israel nears her 60th birthday, this is major food for thought: Hamas airs a “documentary” showing that Jews supposedly plotted the Holocaust to weed out the weak and gain international sympathy. They release it just a couple of weeks before the day when the world remembered the victims of the Holocaust. The media largely ignores this outrage, because Hamas represents the “persecuted” Palestinians. I write about the lessons we need to learn from this — with the insight of my pal Valerie Harper, who took her amazing Golda Meir character to the big screen recently — in my Los Angeles Daily News column this week:
As rapper 50 Cent and others have said, they worry that if a black man becomes president, “he’ll probably be killed.” Considering that most black victims are targets of black-on-black crime, and considering that Obama’s former pastor Jeremiah Wright is pretty pissed at him right now, I think that between Wright and the first black president Bill Clinton, Obama should know whom to watch out for. In fact, check out Wright’s phrasing in the following sentence just last week:
Last night, Hillary Clinton suffered not one but two electoral indignities. First, she lost the North Carolina primary to Barack Obama by a whopping 14 points. Then, after midnight Eastern Time, came the bad news from Indiana: she had won, but barely. She kept Obama at bay by only 2 points.
Yes, I loved it. I’ve got an Y-chromosome, what do you expect? He is a man wrapped in a robot, wrapped in a missile. Oh, and he shoots lightning. He kills terrorists. He saves children. According to CNBC, Americans paid over one hundred million dollars in one weekend to see Iron Man do all that stuff.
We are now up to 37 international entities recognizing Kosovo’s independence, out of 192. Following the lead of the great powers and Costa Rica, Number 36 was some dude named Liechtenstein. And just this week Marshall Islands followed Liechtenstein. (Marshall Who?)
In an insufficiently thought through column today, Gerald Seib of the Wall Street Journal compares Obama to Bobby Kennedy in 1968, another “young charismatic politician who served as a magnet for the young and idealistic, [who] was in the process of conquering doubts about his background and personality in 1968.” Seib, old enough to know better, manages to be wrong about RFK and wrong about Obama in the same sentence. RFK in 1968 was a hardened, cynical politician, perhaps the least popular member of the Kennedy family and the Kennedy administration, who, halfway through the primary season, took on, co-opted and all but defeated the charismatic, idealistic politician who had pioneered the anti-war position of those days: Eugene McCarthy. Sound familiar?
Below is an early email I received from a reader named Theodore, who served almost three decades in the U.S. Navy. It is from September 2006, and is followed by his more recent email to me last week.
The Libel Terrorism Protection Act has just been passed into law in New York, despite being ignored by the mainstream and alternative media alike — that is, by those who will most depend on its safeguards.
In an attempt to show that she’s got more testosterone than Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton has recently—and repeatedly—said that if Iran were to attack Israel, as Commander-in-Chief she would respond by “totally obliterating” Iran.
Consider this headline: Palestinian fiscal crisis averted by $80m Kuwaiti donation Why was there a Palestinian fiscal crisis? Because “Arab nations have been unwilling to follow through on pledges they made five months ago to help breathe new life into the West Bank economy.” What led Kuwait finally to turn over $80m of the $300m it has pledged in Annapolis?
