AS THE WORLD'S FOREMOST JEWISH LEADER...:

Beijing Games Compared to 'Hitler's Olympics': Jewish Leaders Call for Boycott, Citing China's Record on Rights, Hamas 'Friendship' (Eric Gorski, April 30, 2008, ABC News)

A wide-ranging group of U.S. Jewish leaders plans to release a statement Wednesday urging Jews worldwide to boycott the Summer Olympics in Beijing, citing China's troubling record on human rights and Tibet.

The statement also notes China's close relationships with Iran, Syria and the militant group Hamas.

So far, 175 rabbis, seminary officials and other prominent Jews have signed the declaration, which comes shortly before Holocaust Remembrance Day on Friday, organizers said.

KNOWING YOUR ALLIES:

Hate the U.S., And Head For It (Mona Alami, Apr 30, 2008, IPS)

The growing rift between the U.S. and Iran has spread also to Lebanese soil, with Shia youngsters frequently seen burning U.S. flags. But ironically, for many of Hezbollah's Shia constituency, the U.S. is home.

Lebanese have been flocking to the U.S. since the first emigrant left for Ellis Island in 1849. Looking for better work opportunities and an escape from war, it has been a journey thousands and thousands of Lebanese have made over the past 150 years.

Ahmad, a dual Lebanese-U.S. citizen and a Shia from the southern region of Nabatieh, on vacation in Lebanon, has been living in the U.S. for the past ten years. A security specialist, he was sponsored by his elder brother, an engineer who studied in Texas. "My three brothers and I currently live in the USA. We are happy to live in a country ruled by law and order," he says.

His aunt Hiba, a hairdresser, dreams of following in the footsteps of her other family members and moving to the U.S. "My sister lives comfortably in America, where everyone enjoys equal rights. Lebanon is a country where only the rich can buy their way out of problems and live happily," she says.

IT'S SO RARE FOR THEM TO GET ANYTHING RIGHT...:

CIA boss sees more ethnic conflict in Russia (Bill Gertz, April 30, 2008, Washington Times)

Russia's declining population will require Moscow to import foreign workers in the future, increasing racial and religious tensions in the former superpower, according to Gen. Michael V. Hayden, the CIA director. [...]

On Russia, Gen. Hayden warned that Russia is facing "demographic stress" with a population that will decline by 32 million in the next 40 years, almost one-fourth its current population of 141 million.

"To sustain its economy, Russia increasingly will have to look elsewhere for workers," he said. "Some immigrants will be Russians from the former Soviet states. But others will be Chinese and non-Russians from the Caucasus, Central Asia and elsewhere, potentially aggravating Russia's already uneasy racial and religious tensions," the general said.

SOMETIMES IT PAYS TO HEAD THE REACTIONARY PARTY:

The Political Limits of Idealism (NICHOLAS WAPSHOTT, April 30, 2008, NY Sun)

Yet Mr. Obama has one thing in his favor: the predilection of ideologically driven supporters to fall in love with a losing candidate. The Democratic party's virgin foot soldiers put more value on intention than achievement and prefer purity to pragmatism. They consider idealistic perfection more important than tainted electability. They are often natural oppositionists who prefer to complain from a position of self-righteous impotence than make the grubby compromises needed to win and to govern.

In 1952, they favored the eloquent intellectual Adlai Stevenson, whose lofty tone, soaring rhetoric, and disinclination to be seen scrapping for the nomination are echoed in Mr. Obama's languid style. Even though Stevenson lost to Dwight Eisenhower by 442 to 89 electoral college votes, winning just nine states, the purists chose him again in 1956, when he went down to an even more inglorious defeat, with just 73 electoral college votes.

After rejecting the party of Lyndon Johnson and Hubert Humphrey, in 1972 the purists picked the weak, well-meaning peacenik George McGovern and watched him lose catastrophically to Richard Nixon by 520 electoral votes to 17.

HOW CAN YOU BE LEFT-LEANING IF YOU'RE RIGHT-GOVERNING?:

Bush Builds Ties to Brazil's Left-Leaning Leader: U.S. aides cite a good personal relationship and a shared agenda (Thomas Omestad, April 30, 2008, US News)

The State Department's top official on relations with the Western Hemisphere portrays U.S. relations with Latin America's most populous country—Brazil—as strong, and he credits the ties between President Bush and Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva as one reason for it.

"It's for real," says Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs Thomas Shannon, speaking of "respect and comfortableness" between the two leaders. Shannon says the two "communicate in as clear and direct fashion as possible." Adds Shannon, "Both leaders have a very clear understanding of [what is] at stake in the relationship."

Numerous foreign policy commentators have expressed surprise that Bush would take such a liking to a left-leaning, career labor leader in the person of Lula. But their friendship has "reduced suspicions that might have existed...[and] overcome that wariness and replaced it with a certain confidence that we can actually get things done," says Shannon.

HE'S ALREADY DESCENDED TO THE POINT...:

Praying and Preying (Maureen Dowd, 4/30/08, NY Times)

On Tuesday, the Sort Of Angry Black Man appeared, reluctantly spurred into action by The Really Angry Black Man.

Speaking to reporters in the heart of tobacco country in Winston-Salem, N.C., the poor guy looked as if he were dying for a smoke. “When I say I find these comments appalling, I mean it,” Obama said. “It contradicts everything I am about and who I am.” He said that the riffs of the man he prayed with before his announcement speech give “comfort to those who prey on hate.”

Obama, of course, will only ratchet up the skepticism of those who don’t understand why he stayed in the church for 20 years if his belief system is so diametrically opposed to Wright’s.

He’s back on the tricky path he faced as a child, navigating between two racial cultures. At Trinity, he may have ignored what he should have heard because he was trying to assimilate to black culture. Now, he may be outraged by what he belatedly heard because he’s trying to relate to the white lunch-pail set.

ANCHORING THE TICKET:

Democratic Congressional Candidate: Obama? Obama Who? (Jake Tapper, April 30, 2008, ABC News: Political Punch)

In North Mississippi, Democratic congressional candidate Travis Childers has been hammered by Republicans for ties to Sen. Barack Obama, D-Illinois, in THIS AD from the National Republican Congressional Committee and THIS AD from Childers' opponent -- "When Obama's pastor cursed America blaming us for 9/11 Childers said nothing," the ad says.

Now Childers is pushing back -- by acting as if he's never even heard of Obama.

ATOMS AREN'T MAGICAL:

Eisenhower Advisers Discussed Using Nuclear Weapons in China (Walter Pincus, 4/30/08, Washington Post)

Senior Air Force officers proposed using 10-to-15-kiloton nuclear bombs against targets in Communist China in 1958, in the event that Beijing blockaded the Taiwan Strait, but President Dwight D. Eisenhower ruled out that option, according to a newly declassified Pentagon document.

At a Cabinet meeting in mid-August 1958, as the threat of a Chinese blockade of Taiwan was developing, Air Force Gen. Nathan F. Twining, then chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, explained "that at the outset American planes would drop 10- to 15-kiloton bombs on selected fields in the vicinity of Amoy," a coastal city on the Taiwan Strait now called Xiamen, according to the documents.

But "the President simply did not accept the contention that nuclear weapons were as conventional as high explosives," according to the now-declassified Air Force history of the Taiwan crisis.

NOR WAS BOB DOLE DAN INOUYE:

GI bill sparks Senate war (DAVID ROGERS, 4/30/08, Politico)

From Annapolis to Vietnam and back to the Pentagon, John McCain and Jim Webb trod the same paths before coming to the Senate. Iraq divides them today, but there’s also the new kinship of being anxious fathers watching their sons come and go with Marine units in the war.

So what does it say about Washington that two such men, with so much in common, are locked in an increasingly intense debate over a shared value: education benefits for veterans? [...]

“There are fundamental differences,” McCain told Politico. “He creates a new bureaucracy and new rules. His bill offers the same benefits whether you stay three years or longer. We want to have a sliding scale to increase retention. I haven’t been in Washington, but my staff there said that his has not been eager to negotiate.”

W'S THIRD TERM (OR CLINTON'S 5TH, DEPENDING ON HOW YOU COUNT):

McCain Offers Market-Based Health Plan (Michael D. Shear, 4/30/08, Washington Post)

Sen. John McCain on Tuesday rejected calls by his Democratic opponents for universal health coverage, instead offering a market-based solution with an approach similar to a proposal put forth by President Bush last year.

FUNNY SORT OF GREAT DEPRESSION:

U.S. First-Quarter Growth Stronger Than Forecast (Reuters, 4/30/08)

The U.S. economy grew at a slightly stronger pace than forecast as 2008 began, helped by inventory-building that tempered a steadily deteriorating housing sector and less vigorous consumer spending.

The Commerce Department said on Wednesday that gross domestic product or GDP expanded at a 0.6 percent annual rate in the first quarter, matching the fourth quarter's advance and handily topping a forecast for 0.2 percent growth in an advance poll of economists by Reuters.

WHEN YOU DEFINE VICTORY...:

'Karzai attackers' die in siege (BBC, 4/30/08)

Afghan intelligence services say they have killed three insurgents and arrested six more in connection with Sunday's attack on President Karzai.

Three operations were launched simultaneously across the capital, Kabul, one of which resulted in a gun battle and an eight-hour siege.

Five suspected Taliban militants blew themselves up in a house close to Kabul's old city on Wednesday, avoiding capture by besieging Afghan security forces, an Interior Ministry official told Reuters.

JUST WHAT THE REVEREND AL WOULD HAVE DONE:

Sharpton on Obama on Wright (Jake Tapper, April 29, 2008, ABC News: Political Punch)

ABC News' Brinda Adhikari reports: Reacting to Sen. Barack Obama's comments today about his former pastor Rev. Jeremiah Wright's inflammatory remarks at the National Press Club on Monday, the Rev. Al Sharpton told ABCNEWS that it took "a lot of courage for [Sen. Obama] to say some unequivocal statements against someone that has been dear to him, his pastor."

TOO BAD PRICE HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH SUPPLY:

Oil drops as demand falls amid supply growth expectations (JOHN WILEN, 4/29/08, AP)

Oil prices fell more than $3 a barrel Tuesday as the market absorbed data showing demand is falling even as supplies are rising.

RISKY SCHEMING:

Obama's Risky Denunciation Of Rev. Wright (Vaughn Ververs, April 29, 2008, CBS News)

In taking such an aggressive stand Obama may succeed in publicly distancing himself from the spectacle that the Rev. Wright has become, but his newfound outrage raises some further questions. In his Philadelphia address, Obama stood by his friend. “As imperfect as he may be,” he said of Wright a month ago, “he has been like family to me. He strengthened my faith, officiated my wedding, and baptized my children. … I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community.”

In today’s press conference, Obama said he sought in his earlier speech to “provide a context and to lift up some of the contradictions and complexities of race in America,” but that he found Wright’s comments Monday to be a “bunch of rants that that aren’t grounded in truth.” But many of Wright’s “rants” were simply a confirmation of many of the statements which had stirred up controversy in the first place.

Despite his appropriate outrage over Wright’s performances of late, Obama’s claim that his longtime pastor is exhibiting new behavior is certain to come under scrutiny. “The person I saw yesterday was not the person that I met 20 years ago,” Obama insisted today. That comment, and any suggestion that the relationship between the two men was never as close as portrayed, are questionable.

Some of Wright’s remarks that sparked this mess were made over five years ago, specifically his oft-played comment that the nation’s “chickens” were “coming home to roost,” which he made shortly after 9/11. Obama has indicated Wright was instrumental in attracting him to the church he joined and has said he titled his book, “The Audacity of Hope,” after one of Wright’s sermons. That 20-year relationship will not be easily broken as a result of one afternoon press conference.

“What I think particularly angered me,” Obama said of Wright on Monday, “was his suggestion somehow that my previous denunciation of his remarks were somehow political posturing."

In a New York Times profile of the Obama-Wright relationship in April 2007, Wright himself predicted such a split based on the controversial remarks that were already under some scrutiny. “If Barack gets past the primary, he might have to publicly distance himself from me,” Wright told the paper over a year ago. “I said it to Barack personally, and he said yeah, that might have to happen.”

THERE ARE BETTER USES FOR SHEEP:

America's Most Overrated Product: the Bachelor's Degree (MARTY NEMKO, 5/02/08, The Chronicle Review)

Among my saddest moments as a career counselor is when I hear a story like this: "I wasn't a good student in high school, but I wanted to prove that I can get a college diploma. I'd be the first one in my family to do it. But it's been five years and $80,000, and I still have 45 credits to go."

I have a hard time telling such people the killer statistic: Among high-school students who graduated in the bottom 40 percent of their classes, and whose first institutions were four-year colleges, two-thirds had not earned diplomas eight and a half years later. That figure is from a study cited by Clifford Adelman, a former research analyst at the U.S. Department of Education and now a senior research associate at the Institute for Higher Education Policy. Yet four-year colleges admit and take money from hundreds of thousands of such students each year!

Even worse, most of those college dropouts leave the campus having learned little of value, and with a mountain of debt and devastated self-esteem from their unsuccessful struggles. Perhaps worst of all, even those who do manage to graduate too rarely end up in careers that require a college education. So it's not surprising that when you hop into a cab or walk into a restaurant, you're likely to meet workers who spent years and their family's life savings on college, only to end up with a job they could have done as a high-school dropout. [...]

[E]ven those high-school students who are fully qualified to attend college are increasingly unlikely to derive enough benefit to justify the often six-figure cost and four to six years (or more) it takes to graduate. Research suggests that more than 40 percent of freshmen at four-year institutions do not graduate in six years. Colleges trumpet the statistic that, over their lifetimes, college graduates earn more than nongraduates, but that's terribly misleading. You could lock the collegebound in a closet for four years, and they'd still go on to earn more than the pool of non-collegebound — they're brighter, more motivated, and have better family connections.

IF ONLY SHE WERE WHO THEY THOUGHT SHE WAS (via Glenn Dryfoos):

Hillary Gets No Respect (WILLIAM KRISTOL, 4/28/08, NY Times)

The fact is Hillary Clinton has turned out to be an impressive candidate. She has consistently defeated Barack Obama when her back was to the wall — first in New Hampshire, then in several big primaries on Super Tuesday, on March 4 in Ohio and Texas, and then last week in Pennsylvania, where she was outspent by almost 3 to 1, yet won handily.

She is, of course, still behind in the race, and Obama will most likely be the nominee. His team has run the better campaign. In particular, it realized how important the caucus states could be: Obama’s delegate lead depends on his caucus victories.

But Hillary may well be the better candidate. After all, for all the talk of Obama’s extraordinary ability to draw voters to the polls, Clinton has defeated him in the big states, including California, Texas, New York, Pennsylvania and Ohio. Obama won his home state of Illinois, but she won Florida, where both were on the ballot but didn’t campaign.

Furthermore, if you add up the votes in all the primaries and caucuses — excluding Michigan (where only Hillary was on the ballot), and imputing the likely actual totals in the four caucus states, where only percentages were reported — Clinton now trails in overall votes by only about 300,000, or about 1 percent of the total. By the end of the nominating contest, she may well be ahead on this benchmark — one not entirely to be scorned in a democracy.

ALSO KNOWN AS, THE ORIGINAL SOCIAL SECURITY:

Getting married for health insurance: Seven percent of Americans say they or someone in their household decided to tie the knot in the last year so they could receive healthcare benefits, a poll finds (Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar, 4/29/08, Los Angeles Times)

Some people marry for love, some for companionship, and others for status or money. Now comes another reason to get hitched: health insurance.

In a poll released today, 7% of Americans said they or someone in their household decided to marry in the last year so they could get healthcare benefits via their spouse.

"It's a small number but a powerful result, because it shows how paying for healthcare is reflected not only in family budgets but in life decisions," said Drew E. Altman, president of the Kaiser Family Foundation, which commissioned the survey as part of its regular polling on healthcare.

WATCHOUT GRANDMA:

Obama denounces Rev. Wright's latest comments (Johanna Neuman, 4/29/08, Los Angeles Times)

Democrat Barack Obama today denounced his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, saying that the fiery minister's "ridiculous propositions" that the United States spread AIDS in the black community and invited the 9/11 terrorist attacks contradicted "everything that I'm about and who I am."

EGGHEADS NEED NOT APPLY:

Obama: The know-too-much candidate? (ROGER SIMON, 4/28/08, Politico)

Comparisons are already being made between Obama and Adlai Stevenson, who was an intellectual (read: loser). Obama used to teach law at the University of Chicago, one of the brainiest universities in the country.

And Americans don’t want presidents who are too brainy. (Obviously.) We would rather plunge into foreign wars or fall off economic cliffs than have presidents who know too much. That is because braininess is elitist, and being an elitist is the worst thing you can be if you want to be president.

MORE:
Demography is king (David Brooks, April 29, 2008, NY Times)

In state after state (Wisconsin being the outlier), Barack Obama has won densely populated, well-educated areas. Hillary Clinton has won less-populated, less-educated areas. For example, Obama has won roughly 70 percent of the most-educated counties in the primary states. Clinton has won 90 percent of the least-educated counties. In state after state, Obama has won a few urban and inner-ring suburban counties. Clinton has won nearly everywhere else.

This social divide has overshadowed regional differences. Sixty-year-old, working-class Catholics vote the same, whether they live in Fresno, Scranton, Nashua or Orlando.

The divide has even overshadowed campaigning. Surely the most interesting feature of the Democratic race is how unimportant political events are. The candidates can spend tens of millions of dollars on advertising, but they are not able to sway their opponent's voters to their side. They can win a stunning victory, but the momentum doesn't carry over from state to state. They can make horrific gaffes, deliver brilliant speeches, turn in good or bad debate performances, but these things do not alter the race.

In Pennsylvania, Obama did everything conceivable to win over Clinton's working-class voters. The effort was a failure. The great uniter failed to unite. In this election, persuasion isn't important. Social identity is everything. Demography is king.

WHEN THE MSM SOUNDS LIKE GOP TALKING POINTS...

The Wright Comeback Tour (Howard Kurtz, 4/29/08, Washington Post)

Jeremiah Wright's complaint -- and Barack Obama's as well -- has been that the media have been distorting the reverend's message through sound-bite snippets and missing the full context.

The more I hear the full context, the more I think the Illinois senator has a growing problem.

TO BORROW FROM THE REVEREND WRIGHT'S OWN ANALOGY...:

The Pastor Casts a Shadow (BOB HERBERT, 4/29/08, NY Times)

The question that cries out for an answer from Mr. Wright is why — if he is so passionately committed to liberating and empowering blacks — does he seem so insistent on wrecking the campaign of the only African-American ever to have had a legitimate shot at the presidency.

On Sunday night, in an appearance before the Detroit N.A.A.C.P., Mr. Wright mocked the regional dialects of John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson. I’m not sure how he felt that was helpful in his supposed quest to bring about a constructive discussion about race and reconciliation in the U.S.

What he is succeeding in doing is diminishing the stature of Senator Obama. A candidate who stands haplessly by as his former spiritual guide roams the country dropping one divisive bomb after another is in very little danger of being seen by most voters as the next J.F.K. or L.B.J.

The thing to keep in mind about Rev. Wright is that he is a smart fellow. He’s been a very savvy operator, politically and otherwise, for decades. He has built a thriving, politically connected congregation on the South Side of Chicago that has done some very good work over the years. Powerful people have turned to him for guidance and advice.

So it’s not like he’s naïve politically. He knows exactly what he’s doing.

ONCE YOU'VE GIVEN THEM GUNS, SWORN THEM TO DEFEND THE COUNTRY, AND TAUGHT THEM TO KILL THE ENEMY... (via Lisa Huang Fleischman):

Soldier Sues Army, Saying His Atheism Led to Threats (NEELA BANERJEE, 4/26/08, NY Times)

When Specialist Jeremy Hall held a meeting last July for atheists and freethinkers at Camp Speicher in Iraq, he was excited, he said, to see an officer attending.

But minutes into the talk, the officer, Maj. Freddy J. Welborn, began to berate Specialist Hall and another soldier about atheism, Specialist Hall wrote in a sworn statement. “People like you are not holding up the Constitution and are going against what the founding fathers, who were Christians, wanted for America!” Major Welborn said, according to the statement.

Major Welborn told the soldiers he might bar them from re-enlistment and bring charges against them, according to the statement.

NOTHING LEFT TO BE DAMAGED:

Mindy McCready weeps as she confirms affair with Roger Clemens (TERI THOMPSON, MICHAEL O'KEEFFE and NATHANIEL VINTON in New York and CHRISTIAN RED in Nashville, 4/29/08, NY DAILY NEWS)

Barricaded behind tightly drawn blinds at her Nashville home Monday, country singer Mindy McCready confirmed a long-term affair with embattled pitcher Roger Clemens.

"I cannot refute anything in the story," a tearful but resolute McCready told the Daily News, which broke the story at midnight Sunday.

The News reported that the two met in a Florida karaoke bar when McCready was a 15-year-old aspiring singer and Clemens was a 28-year-old ace for the Red Sox and a married father of two. [...]

The Rocket filed a defamation suit against McNamee on Jan. 6. McNamee's lawyer Richard Emery said revelations of the affair would have a big impact on that case because they influence Clemens' claim that his reputation was damaged.

"If the case heads to trial and is not dismissed, as we feel it should be, we will be calling [McCready] as a witness," Emery said.

"The point is whether he was damaged by the allegations that he used steroids - he claims he was hurt. But if there are other women - and there's not just one case, but many - and he holds himself out as a family man and an American paradigm, it's relevant.

"None of this would have been revealed but for his lawsuit and sanctimonious testimony before Congress."

THEM VS HIM:

As Clinton seeks gas tax break for summer, Obama says no (John M. Broder, April 29, 2008, NY Times)

As angry truckers encircled the Capitol in a horn-blaring caravan and consumers across the country agonized over $60 fill-ups, the issue of high fuel prices flared on the campaign trail on Monday, sharply dividing the two Democratic candidates.

Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton lined up with Senator John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee for president, in endorsing a plan to suspend the U.S. government excise tax on gasoline, 18.4 cents a gallon, for the summer travel season. But Senator Barack Obama, Clinton's Democratic rival, spoke out firmly against the proposal, saying it would save consumers little and do nothing to curtail oil consumption and imports.

WELL, ONE CHICKEN IS CERTAINLY ROOSTING:

Obama dismisses Clinton debate challenge (Brian Knowlton, April 27, 2008, NY Times)

Clinton, following her clear victory in Pennsylvania, has been goading Obama to debate yet again. She said Saturday that she wanted a 90-minute confrontation without moderators or questioners. That approach, rather like the series of debates in 1858 between Abraham Lincoln and his rival for an Illinois Senate seat, Stephen Douglas, might have seemed to appeal to Obama after a debate in which the ABC moderators were widely viewed as unfairly tough on him.

DID MITT AND RUDY TEACH THEM NOTHING?:

For McCain, There's Only One Perfect Candidate for Veep (Stuart Rothenberg, 4/29/08, Real Clear Politics)

We all hear the same names mentioned as prospective running mates for John McCain: former Office of Management and Budget Director and one-time U.S. Trade Representative Rob Portman, Florida Gov. Charlie Crist, South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford, Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty and even former Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Ridge.

Each one would bring something to the ticket. Some come from crucial swing states that could help McCain reach 270 electoral votes. A number are governors, adding a non- Washington, D.C., piece to the ticket. By most standards, all are good-looking and articulate.

And yet, none of them would change the partisan political equation in the fall election, and I'm not at all sure any of them would increase McCain's chances of winning in the fall. Certainly none of them would constitute a statement by McCain about his presidency, the kind of statement that would send a message to voters.

There is, however, somebody who would fill that bill and therefore be a near-perfect pick for McCain: Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman.

I STAND CORRECTED...:

Ronaldo 'threatened transvestites in Rio motel room' (Sally Peck, 29/04/2008, Daily Telegraph)

Brazilian police are investigating allegations by three transvestites that Ronaldo, the Brazilian football star and AC Milan forward, threatened to harm them after he took them to a Rio de Janeiro motel.

EVEN WORSE THAN PERSONALITY IS IDENTITY:

A Race of Personalities: Ken Livingstone vs. Boris Johnson (ANNE APPLEBAUM, April 29, 2008, The Washington Post)

[I] first met Ken Livingstone, the current mayor of London, now up for re-election, some 15-odd years ago too, when he was a member of parliament.

I don't know his mistresses — though I gather there are several — or his colleagues. But I do recall one memorable dinner, organized by a London newspaper, during which we argued at some length about whether Stalin was evil. I said yes. He disagreed. No one laughed. [...]

Any long, drawn-out contest between two people who don't — let's face it — differ that much on fundamental issues will invariable turn into farce; Whether it's an amusing one, as in London, or a "bitter" one, as in Pennsylvania, depends on the characters of the candidates involved.

So three cheers then, for ideological politics, or at least for real clashes of ideas, and let's hope our presidential elections, when we get to them, include some: At least they make everyone talk about things that matter. And yes, I do hope Boris wins.

NOTHING TO LOVE:

China intensifies war against splittism (Willy Lam, 4/30/08, Asia Times)

As police in various cities were issuing warnings to protesters outside Carrefour supermarkets last Saturday and Sunday, the Hu Jintao administration has intensified efforts to suppress and contain "splittists" in Tibet and Xinjiang and is using nationalistic sentiments to help achieve its goal.

As the nation is being swept by a tidal wave of "patriotism" if not xenophobia, liberal intellectuals who had earlier implored Beijing to consider conciliatory policies toward the two autonomous regions no longer dare raise their voice for fear of being labeled traitors. The CCP leadership is also hopeful that CNN, BBC and other Western media - having been put on the defensive by tens of thousands of angry Chinese netizens and demonstrators in the United States and Europe - might think twice when reporting on the CCP's iron-fisted tactics in China's far west regions.

AS THE GOP CRANKS UP THE JEREMIAH-ADS:

Jeremiah Wright, former pastor to Barack Obama, strides back on stage: With timing unwelcome to Democratic candidate's campaign, Wright defends his racially charged comments. (Peter Nicholas, 4/28/08, Los Angeles Times)

Taking questions Monday, Wright stood by some of the most divisive assertions he had made in church sermons -- statements that Obama has denounced.

He declined to retract a statement from a post-Sept. 11 sermon that "America's chickens are coming home to roost."

"You cannot do terrorism on other people and expect it never to come back on you," Wright said after his speech. "Those are biblical principles, not Jeremiah Wright bombastic divisive principles."

Asked about his earlier suggestion that the government had created AIDS to harm black people, Wright said that "based on the Tuskegee experiment and based on what has happened to Africans in this country, I believe our government is capable of doing anything." He was referring to an infamous experiment conducted over decades in which the government studied syphilis by allowing blacks to go untreated for the disease.

Wright spoke admiringly of Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, long criticized for making anti-Semitic comments. Wright described Farrakhan as a hugely influential figure -- "one of the most important voices in the 20th and 21st century."

"Louis Farrakhan is not my enemy," Wright said. "He did not put me in chains, he did not put me in slavery and he didn't make me this color."

Wright had kept a low public profile since portions of his sermons were widely played on television in March, including snippets in which the pastor said "God damn America." Obama, a longtime member of Wright's church in Chicago, partially quelled the controversy with a speech on race in Philadelphia that month. But Republicans are already using Wright's comments in advertisements against Obama.

Hillary Rodham Clinton, Obama's rival for the Democratic nomination, has said that she would not have chosen Wright as her pastor.

[W]right's paranoias tell us something -- exactly what remains to be explored -- about his 20-year parishioner.

In Monday's speech at the National Press Club, Wright repeated -- decorously, by his standards, but clearly -- his accusation, made the Sunday after 9/11, that America got what it deserved. His Monday answer to a question about that accusation was: "Whatsoever you sow, that you also shall reap" and "you cannot do terrorism on other people and expect them never to come back on you."

As evidence that "our government is capable of doing anything," he strongly hinted that he has intellectually respectable corroboration -- he mentioned several publications -- for his original charge that the U.S. government is guilty of "inventing the HIV virus as a means of genocide against people of color." But on Monday he insisted that he is not anti-American: It is, he said, Americans' government, not the American public, that is a genocidal perpetrator of terrorism. So, he now denies that America has a representative government -- that it represents the public. He believes that elections constantly and mysteriously -- and against the public's will -- produce a genocidal, terroristic government.

On Monday, Wright also espoused the racialist doctrine that blacks have "different" learning styles than do others. This doctrine of racially different brains, or of an unalterably different black culture, is a doctrine today used to justify various soft bigotries of low expectations regarding blacks, and especially black children. It has a long pedigree as a rationalization for injustices. Slaveholders and, later, segregationists loved it.

The Rev. Jeremiah Wright has taken Barack Obama’s critically acclaimed race speech in Philadelphia, ripped it into bits, and tossed it in the air to serve as confetti for his parade through the media.

In that speech, Obama said Wright had been taken out of context, a defense the pastor has made himself. If only we knew the true Wright, Obama complained, instead of just “the snippets of those sermons that have run on an endless loop on the television and YouTube.” In his interview with Bill Moyers on PBS, Wright said the playing of his sound bites was “unfair,” “unjust” and “untrue.”

Then cometh the good reverend to step all over the out-of-context defense in a speech at the National Press Club.

NO ONE TO SCAPEGOAT:

Cuba walks tightrope of reforms: By lifting bans on cellphones and personal computers, Raul Castro is paving the way for open communications, but the regime is intent on avoiding the fate of the Soviet Union (Carol J. Williams, 4/29/08, Los Angeles Times)

The top-down decisions granting citizens the ability to communicate with one another and to brainstorm solutions have been a hallmark of Castro's leadership since he took the reins of a nation in crisis 21 months ago from his older brother Fidel.

Cuban intellectuals and common folk are embracing the straight-talk notion, as did Russians 20 years ago. But here, as in the Soviet Union, the leadership is walking a tightrope, risking the collapse of a struggling, authoritarian system by granting long-denied freedoms.

"Raul Castro's government will eventually need to confront the million-dollar question: Once it releases the genie of public opinion from the bottle, does it risk permanently reducing its control over Cuban society?" says Daniel P. Erikson, Caribbean analyst for the Inter-American Dialogue think tank in Washington.

Mindful of the Soviet collapse, Cuban officials are loath to allow any kind of political opening that would be perceived as diminishing the legitimacy of the Communist Party, Erikson said.

A peculiarity of Cuba's decades of one man rule is that there's no one to blame but Fidel. What exists in Cuba is Castroism, so every criticism undermines Castro and the Revolution entire.

(via Mike Daley):

Frontera's Chocolate Pecan Pie Bars (Chef Rick Bayless)

2 1/2 cups coarsely chopped pecans, toasted, divided

2 (3.1-oz.) disks Ibarra Chocolate, finely chopped, divided

6 oz. (about 4 to 5 slices) firm white sandwich bread, such as Sara Lee Honey White

1 cup butter, melted, divided

3/4 tsp. salt, divided

1 cup packed dark brown sugar

1 cup dark corn syrup

3 tbsp. flour

2 tsp. vanilla extract

4 eggs

3/4 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips, slightly heaping

Preheat oven to 325°F and spray a 13 X 9-inch baking pan with nonstick cooking spray.

Place 1 cup pecans and 1/2 of the Ibarra chocolate in a food processor; pulse several times to mix.

Break bread into pieces and add to food processor; pulse until fine crumbs form.

Add 1/3 cup melted butter and 1/4 tsp. salt; pulse to blend.

Press mixture firmly into bottom of prepared pan.

In same work bowl (no need to wash), pulse together brown sugar, corn syrup, flour, vanilla and eggs until well mixed.

Transfer to a large bowl and stir in remaining pecans, Ibarra chocolate, butter and salt.

Add chocolate chips; pour over crust and bake for 45 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.

Let cool to room temperature, then refrigerate before cutting.

RIGHTS CONVEY RESPONSIBILITIES:

Supreme Court Upholds Voter Identification Law in Indiana (DAVID STOUT, 4/28/08, NY Times)

Justice John Paul Stevens, who announced the judgment of the court and wrote an opinion in which Chief John G. Roberts Jr. and Anthony M. Kennedy joined, alluded to — and brushed aside — complaints that the law benefits Republicans and works against Democrats, whose ranks are more likely to include poor people or those in minority groups.

The justifications for the law “should not be disregarded simply because partisan interests may have provided one motivation for the votes of individual legislators,” Justice Stevens wrote.

Justice Stevens and the two court members who joined him found that the Democrats and civil rights groups who attacked the law, seeking a declaration that it was unconstitutional on its face, had failed to meet the heavy burden required for such a “facial challenge” to prevail. [...]

Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr. concurred in the judgment of the court, but went further in rejecting the plaintiffs’ challenge. In an opinion by Justice Scalia, the three justices said, “The law should be upheld because its overall burden is minimal and justified.”

THEIR OWN RUDY:

Center-right solidifies gains in Italy (Elisabetta Povoledo, April 28, 2008, IHT)

Promising to crack down on crime, the center-right candidate Gianni Alemanno, who ran with the conservative People of Freedom party, defeated Francesco Rutelli, who had served as mayor of the capital from 1993 to 2001. Alemanno won a comfortable majority with nearly 54 percent of the vote. He will be the first rightist leader to govern Rome since the end of World War II.

Losing the vote dealt a double blow to the departing mayor of Rome, Walter Veltroni, who left city politics to become the leader of the newly formed Democratic Party, which lost the April 13-14 national elections to the conservative leader Silvio Berlusconi.

THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A CONSERVATIVE AND A LIBERAL:

Obama's former pastor says he has been 'crucified' by the media (Johanna Neuman, 4/28/08, Los Angeles Times)

The Rev. Jeremiah Wright, whose fiery sermons as Democrat Barack Obama's former pastor set off a political firestorm last month, told reporters today that he has been "crucified" by the media and that attacks on him are really slams on the black church.

HMMM, MUSTARD....:

Rise in Doctors Refusing to Perform Abortions (AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE, 4/24/08)

Nearly 70 percent of Italian gynecologists now refuse to perform abortions on moral grounds, according to the Health Ministry. Italy legalized abortion in 1978 but pressure from the Vatican enabled doctors to claim a “conscientious objection” and refuse to carry out the procedure.

HOW MANY BRIGHTS DOES IT TAKE TO SCREW UP A COUNTRY?:

Smarty-pants summit short on substance (David Burchell, April 28, 2008, The Australian)

CASTING about for something to explain the spooky unease that crept over me during the 2020 Summit, I happened upon British Labour thinker Michael Young's old futuristic satire The Rise of the Meritocracy.

The premise of Young's book - published 50 years ago - is that all previous societies distributed talent more or less randomly among the classes. But in the 20th century the professional middle classes wrested the education system out of the hands of the old elites, and reorganised the ladder of social success according to their own preferred criteria: those of academic cleverness.

The outcome in 2036 was the most oppressive social system of all: an aristocracy of self-defined merit, made unbearably smug and patronising by its distinctive combination of smarty-pantsness and success.

Young had a lot of difficulty getting his book published: few high-brow publishers seemed to enjoy the joke. And when it did go into print, the book suffered a predictable fate. People forgot it was a satire, and took meritocracy to be a virtue. In the 1990s, Tony Blair went so far as to declare his goal to be the creation of a meritocratic Britain. Young (who was no political neophyte; he had been the author of the 1945 Labour manifesto) wrote to the newspapers, trying to point out the error. But in vain. Meritocracy had become a new Labour core value.

On the evidence of the last fortnight, Australian Labor is in some danger of falling into the same trap. After all, what was the 2020 Summit if not a celebration of the triumph of the meritocracy, a ritual homage to the best and brightest, in all their ceremonial glory? A celebration fuelled, moreover, by the meritocrats' new-found sense of liberation from the banal horror of the Howard years, a time when, so we're told, the best and brightest were ignored, or even silenced, and mediocrity ruled in the halls of power.

At times the summit had the savour of one of those official festivals dreamed up by the French revolutionaries to persuade themselves that theirs really was a revolution by the people, not just in their name.

THINKING CAP TIME:

Friends with Iran or kiss of death? (P R Kumaraswamy, April 28, 2008, Rediff)

The visit marks an interesting phase in India's foreign policy. This is the first formal meeting between the mercurial Iranian leader and Prime Minister Singh. Ever since he was elected President in July 2005, Ahmadinejad has been trying to consolidate his stature and international acceptance. With Western criticisms and disapprovals getting louder, he needed to be seen in different parts of the world and courted by prominent world leaders. He visited all major non-Western powers such as China, Russia and of course Venezuela, which has emerged as the torchbearer of growing anti-Americanism in the Third World.

Partly to further Indo-Iranian ties, but primarily to enhance his international profile and acceptance, Ahmadinejad has been keen to meet Indian leaders. Such an opportunity came in June 2006 during the summit meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Council where both India and Iran are 'observers'. Timing, however, was bad. Photo opportunity with Ahmadinejad, the Indian leader feared, would have hardened the critics of the nuclear deal then on Capitol Hill. Hence, Dr Singh skipped that meeting and instead sent Petroleum Minister Murli Deora.

Indeed when Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee went to Teheran in February last year, the Iranian officials ambushed him by suggesting a summit meeting among leaders of India, Iran and Pakistan to sort out their differences over the gas pipeline.
Thus, by hosting the Iranian leader, what does India convey to the outside world? Going by the working of the UPA government, one can infer a few possible explanations.

The visit is most likely to be used by the government to exhibit its 'independent' foreign policy vis-�-vis the US. This would partially assuage the Left and its supporters within the establishment. Spin doctors might stretch it further and hope that by hosting the Iranian leader the government could make the Left 'flexible' on the nuclear deal.

The sudden silence adopted by the US following its initial displeasure over the Indian decision should also be seen within this context. Washington might see the visit as a small price for larger cooperation with India.

Given this context, it takes not one lick of foreign policy expertise to perceive that India is the single most important American ally in the world today, situated, as it is, between the two sources of trouble. And, given the threat that resides in Pakistan, between India and Iran, it is ridiculously easy to see why they are natural allies.

It's a short step from there to grasp that because we share a common enemy, America, India and Iran are in all likelihood destined to make common cause, irrespective of the bumptious current president of the Islamic Republic. While domestic political concerns mitigate against a rapproachment between the US and Iran in the short term, electoral processes and historic inevitabilities will take care of the obstacles in the medium term. This reality would explain why we would not make a big humturum about India/Iran relations, were we thinking in such longer terms....

ON NOT GRASPING YOUR OWN PARENTHETICAL:

As Democrats battle on, McCain running strong: He supports an unpopular war and president. So why is he so popular? (Susan Page, 4/27/08, USA TODAY)

[I]n what seems to be the most promising election for Democrats since 1976 — when the aftermath of the Watergate scandal opened the door for Democrat Jimmy Carter to win the presidency — the USA TODAY/Gallup Poll shows the presumptive Republican presidential nominee within striking distance of either Illinois Sen. Barack Obama or New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton.

"Sen. McCain will not be a pushover in Ohio," cautions Ted Strickland, the Democratic governor of one of the nation's most important battleground states. "It will be a hotly contested race."

At least at the moment, McCain's personal qualities — his stature as a Vietnam war hero, reputation as an independent-minded Republican and persona as a strong leader — are trumping the significant policy disadvantages he faces in pursuing a third consecutive term for the GOP in the White House.

The protracted and increasingly bitter rivalry between Obama and Clinton for the Democratic nomination is a boost for McCain, too.

He has stayed competitive by drawing support from unlikely quarters.

PRESUMABLY THIS IS ETHNIC CLEANSING THAT FAREED ZAKARIA APPROVES OF?:

Uighurs struggle in a world reshaped by Chinese influx: In China's far west, the Muslim ethnic group finds itself relegated to menial jobs. Chinese officials also restrict religious practice and use of their language in schools. (Peter Ford, 4/28/08, The Christian Science Monitor)

"We feel like foreigners in our own land," complains one Uighur teacher in the provincial capital of Urumqi, who offers only a nickname, Batur, for fear of angering the authorities. "We are like the Indians in America." Or Tibetans in Tibet. "Most Uighurs sympathize with the Tibetans," says Batur. "We feel we are all under the same sort of rule." [...]

That concern, many Uighurs charge, translates into harsh government control of their lives, restrictions on the use of their language in schools and on their Muslim religious practice, and a colonial-style economy that keeps most local people in menial jobs while Han Chinese immigrants run businesses and the local administration.

"THE ISRAEL-ARAB READER"
Seventh edition
Edited by Walter Laqueur and Barry Rubin
Israel Arab Reader

Now available from Penguin publishers is this new edition of one of the most highly respected, widely used reference books on the Middle East, documenting the Arab-Israel conflict and peace process from its inception to the present day.

The book provides almost 300 primary texts covering more than a century of history. It documents the British mandate and early attempts to handle the conflict; Israel's independence and the outbreak of wars; international diplomatic efforts to make peace including the 1990s’ peace process and its breakdown. Materials are presented reflecting the positions of Arab leaders and states, Europeans, Israel, Palestinians, the USSR, and the United States. The texts of international resolutions and agreements, as well as accords made during the peace process, are also provided.

The result is a comprehensive work suitable for reading, reference, and teaching.

To order click here: Buy Now!

For detailed information on this book, follow this link: GLORIA Publication Catalog

JUST ANOTHER BUREAUCRACY:

In push for drones, Gates labors to change Pentagon: The services aren't delivering enough unmanned planes to war zones, the Defense secretary charges. (Gordon Lubold, 4/28/08, The Christian Science Monitor )

The flap over the unmanned planes is the latest example of Secretary Gates's effort to shake up the Pentagon. Much like his push to speed up delivery of armored troop-transport vehicles to Iraq last year – a request that originally came from the field – the new initiative is part of Gates's strategy to force the services to think differently and more creatively to solve problems quickly, experts say.

But overcoming the Pentagon's institutional inertia will not come easily.

WHEN REVEALING YOUR POLITICAL POSITIONS WOULD PLAY INTO YOUR OPPONENTS' HANDS...:

Obama's Foreign Non-Policy (David Bedein, 4/28/08, FrontPageMagazine.com)

The following are the questions posed to Mr. Obama's Middle East advisers and the responses they provided:

Bedein: How would a President Obama relate to the security threat posed by Saudi Arabia? Declassified security reports confirm that Saudi Arabia continues to fund groups defined by the U.S. government as terrorist organizations, while Saudi Arabia maintains an active state of war against the state of Israel since 1948.

Answer: None of Mr. Obama's advisers could answer this question.

Bedein: Does Mr. Obama support President Bush's policy of arming the Saudis? (The Bush administration offers major arms sales to Saudi Arabia, despite its pro-terror posture.)

Answer: Neither Guttman nor Levine could tell me whether or not Mr. Obama supports the Bush arms sales to Saudi Arabia. They checked with Mr. Obama and could not get an answer.

Bedein: Would a President Obama support the idea that Palestinian refugees should reside in UNRWA refugee camps, under the premise and promise of the "right of return," instead of being provided with decent living conditions?

Answer: While each of Mr. Obama's advisers emphasized that the candidate opposed the Palestinian "right of return," none of them could find out what Mr. Obama's position is concerning continuing American government funding for the UNRWA agency, which fuels the right of return.

Bedein: Would a President Obama continue Mr. Bush's policy to arm the Fatah organization, since the armed forces of the Fatah are defined by American law as an illegal terrorist organization?

Answer: The Obama advisor who spoke on condition of anonymity answered that Mr. Obama wants to continue the policy of developing Fatah as a moderate entity.

Bedein: Would a President Obama ask for a change in the proposed constitution of the Palestinian Fatah state, which is based on the Islamic Sharia law, and not allow for juridical status for any religion other than Islam?

Answer: All three Obama advisers promised to check this out with the senator. None of them could provide an answer.

WHERE THE WEST WENT:

Understanding American Exceptionalism (Karlyn Bowman Monday, April 28, 2008, The American)

[James Q.] Wilson noted that one of the best ways to understand American exceptionalism is to look at polls. Three-quarters of Americans say they are proud to be Americans; only one-third of the people in France, Italy, Germany, and Japan give that response about their own countries. Two-thirds of Americans believe that success in life depends on one’s own efforts; only one-third of Europeans say that. Half of Americans, compared to one-third of Europeans, say belief in God is essential to living a moral life.

Negative views of America in polls today have been shaped by the Iraq war and by the response to President Bush, Wilson noted, but criticism of America has a long history, particularly among elites. He quoted Sigmund Freud as saying, “America is a great mistake.” “Anti-Americanism was an elite view,” Wilson continued, “but it has spread deeper to publics here and abroad.”

COMMITTEE ON UNISLAMIC ACTIVITIES:

U.S., Allies See Progress in Selling Al-Qaeda As an Enemy to the Muslim World (Walter Pincus, April 28, 2008, Washington Post)

One approach, [Michael E. Leiter, director of the National Counterterrorism Center, ] said, is "to show that it is al-Qaeda, not the West, that is truly at war with Islam."

Last week, Zarate echoed that theme. He said al-Qaeda "should be revealed as themselves being at war with Muslims, especially those who do not believe as they do or subscribe to the al-Qaeda agenda."

Zarate cited an Egyptian Islamic group, which includes former jihadist leaders, that recently published a series of books "highly critical of jihadists and al-Qaeda." He did not say who promoted or paid for the books, but in undertaking this program, Zarate said, "credible voices, outside of the U.S. government," had to carry the messages.

Another example is a widely circulated letter to bin Laden from a leading Saudi cleric, Sheik Salman al-Ouda, released last September, in which the religious leader asked: "How much blood has been spent" by al-Qaeda attacks?

In October 2007, Zarate said, the Saudi grand mufti, Abdulaziz Al-Sheik, warned Saudis against unauthorized jihadist activities and lectured wealthy Saudis against "funding causes that 'harm Muslims.' "

To illustrate the impact of these actions, Zarate noted a recent question-and-answer session on the Web with al-Qaeda's second in command, Ayman al- Zawahiri, who responded to some of the issues raised by the campaign against al-Qaeda. Asked about the book written by a former leading Egyptian jihadist, Said Imam al-Sharif, Zawahiri tried to minimize the author's credentials, according to an analysis by the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point.

Zarate said Zawahiri "sidestepped" the issue of killing innocents "by claiming al-Qaeda does not target civilians and arguing the loss of innocent Muslim life was either accidental or the Muslims mixing with non-Muslims were fair game."

MEMORIAL? HOW ABOUT A PLAQUE?:

Glad Bush Is Still Around (Paul Johnson, 05.05.08, Forbes)

There is no doubt that attacking the American homeland remains the prime objective of Muslim fundamentalist leaders. Yet they have not done so. One reason for this is the success of Mr. Bush's team in learning the lessons of Sept. 11 and building a security system of impressive strength and sensitivity. It has yet to be breached. Also, the suicide bombers fear being sent to Guantánamo more than they fear death itself. It is right that the prime defender of democracy and freedom should strike terror into the hearts of terrorists.

Equally, if not more important, is the way in which Mr. Bush--partly by accident but mainly by design--has switched the war's theater of operations to the death-dealers' territory. At the time of Sept. 11 the battlefield was the undefended West, with its great, peaceful cities. The civilian population was exposed to mass murder at the hands of carefully trained and well-equipped fanatics. Now, thanks to the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan-- which were achieved at relatively minor cost--the battlefield has been decisively switched to the Muslim heartlands. And in the Middle East the war is being waged against the fundamentalists by the highly trained and superbly equipped professional armed forces of the U.S., Britain and other nations. The results of this are reflected in the casualty figures.

It's true that more than 4,000 U.S. servicemen and -women have been killed in this five-year conflict. But considering the extent of the operations, the importance of the war and the threat to the U.S. populace posed by these terrorists, this total is small. In World War I up to 60,000 casualties were inflicted in a single day. And there were many occasions during World War II when the U.S. and Britain lost more than 4,000 men in a one-day operation.

PANTSED YA:

The Top Ten List of Undisputed Facts Showing Barack Obama's Weakness in the General Election Against John McCain (Lanny Davis, 4/27/08, Real Clear Politics)

6. Barack Obama hasn't won a single major industrial state that historically constitute the key "battleground" states for both parties, i.e., the states in the last three or four presidential elections have switched back and forth between the Democratic and Republican presidential candidates.

7. The reason that he lost can be found in the demographic data: He lost -- and Senator Clinton won -- by substantial margins blue collar and middle class white voters earning under $50,000 a year, senior citizens, rural voters, Hispanic voters, and women voters -- all core constituencies in the Democratic base that must be won if a Democrat is to win the White House. For example, yesterday in Pennsylvania she won Roman Catholics by 32 percent (66034), union households by 18 percent (59-41), and those most concerned about the economy by 16 points (58-42). Only 60 percent of Democratic Catholic voters said they would vote for Mr. Obama in a general election.

8. Barack Obama has lost these same demographic groups in Massachusetts, Ohio, Texas, California and New Jersey and other major states that Senator Clinton won. There is a factual pattern of his weakness among these demographic groups in virtually every primary state that cannot be disputed.

GOSH, WOULDN'T YOU THINK...:

Obama's senior difficulty (DAVID PAUL KUHN | 4/27/08, Politico)

Barack Obama’s difficulty attracting older voters now far exceeds Hillary Rodham Clinton’s own weaknesses with youth.

Repeatedly during the tight race for the Democratic presidential nomination, Obama, who’s been defined in part by his popularity among young voters, has seen that strength undercut by his failings with seniors.

In the Pennsylvania and Ohio primaries, Obama lost older whites by 30 percentage points, while Clinton split white voters under age 30 in both critical contests. Obama’s senior problem is even greater among Hispanics. The Illinois senator lost older Latinos by 40 to 60 percentage points in Texas, New Mexico and California.

UNMISTAKEABLE ENGLISHNESS:

Dances to the music of time: a review of Cold Cream: My Early Life and Other Mistakes, by Ferdinand Mount (Dominic Sandbrook, 4/26/08, Daily Telegraph)

He is, he tells us at various points, gawky, reticent, cripplingly self-doubting, lazy, snooty and incompetent. He gleefully cites school reports on his "superciliousness" and "mental laziness", and after quoting his last letter to his dying mother, written when he was a teenager visiting Munich, he condemns "the intellectual snobbery, the preening hypochondria, the callous self-absorption".

If there is something unmistakeably English about this thread of comic self-deprecation, it is because Mount conceives himself to be a quintessentially English character, brought up on the Wiltshire Downs, educated at Eton and Oxford, and moving effortlessly - more by patronage than merit, he would say, although that is obviously not true - through the circles of the great and the good.

At times he casts himself as a kind of toned-down Bertie Wooster, a charming blithering idiot forever letting down one cut-glass girlfriend after another, comically tumbling through roofs and into rivers, and dashing out of dinner at the 1963 Tory party conference to be violently sick after too much champagne.

But he is irresistibly reminiscent above all of Nicholas Jenkins, the narrator of Anthony Powell's great post-war sequence A Dance to the Music of Time, and that is, of course, no accident. Powell was Mount's uncle, and the two have much in common: a fascination with lineage and tradition, a deeply humane interest in the lives and predilections of others, a sense of detachment from the whirl of events, and, above all, a kind of mingled amusement and melancholy at the vicissitudes of time and age.

As he rambles silkily hither and yon, Mount takes in seemingly random swaths of history, social, literary and political. The political bits are the funniest, particularly those about Margaret Thatcher, whom he first met when she was 39, looking "like one of the overage milkmaids in the chorus of the Bath panto".

Years later, he finds himself accidentally working for her at Downing Street, making up her policies, writing her speeches and helping to trip up her cabinet enemies - "The target had to be lured off his own ground, denied the support of his consiglieri, disoriented and confronted by superior forces." The Mafia reference is apt, as at one stage Mount is assisted by his old fag from Eton, and there are other echoes of criminality. Getting Thatcher to utter the sentence "The National Health Service is safe with us", for example, was like pulling teeth. It "came out in the listless drone of a hostage reading a statement prepared by her captors - which is what it was".

There are some wonderfully Yes, Prime Minister moments, such as her mad dismissal of some suggestion of Geoffrey Howe's. "I can't let the mill girls of Bolton down," she tells him. "It was too late to point out that by now there weren't any mill girls in Bolton because there weren't any mills," Mount writes.

Working for her was "a holiday from irony". It sounds pretty hellish, but he grew quite fond of "this strange, tense, ruthless, but deeply honourable and usually honest woman", with her "eager, waddling walk". Returning to his panto theme, he humanises her in the spectacle of her standing "by the huge grate at Chequers, exhausted by the day's work like Cinders after a hard time with the Ugly Sisters".

IS IT TOO MUCH TO ASK...:

Timetable Energizes What Once Was ‘Lost’ (EDWARD WYATT, 4/24/08, NY Times)

A little over a year ago the creators of “Lost,” ABC’s ambitious serial drama about the castaway survivors of an airplane crash in the Pacific, seemed to be quite lost themselves.

Their show, a huge hit in its first season, had become, in its third, weighed down with the expectations created by its early success. Viewers were steadily draining away as doubts grew that the series was headed in any definite direction, while the complicated and often convoluted story line seemed to provide few entry points for new fans.

Yet as “Lost” embarks on Thursday night on the second half of its strike-shortened fourth season, the series is moving at a breakneck pace that has excited the fan base and energized the show’s writers, actors and staff. What happened?

“We were sort of stalling” last season, said Carlton Cuse, an executive producer of “Lost” who, with Damon Lindelof, forms the core of the creative team behind the island mystery. “We didn’t know whether the mythology we constructed had to last two more seasons or seven more seasons. And that was driving us crazy because we didn’t know how fast it was going to play out.”

What the producers asked for and the network and ABC’s television studio granted was something almost unheard of in network television: an end date, when the series would conclude and the mysteries of the island would be revealed.

Early last May, ABC and the producers announced that the series would run for three more seasons, through spring 2010.

FRANCO WEPT:

Pirates Get $1.2 Million Ransom to Release Crew of Spanish Fishing Boat (VOA News, 27 April 2008)

Somali and Kenyan officials say a ransom of $1.2 million was paid to pirates to release a Spanish fishing boat and its crew of 26 hijacked off the coast of Somalia last week.

Spanish Deputy Prime Minister Maria Teresa Fernandez de la Vega told a news conference in Madrid Saturday that the release had been the result of a joint effort from Spain and the ship's owners.

DOES BEIJING GOVERN SEOUL?:

Chinese Clash With Protesters at Seoul Torch Rally (SANG-HUN CHOE, April 27, 2008, IHT)

Thousands of young Chinese assembled to defend their country’s troubled Olympic torch relay pushed through police lines on Sunday, some of them hurling rocks, bottled water and plastic and steel pipes at protesters demanding better treatment for North Korean refugees in China.

Two North Korean defectors living in South Korea poured paint thinner on themselves and tried to set themselves on fire in an attempt to protest what they condemned as Beijing’s inhumane crackdown of North Korean refugees, but the police stopped them, according to witnesses and the police.

The South Korean police and Chinese students also overpowered at least two other protesters who tried to impede the run along a 15-mile route through Seoul. The route was kept secret until the last minute and guarded by more than 8,300 police officers.

MORE:
Inflamed passions (Rowan Callick, April 26, 2008, The Australian)

THE Olympic torch relay's Journey of Harmony has become a tortuous road of angst pointing to a chasm between China's ruling Communist Party and the democratic world.

The torch has also shone a light on the rift between Beijing and its "minorities", still frustratingly fractious despite their growing material opportunities.

The intensity and passion aroused by the events in Tibet this year and the resulting furore over the relay threaten to sour the Olympic Games, which will begin in 15 weeks.

More than that, though, they throw a great question mark over the previously assumed inevitability of China's peaceful rise to superpower.

In the end, the 1980 Games revealed a lot more about the paranoia and ruthlessness of an authoritarian state than about its skill at organizing sports competition - at least to the West.

Now, in the same way, we're learning a lot about China. And just as a lot of Russians then couldn't see a connection between their state's policies and the Games, so many Chinese today seem genuinely angry and convinced that "foreign enemies" are deliberately trying to ruin their coming-out party.

I suspect the International Olympic Committee also has not quite understood that a connection might be made between a country's human-rights record and hosting the Games.

There are limits, of course, to the parallels between the sealed military camp that was the Soviet Union 28 years ago and the wealthy, exploding China of today. But that only makes the similarities in the reactions of the two Communist parties all the more striking.

The West may see China as the economic and military powerhouse of the 21st century, where presidents and magnates seek to find a piece of the action. Yet the ruling party has remained remarkably ignorant of the rules of the open societies with which they deal, and remarkably insecure before every Tibetan or Uighur dissident, every human-rights activist and every Western critic.

A state that sentences a dissident like Hu Jia to prison for "inciting subversion of state power" by linking the Games with human rights is not a self-confident one.

Reared in a secretive, suspicious, paternalistic and highly bureaucratized culture, the Chinese Communist elite can only presume that Western elites are like them, that protests over Darfur, Tibet or the persecution of dissidents are all cynical political maneuvers.

The attacks on the torch, thus, can only be the work of "enemies." And these are everywhere.

NOTHING COSTS MORE...:

New battle cry of U.S. consumers: 'Get the cheap stuff!' (Michael Barbaro and Eric Dash, April 27, 2008, IHT)

Stung by rising gasoline and food prices, Americans are finding creative ways to cut costs on routine items like groceries and clothing, forcing retailers, restaurants and manufacturers to decode the tastes of a suddenly thrifty public.

Spending data and interviews around the country show that middle- and working-class consumers are starting to switch from name brands to cheaper alternatives, to eat in instead of dining out and to fly at unusual hours to shave dollars off airfares.

"MADE TO LOOK BROODING":

New Town Thriller: DOUGRAY Scott has come a long way since his Glenrothes boyhood, but, says the actor, growing up in Fife is what laid the foundations of his career and international success. (Chitra Ramaswamy, 4/27/08, Scotland on Sunday)

IT IS the day after meeting Dougray Scott that it suddenly hits me: he doesn't smile. Actually, that's not quite true. It's more that on the rare occasions when the 42-year-old Scot does curve his lips in a skywards direction, it doesn't suit him; a bit like when Gordon Brown breaks into one of his grimaces. It's as though Scott's face – rugged, bronzed, James Bond-like – wasn't made to grin, chortle or look especially animated. It was made to look brooding. Renowned as a man of few words, perhaps it is not surprising that he is also a man of few expressions.

Scott has said that he is a product of where he comes from: Glenrothes, in Fife, where his mother still lives in the same house he grew up in opposite a whisky bottling plant.

NO ONE'S EVER ENJOYED THE OFFICE MORE:

Bush tweaks candidates at correspondents' dinner: President Bush pokes fun at his potential successors at White House correspondents' dinner (CHRISTINE SIMMONS, 4/26/08, Associated Press)

"Senator McCain's not here," Bush said of GOP nominee-in-waiting John McCain. "He probably wanted to distance himself from me a little bit. You know, he's not alone. Jenna's moving out too."

Bush then referred to scandals that have dogged the campaigns of the two remaining Democratic candidates, Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama, in explaining their absence: "Hillary Clinton couldn't get in because of sniper fire and Senator Obama's at church."

THEY LOVED IT WHEN IT WAS A SOCIALIST EXPERIMENT...:

The fate of nations: The subtle historian excels on 20th century European intellectuals but trips in polemics on Israel. (Tim Rutten, 4/23/08, Los Angeles Times)

As a student in England, [Tony] Judt was an ardent supporter of Labor Zionism, spent time on a kibbutz and volunteered as a translator and driver for the Israel Defense Forces during the 1967 war. One of the two essays on Israel that Judt includes in this collection is a review of Michael Oren's history of that conflict, which the author argues was a disaster for Israel, fundamentally altering the Jewish state's culture, politics and even its demography for the worse.

The other piece -- "The Country That Wouldn't Grow Up" -- was commissioned by the editors of the Israeli daily Haaretz. In it, Judt argues that "Israel's future is bleak," the country "an object of universal mistrust and resentment" through its own doing and because of its infantilizing relationship with the United States.

Missing from this collection -- though Judt refers to it in a boldfaced after-note to the essay on Oren's book -- is the most controversial of his anti-Israeli polemics, a 2003 piece for the New York Review of Books in which he advocated abolition of the Jewish state in favor of a new, binational country of unspecific constitution. The heart of Judt's argument for that radical "alternative," as he styled it, can be found in this paragraph: "Today, non-Israeli Jews feel themselves once again exposed to criticism and vulnerable to attack for things they didn't do. But this time it is a Jewish state, not a Christian one, which is holding them hostage for its own actions. Diaspora Jews cannot influence Israeli policies, but they are implicitly identified with them, not least by Israel's own insistent claims upon their allegiance. The behavior of a self-described Jewish state affects the way everyone else looks at Jews. The increased incidence of attacks on Jews in Europe and elsewhere is primarily attributable to misdirected efforts, often by young Muslims, to get back at Israel. . . . The depressing truth is that Israel today is bad for the Jews."

The best rejoinder to Judt's superficially "realist" argument came quickly from the New Republic's Leon Wieseltier: "Why must Israel pay for his uneasiness with its life? The reason, I fear, is that Judt has misinterpreted the nature of the hostility that vexes him. . . . For the notion that all Jews are responsible for whatever any Jews do, that every deed that a Jew does is a Jewish deed, is not a Zionist notion. It is an anti-Semitic notion. But Judt prefers to regard it as an onerous corollary of Zionism ('not least by Israel's own insistent claims upon their allegiance'). He refuses to place the blame for this unwarranted judgment of himself upon those who make it. Instead he accepts the premise of the prejudice, and turns on Israel. He makes a similar mistake in his evaluation of 'the increased incidence of attacks on Jews in Europe.' He knows that they are 'misdirected,' but still he describes them as 'efforts, often by young Muslims, to get back at Israel.' In what way, exactly, is the burning of a synagogue a method for getting back at Israel? In the anti-Semitic way, plainly. It is the essence of anti-Semitism, as it is the essence of all prejudice, to call its object its cause. But if you explain anti-Semitism as a response to Jews, and racism as a response to blacks, and misogyny as a response to women, then you have not understood it. You have reproduced it."

ALL DEFENSE, ALL THE TIME:

Deepening Democratic Dilemma (Robert Novak, 4/24/08, Real Clear Politics)

Prominent Democrats only whisper when they compare Obama, the first African-American with a serious chance to be president, with what happened to Los Angeles' black Mayor Tom Bradley a quarter of a century ago. Exit polls in 1982 showed Bradley ahead for governor of California, but he actually lost to Republican George Deukmejian. Pollster John Zogby (who correctly predicted Clinton's double-digit win Tuesday) said what practicing Democrats would not. "I think voters face-to-face are not willing to say they would oppose an African-American candidate," Zogby told me.

If there really is a Bradley Effect in 2008, Zogby sees November peril ahead for Obama in blue states. John McCain is a potential winner not only in Pennsylvania but also Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota, and can retain Ohio.

MAYBE THE A'S ARE FOR REAL:

MLB now a young man's game (Peter Gammons, April 26, 2008, ESPN)

We'll see when we reach August, when the 35-year-olds and 40-year-olds find out if their minds are making promises that their bodies can't keep. "It's a different game today with the drug testing and without amphetamines and steroids," says one very wise baseball executive. "Wait and see come the dog days. Those organizations that can bring up young players -- guys they know because they've been tested time after time in the minor leagues -- are going to have a huge advantage on the older teams."

If that is the reality, where once teams sought veterans who have been through the wars, now teams like the Angels, Athletics, Red Sox, Indians, Braves, Diamondbacks and Dodgers may have their stretch drive solutions in house. Tampa, as well.

"We saw it last year when the Red Sox made their run through the World Series by bringing in [Jacoby] Ellsbury and Clay Buchholz and guys like that," another executive said. "I think it's going to be a younger man's game."

REALISTS NEED NOT APPLY:

Mccain Vs. Mccain: He seems to think he can magically unite the two main strands in the foreign-policy establishment. He can't. (Fareed Zakaria, 4/26/08, NEWSWEEK)

On March 26, McCain gave a speech on foreign policy in Los Angeles that was billed as his most comprehensive statement on the subject. It contained within it the most radical idea put forward by a major candidate for the presidency in 25 years. Yet almost no one noticed.

In his speech McCain proposed that the United States expel Russia from the G8, the group of advanced industrial countries. Moscow was included in this body in the 1990s to recognize and reward it for peacefully ending the cold war on Western terms, dismantling the Soviet empire and withdrawing from large chunks of the old Russian Empire as well. McCain also proposed that the United States should expand the G8 by taking in India and Brazil—but pointedly excluded China from the councils of power.

We have spent months debating Barack Obama's suggestion that he might, under some circumstances, meet with Iranians and Venezuelans. It is a sign of what is wrong with the foreign-policy debate that this idea is treated as a revolution in U.S. policy while McCain's proposal has barely registered. What McCain has announced is momentous—that the United States should adopt a policy of active exclusion and hostility toward two major global powers. It would reverse a decades-old bipartisan American policy of integrating these two countries into the global order, a policy that began under Richard Nixon (with Beijing) and continued under Ronald Reagan (with Moscow). It is a policy that would alienate many countries in Europe and Asia who would see it as an attempt by Washington to begin a new cold war.

I write this with sadness because I greatly admire John McCain, a man of intelligence, honor and enormous personal and political courage. I also agree with much of what else he said in that speech in Los Angeles. But in recent years, McCain has turned into a foreign-policy schizophrenic, alternating between neoconservative posturing and realist common sense. His speech reads like it was written by two very different people, each one given an allotment of a few paragraphs on every topic.

The neoconservative vision within the speech is essentially an affirmation of ideology. Not only does it declare war on Russia and China, it places the United States in active opposition to all nondemocracies.

MORE:
How Neo are the Neocons?: What is needed is a good dose of the neoconservatism of old. (Jonah Goldberg, 4/23/08, National Review)

From our earliest days, Americans have supported the promotion of democracy around the world, often by force and without undue heed to international institutions. William Henry Seward, a founder of the Republican Party and Lincoln’s secretary of state, argued that it was America’s mission to lead the way “to the universal restoration of power to the governed.” A generation earlier, statesman Henry Clay championed the idea that America had the “duty to share with the rest of mankind this most precious gift” of liberty. Both world wars, Korea and Vietnam would be inconceivable without accounting for America’s dedication to the promotion and defense of democracy.

Kagan traces such sentiments to the dawn of the republic. The Founders, he writes, saw the U.S. as a “‘Hercules in a cradle’ ... because its beliefs, which liberated human potential and made possible a transcendent greatness, would capture the imagination and the following of all humanity.”

Even amid the 15-month riot of Bush-bashing that has been the Democratic party’s fratricidal primary, Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama conceded the core neoconservative principle of the Bush doctrine. “There’s absolutely a connection between a democratic regime and heightened security for the United States,” Clinton said, responding to events in Pakistan. Obama would not only unilaterally attack al-Qaida in Pakistan without Pakistan’s permission if necessary, but he also argues that anti-Americanism in the Middle East is a direct consequence of the lack of democracy.

Obviously, supporting the spread of democracy hardly requires you to support the Iraq war. But it works the other way around as well. Support for the Iraq war doesn’t automatically make you a neoconservative. Douglas J. Feith, a former undersecretary of defense after 9/11, argues in his new memoir, War and Decision, that democratization didn’t rank very high among the Bush administration’s early priorities. Moreover, the administration’s mistakes in Iraq — perhaps including the war itself — have less relationship to ideology than many think. “It is possible,” as Kagan notes, “to be prudent or imprudent, capable or clumsy, wise or foolish, hurried or cautious in pursuit of any doctrine.” (Just ask newly hired Hamas spokesman Jimmy Carter.)

America’s forcible promotion of democracy has been both successful (Germany, Japan) and unsuccessful (Vietnam). Where Iraq will fall in the win-loss columns is unknowable right now. But the idea that the “Iraq project” is some bizarre and otherworldly enterprise will seem laughable to historians a century from now, even if it is viewed as a disaster.

THE ANTI-MAHMOUD MAJORITY MAJLIS:

Iran conservatives bolster power (Associated Press, April 26, 2008)

The conservative majority in the 290-seat parliament is divided between supporters of Ahmadinejad and opponents who say he has mishandled a nuclear standoff with the West and concentrated too much on fiery, anti-U.S. rhetoric while neglecting the economy.

Within the conservative bloc, Ahmadinejad's supporters added 27 seats to the 90 they won previously. His moderate opponents gained 11 on top of 42 from the first round in March, according to the Interior Ministry.

Reformists, who favor greater democracy, closer ties with the West and reducing the clergy's powers, made a respectable showing even after most of their candidates were barred from running.

They added at least 15 seats to the 31 they won in the first round, a gain of six from the outgoing parliament.

Independents picked up 32 seats on top of 39 they won in the first round.

BEFORE 9-11 INTERVENED...:

Now, This Is Campaign Fatigue (Jonathan Weisman, 4/27/08, Washington Post)

If the American people are growing weary of the protracted Democratic nomination fight, they've got nothing on the candidates, their staffs or their staffs' families. A campaign that has stretched more than a year has now reached virtually every state, has seen babies born and staffers married, and has now begun to heat up again.

Fabiola Rodriguez-Ciampoli, Clinton's director of Hispanic communications, arrived in San Antonio on Feb. 15 to ramp up outreach to Latinos in Texas. Two days later, her long-awaited adoption papers came through and she became a mother, working out of an adviser's home with an infant in her lap.

Between the two, the campaigns have logged more than 2,000 meal stops, from Yum Yum Donuts in Baldwin Park, Calif., to the Fontainebleau Hotel in Miami Beach -- with pit stops at 15 7-Elevens from North Las Vegas to Raymond, N.H.

The Clinton campaign has sent out 1,572 news releases since the beginning of the campaign in 2007, the Obama campaign 454.

"Sometimes, yes, of course," Obama acknowledged Tuesday, when asked whether he was exhausted.

It's starting to show. "Why can't I just eat my waffle?" Obama snapped at a reporter who sought to interrupt his breakfast with a policy question last week in Pennsylvania. [...]

Presumptive Republican nominee John McCain has pared back his schedule, taken the time to grill ribs for reporters at his Sedona, Ariz., ranch and carefully picked the venues for his public appearances. His would-be Democratic opponents have no such luxuries.

This served Mr. Bush and the country well immediately after 9-11, as his speeches had an added drama and weight precisely because he'd not been droning on about things like his underwear preferences for the prior year. But, perhaps understandably, they didn't follow through in the ensuing years because the war had raised the stakes on such events, such that silence might have seemed reluctance.

Mr. McCain probably ought to return to their original plan. Let Americans grow wary of the other two and he'll be the oldest fresh face in political history when he resumes real campaigning this Summer.

THRESHHOLD ERROR:

CIA given leeway on barred interrogation methods (Mark Mazzetti, April 27, 2008, NY Times)

The Justice Department has told Congress that U.S. intelligence operatives attempting to thwart terrorist attacks can legally use interrogation methods that might otherwise be prohibited under international law.

The legal interpretation, outlined in recent letters, sheds new light on the still-secret rules for interrogations by the CIA. It shows that the administration is arguing that the boundaries for interrogations should be subject to some latitude, even under an executive order issued last summer that President George W. Bush said meant that the CIA would comply with international strictures against harsh treatment of detainees.

While the Geneva Conventions prohibit "outrages upon personal dignity," a letter sent by the Justice Department to Congress on March 5 makes clear that the administration has not drawn a precise line in deciding which interrogation methods would violate that standard and is reserving the right to make case-by-case judgments.

"The fact that an act is undertaken to prevent a threatened terrorist attack, rather than for the purpose of humiliation or abuse, would be relevant to a reasonable observer in measuring the outrageousness of the act," said Brian Benczkowski, a deputy assistant attorney general, in the letter, which had not previously been made public.

HISTORY JUST KEEPS ENDING:

Mugabe fails in bid to switch poll result: The Electoral Commission has not awarded any more seats won by the opposition to Zanu-PF (Tracy McVeigh, 4/27/08, The Observer)

Robert Mugabe has been unable to win back control of Zimbabwe's parliament after a partial recount of the 29 March election results failed to overturn any of the original results that gave the opposition the majority of seats.

It means the first defeat in 28 years for Mugabe's ruling Zanu-PF party after Zimbabwe's electoral commission (ZEC) yesterday released seven more results from the recount, changing none. It brings to 13 the number of seats recounted, with 10 remaining to be declared - all in strong opposition-held areas. Zanu-PF would need to win nine to regain control.

A VERY FEW TEAMS ARE RUN WELL:

No matter what, Patriots get what they want (MARK CRAIG, April 26, 2008, Star Tribune)

The New England Patriots might lose a Super Bowl once in a while, but no one beats this dynasty on draft day.

No one. Not even NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell.

Sheriff Goodell stripped the Patriots of their own No. 1 pick as punishment for filming the Jets' defensive signals in violation of league rules in Week 1 last season. Yet the Patriots still managed to fill their biggest need -- linebacker -- with a top-10 pick while trading down to acquire another third-round selection and give themselves five picks in the top three rounds.

In a league that demands parity and frowns on cheating, that's an impressively resourceful day for a team that went 18-1 and cheated last season. But it's hardly a surprise. After all, being a step ahead of everybody else is what Patriots coach Bill Belichick and vice president of player personnel Scott Pioli do best.

Especially on draft day.

MUST NOT KNOW ANY DECENT PEOPLE:

When we abuse animals we debase ourselves: What qualities associated with the best in mankind aren't expressed by animals? (Barbara Cook Spencer, April 11, 2008, CS Monitor)

We may not be linked by trunks and tusks, wings and beaks, but I have yet to think of a single quality associated with the best in mankind that is not expressed by animals and often – as with loyalty, sincerity, wisdom, and forgiveness – more perfectly.

Our differences appear to lie more in the complexity with which we express our commonly held qualities. In fact, the caring, thoughtful observation of animals has taught, and can continue to teach, vital lessons about what we ourselves are and what we can accomplish.

OH, THAT CONSERVATIVE MEDIA...:

So, we not only have MoDo and Paul Krugman going into the tank for the GOP and Howard Fineman offering advice that would leave Senator Obama with only Illinois on Election Night, here's what Ed Driscoll found another Newsweek columnist saying.

AN ANTI-EXCEPTIONALIST WOULD BE THE EXCEPTION::

Only in America: America's particularities will survive George Bush (Lexington, 4/24/08, The Economist)

[L]ook at the 2008 election—the one that is supposed to be changing the direction of the country—and American exceptionalism seems to be as strong as ever. Where else do primary elections go on for well over a year? Where else do candidates raise tens of millions of dollars a month from their supporters? And where else do the party rank-and-file (as well as some non-party people) get a chance to choose the candidate for the top job? Gordon Brown became Britain's prime minister without a single ordinary Briton casting a vote. John McCain won his party's nomination despite the opposition of a large chunk of his party. Mr Obama is leading an uprising against his party's old establishment.

The various campaigns have often invoked American exceptionalism, especially the strength of its religious feeling. Mrs Clinton has stressed her credentials as a cradle Methodist who once thought of becoming a minister. Even before the Jeremiah Wright affair, Mr Obama spoke at length about how he found purpose in life when he discovered God. The only odd thing about this election is the fact that the Democratic candidates both seem more comfortable with God-talk than Mr McCain.

All three candidates preach a peculiarly American style of patriotism. Mr McCain invokes his military service in Vietnam, when he learnt to depend on something greater than himself. Mr Obama argues that there is not a red America or a blue America but one America united by common values. All three candidates wax lyrical about the American dream. And by European standards all three candidates are strikingly willing to sanction the use of force. Mr McCain sings “Bomb, bomb Iran” to the tune of “Barbara Ann”. Mr Obama talks about sanctioning a search-and-destroy mission in Pakistan without the permission of that country's government. Mrs Clinton said this week that, as president, she would have no qualms about “totally obliterating” Iran if it used nuclear weapons against Israel.

THE CAVE WALLS SHRINK:

Gap opens between Al Qaeda and allies: A backlash builds over the network's tactics, including suicide attacks. Its leaders try to defuse the anger. (Josh Meyer, 4/24/08, Los Angeles Times)

Al Qaeda increasingly faces sharp criticism from once-loyal sympathizers who openly question its ideology and tactics, including attacks that kill innocent Muslims, according to U.S. intelligence officials, counter-terrorism experts and the group's own communications.

A litany of complaints target Osama bin Laden's network and its affiliates for their actions in Iraq and North Africa, emphasis on suicide bombings instead of political action and tepid support for, or outright antagonism toward, militant groups pressing the Palestinian cause. [...]

Sayyed Imam Sharif, an Egyptian physician who once was a senior theologian for Al Qaeda, was one of Zawahiri's oldest associates. The author of violent manifestoes over the last two decades, Sharif did an about-face while incarcerated in Egypt. Several other prominent Muslim clerics and former militants have similarly condemned Al Qaeda.

Such rifts have been emerging for several years, but they have become increasingly contentious lately, in cyberspace and on the streets of some Arab countries.

MAYBE HE WAS AT CANSECO'S AND ROGER WAS AT REZKO'S?:

Obama doesn't recall '04 Rezko party (John McCormick, April 26, 2008, Chicago Tribune)

The question has lingered since it arose last week during the federal corruption trial of Antoin "Tony" Rezko: Why, just weeks after winning the Democratic U.S. Senate primary in 2004, would Barack Obama attend a party for a controversial Iraqi-born billionaire whom Rezko was trying to lure into an investment?

In an interview Friday, Obama didn't deny the assertion by Stuart Levine, the government's star witness in the Rezko trial, about the party honoring Nadhmi Auchi, a British citizen who is appealing a fraud conviction in France. Obama said he didn't recall the event.

ONLY TAXES CAN RAISE PRICES AS HIGH AS NEEDED:

Oil bubble will burst soon, says Lehman report news (Domain-B, 25 April 2008)

The oil boom is on its last leg and may last a few months before a clutch of new refineries start operations amid slackening economic growth across the world, consultancy firm and investment bank Lehman Brothers has predicted in a report.

The report said supply is in fact outpacing demand growth even as inventories have been building up for quite some time now.

BECAUSE IT'S PSYCHOSAOMATIC AND STRAIGHT MEN HATE DOCTORS?:

Fibromyalgia Affects Women More Often Than Men (ScienceDaily, Apr. 26, 2008)

There is no laboratory test available to diagnose fibromyalgia. Doctors must rely on patient histories, self-reported symptoms, a physical examination and an accurate manual tender point examination.

To receive a diagnosis of fibromyalgia, a patient must experience widespread pain in all four quadrants of the body for a minimum duration of three months and experience tenderness or pain in at least 11 of the 18 specified tender points when pressure is applied.

Fibromyalgia may affect as much as 3-6 percent of the U.S. population. It is more common in women than in men, but the reasons for this difference are unclear.

STRAIGHT TALKIN':

Contrarian McCain: Far from pandering, John McCain tells financially hard-pressed voters things they don't want to hear (LA Times, April 26, 2008)

John McCain's "Time for Action" tour of small and hard-hit towns played a bit like an extended campaign commercial, but with an important difference. Yes, there were the photo ops of the candidate in locales usually bypassed by Republicans seeking the White House, including an African American quilting hotbed in rural Alabama, a shuttered factory in a struggling Ohio town and an impoverished Appalachian community in eastern Kentucky. But instead of promising truckloads of aid if he's elected, McCain talked up his vision of a government that helps more by doing less.

It's not a new message from the Arizona senator, who follows an unpredictable political muse but typically favors smaller government and less regulation. Yet the context was important. Standing outside the Ohio factory Tuesday, in a state where Democrats Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton pandered to protectionists, McCain actually stood up for the North American Free Trade Agreement and free trade. The lost factory jobs aren't coming back, McCain said, and rather than waging a futile fight against globalization, Washington should do a better job training workers for careers in the new economy.

The next day he visited Inez, Ky., where nearly a third of the population lives below the poverty line and almost half of the adults never made it through high school. President Lyndon Johnson announced his War on Poverty in Inez, but McCain was there to withdraw the troops. "Government can't create good and lasting jobs outside of government," he said, adding that it should focus on encouraging businesses to create opportunities for the poor and reduce regulatory barriers to improving education.

ON THE OTHER HAND, LOTS OF CONSERVATIVES ARE DUMB AS WELL AS STUPID:

G.O.P. Now Sees Obama as Liability for Ticket (CARL HULSE, 4/26/08, NY Times)

“The public, week by week, is becoming more familiar with his big-government, far-left vision for America,” said Ed Patru, a spokesman for Freedom’s Watch, an advocacy organization that is portraying Mr. Obama as ultraliberal in an advertisement running in Louisiana before a special election for a House seat.

Republicans say the new focus on Mr. Obama reflects their view that he remains the more likely Democratic presidential nominee since he continues to lead Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton in convention delegates. It also shows that Republicans, who have for months characterized Mrs. Clinton as the contender who would most energize Republican voters, now see vulnerabilities in Mr. Obama that could be liabilities for other Democrats on the ballot.

“There were times when Republicans reacted with just horror that he would lead the ticket,” said Stuart Rothenberg, a nonpartisan political analyst. “Now there is not the sense of him being invulnerable, the magic bullet. I think there has been a major change.”

DEATOMIZATION:

Suddenly, It's Cool to Take the Bus: Sky-high gas prices have more commuters switching to employer-subsidized transportation—and loving it (Michelle Conlin, 4/26/08, BW Magazine)

Companies are big on breaking the car addiction because doing so raises productivity, amps morale, and delivers much lusted-after green cred.

The surge in oil prices has accelerated the trend. So have new corporate tax deductions for employer-subsidized transportation. Consider what's happening at insurer Safeco (SAF). When the company moved to Seattle last year, it installed commuting concierges to help employees figure out how best to use the company's vouchers for mass transit, shuttles, car pools, and ferries. Free rentals from Zipcar await those who need to run errands during the day. Safeco also encourages its staff to skip the commute altogether by offering free phone and broadband service for their home offices, as well as a furniture stipend with which to decorate. Today, 90% of employees are out of their cars, up from 50% in 2006. The company is aiming for zero-car status. Says Safeco transportation analyst Brady Clark: "We're still working on that 10%."

Some companies can't meet the demand fast enough. After Microsoft (MSFT) rolled out a new shuttle-bus service last fall, employees immediately howled for more routes. The plush, Wi-Fi-equipped coaches have become so wildly popular—strategy chief Craig Mundie is a big fan—that when word leaked recently that Microsoft was adding to the service, a group of Microserfs hacked into the reservation system and filled up the new routes before they were even announced. Employee Bryan Keller used to commute alone in his 20-mpg Honda Pilot. "I've regained two hours of my day," he says. Using Microsoft's online "carbon calculator," Keller estimates he's saved $150 on gas and dropped 1,000 pounds of CO2 from his carbon footprint since he began using the service in October.

THAT'S THE TICKET:

Memo to Obama: Seven things he should do to fix his image problem. (Howard Fineman, 4/26/08, Newsweek)

TELL US IN CONCRETE TERMS WHERE YOU ARE FROM. Kids under 30 don't care about geography. Born and bred in the Mapquest and GPS era, they can't even read a map. They live in and on the Internet, which is everywhere and nowhere at the same time. They are from brands, not places; lifestyle choices, not home-town roots. But that is not true of older people. For them, "where you are from" still matters, and you have to do a better, simpler job of explaining it in terms they understand. And where is that? It's not Indonesia, and it's probably not Hawaii (hard to translate in any case). It's not the Ivy League. You are from where you chose to be from, which is the South Side of Chicago.

CAROM SHOT:

McCain Goes Where Few Republicans Dare, Deep in Democrats’ Territory (ELISABETH BUMILLER, 4/26/08, NY Times)

Mr. McCain was at the end of a weeklong tour to America’s “forgotten places,” otherwise known as swaths of the country where Republicans dare not go — the Black Belt of Alabama, the Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans, the coal-mining hollow in Appalachia where President Lyndon B. Johnson declared his war on poverty.

Derided by Democrats as an exploitive publicity stunt, promoted by Mr. McCain’s advisers as evidence that he is determined to tackle poverty, the trip was aimed far beyond the people of Selma, Ala., or Inez, Ky. Its target was suburban swing voters who might see Mr. McCain in such unfamiliar surroundings as a different face of the Republican Party. As the candidate put it Thursday, “I don’t know how many votes I’m going to get in Selma, and I don’t know how many votes I’m going to get here in the city of New Orleans.”

Mr. McCain has seemed alternately moved and awkward this week, and at times defensive about his background. At each stop he offered mostly himself. Substantively, he had little to offer other than general outlines of programs for job training, better Internet access for isolated areas and government partnerships with private enterprise for a faster response to natural disasters. In rural towns, people were excited to see a presidential candidate, no matter his party; in cities like New Orleans they were more skeptical.

But Mr. McCain’s campaign camera crew savored the pictures — scenes of Mr. McCain with the quilters of Gee’s Bend, Ala., were on his campaign Web site within 24 hours — and he himself clearly savored his journey to the Democratic base when the base seems so fractured.

AND THEY WONDER WHY THEY'RE A PERMANENT MINORITY:

Party Fears Racial Divide: Attacks Could Do Lasting Harm, Democrats Say (Jonathan Weisman and Matthew Mosk, 4/26/08, Washington Post)

The protracted and increasingly acrimonious fight for the Democratic presidential nomination is unnerving core constituencies -- African Americans and wealthy liberals -- who are becoming convinced that the party could suffer irreversible harm if Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton maintains her sharp line of attack against Sen. Barack Obama.

THERE IS NO RUSSIA:

Russia's region of 'lawlessness': Since the wars in Chechnya in the mid and late 1990's, Russia's North Caucasus has remained largely off-limits to foreign journalists. But James Rodgers, who covered the separatists' conflict with Kremlin troops has just returned from a rare trip. (James Rodgers, 4/26/08, BBC)

I also visited Ingushetia, the region to the west of Chechnya. This used to be a safe place. No longer. Militants are killing local officials and ethnic Russians.

The groups who are trying to reignite conflict in the Caucasus have plenty to work with. Stories that the Russians and their Chechen allies do not trust each other are easy to believe.

There was a hitch in our travel arrangements. Russians and Chechens were quick to blame each other.

"The locals are idiots," fumed one Muscovite as the spring sun became comfortably warm and the delay continued. He did not know that the Chechen next to him had just said the same to me about Russians.

I did not feel that the north Caucasus was about to explode again. People are exhausted and the rebels are now thought to number only a few hundred.

But the missing and the dead have relatives and Chechnya has a long tradition of blood feuds.

There are countless unemployed young men.

YOU HAVEN'T LIVED UNTIL YOU'VE SEEN POTATO HEAD POLYPHEMUS:

Odysseus Unplugged: a review of THE ODYSSEY: A Dramatic Retelling of Homer’s Epic By Simon Armitage (JAMES PARKER, NY Times Book Review)

Originally commissioned by the BBC and broadcast in 2004, Armitage’s version is a radio play — a play for voices, now published in book form. At times, the reader may feel something is missing: The descriptive sentences that punctuate the dialogue are fairly terse (“Delirious and breathless, Odysseus collapses on the floor”), and one can only guess at the fun some BBC basement wizard must have had with the sound effects (thunderbolts, shades lapping at a puddle of freshly spilled blood and so on). For these moments of wistfulness, however, we are more than compensated by Armitage’s pincer-move on Homer’s epic, his combination of deep attentiveness and refreshing imaginative license.

There are things in Armitage that you won’t find in Homer: the image of Odysseus outside Calypso’s cave, for example, alone on a rock “bleached white, and not by the dung of birds / or the throw of the sea, but by a man’s tears.” And when the Phaeacian ship sets Odysseus down at last on the shore of his longed-for Ithaca, there is a low-voiced conversation over his sleeping body that Homer never wrote. But the tear-blanched rock sits in the tale with a magical solidity, and the two Phaeacians’ gentleness with the unconscious king (“Sailor: Sure we shouldn’t wake him? Skipper: No. This seems right”), while perhaps more a Shakespearean touch than a Homeric one, is a lovely improvisation.

MORE:
-INTERVIEW: Homer is where the art is: In adapting 'The Odyssey' for radio, Simon Armitage took a great epic poem back to its roots. (Tom Payne , 8/26/04, Daily Telegraph)

NOTE THOUGH... (via Lisa Huang Fleischman):

Seven New Deadly Sins: Suitably updated (P.J. O'Rourke, 04/14/2008, Weekly Standard)

Busy times for us sinners--there are now an additional Seven Deadly Sins. The fresh abominations in the eyes of the Lord were announced by Bishop Gianfranco Girotti, head of the Vatican body that oversees confessions and plenary indulgences. This organization goes by the contrition-inducing name of the Apostolic Penitentiary. In an article in the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano, Bishop Girotti detailed the seven new ways we can go to hell or, at the minimum, be sentenced to afterlife in purgatory at the Apostle Pen. The bishop's supersizing of the mortal transgression catalog is thoroughly up-to-date (as translated by the Times of London):

1. Drug abuse

2. Morally debatable experimentation

3. Environmental pollution

4. Causing poverty

5. Social inequality and injustice

6. Genetic manipulation

7. Accumulating excessive wealth

Not to argue theology with the Vatican, but environmental pollution is hardly among Satan's strongest temptations. Pollution is not a passion we resist with an agony of will for the sake of our immortal souls. I've been to parties where all seven of the original deadlies were on offer in carload lots. Never once have I heard a reveler shout with evil glee, "Let's dump PCBs in the Hudson River!"

THERE IS NO ITALY:

Italy must be broken up, says Berlusconi's wife (Malcolm Moore, 26/04/2008, Daily Telegraph)

Silvio Berlusconi's wife added her voice yesterday to the growing calls for Italy to be partitioned.

In an interview with La Stampa, Veronica Lario, 51, said: "Italy has never been well-suited to being a single country, and has never matured enough to become one. There is no longer any value in a unified Italy."

IF YOU'RE ADLAI-LITE DO YOU EVEN EXIST?:

Is Obama Ready for Prime Time? (KARL ROVE, April 24, 2008, Wall Street Journal)

[D]emocrats run the risk of a split decision in June. Mr. Obama could have more delegates, but she could have more popular votes. In fact, on Tuesday night she actually grabbed the popular vote lead: If you include the Michigan and Florida primary results, Mrs. Clinton now leads the popular vote by a slim 113,000 votes out of 29,914,356 cast.

Mr. Obama will argue he wasn't on the ballot in Michigan and didn't campaign in Florida. But don't Democrats want to count all the votes in all the contests? After all, Mr. Obama took his name off the Michigan ballot; it isn't something he was forced to do. And while he didn't campaign in Florida, neither did she.

And what about the Michigan and Florida delegates? By my calculations, she should pick up about 54 delegates on Mr. Obama if they are seated (this assumes the Michigan "uncommitted" delegates go for Mr. Obama). If he is ahead in June by a number similar to his lead today of 125, does he let the two delegations in and make the convention vote even closer? Or does he continue to act as if two states with 41 of the 270 electoral votes needed for the White House don't exist?

The Democratic Party has two weakened candidates. Mrs. Clinton started as a deeply flawed candidate: the palpable and unpleasant sense of entitlement, the absence of a clear and optimistic message, the grating personality impatient to be done with the little people and overly eager for a return to power, real power, the phoniness and the exaggerations. These problems have not diminished over the long months of the contest. They have grown. She started out with the highest negatives of any major candidate in an open race for the presidency and things have only gotten worse.

And what of the reborn Adlai Stevenson? Mr. Obama is befuddled and angry about the national reaction to what are clearly accepted, even commonplace truths in San Francisco and Hyde Park. How could anyone take offense at the observation that people in small-town and rural American are "bitter" and therefore "cling" to their guns and their faith, as well as their xenophobia? Why would anyone raise questions about a public figure who, for only 20 years, attended a church and developed a close personal relationship with its preacher who says AIDS was created by our government as a genocidal tool to be used against people of color, who declared America's chickens came home to roost on 9/11, and wants God to damn America? Mr. Obama has a weakness among blue-collar working class voters for a reason.

His inspiring rhetoric is a potent tool for energizing college students and previously uninvolved African-American voters. But his appeals are based on two aspirational pledges he is increasingly less credible in making.

Mr. Obama's call for postpartisanship looks unconvincing, when he is unable to point to a single important instance in his Senate career when he demonstrated bipartisanship. And his repeated calls to remember Dr. Martin Luther King's "fierce urgency of now" in tackling big issues falls flat as voters discover that he has not provided leadership on any major legislative battle.

Mr. Obama has not been a leader on big causes in Congress. He has been manifestly unwilling to expend his political capital on urgent issues. He has been only an observer, watching the action from a distance, thinking wry and sardonic and cynical thoughts to himself about his colleagues, mildly amused at their to-ing and fro-ing. He has held his energy and talent in reserve for the more important task of advancing his own political career, which means running for president.

But something happened along the way. Voters saw in the Philadelphia debate the responses of a vitamin-deficient Stevenson act-a-like.

FRETTING BY TALKING HEADS ISN'T QUITE THE SAME THING AS FLEXIBILITY:

The Future of American Power (Fareed Zakaria, 4/25/08, Foreign Affairs)

The United States has been and can continue to be the world's most important source of new ideas, big and small, technical and creative, economic and political. (If it were truly innovative, it could generate new ideas to produce new kinds of energy.) But to do that, it has to make some significant changes. The United States has a history of worrying that it is losing its edge. Today's is at least the fourth wave of such concern since World War II. The first was in the late 1950s, a result of the Soviet Union's launching of the Sputnik satellite. The second was in the early 1970s, when high oil prices and slow growth convinced Americans that Western Europe and Saudi Arabia were the powers of the future. The third one arrived in the mid-1980s, when most experts believed that Japan would be the technologically and economically dominant superpower of the future. The concern in each of these cases was well founded, the projections intelligent. But none of the feared scenarios came to pass. The reason is that the U.S. system proved to be flexible, resourceful, and resilient, able to correct its mistakes and shift its attention. A focus on U.S. economic decline ended up preventing it.

The problem today is that the U.S. political system seems to have lost its ability to fix its ailments.

MORE (via Bryan Francoeur):
India to crack down on doctors aborting girls (Randeep Ramesh, 4/25/08, The Guardian)

The Indian government yesterday signalled that it would be imposing tougher sentences on doctors who illegally abort female foetuses - a tacit admission that the law was not working.

Experts estimate India has lost 10 million girls in the past 20 years. Yet in the 14 years since selective abortion was outlawed only two doctors has been convicted of the crime - and officials admit one of those is back in business.

THE SUREST SIGN THAT HE SCORED A HISTORIC WIN...:

A Bush Success (not that he gets credit): The Medicare drug benefit is working better than predicted (James C. Capretta, Peter Wehner, Friday, April 25, 2008, Weekly Standard)

The governmentalists were right about one thing: The new drug benefit is unquestionably designed to encourage market competition. But on everything else, they were mistaken.

The drug benefit's market-based tilt is not complicated. Medicare beneficiaries choose every year from among competing, privately run drug-coverage plans. The government's contribution toward this coverage is set at a fixed percentage of the average premium, and no more. If beneficiaries want to enroll in a plan that costs more than the average, they can do so--but they, not the government, must pay the additional premium.

This structure provides strong incentives for the drug coverage plans to secure discounts from manufacturers and encourage use of lower cost products over more expensive alternatives. Drug plans that fail to cut costs risk losing enrollment to cheaper competitors.

Still, the governmentalists found this design wanting and predicted failure. Their argument was that private insurers wouldn't offer coverage, so the price competition would be weak. Costs would soar without government-set price controls. Beneficiaries wouldn't sign up because the premiums would be too high. The program would collapse under the weight of a public yearning for government-run simplicity.

On all these points, the governmentalists were wrong.

Now in its third year, the drug benefit is working better than predicted. More than 1,800 private plans are competing for enrollment. More important, Medicare beneficiaries like the program. Recent independent surveys show 85 percent are satisfied with their coverage. And little wonder: In 2008, the average beneficiary premium is just $25 per month, well below the original estimate of $41.

The program's competitive design is holding down costs for the government as well. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services announced earlier this year the new drug benefit's costs will be 40 percent--or $244 billion--less over ten years than originally projected. This is an unprecedented achievement in health care policy.

There are important lessons to draw from this experience. For liberals it is that the greatest threat to public support for their ideology is reality. It's been said that you can prove the possible by the actual--and in this case, the "actual" is that sensible public policy can liberate markets to work in health care just as they work in every other area. Governmentalists have a deep interest in grounding policy debates on issues like health care in abstractions and appeals to fear of the unknown. Pro-market reformers, on the other hand, need only to test their propositions against reality.

For conservatives, there is a need to accept the reality of measured steps in health and entitlement reform. The public will always be uneasy with abrupt changes to arrangements upon which many are dependent. The best approach is to gradually introduce markets and individual choice and ownership without threatening the security of the known. To his credit, President Bush recognized early on that adding a new drug benefit to Medicare presented a rare opportunity to introduce competition into the program, and he seized it.

PAGING MR. KRISTOF...:

Esteem for US rises in Asia, thanks to Iraq war (Greg Sheridan, April 26, 2008, The Australian)

Mike Green holds the Japan chair at Washington's Centre for Strategic and International Studies and was for several years the Asia director at the National Security Council. He is also one of America's foremost experts on Japan and northeast Asia generally. [...]

[G]reen's positive thesis is fascinating. The US's three most important Asian alliances - with Australia, Japan and South Korea - have in his view been strengthened by the Iraq campaign. Each of these nations sent substantial numbers of troops to help the US in Iraq. They did this because they believed in what the US was doing in Iraq, and also because they wanted to use the Iraq campaign as an opportunity to strengthen their alliances with the US.

More generally, in a world supposedly awash in anti-US sentiment, pro-American leaders keep winning elections. Germany's Angela Merkel is certainly more pro-American than Gerhard Schroeder, whom she replaced. The same is true of France's Nicolas Sarkozy.

More importantly in terms of Green's analysis, the same is also true of South Korea's new President. Lee Myung-bak, elected in a landslide in December, is vastly more pro-American than his predecessor, Roh Moo-hyun.

Even in majority Islamic societies, their populations allegedly radicalised and polarised by Bush's campaign in Iraq and the global war on terror more generally, election results don't show any evidence of these trends. In the most recent local elections in Indonesia, and in national elections in Pakistan, the Islamist parties with anti-American rhetoric fared very poorly. Similarly Kevin Rudd was elected as a very pro-American Labor leader, unlike Mark Latham, with his traces of anti-Americanism, who was heavily defeated.

WHAT DOES THE GREAT GAME CARE ABOUT YOUR ISM?:

Taliban bitten by a snake in the grass (Syed Saleem Shahzad, 4/25/08, Asia Times)

At this point, the council hit on the idea of taking the initiative and turning Taliban and al-Qaeda attention on Khyber Agency with the aim of bleeding the Western coalition without having to launch major battles.

This was fine in theory, but there were practical difficulties: the agency is the most unlikely place for "Talibanization". The majority of the population is Brelvi-Sufi Muslim, traditionally opposed to the Taliban's Deobandi and al-Qaeda's Salafi ideology. Being an historic route for armies and traders, the population is politically liberal and pragmatist, not easily swayed by idealist and Utopian ideology such as the Taliban's and al-Qaeda's.

So the Taliban sent in its own fighting corps gathered from other tribal areas, and drafted in Ustad Yasir, a heavyweight Afghan commander, from Afghanistan. These predominantly Pashtun fighters consider the Afridi and Shinwari tribes, the natives of Khyber Agency, as materialist and non-ideological, but all the same a local host was essential for their operation.

The Taliban hit on one of the few Salafis in the area, Haji Namdar, as their point man. Namdar is not a traditional tribal, he's a trader who has worked in Saudi Arabia. His Salafi ideology and the fact that he is a practicing Muslim lent him credibility - and trustworthiness - in the eyes of the Taliban.

Namdar came on board, offering to provide the Taliban with sanctuary for their men, arms and supplies along the main road leading to the border area. He gave these assurances to Taliban leaders in his own home.

The Americans were fully aware of the Taliban's designs on Khyber Agency and invested a lot in the tribes to protect the route. In response, the Taliban threatened tribal chieftains, and launched a suicide attack on a jirga (meeting) convened to discuss eradicating the Taliban from the area. Over 40 tribals were killed.

US Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte also visited Khyber Agency to meet with chiefs, but out of fear for the Taliban only six tribal elders showed up. It appeared the Americans had been outwitted, but their game was not over.

Anyway, with the Taliban's arrangement with Namdar, the stage was set and they steadily stepped up their attacks on convoys heading for Afghanistan, leading to the capture of the two WFP members and their vehicle on Monday.

Unlike in previous Taliban attacks in the area, local paramilitary forces chased the Taliban after this incident. The Taliban retaliated and five soldiers were killed, but then their ammunition ran out and they surrendered the two workers and tried to flee, but they were blocked.

The Taliban called in reinforcements, but so did the paramilitary troops, and a stalemate was reached. Eventually, the Taliban managed to capture a local political agent (representing the central government) and they used him as a hostage to allow their escape.

They retreated to their various safe houses, but to their horror, paramilitary troops were waiting for them and scores were arrested, and their arms caches seized. A number of Taliban did, however, manage to escape once word got out of what was happening.

The only person aware of the safe houses was Namdar, their supposed protector: they had been sold out.

Their worst suspicions were confirmed when Namdar broke his cover and announced on a local radio station that Taliban commanders, including Ustad Yasir, should surrender or face a "massacre", as happened when local tribes turned against Uzbek fighters in South Waziristan in January 2007.

Namdar said that he had the full weight of the security forces behind him, and he did not fear any suicide attack.

Al-Qaeda and the Taliban immediately called an emergency shura in North Waziristan to review the situation. Al-Qaeda's investigations revealed that the CIA and Pakistani intelligence had got to Namdar and paid him $150,000 in local currency.

WAS ANYONE IN CIVICS CLASS ON THE DAY...:

The Pastor Returns (Howard Kurtz, 4/25/08, Washington Post)

Barack Obama needed this like he needed a root canal.

Just when the Jeremiah Wright furor seemed to be dying down, the ex-pastor is back and suddenly inescapable. On the tube with Bill Moyers. Speaking to the NAACP. Showing up Monday at the National Press Club.

There it was yesterday, that endless loop of Wright shouting "God damn America" over and over. Yet another opportunity to talk about how he thinks the US of KKK-A created the AIDS virus to kill blacks.

IDLE WORSHIP:

Dems' Falling Idol (Rich Lowry, 4/25/08, Real Clear Politics)

The self-appointed 19th-century prophet William Miller attracted an intense following when he predicted the end of the world and the arrival of the Second Coming sometime between March 1843 and April 1844. When the appointed time embarrassingly came and went, one of his followers pluckily predicted a new date of Oct. 22, 1844. The Millerites gathered that night to await the blessed event, and instead experienced what became known as "The Great Disappointment."

Barack Obama's supporters and the media (excuse the redundancy) have expected his ascension to presumed Democratic nominee (accompanied, no doubt, by blazing lights of Unity and trumpet calls of Change - in New Hampshire, Texas and now Pennsylvania - and experienced a "Great Disappointment" each time.

CONDITIONS HAVEN'T ACTUALLY CHANGED...:

Obama=Dukakis? (David Frum, April 25, 2008, AEI.org)

Two months ago, there seemed no way the Republicans could win the 2008 presidential election.

The polls were awful. Fundraising was hopeless. Twice as many people were voting in Democratic as in Republican primaries.

Today, these objective conditions remain as bad as ever--maybe worse. In March, the Republicans' presumptive nominee, John McCain, raised barely one-third as much as Democratic front-runner Barack Obama. Small donors in particular favor Senator Obama: the Democrat has raised $76 million in small donations over the campaign cycle; McCain, only $7.4 million.

George H. W. Bush defeated the Democratic challenger Michael Dukakis by convincing America that Dukakis was radically unacceptable: too left-wing, too weak, too out of touch with the values of ordinary voters.

The energy, turnout, and volunteering on the Democratic side all dwarf anything we see among Republicans.

And yet this month for the first time this year, Republicans are feeling twinges of optimism.

HUMBUG PEAK:

Trees in Your Tank? The Future of Green Gasoline: Earth Day Extra (Chris Ladd, April 22, 2008, Popular Mechanics)

Hydrogen, ethanol and even compressed air all have the shrink-wrapped sheen of the bright, green future. But gasoline? At $1 per gallon?

Researchers at UMass Amherst recently published a new method of refining hydrocarbons from cellulose, paving the way to turn wood scraps into gasoline, diesel fuel, Tupperware—anything, essentially, that’s normally refined from petroleum. Many scientists have been working on ways to turn everything from corn stalks to tires into ethanol, sidestepping some of the problems inherent to making fuel from corn and other food products. But ethanol has a number of liabilities, regardless of the source. For instance, it requires automotive engines to be modified and contains less energy than gasoline, driving down fuel economy. [...]

Huber and his colleagues aren’t the first to derive hydrocarbons from renewable sources. Virent Energy Systems, for example, just signed a deal with Shell to produce gasoline from plant sugars and expects to open a pilot facility in the next two years. UOP is working on a project to produce jet fuel for U.S. and NATO fighters from algal and vegetable oils. But Huber’s work stands out as likely the first direct conversion from cellulose, opening up as potential fuel sources virtually anything that grows. Commercialization of the technology may take another five to 10 years, the researchers predict.

Developments in so-called “green hydrocarbons” arrive as ethanol continues to come under attack as expensive, inefficient and a contributor to rising food prices around the world.

WE NOMINATED WHO?:

Media Jump Ship From Obama To Clinton (Thomas Edsall, 4/25/08, Real Clear Politics)

In a blink of an eye, the media has jumped ship from the Obama campaign and become a crucial Clinton ally, pressing just the message -- that Obama is a likely loser in the general election -- that Hillary and her allies have been promoting for the past six weeks.

The new tenor of media coverage is visible almost everywhere, from Politico, Time and The New Republic to The Washington Post and The New York Times.

MORE:
-Political Wisdom: Obama Confronts His Weaknesses: Here’s a summary of the smartest new political analysis on the Web (Sara Murray and Gerald F. Seib, 4/25/08, WSJ: Political Perceptions)
-The Next McGovern?: Obama may still get the nomination, but his loss tonight deals a harsh blow to his electibility arguments (John B. Judis, April 23, 2008, New Republic)

f you look at Obama's vote in Pennsylvania, you begin to see the outlines of the old George McGovern coalition that haunted the Democrats during the '70s and '80s, led by college students and minorities. In Pennsylvania, Obama did best in college towns (60 to 40 percent in Penn State's Centre County) and in heavily black areas like Philadelphia.

Its ideology is very liberal. Whereas in the first primaries and caucuses, Obama benefited from being seen as middle-of-the-road or even conservative, he is now receiving his strongest support from voters who see themselves as "very liberal." In Pennsylvania, he defeated Clinton among "very liberal" voters by 55 to 45 percent, but lost "somewhat conservative" voters by 53 to 47 percent and moderates by 60 to 40 percent. In Wisconsin and Virginia, by contrast, he had done best against Clinton among voters who saw themselves as moderate or somewhat conservative.

Obama even seems to be acquiring the religious profile of the old McGovern coalition. In the early primaries and caucuses, Obama did very well among the observant. In Maryland, he defeated Clinton among those who attended religious services weekly by 61 to 31 percent. By contrast, in Pennsylvania, he lost to Clinton among these voters by 58 to 42 percent and did best among voters who never attend religious services, winning them by 56 to 44 percent. There is nothing wrong with winning over voters who are very liberal and who never attend religious services; but if they begin to become Obama's most fervent base of support, he will have trouble (to say the least) in November.

FINALLY, A STEP AHEAD OF AL QAEDA...:

Terror talk: No more jihad or Islamists (Allegra Stratton, 4/25/08, guardian.co.uk)

Documents obtained by the Associated Press news agency show officials in federal agencies have been asked not to use the terms jihadists and mujahideen, describe al-Qaida as a movement or refer to Islamo-fascism.

Staff of the state department, homeland security department and national counterterrorism centre, as well as diplomats and other officials, have been told that various words in common use may actually boost support for extremists among Arab and Muslim audiences by giving them a veneer of religious credibility or causing offence to moderates.

The new guidance explains that while Americans may understand jihad to mean holy war, it is in fact a broader Islamic concept of the struggle to do good. Similarly, mujahideen, which means those engaged in jihad, must be seen in its broader context.

*?:

Obama has a punctuation problem (John F. Harris and David Paul Kuhn, April 25, 2008, Politico)

Barack Obama’s real opponent now is not Hillary Rodham Clinton. It is a pair of punctuation marks.

The first is a question. The second is an asterisk. [...]

A loss [in Indiana]—on top of a succession of losses in Pennsylvania, Ohio and other big states—would mean the nominee would enter the general election defined to an unusual degree by his vulnerabilities.

Could he run strongly in these states in a general election even after running weakly during the nomination phase? That is the question.

It is strange for a party nominee to confront such a question. Obama faces it only because of the peculiar set of circumstances by which elected delegates and appointed superdelegates will likely give him the nomination. That is the asterisk.

MAYBE SENATOR OBAMA REALLY IS MAGIC...:

Obama's Self-Inflicted Confusion: Maybe Barack Obama’s transformational campaign isn’t winning over working-class voters because transformation isn’t what they’re looking for. (Paul Krugman, 4/25/08, Der Spiegel)

But how negative has the Clinton campaign been, really? Yes, it ran an ad that included Osama bin Laden in a montage of crisis images that also included the Great Depression and Hurricane Katrina. To listen to some pundits, you’d think that ad was practically the same as the famous G.O.P. ad accusing Max Cleland of being weak on national security.

It wasn’t. The attacks from the Clinton campaign have been badminton compared with the hardball Republicans will play this fall. If the relatively mild rough and tumble of the Democratic fight has been enough to knock Mr. Obama off his pedestal, what hope did he ever have of staying on it through the general election?

Let me offer an alternative suggestion: maybe his transformational campaign isn’t winning over working-class voters because transformation isn’t what they’re looking for.

From the beginning, I wondered what Mr. Obama’s soaring rhetoric, his talk of a new politics and declarations that “we are the ones we’ve been waiting for” (waiting for to do what, exactly?) would mean to families troubled by lagging wages, insecure jobs and fear of losing health coverage. The answer, from Ohio and Pennsylvania, seems pretty clear: not much. Mrs. Clinton has been able to stay in the race, against heavy odds, largely because her no-nonsense style, her obvious interest in the wonkish details of policy, resonate with many voters in a way that Mr. Obama’s eloquence does not.

ACCUSES? HOW ABOUT "CREDITS"?:

Syria accuses U.S. of aiding Israel in raid (Reuters, 4/25/08)

Syria accused the United States on Friday of involvement in last year's Israeli attack on Syria that Washington said struck a suspected nuclear reactor built with North Korea's help.

A Syrian statement said: "The U.S. administration was apparently party to the execution" of the September raid by Israeli warplanes on eastern Syria. The statement did not give details. A U.S. official said on Thursday that Washington did not give Israel any "green light" to strike the area.

JUST A PIECE OF PAPER:

Poll: Online Degrees Earn Wider Acceptance in the Business World (Zogby, 4/17/08)

In the Excelsior College/Zogby International survey, 61 percent of chief executive officers (CEOs) and small business owners nationwide said they were familiar with online or distance learning programs. When assessing whether or not they would view an online degree as credible they cited consideration of factors such as the accreditation of the college or university, the quality of its graduates and the name of the institution awarding the degree. Only 5 percent of those surveyed cited as a consideration whether or not the college or university was fully online or was part of a traditional campus-based program.

When asked whether they tended to give more weight to an applicant's work experience or educational background in making a hiring decision, 50 percent of the CEOs and small business owners said they gave more weight to a candidate's work experience. Almost as many (46%) said they equally consider both work experience and education in their decisions. Only one percent said they gave more weight to educational background.

THE GOOD NEWS...

Farewell, Foyle (Simon Hoggart, 23rd April 2008, The Spectator)

Foyle's War (ITV); Age of Terror (BBC2)

So it’s goodbye to Foyle’s War (Sunday, ITV), for the time being at least. The series seems to have been cancelled not because it was no good; it was, for a TV ’tec drama, superb. Nor because it had poor ratings — they were huge for today’s crowded television schedules. The reason seems to be that it had the wrong kind of viewers, people who remembered the war or, increasingly these days, people who were born to people who remembered the war. It is a given of marketing that the young are the only target advertisers should bother to attract, since they are deemed to flit from brand to brand like binge-drinking butterflies. Older people are presumed to be set in their ways. No doubt some are. But many are prepared to use their larger incomes to switch from one brand of car to another, to try new drinks, new toilet cleansers and new places to go on holiday. However, marketing is a ju-ju science, much like astrology, and its practitioners need to insist they are never wrong because if you examined their work carefully you would discover that they were rarely right.

There is talk that Foyle may be back in, no doubt, something called Foyle’s Austerity with episodes about stolen ration books and doctors who don’t want to join the NHS. I have a suggestion which might solve ITV’s conundrum. Have him take part in a reverse Life on Mars or Ashes to Ashes. Injured in a crash, hit amidships by an ancient Humber, he wakes up several decades in the future. Here he is shocked to discover the rules of modern policing, as well as coping with drug dealers and people traffickers in a world full of WKD cocktails and hedge-fund managers. I’d love to see him walk into an All Bar One wearing that Homburg and that overcoat.

THE POLITICS OF THE LEFT...

Better Roses Than Cocaine (NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF, 4/24/08, NY Times)

In Latin America, it is Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton who are seen as the go-it-alone cowboys, by opposing the United States’ free-trade agreement with Colombia.

Some Democrats claim that they are against the pact because Colombia has abused human rights. Those concerns are legitimate — but they shouldn’t be used to punish people like Norma Reynosa, a 35-year-old woman who just may snip the flowers that go into the Mother’s Day bouquet that you buy.

Human rights aren’t abstract to Ms. Reynosa. Two of her relatives were killed in the brutal warfare and insecurity that plague her home region in Colombia’s South. A third was killed by a land mine, and a fourth was kidnapped at age 12 to work for guerrillas in the National Liberation Army, or the ELN. Ms. Reynosa ran a small restaurant but had to flee when the guerrillas demanded that she pay more extortion money than she could afford.

“They said they would kill us,” she recalled. “They didn’t say how. Mostly they just shot people and threw their bodies in the river.”

So in June 2005, Ms. Reynosa and her husband abandoned their home and fled to the outskirts of the capital to see if they could get jobs in the booming flower industry. Colombian cities like Medellín were the most dangerous cities in the world in the 1980s and ’90s, but now they are thriving and homicide rates are well below those of some American cities.

One reason is those bouquets you buy, entering duty-free from Colombia. These days Colombia is the world’s second-largest exporter of flowers after the Netherlands, and almost 200,000 people work in the flower industry. Up to 28 cargo planes a day carry flowers from Colombia to the U.S.

Better carnations than cocaine, no?

Hugo
Mahmoud
Hu
Vlad
Baby Assad
Kim Jong-il
Mugabe
Spain....

Pope
Maliki
Karzai
Abbas
Olmert
Harper
Calderon
Sarkozy
Merkel

Klaus...

THE LEFT EXISTS ONLY TO AMUSE US:

The Incredibly Shrinking Democrats (Joe Klein, Apr. 24, 2008, TIME)

But that was nothing compared with the damage done to Obama, who entered the primary as a fresh breeze and left it stale, battered and embittered — still the mathematical favorite for the nomination but no longer the darling of his party. In the course of six weeks, the American people learned that he was a member of a church whose pastor gave angry, anti-American sermons, that he was "friendly" with an American terrorist who had bombed buildings during the Vietnam era, and that he seemed to look on the ceremonies of working-class life — bowling, hunting, churchgoing and the fervent consumption of greasy food — as his anthropologist mother might have, with a mixture of cool detachment and utter bemusement. [...]

In his 1991 book, The Reasoning Voter, political scientist Samuel Popkin argued that most people make their choice on the basis of "low-information signaling" — that is, stupid things like whether you know how to roll a bowling ball or wear an American-flag pin. In the era of Republican dominance, the low-information signals were really low — how Michael Dukakis looked in a tanker's helmet, whether John Kerry's favorite sports were too precious (like wind-surfing), whether Al Gore's debate sighs over his opponent's simple obfuscations were patronizing. Bill Clinton was the lone Democratic master of low-information signaling — a love of McDonald's and other assorted big-gulp appetites gave him credibility that even trumped his evasion of military service.

The audacity of the Obama campaign was the belief that in a time of trouble — as opposed to the peace and prosperity of the late 20th century — the low-information politics of the past could be tossed aside in favor of a high-minded, if deliberately vague, appeal to the nation's need to finally address some huge problems. But that assumption hit a wall in Pennsylvania.

GOOD ON GRANNY SMITH APPLES:

Hot Caramel Dip (Shelley Campbell, April 24, 2008, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette)

* 2 packages (8 ounces each) cream cheese, softened
* 1 1/3 cup brown sugar
* 2/3 cup white sugar
* 1 tablespoon vanilla

Mix together all ingredients and microwave until hot. Place dip in small crockpot or fondue pot to keep warm.

CYRUSWORLD:

A passion for Persia, Disneyland and dolphins (Nazila Fathi, April 24, 2008, IHT)

The indoor dolphin show was in full swing as Hossein Sabet walked in to a burst of applause from the 1,200 people in attendance. Clad in tight beige equestrian pants and long black boots, he waved at the crowd and went straight to his office behind the pool.

Sabet, 58, an Iranian expatriate who spends most of his time in Germany, is no performer, however. He is a businessman and something of a local legend, having invested more than $300 million here in hotels and attractions like the dolphin show, the only one in the Middle East.

He has built this island's fanciest establishment, the Dariush Grand Hotel, modeled after the Persian capital of Persepolis, which dates from 500 B.C. He also owns 11 hotels in Europe and the Canary Islands.

One of the Iranian islands in the Gulf, Kish is accessible to foreigners without a visa and to Iranians looking to vacation in a relatively relaxed atmosphere, though things are not as relaxed now as they were before President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad came to power.

In addition to the Dariush Grand - named for Darius the Great, the empire builder of the sixth century B.C. who was eventually defeated by the Greeks at Marathon - Sabet owns five other hotels here and a huge park with exotic birds, an aquarium, a butterfly enclave and the dolphin show.

He says he is also negotiating to build the first Disneyland in the Middle East, but his passion is Iran and its Persian identity. "I have reached a point in life that money does not matter anymore," he said in an interview at the Dariush Grand. "I want to make people happy. I want to revive the 7,000-year-old identity of this nation."

One of the demonstrators peeled off to rest by the curb, and I edged over to ask him what the mourners were shouting.

'Death to America,' he said.

'Oh.' I reached for my notebook as self-protection and scribbled the Farsi transliteration : Margbar Omrika.

'You are American?' he asked.

'Yes. A journalist.' I braced myself for a diatribe against the West and its arrogant trumpets.

'I must ask you something,' the man said. 'Have you ever been to Disneyland?'

'As a kid, yes.'

The man nodded, thoughtfully stroking his beard. 'My brother lives in California and has written me about Disneyland,' he
continued. 'It has always been my dream to go there and take my children on the tea-cup ride.'

With that, he rejoined the marchers, raised his fist and yelled 'Death to America!' again.

IN THE ABSENCE OF IDEAS, IDENTITY:

After Pennsylvania: demography is destiny: With neither Clinton nor Obama offering a compelling political vision, the primaries are becoming a deeply entrenched war of identities. (Sean Collins, 4/24/08, spiked)

It’s almost as if demography is destiny. Pennsylvania has similar demographics as Ohio, and, sure enough, the Pennsylvania results were similar to Ohio’s back in March. In particular, Pennsylvania has a large proportion of senior citizens (the second-highest after Florida in fact – and, unlike Florida, very few are retiring to Pennsylvania), which was to Clinton’s advantage. And so, despite all of the noise about Reverend Jeremiah Wright, Bittergate and Clinton dodging sniper-fire in Bosnia, these events in the end did not upset what’s become the predictable demographic dividing line between the two candidates.

In electoral terms, this divide means that when the race moves on to states that have more favorable demographics for Obama – such as in about two weeks’ time in North Carolina and, to a lesser extent, Indiana – it is possible that he will come out on top, but that would not necessarily signal a swing in momentum towards his campaign. And what’s even more important than these electoral considerations are the political implications of this demographic divide.

Essentially these ongoing allegiances reflect the fact that neither candidate has a compelling vision that is able to win over voters across the spectrum of the party. For all of the excitement around the race, it has noticeably lacked a discussion of big ideas. Having to choose among personalities rather than programmes, many voters have seemingly fallen back on preferences that align with certain demographic profiles. As the race has continued, the candidates have moved even further away from any connection to ideas, turning inwards towards so-called negative ‘gotcha’ attacks. And, at the same time, the voters’ attachments, which began as mostly arbitrary and based on personal experiences, have showed signs of hardening into battles between competing identities.

Tony Blair, Bill Clinton, Kevin Rudd and other liberal leaders were able to come to terms with that failure and conform to the Third Way of New Zealand, Pinochet, and Thatcher. Lesser lights in their parties have proved unable to make the adjustment. It is the Democrats' misfortune to be well on their way towards nominating their third consecutive Second Way candidate in a Third Way epoch. It doesn't just cost them elections but, as Mr. Collins recognizes, sets loose the tribes against each other because the nominees are, wisely, terrified of running on the outdated and rejected ideas of yore.

IT'S ACTUALLY ABOUT CLASTING THE ICONOCLASTS:

James Woolsey, Green Neocon: The former CIA director turned clean-energy enthusiast is part geek, part zealot—and all iconoclast (Laura Rozen, May/June 2008, Mother Jones)

Like many clean-energy enthusiasts, Woolsey is part geek, part zealot. He's happy to spend a Saturday morning showing off the three rows of photovoltaic panels on his roof, the meter in his basement that displays when his house is feeding electricity back to the grid, and his white hybrid with a "Bin Laden Hates This Car" bumper sticker. "In two weeks," he boasts of his next oil-saving upgrade, "my Prius is going to become a plug-in." He wrote the foreword to 50 Simple Steps to Save the Earth From Global Warming, appeared in Who Killed the Electric Car? and Leonardo DiCaprio's The 11th Hour, and cofounded a group to wean Americans from foreign oil.

As Woolsey explains it, there is a seamless connection between his strategic worldview and energy-independence convictions. In an op-ed he coauthored for National Review last September, he wrote of ending our reliance "on the whims of opec's despots, the substantial instabilities of the Middle East, and the indignity of paying for both sides in the War on Terror." He still thinks the United States should continue its global military role even as it untangles itself from the Middle East, standing by the decision to depose Saddam Hussein. "I'd support his ouster again if there weren't a drop of oil in Iraq," he explains. "If all that had been at issue was the oil, the simple thing to do would have been to just buy it."

Woolsey recalls the moment he started thinking seriously about energy as both an environmental and strategic issue. "I was sitting in my car in a gas line in Washington in '73, after the Saudis had declared an oil embargo on us and Israel was attacked," he says. "And I got mad." Energy issues have captivated him ever since. In the early '80s, he joined the Jefferson Group, an alternative-fuel salon founded on the Jeffersonian ideal "that the future of America is determined by the independent yeoman farmer."

An independent streak has run throughout Woolsey's 40-plus years in Washington. He has served in four administrations, both Republican and Democratic. In the twilight of the Cold War, he found himself increasingly identifying with Republicans on national security. He spent three years as a member of then-defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld's Defense Policy Board. When I met with him, he was expecting another career change, leaving the federal contractor Booz Allen Hamilton to join a California firm that invests in alternative-energy technology. He'd also just appeared in an anti-oil print ad for the American Clean Skies Foundation, a PR group started by a natural gas company.

Being a green neoconservative is becoming less lonely, Woolsey says, especially as more hawks come to see energy as a security issue. He tells a story about an argument with a friend who is a global warming skeptic. When Woolsey explained how improvements to the electrical infrastructure could make it safer from terrorists, his friend replied, "Oh, well, that's fine, then—we can do all that as long as it's not because of this fictional global warming."

TWELVERNOMICS ISN'T WORKING:

Ahmadinejad under fire on economy (BBC, 4/23/08)

Iran's outgoing finance minister has added his voice to mounting criticism of his president's economic policies amid a period of economic difficulty.

Davoud Danesh-Jafari said President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's government lacked experience and had no solid plans.

He accused Mr Ahmadinejad of giving priority to "peripheral issues" while allowing inflation to reach 18%.

EVEN COLLEGE KIDS KNOW BETTER THAN STUDIO EXECS:

McCain's Hollywood advantage (Lindsey Meyers, 4/17/08, Brown Daily Herald)

If Americans vote at the ballot box, they also express their political preferences at the box office. And recent cinematic trends suggest that conservatism is not as moribund as some hope and others fear.

An intriguing case in point is the inability of Hollywood to translate the unpopularity of the war into domestic box office success. Major studios have produced movies highly critical of Bush's war on terror with some of Hollywood's most bankable stars.

However, every one of these movies bombed at the box office. Consider "Rendition" with Reese Witherspoon and Jake Gyllenhaal, "In the Valley of Elah" with Tommy Lee Jones and Charlize Thereon or "Lions for Lambs" with Tom Cruise, Robert Redford and Meryl Streep. These box office flops led Jon Stewart to quip at the Oscars that "Withdrawing the Iraq movies would only embolden the audience. We cannot let the audience win."

By contrast, recent movies with distinctly conservative messages have been huge hits. Judd Apatow's recent films are a case in point. "Knocked Up," and "Superbad," earned a combined domestic gross in excess of $270,000,000.

With their drug use, drinking and gross humor, these movies might seem like unlikely platforms for traditional values. However, no less an authoritative source than Seth Rogen, star of "Knocked Up" and co-writer of "Superbad," said, "We make extremely right-wing movies with extremely filthy dialogue."

The thematic content of these movies supports Rogen's point. Each movie is a traditional morality tale, a poignantly humorous work where characters come of age by overcoming modern temptations and embracing conservative principles. [...]

Apatow's ability to translate social conservatism into box office success should be an object lesson for Democrats and Republicans alike. If voter dissatisfaction with the Republican handling of the war and the economy is an irresistible force, social conservatism may be an immovable object. As a result, no presidential candidate will be able to decisively win or effectively govern without operating within the framework of traditional social values.

BE GLAD THEY DON'T BURN HIM:

Flunking the tenure test (Doug Schneider, April 23, 2008, Washington Times)

Earlier this month, the Collegiate Network awarded Iowa State University (ISU) a 2008 Campus Outrage Award for classroom bias. ISU received the fifth place for denying Professor Guillermo Gonzalez, Assistant Professor of Physics & Astronomy, tenure after he co-authored in 2004 the book, "The Privileged Planet," which suggests Intelligent Design might be responsible for life on Earth. Although he never taught Intelligent Design in class, when Dr. Gonzalez applied for tenure in 2007, he was denied.

It is inexplicable that Mr. Gonzalez was denied tenure. He has had nearly 70 peer-reviewed articles published and has co-authored a major college-level astronomy textbook, which was well beyond the standard and tenure requirements of the Physics & Astronomy department at ISU. Interestingly enough, while his colleagues questioned Mr. Gonzalez's view on Intelligent Design — a bias clearly revealed through faculty e-mail exchanges released to the public — they heartily approved of another ISU professor, Hector Alvalos, who drew parallels between "Mein Kampf" and the Bible.

If tenure is based on academic success through researching and teaching at ISU, which Mr. Gonzalez clearly accomplished, then what more would ISU liked to have seen of Mr. Gonzalez? In 2007, the year Gonzalez was denied tenure, 91 percent of tenure applications were approved, Professor Alvalos being one of them.

Unfortunately, seems a close adherence to the narrow ideology of the university, as opposed to actual academic accomplishments, are a better route for tenure at ISU.

THE WHOLE WORLD HATES THE DEMOCRATS:

North American leaders rebuke critics of NAFTA (Jon Ward, April 23, 2008, Washington Times)

President Bush and his Mexican and Canadian counterparts yesterday directly challenged talk by Democratic presidential candidates of pulling out of a trade agreement among the three countries.

Mexican President Felipe Calderon released the strongest criticism. He said a withdrawal from the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) would "condemn North America as a region to complete backwardness."

"If you were to take a step backwards with regard to NAFTA or free trade, you would be condemning Americans to have one of the least competitive economies in the developed world, while other parts of the world are accelerating their growth," Mr. Calderon said, mentioning the consolidated trade bloc of China, India, Japan and the European Union.

THE EAGERNESS TO DEAL WITH THE MOST VILE AND REPRESSIVE REGIME IN THE REGION...:

Hints of Progress Toward a Deal on the Golan Heights (ISABEL KERSHNER, 4/23/08, NY Times)

Peace overtures between Israel and Syria moved up a gear on Wednesday when a Syrian cabinet minister said that Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of Israel had sent a message to President Bashar al-Assad to the effect that Israel would be willing to withdraw from all the Golan Heights in return for peace with Syria.

The Syrian expatriate affairs minister, Buthaina Shaaban, told Al Jazeera television that “Olmert is ready for peace with Syria on the grounds of international conditions; on the grounds of the return of the Golan Heights in full to Syria.” She said that the message had been conveyed by Turkey.

BEING EUROPEAN...:

Record-breaking Mentos and coke explosions (Natalie Paris, 23/04/2008, Daily Telegraph)

IT WOULD SEEM A DEMOGRAPHIC IMPROBABILITY...:

Next Stop for the Dems: Indiana (STEVEN GRAY, 4/23/08, TIME)

One of the few polls surveying this state's electorate puts Obama slightly ahead of Clinton, 40% to 35%. He is expected to win Indianapolis, given its significant black population, and he may do well in the city's so-called collar counties, like Hamilton. After working hard to boost voter rolls at colleges and even high schools (17-year-olds can participate in Indiana's primaries, so long as they're 18 by the general election), Obama is also expected to win the state's college towns, as well as Indiana's Northwestern corner, partly because it falls within the media market of his hometown of Chicago. However, Obama faces significant hurdles in the rest of Indiana, whose blue-collar demographics and sensibilities closely resemble those of Ohio, which he lost by 10.5 percentage points.

Despite Clinton's derision of Obama as an elitist in recent days, her Indiana strategy has been hinged on winning the support of the state's political establishment. That began in earnest with last fall's endorsement by Sen. Evan Bayh, the popular former governor. She also won the backing of Indiana's Democratic party chair, Dan Parker, who, like Bayh, is among the state's 12 superdelegates. Still, the race is considered so tight that Stephen J. Luecke, South Bend's mayor, began a recent interview with TIME by saying, "Whoever our nominee is, I'm going to fully support him. Or her." Earlier this month, he revealed his allegiance by introducing Obama to a crowd of 3,500 screaming fans at a late-night rally at a high school here.

But if Clinton has an advantage amongst the state's power brokers, Obama appears to have a lead at the grassroots level, and his continued fund-raising advantage reflects that; in March, Indianans gave some $218,800 to Obama's campaign, and $79,600 to Clinton's.

MISTAH WARREN, HE DEAD:

Supreme Court rules that the police can seize evidence after an arrest (The Associated Press, April 23, 2008)

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that police can conduct searches and seize evidence after arrests that may turn out to have violated state law.

The unanimous decision came in a case from Portsmouth, Virginia, where city detectives seized crack cocaine from a motorist after arresting him for a traffic ticket offense. David Lee Moore was pulled over for driving on a suspended license. The violation is a minor crime in Virginia and calls for the police to issue a court summons and to let the driver go.

Instead, the detectives arrested Moore and prosecutors in the case said that drugs taken from him in a subsequent search could be used against him as evidence.

"We reaffirm against a novel challenge what we have signaled for half a century," Justice Antonin Scalia wrote for the court. Scalia said that when officers have probable cause to believe a person had committed a crime in their presence, the Fourth Amendment permits them to make an arrest and to search the suspect to safeguard evidence and to ensure their own safety.

WHO'D HAVE DREAMT YOU COULD MAKE IT LESS HUMAN?:

Robot soccer players learning the 'beautiful game' (Juergen Voges, 4/24/08, Associated Press)

They're not quite the automatons and androids of popular culture, but the small sporting robots on the field in Germany this week are no less entertaining.

Some move about on three wheels; others plod slowly and deliberately on two or four legs. These robots come in a multitude of designs — ranging from thumb-sized midgets to over 2½-foot giants.

Their common aim? To win the annual RoboCup German Open at the Hannover Trade Fair by getting the ball into their opponents' goal.

DOES ANYONE ELSE GET THE STRANGE FEELING...:

Nancy Hearts Hugo (Matthew Continetti, 4/23/2008, The Weekly Standard)

A war-torn country with a democratically elected government, plagued by militias, terrorists, and drugs--but one that is steadily making progress against all these evils--wants to strengthen its ties to the United States. The Bush administration acts to help this ally. What does the Democratic Congress do? It changes the rules so that the Colombia Free Trade Agreement (CFTA), negotiated in good faith between the two governments and inked in 2006, can't come to a vote.

Memo to Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chávez: Send flowers to the office of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

It is Chávez who profits most from the CFTA's demise. For years now, he's been locked in a struggle with Colombian president lvaro Uribe over the future of South America. Chávez wants that future to be socialist, authoritarian, friendly to other dictators, and belligerent toward the United States. Uribe wants it to be market-oriented, democratic, and integrated into an international system friendly to freedom and organized and led by the United States. The two visions could not be more different.

I WANT MY ED TV (profanity alert):

Friend Ed Driscoll has up a very funny video that captures the degree to which Obamania is nothing more than the desire of those on the Left to have their own bull[squat] to believe in. And what does it say about them that they know their past idols were hoaxes but they're bitter that they haven't had one of their own?

[By the way, I can't be the only one who thinks Ed ought to to do these reports while mounted on his Segway.]

NOT A GOOD THING:

Right-Sizing the College Market: Let students find an investment market for their talents. (Thomas Sowell, 4/23/08, National Review)

Some education is not only a good thing but a great thing. But, like most good things, there are limits to how much of it is good — and how good compared to other uses of the resources required.

In other words, education is not a Good Thing categorically in unlimited amounts, for people of all levels of ability, interest, and willingness to work.

Nor is there any obvious way to set an arbitrary limit. These are questions that no given individual can answer for a whole society.

The most we can do is confront individuals with the costs that their choices are imposing on others who want the same resources for other purposes, and are willing to pay for those resources.

UNRIGHTEOUS FIST:

Denial Is a Senator from California: Life in the Senate. (Paul Kengor, 4/23/08, National Review)

Sen. Rick Santorum (R., Penn.), at the time the leading defender of the unborn in the Senate, paused to ask Senator Boxer a “what if.” What if, asked Santorum almost facetiously, in the course of the partial-birth abortion, the baby’s foot was inside the mother but the rest of the baby was outside. “Could that baby be killed?”

Santorum was trying to illustrate the absurdity of the point. He was taken aback, however, as Boxer struggled for an answer. Santorum pressed on, reiterating the question with different body parts, prompting Boxer — caught in the ridiculousness of her position — to snap, “I am not answering these questions.” Boxer informed Santorum that he (not she) was “losing his temper.”

Santorum did, however, get an answer from Boxer on this one: “Do you agree, once the child is born, separated from the mother, that that child is protected by the Constitution and cannot be killed?” Boxer replied: “I think when you bring your baby home, when your baby is born . . . the baby belongs to your family and has rights.” The gentle-lady from California had developed her own definition of a baby.

This surreal scenario was repeated during another debate over partial-birth abortion in October 2003, this time with Sen. Sam Brownback (R., Kan.). Brownback presented the now-famous photograph of tiny, pre-born Samuel Alexander Armas squeezing his doctor’s finger from his mother’s womb during a delicate emergency surgery. Brownback posed to Boxer the same kind of ludicrously simple and (one would think) unnecessary questions Santorum had tried. He asked the senator if the picture represented a piece of property or “the hand of a child.” Boxer fired back: “I am not a doctor, and I am not God.” [...]

[S]enator Brownback, a devout Catholic who has replaced the departed Santorum as the Senate’s most stalwart defender of the unborn, sponsored a resolution welcoming the pontiff.

It turns out, though, that Brownback was guilty of an egregious affront in his draft resolution: He had dared to thank the pope for valuing “each and every human life.” This was an apt acknowledgment for the man in Rome, given his remarkable consistency on life issues across the board, from abortion to AIDS to embryos to war. Nonetheless, Brownback’s statement of the obvious raised the ire of pro-choice Democrats in the Senate, particularly Barbara Boxer, who feared “human life” might extend to the unborn — a group that, by her definition, not only has no human rights but is not even human life.

This, of course, could not stand. Boxer immediately demanded that the “objectionable language” (the words of one senior Democratic Senate aide) be dropped from the resolution.

BUT HE'S HUGE WITH THE BRIGHTS:

Taking Stock of the Catholic Vote(s) (Steven Waldman, 4/23/08, Wall Street Journal: Political Perceptions)

Sen. Clinton trounced Sen. Obama 69% to 31% among Catholic voters, according to exit polls. Ominously, this pattern appears in polls pitting Sen. Obama against Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain. Last month’s NBC/Wall Street Journal poll had Sen. Obama beating Sen. McCain 47% to 44% but losing among Catholics 48% to 44%.

Remember, President Bush’s victory in 2004 had as much to do with his winning the Catholic vote as the much-discussed evangelical Christian vote. Mr. Bush beat Sen. John Kerry among Catholics 52% to 46%, even though Al Gore had beaten Bush 50% to 46% in 2000. If the Catholic Mr. Kerry had merely done as well among Catholics as the Baptist Mr. Gore, he probably would have won the presidency.

WELCOME TO THE WOODSHED, SENATOR OBAMA:

Clinton Wins Lackawanna With Only 74 Percent (Jake Tapper, April 23, 2008, ABC News: Political Punch)

ABC News Political Director David Chalian reports that Obama only won seven of the state's 67 counties -- Philly, Delaware, Dauphin, Chester, Lancaster, Centre and Union.

He lost two key suburban Philadelphia counties he needed to win. Clinton won Montgomery County 51% to 49%; she won Bucks County 63% to 37%.

Clinton won Lackawanna County, the home of Obama-backing Sen. Bob Casey, with 74% to Obama's 26%.

THE AYATOLLAH VS. MAHMOUD:

Leader calls for strong Iran economy (Press TV, 23 Apr 2008)

The Leader of the Islamic Revolution says Iran must strengthen its economic foundation to protect the sovereignty of its nation.

Addressing workers on Wednesday, Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei said because of the Islamic Revolution the Iranian nation has ensured its political independence.

The Leader, however, added that in order to protect its sovereignty and political privacy, Iran must strengthen its economy.

The U.N. nuclear monitoring agency on Wednesday announced a "milestone" agreement with Iran that aims to provide answers about allegations Tehran tried to develop nuclear weapons under cover of a peaceful atomic program.

International Atomic Energy Agency spokeswoman Melissa Fleming divulged no details in a brief statement about the deal. But IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei called the agreement "a milestone" that — if successful — should signal the end of his organization's years of attempts to probe Tehran's secretive nuclear program.

In the clearest indication yet that Israel now believes Iran's nuclear aspirations will be curbed, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has said that efforts being undertaken by the international community will ensure that Tehran does not acquire nuclear capability. [...]

Talks in China last week looked not just at sanctions against Iran, but also "incentives" aimed at persuading Tehran to curb its nuclear pursuit. US State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said that officials from the US, Russia, Britain, France, Germany, China and the European Union were looking "at the incentive side of the equation".

If Olmert now believes that the efforts of the international community will bear fruit, then his comments seem to reflect an Israeli conviction that diplomatic means will be central in stopping Iran from going nuclear.

MY MATH ISN'T SO GOOD...:

Signs Indicate That Duels May Be Hurting Party (Jon Cohen and Jennifer Agiesta, 4/23/08, Washington Post)

Nearly seven in 10 voters said Clinton has attacked Obama unfairly, and half said the same of Obama's campaign against Clinton. Those are the highest numbers saying the candidates have unjustly characterized each other since before Super Tuesday contests on Feb. 5, according to network exit polls conducted with voters as they left polling places.

Barely more than a third of Clinton voters in Pennsylvania said they would be happy with Obama atop the Democratic ticket; less than half of those backing Obama said they would be satisfied with Clinton as the one leading the challenge of Sen. John McCain (Ariz.), the presumed GOP nominee.

Clinton voters also appear especially likely to say they will abandon the party if their candidate is not the nominee. Fifty-three percent of those voting for her yesterday said they would cast a ballot for Obama in a hypothetical November matchup against McCain. More than a quarter said they would vote for the Republican, and about two in 10 said they would not vote at all.

IF HILLARY'S CONTEMPT PUTS HIM OFF HIS FEED....:

Wilting Over Waffles: Now that Hillary has won Pennsylvania, it will take a village to help Obama escape from the suffocating embrace of his rival. (Maureen Dowd, 4/23/08, Der Spiegel)

The Democrats are eager to move on to an Obama-McCain race. But they can’t because no one seems to be able to show Hillary the door. Despite all his incandescent gifts, Obama has missed several opportunities to smash the ball over the net and end the game. Again and again, he has seemed stuck at deuce. He complains about the politics of scoring points, but to win, you’ve got to score points.

He knew he tanked in the Philadelphia debate, but he was so irritated by the moderators -- and by having to stand next to Hillary again -- that he couldn’t summon a single merry dart.

Is he skittish around her because he knows that she detests him and he’s used to charming everyone? Or does he feel guilty that he cut in line ahead of her? As the husband of Michelle, does he know better than to defy the will of a strong woman? Or is he simply scared of Hillary because she’s scary?

He is frantic to get away from her because he can’t keep carbo-loading to relate to the common people.

In the final days in Pennsylvania, he dutifully logged time at diners and force-fed himself waffles, pancakes, sausage and a Philly cheese steak. He split the pancakes with Michelle, left some of the waffle and sausage behind, and gave away the French fries that came with the cheese steak.

But this is clearly a man who can’t wait to get back to his organic scrambled egg whites. That was made plain with his cri de coeur at the Glider Diner in Scranton when a reporter asked him about Jimmy Carter and Hamas.

“Why” he pleaded, sounding a bit, dare we say, bitter, “can’t I just eat my waffle?”

His subtext was obvious: Why can’t I just be president? Why do I have to keep eating these gooey waffles and answering these gotcha questions and debating this gonzo woman?

POOR OLD OBAMA THAT WAS A MONARCH ONCE:

Obama's Gloves Are Off -- And May Need to Stay Off (Jonathan Weisman, 4/23/08, Washington Post)

[T]he candidate who rocketed to stardom as the embodiment of a new kind of politics -- hopeful, positive and inspiring -- saw his image tarnished in the bruising fight for Pennsylvania. Provoked by Clinton's repeated references to his remarks about the state's voters and her charges that he is an "elitist," Obama struck back in the closing days of the campaign.

"It's a real danger for Obama, and if you look at these recent ads, the messages they're delivering in all these conference calls, it's a far cry from last fall," when the theme of hope emerged amid calls for a more negative tone, said Democratic consultant Steve Elmendorf, a Clinton supporter.

Republican strategist John Feehery put it less charitably: "That's the danger of running as holier-than-thou. You have a lot farther to fall." [...]

In early exit polls, Clinton was carrying white voters by 24 percentage points, union households by 18 points, and voters without college degrees by 16 points -- all that, according to the Clinton campaign, "after the Obama campaign's 'go-for-broke' Pennsylvania strategy, after their avalanche of negative ads, negative mailers and negative attacks against Sen. Clinton, after their record-breaking spending in the state."

If Obama's image was coarsened in Pennsylvania, the next round of primaries may do it even more damage. But Obama advisers say the campaign is in a far different place than it was last fall. The senator from Illinois is much better known nationally, with an image that will not be easily recast -- either by his opponents or his own tactics.

"Are there some people who might see him as less than the idealistic candidate that he was at the beginning of this process? Certainly," said an Obama adviser who spoke on the condition of anonymity last night.

RUN AWAY!:

Gordon Brown backs down over 10p tax (James Kirkup, 23/04/2008, Daily Telegraph)

Gordon Brown will today concede to Labour rebels with a public climb-down over help for low low-paid workers and pensioners hit by the scrapping of the 10 pence rate of tax.

Alistair Darling, the Chancellor, will set out plans for immediate compensatation later today, Treasury sources said.

Meeting a cruicial rebel demand, financial help for those affected will be back-dated to apply from the start of the current financial year.

IF YOU HAD 9-10% SEND YOUR ADDRESS & WE'LL SEND BOOKS:

A Primary with No End (AMY SULLIVAN, 4/23/08, TIME)

If an Obama collapse of the sort Clinton needs to gain the nomination was ever going to happen, it was in that month and a half between Ohio and Pennsylvania. Yet despite increased criticism and scrutiny, Obama has expanded his lead over Clinton in national polls. He cut her margin in Pennsylvania down to 10 points, and he actually improved his performance from Ohio in the demographic groups he needed to demonstrate he could win: voters with no college education or those over 65, white men, those making less than $50,000, and self-described conservatives.

Even so, the real winner of the Democratic race in Pennsylvania is John McCain. The most significant number coming out of Tuesday night wasn't Clinton's 10 point margin of victory, but 43. That's the percentage of Clinton voters who say they would stay home or vote for McCain if Obama is the party's nominee in November. It is no longer just the Chicken Littles within the party who openly worry about an outcome that leaves large blocks of women or African-Americans frustrated and alienated.

The extended race is also clearly getting to Obama, who is noticeably fatigued on the stump and lacks the energy that drew in so many new voters earlier in the primary season. The largely positive media coverage he previously enjoyed has been replaced by a tenser relationship. The candidate now limits his availability to the political press corps, and recently snapped at a reporter who tried to ask a question while he was eating breakfast at a Pennsylvania diner.

At the same time, Tuesday night's results may require Clinton to alter her case against Obama in ways that could do real damage if he becomes the nominee. His ability to improve his standing among key constituencies while withstanding intense scrutiny makes it more difficult for her to argue that he could not win in November. (Clinton admitted as much in their 21st debate, answering "yes, yes, yes" when asked if Obama could beat McCain.) That means she'll have to instead argue that he should not be president. And that's music to Republican ears.

Mrs. Clinton built her nearly 10-point victory on the strength of blue-collar workers, gun owners, women, seniors and a surprisingly large number of voters who said race played a role in their choice, exit polls showed.

Her campaign immediately sought to seize new momentum going into the last nine contests before Democrats choose their nominee in Denver this summer with neither candidate able to win the required number of delegates. Despite the convincing win, Mrs. Clinton did not score significant gains in delegates, leaving Mr. Obama with more than a 100-delegate lead.

But Mr. Obama's loss in the last big-state primary of the season gave Clinton supporters a rallying point for the final stretch of primaries.

Mrs. Clinton, who led 55 percent to 45 percent with most precincts reporting, said the "tide is turning" in the race.
While the natural temptation for the press is to write the Obama Can't Seal Deal story, few are mentioning either the thoroughly historical nature of this phenomenon or the possibility that buyers remorse is likely to be particularly strong because Senator Obama is such a cipher. Both the general and the particular conspire against him.

MORE:
Why Obama can't close deal (RON FOURNIER, Associated Press)

Here are five reasons why Clinton is still alive. Five ways he'd be vulnerable in November. [...]

WORKING-CLASS VOTERS: Obama can't win the presidency unless he starts connecting better with blue-collar voters.

The New York senator easily won among Pennsylvania voters without college degrees and those from families earning less than $50,000 a year. Gun owners, rural voters and churchgoing Democrats also backed Clinton.

These are the folks who Obama said "cling to" guns and God, an inelegant attempt to explain to San Francisco liberals how GOP operatives exploit Democratic voters in anxious economic times. He bowled (poorly) and drank beer in a feeble attempt to show a blue-collar touch.

If Obama wins the nomination, he risks losing those voters to Republican John McCain. While 68 percent of Obama voters in Pennsylvania said they would vote for Clinton should she run against McCain, just 53 percent of Clinton voters said they would vote for Obama.

Hillary unquestionably met or exceeded expectations tonight, and she'll get a deserved boost in the media and fundraising as a result. (According to the Clinton campaign, they'd already raised $2.5 million between the time the networks called the state and 11:30 pm.) This probably makes her a favorite to win Indiana (I thought she was a slight favorite even before tonight)--and, therefore, makes it pretty likely that she'll be in the race until the voting ends in early June.

While Clinton did not actually call Obama a wimp in Pennsylvania, she did say he was “elitist and out of touch” and “demeaning.” She can also drink him under the table. (And he stinks at bowling.)

Clinton continues to do well in big states, having previously won primaries in California, Massachusetts and Ohio.

The good news for Obama, however, is that in the contest that actually counts — who wins the most pledged delegates to the Democratic Convention -— his lead appears to be unassailable.

In other words, he probably “closed the deal” when, after Super Tuesday, he won 10 contests in a row, running up his pledged delegate lead while Clinton’s chief strategist, Mark Penn, was still trying to figure out what was happening. (Clinton, who fired Penn, still owes him $4.5 million. I could have come up with a losing strategy for half that.)

True, Obama missed an opportunity Tuesday night, one of his two “silver bullets.” Had he actually beaten Clinton in Pennsylvania, she almost certainly would have had to withdraw from the race.

But Obama has another opportunity in two weeks: If he beats her in North Carolina and Indiana on May 6, some members of her own campaign say she might have to withdraw.

Indiana appears to be a toss-up, which is why Obama and Clinton both headed there from Pennsylvania. North Carolina looks like a safe state for Obama, though some think Clinton could make up some ground if she snagged the endorsement of former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards. But enough ground to change things? I doubt it. (The John Edwards wing of the Democratic Party is pretty much limited to John Edwards these days.)

Failing a double win on May 6, Obama might have to slog on all the way to June and the last primaries and even, conceivably, to the Democratic National Convention in August.

The win for Mrs. Clinton, which was widely expected after several polls showed her leading, may quiet calls for her immediate exit from the Democratic race, but it will not likely make her path to the nomination much easier.

The result is unlikely to significantly erode Mr. Obama's delegate lead, and Mrs. Clinton's attempts to raise doubts about the Illinois senator's electability have thus far drawn few undecided superdelegates to her corner.

The New York senator is hoping that her Pennsylvania win will boost her debt-ridden campaign and give her more time to make her case to the roughly 300 undecided superdelegates who will, in large measure, decide the Democratic nomination. Amid reports that Mr. Obama might announce several superdelegate endorsements after yesterday's vote to blunt any momentum for Mrs. Clinton, a senior Democrat in the Clinton camp told The New York Sun yesterday she would soon roll out her own group of new superdelegates, including several from Pennsylvania.

The chairman of the Democratic National Committee, Howard Dean, has urged superdelegates to publicly announce their decisions soon to prevent the primary fight from carrying into the party's nominating convention late this summer.

With Mr. Obama expected to retain his advantage in pledged delegates through the final nine contests, Mrs. Clinton will have to persuade superdelegates to overturn that edge and risk alienating a substantial portion of the Democratic electorate, and particularly African-Americans, who may question the legitimacy of her nomination.

PA RESULTS:

Mark Blumenthal at Pollster.com is live blogging the election returns and exit polls.

Just switched over from the Sox game and Fox has already called it for Ms Clinton.

HAVING COME IN AS MAGGIE...:

Tax Policy Haunts British Leader as Vote on Budget Approaches (ALAN COWELL, 4/22/08, NY Times)

At the time, it seemed like a political masterstroke, the kind of move that inspired Tony Blair to label his successor, Gordon Brown, a “great clunking fist” in the bruising jousts of the British Parliament.

But now Mr. Brown’s surprise announcement in March 2007 that he was lowering an income tax rate has struck back vengefully, prompting a political crisis that threatens to unravel the Labor Party less than two weeks before a set of critical local elections. Some analysts are even questioning Mr. Brown’s political future.

Initially his announcement seemed to undercut the opposition Conservatives, appropriating their historic reputation for lower taxes. Labor lawmakers applauded deliriously. But the problem lay in the detail of Mr. Brown’s last budget as chancellor of the Exchequer before he took over from Mr. Blair last June.

To finance a 2-percentage-point cut in one rate of income tax, from 22 to 20 percent, the chancellor abolished a lower rate of 10 percent that benefited particularly low-paid young workers without children — part of Labor’s most cherished blue-collar constituency.

WHO'S EVER BEEN MORE ICONOCLASTIC THAN THE GUY WHO COINED "DEMOCRAT WARS"?:

Is John McCain Bob Dole?: Or is he Dwight Eisenhower? (Actually, that may depend on whether Barack Obama is Mike Dukakis or John Kennedy.) A handicapping. (John Heilemann, Apr 13, 2008, New York)

So if McCain is no longer the bracing iconoclast he was in 2000, who the hell is he?

“I’ll tell you,” this person says. “He’s morphed into Bob Dole.”

This was not my first encounter with the McCain-is-Dole meme. I had first run across it back in January, on the night of the final Republican debate, in Simi Valley, California, when McCain’s crabbiness and sarcasm onstage had prompted a former GOP player now tilling the corporate field to make the comparison over dinner. As it turned out, the idea was also being promulgated sub rosa by a number of Mitt Romney’s senior strategists. A few days later, on the morning of Super Duper Tuesday, it popped out of Mitt’s own mouth. “There are a lot of folks that tend to think maybe John McCain’s race is a bit like Bob Dole’s race,” Romney snarked on Fox News. “That it’s the guy who’s the next in line; he’s the inevitable choice and we’ll give it to him, and then it won’t work.”

Not surprisingly, McCain’s people push back hard on the suggestion that their guy might be Dole Redux. “I think that in many ways he’s very un-Dole-like,” retorts McKinnon. “He actually has really good strategic sense. He’s a very disciplined candidate in terms of delivering a message. And Dole restrained those things that people liked best about him. There’s a great side of Dole that we never saw. We’ll always see that with McCain.”

Certainly it’s true that Dole kept his sense of humor—dark, ironic, acutely subversive—largely under wraps when he was the Republican nominee in 1996. It’s also true that McCain makes no effort to suppress his comic sensibilities, which are not only similar to Dole’s but also to those of David Letterman, with whom he shares an affinity. Like Letterman and Dole, McCain is constantly offering a running sidelong commentary about himself and what he is doing, in the process winking, letting everyone know that, deep down, he considers it a bit of a sham. In New Hampshire, McCain routinely ended appearances on the stump by invoking Richard Daley’s timeless dictum “Vote early and vote often.” What other presidential candidate in history has ever left his audiences not with an applause line or a rousing crescendo but a cynical joke about politics?

As Neal Gabler argued recently in the Times, this is no small part of why McCain is popular with the press: He is the meta-candidate—and journalists have never met a meta they didn’t like. The question, however, is whether it’s the ideal approach to claiming the hearts of voters. Though Letterman is popular, Leno always thumps him in the ratings, after all. On the other hand, McCain’s propensities in this regard may be the best counterweight against his increasingly geriatric bearing. “It’s one of the few future-oriented things about him,” says Alex Castellanos. “He’s got that postmodern detachment and intolerance of bullshit that will keep you young forever.”

But few of the other likenesses between McCain and Dole can be spun so benignly. There’s the septuagenarian-ness (McCain is 71; Dole was 72 when he ran). There’s the physical frailty, courageously earned in war, that nevertheless serves as a constant reminder of his advanced years. There’s the legendary shortness of his fuse. (McCain has yet to have a full-on “Stop lying about my record” moment on the trail, but his testiness was on display the other day in a widely YouTubed confrontation on his campaign jet with the Times’s Elisabeth Bumiller.) There’s the firm conviction, as Time journalist Mark Halperin has noted, that “being on Meet the Press is more important than going to church—actually, that being on Meet the Press is going to church.”

These are all superficial things, you might say, and you’d be correct. But Republicans cite deeper, more worrying commonalities between McCain and Dole. “You’d fly around with Dole in 1996 and try to talk message, and all he wanted to know was who was going to be up onstage with him at the next event,” recalls an operative who worked for Dole in his pre-Viagra days. “Same deal now with McCain. He has no message outside of Iraq. What’s John McCain’s health plan? What’s his tax plan? What’s his high-tech plan? No one in a million years can tell you.”

Scott Reed, Dole’s campaign manager, doesn’t disagree with many of these parallels. “Can’t lift their arms above their heads, can’t comb their own hair—yeah,” he says. “Teleprompter-challenged—right.” But Reed points out a salient difference between 1996 and today. “What happened with Dole was that the Democrats were able to aim both bazookas at us,” he explains. “They took all their primary money and used it to create the Dole-Gingrich two-headed monster, and we were never able to get up off the mat. But the Democrats aren’t able to do that now. They may never be able to do it.”

Reed is right. For all the wailing and gnashing of molars among Democrats about the damage being done to Obama and Clinton by their prolonged primary tussle, the greater cost to the party may be the missed opportunity to unload on McCain this spring. To no small extent, presidential campaigns are battles that boil down to a pair of competing efforts to define the opposition. Were BHO and HRC not still endeavoring to hack each other to pieces with metaphorical meat cleavers, Democrats could be using their huge financial advantage to cast McCain in whatever mold they consider most damaging: Dubya II, Dole II, Attila the Hun II, whatever. But instead it’s the GOP that’s getting a head start in the definition derby—especially concerning Obama.

THE HAND THAT ROCKS THE BUTTON:

Clinton says U.S. could "totally obliterate" Iran (David Morgan, 4/22/08, Reuters)

On the day of a crucial vote in her nomination battle against fellow Democrat Barack Obama, the New York senator said she wanted to make clear to Tehran what she was prepared to do as president in hopes that this warning would deter any Iranian nuclear attack against the Jewish state.

"I want the Iranians to know that if I'm the president, we will attack Iran (if it attacks Israel)," Clinton said in an interview on ABC's "Good Morning America."

"In the next 10 years, during which they might foolishly consider launching an attack on Israel, we would be able to totally obliterate them," she said.

WHAT'S THE DIFFERENCE?:

Is Obama JFK or Adlai Stevenson? (E. J. Dionne, 4/22/08, Real Clear Politics)

The result of the 2008 election may come down to how voters decide to define Barack Obama. Is he Adlai Stevenson or John F. Kennedy? Is he a detached former law review editor or a passionate agent of change? Is he an upscale reformer focused on process or a populist who will turn Washington and the country around?

UNREALITY IS THE OPIATE OF THE INTELLECTUALS:

The Great Terror at 40: As his classic work is republished, Robert Conquest reflects on how it threw open the doors of the Gulag’s secrets. (Robert Conquest, Spring 2008, Hoover Digest)

What was the condition of our previous knowledge of Stalinist actuality before, let us say, 1956? We had for decades had a large amount of real information about the purges, all often rejected or ignored, while little truth and much falsehood had emerged from Moscow. However, since 1956, starting with the revelations of Nikita Khrushchev’s Secret Speech it was (or seemed) indisputable that a regime of lies and terror had indeed been in existence. Over the years that followed came the publication of One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, which, as Galina Vishnevskaya put it, “let the genie out of the bottle, and however hard they tried later, they couldn’t put it back in.”

So by 1964 or 1965 it had gradually become plain that a huge gap in history needed to be filled, and that the facts released over the past few years, plus the often denied testimony of some of the regime’s hostile but increasingly justified witnesses, could be put together, if carefully done, to produce a veridical story, a real history.

When my book came out in 1968, the publishers were surprised to have to reprint it time and time again to meet demand. Reviews, from left and right, were almost all very favorable. And it was soon published in most Western languages—and also Hindi, Arabic, Japanese, and Turkish.

Over the decades that followed, “the period of stagnation” as it became known in Russia, there was little further public addition to our knowledge—or to that of the Soviet citizen. But in those years came many breaches of the official silence. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn “illegally” gave us The Gulag Archipelago. From Andrei Sakharov came striking interviews and interventions. There was a flowering of samizdat and, to counter it, many arrests (and confinement in penal “psychiatric” wards— as reported by my friend Vladimir Bukovsky and others—as well as the Gulag). And there was Roy Medvedev’s Let History Judge—from, what is more, a devoted Leninist: a deeply detailed blow at the Stalin terror. There was a liberalism of the catacombs. Above all, the old falsifications lost credibility among anything describable as an educated class in Russia. The public acceptance of what they knew to be not merely falsehoods, but stupid and long-exposed falsehoods—the mere disgrace of it ate into the morale of even the official intelligentsia, as I remember noting in conversations with Soviet diplomats. Meanwhile, the original 1968 edition of The Great Terror had been published in a Russian version (in Florence, in 1972) and was soon being smuggled into the USSR, where it was welcomed by many outside—and, as we now know, inside—official circles.

In the early 1980s came the realization by some in Moscow that the whole regime had become nonviable economically, ecologically, intellectually— and even militarily—largely because of its rejection of reality.

"THIS BEING AMERICA":

Been Up, Been Down. Now? Super (DAVID CARR, 4/20/08, NY Times Magazine)

Later this summer he will show up as Kirk Lazarus in “Tropic Thunder,” a comedy that throws multiple grenades at war movie clichés. Mr. Downey’s character is an extremely mannered Australian Method actor who undergoes a pigment change to play a soulful black soldier. There is rich historical resonance in the turn. In his writer-director father’s signature film, “Putney Swope,” the senior Mr. Downey substituted his own voice for that of Arnold Johnson, his black lead. (In “Tropic Thunder,” however, the racial co-option is mocked mightily by the character played by Brandon T. Jackson, a member of the platoon who is black.) And he has just finished filming “The Soloist,” about a homeless schizophrenic who nurses hopes of performing at Walt Disney Concert Hall.

So, superhero, arch comic in blackface and sympathetic nutball. Not inconsistent with a career that has included “Chaplin,” “Natural Born Killers,” “Less Than Zero” and “Kiss Kiss Bang Bang,” among some 50 other films.

Then again, he was extraordinary in other ways, once showing up to meet the director Mike Figgis two hours late, barefoot, with a loaded shotgun he could not quite explain. It was a while in coming, but in 1996 police officers who stopped Mr. Downey noticed he was packing an unloaded .357 Magnum, along with small amounts of heroin and cocaine. Just a month after that he was cited for trespassing and being under the influence of a controlled substance after passing out in a neighbor’s (empty at the time) home.

There were rehabs that did not work, followed by jails that did not impress, ending in hard time, twice, including a one-year stint in a state lockup where he had to fight to find a place to stand.

A winking nod to that tumultuous history is baked into the banter in “Iron Man.” The movie opens with Mr. Downey’s mitt wrapped around a tumbler of whiskey, rumbling along in a Humvee, AC/DC’s “Back in Black” blasting on the soundtrack and Mr. Downey acting all lusty and incorrigible. And when Gwyneth Paltrow’s character, the dewy-eyed, ever-loyal assistant he sees with new eyes by the end of the film, learns about his alter ego, Mr. Downey’s Tony Stark goes deadpan.

“Let’s face it,” he says. “This is not the worst thing you’ve caught me doing.”

That running dialogue — between audience and actor, between Mr. Downey’s past and present — gives the film a symbolic power not usually found in comic book movies. In the interview he preferred to leave that history between the lines.

“It has struck me lately that I don’t have to talk about last century at all,” he said with a dismissive wave. But he does so, obliquely.

“I have a really interesting political point of view, and it’s not always something I say too loud at dinner tables here, but you can’t go from a $2,000-a-night suite at La Mirage to a penitentiary and really understand it and come out a liberal. You can’t. I wouldn’t wish that experience on anyone else, but it was very, very, very educational for me and has informed my proclivities and politics every since.”

(Suffice it to say he is not one of the Hollywood types who weeps over innocents trapped behind bars.)

His romance with mood-altering chemicals didn’t end after he got out of prison. By 2003 he was an uninsurable serial relapser famous for being pulled out of hotels or other people’s homes in an addled, disheveled state. As a movie star with a lot of pals, he lived a life beyond consequence until he finally wore out the endless mercies of the entertainment business. After he was fired from his spot on “Ally McBeal,” the bottom finally came, at a Burger King of all places.

On or around Independence Day in 2003, he stopped at a Burger King on the Pacific Coast Highway and threw all his drugs in the ocean. And while he was sitting there chewing on a burger, he decided he was done. This being America, five years later you can walk into that Burger King, and if you order a Kids Meal you can get your own Robert Downey Jr. action figure, wrapped up in gadget ware. (And what does Tony Stark want when he escapes his kidnappers? A good old American cheeseburger — from Burger King, natch.)

EVEN BETTER THAN CLINTON V. OBAMA:

Al-Qaeda accuses Iran of 9/11 lie (BBC, 4/22/08)

Al-Qaeda's deputy leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri, has blamed Iran for spreading the theory that Israel was behind the 11 September 2001 attacks.

In an audio tape posted on the internet, Zawahiri insisted al-Qaeda had carried out the attacks on the US.

He accused Iran, and its Hezbollah allies, of trying to discredit Osama Bin Laden's network.

BUT AL GORE STILL BLAMES DDT...:

Gamekeepers accused of 'wiping out' birds of prey? (Alexi Mostrous, 4/22/08, Times of London)

The RSPB has accused gamekeepers in the UK of “systematically wiping out” iconic species of birds of prey.

EVER NOTICE HOW THE ANSWER TO THE DEMOCRATIC CONTENDERS' QUESTIONS...

On eve of crucial primary, Clinton TV ad uses images of Pearl Harbor and Bin Laden (Jeff Zeleny and John M. Broder, April 22, 2008, NY Times)

The six-week Pennsylvania presidential primary drew to a contentious finish with Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton invoking images of Pearl Harbor and Osama bin Laden in a television ad that questioned Senator Barack Obama's ability to lead in a time of crisis. [...]

While Obama spent nearly twice as much money as Clinton on television ads in the final days of the race here, her new commercial used historic images and threatening moments to ask voters whom they could trust in the White House. It did not mention Obama by name, but closed with a question: "Who do you think has what it takes?"

YOU'VE GOT TWO EQUALLY LIKELY POSSIBILITIES...:

Right Turn (Howard Kurtz, 4/22/08, Washington Post)

In the aftermath of Iowa, a striking number of conservative commentators were saying nice things about Barack Obama.

David Brooks: "You'd have to have a heart of stone not to be moved by this . . . This is a huge moment."

The Weekly Standard: "The classiest candidate on the Democratic side."

Townhall's Amanda Carpenter: "Who's not proud of this kid? He has a story people feel good about."

Peggy Noonan said Obama won the caucuses "with a classy campaign, an unruffled manner, and an appeal on the stump that said every day, through the lines: Look at who I am and see me, the change that you desire is right here, move on with me and we will bring it forward together."

Now, on the eve of today's Pennsylvania showdown, not so much.

Perhaps Obama has said and done things that have caused said commentators to reconsider their initial enthusiasm. Perhaps they were enamored of Obama only because he could sideline their longtime bete noire Hillary Clinton. Or perhaps, with Obama close to wrapping up the Democratic nomination, some are falling into line.

YOU GUYS, ON THE OTHER HAND, SHOULD KEEP THE LIGHT UNDER THE BUSHEL:

Olympic Torch Relay Held Behind Closed Doors in Indonesia: The Beijing Olympic torch relay was held in the Indonesian capital amid tight security and at an invitation only ceremony in a Jakarta stadium attended by a handpicked crowd of several thousand. (Nancy-Amelia Collins, 4/22/08, VOA News)

The Olympic flame fluttered out after only a few seconds and had to be re-lit as Jakarta's Governor Fauzi Bowo led the torch parade before a carefully selected crowd at Jakarta's Bung Karno Stadium. [...]

Officials from the Chinese embassy helped man the stadium gates, refusing entry to many, including accredited journalists.

The event was closed to the public after the Chinese embassy insisted the torch relay be shortened and limited to 5,000 invited guests, mostly Chinese school children, Indonesian officials, and journalists.

OBAMA RULES:

Rules changing for Obama (Michael Barone, April 22, 2008, Washington Times)

Barack Obama seemed puzzled. Angrily puzzled. The apostle of hope seemed flummoxed by the audacity of the question. At the April 16 Philadelphia debate, George Stephanopoulos, longtime aide to Democratic politicians, was asking about his longtime association with Weather Underground bomber William Ayers.

The Weather Underground attacked the Pentagon, the Capitol and other public buildings; Mr. Ayers was quoted in the New York Times on Sept. 11, 2001, as saying, "I don't regret setting bombs; I feel we didn't do enough."

It was at Mr. Ayers' house that Mr. Obama's state Senate candidacy was launched in 1995; Mr. Obama continued to serve on a nonprofit board with Mr. Ayers after the Times article appeared.

Obamaites live-blogging the debate were outraged. The press is not supposed to ask such questions.

IT'S NOT YOUR GRANDPA'S GREAT DEPRESSION:

Troops Are at the Border: The major indexes have rallied back to near or slightly above their recent ranges and look poised to break out (Mark Arbeter, 4/21/08, Standard & Poor's Equity Research Investing)

The major indices rallied sharply on Wednesday and Friday, proving that there are other good days in the stock market besides Tuesday. The S&P 500, DJIA, Nasdaq, S&P MidCap 400, and S&P SmallCap 600 all ran up near or slightly above the tops of their respective trading ranges that have been in place since the middle of January. In other words, they are knocking at the breakout door once again, and prices appear like they want to see some different territory for a change.

The potential reversal formations that the indices are working on has gone from looking very sloppy to fairly constructive and symmetrical, a bullish sign, in our view.

YOU MAKE THE CALL, WE SEND THE BOOKS:

In Democrats' fight, the numbers count (John Harwood, April 21, 2008, NY Times)

The 2008 Democratic contest has been fought on the terrain of change. Yet the contest itself, after taking shape in early February, has changed remarkably little.

Obama has won more states: 28, compared with 14 for Clinton.

He has accumulated more votes: 13.3 million, roughly 700,000 more than she has.

He has raised more money: $237 million, to her $193 million.

Most critically, Obama possesses more delegates to the party's national convention this summer in Denver. He has 1,635.5, while Clinton has 1,474.5, according to a tally by The New York Times. And the lead keeps slowly growing as uncommitted superdelegates — elected officials and party leaders — move his way.

Behind those figures, however, are the patterns that give Clinton hope in Pennsylvania and beyond.

Obama thrives among fellow blacks and younger, higher-income, better-educated Democrats, but Clinton has held the upper hand among women, Hispanics and white, working-class Democrats.

Consider the numbers. As Clinton and Obama split the overall vote in the 22 states that voted on Feb. 5, exit polls showed that she led by 9 percentage points among whites, 6 points among those earning less than $50,000, 9 points among those without a college degree and 20 points among those over 65. In Ohio, the site of her comfortable primary victory on March 4, all of those margins were at least twice as big.

Those demographic patterns explain why Clinton entered the Pennsylvania campaign as the favorite. Pennsylvania's electorate is similar to Ohio's, except even older and less affluent. The same is true in Indiana, which has fewer black people and more blue-collar voters than Ohio. By contrast, North Carolina's black population is nearly double that in Ohio and helps to give Obama the edge there.

Mind you, in previous cycles, buyers' remorse has been enough to hand even guys like Jerry Brown victories once the party faithful have had a chance to grow disillusioned with their nominee.

N.B.: We'll officially go with 10%, just a bit bigger than she needs to stay in the race. If it's more than that the panic among Democrats will be more fun than a bag of cats.

Our friends at FSB just offered a couple copies of Andrew Yarrow's Forgive us Our Debts for a PA Primary Contest and we've got two copies of Robert Ferrigno's Sins of the Assassin left, so give a % guess and we'll give away some books (multiple winners is fine by us):

ONE NICE THING ABOUT DARWINISTS... (profanity alert):

I am Labeled a "Creationist Apologist" (Chris C. Mooney, 4/21/08, Science Blogs: The Intersection)

...is that you can always count on them to make the skeptics case, even if accidentally.

THE COMEBACK KID DIDN'T EVEN WIN, NEVERRMIND BY A LANDSLIDE:

What to look for in the Pennsylvania primary: The primary may be just another day of voting for Democrats. Or it could be the beginning of the end for one of the candidates (Peter Wallsten, 4/22/08, Los Angeles Times)

"The margin of the vote is equally as important" as who posts the highest vote total, said former Colorado Gov. Roy Romer, one of the nearly 800 party activists and leaders whose votes as superdelegates will put the winning nominee over the top at this summer's party convention.

About 300 of the superdelegates are still uncommitted, including Romer, and many of them will pore over the finer details of today's results to gauge how each candidate might fare in the fall and, as a result, which one deserves the nomination.

"I keep absorbing information," Romer said.

Here are some factors that, in addition to who wins the vote, will help decide whether the Pennsylvania primary is one more way station on the road to the final primaries in June, or whether the nomination fight might come to a quicker conclusion:

The spread: Clinton needs to win by at least 10 percentage points -- the margin she posted over Obama in Ohio's March 4 primary -- to show that she has not lost her touch in the industrial Rust Belt, several uncommitted superdelegates said.

If she is successful, she will be able to point superdelegates to the fact that she trounced Obama despite being severely outspent on television and radio advertisements in Pennsylvania by a more than 2-to-1 margin.

If Obama can keep the race to within 10 percentage points, or even win, he would claim that he has shown surprising strength in a state that is Clinton's demographic home turf, with many of the lower-income Democrats who have supported her in earlier primaries.

BECAUSE EVOLUTION IS LATIN FOR STASIS:

New Zealand's 'Living Dinosaur' -- The Tuatara -- Is Surprisingly The Fastest Evolving Animal (ScienceDaily, Mar. 23, 2008)

In a study of New Zealand's "living dinosaur" the tuatara, evolutionary biologist, and ancient DNA expert, Professor David Lambert and his team from the Allan Wilson Centre for Molecular Ecology and Evolution recovered DNA sequences from the bones of ancient tuatara, which are up to 8000 years old. They found that, although tuatara have remained largely physically unchanged over very long periods of evolution, they are evolving - at a DNA level - faster than any other animal yet examined.

IF ONLY PEAK OIL WEREN'T A FAIRY TALE::

There Is No Gas Shortage: But Washington, Wall Street, and ethanol and oil and gas companies want you to think there is, says automotive expert Ed Wallace (Ed Wallace , 4/01/08, Business Week)

Gasoline reserves on hand are at the highest levels since the early 1990s, which is remarkable considering the nation's refineries have been cutting back on the production of gasoline because their margins have declined. In fact, average gasoline reserves on hand have risen since this past October, while oil reserves in this country have gone up virtually every week this year—and only fog in the Houston Ship Channel that kept oil tankers from unloading their crude one week kept it from being every week. [...]

In January of this year, the U.S. used 4% less petroleum than we did a year ago. (Oil demand was down 3.2% in February.) Furthermore, demand has been falling slowly since July of last year. Ronald Bailey of Reason Online has pointed out that worldwide production of oil has risen 2.5% in the first quarter, while worldwide demand has grown by only 2%.

Production is expected to increase by 3.3% in the second quarter, and by as much as 4.1% by the third quarter. The net result is that the U.S. daily buffer for oil production against demand, which was a paltry 1.5 million barrels as recently as 2005, is now up to 3 million barrels in excess capacity today.

THE POINT...:

Hamas accepts two-state idea, says Carter (Rory McCarthy, 4/22/08, The Guardian)

Carter acknowledged that Hamas still refused to renounce violence, to recognise explicitly Israel's right to exist, or to recognise previous peace accords. The movement refused to speed up the release of Gilad Shalit, an Israeli corporal captured two years ago, though it did tell Carter it would let the soldier write a new letter to his parents to prove he was still alive.

While Carter condemned attacks by Hamas as "despicable" and "acts of terrorism" in his speech yesterday, he sounded encouraged by his talks, which included meetings with the most powerful Hamas leader in Gaza, Mahmoud Zahar, and its exiled head, Khaled Meshal.

"They said they would accept a Palestinian state on the 1967 borders if approved by Palestinians and they would accept the right of Israel to live as a neighbour next door in peace, provided the agreements negotiated by prime minister Olmert and President Abbas were submitted to the Palestinians for their overall approval, even though Hamas might disagree with some terms of the agreement," he said.

In Damascus, Meshal appeared to confirm Carter's version. He said: "We agree to a state on pre-67 borders, with Jerusalem as its capital with genuine sovereignty without settlements but without recognising Israel." Hamas would "respect Palestinian national will even if it was against our convictions".

HOW FAR INSIDE THE BELTWAY DO HAVE TO BE...:

Bob Kerrey defends McCain on temper (Jonathan Martin, 4/21/08, Politico)

McCain and Iowa Sen. Charles Grassley got into such a furious argument in a closed-door meeting in 1992, Post reporter Michael Leahy wrote, that Kerrey had to step in and prevent fisticuffs.

Not so says Kerrey, the former Nebraska senator and president of New York's New School.

"First, I did nothing to intervene; the two Senators worked it out on their own," Kerrey wrote in a comment posted this morning under his name at 7:45. "Second, the subject of the debate - the status of Americans held as prisoner in Vietnam - was one that always provoked violent, ugly debates."

The two senators were both "extremely angry," Kerrey adds, but McCain was "at no time threatening."

Kerrey, a Democrat and Hillary Clinton backer, concludes: "My experience is that [McCain's] anger always has a purpose and in this case the purpose was to defeat Senator Grassley's argument which he did decisively."

MUSTN'T EVER QUESTION YOUR OWN ASSUMPTIONS:

The McCain Doctrine: Presumptive Republican nominee John McCain may protest that he hates war, but no American leader has promoted it more avidly. McCain is not only the most hawkish neocon on the horizon but genuinely sees war as America's most ennobling enterprise. (Matthew Yglesias, April 21, 2008, American Prospect)

The collapse of the George W. Bush-era Republican Party is a multifaceted story, but no chapter stands out as clearly as the war in Iraq. As the occupation has dragged on and the U.S. casualties have mounted, Bush has watched his public approval ratings spiral downward. By the time the contested GOP primaries came around, even a healthy proportion of Republican voters were saying that they strongly or somewhat disapproved of the war in Iraq.

Under the circumstances, it's not surprising that the GOP is poised to nominate a presidential candidate who will appeal to its anti-war base. What is surprising is that the candidate is Sen. John McCain.

THAT INFAMOUS OBAMA TEMPER PROBLEM...:

But the melody lingers on (Joe Klein , 4/20/08, TIME: Swampland)

Obama seems either bummed or pissed or exhausted. He could be near death and still be a pretty good speaker, but he's very much off his game right now. Clinton, by contrast, is on fire--as energetic and passionate as I've seen her.

WHY NOT JUST APPLY FOR STATEHOOD?:

Poland wants U.S. to be 3rd leg of its security plan (Judy Dempsey, April 21, 2008, NY Times)

Neither NATO nor the European Union can provide sufficient security to calm Poland's fears, particularly with Russia now resurgent to its east, and so the government in Warsaw wants the United States to base part of its planned antimissile system here to provide an American guarantee of safety, according to Poland's defense minister.

Wedged between Germany and Russia and wiped off the map by those countries in centuries past, Poland has long had fears for its security. After the collapse of communism, it joined the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in 1999 and the EU in 2004. Now, with Russia richer and more confident than in a decade, Poland seeks extra protection, said the defense minister, Bogdan Klich.

MEANWHILE, THE YANKEE ORGANIZATION HAS SUNK TO THE POINT....

New Boss Wants to See Chamberlain Start (Now) (MICHAEL S. SCHMIDT, 4/21/08, NY Times)

With the Yankees off to a 10-10 start, and with two of their young starters struggling, the Yankees co-chairman Hank Steinbrenner said there was one thing in particular he would like to change: He wants Joba Chamberlain, the Yankees’ hard-throwing setup man, to move into the rotation. [...]

He also said he thought Mike Mussina, who is 39, “just needs to learn how to pitch like Jamie Moyer,” the Phillies’ 45-year-old starter, suggesting that Mussina shouldn’t try to rely on his diminished fastball to get hitters out.

THEREBY PRESERVING THEIR VIRGINITY:

Carter says Hamas will accept Abbas-brokered deal (Reuters, The Associated Press, April 21, 2008)

Former President Jimmy Carter of the United States said on Monday that Hamas leaders had told him they would accept a peace agreement negotiated by their rival, Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, if Palestinians approved the deal in a vote.

"They said they would accept a Palestinian state on the 1967 borders if approved by Palestinians," even though "Hamas might disagree with some terms of the agreement," Carter said in a speech, after talks in Syria and Egypt with Hamas leaders.

WE ARE ALL GEOCENTRISTS NOW:

ET Likely Doesn't Exist, Finds Math Model (Irene Klotz, 4/21/08, Discovery News)

Earth-like planets have relatively short windows of opportunity for life to evolve, making it highly doubtful intelligent beings exist elsewhere in the universe, according to newly published research based on a mathematical probability model.

Given the amount of time it has taken for human beings to evolve on Earth and the fact that the planet will no longer be habitable in a billion years or so when the sun brightens, Andrew Watson, with the United Kingdom's University of East Anglia in Norwich, says we are probably alone.

Earthlings overcame horrendous odds -- Watson pegs it at less than 0.01 percent over 4 billion years -- to achieve life.

THE IDIOT IN THE CORNER:

The Elephant in the Room: Why conservatives should support McCain (Rick Santorum, 4/21/08, Philadelphia Inquirer)

Anyone who knows me knows that I don't shy away from offering my two-cents on the issues of the day, particularly in presidential races. And anyone who has heard me talk about the presidential race over the last few months knows that I've had, shall we say, some serious reservations about John McCain's candidacy.

I've disagreed with him on immigration, global warming and federal protection of marriage. I've taken strong exception to his view that the federal government should fund embryonic stem-cell research. But disagreement on such issues is one of the reasons we have presidential primaries - so each party's voters can sort out the issues and personalities and choose the candidate who best reflects their collective view. Republicans have done that. Now the question for conservatives is whether McCain fits the Reagan Axiom that someone you agree with on 80 percent of the issues is your friend, not your enemy.

Of all the issues confronting the United States today, none is more important than our nation's security. Although these issues don't dominate our news as they once did, we cannot forget that without a safe and secure country, all other issues don't matter.

McCain is clearly the candidate with the capacity, judgment, experience and will to confront America's enemies.

OH, NO, YOU MEAN HE'S NOT EVEN A UNIFIER IN HIS OWN PARTY?:

Trailing in Pennsylvania, Obama Sharpens Tone (JEFF ZELENY and KATHARINE Q. SEELYE, 4/21/08, NY Times)

Senator Barack Obama sharpened his tone against Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton on Sunday as the six-week Pennsylvania primary contest raced to a close, with the rivals marshaling extensive resources in a battle for undecided voters and delegates that could determine whether the Democratic nominating fight carries on. [...]

Mr. Obama, seeking to lock up the nomination, was outspending Mrs. Clinton two-to-one on television advertising in the state, with a barrage of commercials assailing her health care plan and suggesting that she was captive to special interests. [...]

The intensity of Mr. Obama’s campaign and his willingness to air negative attacks in recent days suggest he harbored hope of ending the Clinton campaign here or avoiding a major loss that would keep the race alive.

HAPPY PATRIOTS' DAY, EVERYBODY!:

Tap a toe to banjo as the Paul Revere museum celebrates 100 years (Kate Augusto, 4/18/08 , Boston Globe)

It will cost 25 cents today to hear third-graders recite poetry by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, tap a toe to a vaudeville-style banjo player named Uncle Shoe, and eat a cake decorated to look like the olive-colored clapboard house once home to Paul Revere.

That's because the museum where Boston's most famous silversmith lived is celebrating its 100th anniversary. The Paul Revere House has rolled back the admission price to when it first opened on April 18, 1908.

Built in 1680, the home had been slated for demolition at the beginning of the last century when it was bought by one of Revere's descendants and restored.

boomp3.com

MORE:
-AUDIO: Paul Revere's Ride (Henry Wadsworth Longfellow)

JUST LIFT THE STATIST BOOT FROM CASEY JONES'S NECK:

A Switch on the Tracks: Railroads Roar Ahead: Global Trade, Fuel Costs Add Up To Expansion for Once-Dying Industry (Frank Ahrens, 4/21/08, Washington Post)

The freight railway industry is enjoying its biggest building boom in nearly a century, a turnaround as abrupt as it is ambitious. It is largely fueled by growing global trade and rising fuel costs for 18-wheelers. In 2002, the major railroads laid off 4,700 workers; in 2006, they hired more than 5,000. Profit has doubled industry-wide since 2003, and stock prices have soared. The value of the largest railroad, the Union Pacific, has tripled since 2001.

This year alone, the railroads will spend nearly $10 billion to add track, build switchyards and terminals, and open tunnels to handle the coming flood of traffic. Freight rail tonnage will rise nearly 90 percent by 2035, according to the Transportation Department.

In the 1970s, tight federal regulation, cheap truck fuel and a wide-open interstate highway system conspired to cripple the railroad industry, driving many lines into bankruptcy.

NEWSFLASH--TANKREDISM IS UNCHRISTIAN!:

Deport Such Talk: Tom Tancredo rushes to unnecessary outrage. (Kathryn Jean Lopez, 4/21/08, National Review)

On Thursday he released a statement:

Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-Littleton) today criticized the Pope’s comments regarding U.S. immigration policy. According to reports, Pope Benedict XVI said the United States must do “everything possible to fight . . . all forms of violence so that immigrants may lead dignified lives.”

“I would like to know what part of our lax immigration policy is considered violent,” Tancredo said. “I fail to see how accepting more refugees than any other nation—and providing free health care, education, housing and social service benefits to millions of illegal aliens is in any way ‘violent’ or ‘degrading.’”

Pope Benedict XVI has made amnesty a key issue in his papacy. He met with President Bush, reportedly adding his voice to the open-border lobby by encouraging Bush to provide blanket amnesty to all illegal immigrants in the United States.

Be chill, congressman. No one said anything about amnesty and no one said our immigration policy is violent. The pope knows this nation was founded by immigrants and that immigration today is a significant subject of political debate and struggle. The Church needs to continue to serve. And the government, while making and enforcing law, needs to be humane. Isn’t that pretty much what a pope would say?

THOUGH IT'S STILL ONLY A SMALL PERCENTAGE OF THE ELECTORATE THAT'S HEARD OF THE REVEREND WRIGHT...:

The Audacity of the Real “Audacity”: What Wright said. (Stanley Kurtz, 4/21/08, National Review)

Although the version of “The Audacity to Hope” reprinted in the So Strong collection may not be precisely the same as the 1988 sermon heard by Barack Obama, it appears to contain many passages closer to that original than the supposedly complete text posted at PreachingToday.com. Although the most political passages in the 1991 sermon may have been either reworked, added, or both, to reflect the theme of honoring King, it’s clear from a broader reading of this sermon collection that the themes of the 1991 “Audacity to Hope” sermon are echoed throughout Wright’s broader corpus. If the 1988 sermon’s attacks on “the callousness of policy makers in the White House and in the State House” have not yet been recovered with certainty, the general drift of Wright’s views on these subjects seems clear. It also seems most unlikely that Obama could have failed to pick up on these themes, which are echoed throughout Wright’s sermons.

It also appears highly likely that the version of the “Audacity” sermon posted at PreachingToday.com gives an unrepresentative and sanitized view of Wright’s sermons. Obama’s own account of the original “Audacity” sermon indicates significantly greater political content than what we see in the PreachingToday text. And again, even if it may not take us back to 1988 with complete precision, the So Strong collection makes the overall political character of Wright’s sermons of that era fairly obvious.

More discoveries remain to be made, no doubt. Yet the texts already uncovered raise serious questions about what Barack Obama heard, what he thought of it, and why he remained so close to Reverend Wright.

THE NATURAL ORDER:

It's all coming back to red-hot Red Sox (Gordon Edes, April 21, 2008, Boston Globe)

This is what happens when Manny Ramírez is ejected: Career minor leaguer Joe Thurston makes three plate appearances, Dustin Pedroia's day off is interrupted by a summons to pinch hit in the cleanup spot, and Julio Lugo, who began the game at shortstop, winds up playing in front of the Monster for the first time in his career.

Oh, and the Red Sox come from five runs down to beat the Texas Rangers, 6-5, before a gleeful crowd of 37,480 that witnessed the Sox score four times after there were two outs and nobody on in the eighth. Not quite in the class of last season's Mother's Day Miracle - Seder Surprise? The Pre-Marathon Sprint? - but an immensely satisfying win for a team that now has won four straight and eight of nine and is undefeated (5-0) in games decided in the last at-bat.

"It's just how we drew it up," said manager Terry Francona, whose afternoon looked spoiled when Milton Bradley took Tim Wakefield deep for a three-run home run that gave the Rangers a 5-0 lead in the sixth, but ended with Pedroia delivering a game-tying, pinch-hit double and Sean Casey drawing a bases-loaded walk to go ahead, seven straight Sox hitters reaching safely in the eighth. "There's something to be said for plugging away."

SPEAKING OF SELF-PARODY...:

There's real danger to Obama in a cry of 'snob' : The battle between Barack and Hillary has given the Republicans time to polish their favourite dark art (Michael Crowley, 4/20/08, The Observer)

Obama's candidacy may have reached a turning point when the Illinois senator - speaking at a San Francisco fundraiser under the assumption he was off the record - made the comment that small-town Americans are 'bitter' about their economic circumstances and 'cling' to religion, guns, xenophobia and protectionism as a result. While Clinton gleefully pounced on the comments, hoping to stigmatise Obama in rural Pennsylvania, McCain and the Republican party apparatus also rushed joyfully into the fray. 'I think those comments are elitist,' McCain said, charging that Obama had 'disparage[d] people, who are hard-working, honest, dedicated people ... I think that's a fundamental contradiction of what I believe America is all about.' 'That sentence will cost Obama the election,' chimed conservative activist Grover Norquist.

Obama's line was not fatal, but Norquist still has grounds for glee. For a fundamental battle has been joined here - that battle to define the Democratic nominee's character.

One recurring feature of recent presidential campaigns has been the disgraceful effort of the Republican party to compensate for its unpopular positions on major issues, from health care to Iraq, by impugning the character of the Democratic presidential nominee. Liberals have made this complaint for some time, but I lent it new credence after listening to a senior figure in the Bush political machine. 'You guys never get it,' he said to a group of journalists who'd been debating the politics of some newsworthy issue. 'People don't vote on issues. They vote on character.'

The man knew whereof he spoke, for character largely explains how Bush won two presidential elections.

BE STILL, MY BEATING HEART:

Rail line links London with Bangladesh (Dean Nelson, 4/20/08, Times of London)

RAIL enthusiasts with a sense of adventure and 23 days to spare will be able to travel by train from London to Dhaka, the Bangladeshi capital, when a new link opens later this year.

The 7,000-mile Trans-Asia railway will follow one of the old Silk Roads through Istanbul, Tehran, Lahore and Delhi.

It is already being described by train buffs as “the world’s greatest railway journey” and will be longer than the Trans-Siberian railway, which spans 5,772 miles.

THE OBAMAS SEEM TO THINK...:

Brush It Off (MAUREEN DOWD, 4/20/08, NY Times)

The thorny questions Obama got in the debate were absolutely predictable, yet he seemed utterly unprepared and annoyed by them. He did not do well for the same reason he failed to outmaneuver Hillary in a year’s worth of debates: he disdains the convention, the need for sound bites and witty flick-offs and game-changing jabs.

He needs to be less philosophical and abstract, and more visceral and personal. Some of the topics he acted dismissive about are real things on the minds of many Americans.

Obama does not need to wear a flag pin. By the time NBC colored its peacock logo with the Stars and Stripes after 9/11, it was clear that patriotism had been co-opted by commercialism. And he’s right that W. and Cheney used patriotism in a corrosive way to goad Americans into going along with their trumped-up war.

But when a voter from Latrobe asked in the debate why he doesn’t wear a flag pin, he high-hatted it as a “manufactured issue,” then, backing in tepidly, added, “I could not help but love this country for all that it’s given me.”

Asked about his friendly relationship with the former Weather Underground anarchist William Ayers — an association that The Wall Street Journal suggests could turn into the Swift Boat of 2008 given Ayers’s statement that “I don’t regret setting bombs; I feel we didn’t do enough” — Obama defended him with a line that only the eggheads orbiting his campaign could appreciate. Ayers, he said, is “a professor of English in Chicago.”

Obama has to prove to Americans that, despite his exotic background and multicultural looks, he shares or at least respects their values and understands why they would be upset about his associations with the Rev. Wright and an ex-Weatherman.

IMAGINE THE AV CLUBBERS WHO GET TRICKED INTO PLAYING? (via Ali Choudhury):

BioShock lets users take on fanaticism through fantasy (Hiawatha Bray, August 27, 2007, Boston Globe)

I don't usually warm up for a video game review by reading a book review. But to appreciate the new game BioShock, it helps to read "Big Sister Is Watching You," Whittaker Chambers's coolly contemptuous take on Ayn Rand's 1957 novel, "Atlas Shrugged."

Rand's book has sold millions of copies this past half-century. To several generations of libertarians, it's pretty much sacred scripture. But to Chambers, a recovered communist with an eye for the dictatorial, "Atlas Shrugged" was bunk, and dangerous bunk to boot.

The book envisions a commercial utopia founded on free enterprise at its most absolute -- so absolute that in Chambers's view, this new freedom must ultimately be enforced at gunpoint. "From almost any page of 'Atlas Shrugged,' " said Chambers, "a voice can be heard, from painful necessity, commanding: 'To a gas chamber -- go!' "

Fifty years on, an erstwhile "Atlas Shrugged" fan named Ken Levine came to much the same conclusion. Rather than pound out a scathing critical essay, he created a beautiful, brutal, and disquieting computer game instead. It's called BioShock, and it's one of the best in years. [...]

Rapture was designed as a man-made paradise, but Heaven is only for the dead.

That's the insight that inspired Levine, creative director of Bio- Shock. In an interview, he told me that Rapture is his version of "Galt's Gulch," the capitalist utopia created by the hero of Rand's novel. As a young man, Levine was much taken by the idea. But in time he came to perceive the bitter, world-hating fanaticism at the core of "Atlas Shrugged." He realized, like Chambers, that such fanaticism, even in the service of total freedom, must come to a bad end. BioShock is his vision of how it would all go wrong; it's also a wonderful example of dystopian fantasy done right.

Levine wondered what sorts of people might live in an underwater city, what would drive someone from the rest of the world.

"I started thinking about utopian civilizations," he said. "You have these traditional utopian notions. I've always been a fan of utopian and dystopian literature.

"The more I started thinking about making a compelling place and compelling villain, someone who had a real concrete set of beliefs made sense."

Enter Objectivism. Levine said he had been reading Ayn Rand's books over the past few years and was fascinated with her "intensity and purity of belief."

"The surety she has in her beliefs was fascinating," he said. "She almost spoke like a super villain, like Dr Doom."

And her characters, Levine believed, projected that same intensity.

"I started to wonder, what happens when you stop questioning yourself? It becomes a set of accepted truths, instead of something you're constantly using in the lab of reality." [...]

Rand's characters aren't flawed because not everyone is, [Ayn Rand Institute's president, Yaron Brook] says.

"I think its flawed logic in the sense that he thinks that people have to be flawed," he said. "I think in many respects (Rand's) books do put her characters in real life.

"I think there are great people and perfect people and I think we all should strive to be great and perfect."

THE VRWHRCC:

In Pennsylvania's Democrat primary for president: Vote for Clinton (Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, April 20, 2008)

In policy terms, relatively little may separate these two. Obama ranks as one of the most liberal U.S. senators, but Clinton is no conservative. Determining how they differ is difficult, though, because Obama is long on soaring rhetoric yet painfully short on record.

He has spent just three years in the U.S. Senate. Before that, he spent just eight years as one of 177 state legislators in Illinois. Before that, he was a university lecturer, a community organizer, a civil-rights lawyer.

Quite simply, this is no portfolio for a president, the world's most powerful leader. The presidency is no place for on-the-job training in the best of times -- and certainly not when the nation is at war, the economy is struggling, and federal governance in general is adrift.

More disturbing is what seems to be Obama's private view of America.

Start with the "God damn America" diatribes of his one-time pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. (Obama claims he didn't know of these, even though he sat in Wright's church for 20 years.) Add his wife Michelle's remark about being proud of America for the first time in her life only because of her husband's campaign.

Now we hear Obama himself disdaining small-town, Middle-America attitudes and values -- a "clinging" to God, guns and bigotry -- as a legacy of bitterness.

Everyone utters stupidities now and then. Yet taken together and uttered repeatedly, they sound like a pattern of thought in the Obama household. It's a pattern the nation can't afford in the White House.

In sharp contrast, Clinton is far more experienced in government -- as an engaged first lady to a governor and a president, as a second-term senator in her own right.

She has a real voting record on key issues. Agree with her or not, you at least know where she stands instead of being forced to wonder.

Many of her views on domestic issues are too liberal for us, but on others she seems to have moderated. She told the Trib she opposes raising the cap on Social Security taxes, and she is less eager to raise income taxes than Obama.

WHICH IS WHY STATISTS LOVE HIGHWAYS:

Drop your car, get on the bus – warm your heart: Cars isolate us. The bus brings out our gentler side. (Jampa Williams, April 21, 2008, CS Monitor)

Passengers queue up at buses. We don't push, yell, curse, or complain, even if – perhaps especially if – it is particularly cold, or wet, or miserable outside. We chat with one another, tell jokes, respect one another's silence. We commiserate, compare notes, smile at one another's children. Even when we annoy one another, we rise above our own irritation.

But something happens when people drive; a sense of entitlement takes over as the driver talks on her cellphone and drives through the red light in a school zone. A sense of self-importance takes hold of the driver as his BMW rushes to pass in the wrong lane, indifferent to the harm his actions may cause.

The immediate honking and cursing when a car doesn't instantly surge forward at the changing of a light is unnecessary. So, too, the bizarre rage from drivers if a car slows to let a passenger cross in a crosswalk.

WHY WOULD YOU WANT STABILITY IN THE ISLAMICIST HAVEN?:

U.S. military urges widening of Pakistan attacks (Mark Mazzetti and Eric Schmitt, April 20, 2008, NY Times)

U.S. commanders in Afghanistan have in recent months urged a widening of the war that could include U.S. attacks on indigenous Pakistani militants in the tribal areas inside Pakistan, according to U.S. officials.

The requests have been rebuffed for now, the officials said, after deliberations in Washington among senior Bush administration officials who fear that attacking Pakistani radicals may anger Pakistan's new government, which is negotiating with the militants, and destabilize an already fragile security situation there.

WHICH IS WHY OPEN BORDERS ARE CONSERVATIVE:

Pope's U.S. trip stirred immigration debate (Daniel J. Wakin and Julia Preston, April 20, 2008, IHT)

Even as he was flying to the United States last week, Pope Benedict XVI spoke of protecting immigrant families, not dividing them.

He raised the issue again in a meeting on Wednesday with President George W. Bush, and later that day spoke in Spanish to the church's "many immigrant children." And at his departure from New York on Sunday, he was to be sent off by a throng of the faithful, demonstrating the ethnic diversity of American Catholicism.

The choreography underscores the importance to the church here of its growing diversity, especially its increasingly Latino membership.

Of the nation's 65 million Roman Catholics, 18 million are Latino, according to the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, and they account for more than two-thirds of the new Catholics in the country since 1960.

Millions of other recent arrivals come from Asia and Africa, and more and more parishes depend on priests brought from abroad to serve the flock.

MORE:
Democrats Blocked Resolution Welcoming Pope because of "Pro-life" Language (John Jalsevac, April 18, 2008, LifeSiteNews.com)

A resolution welcoming the Pope to the United States was stalled in the U.S. Senate after Democrats said they would not vote on the resolution unless offending "pro-life language" was removed from it. [...]

Democratic Senator Barbara Boxer, however, disapproved of the wording of that part of the resolution, and demanded that the last ten words, "witnessing to the value of each and every human life", be removed. Boxer and a number of colleagues delayed the vote for three days. In order to pass using the process of "hotlining," which allows for a resolution or a bill to pass in a matter of minutes instead of weeks, the resolution welcoming Benedict required a unanimous vote.

One senior Republican leadership aide told FOX News, "What's the problem with this? Does Sen. Boxer not value life? It speaks directly to the message the Pope delivered when he arrived here."

Senator Boxer also disapproved of a part of the resolution that mentioned that the Pontiff, " has spoken approvingly of the vibrance of religious faith in the United States, a faith nourished by a constitutional commitment to religious liberty that neither attempts to strip our public spaces of religious expression nor denies the ultimate source of our rights and liberties."

THE GLINT:

The new Tories: out of the blue: The Tories have succeeded in recruiting candidates from what would once have been thought of as enemy territory. But while the black security man, the woman boxer and the gay TV presenter may be closer to the people, are they still at arm's length from Team Cameron (Damian Thompson., 4/18/08, Daily Telegraph)

I have spent the past few weeks interviewing Conservative candidates, on and off the record. One thing is clear: even though open primaries are still fairly rare, the leadership has succeeded in its aim of enticing a different kind of activist into the election. The credit belongs not just to Cameron but to the 'quartet' - the leader and his praetorian guard of Steve Hilton, the director of strategy, George Osborne, the shadow chancellor, and Andy Coulson, the former News of the World editor, now director of communications. This is the core of 'Team Cameron'. Other key members are Michael Gove, the shadow education secretary, James O'Shaughnessy, head of policy, and Ed Llewellyn, the chief of staff.

Refreshing the candidates' list was always a priority of Team Cameron. In theory, at least, it has got what it wanted: a collection of people who bear at least a passing resemblance to the general public. Roughly 40 per cent of new candidates are women or from ethnic minorities. On the whole, they are impressive. They may rather obviously tick boxes - gay, Asian, black, female - but they are united by something the Conservative Party has not witnessed for years: the glint of the street fighter in their eyes. For the first time since working-class Tories raided West Midlands council estates in the Thatcher heyday, candidates seem to be winning stretches of enemy territory.

The candidates I spoke to emphasised how grateful they were to Cameron. 'He's made us electable again,' they said. Yet these new-look Tories sounded nothing like the original Thatcher­ites or Blairites, who were desperate to associate themselves with their idol. They never used the label 'Cameronian' or 'Cameroon' except to describe the gang surrounding the leader. Why? As I listened to candidates and party supporters talking on and off the record, the answer became clearer.

Shaun Bailey is a black Tory. In itself, that is not such a big deal. There have been quite a few of those in the past, even if they have not made it into Parliament. Many were pinstriped professionals who sent the old Spectator crowd into ecstasies by calling them 'old chap'. But Bailey, 35, is not the sort of black guy that Conservatives would expect to meet socially. He was once a security guard in a shopping centre. You would not want to mess with him. Hammersmith is a new seat. Before the boun­dary changes it was Hammersmith and Fulham, with a Tory majority of 5,000; now that it has lost Fulham to Chelsea, there is a notional Labour majority of 5,600. Bailey will need a swing of 6.75 per cent to beat Andrew Slaughter, currently Labour MP for Ealing Acton and Shepherd's Bush. To do that, he will have to win votes in the crack-infested housing estates where he spent his childhood.

We meet in a pub in Golborne Road, north Kensington. The bric-a-brac stalls and Portuguese pastry shops create a villagey atmosphere much commented on by estate agents who show clients around in daylight, before the drug dealers come out to play.

I had seen pictures of Bailey, so I knew to expect the huge smile and the gladiator's chest ('unspeakably gorgeous,' said one Tory volunteer). The surprise is the accent, which cannot have changed much since he was sorting out troublemakers at the Trocadero centre in the West End. 'If I were talking to my boys at the youth club, you might understand 30 per cent of what I was saying,' he tells me. There is a touch of pride in his voice - but then he goes into a riff about how black parents must not allow their children to speak to them in slang. 'It's not the street talk I mind, it's the idea that because you're black you have to speak that way. Employers can't understand you and then you're surprised when you don't get the job.'

Bailey and his wife Ellie have a one-year-old daughter. 'I'm not ashamed of my working-class roots, but I'm not going to bring her up in the same depressing environment,' he says.

THE FREEDOM TO ACT OUT FAITH:

The Pope's Meaning Of Freedom (William A. Donohue 04.18.08, Forbes)

The pope also wasted no time speaking to an issue that is dear to him--the meaning of freedom. In his remarks at the White House, he said something that is profoundly counter-cultural from an American point of view: He stressed that "freedom calls for the cultivation of virtue, self-discipline, sacrifice for the common good and a sense of responsibility toward the less fortunate." Not exactly music to the ears of those who mistake freedom for license.

In his joint presentation with President Bush, the Holy Father also made plain his ongoing concern that all religions must act responsibly when confronted with adversity. According to news reports, the pope and the president rejected "the manipulation of religion to justify immoral and violent acts against innocents." It should be obvious that this remark was aimed mostly at fanatics who kill in the name of Islam. Indeed, it is reminiscent of the pope's Regensburg address in 2006, which so many Muslims found offensive.

In that speech, the pope emphasized the need to conjoin faith to reason, and vice versa. When faith is disconnected from reason, it breeds religious fanaticism. When reason is disconnected from faith, it breeds radical secularism. Regarding the latter, the pope had in mind the professoriate, too many of whom have made a god out of reason. But reason alone does not liberate--it invites us to make moral decisions absent a larger good. And when that happens, people walk around willy-nilly, executing their own moral code. Historically, this has had monstrous consequences.

WHAT'S GOOD FOR THE GOOSE:

John Huss: Pre-Reformation Reformer (Christian History, 4/19/08)

Huss was born to peasant parents in "Goosetown," that is, Husinec, in the south of today's Czech Republic. (In his twenties, he shortened his name to Huss—"goose," and he and his friends delighted in making puns on his name; it was a tradition that continued, especially with Luther, who reminded his followers of the "goose" who had been "cooked" for defying the pope).

To escape poverty, Huss trained for the priesthood: "I had thought to become a priest quickly in order to secure a good livelihood and dress and to be held in esteem by men." He earned a bachelor's, master's, and then finally a doctorate. Along the way he was ordained (in 1401) and became the preacher at Prague's Bethlehem Chapel (which held 3,000), the most popular church in one of the largest of Europe's cities, a center of reform in Bohemia (for example, sermons were preached in Czech, not Latin).

During these years, Huss underwent a change. Though he spent some time with what he called a "foolish sect," he finally discovered the Bible: "When the Lord gave me knowledge of Scriptures, I discharged that kind of stupidity from my foolish mind."

The writings of John Wycliffe had stirred his interest in the Bible, and these same writings were causing a stir in Bohemia (technically the northeastern portion of today's Czech Republic, but a general term for the area where the Czech language and culture prevailed). The University of Prague was already split between Czechs and Germans, and Wycliffe's teachings only divided them more. Early debates hinged on fine points of philosophy (the Czechs, with Wycliffe, were realists; the Germans nominalists). But the Czechs, with Huss, also warmed up to Wycliffe's reforming ideas; though they had no intention of altering traditional doctrines, they wanted to place more emphasis on the Bible, expand the authority of church councils (and lessen that of the pope), and promote the moral reform of clergy. Thus Huss began increasingly to trust the Scriptures, "desiring to hold, believe, and assert whatever is contained in them as long as I have breath in me."

WE ARE ALL DESIGNISTS NOW:

Ben Stein Exposes Richard Dawkins (Dinesh D'Souza, Apr 18th 2008, AOL News)

And this is precisely the suggestion that Richard Dawkins makes in his response to Ben Stein. Perhaps, he notes, life was delivered to our planet by highly-evolved aliens. Let's call this the "ET" explanation.

Stein brilliantly responds that he had no idea Richard Dawkins belives in intelligent design! And indeed Dawkins does seem to be saying that alien intelligence is responsible for life arriving on earth. What are we to make of this? Basically Dawkins is surrendering on the claim that evolution can account for the origins of life. It can't. The issue now is simply whether a natural intelligence (ET) or a supernatural intelligence (God) created life. Dawkins can't bear the supernatural explanation and so he opts for ET.

The highlight of the film features Ben Stein interviewing Dawkins, who concedes that an intelligent being may have created life on earth. But that being cannot be “God.” Instead, he suggests it may be an alien, itself a product of “Darwinian evolution.” Oh, the scientific imagination — there’s nothing like it on God’s green earth.

Dawkins has since complained that the interview was set up under false pretenses, and that he didn’t even know who Stein was. It is rather astonishing that it did not occur to the world’s smartest atheist to look up Ben Stein on the Internet, where he might have readily discovered numerous examples of his writings that are critical of Darwinism.

Dawkins dismisses the Emmy-winning actor as having “no talent for comedy.” He believes during the interview Stein is an “honestly stupid man, sincerely seeking enlightenment from a scientist.” A lawyer, a law professor, an economist, and a speechwriter for both Nixon and Ford, Stein hardly seems to fit the description “honestly stupid.”

In the end, the film isn’t really about intelligent design as much as about a relentless attack on an authentically free inquiry. As Ben Stein points out, “Freedom of inquiry has been greatly compromised, and this is not only anti-American, it’s anti-science. It’s anti-the whole concept of learning.”

A MEMOIR WITH RESTRAINT? HALLELUJAH!:

Ferdinand Mount, man of many parts: a review of Cold Cream: My Early Life and Other Mistakes by Ferdinand Mount (Richard Davenport-Hines, 4/20/08, Daily Telegraph)

Ferdinand Mount is a baronet who prefers not to use his title, a former nanny to the children of American millionaires who later headed Margaret Thatcher's Downing Street Policy Unit, the most scrupulously intelligent man ever to be appointed as an editor by Rupert Murdoch, the nephew of Anthony Powell, and himself the author of a sequence of novels, 'A Chronicle of Modern Twilight', cherished by all those who like their fiction to be amusing, elegant and expletive-free.

The title of his memoirs comes from a passage of lyrical beauty early in the book. Mount recalls, with tender intensity, his pride at the age of nine in taking his mother breakfast in bed, and afterwards watching her slowly working Pond's cold cream into her face.

He attributed magical powers to the chunky white jars with their sea-green lids. A few years later, his mother died of breast cancer at the age of 42. Her illness, like so much else in this matchless memoir, is described with a restraint that pierces to the heart of experience.

COULDN'T YOU HAVE SENT TONY?:

Anonymity abroad and animosity at home for Gordon Brown (Matthew d'Ancona, 20/04/2008, Daily Telegraph)

It is still baffling that Gordon Brown's team thought it would be okay for the him to visit Washington at the same time as Benedict XVI. But, truth to tell, Mr Brown's greater problem in getting America's attention was not the USA's 60 million practising Catholics. It was the USA's 60 million practising Blairites.

Short of asking the Prime Minister for his predecessor's autograph, the American media treated Mr Brown with a perplexed air of barely-concealed disappointment. On National Public Radio on Thursday, the PM was asked: "You were Tony Blair's Number Two for a decade - now taken over the top spot. Have you had moments when you've worried if you might have been a better second person than the man on top who has to sell the policies?"

Ouch.

IT'S BEEN ALL DOWNHILL SINCE THE FIRST MATRIX:

Bob Thompson: Actors say Wachowski Bros. Speed Racer a mind-blowing experience (Ronald Nurwisah, April 18, 2008, National Post)

The Wachowski Brothers’ Speed Racer zooms into theatres starting on May 9.

But to gear up for the brothers trippy movie version of Tatsuo Yoshida’s 1960s Japanese cartoon, there were previews in L. A. on Thursday and Friday. And yes Speed Racer is a marvel of movie engineering. And yes the Mach 5 car contains lots of gadgets easily deployed by pressing buttons marked A through G on the steering wheel and another all important one marked H.

While generally loyal to the various cartoons, this movie creature is nothing like anything we’ve seen before as the Wachowskis of The Matrix trilogy fame immerse themselves in high-definition video layering which allows foreground and background to stay in focus. The result is a backdrop as bizarre as it is vivid. [...]

"It was a whole different style of acting," Hirsch reported. "And sometimes you weren‚t sure what was going on but it was so easy to trust the directors. They really made the races engaging and I was impressed because they were so detail oriented."

Ricci felt right at home with all the Speed Racer action as the helicopter girl Trixie. "I never felt out of place or like the only girl in a guy's movie," she said. "And I got to kung-fu fight and fly a helicopter."

GOOD LITTLE ROVEBOT:

Obama Could Get 'Swift Boated': Clinton Supporter Says Anti-Obama Campaign in the Works (KATE SNOW, April 19, 2008, ABC News)

Rick Sloan says he doesn't want to see the Democrats get "Swift Boated" again this time. So the communications director for the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers has sent a couple of dozen friends  union leaders and Democratic activists, mainly  an urgent plea to pay attention to Sen. Barack Obama's connections with the 1960s anti-war group, the Weather Underground, and other leftist thinkers. [...]

In the memo, Sloan lays out the case he believes Republicans are making and would make against Obama if he were the Democratic nominee, linking the senator to Weather Underground founders Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn.

"According to Weatherman communiqués and papers compiled by the Federal Bureau of Investigation into a 403 page summary, Ayers and Dohrn toed the Marxist-Leninist-Maoist line. They were hardcore Communists bent on world revolution," Sloan writes.

"Ayers and Dohrn were responsible for bombings of the US State Department, US Capitol, the Pentagon, the National Guard Headquarters and nineteen other sites. Two other Weathermen, the parents of Ayers and Dohrn's adopted son, Chelsa, were convicted of murdering two policemen and a security guard during a Brinks truck robbery," he says.

Sloan says Rove and Republicans would "eviscerate" Obama if he were the Democratic presidential candidate. He recalls links that have been reported in the press between Obama and Ayers and brings up other leftist leaders and ideologues.

"Rove's frame for the fall campaign will be filled with revolutionary figures -- Marx, Lenin, Mao, Ho Chi Minh and Che Guevara. His audio tapes of Ayers, Dohrn and other Weathermen will provide the screams of revolution. The bombing of the US Capitol, the Pentagon and the US State Department will serve as b-roll for his television ads that will have one final visual as the announcer gravely intones 'Their Change -- Not What You Had In Mind?'" he predicts.

COME BACK, ED ROLLINS, ALL IS FORGIVEN:

Barack Obama's campaign finds a culture clash in Philadelphia -
The city's entrenched, quirky political system isn't a natural fit for a campaign staff that talks grass-roots. And what's this about no cash payouts? (Peter Nichols, Los Angeles Times, April 20, 2008)

PHILADELPHIA — Hal Sawyer figures he knows just what is needed to deliver his precinct for Barack Obama in the gritty world of Philadelphia politics.

He has rigged up his Dodge Caravan with a loudspeaker so he can drive through his neighborhood in northwest Philadelphia urging people to come out to Obama events. He has reams of contacts as a local committeeman, part of the city's entrenched Democratic Party machine.

So when Sawyer walked into an Obama campaign office and asked for a yard sign, the response took him aback. They said they didn't have any.

"Then I tried to play the 'I'm a Democratic committeeman' card and 'I need materials for my voters and stuff for election day.' And their response was nothing, zero. 'You're a what?' "

The mutual puzzlement underscores the culture clash within the coalition working to elect Obama here. In the run-up to the Pennsylvania primary Tuesday, there is a deep divide over the best tactics to use in this city's quirky political culture.

On one side is the city's aging Democratic apparatus, a collection of pro-Obama ward leaders and committee people whose tools of persuasion are yard signs, campaign hats, buttons, stickers and "street money" -- cash handed out before the election to juice turnout.

On the other is the Obama campaign team, a network of young aides from out of state who eschew the traditional trappings of a campaign and think that elections turn on intangibles: grass-roots organization and an ever-expanding web of volunteers motivated by a deep belief in the candidate.

SHARING FLEAS:

About Obama's Terrorist Acquaintance (Steve Chapman, 4/20/08, Real Clear Politics)

When William F. Buckley Jr. died in February, one of the things widely praised, by liberals and others, was his stalwart insistence on moral hygiene. Even when his conservative movement was small and embattled, he rejected the temptation to join forces with anti-Semites, the John Birch Society and other extremists. Later, he disavowed longtime confederates Pat Buchanan and Joseph Sobran for the sin of bigotry.

Buckley knew the importance of choosing allies carefully. But some people who expect such care from conservatives don't practice it themselves.

Among many liberals, extremism in the defense of "social justice" is no vice. When the folk singer Pete Seeger got a medal by President Clinton, no one cared that he was a veteran apologist for Stalin who still regarded himself as a communist. That indifference betrayed a double standard that conscientious liberals should reject.

By that standard, Barack Obama is a liberal, but not a conscientious one. I don't much care if he declines to wear a flag pin; I can overlook his wife's limited capacity for patriotic pride; and I defended his relationship with his former pastor. But his comfortable association with an unrepentant former terrorist should induce queasiness in anyone who shares the humane values that Obama extols.

A HANDY TEST OF HOW BELTWAY YOU ARE:

McCain overcomes rank-and-file concerns (DAVID PAUL KUHN, 4/20/08, Politico)

Although John McCain's candidacy is still viewed with suspicion by many conservative leaders, polling suggests he has overcome the concerns of rank-and-file conservatives: McCain isn't viewed more unfavorably by conservative voters today than George W. Bush was at this point in the 2000 election cycle.

In the latest CBS News/New York Times poll, 18 percent of conservatives said they have an unfavorable view of McCain. The same percentage expressed an unfavorable view of Bush in CBS News polls conducted in March and April of 2000; higher percentages of conservatives held unfavorable views of Bob Dole and George H.W. Bush at similar points in 1996 and 1988, respectively.

WHO WILL TELL THE NEOCONS?:

Battle to retake Basra was 'complete disaster' (Sean Rayment, 20/04/2008, Daily Telegraph)

The British-trained Iraqi Army's attempt to retake Basra from militiamen was an "unmitigated disaster at every level", British commanders have disclosed.

Senior sources have said that the mission was undermined by incompetent officers and untrained troops who were sent into battle with inadequate supplies of food, water and ammunition.

They said the failure had delayed the British withdrawal by "many months".

THE POPE AND THE UN BOTH...:

BENEDICT & BUSH: MUCH IN COMMON (Rich Lowry, 4/19/08, NY Post)

In fact, Benedict blessed an interventionism farther reaching than anything Bush has ever defended. If nation states don't protect their citizens from "grave and sustained violations of human rights," he said, "the international community must intervene." This view might seriously endanger national sovereignty - if the United Nations weren't so comically ineffectual.

Borrowing from Stalin's infamous jibe, one might ask Benedict how many divisions Ban Ki-moon has? The UN is a collection of squabbling nation states, many of which cynically use it to block the principled international action that Benedict envisions. If a dictator is toppled or a humanitarian crisis averted anywhere in the world, it is almost always the United States that took the lead.

Benedict devoted the balance of his address to a dense explanation of the philosophical basis of human rights. They are founded, he said, "on the natural law inscribed on human hearts and present in different cultures and civilizations." In defending the universality of human rights, Benedict sounded similar to Bush. There's a reason that yesterday Bush declared with gusto at the National Catholic Prayer Breakfast in Washington: "His Holiness believes that freedom is the Almighty's gift to every man, woman and child on Earth."

This was the neglected storyline of Benedict's visit: the consonance of vision of the president and the pontiff. When they stood together on the White House lawn in a majestic welcoming ceremony on Wednesday, it symbolized the growing rapprochement of American evangelical Protestantism and the Catholic Church.

SHE'S THE MAN!:

Clinton Impugns Obama’s Toughness (JULIE BOSMAN and JEFF ZELENY, 4/19/08, NY Times)

Heading into the final weekend before the crucial Pennsylvania primary, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton questioned Senator Barack Obama’s toughness, a tactic her campaign called an 11th-hour message to uncommitted superdelegates who may have lingering concerns over his electability.

At a rally at Radnor Senior High School, one of two high schools at which she spoke on Friday, Mrs. Clinton seized upon Mr. Obama’s remarks made the day after Wednesday’s Democratic debate, when he expressed his irritation at the moderator’s questions and the debate format. Mrs. Clinton said dryly that Mr. Obama had been “complaining about the hard questions.”

“Well, having been in the White House for eight years, and seeing what happens in terms of the pressures and the stresses of the president, that was nothing,” she said of the debate.

Hillary Clinton's campaign on Friday accepted Gary Mayor Rudy Clay's invitation to debate Barack Obama on urban issues in the struggling Steel City -- only to have the mayor promptly rescind the offer he had extended a day earlier. [...]

The reversal came just hours after the Clinton campaign told reporters the New York senator had accepted Clay's invitation, as well as an earlier debate offer made by the Indiana Debate Commission.

Howard Wolfson, Clinton's communications director, challenged Obama to shake off his "bad debate" in Philadelphia and give Hoosiers a chance to hear the Democrats parse the issues.

EX IS BETTER THAN IM:

Awaiting China's implosion (SALIM MANSUR, 4/19/08, Toronto Sun)

In the list of tyrants, mass-murderers and psychopaths Mao stands apart. Others in comparison -- Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Mussolini, Pol Pot, Saddam Hussein, Fidel Castro, Idi Amin, Ayatollah Khomeini and the rest -- are merely horrid and detestable characters.

They lacked the aura of philosopher-statesman that brought so many in the West, including president Richard Nixon and the suave Henry Kissinger during their 1972 trip to China, to praise Mao as the "great helmsman" for his history-making role.

But it is Mao's China and not the United States that is a paper tiger held together by undisguised force of communist police and informers.

Though Tibet was devoured brutally and other ethnic minorities repressed cruelly, such as the Uighur Turks in the Xinjiang province who are mostly Muslims -- I have personally witnessed the situation while travelling through the region -- Mao's successors tremble in fear at the possibility the prison he constructed might dissolve, as did the former Soviet Union.

IF MICROSOFT CAN'T STEAL YOUR INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY THEY'RE USELESS:

Macs Run Windows Vista Better Than PCs, Popular Mechanics Says So (Antone Gonsalves, April 17, 2008, InformationWeek)

Surprisingly to the magazine, Apple's user interface for its OS X Leopard didn't outshine Vista among the testers, who liked the look and feel of both operating systems, but showed a slight preference toward OS X. The real differences were in the speed trials, where Leopard "trounced" Vista in important tasks such as boot-up, shutdown and program-launch times.

"We even tested Vista on the Macs using Apple's platform-switching Boot Camp software -- and found that both Apple computers ran Vista faster than our PCs did," the magazine said. "Simply put, Vista proved to be a more sluggish operating system than Leopard."

Another surprise was the price of the systems. While the Apple Mac is often seen as more expensive than the PC, Popular Mechanics found that the Asus M51sr cost the same as the MacBook, and the Gateway One cost $300 more than an iMac.

"That means for the price of the Gateway you could buy an iMac, boost its hard drive to match the Gateway's, purchase a copy of Vista to boot -- and still save $100," the magazine said.

HUMMIN' THE SEED:

The Wildest Fastball Ever: Steve Dalkowski's pitches didn't rip through the air, they appeared under mystified Ted Williams' chin as if by magic (Pat Jordan, 10/12/70, Sports Illustrated)

On May 7, 1966, shortly after his release from baseball, The Sporting News carried a blurred, seven-year-old photograph of one Stephen Louis Dalkowski, along with a brief story that was headlined: LIVING LEGEND RELEASED. It began, "Steve Dalkowski, a baseball legend in his own time, apparently has thrown his last professional pitch." The description was not hyperbolic. Despite the fact that he never pitched an inning in the major leagues, few people in organized baseball at that time had not heard of Steve Dalkowski.

The legend began 10 years before, on a hot spring day in Miami, Fla., when Dalkowski was pitching batting practice for the Baltimore Orioles before an exhibition game with the Red Sox. According to several guys who were there, Ted Williams was watching curiously from behind the batting cage. After a few minutes Williams picked up a bat and stepped into the cage. Reporters and players moved quickly closer to see this classic confrontation. Williams took three level, disciplined practice swings, cocked his bat, and motioned with his head for Dalkowski to deliver the ball. Dalkowski went into his spare pump, his right leg rising a few inches off the ground, his left arm pulling back and then flicking out from the side of his body like an attacking cobra. The ball did not rip through the air like most fastballs, but seemed to appear suddenly and silently in the catcher's glove.

The catcher held the ball for a few seconds a few inches under Williams' chin. Williams looked back at it, then at Dalkowski, squinting at him from the mound, and then he dropped his bat and stepped out of the cage. The writers immediately asked Williams how fast Steve Dalkowski really was. Williams, whose eyes were said to be so sharp that he could count the stitches on a baseball as it rotated toward the plate, told them he had not seen the pitch, that Steve Dalkowski was the fastest pitcher he ever faced and that he would be damned if he would ever face him again if he could help it.

Ted Williams was not the only baseball authority awed by Dalkowski's speed. Paul Richards, Harry Brecheen, Earl Weaver and just about anyone who had ever seen him throw claimed he was faster than Johnson or Feller or any of the fabled oldtimers. The Orioles, who owned Dalkowski from 1957 to 1965, once sent him to the Aberdeen Proving Grounds, where they used Army equipment to test the speed of his fastball. The machine clocked it at 93.5 mph, about 5 mph slower than Bob Feller's, which was clocked on similar equipment. But Feller had thrown his fastball from a high mound, which added 5 to 8 mph to its speed, and Dalkowski had thrown his from level ground. Also, Dalkowski had pitched a game the day before, which it was estimated knocked off another 5 to 10 mph. Finally, Dalkowski was literally exhausted by the time the machine clocked his pitch because he had thrown for 40 minutes beforehand, just trying to get a fastball within range of the device. All things considered, it was assumed conservatively that Dalkowski, when right, could throw a baseball at well over 105 mph.

THE 13% ARE EASILY SURPRISED:

Intelligent Design doc 'Expelled' surprises w/Top 10 finish! (Steve Mason, 4/19/08, Fantasy Moguls)

One surprise success this weekend is Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, a new doc from Nathan Frankowski featuring conservative commentator Ben Stein. Clearly Rocky Mountain Pictures has engineered a successful faith-based marketing campaign for this anti-evolution treatise. On 1,052 screens, the film finished #8 on Friday with $1.12M, and it'll wrap the weekend with at least $3.1M. Expelled has dramatically out-performed a documentary from the other end of the political spectrum.

The tongue-in-cheek Where in the World is Osama Bin Laden (Weinstein) from Morgan Spurlock, the Oscar nominated filmmaker behind the hit doc Super Size Me. The poorly-reviewed pseudo-doc generated a dismal $363 Per Theatre Average on Friday in its 102 engagements, and it will likely deliver only $140,000 over the 3-day. Expelled will deliver a weekend Per Theatre Average of $3,000 or so compared to Spurlock's $1,300 despite the fact that Where in the World is in very limited release.

WITH BONUS POINTS FOR USING "EVOLUTION" CORRECTLY:

Afghan Commandos Emerge: U.S.-Trained Force Plays Growing Role in Fighting Insurgents (Ann Scott Tyson, 4/19/08, Washington Post)

Night after night, commandos in U.S. Chinook helicopters descend into remote Afghan villages, wielding M-4 rifles as they swarm Taliban compounds. Such raids began in December in the Sabari District here, long considered too dangerous for U.S. patrols, and have already resulted in the death or capture of 30 insurgent leaders in eastern Afghanistan, according to U.S. commanders.

"The Americans are doing this," the Taliban fighters concluded, according to U.S. intelligence.

But though the commandos carry the best U.S. rifles, wear night-vision goggles and ride in armored Humvees, they are not Americans but Afghans -- trained and advised by U.S. Special Forces teams that are seeking to create a sustainable combat force that will ultimately replace them in Afghanistan.

"This is our ticket out of here," a Special Forces company commander said last month at a U.S. base in Khost, where his teams eat, sleep, train and fight alongside the commandos.

The creation of a 4,000-strong Afghan commando force marks a major evolution for U.S. Special Forces in Afghanistan.

WHICH IS ENTIRELY UNFAIR TO JOHN KERRY AND AL GORE...:

The Democrats’ Wimp Factor: As Obama's patriotism is questioned, he's starting to look more and more like John Kerry in '04. (Michael Hirsh, Apr 17, 2008, Newsweek)

The specter of John Kerry in 2004 is beginning to haunt the Democrats in 2008. It is the specter of wimpy campaigns past. It showed up, like Banquo's ghost, at the debate Wednesday night in Philadelphia, particularly when Hillary Clinton joined with ABC's George Stephanopoulos and Charlie Gibson to nip away at the edges of Barack Obama's patriotism. Between the questions about Obama's meager association with William Ayers, a former Weatherman, and the suspicions raised by his lack of a flag lapel pin, the likely nominee is slowly being turned into John Kerry. He is becoming, in other words, a candidate who may be mostly right about national security but who will lack the Red State street cred to carry his point—and the election.

Once again timorous Democratic advisers behind the scenes are hoping they can run mainly on the ailing economy. While their candidates are urging an end to George W. Bush's war in Iraq, they are terrified of questioning the larger premises of his "war on terror" or John McCain's redefinition of it as the "transcendent challenge of the 21st century." Today's Dems are, in other words, proving unequal to the task of reclaiming the party's mostly honorable heritage on national security. This view is sadly out of touch, today more than ever.

MAKE DRIVERS PAY THEIR COSTS AND THEY'LL STOP:

Not-So-Free Ride (STEPHEN J. DUBNER and STEVEN D. LEVITT, 4/19/08, NY Times Magazine)

Americans drive too much. This isn’t a political or moral argument; it’s an economic one. How so?

Because there are all sorts of costs associated with driving that the actual driver doesn’t pay. Such a condition is known to economists as a negative externality: the behavior of Person A (we’ll call him Arthur) damages the welfare of Person Z (Zelda), but Zelda has no control over Arthur’s actions. If Arthur feels like driving an extra 50 miles today, he doesn’t need to ask Zelda; he just hops in the car and goes. And because Arthur doesn’t pay the true costs of his driving, he drives too much.

What are the negative externalities of driving? To name just three: congestion, carbon emissions and traffic accidents. Every time Arthur gets in a car, it becomes more likely that Zelda — and millions of others — will suffer in each of those areas.

Which of these externalities is the most costly to U.S. society? According to current estimates, carbon emissions from driving impose a societal cost of about $20 billion a year. That sounds like an awful lot until you consider congestion: a Texas Transportation Institute study found that wasted fuel and lost productivity due to congestion cost us $78 billion a year. The damage to people and property from auto accidents, meanwhile, is by far the worst. In a 2006 paper, the economists Aaron Edlin and Pinar Karaca-Mandic argued that accidents impose a true unpaid cost of about $220 billion a year. (And that’s even though the accident rate has fallen significantly over the past 10 years, from 2.72 accidents per million miles driven to 1.98 per million; overall miles driven, however, keep rising.) So, with roughly three trillion miles driven each year producing more than $300 billion in externality costs, drivers should probably be taxed at least an extra 10 cents per mile if we want them to pay the full societal cost of their driving.

How can this be achieved? Higher tolls, especially variable tolls like congestion pricing, are one option. This seems to have worked well in London but was recently quashed in New York City, where the political hurdles proved too high.

A higher gas tax might also work. If a typical car gets 20 miles to the gallon, then the proper tax would be about $2 per gallon. But with the current high market price for gas and the political hysterics attached to it — well, good luck with that one.

This brings us to automobile insurance.

JUST WAIT AND YOU CAN GET THEM WHEN THEY ARE RICH:

Why Not Blame Obama? (Lawrence Kudlow, 4/19/08, Real Clear Politics)

[D]oubling the capital-gains tax rate will affect Americans up and down the income ladder, not just rich hedge-fund managers. In addition, capital-gains tax cuts are self-financing, and they stimulate jobs and the economy. You want to raise budget revenues and spark economic growth? Cut the cap-gains tax rate. That's what history shows.

The Wall Street Journal's Steve Moore points out that in 2005, almost half of all tax returns reporting capital gains came from households with incomes under $50,000, while more than three-quarters came from households earning less than $100,000.

Obama also proposed uncapping the payroll tax, another blunder that will hit people up and down the income ladder. While Obama pledges tax hikes only for folks earning more that $200,000 a year, his tax hike on payrolls would actually slam middle-income earners. The cap on wages subject to the payroll tax is presently $102,000. By eliminating that cap Obama will be soaking veteran firemen, cops, teachers, and health-service workers, along with a variety of other occupations.

In fact, in America's largest cities, a firefighter married to a school teacher can earn close to $200,000 filing jointly. So not only will each spouse separately pay more for Social Security and health care under Obama's plan, together they'll also be slammed by Obama's cap-gains tax increase.

This is more than just a failure to understand the Laffer curve. It's another cultural misstep by Obama. I can't help but wonder if the senator knows any cops or firemen.

POLITICS AS MR. POTATO HEAD:

The Rules Change for Obama (Michael Barone, 4/19/08, Real Clear Politics)

The presidency is a uniquely personal office, and each incumbent puts his individual stamp on it. Obama's choice to join Rev. Jeremiah Wright's church and his choice to befriend William Ayers were not those most Americans would make, and Hillary Clinton was quick to declare, perhaps opportunistically, they were not choices she would have made.

This doesn't mean that Obama is responsible for Wright's outrageous statements or for Ayers' criminal acts (the charges against him were dropped because of government misconduct). But Obama's choices to associate with Wright and Ayers tend to undercut his appealing message -- very appealing after 15 years of Bill Clinton and George W. Bush -- that we must strive to overcome the racial and cultural and ideological divisions which have dominated our politics They are something that voters are entitled to weigh as they make their decisions.

Obama fans are upset that ABC News' Stephanopoulos and Charlie Gibson broke the unwritten rule that you are not supposed to ask Democratic candidates about these things. Associations with unrepentant radicals and comments made to contributors at a San Francisco fund-raiser in a billionaire's mansion are supposed to be kept indoors. Only the face that the candidate wants to place before the public should be seen.

Beliefs that most activist liberals share should be kept under wraps if they are unpopular with most of the voting public. That is how mainstream media have operated for the last generation or more. But not at Philadelphia's Constitution Center on April 16. The rules had changed. And Barack Obama was not well prepared.

THEY ALL PRAISE SCHUMPETER, BUT THEY'RE TERRIFIED OF CREATIVE DESTRUCTION (via Charlie Herzog):

Our Climate Numbers Are a Big Old Mess (PATRICK MICHAELS, April 18, 2008, Wall Street Journal)

President George W. Bush has just announced his goal to stabilize greenhouse-gas emissions by 2025. To get there, he proposes new fuel-economy standards for autos, and lower emissions from power plants built in the next 10 to 15 years.

Pending legislation in the Senate from Joe Lieberman and John Warner would cut emissions even further – by 66% by 2050. No one has a clue how to do this. Because there is no substitute technology to achieve these massive reductions, we'll just have to get by with less energy.

YOU'D BE BITTER TOO...:

God and Guns: The only healthy way to fly (Mark Steyn, 4/19/08, National Review)

In my book America Alone, I note a global survey on optimism: 61 per cent of Americans were optimistic about the future, 29 per cent of the French, 15 per cent of Germans. Take it from a foreigner: In my experience, Americans are the least “bitter” people in the developed world. Secular gun-free big-government Europe doesn’t seem to have done anything for people’s happiness. Consider by way of example the words of Keith Reade. He’s not an Obama speechwriter, he’s a writer for the London Daily Mirror. And the day after the 2004 presidential election he expressed his frustration in an alarmingly Obamaesque way:

Were I a Kerry voter, though, I’d feel deep anger, not only at them returning Bush to power, but for allowing the outside world to lump us all into the same category of moronic muppets. The self-righteous, gun-totin’, military-lovin’, sister-marryin’, abortion-hatin’, gay-loathin’, foreigner-despisin’, non-passport ownin’ red-necks, who believe God gave America the biggest d*** in the world so it could urinate on the rest of us and make their land “free and strong.”

Well, that’s certainly why I supported Bush, but I’m not sure it entirely accounts for the other 62,039,073 incontinent rednecks. Mr Reade, though, does usefully enumerate some of the distinctive features that separate America from the rest of the west. “Self-righteous”? If you want a public culture that reeks of indestructible faith in its own righteousness, try Europe — especially when they’re talking about America: If you disagree with Eutopian wisdom, you must be an idiot. Obama and far too many Democrats have bought into this delusion, most thoroughly distilled in Thomas Frank’s book What’s The Matter With Kansas?, whose argument is that heartland voters are too dumb (i.e., “moronic muppets”) to vote for their own best interests.

Europeans did “vote for their own best interests” — i.e., cradle-to-grave welfare, 35 hour work-weeks, six weeks of paid vacation, etc — and as a result they now face a perfect storm of unsustainable entitlements, economic stagnation, and declining human capital that’s left them so demographically beholden to unassimilable levels of immigration that they’re being remorselessly Islamized with every passing day. We should thank God (if you’ll forgive the expression) that America’s loser gun-nuts don’t share the same sophisticated rational calculation of “their best interests” as Thomas Frank, Obama, too many Democrats and the European political establishment.

THE ACORNS WANT TO BE LIKE EACH OTHER...:

Hillary Clinton falls for Gordon Brown's tax appeal (Andrew Gimson, 18/04/2008, Daily Telegraph)

Hillary Clinton has moved to consolidate her position as the Gordon Brown of American politics. There are some superficial differences between the two. Mrs Clinton is a woman, and better than Mr Brown at pretending to be delighted to see whichever audience she happens to be addressing.

THE GALTON CASE:

Don’t Doubt It: An important historic sidebar. (David Klinghoffer, 4/18/08, National Review)

The Darwin-Hitler connection is no recent discovery. In her classic 1951 work The Origins of Totalitarianism, Hannah Arendt wrote: “Underlying the Nazis’ belief in race laws as the expression of the law of nature in man, is Darwin’s idea of man as the product of a natural development which does not necessarily stop with the present species of human being.”

The standard biographies of Hitler almost all point to the influence of Darwinism on their subject. In Hitler: A Study in Tyranny, Alan Bullock writes: “The basis of Hitler’s political beliefs was a crude Darwinism.” What Hitler found objectionable about Christianity was its rejection of Darwin’s theory: “Its teaching, he declared, was a rebellion against the natural law of selection by struggle and the survival of the fittest.”

John Toland’s Adolf Hitler: The Definitive Biography says this of Hitler’s Second Book published in 1928: “An essential of Hitler’s conclusions in this book was the conviction drawn from Darwin that might makes right.”

In his biography, Hitler: 1889-1936: Hubris, Ian Kershaw explains that “crude social-Darwinism” gave Hitler “his entire political ‘world-view.’ ” Hitler, like lots of other Europeans and Americans of his day, saw Darwinism as offering a total picture of social reality. This view called “social Darwinism” is a logical extension of Darwinian evolutionary theory and was articulated by Darwin himself.

The key elements in the ideology that produced Auschwitz are moral relativism aligned with a rejection of the sacredness of human life, a belief that violent competition in nature creates greater and lesser races, that the greater will inevitably exterminate the lesser, and finally that the lesser race most in need of extermination is the Jews. All but the last of these ideas may be found in Darwin’s writing.

Like Hitler, Charles Darwin saw natural processes as setting moral standards. It’s all in The Descent of Man, where he explains that, had we evolved differently, we would have different moral ideas. On a particularly delicate moral topic, for example, he wrote: “We may, therefore, reject the belief, lately insisted on by some writers, that the abhorrence of incest is due to our possessing a special God-implanted conscience.”

In the same book, he compared the evolution of people to the breeding of animals and drew a chilling conclusion regarding what he saw as the undesirable consequences of allowing the unfit to breed:

“Thus the weak members of civilized societies propagate their kind. No one who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race of man. It is surprising how soon a want of care, or care wrongly directed, leads to the degeneration of a domestic race; but excepting in the case of man himself, hardly any one is so ignorant as to allow his worst animals to breed.” In this desacralized picture of existence, to speak of life as possessing any kind of holiness is to introduce an alien note.

Most disturbing of all, in The Descent of Man, Darwin prophesied: “At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilized races of man will almost certainly exterminate and replace throughout the world the savage races.”

WHAT DOES SHE THINK PAID MEDIA IS FOR?:

Obama's secret weapon: the media (JOHN F. HARRIS & JIM VANDEHEI, 4/18/08, Politico)

My, oh my, but weren’t those fellows from ABC News rude to Barack Obama at this week’s presidential debate.

Nothing but petty, process-oriented questions, asked in a prosecutorial tone, about the Democratic front-runner’s personal associations and his electablity. Where was the substance? Where was the balance? [...]

The shower of indignation on Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopoulos over the last few days is the clearest evidence yet that the Clintonites are fundamentally correct in their complaint that she has been flying throughout this campaign into a headwind of media favoritism for Obama.

WHAT'S THE CHINESE FOR POTEMKIN?:

China's last Maoists submit to capitalism (Richard Spencer, 19/04/2008, Daily Telegraph)

While the rest of the country abandoned the commune, pursued personal fortunes and dismantled state industries, the village of Nanjie in central China renationalised its land, set up factories and paid all residents £20 a month.

Advertising was banned and instead, propaganda banners hung in streets which led to a 30ft statue of Mao built in 1993. Annual "profits" from the 26 village businesses paid for a mass wedding ceremony and honeymoons in Beijing.

Nanjie also provided free housing, schooling and health care, supporting a standard of living so much better than surrounding towns that many who visited were awestruck by its egalitarianism.

Ten years ago, The New York Times noted its well-kept apartments and spacious schools - although it added that the state of its finances could not be verified.

More recently, one of the nostalgic Chinese tourists attracted to the village as its fame spread enthused to the BBC: "Mao's slogan 'Serve the people' is really put into practice here. It's not just empty rhetoric."

Unfortunately, few of the visitors were accountants. In the past two months, newspapers in Hong Kong and Guangzhou have unravelled a tale of Enron-style woe.

WANNA BET BILL MADE THE TAPE AND CARVILLE LEAKED IT?:

This Time It’s Clinton Caught on Tape (T.W. Farnam, 4/18/08, Wall Street Journal: Washington Wire)

Now it’s Sen. Hillary Clinton’s turn to explain remarks at a private fund-raiser.

On a tape released by the Huffington Post, Clinton bashes MoveOn.org and the Democratic Party’s “activist base” for “intimidating” her supporters.

“We have been less successful in caucusing because it brings out the activist base of the party,” Clinton says on the muffled audio recording. “You know, MoveOn.org didn’t want us to go into Afghanistan. I mean, that’s what we’re dealing with, and they turnout in great numbers and, um, they are very driven in their view of our positions. And it’s primarily national security and foreign policy that drives them. I don’t agree with them. They know I don’t agree with them. Though they flood into these caucuses and dominate them and really intimidate people who actually show up to support me.”

WHEREAS SENATOR OBAMA...:

Brown Urges Global Push To Solve Global Problems (KATIE ZEZIMA, 4/18/08, NY Times)

Making numerous references to the post-World War II era and to Kennedy’s push for internationalism, Mr. Brown said that the world needed “a new deal” much like the Marshall Plan, and that countries like the United States and Britain must work to stabilize volatile nations and prevent crimes against humanity and terrorism.

He praised President Bush for “leading the world” in the fight against terrorism, and reaffirmed his support for a unified response that includes freezing assets, tightening international law and imposing travel bans, which he said he and Mr. Bush discussed Thursday at the White House.

“He and I agree terrorism will ultimately be defeated only when it is isolated and abandoned,” the prime minister said. More must be done, however, to intervene in countries shaken by conflict and to stamp out atrocities, he said.

“Instability in one country will affect stability in all countries; an injustice anywhere is now a threat to justice everywhere,” Mr. Brown said. “And that is how we must respond: not walking away as we did in Rwanda at the cost of thousands of lives, but by engaging as hard-headed internationalists.”

COMING HOME:

Baseball's worldwide appeal: After a few months in the BBC Washington bureau Kevin Connolly says while he may not have grasped all the finer points of baseball, he feels remarkably at home at the ballpark. (Kevin Connolly, 4/12/08, BBC News)

We have lived once again through the triumphs and disasters of opening week, that brief uplifting period in the baseball season when grass is short and hopes are high.

It is a time when even fans who know they will end the summer with the comforting familiarity of defeat and despair allow themselves to feel the uncertain agony of hope.

Not that I have actually lived through a baseball season before, of course.

It is just that a lifetime of watching American films and television programmes has given me a kind of eerie familiarity with things I have never seen before, almost as though I have experienced them in a previous life. Which I suppose I have.

It struck me first when I drove through southern Texas, where telegraph poles, strung out along the desert highways, chop the horizon into identically sized blocks, creating the illusion you are looking at a series of frames on a never-ending roll of film.

I felt as though I knew it and of course I did.

It is the landscape across which that great towering giant of stubborn optimism, Wile E Coyote, eternally chased the charmless Road Runner in Looney Tunes cartoons.

But nowhere is the shock of the familiar sharper than in the ballpark.

The very word alone reminds you that we speak the language of baseball even if we live in countries where we do not play it or watch it.

EVEN THE RIGHTWING RAGS ARE IN ON THE CONSPIRACY:

The martyr's son behind Iraq's militiamen: a review of Muqtada al-Sadr and the Fall of Iraq by Patrick Cockburn (Sameer Rahim, 4/18/08, Daily Telegraph)

In an article in the Wall Street Journal on March 20, two former advisors to L Paul Bremer - the American proconsul in Iraq from 2003-4 - made confident predictions about the fate of Muqtada al-Sadr.

The "surge" in troops begun last year had reduced sectarian attacks on the Shia; and support was ebbing away from the 34-year-old cleric and his Mahdi Army, he said. Earlier in the month, Muqtada had admitted his "failure to liberate Iraq".

The Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki was thinking on similar lines. On March 25, he ordered an attack on the Mahdi Army in Basra. But after five days and 500 killed, the Iraqi Army controlled less than a quarter of the city, and its soldiers were handing their weapons to Muqtada's men.

Patrick Cockburn's valuable biography makes clear that many have underestimated Muqtada over the years.

THE SPECIAL PURPOSE:

MASH OF THE TITANS: Jet Li and Jackie Chan partner as heroes in a Hollywood film that respects Hong Kong action cinema : a review of The Forbidden Kingdom Directed by Rob Minkoff (Armond White, 4/17/08, NY Press)

Rather than infantilizing HK action cinema or subordinating it to the needs of Western audiences (as if providing life-lessons to Jason made HK culture significant), the artists behind The Forbidden Kingdom respect Chan and Li’s artistry. In the neighborhood store where Jason buys rare kung-fu DVDs, the old Chinese proprietor teases him, “You watch too much Hong Kong Phooey. Crouching Tiger, Spanking Monkey”—a joke on how an authentic pop culture has been trivialized and misunderstood in the West. This won’t be a dull-witted genre parody like Arnold Schwarzenegger’s 1993 The Last Action Hero: It’s a tribute. [...]

The many worthy images include the group of misfits walking along the snaking crests of sand dunes—vistas that pan from mountains to a valley of blossoming trees. In one fight, Jade War Lord’s (Collin Chou) soldiers ride through tree blooms, which is an epiphany worthy of Shakespeare’s Birnam Wood. The climactic Five Elements temple battle becomes a mini epic. Li Bingbing as the White-Haired Witch shows sensational aggression; her clawing poses give extravagant definition to cat-fighting. Yet it’s Chan and Li, older and slightly less quicksilver, who fulfill the special purpose of HK cinema. They fight heroically—with hope of faith, fairness, goodness and triumphant justice.

The Forbidden Kingdom isn’t one of the greatest HK epics, but it’s a fan’s delight.

THEY CAN'T FORGIVE PINOCHET AND THE CONTRAS EITHER:

The Uribe temptation: America stiffs its best friend in Latin America. How much will he really care? (The Economist, 4/17/08)

Mr Uribe is that rarest of beasts: a democratic, pro-American president winning an anti-terrorist war. [...]

In Mr Uribe...the Americans have an ally who has worked hard, through the American-financed Plan Colombia, to eradicate coca and disrupt the traffickers. More than this, he has made Colombia the odd-man-out in the Andes. Venezuela, Ecuador and Bolivia are run by anti-American leftists. Mr Uribe believes in free markets and has hitched Colombia's star to the United States. He even backed the war in Iraq.

Such an ally should be nurtured. Or so says George Bush, who appealed to Congress this week to ratify a long-promised Free-Trade Agreement (FTA) with Colombia so as not to “stiff” an ally. Stiffed, however, Colombia will probably be. The Democrats on Capitol Hill refuse to be bounced. Nancy Pelosi, speaker of the House, responded to Mr Bush by accusing him of “stiffing” the American people via seven years of lousy economic policies.

Ms Pelosi's view of Mr Bush is no surprise. But what do the Democrats have against Colombia?

THE POPE'S CURIOUS TASK...:

Christ Our Hope (George Neumayr, 4/17/2008, American Spectator)

[P]ope Benedict enters Washington, D.C., at an ironic moment, in which many of his critics are Catholics and his allies Protestants.

The Pelosis, Kennedys, and Kerrys press for an irrelevant and secularized Catholicism, an empty faith without works, as it were. Meanwhile, a Protestant President applauds the Holy Father for his faith and works, for defending God and objective truth in a time of relativism.

Their speeches on Wednesday at the White House harmonized, causing some disappointment to the press corps. Scrambling for a storyline, the press had hoped for tension and conflict between them over "immigration" and "Iraq." How the Holy Father could get to the left of a (basically) pro-amnesty president on the issue of immigration isn't clear to me.

On his trip to America Pope Benedict is addressing two crises at once, which are connected more deeply than the press can compute. One crisis afflicts the world, the other the Church. Both result from the same cause: the post-Enlightenment rupture in the relationship between faith and reason, God and man, that marginalized Jesus Christ.

At the very moment society was plunging into de-Christianized chaos, the American Catholic Church decided to join it.

THE STRAIGHT LINE TO THE HAKENKREUTZ:

Darwin and the Nazis (Richard Weikart, 4/16/2008, American Spectator)

Where did the Nazis get the idea that some human beings were "lives unworthy of life"?

As I show in meticulous detail in my book, From Darwin to Hitler: Evolutionary Ethics, Eugenics, and Racism in Germany, the Nazis' devaluing of human life derived from Darwinian ideology (this does not mean that all Nazi ideology came from Darwinism). There were six features of Darwinian theory that have contributed to the devaluing of human life (then and now):

1. Darwin argued that humans were not qualitatively different from animals. The leading Darwinist in Germany, Ernst Haeckel, attacked the "anthropocentric" view that humans are unique and special.

2. Darwin denied that humans had an immaterial soul. He and other Darwinists believed that all aspects of the human psyche, including reason, morality, aesthetics, and even religion, originated through completely natural processes.

3. Darwin and other Darwinists recognized that if morality was the product of mindless evolution, then there is no objective, fixed morality and thus no objective human rights. Darwin stated in his Autobiography that one "can have for his rule of life, as far as I can see, only to follow those impulses and instincts which are the strongest or which seem to him the best ones."

4. Since evolution requires variation, Darwin and other early Darwinists believed in human inequality. Haeckel emphasized inequality to such as extent that he even classified human races as twelve distinct species and claimed that the lowest humans were closer to primates than to the highest humans.

5. Darwin and most Darwinists believe that humans are locked in an ineluctable struggle for existence. Darwin claimed in The Descent of Man that because of this struggle, "[a]t some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilised races of man will almost certainly exterminate and replace throughout the world the savage races."

6. Darwinism overturned the Judeo-Christian view of death as an enemy, construing it instead as a beneficial engine of progress. Darwin remarked in The Origin of Species, "Thus, from the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows."

These six ideas were promoted by many prominent Darwinian biologists and Darwinian-inspired social thinkers in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. All six were enthusiastically embraced by Hitler and many other leading Nazis. Hitler thought that killing "inferior" humans would bring about evolutionary progress. Most historians who specialize in the Nazi era recognize the Darwinian underpinnings of many aspects of Hitler's ideology.

SPEED OF LIGHTNING, ROAR OF THUNDER:

McCain Winning Back Republicans (ALAN FRAM AND TREVOR TOMPSON, 4/17/08, AP)

Republicans are no longer underdogs in the race for the White House. To pull that off, John McCain has attracted disgruntled GOP voters, independents and even some moderate Democrats who shunned his party last fall.

Partly thanks to an increasingly likable image, the Republican presidential candidate has pulled even with the two Democrats still brawling for their party's nomination, according to an Associated Press-Yahoo news poll released Thursday. Just five months ago — before either party had winnowed its field — the survey showed people preferred sending an unnamed Democrat over a Republican to the White House by 13 percentage points. [...]

Among people who have moved toward McCain, about two-thirds are discontented Bush voters, with many calling themselves independents but leaning Republican.

UNIVERSAL CHURCHMAN IN THE UNIVERSALIST COUNTRY:

Pope Benedict's Message for America (Maggie Gallagher, 4/17/08, Real Clear Politics)

The first thing I learned from Vatican officials during a recent trip to Rome was this: Pope Benedict XVI is not really worried about us Americans.

For a universal church, the relative contentment with American Catholicism is perfectly understandable. In Rome, they worry about China, where the clandestine Bishop Han Dingxiang died after an 8-year imprisonment by the Chinese authorities. They worry about the Islamic world in the Middle East, including Iraq, where the Chaldean Catholic Bishop Paulos Faraj Rahho was killed by jihadist kidnappers. In Africa they worry not only about poverty and disease but an encroaching jihadist fever in places such as Nigeria. They worry a lot about whether Ireland and Poland are going to follow the European model of rapid secularization -- the end of historic national faith communities.

America? The view from Rome is that, on a relative basis, we Catholics here are doing just fine.

LITTLE LADY, BIG SHADOW:

Margaret Thatcher, inspiration to New Labour: John Kampfner examines the curious relationship between Margaret Thatcher and the party she so nearly destroyed (John Kampfner, 17/04/2008, Daily Telegraph)

[B]ehind the simplistic attacks lies a more intriguing political reality. The Left, or at least the mainstream Left, has - for all the fury - accepted much of the Thatcher legacy.

Part of that is the inevitable passing of time, and the passage of events that are brought about only in part by politicians.
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Would, for example, the greater onus on entrepreneurship and individualism that started in the Eighties not have happened anyway, albeit at a slower pace? And the technological revolution and onset of globalisation occurred long after Maggie departed.

Still, the Britain that Tony Blair inherited had the Thatcher imprint all over it. It was an axiom of New Labour not to shake the foundations she had laid. Part of this was calculation. Like all successful electoral machines, New Labour was a construct, a coalition of different forces.

Integral to Blair's strategy was to win back the skilled manual labourers, the aspirational class that had flocked to Mrs Thatcher, with her promise to enable people to buy their council homes, and to take part in a "share-owning democracy".

Some of this was also a conversion to a value system. Indeed, Blair's programme for the 1997 election confirmed all Mrs Thatcher's free-market reforms of a deregulated, non-planned, largely privatised economy with a flexible labour market, marginalising the trade unions and local authorities, while publicly disowning Left-wing shibboleths such as redistribution.

From the "prawn cocktail" offensive under John Smith to the more sophisticated wooing of the mid-Nineties, Blair and Brown let it be known that Labour had become "the party of business". They had dumped "tax and spend" policies forever.

They were seemingly all Thatcherites now.

NO WONDER GENERAL PETRAEUS VALUES THEM SO HIGHLY:

Cleric Sadr key player in helping poor Iraqis-report (Dean Yates, April 15, 2008, Reuters)

In the report published on Tuesday, Refugees International said Sadr's Mehdi Army militia as well as other Shi'ite and Sunni Arab militias were expanding their influence by providing food, shelter and other essentials to Iraqis left destitute by war.

The findings underscore Sadr's mass appeal ahead of provincial elections in October and will cause concern for U.S. officials who see reducing the influence of the militias as one of the Iraqi government's key challenges.

Sadr's political movement will compete for the first time in the local polls and is expected to make gains at the expense of other Shi'ite parties supporting Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki. [...]

The Washington-based Refugees International said the Sadrist movement was operating on a similar model to Lebanon's Hezbollah, a group sponsored by Shi'ite Iran that provides a range of humanitarian services in Lebanon.

"Through a Hezbollah-like scheme, the Shi'ite Sadrist movement has established itself as the main service provider in the country," said the report.

"This sustainable programme provides shelter, food and non-food items to hundreds of thousands of Shi'ites in Iraq."

WELL, THE DEMOCRATS ARE ALWAYS DRONING ON ABOUT TWO AMERICAS...:

Ronald Reagan's America, and Obama's (Dr. Paul Kengor, 4/18/08, FrontPageMagazine.com)

Reagan was heavily influenced by his pastor in Dixon, Illinois, a man named Ben Cleaver, who was a father figure to the young Reagan. Cleaver had attended the University of Chicago, near Obama and Wright's church, and learned to read Hebrew and classical Greek. He was well read and curious, intellectual, and patriotic, harboring a faith in the American founders, given to invoking the likes of Washington and Lincoln. On one such speech to the local American Legion in February 1927, Cleaver spoke of the decidedly different upbringings of the two presidents, emphasizing that neither man's background, whether rich or poor, stopped him from making his mark on history.

Cleaver, a member of the Disciples of Christ denomination, was influenced by church leaders like Alexander Campbell. For Campbell and other 19th century Disciples, America's destiny was often prophetically interpreted, and the nation had a democratic mission to save the world from autocrats. Campbell believed the world's fate rested on America. In July 1830, Campbell declared the world "must look" to America "for its emancipation from the most heartless spiritual despotism ever." "This is our special mission in the world as a nation and a people," said Campbell, "and for this purpose the Ruler of nations has raised us up and made us the wonder and the admiration of the world." Campbell confidently predicted the "speedy overthrow" of "false religion [and] oppressive governments." He spoke of America as a "beacon," a "light unto the nations."

This was the kind of instruction that Ronald Reagan got from his church and the pulpit of Rev. Ben Cleaver, not to mention similarly uplifting messages from additional pastors, like the Rev. Cleveland Kleihauer, who pastored Reagan's church in Hollywood when Reagan was at an age comparable to Barack Obama during his time with Rev. Wright.

From his religious instruction and own reading, Ronald Reagan came to view America as "A Shining City Upon a Hill," which he anchored in his understanding of the Old and New Testament and from his knowledge of what John Winthrop had proclaimed aboard the Arabella off the Massachusetts coast in 1630, the latter of which Reagan recited by heart.

The message Reagan took from Matthew 5:14-16 (New Testament) is especially telling. The passage reads:

You are the light of the world. A city on a hill cannot be hidden. Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before men....

A nation that reflects God is not a nation to be hidden under a bowl, Reagan held, just as one would not light a lamp and then cover it with a bowl, not shining its light and extinguishing itself in the process. There's no point to lighting a lamp merely to cover it. Likewise, there's no point to a nation that's a beacon hiding itself. The faithful are not to harness the light only for themselves and their own warmth, but to share and spread it. One must bring that light to where it is needed -- to cast it upon the darkness. For Reagan, that would mean (especially) upon the Soviet Union - an empire he called "evil," and a land he dubbed "the heart of darkness."

Reagan both privatized and nationalized -- and even internationalized -- Matthew 5:14-16. He spoke of the "city on a hill" in this passage as a "Shining City Upon a Hill," as a "beacon." This is what Reagan wanted America to be: a model for all others, a guiding light . He saw America as divinely blessed and chosen to lead the world to freedom.

"I've always believed that this blessed land was set apart in a special way," Reagan said literally innumerable times, "that some divine plan placed this great continent here between the two oceans." It was a divine edict to bring freedom to the world-one that Reagan sought to fulfill. As he summed up in his Farewell Address from the Oval Office on January 11, 1989: "We stood, again, for freedom.... We meant to change a nation, and instead, we changed a world."

In short, Reagan's optimistic view of America would compel him to lead a positive America to create a better world. Reagan looked at America and saw freedom, not slavery.

SURRENDERING FASTER:

Democrats seek to avoid Iraq funding vote this fall (ANDREW TAYLOR, 4/17/08, AP)

Democrats in Congress, seeking to avoid a vote on funding the Iraq war during the fall campaign season, are likely to combine President Bush's two pending requests into a single bill to be voted on this spring.

House Democratic aides said Thursday that Bush's $108 billion request to finance military and diplomatic operations in Iraq and Afghanistan through the Oct. 1 end of the 2008 budget year is likely to be combined with his $70 billion request to continue the war into the next president's term.

"You vote one time and get the money out of the way," said Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., chairman of the House panel responsible for the Pentagon budget. He cautioned that House leaders have not officially endorsed the idea.

GIVE GORDO HIS SCOOBY SNACK:

Brown and Bush promote international alliance at White House (Nicholas Watt and Ewen MacAskill, 4/17/08, guardian.co.uk)

At a joint press conference in the Rose Garden, Brown, asked about the special relationship between the US and Britain, said that, like Tony Blair, he stood "shoulder to shoulder" with the president in the battle against terrorism. [...]

Brown said the world owed Bush "a great deal of gratitude" for helping to root out terrorism. Although Bush has only nine months left in office, Brown said the two had "an ambitious agenda" to get through over the next few months, mainly on facing the economic crisis.

In July last year, a month after becoming prime minister, Brown sought to distance himself from Bush after the years in which Tony Blair was portrayed as the president's poodle and was deliberately cool towards the president.

The two joined in condemning the behaviour of the Zimbabwe president, Robert Mugabe, over the election results.

TROTTING FROM HUMILIATION TO HUMILIATION:

Demonstrators Gather in India to Protest Truncated Olympic Torch Relay (Emily Wax and Rama Lakshmi, 4/17/08, Washington Post)

Tens of thousands of pro-Tibetan demonstrators gathered across India Thursday to protest the Olympic torch relay, facing off with a massive show of security mobilized to ensure the flame's "harmonious journey" to Beijing could proceed.

A 70-person relay team of Indian athletes and celebrities carried the torch on a truncated, two-mile run through the city's colonial-era government center -- a part of town that had been closed to traffic and emptied of people to protect the flame's symbolic journey toward the start of the Olympic Games in August.

Hundreds, including at least 150 Tibetans, were arrested or detained in at least four different cities, including a group held by police in New Delhi after storming the hotel where the torch was housed. Another 30 were hustled away by police from in front of the Chinese consulate in Mumbai. Along with demonstrations in New Delhi and Mumbai, an estimated 30,000 had gathered in Bangalore and thousands more in the Hindu spiritual capital of Varanasi to protest China's human rights record and its treatment of Tibet.

WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU'RE NOT TRYING TO WIN:

The US's secret plan to nuke Vietnam, Laos (Richard Ehrlich, 4/16/08, Asia Times)

The US Air Force wanted to use nuclear weapons against Vietnam in 1959 and 1968, and Laos in 1961, to obliterate communist guerrillas, according to newly declassified secret US Air Force documents.

In 1959, US Air Force chief of staff General Thomas D White chose several targets in northern Vietnam, but other military officials blocked his demand to nuke the Southeast Asian nation.

"White wanted to cripple the insurgents and their supply lines by attacking selected targets in North Vietnam, either with conventional or nuclear weapons," one declassified air force document said.

UH-OH, SOUNDS LIKE TREASON...:

Differences emerge in US and Iraqi strategies for al-Sadr (ROBERT H. REID, 4/15/08, AP)

Differences have emerged between the U.S. and Iraq on how to deal with Shiite militant Muqtada al-Sadr, with the Americans appearing more willing than the Shiite-led government to concede a legitimate political role to the anti-U.S. cleric.

The gap appeared after fighting broke out last month between Iraqi forces and al-Sadr's Mahdi Army militia in Basra. Clashes quickly spread to Baghdad, where U.S. and Iraqi troops are still confronting Shiite militiamen in the Mahdi Army stronghold of Sadr City.

Throughout the fighting, U.S. commanders have avoided publicly identifying al-Sadr or his Mahdi Army as their adversary, instead referring to the Shiite militants as "special groups" or simply "criminals."

Moreover, top American officials have left the door open for al-Sadr, who is believed to be in Iran, to maintain a significant role in Iraqi politics.

Last week, Defense Secretary Robert Gates described al-Sadr as "a significant political figure," adding that the Americans wanted to see him "work within the political process."

The top U.S. commander in Iraq, Gen. David Petraeus, went even further, telling reporters that al-Sadr's political movement was a major force that should be "to varying degrees, accommodated."

MORE:
Al-Sadr Tightens the Screws (MARK KUKIS, 4/15/08, TIME)

Sadr's Mahdi Army has effectively stopped an advance by U.S. and Iraqi forces into its strongholds in Baghdad and Basra after weeks of fighting. On Monday Maj. Gen. Jeffery Hammond, the commander of U.S. forces in Baghdad, said American troops operating at the edge of Sadr City in support of Iraqi troops would not press deeper into the area. That means any decisive push into the heart of the Mahdi Army stronghold in east Baghdad would be left to Iraqi security forces, which so far have been unable to deal any meaningful blows against the militia.

The conflict in Sadr City remained stalemated Tuesday. There were no reports of serious fighting, but Iraqi government forces clung to their foothold in the area by manning checkpoints. "The city still under siege," said Sadr City resident Ghofran al-Saidi, a member of parliament loyal to the cleric. "The Iraqi troops stopped me twice from going out although I told them who I am."

Sadr's political power appears to be growing even as the crisis wears on. A new report by Refugees International says the Mahdi Army ranks are swelling with new recruits drawn from internally displaced people who've gotten aid from the militia. "Displaced men have joined armed groups," said the report, which put the number of internally displaced people in Iraq at 2.7 million. "As a result of the vacuum created by the failure of both the Iraqi government and the international community to act in a timely and adequate manner, non-state actors play a major role in providing assistance to vulnerable Iraqis. Militias of all denominations are improving their local base of support by providing social services in the neighborhoods and towns they control. Through a 'Hizballah-like' scheme, the Shi'ite Sadrist movement has established itself as the main service provider in the country."

WHAT IS LEFT FOR FRANCE BUT TO APE ANGLO CULTURE?:

Eurovision song sparks French row (BBC, 4/17/08)

A French MP has said he is outraged that the song chosen to represent the nation in the Eurovision song contest has English lyrics.

Jacques Myard, of the UMP party, has urged the company that runs most of France's TV networks to reconsider.

Sebastien Tellier's entry, entitled Divine, combines both English and French lyrics with electro music. [...]

Mr Myard told the BBC that allowing an English song to represent France was a fiasco: "The French language is the tool of a huge industry in terms of cultural influence and if we French give up our language, what do you think the others will say?"

Mr Myard, himself a fluent English speaker, said it was not appropriate that, in a European contest, France should "monkey another's culture".

EXQUISITE CONFUSION:

Elephants, Once Thought Extinct, Likely Survived (Vijay Joshi, 4/17/08, Associated Press)

Borneo's pygmy elephants may be descendants of an extinct Javan elephant race, saved by chance by an 18th century ruler, according to a new study released Thursday.

HECK OF A WORLD:

Missing Rush Limbaugh: A look ahead (Robert Ferrigno, 4/16/08, National Review)

Rush Limbaugh wasn’t sorry either. After he got bounced off the U.S. airwaves, Rush had set up a pirate station in the Bahamas, a real blowtorch, powerful enough to reach across the country. It had been a problem for a while, then Barry had stationed the coast guard up and down the whole east coast to jam the broadcasts. Cost a lot of money, but there was plenty now since Barry cut the defense budget by 2/3 after the Iranians promised to play nice. Must be nice to be able to get that through congress. He had slashed the military too, but the republicans squealed like feeder pigs before a luau. Barry … President Obama just blathered something about hope and everybody on both sides of the aisle swooned. Hope we can be friends. Hope we can trust you to keep your word. Hope we don’t get attacked. Hope this.

He checked his reflection in the smudged mirror. Ran a hand through his hair. Didn’t look right … all flattened down on one side. He used to travel with his own hair stylist, woman who used to work on Leo DiCaprio, for gracious sake. Now he got a quick comb-through from a high-school drama teacher and they sent him out with his cowlicks stuck down with a gob of spit. Heck of a world.

He blamed Hillary. Bad enough she had lost the election, but what was worse, she had won the divorce. So much for community property, she got just about everything, all thanks to that friend of the court brief filed on Hillary’s behalf by Associate Justice Gloria Allred. Hillary got the cash, the stock, the house in D.C. and the one in that town upstate New York which he could never spell right. He got his presidential pension and a free pass to his own library in Little Rock. Big Whoop. Especially since the tax rates had been bumped up to sixty percent.

Immediately after the divorce, the foreign speaking gigs dried up, and the hedge fund boys booted him off their corporate boards. Oh, he missed the money, but even more than that, he missed the attention, the five-star hotels, the sense of . . . specialness. No more Air Force One, no more parades, no more weeks at Gstaad with George Soros and the fellahs. It had been months since Anderson Cooper called to chat, and Spielberg didn’t bother sending a birthday card this year. Even his Secret Service detail has been narrowed to one old timer with an arthritic hip and a couple of trainees.

THE BOY WHO LOVED CHICKEN:

Why Duane Kuiper is my hero (Joe Posnanski, April 16th, 2008)

Fortunately, growing up in Cleveland, I was never really given the Tom Seaver dilemma. There were no stars (unless you consider the manager, Frank Robinson, or the aging Boog Powell). The Cleveland Indians pitcher with the most victories during my five formative years (1975-79) was, in fact, the aforementioned Rick Waits. With 51. The team was dreadful those five years — not the 100 loss dreadful, which steals your hope, but a team splashed with mediocrity (three of those five years, they finished within three games of .500) which gives you false hope.

Still, no matter how bad the team, you need a hero. Everyone who would care knows that my favorite player of that time and all time was Racine’s own Duane Kuiper, Cleveland Indians second baseman from 1974 (22 at-bats, 11 hits, a spectacular debut!) through 1982 (traded for, ugh, Ed Whitson, who lasted only a year in Cleveland but did at least in his future life did break Billy Martin’s arm in a hotel fight). Duane Kuiper. Number 18. A .271 lifetime average with one home run, windblown, to right field, off Steve Stone in 1977, when I was 10 years old. I can keep going a while, if you like. Gemini. Five hit game off Catfish Hunter and Sparky Lyle in ‘76. Was drafted five times before finally signing with Cleveland out of Southern Illinois. Walked almost as many times (248) as he struck out (255) and he really hardly ever walked. And so on.

People always seem to think that I love Kuiper ironically, or that I’m somehow being a wise guy about this whole thing, but in the words of that noted philosopher Mike Gundy, that ain’t true. I loved Duane Kuiper when I was 10. And I love him now. He has always represented something important to me, something I did not really understand when I was young. Duane Kuiper was the player who brought the game closer. He was the one who said that you don’t have to be supremely gifted and impossibly strong and touched by God in order to get where you want to go.

While I pretended not to know the obvious escapee from a lunatic asylum, Reggie sputtered in disbelief and roared: you've got Reggie "F****in'" Jackson standing in front of you and you want Fred "M*****F****in'" Stanley instead!?! What are you, some kind of f*****in' weirdo!?!

Said friend proceeded to reach into his wallet and remove a Fred Stanley baseball card that looked like he'd run it through the dishwasher after his dog chewed on it and protested: "No, I just want him to sign my card! I carry it everywhere, all the time!"

Reggie snatched the card away and raced to the dugout, hooting and hollering. He brought back a befuddled Fred Stanley, holding the card much the way you might a dead mouse: "What's with you kid, you some kind of homo or somethin'?"

[By the way, there were 72 peanut shells under the second row of seats, as I can tell you because I was desperately trying not to look up throughout this whole awkward scene.]

At any rate, the utility infielder with the lifetime .214 average and 10 homeruns did eventually sign the card, so my buddy was happy, and Reggie more than likely dined out on the tale for at least a couple of nights. Me? I'll never figure out how you get that close to a Hall of Famer like Reggie and don't have him at least get you Cliff Johnson.

SPEAKING OF PASSOVER...:

Pigs in a blanket ... of chocolate (Margi Shrum, 4/17/08, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette)

Chocolate-covered bacon. No kidding. Courtesy of a colleague, I was exposed to this. Purchased at Taste of Chocolate's store in the Eastside development, East Liberty (there is also a store on Washington Pike, Collier), this confection got mixed reactions from brave colleagues who inquired about it, and the even braver who ate it.

"It's different," said one. "I don't dislike it but given the choice between this and a chocolate-covered pretzel," guess what wins?

"That is disgusting," said another.

"Savory," said yet another.

In fact, they'd be perfect between two of these, Double-Delight Peanut Butter Cookies (Carolyn Gurtz, April 17, 2008, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette)

The winning creation: Double-Delight Peanut Butter Cookies

Here are the $1 million Pillsbury Bake-Off cookies.

* 1/4 cup Fisher Dry Roasted Peanuts, finely chopped
* 1/4 cup Domino or C&H Granulated Sugar
* 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
* 1/2 cup JIF Creamy Peanut Butter
* 1/2 cup Domino or C&H Confectioners Sugar
* 1 roll (16.5 ounce) Pillsbury Create 'n Bake refrigerated peanut butter cookies, well chilled

Heat oven to 375 degrees. In small bowl, mix chopped peanuts, granulated sugar and cinnamon; set aside.

In another small bowl, stir peanut butter and powdered sugar until completely blended. Shape mixture into 24 1-inch balls.

Cut roll of cookie dough into 12 slices. Cut each slice in half crosswise to make 24 pieces; flatten slightly. Shape 1 cookie dough piece around 1 peanut butter ball, covering completely. Repeat with remaining dough and balls.

Roll each covered ball in peanut mixture; gently pat mixture completely onto balls. On ungreased large cookie sheets, place balls 2 inches apart. Spray bottom of drinking glass with CRISCO spray; press into remaining peanut mixture. Flatten each ball to 1/4-inch thickness with bottom of glass. Sprinkle any remaining peanut mixture evenly on tops of cookies; gently press into dough.

Bake 7 to 12 minutes or until edges are golden brown.blockquote>

Comments

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AS ALWAYS...:

What ‘Bittergate’ reveals about the 2008 race: Barack Obama’s views about rednecks clinging to guns and God are certainly offensive. But he isn’t the only Democrat who holds them. (Sean Collins, 4/17/08, Spiked)

All in all, Obama’s comments make him appear aloof and uninformed about the people he claims he wants to represent. Obama comes across as more Anthropologist-in-Chief than presidential candidate. At his fundraising event, he seemed to be explaining the strange ways of some unusual tribe to friendly San Francisco liberals who just cannot fathom why white working-class people would not simply automatically vote for Obama.

Given these problems with Obama’s remarks, it may seem obvious why they have caused a hail of protest that has yet to subside. But it isn’t obvious at all.

Why are his comments viewed as outrageous, when they have been commonplace within the Democratic Party for many years? That workers have been misled by ‘values’ issues like religion is, as Democratic pundit Arianna Huffington puts it, a party ‘article of faith’. In San Francisco, Obama was speaking in Democratic Party shorthand.

The contempt for the working classes among sections of the Democratic Party is quite amazing. During the 2004 presidential election, Huffington herself referred to voters ‘reacting not with their linear and logical left brain but with their lizard brain and their more emotional right brain’. After John Kerry’s defeat, many turned to Thomas Frank’s What’s the Matter With Kansas? for an explanation. Frank’s condescending thesis was that workers are so thick that they don’t know their own interests. They are duped by the conservative PR machine into voting for Republicans; so it’s nothing to do with the lack of big ideas and inspiring politics in the Democratic Party, then. Obama’s latest comments seem to be built on Frank’s arguments.

Since the defeat of 2004, Democrats have been searching around for their own ‘values’ that could, opportunistically, connect with the lizard brains in the working class. And it keeps finding more of these types in new places. Indeed, it was (Bill) Clinton operative James Carville who, in 2006, discovered that Pennsylvania was full of rednecks. Carville observed that Pennsylvania, although in the Northeast, is Philadelphia and Pittsburgh with Alabama in-between.

These anti-working class views have continued up to today. For instance, some, such as former Clinton labour secretary Robert Reich, claim that everything Obama said was true. Jon Stewart, host of Comedy Central’s The Daily Show (one of the most-watched ‘political’ TV programmes), believes Obama was being too forgiving: ‘These people don’t turn to God and guns and mistrust of foreigners because of a downturn in the economy. Those are the very foundations those towns are built on.’

TRANSFORMATIVE TOURISM:

A Moroccan model for change: Rory MacLean visits a hotel in the High Atlas mountains to see how responsible tourism is bringing benefits to the local community (Rory Maclean, 4/17/08, guardian.co.uk)

As an eager young British climber, Mike McHugo fell in love with the High Atlas. In 1989, he bought the abandoned summer home of a feudal chief and - in a unique partnership with the local community - transformed it into a secluded getaway. From the outset, his priorities have been collaboration and sustainability. All workmen and materials come from the local Berber community, as do its kind and attentive staff. Water is spring-fed, not trucked in bottled. Towels and sheets are changed only when necessary, not every day. Fruit, vegetables and meat are locally-sourced. A five per cent levy added to all guests' accommodation bills has financed the valley's first ambulance and community hammam, as well as supporting the school and enabling local girls to continue their education in Asni.

Guests are truly welcomed with splashes of rose water, then ushered on to the lofty, many-carpeted roof terrace and guided to simple yet stylish bedrooms. Accommodation ranges from traditional Berber salons, which sleep groups of trekkers and extended families, to the beautiful Garden House, a self-contained, double-level sanctuary with two balconies. All the rooms have been decorated with the utmost care, in rich colours and with hand-carved wooden beams (no power tools were used during construction as electricity only reached the valley in 1997). At night, hot water bottles are secreted into beds, open fires lit and the lamps of the surrounding villages glisten like stars fallen to earth.

As well as the sincere hospitality, it is, of course, the mountains that make the Kasbah so special. Walks range from easy ambles to the two-day ascent of Jebel Toubkal - at 4,165 metres the highest peak in north Africa - and are led by personable local guides. Its remote trekking lodge, with solar-powered under-floor heating and en suite bedrooms, allows guests to stay in comfort even higher in the Toubkal Massif.

"I imagine a project like the Kasbah would not be possible without close and deep local ties", said McHugo recently. "I also believe that by our correct behaviour and respect for the local population, hopefully they have come to respect us and also accept some of our differences."

WHERE EVEN THE LIBERALS ARE CONSERVATIVE:

Top U.S. court upholds lethal injection for executions (Linda Greenhouse, April 17, 2008, NY Times)

The Supreme Court on Wednesday upheld Kentucky's method of execution by lethal injection, rejecting the claim that officials there administered a common sequence of three drugs in a manner that posed an unconstitutional risk that a condemned inmate would suffer acute yet undetectable pain.

While the 7-to-2 ruling did not shut the door on challenges to the lethal injection protocols in other states, it set a standard that will not be easy to meet. [...]

While most states use a method similar to Kentucky's, a number of them have adopted additional safeguards to ensure that an inmate is properly anesthetized by the initial drug in the sequence, a barbiturate, before administration of the second two, which paralyze the muscles and stop the heart.

In fact, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, in a dissenting opinion, listed several of these states and described the extra steps they have taken, to show that Kentucky could and should be required to do a better job. The states she named were Alabama, California, Florida, Indiana and Missouri. The other dissenter, Justice David Souter, signed her opinion.

BUT HE FIT IN FINE WITH THE ELITES ON STAGE...:

Democratic debate dwells on Barack Obama's past: Clinton and the moderators put him on the defensive for the first half of the tense Democratic face-off. (Cathleen Decker and Noam N. Levey, 4/17/08, Los Angeles Times)

The Democratic candidates for president debated forcefully Wednesday over who would prove more electable in November, with Hillary Rodham Clinton repeatedly raising questions about Barack Obama's past associations and Obama contending that her approach typified the blowtorch political style that Americans decry.

Obama, the Illinois senator, was thrown on the defensive for the first half of the nearly two-hour debate. The moderators, ABC News anchors Charles Gibson and George Stephanopoulos, pressed him on his recent comments about "bitter" small-town Pennsylvanians; his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr.; his acquaintance with a long-ago member of the Weather Underground group; and the absence of an American flag in his lapel -- though no one else on stage wore one. [...]

The New York senator repeatedly zeroed in on Wright and -- after Stephanopoulos opened the issue -- Obama's relationship with fellow Chicagoan William Ayers, the 1960s radical who is now an education professor at the University of Illinois. She noted that Obama and Ayers were at one point on the same philanthropic board.

"I think it is, again, an issue that people will be asking about," said Clinton, who repeatedly characterized herself as thoroughly vetted during her husband's administration.

Adopting a more-in-sorrow-than-anger mien, she added: "I know Sen. Obama's a good man, and I respect him greatly, but I think that this is an issue that certainly the Republicans will be raising. And it goes to this larger set of concerns about, you know, how we are going to run against John McCain," the unofficial GOP nominee.

Sen. Barack Obama repeatedly found himself on the defensive here Wednesday night as he sought to bat away criticism of his remarks about small-town values, questions about his patriotism and the incendiary sermons of his former pastor in a potentially pivotal debate six days before Pennsylvania's presidential primary.

In their first head-to-head encounter in nearly two months, Obama (Ill.) and his opponent for the Democratic nomination, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.), sparred over gaffes, missteps and past statements that could leave them vulnerable in the general election against Sen. John McCain (Ariz.), the presumptive Republican nominee.

But it was Obama, now his party's front-runner, who was pressed most persistently by moderators Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopoulos of ABC News to answer questions that have dominated the Democratic race in the weeks since the last major contests, held March 4 in Texas and Ohio.

The encounter, particularly in the early stages, seemed more like a grilling of Obama on a Sunday-morning talk show than a debate between the two candidates.

YOU ONLY HAD TO watch last night's Democratic presidential debate to understand why Hillary Clinton stays in the race. She's losing the nomination fight to Barack Obama in both the delegate count and the popular vote. But if bad things happen to her in a debate or while campaigning, she'll be no worse off. She'll still be losing. Her prospects of winning may be slightly more remote, but they aren't exactly bright now.

But if bad things happen to Obama, that's another story. In a debate, he's bound to be asked questions about matters he'd rather not be front and center in this campaign. And indeed those matters were dwelled on last night: his pastor Reverend Jeremiah Wright, his week-old putdown of small town voters, the American flag pin he no longer wears. No good can come to Obama when these issues dominate a nationally televised debate, as they did last night.

Substance: B+

Style: B

Offense: B

Defense: B+

Overall grade: B+

Subdued and secure, but often peevish and cross, seemingly fed up with Clinton's fight and impatient to claim the nomination (the less attractive part of his personality shining through). [...] Despite his aloof, frontrunner's air, sometimes seemed angry, distracted and worn.

The debate between Clinton and Obama, in Philadelphia, was fierce and hostile, and Clinton managed to keep her opponent on the defensive for much of it, bludgeoning Obama for his gaffe about bitter voters and his less savory personal connections. When she talked about the Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr., he shifted from foot to foot, looking down and squirming, if not seething, struggling to hang on to his soft diction, flat affect and refusal to project anger.

But viewers were also treated to another, less common spectacle: the veiled ties and tensions between news media stars and political figures that sometimes make voters bitter, leading them to cling to political satire by the likes of Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert as a way to explain their frustration.

It was weird to see hints of the disgruntled employee/imperious boss dynamic between Stephanopoulos and Clinton. But it was also strange to observe the intramural promos tucked into some of the moderators' questions. Charles Gibson, another moderator, opened by citing a notion proposed by former Governor Mario Cuomo of New York, whom Gibson described as an "elder statesman" of the Democratic Party. Cuomo's son Chris is an anchor on ABC's "Good Morning America," where Gibson also worked for years.

WHAT DO SECOND WAYERS HAVE TO OFFER BUT BITTERNESS AT OUR REJECTION OF THEM?:

What's the Matter With Bitterness?: Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are battling not just over the working-class voters of Pennsylvania but over the legacy of the Democratic Party. (Mark Schmitt, April 16, 2008, American Prospect)

Obama, meanwhile is telling another story about the recent Democratic past. His remarks in San Francisco have been taken as a version of Tom Frank's argument in What's the Matter with Kansas, that working-class whites are drawn to Republicans or conservative social causes because they are distracted from their true economic interests. There are several good responses to Frank. One is to question why people's economic interests should be seen as more legitimate than their spiritual or social commitments; this is the essence of the Clinton/McCain counterattack. The other is to ask why working-class whites, especially those in once-prosperous, now dying towns should see Democrats as supportive of their economic interests. What has the Democratic Party offered that would really address the economic crisis of, say, Hazleton, Pennsylvania? (A town I pick because it was the locus of an immigration controversy a couple years ago, and as it happens, the birthplace of both my father and the third Mrs. Rudy Giuliani.)

While Tom Frank's claim was that Republicans had, in effect, tricked voters, Obama was suggesting something different -- that the Democratic Party had tricked them as well.

THE REPRESENTATIVE OF THE CASTRO DISTRICT:

Too Late for Pelosi? (JAIME DAREMBLUM, April 16, 2008, NY Sun)

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi may not grasp the importance of the U.S.-Colombia free trade agreement, but the prime minister of Canada, Stephen Harper, does.

"Colombia needs its democratic friends to lean forward and give them a chance at partnership and trade with North America," Mr. Harper said in a speech last fall. "I am very concerned that some in the United States seem unwilling to do that. What message does that send to those who want to share in freedom and prosperity?"

Then he delivered a stern warning: "If the U.S. turns its back on its friends in Colombia, this will set back our cause far more than any Latin American dictator could hope to achieve." [...]

We should note that support for the U.S.-Colombia FTA is strong all around Latin America. FTA backers include both right of center leaders, such as Felipe Calderón of Mexico, and left of center leaders, such as Michelle Bachelet of Chile. It is especially encouraging to see so many left of center regimes embracing free trade and foreign investment. This is a sign of Latin America's political and economic maturation.

WHEREAS THE AUTOMOBILE IS BUILT OF LIES:

The honesty of trains (William Davies, April 16, 2008, The Prospect: First Drafts)

We are falling in love with trains all over the place at the moment. As this piece by Stephen Bayley in sunday’s Observer correctly observed, “What a horrible, inhuman, artless culture air travel has become… Trains have never been more popular and as the allure of air travel turns into ordure, they will likely become more popular still.” The new St Pancras station is the most commonly cited cause for this new exuberance, but I have a hunch that the East London Line extension is going to attain a faintly iconic status within a few years. New and stylish bridges are cropping up amongst the flats and warehouses of Hackney and Shoreditch, and the route will be enjoyably tortuous, especially as it does a U-Turn over Hoxton. A railway at this height above street level is reminiscent of the Chicago ‘L’, offering that same perspective on the urban landscape that is neither birds-eye nor pedestrian-eye.

(I used to be a trainspotter. If you don’t believe me, I can tell you that in 1987 there was only one Class 40 operating in Britain, and I, err, spotted it. Just thought I’d get that out of my system.)

Technology always involves recreating the relationship between freedom and constraint. New freedoms involve new types of constraints. We don’t expect to be able to do anything with technology, but it helps if the technology speaks honestly to us. This honesty is central to modernism: modernists offer transparency, and with it, humanity. Like a maths student, modernist technology shows its workings, so that even if the final answer is wrong, we can sympathise. Postmodern architecture later abandoned this commitment to the facts.

We love trains because they display this honesty, while so much technology elsewhere has become deceitful and mysterious.

RED WINE, BLACK COFFEE, BLUE RIBBON BEER:

What’s for Dinner? The Pollster Wants to Know (KIM SEVERSON, 4/16/08, NY Times)

IF there’s butter and white wine in your refrigerator and Fig Newtons in the cookie jar, you’re likely to vote for Hillary Clinton. Prefer olive oil, Bear Naked granola and a latte to go? You probably like Barack Obama, too.

And if you’re leaning toward John McCain, it’s all about kicking back with a bourbon and a stuffed crust pizza while you watch the Democrats fight it out next week in Pennsylvania. [...]

So, for example, [Christopher Mann of MSHC Partners, a political communications firm, which has used microtargeting to help dozens of successful candidates,] knows that someone who subscribes to lots of gourmet cooking magazines is more likely to be a Democrat or at least more open to progressive causes. [...]

For example, Dr Pepper is a Republican soda. Pepsi-Cola and Sprite are Democratic. So are most clear liquors, like gin and vodka, along with white wine and Evian water. Republicans skew toward brown liquors like bourbon or scotch, red wine and Fiji water.

When it comes to fried chicken, he said, Democrats prefer Popeyes and Republicans Chick-fil-A.

“Anything organic or more Whole Foods-y skews more Democratic,” Mr. Dowd said. [...]

Although [Mark Penn, a microtargeting expert who was dismissed as chief strategist for the Clinton campaign last week], who claims credit for coining the term “soccer mom,” didn’t specifically seek out research on the dining habits of voters, he does use food as a way to define the candidates.

Specifically, he points to Mr. Obama’s comments about the rising price of arugula at Whole Foods during a campaign stop in Iowa.

“He has more of the arugula vote,” he said in an e-mail message last week. “Senator Clinton’s voters are more likely to be making ends meet and so they do a lot more cooking at home and a lot less eating out at expensive restaurants.”

HEY, W, IS THERE ROOM IN YOUR LAP?:

Brown in U.S. Pledging Closer Ties (ALAN COWELL and JOHN F. BURNS, 4/16/08, NY Times)

Lambasted at home by foes across the political spectrum, Prime Minister Gordon Brown began a formal visit to the United States on Wednesday, and even there he seemed to some Britons to face eclipse by a simultaneous sojourn in America by Pope Benedict XVI. [..

Mr. Brown began his tenure as prime minister with a conscious effort to distance himself from the war in Iraq and to draw back from a relationship with President Bush that had British columnists mocking Tony Blair, the previous prime minister, as Mr. Bush’s “poodle.”

But Downing Street officials have been playing down the differences over Iraq, and Mr. Brown now appears to be looking to the United States for a way to redress his sinking political fortunes at home over a variety of perceived missteps.

THE POPE IS NEVER MORE AT HOME THAN IN THE PURITAN NATION:

'I Come As A Friend' (Pope Benedict XVI, 04.16.08)

I come as a friend, a preacher of the Gospel, and one with great respect for this vast pluralistic society. America's Catholics have made, and continue to make, an excellent contribution to the life of their country. As I begin my visit, I trust that my presence will be a source of renewal and hope for the Church in the United States, and strengthen the resolve of Catholics to contribute ever more responsibly to the life of this nation, of which they are proud to be citizens.

From the dawn of the Republic, America's quest for freedom has been guided by the conviction that the principles governing political and social life are intimately linked to a moral order based on the dominion of God the Creator. The framers of this nation's founding documents drew upon this conviction when they proclaimed the self-evident truth that all men are created equal and endowed with inalienable rights grounded in the laws of nature and of nature's God.

The course of American history demonstrates the difficulties, the struggles and the great intellectual and moral resolve which were demanded to shape a society which faithfully embodied these noble principles. In that process, which forged the soul of the nation, religious beliefs were a constant inspiration and driving force, as for example in the struggle against slavery and in the civil rights movement. In our time, too, particularly in moments of crisis, Americans continue to find their strength in a commitment to this patrimony of shared ideas and aspirations.

In the next few days, I look forward to meeting not only with America's Catholic community, but with other Christian communities and representatives of the many religious traditions present in this country. Historically, not only Catholics, but all believers have found here the freedom to worship God in accordance with the dictates of their conscience, while at the same time being accepted as part of a commonwealth in which each individual group can make its voice heard.

As the nation faces the increasingly complex political and ethical issues of our time, I am confident that the American people will find in their religious beliefs a precious source of insight and an inspiration to pursue reasoned, responsible and respectful dialog in the effort to build a more human and free society.

Freedom is not only a gift, but also a summons to personal responsibility. Americans know this from experience--almost every town in this country has its monuments honoring those who sacrificed their lives in defense of freedom, both at home and abroad. The preservation of freedom calls for the cultivation of virtue, self-discipline, sacrifice for the common good and a sense of responsibility toward the less fortunate. It also demands the courage to engage in civic life and to bring one's deepest beliefs and values to reasoned public debate.

In a word, freedom is ever new. It is a challenge held out to each generation, and it must constantly be won over for the cause of good. Few have understood this as clearly as the late Pope John Paul II. In reflecting on the spiritual victory of freedom over totalitarianism in his native Poland and in Eastern Europe, he reminded us that history shows time and again that, "in a world without truth, freedom loses its foundation," and a democracy without values can lose its very soul. Those prophetic words, in some sense, echo the conviction of President Washington, expressed in his farewell address, that religion and morality represent "indispensable supports" of political prosperity.

The Church, for her part, wishes to contribute to building a world ever more worthy of the human person, created in the image and likeness of God. She is convinced that faith sheds new light on all things, and that the Gospel reveals the noble vocation and sublime destiny of every man and woman. Faith also gives us the strength to respond to our high calling and to hope that inspires us to work for an ever more just and fraternal society. Democracy can only flourish, as your founding fathers realized, when political leaders and those whom they represent are guided by truth and bring the wisdom born of firm moral principle to decisions affecting the life and future of the nation.

YOU GONNA BELIEVE MY RECORD OR ME?: