Click WORD or PDF below for full content
So, what’s it like in South Africa for Zimbabwean refugees.
… “It is better to be killed by my young brother than to be killed by someone I do not know,” said Douglas, 28, a mechanic from Harare. “I was beaten here and lost everything I worked for for two years.”
As he talked about the 80 per cent unemployment in his home country and the prospect of voting in the presidential run-off election on June 27, three burly men in leather jackets appeared out of the night. From now on the agents of Mr Mugabe’s regime would never be far from Douglas. Yet he felt he had no choice but to return.
The same was true of John, 32, who had spent 15 years in the Tokoza township. He married a South African and was a proud father. But a mob wielding clubs and knives drove him from his home. “I ran away and had to leave my wife and kid. Imagine how terrible it makes me feel being forced to leave the people I love,” he said. But when the men in leather jackets appeared, his tone changed. “Given the opportunity I have been given by my Government, I will go home a happy man,” he boomed. “I want to equate this journey to the journey made by the Israelites to the Promised Land.” …
Mark Steyn says the Clintons aren’t going to win this time.
The conventional wisdom on the Clintons was promulgated by my then-senator, Bob Smith of New Hampshire, back at the end of the impeachment trial. “He’s won,” said Senator Smith, after dutifully if vainly casting his vote to nail Slick Willie’s puffy butt. “He always wins. Let’s move on.”
They won through the Nineties. The Clintons’ Democratic party was great for the Clintons, lousy for the Democratic party, which in the course of the decade lost Senate seats, House seats, governors’ mansions, state legislatures, and on and on, until, in a final snook cocked at his comrades, Bill Clinton was unable to bequeath the White House to his vice president in a time of peace and prosperity — but his wife, campaigning for her first political office, managed to pick up a Senate seat in a state she’d barely spent 20 minutes in.
Yet even iron rules have their exceptions. This time the Clintons won’t win. And it’s the Democratic machine that wants to move on — notwithstanding that in the past three months former president-presumptive Rodham has won more votes from actual Democratic voters than Senator Obama, a weak candidate being propelled in slow motion across the finish line, the sputtering engine of his “inevitability” frantically augmented by media bobbysoxers pushing at the rear. …
David Harsanyi says to Obama, “You want change? Why not start in schools?
Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama visited a Denver-area school this week, offering his characteristically uplifting words — and not much else.
“I’m here to hold up this school and these students as an example of what’s possible in education,” Obama told those gathered at the Mapleton Expeditionary School of the Arts, “if we’re willing to try new ideas and new reforms based not on ideology but on what works to give our children the best possible chance in life.”
Should all “ideology” be discarded? Or only the “ideology” Obama finds distasteful? What if parental choice and competition offer kids the “best possible chance” for success? Would Obama then support any substantive reforms that embrace those precepts?
Up to this point, Obama has peddled a tired canard linking education failure to lack of funding. Nothing about obstructive unions? Nothing about increased teacher accountability? I wonder why. …
Bill Kristol points out Obama’s omission.
… But at an elite Northeastern college campus, Obama obviously felt no need to disturb the placid atmosphere of easy self-congratulation. He felt no need to remind students of a different kind of public service — one that entails more risks than community organizing. He felt no need to tell the graduating seniors in the lovely groves of Middletown that they should be grateful to their peers who were far away facing dangers on behalf of their country
Nor did Obama choose to mention all those college graduates who are now entering the military, either for a tour of duty or as a career, in order to serve their country. He certainly felt no impulse to wonder whether the nation wouldn’t be better off if R.O.T.C. were more widely and easily available on elite college campuses.
Obama failed to challenge — even gently — what he must have assumed would be the prejudices of much of his audience and indulged in a soft patriotism of low expectations.
Was this a public service?
John Warner has become even more of an embarrassment to Virginia since he’s decided he’s on “grandfather duty.” (“I am worried about the world that my grandchildren will inherit.” Bwa Wa!) His latest is to sign on to the latest power grab from Washington – this in the form of Joe Lieberman’s “cap and trade” bill. George Will comments.
… Lieberman’s legislation also would create a Carbon Market Efficiency Board empowered to “provide allowances and alter demands” in response to “an impact that is much more onerous” than expected. And Lieberman says that if a foreign company selling a product in America “enjoys a price advantage over an American competitor” because the American firm has had to comply with the cap-and-trade regime, “we will impose a fee” on the foreign company “to equalize the price.” Protectionism-masquerading-as-environmentalism will thicken the unsavory entanglement of commercial life and political life.
McCain, who supports Lieberman’s unprecedented expansion of government’s regulatory reach, is the scourge of all lobbyists (other than those employed by his campaign). But cap-and-trade would be a bonanza for K Street, the lobbyists’ habitat, because it would vastly deepen and broaden the upside benefits and downside risks that the government’s choices mean for businesses.
McCain, the political hygienist, is eager to reduce the amount of money in politics. But cap-and-trade, by hugely increasing the amount of politics in the allocation of money, would guarantee a surge of money into politics.
Regarding McCain’s “central facts,” the U.N.‘s World Meteorological Organization, which helped establish the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change — co-winner, with Al Gore, of the Nobel Peace Prize — says global temperatures have not risen in a decade. So Congress might be arriving late at the save-the-planet party. Better late than never? No. When government, ever eager to expand its grip on the governed and their wealth, manufactures hysteria as an excuse for doing so, then: better never.
So does Robert Samuelson.
We’ll have to discard the old adage, “Everyone talks about the weather, but no one does anything about it.” In this era of global warming, it is inoperative, because the whole point of controlling greenhouse gas emissions is to do something about the weather. This promises to be hard and perhaps futile, but there are good and bad ways of attempting it. One of the bad ways is cap-and-trade. Unfortunately, it’s the darling of environmental groups and their political allies.
The chief political virtue of cap-and-trade — a complex scheme to reduce greenhouse gases — is its complexity. This allows its environmental supporters to shape public perceptions in essentially deceptive ways. Cap-and-trade would act as a tax, but it’s not described as a tax. It would regulate economic activity, but it’s promoted as a “free market” mechanism. Finally, it would trigger a tidal wave of influence-peddling, as lobbyists scrambled to exploit the system for different industries and localities. This would undermine whatever the system’s abstract advantages.
The Senate is debating a cap-and-trade proposal, and although it’s unlikely to pass, it will return because all the major presidential candidates support the concept. Cap-and-trade extends the long government tradition of proclaiming lofty goals that are impossible to achieve. We’ve had “wars” against poverty, cancer and drugs; but poverty, cancer and drugs remain. President Bush called his landmark education law No Child Left Behind rather than the more plausible Few Children Left Behind. …
Some of our favorites comment on Obama’s escape from church. Jennifer Rubin is first.
… This one gets the trifecta for dishonesty, or perhaps cluelessness. First, it is, of course, not the case that his Christian faith is being questioned. I know of no commentator, critic, or political opponent who has done that. What is at issue is his propensity to hang out with hatemongers who suggest his current post-racial theme is a pose. Second, he apparently lacks any cultural or political compass if he really believed that Wright et al. would not become an issue. Was it self-delusion? Or is he so out of touch with average Americans that he was unable to predict what would be deeply offensive to millions of Americans? And finally, notice how he impugns the motives of those who raise concerns about his association with Trinity. They are on a footing, in his book, with those perpetrating the “He’s a Muslim” canard. But the former are not perpetrating a lie. They are discussing and probing the beliefs, sincerity, and character of the man who wants to be President.
The Trinity cast of characters and Obama’s reaction to them have been more revealing than more a dozen-plus debates, all the speeches, and just about anything that has happened in over a year of campaigning. It might be even more revealing if the media would take their role seriously and press Obama on some of these obvious points. But Obama, however inadvertently, has done a fairly good job of letting us know how he makes both political and moral judgments. And that is perhaps the most important thing to know about a potential President.
Then Scott Johnson from Power Line.
… Perhaps the entire saga is little more than a tribute to the incomprehension of unsophisticated outsiders. Such outsiders lack the tools necessary to understand the reflections of Reverend Wright and his ilk in churches espousing black liberation theology. As in “Cool Hand Luke,” according to Obama, what we have here is failure to communicate. Unfortunately, not a single member of the press sought further elaboration from Obama on that point.
Every installment of this saga reveals Obama to be a deeply opportunistic politician, ready to beat a hasty retreat from yesterday’s statement of cherished principle in order to fight another day. Each installment of the saga also reveals the organs of the mainstream media to be Obama’s handmaidens. From March 18 forward they have cheered on Obama’s every step, even when Obama’s succeeding steps proved them fools.
In the aftermath of this saga, it should begin to dawn on attentive observers that Barack Obama represents a type that flourishes on many college campuses. The technical term that applies to Obama is b.s. artist. Obama is an overaged example of the phenomenon, but his skills in the art have brought him great success and he’s not giving it up now.
Marty Peretz wonders if we can learn something from airport security in Israel.
News Biscuit, Borowitz and Scrappleface are here.