Sarah Palin Endorses Hamas

..."someone so comprehensively unprepared for the vice presidency".

I suppose if she was called Barak Obama and going for the Presidency her total lack of experience would be OK. 

As for Gaza, it is the perfect example of what a democracy is suppposed to do.

It gives the population the government they want and deserve. The population had a choice between gangsters and fascists and they chose the fascists. They chose, hate, war, terrorism and genocide against the Jews. Let their be no confusion about how they supposedly really want peace and coexistence. They want war and war is what they will get. Palin is right to say we should support those who want democracy. After seeing video of Hamas thugs machine gunning dozens of Fatah thugs cowering face down on the streets of Gaza, it  makes me think they don't really get this democracy thing. Winning does not mean you get to butcher the opposition (sorry if that's disappointing to you). 

I personally fell off my chair when you wrote "Ahmadinejad came to power in a more-or-less democratic election". Gee, I would say less...much less. Although I hear he could have done quite well with the gay/lesbian/bi/transgender community if it exited in Iran. And you have the stones to attack Palin?

I think the hatred against Palin exists because it reminds you of how much an empty suit your front runner is compared to McCain. Palin actually has run governments before, unlike, say Joe Biden who runs his mouth (embarressingly), votes (always on the wrong side of history) and hits the talk show circuit every other sunday for the last 30 years and knows every Washington hack reporter by his/her first name

(provided their first name is "Hey, buddy" "Hey, pal")

I look forward to the televised Palin/Biden debate as well. It might be as good as the televised Hoover/Roosevelt debate of 1932. Biden remembers it well.  Apprently so did genius Katie Couric since she was afraid to call him on it. Obama probably wondered in which one of the 57 states it took place in. Or was it only 53 states back then? 

You really miss the author's point. He is saying that Palin did not know that Hamas was elected to govern the Palestinian Authority. That reflects poorly on her. Were I an American, I would want a knowledgeable vice-presidential candidate.

Jeffrey is not discussing whether 'liberalisation'--the introduction of certain democratic practices, such as elections, or democratic institutions--necessarily prevents Islamic fundamentalist organisations from attaining power.

I think the answer regardless is that liberalisation does no such thing. Democratic institutions exist simply to better express the popular will. They do not necessarily promote the liberal political philosophy/ideology, which is what we need to do.

As to how we should do that, I don't know. I suggest that Western countries engage in a concerted anti-Islamist media campaign aimed both at Western and non-Western audiences. Western governemnts nees to counter the idiocy of the Islamist, pan-Arab, and dictatorial socialist movements. The only means by which they can do that is by providing sensible coverage of world events and by revealing the conspiracy theories that run rampant there for what they are: forgeries and products of ignorance. Political thought in the Middle East is quite simply paralysed by conspiracy theory.

Rob, just what was the point of flinging out "gay/lesbian/bi/transgender community?"  Sounds mighty similar to tossing out "I got jewed by that shopkeeper," a few decades ago.  Let's not insult the current scapegoats just because our knowledge and vocabulary are lacking and we don't have "the stones" to argue effectively, ok? 

News Flash genius:

The point is that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmedinedjad said last year at Columbia University that gays do not exist in Iran. The very fact that you assume any mention of the  "gay/lesbian/bi/transgender" community is an insult perfectly projects your own bigotry and ignorance. I assumed that most readers actually know what I am talking about  and you obviously do not. I am glad I had the chance to educate you Mr/Miss/Ms Whateveryournameis. I If you don' respond I will also assume that your deeply embarrassed by your own ignorance.

Reading is fun-da-mental! Try it sometime.                                                                                                       ?" 

Actually, Rob, if you read Ahmadinejad's recent interview with Amy Goodman (http://www.democracynow.org), you'll see that he did not mean that there were no gays in Iran in the sense that there are no unicorns there. The actual quote was

"In Iran, we don’t have homosexuals like in your country. We don’t have that in our country."

The emphasis is on "like in your country", that is, free to express their sexuality, demand rights , participate openly in civil society, etc. He knows full well that some Iranis are gay, he just wants them to keep it to themselves. Of course, he's a huge asshat for promoting such foolish and cruel restrictions upon the human spirit, but it's best for all of us to oppose his actual bigotries rather than invent fictional ones.

Oh, and he never threatened to wipe Israel off the map, either. He merely predicted Zionism's eventual place upon the trash heap of history. Quite right about that, even if he's a dunce re human liberty.

Rob you're a fucking idiot.
there, they're, their.

Additionally, I believe it's embarrass, not "embarress."

"I suppose if she was called Barak Obama and going for the Presidency her total lack of experience would be OK."
-Have you heard Obama say anything about Hamas? I sure as shit haven't. And as far as I know he doesn't link his ethnic background to having foreign policy experience with Africa.

Read a fucking book or visit a coast sometime.

The Jews will probably no longer be a nation deserving of their properly recognized statehood just as soon as Palestinian nationalism is erased from existence. Oh wait, that's right! The latter has already been replaced by Islamist nationalism. Quite an improvement.

Sooner or later you guys are going to have to abandon your post-Ottoman Imperial griping and accept that the nation-state is the cornerstone of the global order. The only ones in the trash heap of history are the Soviets who rejected that entire system in much the same way that you seem to selectively do with certain parts of it, Ismail. Of course it would help if you even understood enough to realize that much.

I got this Ahmadinejad freak totally wrong. He is MLK in a trench coat and a beard. He loves Jews and wants a nuke just for show.

Thank goodness Amy Goodman cleared that up. Speaking of lipstick on a pig, its that evil Palin woman you have to watch out for; not lovable Ma-Mudd.

Now seriously Ismail, are you yanking my chain or are you truly that stupid?

Anonymous

In 2006, Senator Obama did visit Kenya where he did involve himself in internal politics although he did nothing for his half-brother George who lives in poverty.

Thanks for correcting my spelling. If that's how you get off, by all means go at it.

At least I got you to pick up a dictionary if not a history book.

Good luck with being a total ignoramus - did I spell that right?

If you need a further definition, look in a mirror.  

Palin's answer was normal. She ducked the question. That is what politicians do, when they are asked unanswerable questions, or questions they don't want to talk about now. That is part of their job, both before and after being elected. Do you think this is school?

She said something related to the question, at least a little bit, that was what she wanted to say.

Schoolteachers insist Little Johnny stick to the exact question he is asked, rap rap on the desk, but you can't exact that of politicians. You have a right to ask. You do not necessarily have a right to a complete, truthful answer, right now this very minute. What if it can't be solved right now? What if this isn't the time to talk about it? You can ask, but it's not you who is in charge, or will be accountable for what really happens, in the real world.

Palin didn't say anything wrong or dumb. She just neatly sidestepped an awful problem. So what? They all do that, on both sides of the aisle. They are supposed to.

People fret about "not wanting more of the same." But, wait a minute. We are still alive. Yes, let's have more of that. More of the same. There have been no more 9-11's in the US, only in: Spain (train), England (London train), Russia (school horror). And, big parts of Paris are no-go zones. Also, Sweden. But not in the US. What would be so bad about more of the same of that? Yes, please, let's have more of the same. Troop deaths: each one is horrible. They died, so you didn't have to. Other countries are studying: how we keep the war's losses so low. Not high. Low. Civil liberties: nobody has bothered you, in any way. You write whatever you want. You fly anyplace. You talk to anybody. You get all your mail, no problem, unopened. You don't care who you are seen with. Yes, let's have more of the same. We don't need change. We need more of the same.

As for the financial problems, well, you know who the second largest recipient of the Frannie Freddie payouts went to, one assumes. Find out, if you don't know.

Nobody perfect is running. Some are too young. Some are on the old side. There is a thin-ness to some backgrounds. But please, no change. Maintain course and speed. More of the same.

Obama was the second largest recipient of the Fannie Freddie political gifts. By a long shot. Find the link yourself.

I'm fed up with you people. If any of you Palin-defenders want to retain any sense of self-respect - intellectual integrity is a lost cause - you'll stop peddling the idea that the answers Palin has supplied in her recent interviews are "normal" or sufficient. You're phonies that do a extreme disservice to a Republican party that's struggling to remain ideologically afloat.  And it's not a  matter of Palin not giving the right answer when faced with a complex question about the economy or foreign policy, as Fareed Zaakaria has said, it’s that she clearly does not understand the questions.

She's clearly a terrific orator. She has charisma and wit in spades. And perhaps one day, after she exposes herself to the major issues of the day, she'll be ready for higher office. 

But now, especially now, she's not ready to handle the position. Not even close. And the real thought-leaders and stewards of conservativism are almost unilateral in this view. McCain choice of a running mate was pure Rovian self-serving opportunism. 

That's why I've had enough of the destructive intellectual mediocrity of someone like Rob, especially on the pages of Jewcy. This is more than simply an issue of being unqualified -  Palin is a horrifying symbol of how little we've come to ask from our political establishment, from our leaders, in return for satisfying some of our reflexive partisan inclinations.

As Matt Taibii has written, this is a scary, scary time. "The great insight of the Palin VP choice is that huge chunks of American voters no longer even demand that their candidates actually have policy positions; they simply consume them as media entertainment, rooting for or against them according to the reflexive prejudices of their demographic, as they would for reality-show contestants or sitcom characters."

Well, you have a point.

Now that it is illegal to be a white male, they run have to find a woman. In  order to differentiate her strongly from Hillary, who lost, it had to be a much younger woman, a babe. Cute appearance and charm seem to be coin of the realm these days. She had to be as good-looking as Obama, who is young and thin. Externals seem to be ruling, as you say.

Fortunately, she has ability.

Yes, her background is a little thin.

But look at the other side. Talk about thin background.

At least she has actually run something. She's a governor. She has run a state. She's an executive. Senators are lawmakers. They write law. They're not executives. They don't run organizations where you can look at results. And Palin has remarked that Obama hasn't even done that. "He has written two memoirs, but no laws" she says, and it seems to be true. Mrs. Clinton has never even had her own law firm. She has always been "the-one-with-him", her Rhodes scholar husband. Palin, at least, is not coat-tailing on any husband. Neither, to be fair, is Pelosi.

If you can do it from Arkansas, why not Alaska?

I don't like the Creationism. But I am more afraid of getting Marx than I am of losing Darwin. Darwin is here to stay, no worries. Marxism just plain doesn't work, and has lots of friends, so, plenty of worries. Better Bush 3 than Marx 2.

Let us be patient and have faith. We live under a government of laws, not of men.

Thank GOD we finally have two senators running against each other.

It means that for the first time in, like, forever, we can actually have a substantive debate on the issues. Which is what scares McCain shitless.

This idea of simply "bein' large and in charge" as an end-all be-all qualification for becoming the president is farcical. It reveals nothing in the way of having put any thought into defining the actual role of the president and the executive branch in its relationship with the electorate (a lack made painfully obvious by the current administration), and legitimizes the idea that corrupt, small-time crooks heading their empires at the state level, should bring the same level of self-serving BS into the oval office.

Palin was on the Board of Directors of the Welfare Queen of The 50 States: Alaska. Perhaps she's being honest in wanting to make Washington less corrupt and prone to cronyism absolute loyalty. Her penchant for secrecy, intimidation and disrespect for the rule of law make it highly unlikely that such an ostensible intention would ever be implemented, however. No matter how much she says that's what she wants to do. She's a good enough politician to not mean it anyway.

The GOP has no credibility in reforming government and is too addicted to payola and the current game to do otherwise. And even assuming McCain really wants to change the game, his priorities and judgment about how to actually implement such an agenda are way out of wack. The American people are right to sense that the Dems, especially under Obama's leadership, are the safer bet for that as well as for all other things.

Perhaps she's being honest in wanting to make Washington less corrupt and prone to cronyism absolute loyalty.

Cronyism has been the sum total of her staffing philosophy as governor. Consider her Secretary of Agriculture - a personal friend with no experience whatsoever. Sorry, have to take that back. She claimed that she "likes cows".

I'm telling you - they're absolutely bankrupt both intellectually and ethically. Their ideas of reform consistently revolve around petty dictatorships that are benign at best, and that gut the rule of law and snub the electorate and any media that dares question them at their worst in general. They reject dissent the good, old-fashioned American way - by not acknowledging it. 

The president swears one little sentence, nothing more. He promises that, when he leaves office, the Constitution will still be alive and well. He takes on the task of seeing to that, more than any other person. That is his job, and that is his only job.

That is not about philosophy. It means the country has to still be here, and not be taken over by anybody.

It means one law for everybody, no special cases, no no-go zones, no parallel court systems for another culture, no bathrooms only one religion can use at airports, no taxicab problems at airports for people with guide dogs or liquor, no covered faces on driver's license photos, no forced marriage, no honor killings seen as unfortunate but necessary, no polygamy. It means it's ok to print cartoons. Any cartoons. And there are some pretty edgy cartoons at the top of this very web site.

The biggest payola of our time, the Fannie Freddie mortgage thing, seems to have few Republicans', and many Democrats', fingerprints on it.

The president's role is not to ponder "his relationship with the electorate", and be seen as cool. He is not the country's First Friend. He is its defender. He is indeed large and in charge. Otherwise, we get invisible powers behind the throne. We have to SEE who is REALLY in charge. With a pretty, nice-talking lightweight as visible window-dressing, the real leadership may by invisible, and not accountable. We don't need an inspirational figure, we need an executive.

When the next presidency ends, the country has to still have free speech guarantees. Including the right to say awful, nasty things, that are in terrible taste. That are hurtful. That are insulting. That are mean and cruel. That make people cry. We have our libel laws; otherwise almost all speech is protected. That's fine. It has to still be that way four years from now. I mean, look at Code Pink. Nobody is arresting them.

This is not about "reform," whatever that means. It is not about everybody having the same amount of money, a kindergarten-level concept for children who understandably think everybody should get the same size slice of birthday cake. No socialists need apply. You get to keep your stuff here. Why do you think everybody comes here? The sun and moon shine everywhere, just a few hours later. No, it's for the Constitutional protections of speech, person, and property.

Oh Anonymous, I feel so challenged by your secret defense of Bush/Cheney's presumed respect for the rule of law, that I just don't know what I'll do.

Actually, the only quote of mine you managed to sneak into your rootin' tootin' small town sherrif's vision of 'law and order' and stuff, is one that I thought of re-writing. The "actual role of the president and the executive branch in relation to the electorate" probably would have been more accurate. But, then again, no one's accusing you of being a constitutional scholar or anything.

To deny that the administration has curtailed civil liberties at all is a joke. Yes, it's not China, nor is it even Lincoln's America during the war between the states, for that matter - (from which we also eventually recovered our right to habeas corpus), but the actions have and were meant to have a chilling effect, which Bush lacks the brain to respect and Cheney lacks the ethical decency to consider. Read Glenn Greenwald or any one of a number of legal commentators for the details. And as for the antics of Code Pink, read and watch either his or any other journalist's account of how liberally conspiracy laws were applied to them or anyone else in Minneapolis a month ago - complete with jackboots, body armor and all the other fun and intentionally, overly intimidating dress-up antics. But I warn you, doing so might require actually educating yourself on exactly what conspiracy law is. As it stands, I'm certainly not trusting your ability for legal analysis generally, let alone assuming you have anything approximating credentials or expertise in the field.

 This is not about "reform," whatever that means.

Exactly right. So go tell that to Palin et al. and every other corrupt ignoramus of the law who use such ignorance to trample over it under the banner of that "reform" campaign sloganeering they're so enamored of. That was the point. It's her disingenuous talking point. Not mine.

And then go tell her about which branch of government the vice president belongs to, as she seems as confused as Cheney does about that. Or else go lecture those Middle Eastern tyrants, against which you must pathetically stoop to contrasting your own country in order to make the latter even look decent, about how useless separation of powers is to limiting the reach of the government in a modern democracy.

And the president's first duty and allegiance is to defending the Constitution, not the country. But first you'd have to know a damn thing about the Constitution to understand that. Or else you could always travel back 250 years into the time warp you came from and continue fantasizing that we live under the kind, doting, inept and equally protectionist-minded monarch you obviously long for, and that the American Revolution never even happened. How comforting that would be.  

Thanks to School House Rock I can even it sing it to you.

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence,[1] promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

In short....defend the country.

The Preamble does not have the force of law and does not allow for the evisceration of the constitutional principles it later spells out to the letter, which are what the president is sworn to uphold. Although, perhaps for you Rob, School House Rock might serve as a preamble to a slightly less elementary form of civic education, the Wikipedia:

"The Preamble does not grant any particular authority to the federal government and it does not prohibit any particular authority."

Any other pieces of folk wisdom masquerading as genuine knowledge you'd like to dazzle me with?

What was that thing in Palin's right ear during the debate?  I didn't know she wore hearing aids.  It would be nice if a young public figure like Palin would "come out" about their hearing loss, so people would stop thinking hearing loss was only an elder's problem.

Code Pink is not as harmless as you would like to think. Haven't they met with leaders we are at war with, just recently? Iran? Love and kisses exchanged?

They did, and do, basically, WHAT THEY WANT, without loss of anything tangible. No loss of liberty, person, or money.

Thanks for the Lincoln reference.

The point is, the president has a basic duty to keep us alive. You can't have a Constitution without LIVING people who support it. Corpses don't count. We are still here. We are still expressing ourselves freely. We are alive. That is not as easy to be as it sounds.

There has been so much peace, liberty, prosperity and progress in the past sixty years that people have forgotten that life is not a philosophical discussion.They have been relieved of all material concerns. Yes, there is going to be economic pain now, going forward. But people's thinking is not yet reflecting that.

I hope everybody will be all right.With good culture, we might have a chance to get through. We are going to learn to cook simple cheap food in bulk, and have cheap dinners in our friends' studio apartments. That is going to be our fun. No more going out for drinks.

Yes, the last people who survived this kind of thing were indeed small-town in their mentality. They cared about morals and neighbors. That kind of thing. Well, it worked for them and is worth considering.

 "actual role of the president and the executive branch in relation to the electorate"

... to the electorate? Why, to keep them alive. After that, they govern themselves through their elected representatives. The president does not have a direct role right over the electorate at at all. It's YOU who are sounding monarchist.

You have a huge point, however, that we look to the president to represent our ideals, our culture. Bill Clinton damaged that hugely - (those who publicized his doings did damage also). You are correctly looking for an improvement in that area.

Indeed, making a moral statement is a big part of Obama's appeal. "Fairness to persons of color, long aggrieved, and worse." (Would he be running, if he were the exact same man in every way, but white? No. There are plenty of handsome, thin, young, white Harvard grads with pretty wives, two cute daughters, and a year or two in state legislatures, who have been community activists, and they are not even considered. Nor should they be.)

But staying alive comes first, obviously, before moral statements. Dead people don't make moral statements.

I don't see much love for the Constitution in the philosophy of the left. Am I wrong? Do you? They have that Saul Alinsky mentality - " ... by any means necessary". That doesn't sound much like " I can't stand your ideas, but I will defend your right to say them".

That Alinsky mentality is why I do not want a president from the Left.

We have only had vaguely left-ish presidents up until now, not the real thing. We are about to get the real thing. It is a concern.

I don't like the activist training camps, the  personal veneration, the coins (medallions) bearing his likeness struck in England - (we don't DO that!) , the shush-the-talk-shows caller campaigns.

As for Palin's hires, most pols don't hire their enemies, you know. Do you?

I need to see sincerity in that oath and I don't.

Senator Obama linked to his finance minister Penny Pritzker

Penny Pritzker owns Grand Hyatt hotels

Grand Hyatt hotels host replacement theologists, ie World Council of Churches, who have a theological problem that Jews prosper

World Council of Churches meets with Ahmadinejad to see if he can solve thorny theological problem

Yes, we will get Ismail, Khoffler et al who say that iran isnt threatening Israel-why does Iran fund and supply Hezbollah and Hamas? Why does Iran hate Israel- I heve never quite understood

What is up with all the freaking Right-Wingers? We're already having to shoo away the Jew haters on the other posts, and then a bunch of yutzes keep popping up with this lunatic idea that our Constitutional rights are meaningless by virtue of George Bush's mere assertion that he can save a life here or there by gutting them (so can an outright smoking ban, nutter, or a gun ban, for that matter. Or a national speed limit).

And then with the resentment-mongering against Obama's status as a uniter and the agitating against his interest in reconciliation. As for "mentality", we need a pragmatist who's willing to solve problems right now, not an ideologue so addicted to their own desperate and impoverished vision of humanity as to facilitate it with horrible policies that impose it on the rest of us. Given Obama's unprecedented 10-point lead, it looks like the "electorate" you sneer at agrees. Much as they did when another "do-nothing" defender of the status quo, who gave us the Great Depression, lost his re-election bid to FDR.

But keep going on about everyone else's supposed "mentality" while you wallow in your own avoidance of reality. That's what some conservatives must do, I suppose, when there are real problems to solve that they've let fester for far too long. But do maintain the pride, though. It will come in useful once you move over and let the Dems rebuild the country you've torn apart.

FDR didn't like Pearl Harbor, and Bush didn't like 9-11. They both did something about it. May I remind you almost four thousand civilians were killed in an act of war on our soil?

There were plenty of civil liberties issues in FDR's time - many more than today. Internment of whole ethnicities, like that.

Do your women relatives and friends like having bank accounts, driver's licenses, educations, and visible faces? Maybe you should talk to them about civil liberties.

It's not color! Colin Powell would have been fine! His wife has no taste for it, or he would be running.  

Yo Anonymous, America is no more in danger of being taken over by al Qaeda than it was in danger of being taken over by Japanese Americans. Al Qaeda's goal was to humiliate the US and to cripple it economically and diplomatically - not to have "Muslim extremists" take it over. Thanks to Bush's actions, they have now fully accomplished their goal.

Bush has people like you to thank for that: People who are as afraid of Muslims today as Americans in 1942 were afraid of Japanese Americans.

Stop being a silly coward. Or don't. But the rest of the country can get over fear long enough to actually think strategically and save America. Don't hold that against them, if you can keep your inferiority complex in check for long enough to help it.

Liberal Democrat FDR locked up thousands of innocent Japanese-Americans after Pearl Harbor and executed traitors and enemy combatants.

President George W. Bush ran to the nearest Mosque after 9/11 to hug and kiss Muslim-Americans and cheerfully takes all kinds of vicious greif from the far-left in this nation..

Please stop being stupid.....please.

Nobody thought the Japanese Americans were massing to take over. THEY liked their adopted country, the way it was. (That's out of fashion.) After all, they came here for a reason. The point was, as a population, they quite unwillingly could give cover to genuine enemy agents. They understood that could be a problem, and were pretty good sports. They were quite clear in their minds who they wanted to win the war, and it wasn't Japan. The interrment was awful, and we obviously hope nothing like that ever happens again.

The Empire of Japan did indeed want to take over the US.

AQ seems to have been checked, to some extent.

Facts speak: they have not been heard from lately, and we have had no further 9-11s, although the rest of the world has had them. That has to be described as success.

You are forgetting that, if their success had been complete on 9-11, either the US Capitol (or possibly the White House) would no longer exist. The Pentagon would also no longer exist.

The only reason your country was not completely castrated on 9-11, both administratively and militarily, is that they did not succeed completely. Yes, that qualifies as an attempted take-over, and is a legit causus belli. The Pentagon had just been reinforced on the side they struck. They didn't make it to Washington DC, because of an unscheduled stop in Pennsylvania. Their success in New York showed that their methods were extremely effective. It is odder that they did NOT succeed further, than a complete success would have been, given their extremely effective method. Its effectiveness was certainly demonstrated in New York. The other buildings they were aiming at were much smaller then the Twin Towers. They got BOTH Towers. The Towers were quite imposing, and both are no longer in existence. There is nothing there, where they once were.

So, it's not about being a silly coward.

You know that Bush can hug and kiss as many Muslims and hold hands with as many Saudi tyrants and oil tycoons as he wants to, Rob. The fact that he can still rile up fools like Anon over their cowardly fear of the Muslim terrorist "other" - (and even he admits that their ability to damage the US was restricted to destroying buildings, and does not presently extend to being capable of taking over the US government, our country or our political system) - is what counts.

Anon: the capitol, the pentagon - buildings. And the latter is a very ugly building. The system of government, that you think should capitulate all its priorities and principles to rank fear, is much more worthy of preservation than a fucking building. But don't worry. Once the government gives way to native fascists, authoritarians and other fear-mongers I will recommend they employ you as their chief architect, okay?   

Ok, anon. It was a causus belli and the damage administratively could have been much worse. You say they're in check (although as a symbolic target, it would be much better if they got bin Laden but he's obviously more politically valuable to Bush and McCain alive as that gives them something to run on).

Now, other than that, did you have a point? Or did you just want to get me to become as confused as you are and believe that the year is 2001? Or are you just so obsessed with 9/11 that you'd like to celebrate it, the way Cheney apparently does?

But keep agitating for the Right and Keating Five alum McCain. Given his penchant for theft and ignorance of finance, I assume you think he'll do wonders for the current state of our economic devastation - which was al Qaeda's other key goal.

McCain is old. He is a senator, not a governor, or other executive. His economic knowledge could be better. He has a temper. But somebody has to be president, and the person has to have seen age fifty, for crying out loud, and, not be a socialist. This isn't Europe. Would you like to live in Europe?

Palin would NOT be an obvious pick for the presidency, either. She has ability, but her resume is also thin. No, Hillary would not have done. Her resume is very much like Obama's, and unlike him, she hasn't even made it on her own. She's just Mrs. Him. I would have considered Colin Powell very seriously, maybe preferred him to McCain. But Powell's wife isn't into it, so he is not available. 

The lefty kid is not presidential material. I am just glad the Republican ticket is minimally acceptable, without cries of joy. I think McCain will live through it, he looks strong. I am also quite OK with "more of the same," because I am grateful to be still here to vote at all.

Osama Bin Laden hasn't made a credible video in a long time. It's always old footage. You still think he's alive? He was know to have had a cancer, or kidney problems, I'm not sure what. Yes, he was a master bandit. No, they couldn't catch him. If he hadn't got sick, they might have got him by now. After all, they got  Saddam Hussein.

You are very America-centric. You take no notice of the London train bombing, the Madrid train bombing, the Russian elementary school blood-bath, the no-go zones in Paris itself, the city of Voltaire and the Rights of Man, and the Swedish no-go areas. 

We haven't had any other 9-11s. Is that because nobody would like to do one? Do you believe that? 

Is eight years a long time, since 2001? It's not eighty years.

As for the Keating-Five, I don't have the impression McCain was deep into that. I should vote for a kid, because of the Keating Five thing? Seriously? The kid HIMSELF seems to have misplaced a lot of money, by the way. He was the second largest benefactor of Fannie-Freddie political gifts. By a very,very long shot, not a little bit.

Socialism has been tried, and it does not work. You don't know that, because you are so America-centric, and it has never been tried here.

Listen carefully: the financial meltdown is a skillful act of war from the East. Many Americans had houses who were barely hanging onto them; then heating oil  doubled in price. These home-owners could not allow their persons and their pipes to freeze. Frozen pipes burst. Frozen people die. After paying for oil, they had no money left to make their mortgage payments.  No mortgage payments means no banks, and other financial entities and institutions who were holding these debts. The US taxpayer had to cover it all, then, the market lost confidence in the US consumer, who has been holding up the world. How is he going to keep on buying?

Having lost militarily, the other side understandably jacked up the price of their oil. By two times at least. Hey, it's their oil! They can do what they want with it. The results have been good for them. Very clever! The obvious thing to do! It's odd they hadn't done it before.

Perhaps they waited until the tough guy became a lame duck president. Clever. Somebody told them economic anxiety is good for Democrats.

As for the buildings, you are forgetting that the people inside them are the point. If they had pulverized the Capitol, or the White House, and also the Pentagon, as they nearly did, they would also have eliminated a very large chunk of the class who runs things here. Without leadership, nothing works. Putting in new leadership is possible, but takes a while. It might have been a complete military loss. Yes, this is a big country with a lot of distributed leadership. But the head is the head. The fervor around this election shows the importance of the president, no? And we do have only one Pentagon. Without it, it's just your state's National Guard, and your local cops.

OK:

1) you don't look beyond the Atlantic, 2) you don't imagine events that could have happened very easily, but didn't, 3) you don't know about organizational chain of command, which is how things run, 4) You have not troubled yourself to investigate the very different culture which is confronting yours. Your ignorance of its thinking and its goals is complete and total. 5) You didn't have a friend in the Twin Towers, so it's yesterday's news for you. 6) You think other people are politically and intellectually influenced by psychological difficulties with the "other," when nobody these days hasn't had close contact with other cultures. Try taking a cab. The driver's name is not John Smith. It isn't Ira The Jew, either. Ira the Jew drove a cab thirty years ago.

I know much more about this Other than you do, exactly because I have NOT been too scared to look into it. Can YOU face the Other? You haven't dared to look straight at him, at him, to see him as he is. You actually think he is a Proletariat. He isn't. He is a Theocrat. He is a Jesuit. He is "l'infame". He is fighting for his life, and skillfully. You are, too. But he knows he is, and you don't.

It is a very big world, and not everybody thinks the same. No, it's not just different clothes, different music, and a few quaint interesting customs.

Other than that, you are a wise and seasoned analyst and observer. Thank you for your views. Good luck to us all.

Anon,

Thank you kindly for your complimentary concluding words, despite whatever disagreements we might still have. I harbor no illusions about the mass-homicidal intentions of too many of the "other", and I realize that although the intentions of our most dangerous adversaries are not at all driven by wistful and possibly Socialist-influenced Western projections of lower-class struggle, the majority of the rest of them in the West are just trying to make a buck and live life - like the rest of us. Too many of them, you rightly point out, are not. But we mustn't let that allow us to lose focus on figuring out what are the most important aspects of the nature of the reality we face.  

The dangers posed to us, both through mass acts of violence and economically, need to be taken deadly serious, and, I would argue, through a non-ideological lens. Or at least through a lens as unencumbered by ideology as possible, no matter how pro-American our aims and ultimate goals. My own inclinations are minarchist, anti-authoritarian and devolved/capitalist. But my wish is for leaders who will make use of expert opinion over ideology whenever warranted. If this involves more regulation economically or a better understanding of the actual politics of the Middle East and the world generally in determining our foreign policy, so be it. Or if it calls for the opposite, namely deregulation and belligerence for the sake of saving American face, so be it. I make no calls to look to European policies as a guidepost, at least not simply for the sake of looking up to Europe. And if all this leaves more questions than answers, then I accept that and only hope that whoever we get into the White House in January is up to the task of seeking the most rational, comprehensive and non-politically-oriented answers to all of them.

Best Regards,

"But my wish is for leaders who will make use of expert opinion over ideology whenever warranted."

"Over ideology" would not play well in the ideology-framed discussions at the houses of Wright or Ayers. Your phrase "expert opinion" is code for "what works", which quickly becomes "not the same tasks, or rewards, for everybody". You are much further to the right than you realize, and you may not have a nice day if your guy wins. As for your being anti-authority, when he himself is Authority, he is not going to like your attitude.

I am not sure what "devolved capitalism", but if it is living frugally, and operating a small business, sure, go to it.

As for devolving,

people who can put dinner on the table for six, (or four if it is a folding card table in a studio apartment), cheaply, and, who can also be unifying, positive force socially, are going to come back into fashion. We are not going to have the money to eat out, and we are going to need our economic and psychic bruises soothed, by being invited guests. (Don't show up with empty hands. Bring fruit. A lot of fruit.)

People with those skills used to be called "wives," or was it "mothers".  Some men will try it, but it will be found that the sense of unthreateningness, which is very unifying and comforting, works better with it being a woman. And, peace at the table is best kept if there is a patriarch in the house, even if he is slumped under his newspaper in a corner. When there are a lot of people around, there has to be a sergeant-at-arms, even an old, asleep one.

An unemployed man looks better if he has a wife at home. Though lowly, he is above somebody. Her. His dinner is waiting. He is king at his little table, and can proudly invite you to it. (You need the honor, and the food.) Wives are going to come back into fashion. Particularly the kind with jobs. As women get hungrier, they are going to ask for more. They are going to remember their social value. The third date rule may go away. The cleverer ones will learn how to make home-made this, and home-made that. That is called SELF-MARKETING. They are going to need the kind of man who sticks around, and who can keep the peace. They used to be called "husbands".

Lessons on how to survive in this new environment will be given by the old. For a price. The price is food. Attention. Consideration. That used to be called "manners".

Somebody is even going to dig up the Ten Commandments, in this new climate of hardship. They will need the social order, the dignity, and the hope that they contain.

As for government solving it all, with subsidies, and soup kitchens, that's for the Tooth Fairy. That's called printing money, and the currency will just turn to nothing, if they do that. So they can't. The dollar is high now, because there's no place else to go, but its value doesn't grow on trees, or fall from the moon. It's created by real work.

Real work will come back eventually. But there is going to be a period of shake-out, adjustment, and seeing who has: a cool head, good ideas, positivism, discipline, and persistence. The ability to get along with non-ideal people, and be realistic. Family life is going to be the engine. People are going to work long hours, and fall into dinner, and then collapse into bed. They will have no strength to do laundry or housework. They are not going to be able to do this by themselves.

Women: drive a hard bargain. Get a food processor, a crock pot, and a very large coffee urn. Learn what oil and vinegar is. In large bottles.

Life has to go on no matter who is president. Ask Grandma about that. Not Mom, she was too busy shocking Grandma in the Sixties.

but my impression is that you're reading far too much into what I say.

I never said I wasn't "to the right" in American terms. I'm not defining myself that way. I see myself as closest to a classical liberal (in Lockean parlance), which is the milieu under which Adam Smith (also considered a "liberal" at the time) also sprang forth. So I don't have a problem with private ownership. Never have. My benchmark is therefore in-line with mainstream free-market economics and looks favorably upon growth as an antidote to poverty. This is obviously not the same as taking a doctrinaire approach to peeling away regulation, or worse, maintaining a position so averse to any law regulating business that it strips away at basic expectations of transparency or reasonable accounting practices and other absolutely failed experiments passed under the right's banner of attacking government by any means possible.

Ayers is important in Chicago politics. Obama's associations with him were, if anything, and at the worst, bred moreso of the expediency required of all politicians in that environment than ideology. Much like Bush's associations with the Saudis, Rumsfeld's meetings with Saddam Hussein when we supplied him with chemical weapons in the 1980s, and so on and so forth. Perhaps this means that Obama will have an easier time not letting Ayers dictate policy than the Bushies had getting the Saudis and their other friends to refrain from dictating his administration's policy. But I'm sorry if you can't see it that way and assume that everyone is necessarily as corrupt and solely self-interested as your typical Republican.  

You have a point, nobody is pure.

However, your characterization  "corrupt and solely self-interested as your typical Republican" is plain silly. Talk about prejudice! Broad-brush demonizing is plain silly. That's what happens when people haven't actually had personal contact of a human kind with any Republicans. Perhaps you ought to attend a rodeo, or have a beer in a lower-end neighborhood and really listen to people and think about how it looks to them. They aren't wicked or bad. They aren't uncaring. If a Republican is are your "Other" well, don't be so scared. You don't have to agree with him to hear him out. If he's a bit rock-ribbed and reality-based, "take responsiblity" and all that, well, don't knock it. That's coming back into fashion in these hard times.

Thanks for talking. Have an easy fast. L'Shana Tova. Let the best man win. The Lord will provide.

Same to you re: the holidays. But what I say is not out of a lack for contact with Republicans. Much (at least half) of my extended family growing up felt more affiliated with Republicans. Not to the extent that they'd ever vote solely based on party, but that was a different day. Those were the days before the Republicans thought they could "define" the course of American culture and dictate which social values were worthy of political expression and which were not. I have no problem breaking bread with the poor, regardless of social habits. But where I live nowadays, they, along with most of the others, tend to vote Democrat.

But my criticisms and judgments come from reading the most insightful, honest and thought-provoking conservatives writing today. Most of them are astonished at where they believe their party has led itself. Ethical corruption isn't the sole province of someone affiliated with either political party (and I affiliate with neither), but intellectual corruption is another matter entirely. (Buckley's death will not help matters). Same with the lengths people will go to in order to justify their position and reconcile it with the need for political power. Most serious conservatives think that the Bush years have been a disaster. And the more of them I read, the more I'm inclined to agree.

As of now, my perspective of the political landscape is divided into rational versus anti-rational. A few years ago I felt the right was making (marginally) more sense to me. As of today, I have to admit that the left seems to be winning that contest hands-down. Don't count out the independent voter, or his clout. And be careful when it comes to either dismissing or over-simplifying his thought process.

L'Shana Tova.    

and perhaps it may be generational, because my father and I disagree over the same thing.

I noticed that your thoughts on generating wealth tend to emphasize hard work. My point is not to denigrate hard work, but to point out that irreversible increases in labor productivity in the nineties make it easier to emphasize that creating something of value is what counts. Simply put, with computers and the internet, it became exponentially easier to produce work of equal value. Or if you prefer, a much greater amount of work output, now enhanced with Microsoft Office and search engines, became possible without having to expend much more effort into it.

Much like with the industrial revolution and robotics, these advances should be embraced and need not create displacements as severe as before. With the prospect of outsourcing intellectual labor and the arrival of artificial intelligence, we are reaching the breaking-point of a dog-eat-dog mindset to competition. There is more room for examining the benefits of a harmonious work environment, for competing on the basis of how creatively you manage your workplace and design your product, and for other things that blur the distinction between fun and work.

In short, it makes less and less sense to define work as something you necessarily don't like doing, and more and more sense to define it as something that earns you money. Something that creates value. I think there is a greater opportunity for the enjoyment of things without financial value now. But there is just as much opportunity to make money, and for as many people to make as much money - as long as we make sure our leaders anticipate change, our markets are free from being overseen by conflicts of interest, and the people are awake enough to take note of all that.