Half Past Noon

I don’t follow political/economic blogs or thinkers like Davey does, so it could just be that I haven’t looked in the right places. However, it appears that the mainstream US media is ignoring the protectionism hidden inside Obama’s gargantuan stimulus package. (I always knew that it would pay off to read non-American media—thank God for the National Post.) A quote from my beloved Canadians:

An $819-billion version of the stimulus bill, passed last week in the House of Representatives, bans foreign iron and steel from being used in projects launched under the stimulus plan.

The more expensive Senate version, however, goes even further. It currently includes language requiring that all stimulus-related projects use only American-made goods.

Whoa! (Read the entire article here.) Why isn’t CNN, Fox News, or Drudge talking about this?

Some economists have already offered helpful editorials on the problem with protectionism and Obama’s economic strategies. Let me propose another way of looking at this situation.

I think it safe to claim that the USA holds the most responsibility for the global economic crisis, if only because they are the global economic leaders. (Blame and responsibility can definitely be doled out all around, but since America is the greatest global power, she ought to buck up and take the responsibility that comes with that position.) If America tries to save herself by enacting “Buy America” policies for all stimulus spending, it sends an appalling message to the rest of the world. How will the rest of the world recover if America refuses to take care of anyone except its own?

America already has a terrible reputation abroad. Some of it is undeserved, and some if it is envy. But an action like this—an action that can only be described as “selfish”—will give the entire world justification for hating the USA.

This is not an endorsement of the stimulus package—I remain as “free market” as ever, and I really wish the government would stop trying to solve the problem by printing more and more money. That said, if money is going to be dished out (which is inevitable at this point), it needs to be dished out in a helpful way. The “Buy America” part may be just one of many flaws with the stimulus package, but it’s the one that will matter to everyone who doesn’t live in America and whose lives will be made harder because of it.

Well, I’m finally done. No more quotes: the last parts of the book didn’t surprise me. Freddoso deals with Obama’s relationship with Jeremiah Wright, his view that “partial-birth abortion” ought to be considered a fundamental human right, and lays out the basic facts about Antoin Rezko. All well worth reading, even if not so quotable.

The Case Against Barack Obama will not convince you that Obama is the antichrist. It does not try to. Freddoso very careful avoids any such fearmongering. What he does do, however, is clearly demonstrate that Obama’s taglines of “Hope” and “Change we can believe in” are lies. Or at least that his political history doesn’t suggest that he’ll be any different from any other moneygrubbing, backscratching politician. From earmarking to voting “Present” on controversial issues (a staggering 130 times), Obama is no Mr. Smith. We have no reason to believe that Washington will be any better in 4 – 8 years, and I’m willing to wager that health care, unemployment, and poverty won’t have improved either.

Anyway, I recommend the book to all my fellow HPNers. If you want to borrow it, let me know. It’s an easy read, and I’m happy to make it the first entry in the communal HPN library. (See, Davey? I know how to share!)

Ezra Klein, associate editor of The American Prospect, is a talented liberal writer. He probably got too caught up in the moment when he wrote:

Obama’s finest speeches … enmesh you in a grander moment, as if history has stopped flowing passively by, and, just for an instant, contracted around you, made you aware of its presence, and your role in it. He is not the Word made flesh, but the triumph of word over flesh, over color, over despair … Obama is, at his best, able to call us back to our highest selves, to the place where America exists as a glittering ideal, and where we, its honored inhabitants, seem capable of achieving it, and thus of sharing in its meaning and transcendence.

Martin Snapp of the Bay Area Contra Costa Times, after comparing Obama to Moses, King David, and Luke Skywalker all in the same column (and no, none of it is in jest), gets to the really good part. He writes that the candidate’s followers “love him because he’s taught them to love themselves.” He then explains why Obama is unlike every other politician:

Clinton’s supporters think she would be the best president. Ditto for McCain’s. But the Obamaphiles want something more: They believe the country is going down the tubes, and they consider it their patriotic duty to lay aside all the old differences that have divided us for the past 40 years and work together for the common good.

– David Freddoso, The Case Against Barack Obama, pp. 62-63.

This is only a sampling of the quotes Freddoso includes in his chapter, “Obamessiah.” Believe it or not, the other quotes are even more astounding.

Judges 2:11-15 (ESV):

And the people of Israel did what was evil in the sight of the Lord and served the Baals. And they abandoned the Lord, the God of their fathers, who had brought them out of the land of Egypt. They went after other gods, from among the gods of the peoples who were around them, and bowed down to them. And they provoked the Lord to anger. They abandoned the Lord and served the Baals and the Ashtaroth. So the anger of the Lord was kindled against Israel, and he gave them over to plunderers, who plundered them. And he sold them into the hand of their surrounding enemies, so that they could no longer withstand their enemies. Whenever they marched out, the hand of the Lord was against them for harm, as the Lord had warned, and as the Lord had sworn to them. And they were in terrible distress.

I would fear, if it were not for the next verse (Judges 2:16): “Then the Lord raised up judges, who saved them out of the hand of those who plundered them.”

The question that burns on my mind is, Who will be such men in these times?

Ronald Davis was a paid consultant for Obama, who called him the “guru of petitions.” Davis’s job on January 2, 1996 was to look at each of the nearly 1,600 signatures that stat senator Alice Palmer’s campaign had collected in order [to] place her on the ballot for re-election. Davis was supposed to find a way to challenge and disqualify as many signatures as possible. The goal was to throw her off the ballot.

Palmer, the long-time South Side activist and state senator since 1991, had gathered 1,580 signatures, more than twice the 757 required to get on the ballot. But Davis and his team, over a few days, disqualified hundreds of them, one at a time. Obama says he was uneasy with this hardball tactic. In the end, however, he would say of the five-year incumbent Palmer: “If you couldn’t run a successful petition drive, then that raised questions in terms of how effective a representative you were going to be.”

With that justification, he approved the project, and he checked up on its progress nightly. One by one, Obama’s “petitions guru” disqualified Palmer’s signatures for one reason or another. According to one local newspaper at the time: “Some of the problems include printing registered voters name [sic] instead of writing, a female voter got married after she registered to vote and signed her maiden name, registered voters signed the petitions but don’t live in the 13th district.”

Soon enough, Davis and his crew had brought Palmer below 757 valid signatures.

They had thrown an incumbent state senator off the ballot.

– David Freddoso, The Case Against Barack Obama, pp. 2-3.

Prior to this year, Obama has run in just one seriously contested election—for Congress, in 2000. He lost in a landslide. His victories, right up until his foray into the presidential primaries, have come almost effortlessly, owing largely to incredible good luck and the fact that his opponents’ faults were much greater than his own. This makes him an unknown quantity, even now as he runs for president.

– David Freddoso, The Case Against Barack Obama, p. xiii.

Late news, repeated comments, but still wanted to get them down.

John Podhoretz over at Commentary:
 

America, it appears, is on the verge of electing a black man as its president. It cannot be gainsaid; the enormity of this single cultural moment dwarfs almost any other in my lifetime. Its positive social impact is incalculable; it was only eight years ago that Al Gore traveled to Harlem to kiss Al Sharpton’s ring, which was only seven years after Sharpton had provoked a riot on 125th street that led to a fire that killed seven people. Sharpton was, at that point, by default the most important black politician in America. Obama’s ascension to the White House, if it does nothing else, may at last bring down the curtain on race hucksters like Sharpton, whose power has always been rooted in the political alienation of inner-city blacks.

We can certainly hope. This next bit just blew my mind. It’s easy to forget that we’re just a few generations out from slavery, poll taxes, and the like. From Rod Dreher:

You have to listen to this NPR report about Amanda Jones, a 109-year-old black Texas woman whose father was an emancipated slave. This living link to slavery never thought she’d see this day. Back in the day, they used to have to pay to vote. “We would pick cotton and save our money” to pay the poll tax, she said.

But we still have work to do:

A University of Texas poll released today of 550 registered voters has one very surprising finding: 23 percent of Texans are convinced that Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama is a Muslim.

The Obama-is-a-Muslim confusion is caused by fallacious Internet rumors and radio talk-show gossip. McCain went so far at one of his town hall meetings to grab a microphone from a woman who claimed that Obama was an Arab.

The Texas numbers are unusual because most national polls show that just 5 to 10 percent of Americans still believe Obama is a Muslim — less than half the number of Texans who buy into the debunked theories.

I’m not the least bit surprised by this because of the horrible, slanderous, downright untrue e-mail fowards I’ve received by well-meaning Christians. Vett your e-mail forwards, people.

And lastly, an obligatory The Onion Article: Black Man Given Nation’s Worst Job.

The election’s impact on the world of sports. Better chance for a Chicago Olympics? Presidential order to implode Wrigley Field? Choice quote:

In August, Obama was asked who he would root for in a Cubs-White Sox World Series. This was his answer: “Oh, that’s easy. White Sox. I’m not one of these fair-weather fans. You go to Wrigley Field, you have a beer; beautiful people up there. People aren’t watching the game. It’s not serious. White Sox, that’s baseball. South Side.”

Reason #603 Why I Wish I Could Vote for Obama:

In his own words:

Read this.

History will never be the same. HT: Theologica.