Anybody Got a Spare Missile?
Castro, Zelaya and Chavez
Latin American Axis of Evil
Yes, I know--I'm leaving other Marxist or fascist leaders out (mainly because they're not in the picture). Dishonorable mention also goes to Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega and other members of the Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas (ALBA), determined to spread the dubious benefits of North Korea and Cuba's economic success throughout the Americas.
Obama and Hillary Clinton have avoided using the term "coup" (as have OAS and ALBA) to describe the Honduran expulsion of Zelaya and did warn that "any existing tensions and disputes must be resolved peacefully through dialogue free from any outside interference" (undoubtedly in response to Chavez' saber-rattling). Clinton did say Zelaya's ouster "should be condemned by all", and Obama made specific reference to Honduras' need to respect "the rule of law": the same phrase that Chavez and his cronies are using to demand restoration of Zelaya to power. Never mind the fact that Zelaya was openly defying the Supreme Court of Honduras in insisting on an illegal referendum, which by its very nature is a violation of the rule of law.
What Obama and Clinton are doing is dishonoring the constitutional process in Honduras by refusing to grant the legitimacy of its internal process. This seems to be a double standard given the administration's own reluctance and tentativeness in speaking out about electoral fraud and the Iranian dictatorship's brutal crackdown on its citizens yearning for liberty and republican principles. Perhaps Obama should think about promoting the free enterprise system, instead of paying lip service to the Venezuelan dictator squandering his country's oil wealth furthering his anti-American agenda instead of diversifying his economy and thus raising opportunities for the nation's youth and poor to improve their position, instead of Chavez' arbitrary decisions. Perhaps Obama fears, as leader of the free world, if he responds to Chavez' rabid rants with all due consideration, he won't get another gift of an anti-American screed and another condescending lecture the next time they meet...
Kathleen Kennedy-Townsend Asks: Is the Pope Catholic?
In 2002, heavily Democratic Maryland elected GOP Congressman Bob Ehrlich governor over 2-term Democratic Lieutenant Governor Kathleen Kennedy-Townsend by a solid 6 points. This, if anything, proved the growing irrelevance of the Kennedy name in American politics. (Well, of course, there was that embarrassing incident of Caroline Kennedy this past winter whom vacillated over Hillary Clinton's vacated Senate seat.)
It should not be surprising that the Kennedy's have become just another voice in intellectually pretentious and vacuous liberal Democratic groupthink. I could write an extended post refuting Townsend's Newsweek post ("Without a Doubt: Why Barack Obama represents American Catholics better than the pope does") line by line, but let me just point out a few points for discussion here.
"In fact, Obama's agenda [on abortion, which Townsend euphemizes as "reproductive freedoms", and homosexuality] is closer to [American Catholics'] views than even the pope's."
First of all, the Catholic Church's moral authority is not dependent on decisions of nominal Catholics like Kathleen Kennedy Townsend to put their political ideology above their religious fidelity. The Catholic Church has maintained a consistent moral teaching for 2000 years on the unacceptability of elective abortion and the indissolubility of traditional marriage. Second, Townsend ignores the nuanced differences of Catholic political opinions, characterized by Mario Cuomo's morally and politically convenient boilerplate rationalization from his Notre Dame address over 20 years ago, i.e., "I'm personally opposed to X, but I won't impose my personal moral opinion on others". Third, most of the statistics (e.g., Gallop's) to which Townsend refers lump in nominal along with practicing Catholics; practicing Catholics tend to be more responsive to the Church's teachings. Finally, recent Gallop polls suggest that a simple majority of Americans have listed themselves pro-life.
However, on a more substantive level, Barack Obama has proven himself to the left of even most liberal Democrats on abortion, given his indisputable stonewalling of the Illinois Born Alive Infant Protection Act, principally sponsored by pro-life activist nurse Jill Stanek; this law sought to require doctors to provide medical technological assistance to babies born alive as a result of abortion procedures. (Stanek noted that babies were left to die as a matter of hospital policy; Obama was principally concerned about theoretical challenges to Roe v Wade and undue burden on doctors.) American Catholics do not identify with de facto passive infanticide.
"Obama's pragmatic approach to divisive policy": Are you kidding me? After running on post-partisan grounds, the very first thing he did was allow the Democrats to pass a $787B stimulus package with minimal due consideration and haste, refusing to negotiate in good faith with Republicans, peeling off 3 liberal GOP senators to ram it through Congress. He also famously promised that unemployment would peak at 8% with the package; 6 months later, only about 7% of the "stimulus" bill has been spent, and unemployment is at 9.5%. Obama's approach has hardly been "pragmatic"; in fact, it has been, by nature, divisive.
"Politics requires the ability to listen to different points of view, to step into others' shoes. Obama might call it empathy." As I hear Kathleen Kennedy Townsend indulge in her elitist, judgmental rant against the Catholic hierarchy, she is hardly practicing "empathy". But the fact is that Democrats have hardly engaged in genuine bipartisan dialogue. And she also repeats Obama's fantasy that nations negotiate based on perceived style versus substance, i.e., parochial interests.Whereas the tone of communication--political, diplomatic or otherwise--is important, the key ends of negotiations are based more on salient interests and core beliefs. If anything, accommodation or appeasement tends to be viewed as a sign of weakness. In short, Barack Obama confuses tactics with strategy. And Kathleen Kennedy Townsend and other sophistical Catholics are delusional if they think that Pope Benedict, a world-class scholar, will fall for Obama's politically convenient lip service to reducing abortion while at the same time Obama refuses to budge an inch on even measured legal protections for the rights of preborn children. There is no middle ground with the moral evil of elective abortion any more than the early United States could maintain a middle ground with the moral evil of slavery. Surely Kathleen Kennedy Townsend would not agree with the statement "I am personally opposed to slavery, but I can't impose my anti-slavery opinions on Southern plantation owners."
O'Reilly and those Oil Speculators
I am inherently suspicious when pop conservative Bill O'Reilly of Fox News Channel scapegoats speculators for energy prices. An economist blogger provides some interesting arguments, noting, for instance, in the late 2008 through early 2009 in the graph below that speculative interest moved in opposite directions as prices, which one would not expect. Generally speaking, speculators improve liquidity of a market--something most owners of thinly-traded stocks appreciate. There has been a lot of concern , even by nonfinancial companies, that the effect of new regulations is to raise the costs of hedging and/or lower liquidity. Energy companies argue that price volatility reflects supply/demand and reducing speculators makes hedging itself more volatile. I am concerned about possible spillover effects of new proposed regulations, including possible market share losses of American financial services companies as US companies look for more cost-effective hedging.
O'Reilly and those Oil Speculators
I am inherently suspicious when pop conservative Bill O'Reilly of Fox News Channel scapegoats speculators for energy prices. An economist blogger provides some interesting arguments, noting, for instance, in the late 2008 through early 2009 in the graph below that speculative interest moved in opposite directions as prices, which one would not expect. Generally speaking, speculators improve liquidity of a market--something most owners of thinly-traded stocks appreciate. There has been a lot of concern , even by nonfinancial companies, that the effect of new regulations is to raise the costs of hedging and/or lower liquidity. Energy companies argue that price volatility reflects supply/demand and reducing speculators makes hedging itself more volatile. I am concerned about possible spillover effects of new proposed regulations, including possible market share losses of American financial services companies as US companies look for more cost-effective hedging.
