Ed Morrissey notes an exchange between Chris Matthews and Texas State Senator Kirk Watson that is rather telling in regards to Obama’s accomplishment thus far.

MSNBC’s Chris Matthews: “You are a big Barack supporter, right, Senator?”

State Sen. Watson: “I am. Yes, I am.”

Matthews: “Well, name some of his legislative accomplishments. No, Senator, I want you to name some of Barack Obama’s legislative accomplishments tonight if you can.”

State Sen. Watson: “Well, you know, what I will talk about is more about what he is offering the American people right now.”

Matthews: “No. No. What has he accomplished, sir? You say you support him. Sir, you have to give me his accomplishments. You’ve supported him for president. You are on national television. Name his legislative accomplishments, Barack Obama, sir.”

State Sen. Watson: “Well, I’m not going to be able to name you specific items of legislative accomplishments.”

Matthews: “Can you name any? Can you name anything he’s accomplished as a Congressman?”

State Sen. Watson: “No, I’m not going to be able to do that tonight.”

Matthews: “Well, that is a problem isn’t it?”

(Video is here.)

Indeed, that is the problem. A speech with “something something something change! something something something hope!” may get ’em swooning, but it’s also the perfect way to fly in under the radar and foist on the American people policies they had no idea were coming.

And it actually says more about Obama’s supporters, since they’re more than willing to vote based on platitudes and “free” government goodies than on actual, y’know, policies. Getting more people involved in politics is one thing, and a good thing, but getting them voting without a clue of why they’re voting is not a good thing at all for the democratic process.

[tags]Barak Obama,Democrats,Kirk Watson,Ed Morrissey,democracy[/tags]

• I did a short unnoticed piece in which I wondered which historical figures our three candidates resemble, here’s one: Obama as Putin?
• Now there is an ugly phrase, “soft eugenics”.
• A suggestion for McCain’s running mate.
• A Fidel fan in the media.
• My first glance (wrong as usual) was that “terp” was a type of turtle. Citizenship for the terps? I’d vote yes.
• Bob Geldof praises Bush on Africa.

With John McCain’s victory tonight in Wisconsin, former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee will undoubtedly receive a renewed barrage of questions about when he’s going to drop out of the presidential race. After all, he’s trailing McCain by almost 600 delegates. Senator McCain needs to win only about 200 of the remaining delegates in order to get to the magic number of 1,191.

I don’t think Huckabee will drop out. He’s said many times that until Senator McCain reaches the magic number he’s not going to drop out.

To quote Yogi Berra, “It ain’t over ’til it’s over.”

It’s highly unlikely that Huckabee could win enough delegates to deny McCain winning the nomination. But that doesn’t mean that he should give up, either.

In fact, Mike Huckabee strikes me as a person who finishes what he starts. Anyone who commits to losing over 100 pounds has to have a firm sense of dedication not only to achieve that goal but to continue to do the things day by day that allow him to keep the weight off.

Mike Huckabee won’t win the Republican nomination this year. But he will have shown something far greater: the strength of character to finish what he started.

So how’s that socialism working out?

The pressure on both firms may signal a tougher line by the government against foreign companies in politically sensitive industries such as food. The increasing scarcity of staples such as milk, chicken and eggs is denting Mr. Chávez’s popularity and might worsen the political climate for food companies.

In a sign of how serious the shortages have become, looters last week ransacked government food warehouses in Mr. Chávez’s hometown of Sabaneta. About 100 soldiers and police were sent to restore order, according to the Associated Press.

Empresas Polar, Venezuela’s largest food producer, responded yesterday to nationalization threats, saying it has had no role in the country’s chronic food shortages. Mr. Chávez said Sunday that Polar was "a clear example" of a company that could be nationalized if it were caught hoarding food.

Shortages have become a problem because of price controls implemented by Mr. Chávez in an effort to stem galloping inflation caused by Venezuela’s oil-fueled spending. Companies in many industries complain official prices don’t leave room for profits. Mr. Chávez accuses the companies of hoarding food.

If nationalizing industry causes shortages and inflation, fix it by nationalizing more industries.  Brilliant.  After the Soviet Union, North Korea, communist Eastern Europe, Cuba and many other examples, you’d think people would come to understand that socialism, in spite of all the flowery talk about it being "for the people", is really all about the government and its power.  (Remember that when you hear the about all the "free" goodies you’ll supposedly get from Democrats this election year.)

No human or committee of humans can ever hope to manage something as incredibly complex as a national economy.  Regulate, yes.  Nudge, yes.  Manage, no.  If a business can’t make a profit, it won’t stay in business, and won’t provide the goods or services it was providing. 

Now, Chavez ain’t no dummy.  He knows that all this bullying of corporations gives him street cred as a "man of the people", but even that sheen is beginning to dull as reality sets in. 

Tell ya’ what, though.  I’ll bet Sean Penn, Harry Belafonte and the other glitterati that visit Venezuela won’t have to stand in those lines.  Bad for Hugo’s PR machine, dontcha’ know?

[tags]Venezuela,Hugo Chavez,socialism[/tags]

The poll on whether or not you’d vote for John McCain for President had the following results:

• I’d vote for him, and typically vote Republican (71%, 12 Votes)
• I’d stay home and not vote, or not vote on the Presidential race (18%, 3 Votes)
• I’d vote for him even though I typically vote Democrat (6%, 1 Votes)
• I’d vote Democrat regardless of the Republican nominee (6%, 1 Votes)
• I’d vote against him even though I typically vote Republican (0%, 0 Votes)

Now, this is certainly a non-scientific poll, as most blog polls are, and less so since only 17 folks voted. But it does seem as though, as best as we can tell from this, that McCain’s chance of getting Republicans to vote for him seems pretty good. What I found interesting is that the “stay home” option came in second. This may mostly be due to the possibility that we get far fewer Democrats visiting than Republicans, and thus the “Democrat voting for McCain” option is underrepresented (hence non-scientific). And apparently Ann Coulter doesn’t read us, or doesn’t vote in our poll, since no Republican said they’d vote against him. Still, I wonder what the national numbers might look like.

My mantra is “I hate polls”, so it may seem to be a cognitive dissonance that we have a poll on this blog. What I’ve tried to do, however, is stick to questions of what you have done or will do or about your experience. Polls that are generally on topics outside of the typical persons area of expertise (“Is the economy in the country better or worse?”) are of little to no use (and are certainly not newsworthy, in spite of what much of the media would have you believe), whereas a question about your own experience (“Is your economic situation better?”) is worth more as a data point. Hence, we’ll still have them here, and if you have any suggestions for a new poll question, we’re happy to hear it.

• Mr Obama and church and state examined.
• Abortion, Jesus, and the modern philosopher. A really interesting twist to the debate, in denying what I’d previously called the Pontius Pilate defense of abortion.
• For your prayer list.
• One of my all time favorite musical compositions.
• On income inequality, in Bottom Billion it is noted that statistically income inequality has no correlation with outbreak of civil unrest or war.

I’m not going to note this every week or post, but the “things heard” are culled from a longer weekday/daily link list on my personal blog.

Recently, in a short exchange, the subject of national apology resurfaced, especially in the light of Australia’s move to apologize for its treatment of the aborigine population. However, on some reflection I think the idea of national apology is wrong and actually counter-productive. I was briefly looking for entertainment opportunities for my wife and I to take in in the upcoming weeks and this arose as a possibility. The remark embedded in the blurb:

This concise but wide-ranging documentary examines the subject through compelling stories from around the globe, including the families of six young men killed by the British Army in Northern Ireland, an Amish community overcoming the mass murder of five of its schoolchildren, Nobel Peace Prize winner Elie Wiesel seeking an official apology from Germany for the Holocaust, … [emphasis added]

Now let me suggest two events and consider of the following which do you think would mean more to the world-wide Jewish population:

1. Angela Merkel reads an apology ratified by the Bundestag and Bundesrat offering regret for the Holocaust. A piece of modern art-work is commissioned to be executed by some marginally transgressive modernist artist.
2. In a ground-swell movement of German people individually embark on a pilgrimage to visit Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka, and Auschwitz-Birkenau. Once there these pilgrims plant near or on the site a rue flower, read a poem selected by the movement, tour the site, and shed some tears. Imagine this movement sweeps over a significant percentage of the German people. Millions visit each year for decades or even for generations.

My point is to ask which of these is actually the more meaningful? A statement by a figurehead (or figureheads) or the actual feelings and demonstration of repentance by the people as individuals? I’d offer that the latter would hold far more meaning and that the former would be (should be, by comparison) almost meaningless.

Charity, when practiced by the state, tends to counter and diminish our individual impulse to charity. It is a common notion that personal participation in food kitchens, pantries, or shelters for the homeless is not required, as that is what taxes, in part, are paid to do for us. Similarly apology for evils done by the state replace or diminish the need or impulse for repentance by the individual. For the actual harm done by the state was not executed by any thing called a “state”, but by individuals. And it is individuals who must repent. Germany as Germany does not need to apologize for the Holocaust. Germans do, not Germany. Solzhenitsyn wrote that the line between good and evil is drawn through every human heart. And it is every human heart that needs to repent for things done, not those heartless state organs.

Scientists have discovered a hydrocarbon reserve larger than all of our current oil and gas reserves. Hydrocarbons, as you know, are those dregs of ancient dinosaurs and plants that we mine for energy. So then, where is this incredible field?

Oh, about 750 million miles away.

Before we get too excited here, let’s remember. There’s still an energy problem. Global warming, too. Nobody’s going to be importing oil substitutes from Titan anytime soon.

That said, data from the Cassini probe orbiting Saturn has shown that the ringed planet’s moon has “hundreds of times more liquid hydrocarbons than all the known oil and natural gas reserves on Earth,” according to research reported in the Geophysical Research Letters. The stuff is literally falling from the sky.

Lakes are scattered across the moon, with each of several dozen holding more hydrocarbon liquid – largely in the form of methane and ethane — than all of Earth’s oil and gas reserves.

OK, so it’s technically not the “mother lode” since it’s not physically connected to the oil and gas here. And it’s technically not biological in nature, since (and we’re pretty sure about this) dinosaurs and plants have never existed on Titan.

Which begs the question: Where did it come from, and are the same processes happening here on Earth? If so, perhaps oil isn’t from dead dinos. Worth looking into.

[tags]abiotic oil,Saturn,Titan,hydrocarbons,methane,ethane,energy,space,Cassini probe[/tags]

• A roundup of comments on Rowan Williams and his comment kerfuffle regarding Sharia law.
• Contra-touchy-feely ministering.
• Defining religious freedom down.
• On the right to live or die and who has the right to make that decision?
• Three hardened reprobates, if I’m any judge. 😉

A web site hosted by my website provider was the proud recipient of a Denial of Service attack the past couple of days, and has put the blog into an unexpected hiatus. Everything’s back to normal (for now).

I understand that schools should and do determine what’s appropriate to be said during school hours, but with all the other speech and such that they do allow, this prohibition looks rather targeted.

A federal judge has rejected a claim that the Poway Unified School District violated a teenager’s First Amendment rights by pulling him out of class for wearing a T-shirt with an anti-gay slogan.

Tuesday’s ruling by U.S. District Judge John Houston reaffirmed an earlier decision in which he found the school district’s policy on hate speech lawful.

Tyler Harper sued the school in 2004 after the district said he could not wear a shirt printed with a Bible verse condemning homosexuality. His younger sister, Kelsie, was named as a plaintiff after he graduated.

Via Stop the ACLU.

John McCain scored a huge victory in yesterday’s Virginia Republican primary winning nearly 51% of the vote and defeating Mike Huckabee by a double-digit margin. But a closer look at the results reveals McCain’s biggest weakness: his inability to win conservative voters.
McCain won the primary by over 50,000 votes. However, when you look at the individual city and county results McCain’s problems are immediately obvious to anyone who is familiar with the state’s demographics.
Mike Huckabee won in more rural and suburban counties which are the more conservative areas of the state. McCain won the larger cities and urban counties that traditionally lean more towards Democratic candidates. Even though McCain won a big victory8 he still did not do well in traditionally Republican areas.
Virginia has voted Republican in every presidential election since 1952. However, this year may be the year that Virginia turns blue. Consider this: the last two governors of Virginia have been Democrats (Mark Warner and current governor Tim Kaine). The last time Virginia elected a senator they picked Democrat Jim Webb over incumbent Republican George Allen. This year, long-time Republican senator John Warner (a RINO in every sense of the term, by the way) will retire and the aforementioned Mark Warner is a heavy favorite to win his seat over former Republican governor and one-time presidential candidate Jim Gilmore.
Unless McCain can figure out a way to get the conservative Republican base behind him, he’ll have a hard time winning Virginia. If he cannot win Virginia, he won’t be able to win the White House no matter who the Democrats decide to nominate.

Missed out during traveling (and server woes) yesterday.

• Jury and Jihad down under.
• Watching East.
• Evaluating the Clinton candidacy.
•  Messianic hopes assigned to Obama noted. Here too.
• One good way to appreciate your freedom.
• In Iraq, women.
• Inconvenient for the inconvenient truthers.

You expect this sort of talk from the Bush administration.

Al-Qaeda in Iraq faces an “extraordinary crisis”. Last year’s mass defection of ordinary Sunnis from al-Qaeda to the US military “created panic, fear and the unwillingness to fight”. The terrorist group’s security structure suffered “total collapse”.

But this is not the script from the latest press briefing in DC.

These are the words not of al-Qaeda’s enemies but of one of its own leaders in Anbar province — once the group’s stronghold. They were set down last summer in a 39-page letter seized during a US raid on an al-Qaeda base near Samarra in November.

The US military released extracts from that letter yesterday along with a second seized in another November raid that is almost as startling.

That second document is a bitter 16-page testament written last October by a local al-Qaeda leader near Balad, north of Baghdad. “I am Abu-Tariq, emir of the al-Layin and al-Mashahdah sector,” the author begins. He goes on to describe how his force of 600 shrank to fewer than 20.

“We were mistreated, cheated and betrayed by some of our brothers,” he says. “Those people were nothing but hypocrites, liars and traitors and were waiting for the right moment to switch sides with whoever pays them most.”

Given that, this pronouncement seems at odds with reality.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said twice Sunday that Iraq “is a failure,” adding that President Bush’s troop surge has “not produced the desired effect.”

“The purpose of the surge was to create a secure time for the government of Iraq to make the political change to bring reconciliation to Iraq,” Pelosi said on CNN’s “Late Edition.” “They have not done that.”

The speaker hastened to add: “The troops have succeeded, God bless them.”

If al Qaeda is having to regroup and has lost all this ground, then the Iraqi government does have “a secure time”, at least far more secure than it has been. If that’s her definition of success, I’d say the Surge has been quite successful.

That the Iraqis have had a tough time coming together and resolving differences is simply human nature in action. As I mentioned earlier, culture and tribalism can work against a shared national identity, both in Afghanistan and Iraq. It will take time, but we are giving them that time, successfully.

[tags]Iraq,al Qaeda,Afghanistan,Nancy Pelosi,terrorism[/tags]

It looks like Mark O. tagged me with the Celebrity meme. I’ve listed it below (note, I’ve masculinized the list because writing (and reading) “s/he” drives me up the wall).

If you could spend 24 hours with a celebrity:

1. Who would he be?
2. Where would you expect him to bring you?
3. Where [what] would you bring him?
4. What would you like to do with him?
5. What’s the one thing you’d been always wanting to ask the celebrity?
6. If he didn’t treat you well, would he be your favorite celebrity?
7. What would you give to him as a gift before saying goodbye so he’d remember you?
8. Tag 3 people.

I’m not so sure that I agree with Mark’s assessment on the word “celebrity”, though. I mean, other than the Lohan / Spears / Hilton drivel that floods the news sites, I’m not very familiar with who the common famous people are. For instance, when Heath Ledger died, I had to look up who he was (but, I would have bet that he was an actor).

Maverick that I am, I’m also deviating from Mark’s conclusion that the celebrity still be alive (much less, in show business).

So, here goes:

1. The “celebrity” I pick is (are) Lewis & Clark. Why both of them? Well, think about it, no one evers speaks of the “Lewis Expedition” or the “Clark Expedition” – they refer to the trip the Corps of Discovery made as the Lewis & Clark Expedition.

2. I would expect them to bring me adventurous accounts (of their trip), heretofore unknown to historians.

3. Given that they would have to travel through time to speak with me (or, vice versa), I would bring them news, both good and bad, of how the United States has progressed in the last 200 years.

4. I would like to visit the place, from their adventure, that they considered the most exciting.

5. I would want to ask them how (and if) they thought their expedition would impact the growth of the new country.

6. I’d probably have a little less respect for them because, based on the accounts of their journey, they appeared to be forthright and honorable men.

7. One of the many books which chronicled their journey, as a memento of the gift they gave the U.S.

8. Bonnie at Intellectuelle, Ilona at TrueGrit, Tom at LotharBot.