Blogito, Ergo Sum - 2 April 2008

Tuesday’s rally on Wall Street continued in Asia on Wednesday, as investors found reasons to believe that the drumbeat of subprime woes may be coming to an end.

Uh, huh...the rich got richer and the poor got poorer as the weaker those who got out at the top were replaced by the stronger those who got in at the bottom.

More fun to be had in politics, where Howard Dean is trying to do something...anything...

After months in which he was largely absent from public deliberations about how to avert a risk to the party’s hopes of taking the White House in November, Mr. Dean stepped forward last week to say he wanted the contest resolved by July 1 and for Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama to tone down their attacks on each other.

Indeed, 24 hours after he made his remarks, Mrs. Clinton said she intended to keep fighting for the nomination through the summer, if necessary. It was an unmistakable rebuke to Mr. Dean, who has never had good relations with the Clintons.

So Clinton shouldn't drop out -- but she, and her advisers, should stop the personal attacks. Obama's campaign should cool it, too, though the candidate himself has been more restrained than Clinton. There's a difference between drawing distinctions and drawing blood. Clinton's legitimate claim to stay in the race doesn't extend to savaging Obama so fiercely that it severely damages his general election prospects.

But what does this really say? Don't let the Republicans find out anything Obama is trying to keep hidden? What does Hillary know that we do not?

Suggesting, as Clinton did, that McCain is more fit to be commander in chief than Obama crossed that line. It's not even good politics: Clinton said in launching her bid that she is "in it to win it," but she isn't going to win it by tearing down Obama.

The problem is that it is an obvious truth, one the public should consider if they haven't already. It's a lot like saying that Obama will be better at involving the black community in a positive fashion, also clearly true. All men aren't equally good at everything, after all, and just because your party nominates a person doesn't make him the best in the world at everything in the world, and if McCain's experience is good for anything at all, clearly it is in an understanding of what is involved in commanding men in the military in time of war.

Politicians get themselves in the most trouble by trying to pretend to be someone they are not. Look at Obama pretending to be a healer, a man capable of bringing people together, sitting 20 year in a pew of a man spewing rhetoric designed to emphasize differences. Or the fact that he is going to reach across party lines, even though his record shows he has never done this, earning a 100% rating on the liberal scale. Look at Hillary pretending to be cool and calm under sniper fire.

Look at John Kerry standing up and "reporting for duty" when he made his political bones by saying the vilest possible things about the military in which he served, showing how little he thought of his medals by publicly throwing them away. Later he tried to concoct a story to explain why what the public saw wasn't what it appeared to be, even though he let them think so at the time.

Sen. John McCain said Wednesday he has begun "getting together a list of names" to choose a vice presidential running mate, and hopes to make an announcement before the Republican convention in early September.

"I'd like to get it done as early as possible. I'm aware of enhanced importance of this issue given my age," said the Arizona senator, 71.

I think the Conventional Wisdom is not to do this until the convention (cute), but I think McCain could do himself a world of good by naming his veep early and then campaigning together while the two Democrats tear each other down.

Pro-life activists say Sen. Barack Obama's abysmal record on abortion issues is reflected by his remark that he would not want his daughters to be "punished with a baby" if they were to make a "mistake" as teenagers.

I don't know about the baby as punishment part, but who gets to decide what constitutes a mistake? Would Obama's mother's parents have considered him to be a mistake at the time of conception? If, according to Michelle Obama, white America is incurably racist, then why wouldn't they have?

But in our society, people are not, oddly enough, required to keep the babies that they have, so presumably the punishment is having to carry the baby to term and go through labor, or at least a Caesarian...but if that punishment has already been suffered, what is the justification for a late-term abortion, particularly immediately preceding live birth?

Pro-life groups have long criticized the record of Mr. Obama, Illinois Democrat, who has voted against legal protection for babies who survive botched abortions...

It is infanticide to kill a baby after it has already been born...that is, outside of the mother. But apparently you can still kill a baby which is the product of a botched abortion, one which is now alive outside of the mother's body. Bizarre.

Mr. Vietor also tried to lay to rest questions about Mr. Obama's familiarity with a 1960s book linked to his church — "Black Theology and Black Power" by James H. Cone — that espouses anti-white views.

"Senator Obama didn't read this book," Mr. Vietor said. "What is clear is that The Washington Times is more interested in rehashing an old story and playing 'gotcha' games than seriously covering this campaign."

You talk about carelessly opening the door for "gotcha" journalism, what could be stupider than stating flatly that Obama did not even read the book? Who's going to be the first reporter to directly ask Obama that question now? And fact-check his answer if Obama says 'no'.

Trinity United Church of Christ, where Mr. Obama has worshipped for two decades, publicly declares that its ministry is founded on the book, which advocates "the destruction of the white enemy," The Times reported yesterday.

So Obama did not read the book upon which his own church is founded? How is he on reading the Bible?

I rather think that Hillary may be correct, and the more we learn about Obama the less we are going to like him.

The latest in the series of pointless gestures that constitute Congressional energy policy came yesterday, when executives from five major oil companies were paraded before Ed Markey's House hearing on global warming. They served as political props for Members to denounce rising gas prices, ventilate Dick Cheney conspiracy theories and otherwise advertise their ignorance of the markets they purportedly oversee. ...

It's true that industry profits are at a record high, but oil is a classic boom-and-bust business, which is why billions in capital investments are folded back into exploration and production. Besides, the industry's effective tax rates are in the neighborhood of 40% to 44%. Over the past five years, Exxon Mobil's total U.S. tax bill exceeded its U.S. revenues by some $19 billion.

Does anybody consider that any corporation in a situation like this, truly acting as a fiduciary for shareholder interests, should just abandon marketing in the U.S? After all, the corporation is supposed to produce profits for shareholders, that is its function, not $19 billion losses.

The Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz reports that a "law and order campaign" among West Bank Arabs is being hindered by a shortage of prison space:

At Ramallah's civil penitentiary, a facility meant to hold no more than 180 inmates, there are 240 prisoners, according to the Palestinian attorney general.

In the town of Jericho, near the Dead Sea, 51 detainees cook, pray and wait in sweltering concrete cells so small they barely have room to stand up and stretch. The facility is meant to hold 40 people. "You sit here and you rot," said Yousef Judeh, a 34-year-old father of five accused of collaborating with Israel. His case still pending, he has been languishing here for two years.