EARLY EVENING POSTINGS: APRIL 26,  2008

Posted at 7:19 p.m. ET

THE SUDDEN CRISIS

Are you as suspicious as I am about the sudden worldwide "crisis" in food prices?  Do you get the feeling that the mainstream media is so invested in the global-warming "crisis" that it will take time to up to speed on this new one?  You know, so many crises, so little space.  The UN secretary-general weighs in:

VIENNA, Austria - A sharp rise in food prices has developed into a global crisis, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said Friday.

Ban said the U.N. and all members of the international community were very concerned and immediate action was needed.

He spoke to reporters at U.N. offices in Austria, where he was meeting with the nation's top leaders for talks on how the United Nations and European Union can forge closer ties.

"This steeply rising price of food — it has developed into a real global crisis," Ban said, adding that the World Food Program has made an urgent appeal for additional $755 million.

"The United Nations is very much concerned, as (are) all other members of the international community," Ban said. "We must take immediate action in a concerted way."

Ban urged leaders of the international community to sit down together on an "urgent basis" to discuss how to improve economic distribution systems and promote the production of agricultural products.

An estimated 40 percent increase in food prices since last year has sparked violent protests in the Caribbean, Africa and South Asia.

On Thursday, U.N. Food and Agricultural Organization chief Jacques Diouf said immediate efforts should focus on helping farmers in developing countries grow more crops.

Gee.  Production.  What a concept! 

I think they should call Al Gore.  Or, wait, wait.  Remember Michael Dukakis?  He said the world needed to grow Belgian Endive.  And he was the Democratic candidate for president in 1988.  And he was from Massachusetts.  He must know. 

I'd like to see some real hardheaded reporting on this, if the media can, for a few days, rip it attention away from the polar ice cap.

April 26, 2008.       Permalink          

UH, I DON'T RECALL...

Yeah, right.  I don't recall.  I didn't know him.  I don't agree with my advisers.  I never heard of them.

Barack Obama is starting to sound like a Jackie Mason routine.  There is this lurking problem for Obama, as reported by the Chicago Tribune:

The question has lingered since it arose last week during the federal corruption trial of Antoin "Tony" Rezko: Why, just weeks after winning the Democratic U.S. Senate primary in 2004, would Barack Obama attend a party for a controversial Iraqi-born billionaire whom Rezko was trying to lure into an investment?

In an interview Friday, Obama didn't deny the assertion by Stuart Levine, the government's star witness in the Rezko trial, about the party honoring Nadhmi Auchi, a British citizen who is appealing a fraud conviction in France. Obama said he didn't recall the event.

"I mean this has been, I guess, four years ago," he said. "My understanding, through his lawyer, Mr. Auchi doesn't recall meeting me."

Asked if he thought Rezko may have been using him to impress potential investors, Obama replied: "I just don't have a recollection of the event. As I said, I was in the middle of running a U.S. Senate race. So, you know, I was speaking all the time, probably six, seven, eight times a day."

As we know, Obama had a financial relationship with Rezko.  A few more "I don't recall" numbers, and this can turn into another Rev. Wright problem.  The headache that the Dems have with Obama is that he's had so many bad associations that it raises serious questions about his judgment and ambition. 

You just know there's another shoe, and you wonder when it will drop.

April 26, 2008.      Permalink          

AFTERNOON POST:  APRIL 26, 2008

Posted at 2:42 p.m. ET

TRACKERS

There are no new state polls to report.

Remarkably, though, tracking polls for the Democratic nomination show Obama losing ground.  Rasmussen has Obama four points ahead of Clinton, but Gallup has them tied.  What we may be seeing is the corrosive effect of the Pennsylvania primary, and all the media talk about Obama's problems.

In general-election trackers, Rasmussen has McCain up two over Obama, Gallup registers a tie.  Rasmussen has McCain up two over Clinton, but Gallup has Clinton leading McCain by three.

It will be instructive to see how McCain holds up in the next week or so.  In my view he did poorly this week in getting into a fight with the North Carolina GOP over an ad critical of Barack Obama.  I've seen that ad.  There was nothing unusual about it.  He might just have said, "I wouldn't run that ad," and left it at that.  But the ongoing dispute, based on what I hear by monitoring talk radio, has cost him with conservatives.  Also, his severe criticism of the Bush administration's handling of Hurricane Katrina was over the top.  He's not going to get any votes from the Katrina Professional Grievance Committee, and it wasn't necessary to grovel. 

Interesting times ahead.  Indiana and North Carolina vote in ten days. 

April 26, 2008.      Permalink          

SATURDAY:  APRIL 26,  2008

Posted at 7:47 a.m. ET

THE RACE CARD - CONTINUED

The ugliness of the race card is emerging far earlier than I'd expected.  The purpose is to make it not quite respectable to ask any questions of Barack Obama.  The race card is intended to provide a protective bubble around him, to make us feel guilty, and to establish a climate of fear - fear of what might happen if Obama is denied.

The senior African-American in the House has weighed in, and it is not attractive:

South Carolina Democratic Rep. James Clyburn warned today that if the heated Clinton-Obama contest continues on its present course it could have dire consequences for African American support of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, should she win the Democratic nomination, and on African American faith in the Democratic Party even if she does not.

"I may not know a lot about what drives some voters, but I know a little bit about African American voters," he said, in an interview with The Trail. "And if they feel as if they're being used, they'll stay away. They just won't engage in the process."

"African Americans are really engaged in the process and I don't think we oughta be saying anything that might discourage these people or in any way marginalize them," he continued. "I am very concerned that if we keep talking as if it doesn't matter ... that Obama gets 92 percent of the black vote ... since he only got 35 percent of the white vote, he's in trouble. Well, Hillary Clinton only got 8 percent of black vote. [That's] like saying that 92 percent, they don't matter."

His remarks come a day after telling the New York Times that Bill Clinton's "bizarre" conduct and statements -- such as comparing Sen. Barack Obama with Rev. Jesse Jackson after his South Carolina primary win -- had incensed African American voters and threatened to create a permanent rift between the Clintons and African Americans.

In other words, you may only say what we allow you to say.  And this is directed at Democrats.  Can you imagine what charges are in store for Republicans?  Are Republicans ready, or will they grovel, as McCain did in North Carolina this week? 

I hope Republicans understand that guys like Clyburn are street fighters, and know exactly what they're doing. 

April 26, 2008.       Permalink          

STILL NOT RIGHT

Today is an important day, especially if you believe in the true meaning of the Reagan Revolution.  Chester Finn is one of the most significant voices in the fight for school reform.  He writes:

Today marks the 25th anniversary of "A Nation at Risk," the influential Reagan-era report by a blue-ribbon panel that alerted Americans to the weak performance of our education system. The report warned of a "rising tide of mediocrity that threatens our very future as a nation and a people." That dire forecast set off a quarter century of education reform that's yielded worthy changes – yet still not the achievement gains we need to turn back the tide of mediocrity.

After decades of furthering educational "equality," the 1983 commission admonished the country, it was time to attend to academic excellence and school results. Educators didn't want to hear this and a generation later many still don't. Our ponderous public-school system resists change. Teachers don't like criticism and are loath to be judged by pupil performance. In educator circles, one still encounters grumbling that "A Nation at Risk" lodged a bum rap.

But what do you do when educators worship mediocrity, or consider it a sign of someone's "authentic" culture?  What do you do when schools of education are influenced by William Ayers - yes, the same Weather Underground Ayers who's now hung around Barack Obama's neck and is one of the nation's most influential and "respected" educators?

Finn goes on:

Yet our school results haven't appreciably improved, whether one looks at test scores or graduation rates. Sure, there are up and down blips in the data, but no big and lasting changes in performance, even though we're also spending tons more money. (In constant dollars, per-pupil spending in 1983 was 56% of today's.)

And just as "A Nation at Risk" warned, other countries are beginning to eat our education lunch. While our outcomes remain flat, theirs rise. Half a dozen nations now surpass our high-school and college graduation rates. International tests find young Americans scoring in the middle of the pack.

What to do now? It's no time to ease the push for a major K-12 education make-over – or to settle (as Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton apparently would) for reviving yesterday's faith in still more spending and greater trust in educators.

I wish someone would say it:  Many "educators" are anti-intellectual, and that has always been a major part of the problem.  And the left, which controls education, is militantly anti-intellectual.  It has to be, for it can't stand up under scrutiny.  Finn concludes:

Finally, content matters. Getting the structures, rules and incentives right is only half the battle. The other half is sound curriculum and effective instruction. If we can't place enough expert educators in our classrooms, we can use technology to amplify the best of them across the state or nation. Kids no longer need to sit in school to be well educated.

Far from delivering an undeserved insult to a well-functioning system, the authors of "A Nation at Risk" were clear-eyed about that system's failings, and prescient about the challenges these posed to America's future. Now that we're well into that future, we owe them a vote of thanks. But our most solemn responsibility is to keep the reform flag flying high in the wind that they created.

We might start by demanding that journalists who cover education actually tell us what is being taught in our schools.  For most parents, it's a mystery.  If they ever found out, they'd be sickened.

April 26, 2008.      Permalink          

OH REALLY?

Gee, I didn't read this in The New York Times:

THE US war in Iraq has strengthened its strategic position, especially in terms of key alliances, and the only way this could be reversed would be if it lost the will to continue the struggle and abandoned Iraq in defeat and disarray.

Surely the author of this sentence is on the ganja, you might say. Something a little weird in the coffee? It goes against every aspect of conventional wisdom.

But the author of this thesis, stated only marginally less boldly, is one of the US's most brilliant strategic analysts. Mike Green holds the Japan chair at Washington's Centre for Strategic and International Studies and was for several years the Asia director at the National Security Council. He is also one of America's foremost experts on Japan and northeast Asia generally.

His thesis, applied strictly to the US position in Asia, is correct.

Pay no attention to that!  Pay absolutely no attention!  The man must be on the Bush payroll.  He must be a neocon.  A closet Zionist.  A...a...well, maybe we should listen, but only to denounce him:

Yet Green's positive thesis is fascinating. The US's three most important Asian alliances - with Australia, Japan and South Korea - have in his view been strengthened by the Iraq campaign. Each of these nations sent substantial numbers of troops to help the US in Iraq. They did this because they believed in what the US was doing in Iraq, and also because they wanted to use the Iraq campaign as an opportunity to strengthen their alliances with the US.

More generally, in a world supposedly awash in anti-US sentiment, pro-American leaders keep winning elections. Germany's Angela Merkel is certainly more pro-American than Gerhard Schroeder, whom she replaced. The same is true of France's Nicolas Sarkozy.

More importantly in terms of Green's analysis, the same is also true of South Korea's new President. Lee Myung-bak, elected in a landslide in December, is vastly more pro-American than his predecessor, Roh Moo-hyun.

This is crazy.  Do not listen.  You must not think about this.  It is an insult to Obama.

But...wait a minute.  It is right, isn't it?  And maybe, just maybe, George Bush, with all his faults, will be remembered rather well, particularly in aspects of foreign policy that do not grab the headlines.  When he was in Africa recently, Mr. Bush was mobbed as a hero.  Oh yes, the press covered it, but barely.  We must not disturb the intellectual classes.

Please note this:

Green cautions that a US failure in Iraq, a retreat and leaving chaos in Iraq behind, would gravely damage US credibility in Asia.

What is clear from Green's analysis is how different the Asian environment is from the European environment, or even from the US domestic debate.

Read the whole piece, published in The Australian.  It may make your day.

Be back later.

April 26, 2008.      Permalink