Stromata Blog

A Star Is Born

We interrupt this blog to note that Los Angeles SF fan Ed Green (this Ed Green) has landed the lead in a great commercial on YouTube. Definitely worth 90 seconds of your time.

Quote of the Yesterday

Denis Boyles wrote this before the Siegessäule Oration:

Ultimately, with Obama, it’s the substance problem. Not drugs (inhaling, Obama truthfully said, was kind of the point of smoking marijuana), but content. Obama’s speeches are like Cocteau Twins’ songs. Each one is a sugar hiccup of audacious hope: they sound great, but the words don’t mean anything, no matter which language is used.

“Can someone explain why it is, exactly, that Barack Obama is not a laughingstock?”

A Song We Can Believe In (or at least hum)

Speaking to a huge and receptive audience today, Barack Obama could have performed a valuable service for our country. He professes to regard Afghanistan as the crucial battleground in the War on Terror. He must be aware that our European allies have, with a few commendable exceptions (of which Germany is not one), given the Afghan government only faint-hearted support. The main reason for that reticence is that European public opinion strongly favors doing nothing.

So here he was, in front of a crowd of 200,000 admirers and every television network on the continent – an unsurpassed opportunity to make the case for the Afghan campaign directly to Hans and Jacques. But he didn’t. Instead, he delivered a standard, gaseous campaign speech, complete with a cringe-inducing tribute to his personal genealogy and a vacuous “This is our moment” refrain. Afghanistan got one paragraph. As a paragraph, it was okay, but it did not lay out the reasons why what happens in that distant land is important to the future of the civilized world. The chance to open a crack in the wall of European indifference slipped away, maybe because Senator Obama did not know how to seize it, maybe because he wasn’t all that eager to try. He has never told us why he regards Afghanistan as vital and Iraq as a throw-away. What could he say to his fellow citizens of the world?

On the more positive and uplifting side, Jim Geraghty has discovered that Slick Barry has unexpected talents as a lyricist. Half of the following stanza is from that monument of 1980’s vacuity, “We Are the World”, the rest from the Siegessäule Oration. (Jim tells which is which, so I don’t have to.)

We can’t go on pretending day by day
That someone, somewhere will soon make a change.
This is the moment we must help answer the call.
But if you just believe there’s no way we can fall.
The world will watch and remember what we do.
Let us realize that a change can only come when we stand together as one.
We cannot afford to be divided.
These now are the walls we must tear down.
This is the moment when we must come together.
They’ll know that someone cares, and their lives will be stronger and free.

The lines almost hum themselves, whether or not the words make much sense.

Welcome to Jerusalem!

Shortly before Barack Obama was due to arrive in Israel’s de jure capital, an Israeli Arab ran amok with a bulldozer. Luckily, he was killed before he could murder anyone. (Sixteen people were wounded.) A Jerusalem Post columnist suggests a lesson that the candidate might want to ponder:

Although subsequent investigation may prove different, there’s good reason to believe Ghassan Abu Tir’s bulldozer terror attack was deliberately staged as a greeting gift for you, Senator Obama.

He belongs to the same Jerusalem family clan as imprisoned Hamas official Muhammad Abu Tir, so he is likely to have had ties to radical Islamist elements. He was shot dead as he was driving his bulldozer up King David Street straight in the direction of the King David Hotel, which you were due to check into later in the day.

And the timing of the incident was logical, since such an attack would have been much harder to pull off after your arrival, when the heavier police presence on the street would have stopped Abu Tir’s rampage even sooner than was the case.

What was the message, then, that Abu Tir was likely trying to deliver to you? Well, let’s consider some of the few facts about him that we already know. His village of Umm Tuba is one of those fortunate Arab neighborhoods on the periphery of Jerusalem that is not cut off from the rest of the city by the security barrier. Thus it is one of the better-off Arab communities in the capital – just like Jebl Mukaber and Sur Bahir, the neighboring Arab villages that produced the perpetrators of the previous two terror attacks in Jerusalem, including the original bulldozer rampage just three weeks ago.

So keep in mind, Senator Obama, that the gainfully employed Abu Tir was probably not one of those Palestinians you spoke about earlier on your trip, whose motivation to carry out terror was primarily due to economic deprivation. Nor is he likely one of those who shared your dream to see a Palestinian state rise up alongside Israel.

His message to you was that some things are not negotiable, and some people do not really wish to be negotiated with, at least not on any terms but their own; that Israel’s crime is not what it does or where its borders are, but its very existence; and that no matter which president sits in , those basic – or, one might say, sacred – principles will remain unchanged. . . .

[W]e need a US president wise enough to understand the need for diplomacy, yes – but equally so, one strong and courageous enough to utilize America’s incomparable might when diplomacy fails.

In short, we need a president who won’t be bulldozed by those who hold in contempt the values that both the US and Israel stand for. That, Senator Obama, is the message you can send back home from Jerusalem, on the day after the blood spilled by Ghassan Abu Tir practically on your doorstep ran down King David Street.

And what did Senator Obama say a few hours after the act of terrorism?

What I think can change is the ability of the United States government and a United States president to be actively engaged with the peace process and to be concerned and to recognize the legitimate difficulties that the Palestinian people are experiencing right now and recognize that it is not only in the interest of the Palestinian people that their situation improves – I believe that it is in the interest of the Israeli people.

It looks like Ghassan Abu Tir’s message was not successfully delivered.

“Even God Cannot Change the Past”

That saying from Aristotle used to be translated differently, but now we know what ‛o theós really refers to. The Man from Change obviously doesn’t agree with the dead white male Greek. His positions may appear to meander across the political spectrum in close coincidence with electoral convenience, but he will be the first to tell us that on all these matters – from the desirable future status of Jerusalem to the success of the “surge” in Iraq – he has been like a tree that’s standing by the water.

Some non-worshipers shake their heads and conclude that arguing about what Slick Barry said last year isn’t worth the effort. Jennifer Rubin responds with four good reasons why his attempts at historical revisionism matter:

#1: He doesn’t tell the truth. His lack of credibility on this and matters small and large (e.g., he never heard Wright’s hate speech, he played a major role in immigration, he always thought the surge would work) reveal him to be, at the very least, not offering anything resembling New Politics and, at worst, entirely untrustworthy.

#2: All his bouncing around is evidence of inexperience. He will confound our allies and embolden our foes because he says silly things or doesn’t understand what he is saying or doesn’t realize the import of his words.

#3: It reveals that he is weak and subject to persuasion by whichever group he is in front of at that moment. Before the netroots, unconditional talks sounded good, but no longer. In front of AIPAC “Undivided Jerusalem” sounded good, but not when trying to play the “honest broker” with the Arabs.

#4 . . . : Obama is stubborn and won’t admit when he makes an error. This is the Bush-redux argument. (The “You don’t want another bullheaded president” argument.)

Let me add one more item: Senator Obama’s indulgence in implausible reconciliations of past and present statements evidences an internal conviction that he is so charismatic, clever and convincing that ordinary mortals can be counted on to fall in readily with this week’s version of reality. “Arrogance” has become an overworked accusation, but it is a real phenomenon, and the junior solon from Illinois has a case so hyper-developed that Bill Clinton himself looks humble by comparison. The negative consequences for the Big He were more personal than political. The country may not be so lucky during an eight to ten year Obama reign.

A Ten-Year Presidency

Barack Obama is touring Afghanistan. The Daily Telegraph picks up an interesting quote:

Mr Obama did little to disappoint critics who accuse him of arrogance. He said the objective of the trip was to “hold substantive discussions” with national leaders “who I expect to be dealing with over the next eight to ten years [emphasis added]”.

Is there something about the length of the President’s term of office that those of us who have never taught constitutional law don’t understand? Or is this the first trial balloon for repeal of the Twenty-Second Amendment?

The paragraph just quoted is the only negative bit in the story, showing that the “Torygraph” is as easily duped by Slick Barry as any other outfit. For instance,

Senator Barack Obama has demanded plans be drawn up immediately for US troops to be redeployed from Iraq to Afghanistan.