From American Thinker.

H/T Diana.

So, the Japanese cell phone company that has a monkey as their mascot made a new commercial. Some African Americans in Japan are playing the race card.

Here's the ad (now pulled from broadcast in Japan):

I suppose this means that the long used and revered (in Japan anyway) eMobil mascot must be abandoned in favor of militant PC speak. I'm surprised that one of the 'victims' didn't start talking about slavery - oh, right, the Japanese people never enslaved any Africans. Never mind.

Of course, no one on the left would ever suggest that a prominent public figure might be somewhat simian. Jeff Goldstein had a bit more on that a few months ago.

Obamessiah's reach is long.

Nobama.

In a last minute creative settlement, the city of Seattle fired the entire NBA for the moment - fired the owner, fired the players, kept their beloved team name, and got up to $75 million for doing it.

A new NBA team will play in Oklahoma City next year. But they won't be named the Supersonics. Seattle has until the end of 2009 to put together a new arena plan and rebirth the Sonics franchise.

The press is calling this a victory for Clay Bennett. Heh.

This just in from James Pell:

I was awarded the Combat Medic of the year award this last March. It was a DOD wide award givin to one service member. I thought I would share the write up.... 

Petty Officer Pell served his first Iraq combat deployment as the Scout Sniper Platoon Corpsman, H&S Company, 3d Battalion, 5th Marines.  During this period Petty Officer Pell participated in 20 Scout Sniper Missions.  He excelled during this deployment becoming a valuable member of the platoon contributing to the tactical mission and prepared to provide the platoon life saving treatment if necessary.  His ability to provide quality care under fire resulted in the successful emergent treatment of active duty, enemy combatants and Iraqi civilians.  When Petty Office Pell returned from this first Iraq deployment he was tireless in developing his combat casualty care skills in preparation for future deployments.  As soon as the opportunity presented itself he volunteered for a second deployment.   

   While serving on his second Iraq deployment as the Surveillance and Target Acquisition Platoon Corpsman,(Scout Sniper), attached to Company I, 3d Battalion, 5th Marines on 15 November 2004 during combat operations in support of Operation Phantom Fury, Al Fallujah, Iraq.   Early in the morning, Petty Officer Pell assisted with capture of several suspected enemy insurgents. Upon inspection of the building, Petty Officer Pell realized that it contained not less than fifteen injured insurgents, and had been serving as an improvised “aid station.” Once the building was secure, Petty Officer Pell began providing medical assistance to the wounded, regardless of their status as enemy combatants. As a result, all of the fifteen were properly stabilized and later transported to higher headquarters. Ten of the fifteen wounded were considered expectent, due to Petty Officer Pell all survived.

Later in the day, India Company received contact from several hardened enemy positions. Unable to effectively engage the enemy with direct fires, Petty Officer Pell risked his life by braving withering small arms fire, (AK-47), and relocating to an adjacent rooftop in order to employ hand grenades, allowing India Company’s Marines to secure a foothold.

Petty Officer Pell then laid down suppressive fire on a second enemy position, freeing his sniper section to move. He then relocated to a higher position in order to provide suppressive fire in support of an assault that into an adjacent building. Another bout of intense small arms fire was directed at him while he moved. From his new position Petty Officer Pell was engaging hardened insurgents at distances of less than ten meters. As the assault progressed, Petty Officer Pell observed one of his Corporals suffer a severe gunshot wound to the head. Petty Officer Pell immediately moved into the enemy’s cone of fire in an attempt to reach the wounded Marine and provide first aid. Petty Officer Pell moved without hesitation or regard for his own safety. He was hit eleven times by enemy fire and seriously wounded. Petty Officer Pell maintained his composure and presence of mind, administering first aid to himself and continuing to provide suppressive fires as additional Marines arrived to evacuate the wounded Marine.  When the day’s fighting was over there were a total of 28 dead insurgents scattered through four mutually supporting buildings. None of the fighters had accepted when given the chance to surrender; they had fortified their positions and held on to the end. Petty Officer Pell’s actions were crucial to 1st Platoon’s seizing of an initial foothold and his subsequent fires surely prevented several more injuries. At the time when Petty Officer Pell was wounded, 1st Platoon and elements of the Company Headquarters had been fighting room to room and roof to roof for more than six hours. His composure and good spirits while being treated played a large part in keeping the Marines’ morale from suffering.

  He has distinguished himself during his third combat tour by demonstrating remarkable proficiency, skill, and leadership in stressful combat situations.   From 12 November 2005 to 11 November 2006 Petty Officer Pell performed his duties in the most exemplary manner as an advisor to 1st BN, 8th Bde, 2nd Iraqi National Police (INP), He was responsible for mentoring, and advising the INP in the execution of their duties, to include conducting combat operations and under these conditions.

On 28 February 2006, while the team was conducting training at the 1-4 Public Order Battalion (POB) compound, medium machine gun and small arms fire was heard near the location where 1-4 POB was conducting a siege operation with the rest of the 4th PO Brigade and the US Army’s 2nd Battalion, 506th Infantry Regiment. A couple minutes after hearing the gunfire it was passed over the tactical control net that one of their units participating in the siege was engaged with enemy forces. As the closest coalition unit in the area, the team mounted up and moved to the location of the firefight. Upon arrival to the scene members of the 2/506th along with the Iraqi Special Police (ISP) from the 1st and 3rd Battalions 4th Public Order Bde were engaged in a firefight with the members of the 16th Strategic Infrastructure Battalion (SIB). While getting an update from the senior ISP on scene it was pointed out that one of the ISP had been shot near the SIB’s secondary gate and may still be alive. Petty Officer Pell immediately directed his team to move and use the M1114 as protection to reach the causality. He grabbed the patient and dragged him to a safe position to assess and treat the injuries, but unfortunately the patient died due to the extent of his injuries.

Once back to safety the team leader and Petty Officer Pell were gathering information from the 3-4 POB OIC who was the senior man on scene he received a gunshot wound to the leg. Petty Officer grabbed a tourniquet from his med bag and applied it. It was clear that the round had severed his Femoral Artery Petty Officer Pell worked to control the hemorrhage and prevent shock. If not for Petty Officer Pell’s quick actions the causality would have bled out. Upon completion of the MedEvac the team devised a plan to get the SIB personnel to lay down their weapons. The team leader was able to accomplish this and directed them to bring out their wounded to Petty Officer Pell. He worked on two casualties that had received head wounds. Petty Officer Pell worked feverishly to stabilize the casualties. Upon stabilization of the men he called for and directed the movement of all injured for MedEvac operations. Throughout the event Petty Officer Pell kept calm and reacted as trained. His mastery of battlefield first aid saved the lives of three people that day, and his ability to make quick decisions under fire helped the team to get the insurgents to lay their arms down preventing further blood shed.

On 13 June 2006, Petty Officer Pell was designated as the National Police Transition Team Patrol Leader for a combined patrol that included a platoon of Iraqi National Police from 1st Battalion, 8th Brigade, and a squad from Alpha Company, 2-506th, and a squad of Iraqi Policemen. While conducting –the patrol in Muhalla 822, in Al Doura, the combined patrol was engaged by Anti-Iraqi forces at extremely close range. Three insurgent gunmen came around a corner approximately 40 yards away and opened fire at the patrol with AK-47 assault rifles and one PKC medium machinegun. Petty Officer Pell acted immediately, directing the Iraqi element to drop, seek cover, and return fire. He intentionally exposed himself while moving from each position to position ensuring the Iraqi element maintained proper cover and fire discipline. At the same time he was directing the actions of the Iraqi forces, Petty Officer Pell passed via radio a situational report to the Army squad who had not yet turned the corner. This action alone prevented soldiers from unnecessary exposing themselves to injury from Anti-Iraqi forces. He quickly devised a plan that the Iraqis would pursue as able and try and pin the Anti-Iraqi forces in place while the Army squad 3 would try and flank around to the west of the Anti-Iraqi forces. His plan was immediately effective and started pushing the Anti-Iraqi forces out of their position.

Petty Officer Pell also called the 1st Iraqi National Police Battalion’s Quick Reaction Force out. This Quick Reaction Force also included the remainder of the National Police Transition Team. Being the man in charge on the ground, he ensured that as the Quick Reaction Forces came into the firefight that he deconflicted their arrival with actions of the Iraqi patrol members and the US Army squad. This prevented the potential of friendly fire incidents. HM2 Pell was able to send a SPOT Report up to the Local Coalition Battle Space Owner, 2-506th. They responded by sending all available patrols in the area to the firefight. As the situation developed the Anti-Iraqi forces started to retreat. HM2 Pell quickly redirected the Quick Reaction force to impede their retreat. Unfortunately they were able to flee the scene.

Throughout this event Petty Officer maintained and displayed the finest discipline and leadership. If not for his quick actions and thinking, the Iraqi forces would have not reacted as a cohesive unit. His ability to focus their fire and actions took great tactical knowledge and exposed him to dangers greater than those experienced had he been with a U.S. pure unit.

Petty Officer Pell’s administrative and organizational have also been highlighted during this deployment. Due to the relative detached nature of the National Police Transition Team (NPTT) and its mission, He almost single-handedly developed the Iraqi battalion medical program. Far before deploying to Iraq, Petty Officer Pell anticipated the needs of the Iraqi battalion to include all medical supplies, training aids and manuals. He was instrumental in the acquisition of a site for the BAS, the associated construction and cleansing, storage of supplies, and the day-to-day

operations. He supervised and treated approximately (25) Iraqi personnel on daily basis to include medical issues ranging from E-Coli to shrapnel and bullet wounds. He researched and acquired the necessary allocations to send Iraqi National Police to a national level medical class in Baghdad.

  Over his three Iraq combat deployments Petty Officer Pell has been combat meritoriously promoted twice and has earned the Bronze Star with Combat ‘V’,  Purple Heart Medal , Navy and Marine Corps Commendation Medal with Combat ‘V’, Army Commendation Medal, Navy and Marine Corps Achievement Medal with Combat ‘V’, Combat Action and numerous other campaign awards.   

   Time and time again Petty Officer Pell has proven himself to be the very best Combat Corpsmen.   He possesses all the finest qualities of the Combat Corpsmen and truly understands the sacred duty of caring for his Marines and Sailors under the most extreme combat conditions and at any personal cost to himself.  Petty Officer Pell epitomizes the spirit of our sacred mission and his selection for this award will be a great honor in memory of HM2 Luke Milam and the bond they share as Combat Corpsmen who will and have given all.

James, there is no one more deserving than you of this honor. Continued Godspeed dear brother. We cannot thank you enough for your courage, sacrifice, and service.

It has all my video work and a goodly number of pictures. Backup is a few months old. Drive is at the 'data recovery' hospital.

Pray for me my laptop.

Made it out to the Nevada desert on the weekend. Back to my favorite Valley of Fire State Park... Here's an image from just about the instant of sunset...

That's some beautiful desert there.

I've been interested in working with the HDR - that's High Dynamic Range - features in Photoshop for a while. So I took this shot with the Nikon D200 body set to capture a series of the same frame at different exposures. Photoshop has an automation facility for taking the group of captures and producing a 32-bit image by merging them together... See more below the fold...

No, well, just got done paying for last year's taxes last week.

As of today, most of us have been working so far this year, just for this year's taxes.

That's right, April 23rd - Tax Freedom Day...

All your wealth are being redistributed by us... through April 23rd anyway...

H/T: Dad...

Happy Tax Day!

I'm doing my part to distribute the wealth.

Somehow, I feel that I'm paying a bit more than my fair share...but I won't get into it...

This is rather self-explanatory...

But, in the context of what we've been saying, what else might he be repeating?

H/T K's via Insty...

So it comes out today that the Sonics owner has been lying all along about his plans to take the Sonics from Seattle to Oklahoma City.

I'm shocked!

Now, suddenly, this is the top political issue for Governor Gregoire's political campaign.

Who'd a thunk it? Last time we had the wackiest gubernatorial campaign of all time and now it's gonna be cluttered with roundballs. More the merrier I guess.

Just watch, somehow basketballs are going to be used in the counting of votes!

The media frenzy has subsided for now - having essentially missed the point. Since the Fourth Estate is so focused on essentialness - is so interested, for example, in exploring the root causes of terrorism - it seems odd that there would be so little focus on the root causes of Jeremiah Wright's explications and the root causes of Barack Obama's participation.

So, we continue to grind this out. I've said that there are some very hard things to say. First, please watch this little mash-up.

It's one thing to write that Jeremiah Wright instructs us to adhere to Cone and to venture into the ambiguous world of Black Liberation Theology where we really cannot tell the difference between faith and policy - it's another thing to see it and hear it in expressions of faith and praxis.

The clip of Jeremiah Wright is from his "Hannity" interview on Fox News roughly a year ago (from this writing). The clip of James Cone is from his Ingersoll Lecture at the Harvard Divinity School (requires Real Media player - about an hour and a half duration) in October 2006 (so it's contemporary), called, reiteratively, The Cross and the Lynching Tree. The Barack Obama clips are from his reading of his book, Dreams from My Father, from a campaign stop in Harlem in 2007, and a debate among the Democratic candidates in late 2007.

Clearly, Cone's theology does not just elevate black experience to primacy, he replaces the very cross of Christ with the lynched black man. And there's no question that he evokes a terrible beauty in the telling, it is just the paucity of reality that speaks louder still.

Lynching is one of those very difficult things to discuss. There is no excuse for vigilante justice. None. And we cannot argue about the value of human life, especially if we embrace Judeo/Christian morality, because each life is of inestimable value. But what we can talk about is perspective.

To avoid intentionalist interpretation about what we mean here - we take lynching to mean "causing the death, typically by hanging, of someone accused of a crime, by a group of people taking the law into their own hands." I realize that the word is loaded with meaning ascribed in the latter part of the 20th century, but that certainly can't be interpreted from Cone's penchant for strange fruit.

Perspective: A Tuskegee Institute study determined that there were 4,730 lynchings between 1880 and 1951. Of those, 3,437 victims of mob violence were African Americans, 1,293 were Caucasians.

Perspective: A brief perusal of homicide statistics demonstrates with little extrapolation that black criminals kill black victims at an annual rate easily more than twice the total number of black lynchings in all of US history. These are not victims that are accused of crimes that might incite the passions of the mob - they are ordinary citizens fully deprived of their lives by people of their own race. This is true for at least the last twenty years, and if past trending is meaningful there were likely many more murders in years past than there are in the present day. Clearly, in the backdrop of life taking by citizens against other citizens, lynching is an aberration, it certainly cannot lay claim to being the scourge of illicit death for black Americans - that long tail lies with black criminals preying on their own identity.

Yet James Cone would have us deify, even comprehend all of American religious meaning through the lynching lens.

It might be tempting to simply view Cone as some sixties cultist - that is until you recall that Cone informs Wright who informs Obama. Some will say that there is some fantastic leap to reach that conclusion. I say pictures and words are worth thousands more.

By the time Barack Obama wrote Dreams from My Father, he was well ensconced in Wright's flock. In an early chapter of the book when he (justifiably) decries miscegenation, he offhandedly displays a stark race baiting cynicism. It is simply not credible to assert that in circa 1960 his father would have been strung up somewhere in the south for looking at his mother the wrong way. Was there racial injustice? Yes. Were their murders, even those motivated by racism? Yes. But there is simply no incident at the time where a black man was hung by a mob in any event - much less by some intentional judgment of the look in that straw man's eye. What could provide Obama with the confidence to assert such an error? Could it be identifying his missing father with the highest religious metaphor available to him?

When Obama complains about "reading about nooses" and the hyperbole of an "epidemic of nooses" he's mainly talking about the events in Jena, Louisiana in the fall of 2007. We won't recount the full story here, but it is clear in hindsight that the claims of the 'black oppressed' criminals, the pandering of the media and black leadership in that situation were proven fraudulent. (While hardly an epidemic, there have also been a number of other "noose" incidents - some hoaxes, some unsolved, which we will visit in a future post.)

But what is most disturbing is the promise of policy. Obama, after ill informed race baiting, pledges action against what amounts to straw men.

Mr. Obama, when your investigators go out to ferret out the hocus pocus around incidents like Jena in the future, will they go out with the religious fervor that elevates black oppression above anything else, including evidence?

And every single day during this campaign we could write a headline that says "Twenty-five black victims murdered by black criminals, Obama continues to campaign." And it would be true.

Barack Obama clearly understands what race baiting is. Yet, he chooses, when it suits him, to do it. I think that can only be explained by his discovery of power - after being long frustrated by his own powerlessness, his inability to achieve real power with education, his inability to achieve it in organizing - that he finds in Black Liberation Theology. Almost no one will argue with an angry black man wielding the theology of the noose. The white intelligentsia of Harvard roll over for Cone, and the Democratic candidates offer not a bleat to the pragmatic fancy of Obama's debate.

It is a fascinating facet, as a backdrop to all of this, that the rhetoric of the theologian and the politician are the same. Perhaps that is why it is so tempting to explain this all away. But this is just one example. We will explore in subsequent posts nearly identical ministerial messages conveyed by each of these men. And we must contemplate with that whether there is a Theocracy coming from a most unexpected place.

UPDATE: Reworked a little based on great input from Karl.

UPDATE2: PW-Lanche!

Prerequisite.

Another picture from Nikko...

This is one of the pictures that I can hardly imagine was ever a photograph. It has been rather completely transformed into a painting. There's a certain longing that I find with this image. I don't know if it's a sense of goodbye or that we wonder just who that is and where they are going.

Another beautiful piece, don't you think?

Going eighty miles an hour across San Francisco Bay...

Is it hypocrisy?

I don't know. I was just thinking that a little slip and it would look rather like a billiard ball rolling around the lanes.

So what was the hottest topic in the 'sphere middle of last week?

Nope, wasn't the long-legged Obamarathon Wright-stuff stuff.

This is what is was: It was the kerfuffle over meany IDists tossing a scientist from seeing their movie. Yep.

I recently noted that Ben Stein (he of Nixon speechwirting, Ferris Bueller's Day Off, game show, and television commercials fame) is spearheading a new movie project called Expelled which examines with Ben Steinian precision and wit the demagoguery of science - specifically as it relates to the barring of a certain point of view from the academic marketplace of ideas.

Different participants have different views on just what went down last week. There are some things that are clear:  It happened in Minnesota. This was a prescreening of the movie - it's not released yet - that is to happen around mid-April. PZ Myers of Pharyngula fame was refused attendance and asked to leave. Richard Dawkins (the world's most famous atheist evolutionist), accompanying Meyers, made it in and afterward was engaged in some discussion, seemingly cordial. (Both Myers and Dawkins appear in the film. Both say that they were deceived about the intention of the film at the time that they gave their interviews.) Myers and Dawkins subsequent to these events posted reasoned academic discussion (OK, I made that part up) about their experiences, and all hell broke loose in the science blogs - as of this writing the Myers post has something over 1600 comments and still going strong. The Expelled folks have this take.  At some point last week, the NYT and AP picked up the story as well.

What seems to be in dispute about the matter is: whether the screening was a private affair or not, whether Myers was behaving in a way that attracted security for the event, whether film producer Mark Mathis pre-determined that Myers would not be admitted to the movie, and whether Richard Dawkins flew across the Atlantic to see a pre-screening of his star role (or attend a nearby atheist conference) among a plethora of other ideas and projections among the parties.

As you can surmise from Dawkins' post, he is very unhappy about what happened to Myers and unhappy with the film, enough to appello Jesus.

For his part, PZ finds ultimate irony that people so concerned with science demagoguery to the extent that they would have Expelled as their nom de guerre would stoop to the very same treatment.

The blog noise over all of this is primarily concerned with the ironic hypocrisy at hand - and in many cases, given such hypocrisy, that the film shouldn't even be released.

I suppose that it could be pointed out that there seems to be a moral equivalence of thin design at work. Neither Meyers or Dawkins work for the film producers or the production company. Neither of them were fired for expressing their views to the producers or the production company. Neither Meyers or Dawkins have had their careers ruined by the denigration of the producers or the production company.

Myers denied attendance at a prescreening of the incomplete film morally equivalent to the experience of expelled academicians? That cur fails to track.

It is also possible that the prolonged ad hominem shouting may just serve to attract more attention to the film's content than the 'science' community would like.

Sometimes life imitates art.

UPDATE: Try some video...

H/T for the video: Uncommon Descent.

UPDATE2: Discovery Institute's Evolution News blog points to highest 'sphere traffic statistic and visits the moral equivalence issue.

Prerequisite.

This is the famous sacred bridge at Nikko (about an hour and a half train ride north of Tokyo - some very famous shrines here). The bridge and the backdrop look almost identical to the present day.

What's different now? Well, there's a two lane highway that would be between this camera perspective and the bridge today - i.e. you'd see another modern bridge in front of this one. Plus the two lane highway turns and runs perpendicular to the bridge at the right and you clearly see that highway if you were at this perspective today.

On the left today, there is a little, well, I'll call it a toll booth. Some monks sit there during open hours and charge you a few hundred yen to walk out on the old bridge. Maybe a hundred and something years ago, you could walk out there unfettered.

This is one of the photos in this album that has a very painting like quality to it. As you can tell, I'm liking all of these.

One response to Barack Obama's Philadelphia speech was that of Michael Meyer, the executive director of the New York Civil Rights Coalition.

This is an appealing piece, because it correctly points out that Obama:

settled on merely "explaining" so-called racial differences between blacks and whites -- and in so doing amplified deep-seated racial tensions and divisions. Instead of giving us a polarizing treatise on the "black experience," Obama should have reiterated the theme that has brought so many to his campaign: That race ain't what it used to be in America...I waited in vain for our hybrid presidential candidate to speak the simple truth that there is no such thing as "race," that we all belong to the same race -- the human race. I waited for him to mesmerize us with a singular and focused appeal to hold all candidates to the same standards no matter their race or their sex or their age. But instead Obama gave us a full measure of racial rhetoric about how some of us with an "untrained ear" -- meaning whites and Asians and Latinos -- don't understand and can't relate to the so-called black experience.

Meyer is right to point out a call to human unity as advisable. We need some of that in terms of dialog in the public square and fundamental resolution of the founding assertion that we are all created equal. It is a point. But it's not the point - not the only point.

Because we err, as well, to issue a call to absolute sameness. Down that path lies the collective and if we embrace it in the extreme we end up not being individually identifiable.

[I regularly travel to Japan. I love that country and its people. But if you want to see the closest thing to a human hive, that's one place to observe. And it isn't America or what I think we want to be.]

It's perhaps a subtle or nuanced point - as Americans we are called to celebrate both our sameness and our differences.

It's intellectually dishonest to say that we aren't in reality different in many respects or that groups of individuals are wrong to desire to celebrate some cultural - or even racial - distinction. Some aspect of each of us is tribal, and ethnic, and individual.

Color-blindness and culture-blindness in the extreme leads to a homogeneity that is not healthy and once we think through it, not something that any of us would really want. We are a country of people - all members of the human race - and many more or less identifiable with any number of groups in which we have something in common.

In this country we have a long tradition of honoring and celebrating identity. We once were Male and Female, Quakers and Puritans, Deists, and Calvinists, Virginians, Loyalists, and Rhode Islanders, Whigs, Tories, and Democrats, Irish, and Italian, Immigrant, and Indian (among many more). We have now become identities too many to measure or conceive and it is our destiny perhaps to become as many identities - and more - as there are souls.

America's traditional message to identity has always been - go and do your thing! Celebrate your identity, celebrate with those that you hold common interest, or culture with.

The error of identity politics enters when identifiable groups assert that their differences have some innate characteristic that demands especially favorable treatment by the "other" - it doesn't matter whether the rationale is because of oppression or the superiority of royal blood or anything else. It is this error that ironically belies the American conception of everyone created equal and makes exception rule.

Identity politics is the bane of our culture. It ultimately leads to a multicultural nihilism - where identities descend to infantile hubris and demand servitude from the "other" - a cacaphony that, even now, runs amok among us.

Perhaps it is the final destination of the addiction to the self.

And so we must walk that razor's edge, the edge that allows us to accept the universal equality of mankind and the identity or identities to which we - and to which others - belong. We can be Greek without demanding special treatment from Cowboys.

As well, it's certainly permissible for an identity group to be insular. I don't like many of the things that Jeremiah Wright has said - but it is his right to say them. He may be offended by my very existence and he has that right as well. His church may not welcome my presence. He and they can possess and celebrate that identity for all they care because this is our beloved country. It is when that identity demonizes the "other" and demands some reparative attention or some special provenance unwarranted by anyone else that the descent befalls. They can keep it in, but they can't let it out. 

It is my hope that we will always be able to hear the lilting Cajun patois in the southern Mississippi basin, that we can always go and buy a painted silk fan or paper lantern in the nearest Chinatown, that we can attend the Greek festival and enjoy those grilled lambchops, listen to the sorrowful blues in a favorite dive, rub shoulders with the brokers on Wall Street, watch the latest incarnations of Beethoven thrash their modern lyres, and any other of the myriad of identity celebrations that characterize our culture. Let us not be so humane that we lose who we are.

Oh, and God grant us the providence to root out the political disease that has befallen us. May we learn to come together as equals in the public square and debate the provenance of government as equals without regard to what sheaths our bodies or how articulate the noise we make with each other may sound. May we not elevate nation above identity, but hold again that we are a nation of laws and not of identity perspective.

H/T: Dan Collins for the Meyer article.

So there were Peep Wars at the Easter dinner. I had no idea.

I reminded the proprieter that Michael Vick was arrrested and drummed from the NFL for conduct in kind.

Acknowledging this, they began taking wagers.

I did not eat any vanquished or victors.

In these next few months there will be troubled waters.

There are many, many things to say. Some are very difficult to say. Perhaps it is a good time to have a national conversation.

Interest across all media regarding Barack Obama's relationship with Jeremiah Wright seems to continue unabated. Some number of media pundits are now of the view that it's over though there may be some typical blips - though it appears that, perhaps because of Obama's allowance by not repudiating Wright, a number of defenses of Wright are occurring . But, as I've been positing, it is comprehending Barack Obama's underlying theological point of view that should eventually become the focus - for the purpose of understanding just what is going on during this particular American season.

[Having just completed reading Jonah Goldberg's Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left (which, by the way, I think is the most important political book that I've ever read - and, please understand, by saying that, I'm not saying that I agree with everything dear Jonah says, but I am offering my opinion that it is the most important political book of our age...), I am realizing just how many political views of the American polity are not necessarily guided by critical thinking and in many cases, perhaps, those points of view have been unwittingly shaped by revisionist history and appealing calls that mask intention. I know that I've had to recalibrate many areas of my own views in light of Jonah's book.]

In the culmination of Obama's speech last week, he suggests we have two alternatives: one (which he eschews) is that we can have a politics of division that continues the discussion that we have had in the last couple of weeks preceding his speech (including the implications of the meaning of the messages of Jeremiah Wright), or two, we can reject that and:

This time we want to talk about the crumbling schools...This time we want to talk about how the lines in the Emergency Room...This time we want to talk about the shuttered mills...This time we want to talk about...how to bring them home from a war that never should've been authorized...

He states this because Obama's constituency is the oppressed. His ministry is to the oppressed (which for him also includes those in military service - he projects that they are oppressed by having to participate in an unjust war). With whatever platitudes he offers about having some national conversation about race, what he says that is ultimately important is that our country is made up of the oppressed and the oppressors and what we need to talk about is the oppressed (and certainly with a sprinkling of the primacy of black experience).

People of all political positions have commented on whether Obama played the race card or commended himself well but it doesn't seem that anyone has pointed out that, after some forty years of our Great Society experiment, his call to action about what America's should be focused on is more fully realizing that experiment - and more can really only mean that we further expand entitlements somewhere above the something more than twenty percent of GNP that it is now. (Doesn't it occur to anyone that, should we contemplate Kenya, the Sudan, and Darfur (along with many other places in the world), whether we should ask "Is anyone in America really oppressed?")

Isn't it time, and really past time, to have a conversation about how the Great Society experiment has utterly failed? Isn't it time to cease the crushing weight of that part of the entitlement system that creates fatherless children and broken lives? Isn't it time to talk about the value of personal responsibility and how energy-sapping is the soul of victimhood?

It is the ultimate irony perhaps to suggest to Mr. Obama that there is perhaps a Third Way.

In his Philadelphia speech Barack Obama said:

...Did I know him to be an occasionally fierce critic of American domestic and foreign policy? Of course. Did I ever hear him make remarks that could be considered controversial while I sat in church? Yes. Did I strongly disagree with many of his political views? Absolutely - ...just as I'm sure many of you have heard remarks from your pastors, priests, or rabbis with which you strongly disagreed.

Just for the record. I have sat in the pew (not every Sunday) for almost twenty years in my church and I have never once heard my pastor say anything whatsoever resembling anything akin to the trail Jeremiah Wright has left. I've never heard him - from the pulpit - every make a political comment - or make any suggestion whatsoever about American leadership - other than to pray for our leaders. Come to think of it, I've never heard any such thing in any church that I have ever attended at any time for nearly fifty years.

So please don't count me among the many, Mr. Obama.