Obama vs. the Somali Pirates

OK, OK, OK...

I have already gotten some feedback, and all of it is appreciated. Thank you.

Several of my liberally-inclined friends thought I was a bit too harsh on my first post about the President. I must be doing something right then.

I am going to avoid succumbing to Obama Derangement Syndrome, the symptoms of which cause me to disagree with everything he does or says simply because he is Obama, as much as possible. Some of you have said that my post was too ad hominem, meaning I attacked him personally rather than intellectually. What specifically? The fact that he was a non-descript legislator? That he lacked substantive achievements? I want to be proved wrong here. I don't think you can.

That being said, something very positive happened while I was in Malaysia. The U.S. Navy managed to rescue several American merchants from ruthless Somali pirates. Please let me refer to John Fund's post below:

Obama's Jefferson Moment

In the wake of the daring killing by Navy sharpshooters of three Somali pirates who were holding Captain Richard Phillips hostage, the question is what next?

Asked about chances that violent confrontations with the pirates will escalate, Vice Admiral Bill Gortney, commander of the U.S. Navy's 5th Fleet, told reporters: "Yes. There's second and third order effects to every action. And this could escalate violence in this part of the world. No question about it." He also warned that the "ultimate solution to piracy is on land."

The pirates themselves vowed retaliation and are already peddling their alternate version of events. A relative of one of the pirates claims the pirates had offered to let Captain Phillips go if they were allowed to escape. Instead, the pirate spokesperson asserts the Americans shot the three pirates while a fourth on board the U.S.S. Bainbridge was still negotiating on their behalf. No doubt many in the Arab world will believe this story and denounce calls for international intervention to stop future piracy.

But that is precisely what is now needed. The pirates have demonstrated time and again their ability to seize ships operating 400 miles or more off the Somali Coast, rendering international patrols against them impractical. Last year, piracy resulted in 889 crewmembers being taken hostage, 32 being injured and 11 being killed.

Today marks the birthday of Thomas Jefferson, our third president, who faced a direct threat to freedom of commerce on the high seas two centuries ago. In 1804, this most non-interventionist of presidents nonetheless felt compelled to send the U.S. Navy to North Africa to clean out the nest of the Barbary Pirates. It was a bold move which effectively ended the pirates' reign of terror in the Mediterranean.

President Obama claims to recognize the threat piracy poses. In a statement from the White House he said: "We remain resolved to halt the rise of piracy in this region. To achieve that goal, we must continue to work with our partners to prevent future attacks, be prepared to interdict acts of piracy and ensure that those who commit acts of piracy are held accountable for their crimes."

But those are precisely the measures that have been tried to date and have failed to dissuade the pirates from boarding and seizing bigger and bigger ships. Something more decisive is needed. President Obama deserves credit for a successful tactical operation in rescuing Captain Phillips. But given the escalation in the region that Admiral Gortney predicts may happen, the president may not have a lot of time before the next incident involving U.S. citizens.

-- John Fund

Now, the right-wing blogosphere is debating what orders came from the White House and what orders were given by the captain of the USS Bainbridge, but I am willing to give the President the benefit of the doubt.

Bravo, Mr. Obama, for standing up to the uncivilized world!

The Tax Day Tea Parties

I haven't had a chance to pay my two cents on the nationwide movement that is the Tax Day Tea Party. I was otherwise occupied in Malaysia, a country that was recently chastised by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development as an "uncooperative tax haven." By uncooperative, I can only infer that the Malaysian government, as with the governments of Singapore and the Phillipines, is not cooperating with the political Left's view of what the proper level of taxation should be. But, I digress.

Coverage of the nationwide movement by the monolithic mainstream press appears to fall in two camps:

1) An attempt to mitigate or downplay the significance of the movement, trying to relegate the movement to fringe status. A mob that has been whipped by uber-Rightwing activists and those bloody capitalists. This, of course, can be contrasted with the supposed "anti-war" movement lead by Cindy Sheehan during the Crawford campout in the summer of 2005. I should add that this anti-war movement was, in fact, a fringe movement, as it was led by the part-time feminists at Code Pink and their ideological brethren (Rats, an anti-feminist faux pas). The media chose to "play up" this anti-war movement by saying it numbered in the hundreds of thousands nationwide when, at best, it numbered in the single digit thousands.

2) A sneering condescesion by the left-wing commentariat, who only recently decided to turn their mental sundials to "patriotic." Stephen Moore's post below captures this perfectly:

Million Taxpayer March

Today is tax protest day, with tea parties around the country. No one knows how many, but the latest estimate from taxdayteaparty.org is anywhere between 600 and 2,300. Organizers are predicting one million people will participate in towns as large as Chicago and as small as Steamboat Springs, Colorado.

I asked one of the lead organizers of the Washington D.C. tea party, Andrew Langer, president of the Institute for Liberty, how this all got started. "A lot of the anger dates back to the failures of the Republican Congress to control spending and earmarks," he says. "Voters evicted Republicans in 2006 and they got Nancy Pelosi, who has been even worse on taxpayer issues like controlling earmarks and balancing the budget. The endless bailouts and debt bills have intensified the rage. Certainly Rick Santelli's rant in February on CNBC tapped into citizen disgust."

What has been fascinating to watch is the left's elitist response to the Tea Party movement. On Monday night on MSNBC, Rachel Maddow and her guests guffawed at the craziness of the protesters. The MSNBC talking heads were arrogant and condescending in their reaction to bus drivers, schoolteachers, plumbers, stay-at-home moms and construction workers who are waving banners and protesting out-of-control government. Never mind that the protesters are many of the same people who hoped that Barack Obama would bring "real change" to Washington. Ten trillion dollars of new debt wasn't exactly what they had in mind. Yet Paul Krugman ranted in the New York Times that the protestors are participants in a fake grassroots movement --"astroturf" was his term -- orchestrated by the conservative powers in Washington and the Republican Party.

He needs to get out more. I covered one of these tea parties a few weeks ago in Milwaukee and was struck by the impressive turnout, some 660 people, and their diverse backgrounds: seniors and teens, black and white, white collar and blue collar, wealthy and working class. They had as much disgust with Republicans as with Barack Obama and the Democrats. And they are infuriated by bailouts to homeowners, banks, auto companies, insurance firms and the like. "There is something going on out there across America," says Tim Phillips, president of Americans for Prosperity. "The anger is palpable."

When I asked one participant why he took time on a rainy Saturday to attend a political rally, he fumed: "Because the government is now wasting $1 billion an hour." Many attendees described themselves as independent voters who said "a pox on both their houses." The mood feels a lot like the "throw the rascals out" election of 1994. For the past nine months, politicians at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue have turned a deaf ear to these voices. If they continue to do so, a lot of incumbents are going to lose in 2010. And that's change you can believe in.

-- Stephen Moore

But nowhere does the coverage of the Tea Party movement become more irresponsible than this editing hatchetjob by CNN. Take a look:

Is this reporter serious? A movement whipped up by the rightwingers and the capitalists at Fox News? Now CNN has decided to cover-up its journalistic fraud by forcing YouTube.Com to pull down this video I have embedded above. So rather than allowing the marketplace of ideas to function properly, CNN thinks its a better idea to stifle the free flow of information. I thought it was the Bush administration that set out to punish dissent with its shocktroops, no?

Steven Chapman has a great article via RealClearPolitcs.Com,

"...the message was one of great skepticism about the efficacy of the government's remedies and great apprehension about the expense (along with some of the extremist lunacy that accompanies any mass movement). The scale of the federal response to the crises has come as a frightening surprise to many Americans, who suspect the cure will be worse, and less transitory, than the disease."

Those Eyes Can Burn Holes Into the Starry Night...

Ah....Mia Stella Splendente!!!!!!!!






"The apple of my eye. The fire of my loins" Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita...(no, not me)

Oooh...Song Lyrics!!!!

Ok, readers of this blog will quickly learn that I have a fettish for really well-written song lyrics. You see, I am something of an amateur guitar player/musician myself and have made several unsuccessful attempts at putting pen to pad. Or even when I do put pen to pad, it sounds pretty close to something someone else has already written. Well, let's be honest...William Shakespeare earn a fat living plagiarazing someone else's work, but I'm better than him.

And the sad part is, I actually have a very vivid imagination. Remember all that alone time I told you about before? Well, I used to be able to fill the vacuum with very vividly constructed narratives. Yes my imaginary friends and I used to spend entire weekends together. Tolstoy would have asked me for private writing lessons if he had seen the "character development" I was capable of with my own toys. Seriously, I can construct narratives from whole cloth and in less time that any liberal on the planet. Dang! Low blow...the judges just deducted a point from me.

So I guess, in a wierd way, my obsession with really cool song lyrics is a manifestation of my inabilty to pour my cerebral cortex onto a sheet of paper. I'd rather worship the tradecraft of others and pretend like I had something to do with it.

On to the songs. First, John Mayer's "In Your Atmosphere"






"I'm gonna stear clear...I'll burn up in your atmosphere..
I'm gonna stear clear...Cuz I'd die if I saw you, I'd die if I didn't see you there"


Watching John Mayer sing this song on the Where the Light Is DVD changed my life last summer. Why on earth does he not play this song more often? This song speaks to anyone who has had a relationship that has ended NOT on their terms. A bad break-up? An awkward break-up? A friendship break-up (yes I am having a lot of these lately)? You know the feeling of really wanting to see someone, but also the feeling of hoping you DON'T run into that same someone? I had an ex-girlfriend once who lived 4 blocks away from me, and I had to take a 3 block detour around her apartment for an entire year everytime I had to head in that direction. Yes John, you nailed this one, kid.

Ok, song #2 is James Morrison's "You Give Me Something"


"For every piece of me that wants you, another piece backs away....
Cuz you..give me...something, that makes me scared alright
This could be..nothing...but I'm willing to give it a try"

This is pretty much self-explanatory. We all have been scared, right? That precipice right at the end of the "dating" stage and right before the "commitment/relationship" stage? When we start making these absurd calculations about how much we gain from having the exciting and scintillating companionship of someone who really lights up your life when he/she smiles...versus how much we lose in independence, liberty, and all the intrinsic benefits of being single. But be careful, as James Morrison warns, because once you figure it out, "it might be a second too late."

Ok, on to song #3. #3 is Keith Urban's "You'll Think of Me"



"Take your records, take your freedom...
Take your memories, I don't need 'em...
Take your space and all your reason's
But you'll think of me..."

Almost, but not quite, the diametric opposite of James Morrison's song. While James Morrison's song preaches something like "Hey, i'm scared too....what have we got to lose," Keith Urban preaches "hey you are ending this now for obviously superficial chickenshit reasons, but in a few months time you are gonna regret making this move. And you will suffer more, not me" Anyone who has never felt this way is a really good fabulist or simply very delusional.


And lastly, the duet performed by Eric Clapton and John Mayer "Broken Hearted"



"So you've gone beyond your means, and every wound is open,
You're best-laid plans are out of reach, and all your fears unspoken
Lord, how will you get thru this night, with your dreams departed,
Who alone will comfort you? Only the broken-hearted"

Just pure poetry, brother. Taking a stand for someone and failing...only to find comfort with those who have been thru the same situation.

Class dismissed. Gotta go hit the cafe for a tall caffeine drink. Til next time!

Our Citizenry is Getting Smarter

Hat tip the gentlemen at Powerlineblog.com

The Public Is Catching On

In recent months, a key trend in American public opinion has emerged: voters are catching on to the global warming scam. It's hard to say why this is happening; certainly not because news coverage has gotten any more unbiased or scientifically accurate. Nevertheless, somehow the word is getting out: the alarmists are all wet.

Today's Rasmussen survey finds that public opinion is turning decisively against global warming alarmism, with 48 percent now attributing climate changes to "long-term planetary trends," with only 34 percent blaming "human activity." Only a year ago, those numbers were reversed. To be sure, there is plenty of room for more education; 62 percent say that global warming is at least a "somewhat serious" problem. But if it is driven mostly by natural cycles, it would be foolish in the extreme to hobble our economy with a pointless tax on carbon.

Members of the "political class" still buy into the alarmist theory, with 48 percent holding out for the "human activity" option. No surprise there: there is lots of money and power in it for them. But as far as the American people are concerned, the politicians and politicized scientists appear to be losing the argument.

Ok Meeester President...

I warmed up with a few a topics and now I want to take on my next larger victim. Naturally, that victim would be the President of the United States of America, Mr. Barack Obama. I should had two things quickly before I begin this entry, I should first disclose that I did not vote for Barack Obama. I am not a democrat, that would be reason number one. Secondly, he is a joke, that's reason number two. A long time state senator from Illinois who has virtually no distinguishable record of accomplishment or legislative iniative he led or no record of challenging the corrupt status quo in Illinois.

But since he has beaten the Clintons a primary election and walloped Senator McCain (also not my favorite) in the general election, the voters thought overwhelmingly that he should be our president. Here is my post 2008 election analysis of how Obama won:

1) the GOP is in trouble. Like Barney Rubble trouble. 30 years ago mainstream Conservatism was on the ascent because people understood it had practical solutions to solving the challenges of the era : inflation, slow growth, high tax rates, energy crises, communism on the march, and decline in the relavance of traditional values (real or perceived). Now conservativism is associated with fiscal recklessness and profligacy at home and launching to protracted wars abroad (full disclosure: I supported these two wars). The oldest rule in politics is: you stay in power if you deliver peace and prosperity. The GOP delivered neither. And they lost

2) John McCain had the unenviable position of trying to distance himself from Obama the candidate and George W. Bush the previous president and party leader.

3) Obama was skillful in shape-shifting symbolic change, e.g. his change rhetoric and his race, with substantive change. By substantive change I mean Obama seeks to jettison the hyper-polarizing presidencies of Bill Clinton and George Bush and build one big all-inclusive tent. Or perhaps he means a sharp break from the policies of the past, even though by any objective measurement he has never been a reform politician. Nevertheless, the voters believed him


Anyway, on to the matter at hand. Democrats lambasted the previous administration as being needlessly unilateral and myopic. So we expected some degree of rapprochment towards some nations before which we previously did not share diplomatic relations. But two headlines in today's Associatied Press grabbed my attention today:


Obama extends hands to Chavez, Ortega at summit

and

US 'deeply disappointed' as Iran convicts reporter


We all knew President Obama would reorganise our diplomatic regime somewhat. But this?
Hugo Chavez has done nothing for the cause of democracy since his coup in 1999. He has stacked the parliament and provincial governorships with loyalists. He has eroded the independent judiciary. He has squandered the nations only major resource on sophisticated armaments, sponsoring the F.A.R.C, and meddling in the internal politics of his neighbors. All this while poverty and crime rates have skyrocketed.

And what on earth is the President doing here? Giving Chavez a "thug hug"? Is Obama trying to improve his street credit with the Latin Kings in L.A. or really get a chokehold on the Hispanic vote in 1012? This is crazy

I guess as long as you keep chasing imperialist ghosts like Chavez and Ortega, then the American Left doesn't really care about those other things they used to care about like disarmament, economic justice, and poverty. Take a look at the book President
Chavez gave to President Obama. The book's title translates as The Open Veins of Latin America; the subtitle is Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent. Listen, a little a reflection and assessment of our past policies is always generally a good thing. But if the Left thinks that trade agreements and wanting other countries to uphold democratic prinicples and pluralism is tantamount to plundering a country or continent, then that reveals an appalling lack of clarity and perspective.

Meanwhile, a journalist is being convicted of espionage in a theocratic state, and the best our government can do is say it is deeply disappointed? What about referring the matter to the United Nations? What about insisting on a transparent judicial process where the world can see whether the journalist's rights are being protected? Where is the Nation magazine on this? the American Prospect? where are all the Lefty blogs about this? I guess if an issue doens't fit neatly into a anti-GOP or ant-Bush narrative, then they really don't care.

Add your comments below..

I Will Own This Guitar, Soon

I played this at a music store in Kuala Lumpur. A Fender Stratocaster....a Stevie Ray Vaughan signature model. Ebay listers, consider yourselves forewarned....

p.s. actually, I don't think Ebay listers will be scared. They'd welcome my bids. sigh....I felt tough for a New York second

Currently Reading...

I am currently reading Discover Your Inner Economist by Professor Tyler Cowen, a Professor of Economics at George Mason University. Professor Cowen is one of the most intriguing and sophisticated thinkers on the planet. You can enjoy his blog MarginalRevolution.com. The chances are 100% that I will make references to this blog periodically. Those of you who liked Freakanomics by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner will LOVE this book. Promise.

Anyway, Professor Cowen poses an interesting question in the first half of the book: Which is more scarce to you? Money? Time? or Attention? Remember that the field of economics deals with the question of scarcity and constraints. So if you could have one of these without having the other two, which one would it be? Food for thought

Rubbing My Eyes....

Okay, so one of the reasons I created this blog was because I was so badly jetlagged from my flight home from Malaysia. I have just returned from 2.5 weeks worth of vacation to the land of rubber, tin, palm oil, and heavy crude.


So I slept for 16 hours and found myself awake at 3 in the morning. I had been rubbing my eyes because a protracted emotional avalanche that I can only describe as Separation Anxiety Disorder. Wikipedia.org defines Separation Anxiety Disorder defines "a psychological condition in which an individual has excessive anxiety regarding separation from home or from people to whom the individual has a strong emotional attachment." I have to say that this is quite an unusual feeling for me, because this writer has a strong aversion to forming emotional attachments in the first place. No, I'm not that kid who wasn't loved enough or pampered enough. The reason is: Once I form an attachment, it's really difficult for me to dissolve that attachment. So I prefer not to form the attachment in the first place.

You see, my memories of my childhood are filled with moments where I am alone. Waiting for my father to finish his rounds or to get out surgery. Waiting for my mother to pick me up at school. Waiting at the Metro North stations in New York for the trains to come. Hanging out in my room and listening to the New York Knicks on the radio (yes this took years off my life). A medical psychiatrist friend of mine told me that I form these strong attachments because, to be sure, I did not have a lot of practice forming them as a kid growing up. No siblings, no close cousins, and not really a lot of friends.

Anyway, no more psychobabble for now. I don't really believe in that crap anyway. Here is the email I wrote to my extended family this morning:

Dear Family,
I have finally woken up from 16 hours of sleep, and it's 8 in the morning on Saturday. The flight back wasn't very relaxing, as it was one of the worst flights I have ever taken from an emotional standpoint. I was very sad to leave everyone in KL. It had been over a decade since i have seen many of you last. That amount of time is too much, and for that I take responsibility. I made an observation to Malini and Jaya as they were driving me to the airport: After too long of a time, one's family tends to become "those people in the old photos I have in the album." So this was a special trip for me to see everyone, and ending the trip proved to be very difficult. I want to thank everyone for setting aside large ammounts of time to make me feel like a loved relative again! Many of you set aside days and evenings to include me in your dinner plans and take me to various places. Many of you lent your spare bedrooms and bathrooms, and many of you managed to quench my insatiable appetite for coffee and pooris! I will promise to be back soon. Ideally I would like to come back in 2010 and sometime when it is not quite as rainy ;) But I will come back soon! And, in the meantime, I will keep in touch thru emails. I love you all very much, and miss you terribly. Thanks again!

Yes, the author of this blog is embarrassed to say that my father's side of the family had become "those people in the photographs in that album somewhere." Isn't that awful? What kind of person thinks that? Me. That's who. But no longer. This trip changed that. I just hope I never became "that grandson/nephew/cousin from America...you know, the one who doesn't write or call and hardly ever visits."

Terima Kasih, Malaysia, for a wonderful trip. I'll be back soon. I promise

Welcome to the Passing Scene Cafe

Welcome viewers to the Cafe!

Let me quickly answer your first question, which is:

"why on earth are you doing this? blogging is lame!"

And perhaps after a few entries or a few weeks---whichever comes first---I will see the light and come to agree with you. But many of my friends and relatives are using blogging as a creative outlet of expression, albeit with varying degrees of success (this has more to do with the shallow and obtuse personalities of the bloggers themselves, not so much the actual blogs). For the last few years, Facebook provided me with way to link to stories and to publish a diary of sorts. I actually started using Facebook as a means to really irritate someone with whom I went to Northwestern University, whose smug and misguided nonsense began to get under my skind. So I began a quest to see if I could really piss him or her off enough to actually "de-friend" me on Facebook. And I would draw some degree of satisfaction knowing that he/she was reading my posts and about to explode.

Also, a handful of books have been written about the emergence and subsequent power and relevance of the blogosphere. My favorites include:

Blog: Understanding the Information Reformation That's Changing Your World

by lawyer, Professor, conservative talk-show host, and activist Hugh Hewitt... and

An Army of Davids: How Markets and Technology Empower Ordinary People to Beat Big Media, Big Government, and Other Goliaths

by Glenn Harlan Reynolds, a 2nd Amendment lawyer and a Professor of Law at the University of Tennessee.

The first blog to have a significant impact on our lives was the infamous Drudge Report, a blog operated by Matt Drudge devoted to news and current events. Please note that I am willing to be corrected on this fact. I am not an astute follower---nor do i care---of the pop culture/paparazzi/Hollywood narcissism/obsessive-fandom industry that is US Weekly, People Magazine, and their ilk. So I don't really know whether PerezHilton or TMZ has been around longer than that, as reluctantly as I am to concede their popularity.

Okay, that was a long disclaimer...hold on..since I am at the cafe, let me order another round....


Drudge gained its prominence by scooping news stories about the Clinton Administration and its missteps when the mainstream media was, at the very least, asleep and the wheel, and at its very worst, "protect a Democratic Administration" mode. Since the Drudge Report began, blogs of various stripes emerged and began to challenge the status quo on just about everything. Perhaps the most influential blog in the last five years or so has been the DailyKos, run by liberal activist Markos Moulitsas, which has blossomed into an enormously powerful fundraising, grassroots organizing, and idea-generating machine for the Democratic Party and whose contributions enabled and catalyzed their recent electoral successes. What's interesting, to me at least, is that nary a politician, newspaper, magazine or student, professor, or any citizen really, lives their life without some casual reference to some blog somewhere. It just doesn't happen. And the ancien regime knows this. And they are paying attention (no i am not a revolutionary, far from it).

The long and short of it is this: rather that be a passive observer of the blogosphere movement, I have decided to join it. Im not really sure where this is going to go, nor to I really understand how to use the blogspot.com editors very well. So why not, right?

I am going to abstain right now from giving a lengthy description of myself or views. They should become readily apparent as I discuss each topic. So.....here it goes! I will hold you close, if you are afraid of heights (thanks Incubus)