“Community organizing is old-fashioned, bare-knuckle politics for the little guy.”

Well written and enormously interesting article from The Windy Citizen by John Maki.

According to Maki, to truly understand Barack Obama, one must first understand that community organizing is not the warm-and-fuzzy occupation that many believe it to be. The title quote is Maki’s one sentence description of community organizing and throughout the rest of the article he makes the case that Obama– through his South Side Chicago community organizing experience– is an intelligent, pragmatic, shrewd, tough and generally bad ass politician.

Just what we expect from a good President.

The Lameness of Charles Krauthammer’s Writing

We’re picking on Charles Krauthammer again today. Here’s his latest column, The Audacity of Vanity, over at the Washington Post.

First, before we get to the column, does everything written about Obama have to include “audacity” somewhere in the title? That got old about two months into the primary, and now it’s just a hackneyed cliche. And that doesn’t just include Chuck Krauthammer, but every member of the media. No more audacity, please.

Now to the meat and potatoes, Chuck is at it again with this piece, doing his best to find something to rail about against Obama. Today’s subject is vanity. The Kraut Hammer takes issue with Obama’s plans to speak at the Brandenburg Gate– where Kennedy spoke, and where Reagan said “tear down this wall”–Chucky says that Obama hasn’t earned his stripes enough to deserve a speech at such a historic venue. The mere fact that Obama would give a speech at this particular landmark just shows his extreme vanity. His audacious vanity of audacity, maybe? No that’s the title of Chuck Krauthammer’s next piece.

To be fair, Chuck has a bit of a case with the whole vanity thing, Obama is pretty full of himself. But, as he is wont to do, Krauthammer takes a legitimate point and then stretches it and exaggerates as much as possible, ultimately making him look petulant and angry. Case in point:

“After all, in the words of his own slogan, ‘we are the ones we’ve been waiting for,’ which, translating the royal ‘we,’ means: ’ I am the one we’ve been waiting for.’

Here’s our problem with Chucky Krauthammer: even when he is right he treads into the realm of absurdity, seemingly for no reason. The quoted sentence above makes no sense and is a completely unnecessary and unfounded attack. When Obama says “we are the ones we’ve been waiting for,” he’s referring to himself? And he’s using the royal we? But wait, “we” is used twice in that sentence, shouldn’t that translate to “I am the one I’ve been waiting for?” Not a great campaign slogan. Not very subtle, either.

There are other instances of exaggeration, as well as some where Chuck exhibits some actual insight. But, overall this is just another Kraut Hammer piece, full of childish attacks as always. Charles Krauthammer, even when you may be right, you find a way to sabotage yourself so that you are always wrong. And your writing is hackneyed and only mildly coherent.

Environmental News of the Day

Here’s the good news from the BBC: Fishing Ban Brings Seas Back to Life 

The Brits have discovered that when you stop killing marine life indiscriminately, surprise surprise, population levels begin returning to normal. Fishing around the island of Lundy and off the coast of Devon has been banned for the past five years. Scientists have found that lobster populations are now seven times larger within the protected area than outside of it.

Now for the bad news from U.S. News & World Report: Gulf Dead Zone May Grow Larger than Ever

The dead zone that forms annually in the Gulf of Mexico will grow to the size of New Jersey this summer. It will be the largest dead zone measured in the Gulf of Mexico ever, measuring 8,800 square miles. Dead zones are formed from algae overgrowth which is exacerbated by agricultural runoff. The algae suck oxygen from the water, making it nearly impossible for other life forms to flourish.

Teen Pregnancies Up for First Time in More than 15 Years

From data issued by the National Institute of Health, as reported by CNN.

Thank you so much, President George W. Bush, for pushing abstinence only sexual education programs on our schools. We hope you are proud of yet another complete failure in your tenure as leader of the U.S.A.

Spin of the Week: Andrew Romano and John McCain’s Internet Illiteracy

From Newsweek’s resident blogger, Andrew Romano, we get a quite entertaining piece of spin regarding John McCain’s numerous admissions that he knows little to nothing about computers and the internet.

Mr. Romano holds the firm belief that computer literacy has no bearing on the presidency and sums up his position on the matter with the always convincing “so what.”

So what? That’s it? In many ways this piece by Romano is a response to the outrage on the left that was stirred up by McCain’s admission that he’s “an illiterate [who] has to rely on my wife for all of the assistance I can get.” Or the latest, “I’m learning to get online myself, and I will have that down fairly soon.” But is it really necessary to defend McCain on this? It is 2008, the internet has been around for a few decades now, computers are more important to the daily lives of most americans now than almost anything else. And that importance will only grow in the near future, so it would be nice to have a President who knew enough about the internet to not refer to a search as “a google.”

The internet has grown in stature by leaps and bounds over the past ten years and it is assured to grow even more important in the next eight, so we at Rebel will have to disagree with Mr. Romano’s assertion that “it’s inaccurate to say that McCain’s computer inexperience would hamper his presidency.”

McCain’s computer inexperience and outright illiteracy would hamper his presidency, if for no other reason than the fact that he would be more out of touch with the public than any other President in history.

No, computer expertise is not a prerequisite for the presidency, but is it completely out of the realm of logic that when important computer related legislation makes its way through congress over the course of the next eight years (internet tax) that the leader of our nation might know enough about the technology to understand the debate?

The Next Penicillin?

We all know that Penicillin was one of the greatest mistakes in history, but it may soon take a back seat to another medical breakthrough discovered by accident, the cancer drug Lodamin.

Lodamin is an angiogenesis inhibitor developed by a team of researchers led by the late Dr. Judah Folkman. Using nanotechnology and a fungus that contaminated another experiment, these researchers may have developed a way to combat a variety of different types of cancer.

Original article from Reuters.

Will Israel Attack Iran Before the End of Bush’s Term?

Maybe. According to this intelligent analysis from Robert D. Kaplan over at The Atlantic, the odds of an attack are better if Obama is elected, but neither Obama nor McCain will be die hard supporters of Israel in the same manner as our current Commander-in-Chief. However, an attack before election day could guarantee an Obama victory, which is why if Israel were to attack Iran, it would have to be between November and January.

Further complicating matters is the fact that the U.S. has control of the air space surrounding Iran, so any attack from Israel would need at least tacit approval from the U.S. government and the Bush regime. No problem, right? No president has been as strident a supporter of Israel as Dubya, and no one is itching for a fight with Iran more than Dick Cheney, right?

Yes, both of those are true, but the person who now stands in the way of Bush & Cheney’s agenda is Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who is one of the few in this administration who actually seems to take his job seriously. Gates will not approve an attack on Iran, and he is not nearly enough of a crony to look the other way if Israel strikes Iran. So if something happens to Gates in September or October, watch out.

Republican Frustration With McCain

According to David Paul Kuhn’s latest article in Politico, many Republican insiders have become more and more frustrated with the McCain campaign over the past few weeks. There are many reasons for this frustration, and some of it can be chalked up to ideological differences, but some insiders’ gripes go far deeper than that and give good reason to worry the GOP.

McCain has not found a consistent message to counteract Obama’s “Hope and Change” mantra. McCain’s campaign has mangled simple things like fundraising and orchestrating appearances, like the “event last week in Santa Barbara, Calif., where McCain sat on stage between California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and a local activist who ended up deriding McCain’s energy policy.”

But more importantly (or worringly if you’re a Republican), since McCain became the presumptive nominee, he has displayed a “my way or the highway” mindset which at the very least has put him at odds with his Republican base:

“‘They are just now opening up campaign operations in most states. The RNC was ready to go in most states in March,’ the state chairman continued, listing off grievances ranging from the campaign’s ‘dictating’ the members of various RNC committees to the state party’s having been ‘threatened’ that, though McCain ‘couldn’t afford not to play in our state,” the campaign would not ‘recommend us for resources’ if the state party did not abide by its requests.”

If it is reasonable to assume that the way a presidential campaign is run can give insight into how that candidate will govern as President, then Senator John McCain is in big trouble. The last thing the American people need is a disorganized, inconsistent, and selfish President who believes that threats and bullying work better than cooperation.