McCain and Trust

John McCain hit the nail right on the head in his acceptance speech for the Republican nomination. He said the Republicans have lost the trust of the American people. That's really an understatement, at least for this former Republican.

He claims to be different, and to advocate change. And it would be believable, given his reputation. But Obama's point that he voted with Bush 90% of the time is telling.

His stated policies are on the whole better than Obama's, but the differences are pretty minor. But where they really differ, he is pretty scary.

His platform on abortion is too extreme. The platform supports a constitutional amendment that "The unborn child [from the moment of conception] has a fundamental individual right to life, which cannot be infringed." This means a 12 year old girl, raped by her father will be forced by the federal government to bear the child. That is positively barbaric.

He supports even further cutting taxes on the wealthy. This just makes me sick, and I won't talk about it any more.

His responses to various questions lead me to believe he is a warmonger. At the least he tends to think about international issues in military terms. When asked about how to deal with evil in the world, he dismisses any notion of containment, and insists on defeating it. Well, there is a lot of evil in the world, and many countries wish us harm.

If you vote for a warmonger, please do not be surprised when you get a war. What I am really afraid of is, Given McCain's attitude toward global ideological struggle, the opponents in his war will not be Iran or North Korea. They will be Russia and China.

The Wrong Speech

Obama's race speech was brilliant. Unfortunately it was the wrong speech.

Many things were explained by it, but the gist that I got out of it was: the history of race in this country explains the source of the hateful remarks of Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Various sound bites were distilled and reported in the media, none of which are likely to influence casual voters.

The problem is, the pastors remarks were not racist, they were anti-American. An anti-war candidate's biggest weakness is the impression of a lack of patriotism. The picture of Obama smiling with pastor Wright puts him smack in the middle of the 'blame america first' crowd. This is political suicide. Look what it did to Ward Churchill, who described WTC victims as 'little Eichmanns'. Surely it is academically worthwhile to try to understand the motives of the enemy. Yet he lost his tenure at a liberal university, even though that is impossible for controversial speech.

Americans don't want to know that an anti-American tirade is an understandable consequence of historical injustice, they want to know deep in their gut that the candidate disagrees with it. The speech Obama should have given would have said: "America is blamed by many people for all sorts of things. Here's why they are wrong."