Hi. Brooks' solid, older Republican values lend weight and interest to many of his insights herein - about the horse-race, that is, if not the controlling forces within the parties. Knight is brilliant, as usual. Ed
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/04/opinion/04brooks.html?th&emc=th The Two Earthquakes By DAVID BROOKS NY Times Op-Ed: January 4, 2008 Ottumwa, Iowa I've been through election nights that brought a political earthquake to the country. I've never been through an election night that brought two. Barack Obama has won the Iowa caucuses. You'd have to have a heart of stone not to feel moved by this. An African-American man wins a closely fought campaign in a pivotal state. He beats two strong opponents, including the mighty Clinton machine. He does it in a system that favors rural voters. He does it by getting young voters to come out to the caucuses. This is a huge moment. It's one of those times when a movement that seemed ethereal and idealistic became a reality and took on political substance. Iowa won't settle the race, but the rest of the primary season is going to be colored by the glow of this result. Whatever their political affiliations, Americans are going to feel good about the Obama victory, which is a story of youth, possibility and unity through diversity - the primordial themes of the American experience. And Americans are not going to want to see this stopped. When an African-American man is leading a juggernaut to the White House, do you want to be the one to stand up and say No? Obama has achieved something remarkable. At first blush, his speeches are abstract, secular sermons of personal uplift - filled with disquisitions on the nature of hope and the contours of change. He talks about erasing old categories like red and blue (and implicitly, black and white) and replacing them with new categories, of which the most important are new and old. He seems at first more preoccupied with changing thinking than changing legislation. Yet over the course of his speeches and over the course of this campaign, he has persuaded many Iowans that there is substance here as well. He built a great organization and produced a tangible victory. He's made Hillary Clinton, with her wonkish, pragmatic approach to politics, seem uninspired. He's made John Edwards, with his angry cries that "corporate greed is killing your children's future," seem old-fashioned. Edwards's political career is probably over. Obama is changing the tone of American liberalism, and maybe American politics, too. On the Republican side, my message is: Be not afraid. Some people are going to tell you that Mike Huckabee's victory last night in Iowa represents a triumph for the creationist crusaders. Wrong. Huckabee won because he tapped into realities that other Republicans have been slow to recognize. First, evangelicals have changed. Huckabee is the first ironic evangelical on the national stage. He's funny, campy (see his Chuck Norris fixation) and he's not at war with modern culture. Second, Huckabee understands much better than Mitt Romney that we have a crisis of authority in this country. People have lost faith in their leaders' ability to respond to problems. While Romney embodies the leadership class, Huckabee went after it. He criticized Wall Street and K Street. Most importantly, he sensed that conservatives do not believe their own movement is well led. He took on Rush Limbaugh, the Club for Growth and even President Bush. The old guard threw everything they had at him, and their diminished power is now exposed. Third, Huckabee understands how middle-class anxiety is really lived. Democrats talk about wages. But real middle-class families have more to fear economically from divorce than from a free trade pact. A person's lifetime prospects will be threatened more by single parenting than by outsourcing. Huckabee understands that economic well-being is fused with social and moral well-being, and he talks about the inter-relationship in a way no other candidate has. In that sense, Huckabee's victory is not a step into the past. It opens up the way for a new coalition. A conservatism that recognizes stable families as the foundation of economic growth is not hard to imagine. A conservatism that loves capitalism but distrusts capitalists is not hard to imagine either. Adam Smith felt this way. A conservatism that pays attention to people making less than $50,000 a year is the only conservatism worth defending. Will Huckabee move on and lead this new conservatism? Highly doubtful. The past few weeks have exposed his serious flaws as a presidential candidate. His foreign policy knowledge is minimal. His lapses into amateurishness simply won't fly in a national campaign. So the race will move on to New Hampshire. Mitt Romney is now grievously wounded. Romney represents what's left of Republicanism 1.0. Huckabee and McCain represent half-formed iterations of Republicanism 2.0. My guess is Republicans will now swing behind McCain in order to stop Mike. Huckabee probably won't be the nominee, but starting last night in Iowa, an evangelical began the Republican Reformation. *** From: Robert Knight Sent: Thursday, January 03, 2008 5:23 PM >From today's "Knight Report" www.flashpoints.net Musharraf Kills! Pakistan's president performs hilariously in a comedic roast of Benazir Bhutto I'm Robert Knight in New York. Thursday was a red-letter day for Pakistani Entertainment Television as president, dictator and officially-retired military commander Pervez Musharraf turned the assassination of former PM Benazir Bhutto from tragedy to farce, in a wide-ranging stand-up routine during a nationally-televised press conference, improvising and temporizing in the best tradition of Leno and Letterman -- without even the assistance of a comedy writing staff. Musharraf regaled reporters summoned to the presidential palace for his command performance called "From the Presidency" -- a weekly one-hour show during which he takes questions from an invited audience. Musharraf said that the assignment of a "Barney Fife" contingent of just a few constables who stood away from the scene of the crime and merely looked on, did not reflect a lack of state security for Bhutto. Nor was the absence of enough cars and cops to cordon off Bhutto's Toyota Land Cruiser from the assassin and bomber, who walked up to the side of her car and blew her away, to blame for letting the murder transpire. Instead, said Musharraf, it was her fault for greeting supporters through the sunroof. Said Musharraf: "Who is to be blamed for her coming out of her vehicle?" Responding to a growing series of videos that put the lie to his government's claims that Bhutto was actually killed by "a bump on the noggin" as she ducked inside her SUV -- and not the three precisely recorded point-blank gunshots that lifted her veil -- Musharraf temporized on his own proxy claims that Bhutto was not killed by gunshots or shrapnel, but rather by... well, by a duck. Musharraf said of that now-inoperative government claim that "One should not give a statement that's 100 percent final. That's the flaw that we suffer from." On the subject of a belated and pointless wild-goose chase by investigators from Scotland Yard -- even after primary evidence was hastily washed away by his own sanitation crews who immediately hosed off the crime scene -- Musharraf quipped, "I will accept that: cleaning the area. Why did they do that? If you are meaning they did that by design I would say no. It's just inefficiency, people thinking things have to be cleared, traffic has to go through," After a pause for a rimshot, Musharraf added that after all, his own people had collected the partial head of the suspected bomber, body parts, two pistols, and mobile phones. As for the presumed culpability, knowledge or cooperation of elements of the ISI intelligence service or military operatives whom Bhutto repeatedly accused of stalking her, Musharraf claimed that his intelligence agencies were "not capable of indoctrinating a man to blow himself up," adding that "It is a joke" to think that the intelligence agencies, who had themselves been the target of several suicide bombings, would themselves deploy a suicide bomber to kill Bhutto. Musharraf, who himself came to power under a military coup, further claimed that "My family, by any imagination, is not a family, which believes in killing people, assassinating, intriguing. And that is all that I want to say." Meanwhile, in Washington, President Bush joined in Musharraf's roast of Bhutto, demonstrating that Islamabad has nothing on the White House Comedy Writer's Guild. Bush said he was "supporting democracy in Pakistan." Presidential spokesperson Dana Perino added the following one-liner about the Scotland Yard's "investigation": "Scotland Yard being in the lead in this investigation is appropriate and necessary and I don't see - we don't see - a need for an investigation beyond that at this time." But the last laugh today belonged to Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party, whose spokesperson Farhatullah Babar, said "The Mushrraf regime has lost all credibility. Neither a domestic inquiry nor vague foreign involvement will lay to rest the lingering doubts and suspicions." As yet, no conformation that Comedy Central is negotiating rebroadcast rights for Musharraf's roast of his late political adversary. But the latest reviews from the comedy club circuit today is that, in a word, "Musharraff killed!" >From exile in New York, I'm Robert Knight for Flashpoints. *** From: All the News That Doesn't Fit <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: [NYTr] Moyers Hosts Shut-Out, Shut-Up Candidates Kucinich and Paul - Jan 4 Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich Bill Moyers Journal PBS Airtime: Friday January 4, 2008, at 9:00 p.m. EST on PBS (check local listings at http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/about/airdates.html). What do the results in Iowa say about the press and politics? In two interviews, Bill Moyers talks with candidates shut out of key debates - Paul by Fox News from an upcoming debate in New Hampshire and Kucinich by Iowa's biggest newspaper, The Des Moines Register, in December. On the Friday after the Iowa caucuses, Paul and Kucinich will give their perspectives on the results, the politics and the process as the field heads to New Hampshire. Also on the program, Kathleen Hall Jamieson, director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center, examines the campaigns and coverage in Iowa and looks at the power of the press to systematically advantage some candidates and disadvantage others. *** Join LA Jews for Peace on the Third Street Promenade Sunday, January 6 , 2 to 4 PM on the corner of Santa Monica and 3rd In the spirit of peace for 2008, LA Jews for Peace joins Israeli, Palestinian, international, and American groups in calling for an end of Israel's siege of Gaza, and an end of unconditional U.S. support of Israel and its practice of collective punishment. Since June 2007, Israel has subjected the 1.5 million people living in Gaza to a siege that restricts movement of people and limits supplies of food, medicine, water, fuel, and electricity, and stops all commercial goods. These Israeli government restrictions have made a humanitarian crisis. Please join us and others in the fight for human rights and justice. Help Stop the Ongoing Humanitarian Crisis in the Gaza Strip Demonstrate to FEED the CHILDREN of GAZA and ISRAEL MUST END SIEGE OF GAZA The Third Street Promenade Sunday, January 6 , 2 to 4 PM Corner of Santa Monica and 3rd LA Jews for Peace will have a large signs. Bring your own sign; flags are not welcome. More information: call Jeff at 562-694-1637 or e-mail [EMAIL PROTECTED] or http://www.geocities.com/LAJewsforPeace/ Jeff Warner --------------------------------------------------------------------------- LAAMN: Los Angeles Alternative Media Network --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Unsubscribe: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subscribe: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Digest: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Help: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Post: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Archive1: <http://www.egroups.com/messages/laamn> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Archive2: <http://www.mail-archive.com/[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Yahoo! 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