Unconventional
“In the modern age, America’s major-party conventions are love fests, feting their preselected nominees. But that may not be the case this year for Barack Obama, which means the Democratic convention even has the potential to derail his chances for victory in November,” Steven Stark writes in the Boston Phoenix.
“The press has been slow to notice the potential trouble ahead, but the Obama camp has not. In the past week, the media has rather dutifully reported that the key final night of the Democratic convention (Thursday, Aug. 28) — the night Obama will give his all-important acceptance speech — will be moved out of the convention hall and into a stadium. …
“Before the change, Obama was scheduled to give his speech in a hall half full of hardcore Hillary Clinton supporters who don’t particularly like him. So odds are that Obama was looking for a larger venue in which Clinton’s supporters would be only a small portion of the crowd. …
“But moving it into a stadium creates a new set of problems for the Obama campaign.
“First, it’s much harder to choreograph a speech in a stadium. …
“Second, a large campaign rally in a ballpark full of adoring supporters may not actually be the best way to re-introduce Obama to the nation. Sure, those ’Yes we can’ events of the primaries conveyed a lot of enthusiasm. But it was always an open question whether they preached more to the choir than to the masses. Having 75,000 supporters screaming their heads off with Obama bellowing back could well scare off a more traditional and independent general electorate.”
Deja vu
“Everyone complains about high gas prices, yet viable solutions to today’s energy crisis get tabled by the very people who do the complaining,” Thomas E. Nugent writes at National Review Online (www.nationalreview.com).
“Certain Californians come to mind folks who philosophically luxuriate in a moratorium on offshore drilling only to boil over on Wilshire Boulevard when faced with gas at $5.50 a gallon,” said Mr. Nugent, who is executive vice president and chief investment officer of PlanMember Advisors Inc. and principal of Victoria Capital Management Inc.
“Then there’s Congress.
“Some proposed solutions to the gas-price crisis, such as a windfall profits tax on oil companies, would merely take us back to the good old days of the gas line. Incentives matter. So do disincentives. When you penalize companies for bringing gas to market, less gas (at higher prices) will come to market.
“But Congress has been getting energy wrong for quite a few years now. When President Bush launched a viable energy plan in 2001, Democrats submarined it. They said a strategy for increased drilling would take too long to have an effect — maybe eight to 10 years. So why bother?
“And here we are again.”
Empty gesture
“For a perfect example of what is meant by ’gesture politics’ — an empty pledge given solely for effect, which the politician has no hope of honoring — one could not do better than this week’s commitment by the G-8 leaders on how they want us to fight climate change,” Christopher Booker writes in the London Telegraph.
“Sitting on their cloud-wreathed Japanese mountain top, they solemnly agreed that, to halt global warming, their countries would aim by 2050 to halve their emissions of carbon dioxide,” Mr. Booker said.
“If the G-8’s leaders genuinely wanted to cut carbon emissions by 50 percent over the next 40 years, this would mean taking steps they haven’t even begun to contemplate.
“A tiny indication of the fact that they didn’t really have a clue what they were talking about was a slip by Japan’s prime minister, Yasuo Fukuda, when he had to be corrected for announcing that the CO2 cut would be measured from ’1990 levels.’
“Even when he amended this to ’present-day levels,’ he was merely spouting empty words into the oriental air.”
Double trouble
“So what part of Barack Obama will the Rev. Al Sharpton want to chop off now?” Chicago Tribune columnist John Kass asks.
“Barack’s pinkie toe? A nose hair? The vast Barackian ego?
“Sharpton’s got to find something, now that his fellow racial crisis broker, the Rev. Jesse Jackson, said something not even Don Imus would dare utter,” Mr. Kass said.
“Speaking into a microphone on Fox News, Jackson whispered he was tired of Obama talking down to black people. And he said he wanted to cut off Obama’s special purpose. Both of them.
“Both of what?
“’Manhood, er, genitals,’ muttered a flustered CNN reporter, obviously unnerved that Jackson made his comments exclusively on the rival Fox News network. ’Uh, male private parts.’
“Then CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, who said he couldn’t be specific for reasons of taste (though the real reason was that he didn’t have Fox’s tape) uttered one of the greatest lines in the history of American broadcasting. It should be carved into stone, with a bust of Blitzer illuminated by an eternal flame.
“’Male private parts?’ shrieked Blitzer. ’The suggestion really was castration, if you will!’ …
“The national media was stunned, as if they’d just found out Obama is a Chicago politician rather than a mythic hero of Kennedyesque proportions, who drew the great sword Axelrod from the cornerstone of Chicago’s City Hall.”
McCain union foes
The AFL-CIO is mobilizing union members who are military veterans to work against Republican Sen. John McCain and other office seekers it opposes, officials said Thursday.
John Sweeney, president of the labor federation, announced the creation of a Union Veterans Council in a teleconference, the Associated Press reports. The union, which endorsed Democrat Sen. Barack Obama for president last month, plans to form state councils of union veterans in key election battlegrounds, including Wisconsin, Minnesota, Colorado, Ohio and West Virginia. Later, it plans to organize in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Virginia.
The new council will include about a dozen state affiliates and will also coordinate other veterans groups “to raise the profile of veterans’ issues and lead the way in securing an economy that works for all,” he said.
• Greg Pierce can be reached at 202/636-3285 or gpierce@washingtontimes.com.
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