So Obama wasn’t there, but he can conclude the police were stupid? Even given the police report indicating that Gates was angry, belligerent, and throwing out racial barbs and profanities? And what Obama and other opportunistic commentators like Michael Eric Dyson forget is that Gates was not wrongly arrested for breaking and entering. He was arrested for disorderly conduct. This tends to happen when you are pugnacious towards the police and refuse their instructions. Also calling them racist and insulting their mother doesn’t help. You would expect a Harvard professor to know better.

If the police came to my home after I had just broke in, I would be glad that someone had called and they showed up. I would expect to be questioned about my actions and to prove it was my house. It seems as if Gates thought his status as a Harvard professor should have sufficed for the police investigation. But wouldn’t that be profiling? Somehow the well-educated have a higher tendency toward truthfulness? In fact it was Gates, not the police officers, who was exhibiting racial profiling. For Gates to assume the police were questioning him simply because he was black speaks to his preconceived biases. He had a narrative in his head and charged with it full speed ahead: “they are questioning me because I’m black.”  For Michael Eric Dyson to get on TV and argue this case is some sort of metaphor for the black experience betrays the facts of the incident; it is just another chance for him to sermonize on perpetual victimhood and get some air time. He is one of the most overrated voices on television whose synonym-clad sentences and triplespeak are painful and nauseous to any thinking listener.

President Obama is supposed to be the President for all Americans. Instead of rising above the situation, he needlessly injected himself into the debate and sided with Gates and trashed the police officer who handled the arrest. It was a shortsighted and pitiful display, especially given how often President Obama attempts to channel Abraham Lincoln. Obama should remember how Lincoln asked all Americans to unite, “with malice toward none, with charity towards all.” The president left us last night with plenty of malice, and no charity.

A group at Fresno Pacific University called the Sunbird Conservatives sent out a notice yesterday publicizing an inaugural (of course they used the grammatically incorrect term “first annual”) Conservatives Conference. The e-mail proclaimed, “Conservatism is not a policy but rather a way of life.  It is a life based on principles and values that transcend time and political parties.”

Really? And what is this way of life? Watching FOX News, listening to Rush Limbaugh and stockpiling guns? Language like “transcend time and politics” involve bigger ideas than a political party. Such universal principles are what a national identity, or a religion, is founded on. Religions and political parties have very different purposes. One seeks to understand truth, articulate a worldview, and win converts. The other tries to influence a broad coalition in order to win power (if you can’t tell which is which, see your priest). Unfortunately too many have confused the two. Too many are trying to create theological purity in this new faith and purge the ranks of the heretics.

These are dark days indeed for the party of Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, and Ronald Reagan. In fact, would any of this great trio recognize, or be welcomed, in today’s Republican Party?

• As a lawyer, Obama once sued the same financial institutions on behalf of radical groups like ACORN for failing to use leftist social engineering criteria for lending instead of an applicant’s ability to repay a loan.
• And now, anyone who dares speak out against or challenge Obama’s ultra-liberal agenda, such as the hundreds of thousands of patriots who attended last week’s Tea Parties, should expect to be labeled “unhealthy” by this Adminstration.  Now, THAT is arrogance!
• You know that Barack Obama’s hubris and charisma conceal the inexperience and lack of wisdom that our country cannot afford in its president.

When you have a popular president and an economic crisis this same old junk just doesn’t work. Even if there is no hope of passage, someone at the top needs to articulate legislation with a vision of optimism that calls Americans to something greater than themselves.  And a plan for government and industry to be held more accountable. Right now that person is President Barack Obama. Even though his budget is bloated and bleeds red ink, he is the only one with any sort of substantive proposals.

I have been reading a lot about Lincoln lately (Team of Rivals and Lincoln, The Biography of a Writer) and today’s Republican Party is starting to remind me of the Whig Party of Lincoln’s day. Its lack of unifying vision and moral bankruptcy over slavery is what gave  birth to the Republican Party.

If the GOP continues to be guided by Michael Steele, Rush Limbaugh, Laura Ingraham et.al., we will need a rebirth of the party or face being overrun for years by the Democrats.

They may not be wrong – but they sure are losing the public relations battle. As New York Times columnist David Brooks writes in his latest column there is plenty the Republicans should be doing to offer alternatives. This economy is a crisis, and it demands leadership and ideas. Right now, the top of the GOP just isn’t doing that.

Now on to more important matters, like finishing up my NCAA bracket.

After trashing the McCain campaign, Rush Limbaugh is now actively cheering for Obama to fail and having a war of words with inept Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele. The spat is all over the media with The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and others devoting coverage to the implosion that is now the Republican Party. When Rush isn’t busy hoping Obama will fail, Steele is promising to reach out to “urban-suburban hip-hop settings” with an “off the hook” campaign. At one point he even criticized Rush, arguing the Sacred Large Cow was merely an entertainer and not the true leader of the party.

Unfortunately, cowardice won over courage.

There are plenty of articulate voices that could be leading the dialogue. New York Times columnist David Brooks is a far better choice from the media than Limbaugh. Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty has also now felt the need to kowtow to the hard right. Instead, right now we have Steele pledging to win over “one-armed midgets.”

So thank you, Michael Steele, for ruining things for all Republicans ever. Anyone up for re-forming the Whig Party?

But really, this is a surprise that Ludacris would offer such astute political analysis? This is the rapper with songs like “Get the F— Back” (lyrics below)

F— That!
Get the f— back!
Luda make your skull crack
Tuck that
B—-, your whole town’s on my n—–k
Cuff that
Put it in your weed, n—-, puff that
What’s that
People gon’ die tonight

Or there is of course “Roll Out:”

Twin glock .40s, cocked back
Me and my homies, so drop that
We rollin on twenties, with the top back
So much money, you can’t stop that

Obama is willing to connect with anyone who serves his interest, but then throw them under the bus when necessary. Ludacris is only talented in a culture where we expect the worst from ourselves. No one with any brains or love of decency should consider themselves one of the “we” that Ludacris is referring to. Racial reconciliation and American identity have far greater models that we should follow. It is tragic that angry, mindless words should be embraced by anyone.

But what do I know, I guess I just be hatin’ on him.

Apparently Chinese hackers are responsible for a number of attacks on U.S. government sites. But instead of being sponsored by the Chinese government, they operate independently and out of a sense of national pride. To them, hacking into U.S. sites is how they can do their part to take on the American enemy.    In addition to the government, corporations, who would be similar targets for attacks, need to get their cybersecurity in order. And this presidential campaign, which has made the Internet a central hub for fundraising and the dissemination of information, makes American web sites a prime target.

The fact that these hackers are acting independently makes them more dangerous, I believe, than if they were Chinese government surrogates. They will likely be more brazen, more willing to take on higher-level targets, and difficult to locate.

The hacking looks like it’s accelerating into a full-fledged cyber war. Recently a few e-Minutemen are taking the fight back to the Chinese. This should be fun to watch. More so than another dry 16 days of Olympics coming soon to Beijing.

The GOP should get credit for taking advantage of the web and making inroads to those who may be turned off by politics. The Internet continues to change the way people interact to political issues and gives voters a chance to support their cause. Unfortunately, at times this leads to things like a Ron Paul Convention.

He tossed his pledge to campaign within public spending limits. It was back and forth on how soon he would get troops out of Iraq. He sided with the conservative members of the Supreme Court in agreeing with the decision overturning the D.C. handgun ban and opposing the reversal of a Louisiana law making child rapists eligible for the death penalty.

Then there was the cardinal sin of all: agreeing to continue and even expand President Bush’s policy of doling out federal money to faith-based charities.

While some of those views would be welcome to those on the right, it sounds eerily like someone who is a calculating politician trying to maneuver his rhetoric to appeal to the middle. Which is nothing unusual, but the problem is that is not who Obama has claimed he would be. He was supposed to be the “change candidate,” offering a transcendent view of politics and promising to change all the rules.

The problem is such high idealism seldom pans into reality because politics is, well, politics. It does not mean we should cynically assume that all politicians are evil and corrupt. But any who offer to transform politics or offer a generic slogan with the word “change” in it is unlikely to, in all reality, alter things on a messianic level.

Clark’s barb was brainless not so much because it insulted McCain, but because it was a weak criticism in the light of who Clark is supporting. It would be one thing to criticize McCain if his opponent were, say, Dwight Eisenhower. Then one MIGHT be able to argue that McCain’s “executive experience” (by the way, thanks Rudy for that phrase. Now everyone must be held to the standard of being a mayor) was not on par with his opponent. But he’s running against Obama – who has hardly faced the kind of foreign affairs issues that McCain has led on. It’s especially an odd criticism coming from Clark, whose major justification for running for president was his record as a U.S. general – which was not exactly perfect.

So Clark is going to argue McCain lacks experience when he has endorsed Obama, a freshman U.S. Senator?  What next – McCain should have spent more time in the run down parts of Phoenix taking on slum lords to have gained better leadership skills? It’s another mindless Washington barb from a politician with an agenda.

Perhaps the knocks against McCain’s age and temper have failed to stick. So Team Obama has moved on to other arguments; his five years in the Hanoi Hilton don’t qualify him, he didn’t lead a large enough squadron, he should have avoided that missile that shot him down, etc.

Expect the barrage to continue. As more try to get a piece of Obama, they will look to do it by digging into McCain. Fortunately those years as a POW that didn’t qualify him to be president strengthened him to handle empty rhetoric.