Mugabe should read the Wall Street Journal

According to the AP, Robert Mugabe's party in Zimbabwe isn't about to bow to outside pressure. "They can't impose anything on us," they brag. Meantime, it is estimated that by early 2009, almost half the population will need food aid.

And where, pray tell, is that food going to come from? Perhaps from the people who produce a surplus beyond the food needs of their own people, many of them white. Such people are likely to get a little tired of being asked to save a people whose government denounces them incessantly for, pretty much, being white.

It's also going to become more difficult not to notice the obvious feedback loop facing anyone attempting to solve the food crisis in Zimbabwe. The reason the government is to keen in staying in power is that it is enormously profitable. There aren't a great many of them at the top, but they can extort money from anyone with hard currency who wants to help the people. This river of cash is what allows them to stay in power, oppress the people, destroy agriculture, and create the need for continued food assistance.

It's interesting to note the deep silence on Zimbabwe in the "progressive" press, compared with their concern over Darfur. In the Eugene Weekly, the acknowledged voice of the hard left in Eugene, Oregon, a Google search turns up more than 200 references to Darfur, and seven to "Mugabe," of which six refer to a local band.

It's not hard to understand their quandary. A couple of decades ago, the EW was probably full of approving comments about Robert Mugabe, a black leader, steeped in the tradition of Marxism, leading a government whose leaders called one another "comrade," and devoted to redistributing wealth so that landless blacks could get the prime farms "stolen" from them by the colonialists.

Now that the redistribution of wealth has run afoul of the related destruction of wealth, Mugabe has turned out to be a ruthless dictator, and the black-run governments of subsaharan Africa to be generally spineless, this is not a story that plays well. The Left seems to want America to jump into the mess in Darfur, with no clear idea how this is going to improve things. But not Zimbabwe, where the obvious question is going to be, why did we force Ian Smith to turn everything over to Mugabe?

Do we speak English or that one?

It appears the John McCain has angered some people by his use of "that one" during the debate. To quote from an article on the subject:

Don Hammonds of The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette also took offence.

"Regardless of intent, it showed Senator McCain to be culturally ignorant, and completely unaware of the implications of what his off-the-cuff statement meant to people of colour," he wrote.

"Whether Senator McCain meant it that way or not, if you are a person of colour, and someone trots out the 'that one' remark, you instantly take it as racist. I know that I did."

OK, I'll bite. What are the implications to a person of color? These are two extremely common English words. I had never heard of them having racial overtones. "That?" "One?" Put together as "That one?"

It wasn't perfect style. The contrast should have been "Him and me," or "That one and this one," but instead he said first, "That one" and later "me." But apparently this transcends rhetorical style and reflects, somehow, on McCain's psyche.

In fact, it says nothing about him at all. It says much more about the people who have taken offense. McCain was indeed trying to show that Obama was the "risky" candidate but not because he is black. He's the Democrat. McCain would have tried the same tactic on Hillary. It's simply politics.

The word "racist" springs immediately to the lips of many people with holier-than-thou attitudes towards anyone they consider to be less sensitive. The effect has been to trivialize the word, and by extension the reality of racism. Kathleen Parker, who wrote in the Washington Post that, "McCain supporters have tried to explain what he meant, but there's a reason it was so stunning in the moment. I'm don't think it was racist, as some have argued. But it was objectifying. "That one" isn't the same as "that man." One is an object; the other is a person. A human being. 'That one' has a dehumanizing effect and one is right to recoil."

He used a freaking pronoun. What exactly does "objectifying" mean? A "dehumanizing effect?"

Obama wants the big one. Many people don't want him to get it, and would think so if he were defined by his 50% whiteness rather than his 50% blackness. They are not obliged to give him special treatment. I rather think Obama knew this going in, although his supporters don't. If you can't take the heat, get out of the kitchen.

In an election year, it's cut taxes and spend

The Senate has decided to upstage the House with its own version of the bailout, which is going to include tax breaks. So much for the notion that the crisis was going to impose a new fiscal discipline on America.

Granted the "tax cut" is a fix to the alternative minimum tax which was flawed when it was written because it wasn't indexed to inflation. Nevertheless, it adds more to the estimates of the federal deficit. For the moment, the feds have managed to create so much anxiety that everybody wants their debt, but if that ever changes, the U.S. government is just going to be a large scale version of Lehman Brothers.

Out here on the Oregon Coast, our little local governments have to keep expenses within revenues. Probably the same in Alaska. Maybe Palin has more credentials for running the national government than I've given her credit for.

Just kidding.