How can Obama leave his brother without money?

An odd story today in the Telegraph, a UK paper: apparently the Italian Edition of Vanity Fair (I am thankfully ignorant of the rest of its contents) has found George Hussein Onyango Obama, Senator Barack Obama's brother. He is Barack Hussein Obama's son, as Senator Obama is, but by a different mother than Senator Obama. And he lives on less than a dollar a day, in a hut in Kenya.

He's met Obama twice. We don't know the full story here, but I think, looking at the article, that it is at the very least odd that Senator Obama has apparently just forgotten about his brother. How can you allow your own brother to live in poverty while you run for president? I realize that Obama has somewhat tenous ties to the Kenyan side of his family, but ask yourself: could you allow your brother to live in poverty while you yourself are rich? Not just that, but could you all but ignore your brother and meet him only twice in almost thirty years? It sounds callous to me, again without knowing the full story.

I think it bears some investigation, if only to determine exactly what kind of person the Senator truly is, behind all the marketing and the media images.

The cowardice of the West enabled Russia's brutality

Abraham Lincoln said that the United States would be defeated, if defeat came, not from without but from within. I think this can be expanded to include the entire West. We will be defeated not from without, but from within. The conflict in Georgia, and the months and years that led up to it, has been a disgusting display of Western weakness, naivete, pusillanimity, cowardice, and appeasement.

Schroeder says that the conflict is Saakashvili's fault. A greater insanity has never come out of that traitor's mouth. He, along with Chirac, and now Merkel and Sarkozy, bear much of the responsibility for the ravaging of Georgia. In April, France and Germany (and others) denied Georgia the NATO Membership Action Plan. As Saakashvili correctly said, Russia perceived this as the new Munich. There isn't a snowball's chance in hell that Putin would have initiated this conflict had Georgia been given the plan.

They did this because they knew they could get away with it. After years of accommodation and appeasement, none of our words mattered to them. They ignored our calls for an end to the conflict. They have strutted around Georgia for a week, doing as they please. They threatened Poland with nuclear attack. They know that we are weak. The United States alone cannot isolate Russia; with the existing institutions, only a united West can do this. There was and is a chance for us to turn the tables on Russia and turn this military 'adventure' into a large strategic blunder, but only if we are united and take the necessary steps. I do not see this happening.

Merkel said on Friday that Russia's actions were "disproportionate in some aspects."

This is an appalling statement that reflects either a vast misunderstanding of the conflict, or the reality of a nation utterly beholden to Russian energy supplies. I think the latter.

The reality is that there wasn't much we could do after the invasion started, although we certainly could have been tougher. The tragedy of Georgia is that we didn't have the courage and strength to prevent the conflict months ago, when we had the chance. We were like the Republicans trying to regain their values six months before the election, after eight years of pigging out at the trough; we tried to get Russia to respect our wishes after eight years of appeasement and accommodation. It doesn't work that way, folks.

Will Russia lose, in the end? Yes. But if we keep on this same course, it will be many years from now indeed. France and Germany have blood on their hands, Georgian blood. Perhaps they will reconsider their opposition to Georgian NATO membership.

Russia returns to its history..

The Russians refuse to move past their sordid history; blind to its lessons, they cannot escape the vice-grip of their own brutal past. They were waiting for an opportunity, spoiling for a fight with Georgia, and they got one. This was not an innocent reaction to Georgian aggression; it was a pre-meditated attack that sought to use the excuse of Georgian involvement in South Ossetia as a way to send in their forces and message to the world.

The Russian attempt to blame this on Georgia and cry wolf is a laughably transparent attempt at obscuring Russian motives, which are singularly dark and brutal. Once again, Russia returns to its past, a time of autocratic brutality that has always failed in the end. The intermediate time may prosper Putin and his pet, Medvedev, but this return to a dark past will impoverish the Russian people, as autocracy always does.

In the end, Russia will fail. Humiliation, rather than the greatness they have always desired, will be their fate. Freedom and opportunity is the only end-state that will ever allow true greatness. State power is a cheap imposter.

Unfortunately, Russia has not learned the lessons of history. This is their great fault; brutality and aggression are all they offered to the world for the last 100 years. Rather than learn from the deaths of millions of their people, the collapse of communism, and the bankruptcy of state control, they have closed their eyes to the truth and blustered blindly down the path to autocracy.

This will all end in failure. It is sad that Russia refuses to avoid this future by changing its present course. How many will have to die before Russia learns that true strength does not lie in military domination, but in democratic freedom?

Alex Castellanos wonders who Obama is..

The Republican Alex Castellanos wrote a good article this week about the essential question of this election: who is Barack Obama? Sure, we know his record in the State Senate. We know his record in the U.S. Senate. But we do not know the man himself. What, really, does he think about race? What does he truly believe about America? His view of this country, to echo the Wall Street Journal, is complex; this by itself is not a sin. But we have a right to know what the deepest beliefs of a candidate are, if indeed Barack Obama has such beliefs. His book is certainly tremendously well-written and candid, but we are left to wonder how he has changed since its publication nearly thirteen years ago.

He campaigns on reform, yet has reformed little. He campaigns on a new politics, yet has, as Ryan Lizza wrote, played by the rules throughout his political life.

His rise has more to do with his own self than it does with any particular idea or belief. The public is not asked to consider an ideology, but rather to consider the specialness of one man. He is undoubtedly a private person, as is John McCain. But Barack Obama is unknown, in part because he is new, but also because he does not tell us who he truly is. This is part of what makes Obama an interesting, even fascinating, figure on the political scene. But, as Castellanos says, it is forbidding; should the American people invest so much power in a man who is not known to them? I say that they should say no because of his abortion policies; moderates will disagree on that. Which brings us back to the first point: should this man be given the most powerful position on earth when he is unknown to many of his countrymen?

My argument is not that Obama is a liar, or that he is a man of evil intent; he may very well have the best of intentions. But we should give the presidency to a man who is done journeying on the road of self-knowledge, and who long ago decided who he must be.

Without further ado, here is part of the article:

In the defining moment of his life, McCain was willing to give everything for one thing, and that one thing was his country. Contrast that with Obama, who has told America that he is "a proud citizen of the United States and a fellow citizen of the world." Obama is the talented salesman who seduced one state after another saying "Iowa, this is our moment," "Virginia, this is our moment," "Texas, this is our moment," and then tells Europe, "people of Berlin, people of the world, this is our moment." How many times can Barack Obama sell the same moment to everyone, before he becomes Mel Brooks in "The Producers"? Who is Barack Obama? His campaign, as it reupholsters him before our eyes, says we can never know -- perhaps because Barack Obama does not know himself.

Dreams from My Father is a staggeringly beautiful book, lyrical, powerful and poetic. It is also the story of a man who has been many men, all named Barack Obama. In his own eyes, he is one race, but also another. He is an American, but also a Kenyan. He is from Hawaii and also the Kansas heartland. He is Harvard elite, then the Chicago streets. At times he decries the very clay from which he was made, only to remake himself again.

At each place and stage, as Barack Obama chronicles the chapters of his life, he tells us how he has re-invented himself, becoming the role he inhabits, though not falsely or in-authentically, like Bill Clinton. He actually seems to transform himself, becoming what must be next. He has been called distant, aloof and somewhat unapproachable, perhaps because we cannot approach what he does not have, a solid core. His soul seems to be molten and made up of dreams, which is at once breathtakingly inspiring and forbiddingly indeterminate. When this young man with the flowing, passionate core, when this candidate without the solid-center changes positions and transforms himself as we watch, it leaves Americans much more in doubt about who he is and how he would lead us. It also reveals an Obama of unapproachable arrogance and inestimable self-regard: He appears confident voters will appreciate his superiority regardless of where he journeys or what he becomes to meet his political ambitions.

John McCain is a complete and well-formed man. Barack Obama is completing himself. As he moves to fit what he perceives to be a right-of-center country, he distances himself from the simple and authentic passion of a young candidate who once pledged "Change We Can Believe In".