Two Random Thoughts

Blurb one: Reports indicate – and a trip to the Acme confirms – that food prices are soaring and that farmers are now making money hand over fist. Combine high demand for foodstuffs with the increasing demand for agricultural products as the basis for fuel and – voila! – record prices.

So. Would now not be a great time to zero out all federal (and state) farm subsidies?

Blurb two: The political dictionary defines "gaffe" as "inadvertently telling a politically incorrect truth". Comes now Geraldine Ferraro, veteran token, averring that Barack Obama would not be where he is today were he a white male.

Ferraro notes, accurately, that if she had been named "Gerald", she’d be historically anonymous; Mondale never would have chosen a little-known, unaccomplished white male Member of Congress as his running mate.

Just so, today, were Barack Obama the same in every way, excepting that his paternal line hailed from Dublin rather than Kenya, he’d been a complete political non-entity. He never would have been chosen to address the DNC in 2004; he never would have been elected to the Senate. And if, as a white male, first term Senator, he’d dared to run for President, he’d get the same respect John Edwards got: a cute, well-spoken neophyte, who won nowhere (to be fair to Edwards, he’d been in office three times as long as Obama when he sought the Presidency).

For telling the truth, Ferraro finds herself vilified. Obama, for his part, condemned her as a "slice and dice" politician , advancing a "... politics that's about race and about gender and about this and that, and that's what Americans are tired of because they recognize that when we divide ourselves in that way we can't solve problems." (Not exactly sound bite quality work from this famously articulate pol)

THAT’S truly funny. The Democratic Party positively revels in "slice and dice" politics and considers identity absolutely crucial. Only a Republican – and a conservative Republican at that – denies the relevance of characteristics like race, sex, and ethnicity (in matters political). Hillary draws huge support from feminists, who believe gender is (political) destiny, while Obama routinely racks up 95% of the black vote, numbers inexplicable except as based upon race.

It would be nice if Obama truly meant what he said. When he announces his support for the abolition of all "affirmative action" programs and demands that his Party foreswear its express quota system for choosing delegates, then he can be taken seriously.