This is something I did not see in Albania when I visited last month. The New York Times reports today (for some reason presenting it as "world news"):

Pashe Keqi recalled the day nearly 60 years ago when she decided to become a man. She chopped off her long black curls, traded in her dress for her father’s baggy trousers, armed herself with a hunting rifle and vowed to forsake marriage, children and sex.

What's the fuss? Women do this all the time in America. Ironically, it's called "feminism." (There! I've said it!) Hold on, There's more.

For centuries, in the closed-off and conservative society of rural northern Albania, swapping genders was considered a practical solution for a family with a shortage of men. Her father was killed in a blood feud, and there was no male heir. By custom, Ms. Keqi, now 78, took a vow of lifetime virginity. She lived as a man, the new patriarch, with all the swagger and trappings of male authority — including the obligation to avenge her father’s death.

So this custom represents not a confusion of the respective roles of men and women in the natural order of things, but a recognition and affirmation of them. Of course, like all things, the particular cultural expression of that natural order is twisted and perverted by sin. “Back then," says Keqi, "it was better to be a man because, before, a woman and an animal were considered the same thing.”

In the Bible itself, we see this twisting of the created order between Genesis 2 and Genesis 3. Eve is given to Adam as his "suitable helper" (Gen. 2:20 NIV) or "help meet" (KJV). Adam was to govern his home with a righteousness that mirrored the character of God himself (Gen. 1:26) in the larger enterprise of governing the creation (Gen. 1:28). Sin changed that beautiful moral economy. When announcing the curses on the serpent, then on Eve, and then on Adam (last, on account of his ultimate responsibility), God said, "Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you." God here announces the effect that sin will have on those previously godly relationships between the sexes.

By "desire," he does not refer to romantic attraction. In the next chapter, God uses the same Hebrew word when he warns Cain against sin that wishes to dominate him: "If you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door. Its desire is for you, but you must rule over it" (Gen. 4:7). Wives will want to dominate their husbands, and husbands, in their own particular perversity, will want to rule their wives brutally.

Again Miss Keqi: “Now, Albanian women have equal rights with men, and are even more powerful."

It seems that the Albanians, so eager to embrace American liberty, are following us also in exchanging one perversion for another in the relations between the sexes.

(To see the pictures of these female patriarchs, you have to go to the NYT story, "Albanian Custom Fades: Woman as Family Man.")

I just filled up my Honda Odyssey here on Long Island...$71! Gas is not just over $4 a gallon. That was a few weeks ago. At $4.23, it is now well over $4 and heading swiftly toward $5. The candidate who squarely and convincingly addresses this issue will be the next President of the United States. It's as simple as that.

Message to John McCain. Do not just concede that drilling is likely okay now. Call for drilling and make a big point of it.

In fact, call for rapid expansion of our nuclear and oil refinery capacity as well. The last time a license was issued for building a nuclear power plant was 1973. That was 35 years ago. Actually McCain has recently said that he wants 45 new reactors by 2030 to supplement the 104 that currently supply 20% of our national electricity needs (New York Times 6/19/08). In 2005, the Christian Science Monitor reported, "In 1981, the US had 324 refineries with a total capacity of 18.6 million barrels per day, the Department of Energy reports. Today, there are just 132 oil refineries with a capacity of 16.8 million b.p.d., according to Oil and Gas Journal, a trade publication." In real terms, the economy has tripled in size since then.

If John McCain hammers at this issue unrelentingly and with passion ("American Energy Means Prosperity and Security"), and if Obama's high principles and tender conscience (and powerful environmentalist lobby) will not allow him to soften his stern opposition to these measures, the Republicans will win the White House in November.

Charles Krauthammer, "McCain's Oil Epiphany" (Washington Post, June 20, 2008), is puzzled by McCain's half measures on nuclear plants and utterly perplexed over his refusal to support drilling in the 0.01% of the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve (ANWR) that contains those billions of barrels of oil.

Paul Krugman thinks drilling, whether off-shore or in ANWR, will have an insignificant impact on oil prices, even in the long run, and that the suggestion that it will is a con. Keep it up, Paul.

Michael Barone suggests that the Democrats have their heads buried deep in the sands of unreality, not only on this issue but also on the war in Iraq ("The Facts in Iraq Are Changing"). Even the Washington Post is telling them to wake up on Iraq. When a candidate, Obama in this case (for ideological reasons, perhaps also for party political reasons), is stuck on a major narrative that is years out of date and the obsolescence of which most voters can see plainly, it is hard to imagine that he could win the election.

Today, David Brooks describes "Two Obamas" that he sees in the Democratic presumptive nominee: Dr. Barack, "the high-minded, Niebuhr-quoting speechifier who spent this past winter thrilling the Scarlett Johansson set and feeling the fierce urgency of now," and Fast Eddie Obama, "the promise-breaking, tough-minded Chicago pol who’d throw you under the truck for votes." He sees hope in the tough Chicago pol side both for moderating the liberal political principles and for dealing with foreign bad guys.

I have recently found these two quotes from Obama challenging.

Obama on religion (even Christian religion!) in politics:

Secularists are wrong when they ask believers to leave their religion at the door before entering into the public square. Frederick Douglass, Abraham Lincoln, William Jennings Bryan, Dorothy Day, Martin Luther King – indeed, the majority of great reformers in American history – were not only motivated by faith but repeatedly used religious language to argue for their cause. To say that men and women should not inject their 'personal morality' into public policy debates is a practical absurdity. Our law is by definition a codification of morality, much of it grounded in the Judeo-Christian tradition

Obama on the war against Islamofascism:

The terrorists are at war with us. The threat is from violent extremists who are a small minority of the world's 1.3 billion Muslims, but the threat is real. They distort Islam. They kill man, woman, and child; Christian and Hindu, Jew and Muslim. They seek to create a repressive caliphate. To defeat this enemy, we must understand who we are fighting against, and what we are fighting for.

John Kerry would never have said these things.

Two items of interest. One anticipates a natural limit on the damage a President Obama could do economically, and the other sees a possibility of light in a President Obama tunnel.

Brian Wesbury in "Change We Can Believe in is All Around Us" (Wall Street Journal, June 11, 2008), argues that on account of the lightening fast speed with which economic data is available today, the unintended consequences of a foolish economic policy become painfully but quickly apparent to the American electorate who in turn make their displeasure painfully known to elected officials.

Decades ago the feedback mechanism was slow. The unintended consequences of the New Deal took too long to show up in the economy. As a result, by the time the pain was publicized, the connection to misguided government policy could not be made. Today, in the midst of Internet Time, this is no longer a problem. So, despite protestations from staff at the White House, most people understand that food riots in foreign lands and higher prices at U.S. grocery stores are linked to ethanol subsidies in the U.S., which have sent shock waves through the global system. This is the good news. Policy mistakes will be ferreted out very quickly. As a result, any politician who attempts to change things will be blamed for the unintended consequences right away.

Bruce Bartlett explains how various neocons and libertarians are viewing Obama with hope in "Mr. Right? The Rise of the Obamacons" (The New Republic, June 25, 2008).

"there are 117 billion barrels of oil on lands owned or managed by the U.S. government"


"Adding in what's available on privately held land, the figure rises to 139 billion barrels of oil, according to the government - more than the known oil reserves of Iran, Iraq, Russia, Nigeria or Venezuela, respectively."


"The biggest untapped land-based oil deposit in the United States lies within ANWR, the Artic National Wildlife Refuge (7.7 billion barrels)."


"Much of the oil is off-limits because of the National Environmental Policy Act(NEPA), the Clean Water Act, the Endangered Species Act and the National Historic Preservation Act."

"The Bakken fields beneath North Dakota, Montana, and Canada hold an estimated 400 billion barrels of oil. In comparison, Saudi Arabia's biggest field, Gahawar, has an estimated 55 billion barrels, while ANWR has an estimated 10.4 billion barrels."

This is a national security issue and it is a love of neighbor issue. We make opportunity cost decisions on the environment all the time. It is not an absolute value. We pave over "the environment" for roads and housing. We sacrifice it to mineral extraction and recreation. People have to live. It is time to start using Amrican oil sources instead of paying some of the most evil and dangerous people in the world astronomical prices for theirs.

Jesse Jackson Jr. is not an obscure New Age journalist from San Francisco. He is a United States Congressman from Illinois and the son of Jesse Jackson, a prominent figure in American politics for the last 30 years. As Harold Kildow reported in his post, "Political Idolatry," Rep. Jackson said,

"The event itself [Barack Obama's nomination to be the Democratic party's presidential candidate] is so extraordinary that another chapter could be added to the Bible to chronicle its significance.”

(Politico.com, in "Black Lawmakers Emotional About Obama's Success," reported this without comment in a serious of responses to the historic development.)

This is not an isolated statement. It has actually become quite common to describe the presumptive Democratic nominee in Messianic or at least semi-divine terms. See Jonah Goldberg's "Messiah in Our Midst" and his more thorough documenting of this in The National Review, as well as my post, "Obama Offers Civil Religion on Steroids." In "Is Obama an Enlightened Being?," the San Francisco columnist denies that he is doing a "superhero messiah" thing. And yet... "Many spiritually advanced people...identify Obama as a Lightworker." He can "help usher in a new way of being on the planet." He can even "help us evolve."

Ask yourself, "What would I do if people were saying these things about ME?" Surely you would caution them to sober up and adjust their expectations. (1) It's wrong. (2) As a professing Christian, he should redirect glory to God. (3) It's bad for the republic. (4) It's bad for him politically, as it establishes expectations he cannot possibly meet.

Notice what the Apostle Paul did when the people of Lystra, led by the priest of Zeus, started worshiping him after he healed a crippled man.

"When the crowd saw what Paul had done, they shouted in the Lycaonian language, 'The gods have come down to us in human form!'...But when the apostles Barnabus and Paul heard of this, they tore their clothes and rushed out into the crowd, shouting: 'Men, why are you doing this? We too are only men, human like you.'" (Acts 14:11-15)

But Obama has not uttered a word of that sort. I am curious to see what effect this talk eventually has on him, especially as it is coming (arguably) even from his wife. This is what happened to Herod Antipas, Tetrarch of Galilee and Perea, when he let the praises of flattering crowds go to his head.

"On the appointed day Herod, wearing his royal robes, sat on his throne and delivered a public address to the people. They shouted, 'This is the voice of a god, not a man.' Immediately, because Herod did not give praise to God, an angel of the Lord struck him down, and he was eaten by worms and died." (Acts 12:21-23)

Not only has Obama not distanced himself from this sort of talk, the way he eventually did from Jeremiah Wright's outlandish rhetoric, he encourages it. He may even have initiated it. In his speech in St. Paul (ironically) marking his effective securing of the Democratic nomination, he promised the faithful that,

“generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs for the jobless; this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal.”

Never mind the notion that we have never taken care of our sick, to say nothing of the sick all over the world, but will he really turn back the tides and "heal" the planet? Yes, we know what he means. He is going to introduce legislation to address global warming. But that's not how he puts it. William Kristol, in "A Campaign We Can Believe In?," notes that, "In his evocation of healing powers and dominion over the waters, Obama summons up echoes of the Gospels and Genesis." (Does he mean Exodus?) He presents his candidacy in millenarian and arguably messianic terms. It stirs up the crowds. It has secured the nomination. But it is dangerous and the mark of a demagogue of a sort most threatening to liberty.

To my knowledge, we have never seen anything like this in American politics. It is the sort of immoderate politics that leads to tyranny and horrific tragedy. There are limits to what can be accomplished through politics and in general through these flawed things we call human beings, even the best of them. When we reach for the Republic of Virtue ushered in by an Enlightened Being or a cadre of such extraordinary men, what we get is...the Terror.

Obama has many questions to answer between now and November. His silence in the face of this political veneration, if not worship, raises one of the most important ones. This may put the Constitution and the character of the American people to an historic test.

Barack Obama, "the winner," is nonetheless in an unenviable position.

On the one hand, choosing Hillary as his running mate makes a lot of sense. She has nearly half the delegates. The party is deeply divided not only as a result of the unusual length and intensity of the campaign, but also as a function of the personalities involved. There are just too many Hillary supporters who have vowed that they will stay home rather than vote for Obama. In addition, Hillary's half of the delegates are of a very particular sort. Despite his best efforts, Obama was not able to crack the Hispanic and working class white votes which he consistently lost to Clinton by wide margins. Then there are the hard core feminists for whom gender trumps race. If these groups are as anti-Obama in November as they were in the primaries, his place in history will remain simply the first black nominee of a major political party.

On the other hand, selecting Hillary is almost unthinkable. Say goodbye to your claim to be ushering in a new kind of politics. Hillary is the consummate old-style political operator. She is also not one to offer a discreet word of advice when asked, and otherwise to sit quietly by as she waits for her constitutional role to kick in (heaven forbid). She pursued her own agenda when her husband was president. (Remember the Gennifer Flowers deal? "I want domestic!") Then there's Bill hanging around. Both of these people want too desperately to get back into the White House to be on the ticket with such a neophyte like the junior Senator from Illinois.

What's a guy to do?

Of course, he would be foolish to allow her in the door. His choices are not happy ones, but the only sensible alternative is to thank Sen. Clinton for her offer then press on without her and hope for the best. Hell hath no fury like Hillary scorned.

Maureen Dowd's column on this is very funny and insightful. "He thought a little thing like winning would stop her. Oh, Bambi. Whoever said that after denial comes acceptance hadn’t met the Clintons." For what it's worth, I foresee her scenario #1.

Of course, we know who Obama wants as his running mate. His idea of a dream ticket is a Barack and Michelle pair up. And wouldn't that be touching?