He has done his country and countrymen proud. In these trying times,
buffeted as we are by natural and man-made disasters on a weekly
basis, and starved as we are for heroes in the flesh, Manny Pacquiao
is a real boost to our sagging national ego.

Actually, I do not like boxing. I did not watch his fight in Las
Vegas. I do not enjoy watching anyone, not even a Mexican boxer, being
beaten to a bloody pulp by another person, even for “sport.”

The first and last boxing match I have ever watched in my entire life
was the title match between Floyd Patterson and Archie Moore – did I
get the names right? – in Chicago half a century ago.

My housemate Jimmy, who is a real boxing aficionado and who now lives
in Australia, convinced the rest of us in our Evanston rooming house
to take the El to Chicago for the fight.

I do not recall any memorable incident that evening, except that I
predicted out loud that the fight would end at 9:30. Sure enough, at
9:30, someone – it must have been Moore – got knocked down or out. I
should have been a boxing bookie.

During the weekend of the Pacquiao-Diaz fight, I was watching replays
of the Euro 2008 UEFA football (soccer to Americans) quarterfinals,
semi-finals and finals in Basel and Vienna.

I had signed up with SkyCable for live broadcasts, but later changed
my mind when I found out that all or most of the live coverage started
at 2:45 in the morning. Never having worked as a call center agent or
as a night watchman, I didn’t think I could stay awake from 2:45 to
5:30 a.m. everyday for several days. So I had to settle for replays
from Solar Sports through Paranaque Cable, to which one of our TV sets
is fortuitously wired.

Of course, watching football replays with full knowledge of who had
won and who had  lost, and by how many points, robs one of the
edge-of-your seat suspense and excitement inherent in a well-contested
game.

But there was still the sheer joy of watching well-executed plays and
expert ball-handling by some of the best football players in the
world. This would be almost akin to watching, again and again,
world-class gymnastics – my favorite spectator sport – performed by
champions and would-be champions in previous years.

Anyone who has watched national teams compete in such championships as
the UEFA and the World Cup know the explosions of national pride that
accompany each victory, as the league progressed. Euro 2008 was no
exception..

Sports champions become national icons. And well they should be,
because they personify the self-esteem their victories generate in the
national psyches. Excellence in sports is actually a tool in
nation-building. Which is why the governments in the then socialist
countries (the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe and Cuba) all invested
heavily in developing world-class athletes

I am surprised that with the world-wide acknowledgement of Manny
Pacquiao, there is no attempt by the Arroyo government to enlist his
endorsement of a nationwide search for new, younger talents through
the medium of nationwide competitions for different age brackets .

Much as I dislike boxing as a sport, I know that it is very popular,
especially among the low income sectors.

And not just in boxing. I am surprised that with several world class
champions that we have in billiards, there is no attempt by the
government to search and develop new and younger talents in this sport
through nationwide competitions for different age brackets.

Even more than boxing, billiards is very popular, especially among the
low income sectors. There are literally thousands of billiard halls
all over the country. An organized competition nationwide, if properly
promoted and marketed, would discover dozens of potential world-class
champions who would help build national pride, as well as earn good
money for their families.

Why stop with boxing and billiards? This country has not produced
world-class tennis players since Felicisimo Ampon in the 1950s. Why
not organize nationwide competitions among ball boys (‘pulot boys’)
and nameless pros who earn their living in the country clubs of the
filthy rich?

So also would nationwide competitions among the caddies in the golf
clubs of the filthy rich. We have not produced a world-class golfer
since the time of Celestino Tugot in the 1960s.

With our low self-esteem because of decades of poor governance by the
trapos and their political dynasties, we need more champions in sports
to remind ourselves that we are as good as anybody else in the world.

Sports are the best training ground for excellence because they teach
the virtues of hard work, self-discipline and fair play. Unlike the
vices of instant yaman, social anarchy and pervasive dishonesty which
our trapo culture has embedded in our national psyche through decades
of misrule. . *****

All reactions to tonyabaya@gmail.com. Other articles in www.tapatt.org
and in acabaya.blogspot.com.

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By Antonio C. Abaya

“Just read your article No Better Idea and noted the last paragraph regarding President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo — you will surely be among the top of her hate list. Granted the futility of whatever she can do for the country or the people, is there no slim possibility of her ever rising from the ashes like the phoenix?  There must be something she can do during her last year to save her governance/name and the legacy of her father.  Can you in your astute mind, offer a solution, even a desperate act to enable her to do even one good thing so she can exit with grace?

” I do feel so bad as I have known her since she was a young girl, she treats me with affection as she knows my close relationship with her Dad and Mom especially, and her brother Arthur is one of my best friends. I so want her wrong to be rendered right…is that possible? Do you have it in your heart to recommend a desperate solution – to give her one last chance that she may have the wisdom to listen to, to consider to do? Why not help her? I don’t believe in too little, too late..

“Have a better idea?”

Because I respect the letter-writer’s opinions and judgment, I have to make public and seriously consider this plaintive cry for even a “desperate solution” to allow President Arroyo to “exit with grace.” Is there anything she can do to salvage her presidency and her name, and leave behind a positive legacy after June 2010?

I must preface my reply with the information that, like hundreds of thousands of other urban middle-class Filipinos, my late wife and children and I took part in the street protests of January 2001 that led to the downfall of Joseph Estrada and the rise to the presidency of then Vice-President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo

(Even earlier, in February 1986, my children and I also took part in the demos that deposed Ferdinand Marcos and brought to the fore Corazon Aquino, while my wife was stranded in San Francisco.)

This is not to say that we were happy with the subsequent turn of events after 1986 and after 2001. But that’s another story.

In the presidential elections of May 10, 2004, after comparing the pre-election public opinion surveys conducted by Pulse Asia and the Social Weather Stations (SWS) with the results of the exit polls conducted by SWS, I was one of the few who came to the conclusion that President Arroyo had won those elections, but by a narrow margin of about 200,000-300,000 votes. (See my articles GMA by a Hair and Who Won? of May 13 and 19, 2004, both archived in www.tapatt.org .)

Economist Winnie Monsod, using the same reference data, came to a similar conclusion months later in her column in the Philippine Daily Inquirer.

That the Comelec subsequently came out with results that purportedly showed her winning by more than 1.1 million votes is, also, another story. But I do not break bread with the gibbering mob who maintain, without presenting any credible numbers, that she was not duly elected to that position.

However, President Arroyo has been a total disappointment in the months and years after May 2004. Her moral ambivalence, her deliberate evasiveness, her refusal or inability to confront the Evil of corruption in her government, the apparent involvement of members of her own family in sordid transactions, her insidious appointment of questionable individuals to key positions in the judiciary and the bureaucracy …..all contribute to widespread perception that not only is she indeed part of that Evil, but that she is laying the foundation for perpetuating that Evil beyond 2010.

President Arroyo has categorically denied that she is seeking an extension of her presidential term, which expires end of June 2010. But that is not reassuring enough. She has not categorically denied that she is seeking a new term as prime minister in the parliamentary order that her fawning sycophants are pushing charter change for..

I warned about this possible strategy as early as May 17, 2005 in my article titled Prime Minister Gloria? and subsequent articles, all archived in www.tapatt.org.

(As I wrote in an article in late 2007, she may follow the example of Vladimir Putin of Russia who was president for two terms (2000-04, 2004-08) and was constitutionally ineligible for a third term. In December 2007, while he was still president, Putin ran for a seat in parliament and, not unexpectedly, won. When his presidential term ended in March 2008, his hand-picked successor, Dmitri Medvedev, won the presidential elections and, to no one’s surprise, chose Putin to be the prime minister. The Big Difference, of course, is that Putin is genuinely popular in his country; Gloria is genuinely unpopular in hers.)

If she is indeed sincere that she will step down from presidential power in June 2010 (and not return as prime minister later), all she has to do is tell her lackeys in the House and the Senate to cease and desist from further maneuvers to convene themselves into a constituent assembly (ConAss) so as to railroad a shift to parliamentary before her presidential term ends in June 2010, so that she can succeed herself, as prime minister..

It is as simple and categorical as that. It is not even a “desperate solution.” Why is that so difficult to do?

If she does not have the steely resolve to tell Prospero Nograles, Luis Villafuerte, Joey Salceda and Nene Pimentel and their cumbancheros to shut up about ConAss before 2010 – or if she tells them half-heartedly in public but they continue their covert and overt maneuvers - then it can only mean that this is her own “desperate solution” to her impending problem of losing presidential immunity from criminal suits after June 2010.

If that is so, then it may be the turn of the sovereign people to come up with their own “desperate solution” - legal or illegal, constitutional or extra-constitutional – to the recurrent problem of an unwelcome leader overstaying their welcome. *****

HOLIDAY GREETINGS. Unless President Arroyo surprises all of us with an announcement during the holidays that she will definitely not seek or accept the position of prime minister after June 2010 – her graceful exit, my dear friend – I will take a two-week break until January 6.

In that scenario, she could endorse the presidential candidacy of someone who she feels would be “sympathetic” to her situation, such as Defense Secretary Gilbert Teodoro, nephew of her family’s business partner, Danding Cojuangco. And/or she and her family could fly off to, say, Portugal days or hours before her presidential term ends, where they could safely await the results of the elections. Declaring martial law and canceling the elections would be the least attractive and the most desperate solution and would likely boomerang on her..

A Merry Christmas and a Prosperous New Year to all. Or, as they say in Portuguese, Feliz natal e próspero ano novo.

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By Antonio C. Abaya

Like many concerned Filipinos, I am not against ChaCha or Charter Change. Regular readers of this space know I have a long list of amendments that I would like to see in our Constitution, even if it means having a revolutionary government make those changes.

And just in case some middle-class types quake in their boots at the mere mention of the R word, let everyone be reminded that President Cory Aquino led a revolutionary government from February 1986 until a new Constitution was ratified in September 1987.

That’s 19 months during which she ruled by decree, since the 1972 Constitution of Ferdinand Marcos had become inoperative. How and why President Aquino’s revolutionary government failed to create anything revolutionary is another matter.

What I and many concerned Filipinos find objectionable is how the political and constitutional institutions are being corrupted and prostituted for the sole purpose of allowing President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo to remain in power beyond 2010, as prime minister.

As far as I know, I was the first columnist to raise the alarm. In February 2005, her miniscule party, KAMPI (Kabalikat ng Malayang Pilipino), held a party conference in which its president then, current Secretary of the Interior and Local Government Ronaldo Puno, announced its plans to become the biggest political party by 2007.

Why such a tiny party nursed ambitions to become the biggest political party by 2007, three years before President Arroyo’s non-extendable presidential term would end in 2010, set me thinking.

In my articles Prime Minister Gloria? (May 17, 2005) and GMA Forever (March 28, 2006) and subsequent articles – all archived in www.tapatt.org – I argued that Mrs. Arroyo was maneuvering through Kampi to amend the Constitution for a shift to a parliamentary system so that she can remain in power beyond 2010, as prime minister.

Sure enough, in the latter half of 2006 we saw two initiatives in this direction: a People’s Initiative signatures campaign by the Sigaw ng Bangaw, led by a factotum of Speaker Jose de Venecia, which purportedly gathered the requisite x million signatures for a shift to parliamentary, but which mercifully was junked by the Supreme Court as “a gigantic fraud.”

The other maneuver was shamelessly led by the persistent De Venecia who tried to convene the Lower House into a constituent assembly (ConAss) without the oppositionist Senate, to railroad a shift to parliamentary in the wee small hours of the breaking dawn. Mercifully, this maneuver was hooted down by public opinion.

In his pompously titled biography “Global Filipino: The Authorized Biography of Jose de Venecia Jr., the Visionary Five-Times Speaker of the House of Representatives of the Philippines,” JdV is said to recall how he allegedly saved President Arroyo from being impeached. That may be true, but it makes him all the more a villain, for extending the shelf life of a putrefying government.

JdV’s kilometrically-titled bio deserves an equally kilometric subtitle: “How I Saved GMA from Political Death in 2005 So That I Could Push for Parliamentary in 2006 and Become Interim Prime Minister in an Interim Parliament in 2007 until GMA Takes Over in 2010 as Permanent PM, Which Would Have Been My Last and Only Chance Before I Die to Become Head-of-Government of This God-Forsaken Country, Having Been Defeated Ignominiously by That Idiot Erap in the 1998 Presidential Elections, 39 to 17 Percent, But Now That I Have Been Kicked Out by GMA from My Own DogHouse, the Only Thing Left for Me to Do Is to Hire An Unknown American Writer to Sing Hosannas to Me.”

The sordid relationship between De Venecia and Gloria Arroyo in the last three years accentuates the need to amend the Constitution so that both the People’s Initiative and the Constituent Assembly are totally removed from our basic law since in the hands of unscrupulous and insatiable trapos, of whom we have legions, these are used only for selfish, ego-maniac purposes.

A Constitutional Convention, to which delegates are elected by congressional districts and from which relatives of incumbents are pointedly excluded, should be the only venue for Charter Change.

A Constituent Assembly, in which incumbent members of both Houses of Congress sit, is by its very composition self-serving. Its members will never do anything contrary to their self interests. On the contrary, they will do everything to protect and preserve their self-interests, including conniving with the incumbent President to prolong her stay in power, as prime minister, as long as they also remain in power, by. becoming automatic members of the resultant parliament.

For example, the 1987 Constitution called for the dismantling of political dynasties. Yet nothing has been done about this in the past 21 years, and nothing will be done about it in the next 21, because the political dynasties which dominate Congress will never do anything to weaken or loosen their stranglehold on political power.

The Constitution should also be amended to reduce the appointive powers of the President who, as exemplified by Gloria, would abuse those powers in appointing members of what are supposed to be independent bodies – such as the Supreme Court, the Court of Appeals, the Office of the Ombudsman, the Commission on Elections, even the Chief-of-Staff of the Armed Forces of the Philippines – to serve her personal agenda.

By appointing mostly those who are friendly or beholden to her, President Arroyo has diabolically built the legal and organizational infrastructure necessary for perpetuating herself in power beyond 2010 as prime minister..

Malacanang and President Arroyo herself have categorically stated that they are not interested in term extension. This was in reaction to a bill submitted in the Lower House that would extend the terms of the president down to congressmen and women by one year and postpone the 2010 elections to 2011.

This is only a decoy, meant to delude people into believing that she has no intention of staying in power beyond 2010. It does not rule out or stop current maneuvers to shift to parliamentary, led by Albay Gov. Joey Salceda and the Kampi-Lakas trapos in the Lower House, which would allow GMA to run for a seat in a putative parliament and thus be elected prime minister by the Kampi-Lakas majority. Nothing has changed since the Kampi party conference in February 2005, except that JdV has been discarded like a soiled sanitary napkin.

And then there is Sen. Nene Pimentel who wanted to build a monument to himself as the Father of a Federal Philippines. He also wanted to convene both Houses of Congress into a Constituent Assembly to shift from a unitary state to a federal union. And he wanted this to happen before the end of President Arroyo’s term in 2010. Why? Obviously because his last term in the Senate also ends in 2010, after which his monument to himself could no longer materialize.

Despite my warnings to him (see my article Federal Fol-de-Rol of April 28, 2008 and subsequent articles on Federalism, all archived in www.tapatt.org) that he was building a Trojan Horse for President Arroyo to hide in and jump from once it was sneaked in through the ConAss, he insisted that only the federal agenda would be tabled for discussion. But, I argued, he was only the designated carpenter and he had no say whatsoever on who or what would be hiding in it. In other words, parliamentary would be sneaked in through his Federal Trojan Horse

But, hopefully, he may have seen the light. In the latest (Nov. 30) of his endless stream of press releases, Sen. Pimentel warns “what (the allies of GMA in Congress) did to the impeachment case by using their numerical superiority, they would also do on the proposed extension of terms….it is a portent of things to come……”

Ngayon ka lang ba nakahalata, Nene?

By all means, let us have ChaCha. But only after 2010. And only through a Constitutional Convention. Even if it has to take a revolutionary government to do it, after everything else is co-opted and corrupted. *****

Reactions to tonyabaya@gmail.com. Other articles in www.tapatt.org and in acabaya.blogspot.com.

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Those were harsh words that five Roman Catholic bishops spoke against President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, as quoted in the Oct. 29 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer.

“Twenty million hungry Filipinos will disagree with the proclaimed ‘ramdam ang kaunlaran‘ (progress is felt’) – which is the administration’s favorite mantra – with their own experience. ‘Ramdam ang kahirapan, ramdam ang gutom.’ (Poverty is felt, hunger is felt’),” Jaro Archbishop Angel Lagdameo said yesterday.

“The benefits of the much proclaimed economic growth are not felt by the masses,” the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) president said in a statement which he issued jointly with three other bishops and the vocal administration critic, Lingayen-Dagupan Archbishop Oscar Cruz.

Asked by reporters later if he thought President Macapagal-Arroyo was corrupt, Lagdameo unhesitatingly said “yes.”

Asked if the President deserved to be removed from power, he said “the answer should come from the people who see what’s happening in our country.”

Lagdameo said in a press conference that the statement, which called for “immediate reforms,” was the product of communal discernment” with Cruz, Masbate Bishop Joel Baylon, Banga-Bataan Bishop Socrates Villegas and Legazpi Bishop Emeritus Jose Sorra.

“In the past few years up to today, we have watched how corruption has become endemic, massive, systemic and rampant in our politics. Corruption is a social and moral cancer,” said Lagdameo, who clarified that he was making the statement as the archbishop of Jaro and not as the CBCP president.

“In response to the global economic crisis and the pitiful state of our country, the time to rebuild our country economically, socially, politically is now,” Lagdameo said.

“The time to start radical reforms is now. The time for moral regeneration is now. The time to conquer complacency, cynicism and apathy and to prove that we have matured from our political disappointments, is now. The time to prepare for a new government is now,” he said.

Villegas stressed that they were not calling for another mass revolt.

“We are making this statement because we believe that if we had been less corrupt we would be better prepared to face the impending global crisis. The problem of the Philippines is not population, the problem is corruption, Villegas said.

End of quotes from the Philippine Daily Inquirer.

Many concerned Filipinos would agree and sympathize with the bishops’ sentiments. But, realistically speaking, how do the bishops propose to convert those sentiments into political action and reality?

How do we start radical reforms now? How do we encourage moral regeneration now? How do we conquer complacency, cynicism and apathy now? How do we prepare for a new government now?

To achieve these goals, there must be a political movement, and there must be a fearless and charismatic individual to personify that movement and articulate its goals, someone to publicly carry the torch for that movement. Most people, especially Filipinos, will not rally around an abstract idea, no matter how noble and compelling it may be.

And – pray, tell – what are these “immediate and radical reforms” that the bishops want to push? Judging by Bishop Villegas’ last line, it could include equating the use of condoms with abortion.

Barack Obama‘s ‘Change We Need’ and ‘Yes We Can’ would not have won the commitment of tens of millions of Americans if there was no Barack Obama to personify and eloquently articulate it.

Do the bishops have someone in mind, our own Barack Obama? If they do, I doubt if they will publicly name him or her. And they shouldn’t, as they should not involve themselves in partisan politics.

About three years ago, Archbishop Lagdameo expressed the need for a “new breed of leaders,” which I supported in one of my columns. But my Thursday group met with him and seven other bishops to find out how this “new breed of leaders’ could come to prominence, seeing that Philippine media tend to publicize only trapos, coup plotters and communists. Our impression was that the bishops had no practical method on how to bring about this transformation. Or, if they had one, they did not want to tell us.

Ten months ago, at the height of the ZTE broadband scandal, a previously unknown individual, Jun Lozada – who was/is neither a trapo nor a coup plotter nor a communist – shot up to prominence because of the weight of his testimony before the Senate committees investigating the scam, and his apparent readiness to risk his life in doing so.

Lozada became the man of the hour as no Filipino has ever become since the beloved Ninoy was assassinated in 1983. Because he spoke mostly in Filipino – eloquently and with deadpan humor, at that – Lozada connected with all levels of society. Even our maids and drivers followed the senate hearings and the TV interviews every day.

In his many forays into schools and universities, he was welcomed and embraced by the young people like a rock star. No public figure has excited the young people of this country as Lozada did, since Miriam Defensor-Santiago ran for president in 1992 (and topped all public opinion surveys and straw votes in and out of schools at that time.)

But Lozada was eventually gagged by no less than the bishops, who banned Catholic schools from further inviting him to their campuses, even as Malacanang’s paid hacks in media stumbled over each other bad-mouthing him, both for the benefit of the embattled Black Queen.

I am not sure if Archbishop Lagdameo and the other White Bishops-critics of President Arroyo participated in the gagging of Lozada, but they certainly did nothing to protest or prevent it.

In chess, as in our cannibalistic politics, it is almost impossible for just two (or even more) White Bishops to checkmate the Black King, without the help of White Knights and White Rooks. Lozada could have been one of the White Knights and the Catholic schools and the NGO community could have been the White Rooks. Even without a White Queen, the White Bishops can checkmate the Black King, but not if the White Knights are gagged and the White Rooks are purged of sentiments inimical to the Black Queen…

On the other hand, the Black Queen is very powerful. She has her own Black Bishops who are rewarded generously for their loyalty. Her Black Knights – the AFP and the PNP – are coiled to strike at a moment’s notice. Her Black Rooks – the Lower House and (soon) the Supreme Court – are impregnable, while upfront, her eight willing pawns – Ronnie Puno, Eduardo Ermita, Hermenigildo Esperon, Raul Gonzalez, Bert Gonzales, Prospero Nograles, Joey Salceda and Nene Pimentel – are eager to change the rules of the game so that the Black Queen can reign forever.

Check?!!!? More like bundles of cash in paper bags. *****

SWAP WITH THAILAND. During a round table discussion of current events yesterday with some faculty members and students at the Lyceum of the Philippines, a student asked how to resolve the impasse regarding the request of former Thailand prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra for political asylum in the Philippines.

I suggested a swap: We will grant political asylum to Thaksin, as long as, and at the same time that, Thailand agrees to grant political asylum to President Arroyo. Fair? *****

Reactions to tonyabaya@gmail.com. Other articles in www.tapatt.org and in acabaya.blogspot.com. .

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In the American system, vice-presidential nominees are not chosen by primaries or on the convention floor. He or she is the personal choice of the presidential nominee.

Thus Barack Obama, the winner in the Democratic primaries and caucuses, exercised his prerogative after due diligence and came up with Sen. Joseph Biden of Delaware. By most accounts, it was an inspired choice.

Sen. Biden has long been prominent in Washington politics, with an established reputation as being knowledgeable in foreign affairs. He is perceived to fill a gap in Sen. Obama’s political curriculum vitae, that in foreign policy. Thus the pair is seen as logically complementing each other..

The same cannot be said of Sen. John McCain and his choice of vice-presidential running mate. It is safe to assume that before Aug. 30, 99.5 percent of the population of the United States, outside of the state of Alaska, had never heard of Sarah Palin, incumbent governor since 2006 of, well, Alaska.

It did not help reassure puzzled pundits and voters that before she became governor of Alaska, Ms.Palin had been mayor of the town of Wasilla (pop. 8,741). Or that during high school days, she had played center guard in basketball and was known as Sarah Barracuda. Or that Sen. McCain had apparently met her only once (last February) in his entire life, though he had talked to her, by telephone, one other time since.

Even Republican apologists and strategists were at a loss to cite anything significant to give a positive spin to the Great Puzzlement that this nomination has spawned. The GOP line is that Gov. Palin had fought against corruption in Alaska, had refused to support a Bridge to Nowhere, and something or other that she did or did not do. Someone in Fox News, the cable channel of the neo-cons, is said to have remarked that Gov. Palin has some experience in foreign relations because Alaska is right next to Russia. Amazing!

My reading is that Sen. McCain made this choice based on his personality flaws. He is known to have a short temper and does not get along easily with other people. During the early part of the primary season, he had candidly admitted that he knew absolutely nothing about economics, which one of his rivals, former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, used to hit him on the head with. So he scratched Romney off his short VP list.

Perhaps for a similar, personality-based reason, he scratched New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani off the list, who has something of a star status from 9/11 and could outshine him on the campaign trail, aside from being too liberal by Republican standards.

McCain’s constant beef against Obama has been that Obama was only a celebrity and did not have the executive experience to qualify for the presidency, a bias that was uncannily reinforced when Obama chose Biden as his running mate Two articulate and verbose lawyers, both without any executive experience in managing a state or a federal agency..

But what does McCain do? He scratched out Romney, and Giuliani and former Pennsylvania Governor and former Homeland Security Secretary Tom Rich from his VP short list - each one with more executive experience than Obama and Biden combined, each one with more executive experience than McCain himself - and chose instead an unknown woman whose executive experience has been limited to being mayor of a small town in Alaska for six years , then being governor of that state for less than two, whom McCain has met only once in his entire life.

Does this make any sense to anyone other than a die-hard Republican?

It makes some sense to social conservatives, whether Republican or independent. Ms. Palin is a lifetime member of the National Rifle Association and is against gun control. She is also against same-sex marriage, birth control and abortion. Her youngest child was diagnosed with Down’s syndrome – a chromosomal deficiency – four months into her pregnancy, but she chose not to abort the foetus. She also rejects Darwin’s Theory of Evolution and wants to have the Creationism of Christian Evangelicals taught in public schools.

The idea that McCain is trying to win Hillary Clinton’s women supporters, who were disappointed when Obama did not choose her as his VP, is nonsense. Most of Hillary’s women supporters would never support Palin’s conservative agenda.

Here seems to be the key element in McCain’s choice of Ms. Palin, and there is reason to believe that the Christian Evangelicals, who constitute 30 to 35 percent of the American electorate and continue to be the biggest single political bloc that still supports the disgraced George W. Bush, will rally around the McCain-Palin team.

With Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson gone to their heavenly rewards, the leading Christian Evangelical preacher now is John Hagee, head of a mega-church in Texas. As early as more than a year ago – and I mentioned it in a column of mine then - the Rev. Hagee anointed McCain as the successor to George W, in a lavish ceremony in Texas attended by McCain, to which George W. sent a congratulatory message. This was long before Hagee’s endorsement of McCain last April, which was criticized as being anti-Catholic and from which McCain has distanced himself…

Hagee is also national chairman of a Christian-Zionist organization called Christians United for Israel. Christian Evangelicals believe that war in the Middle East is biblically foretold and divinely ordained. They support Israel because they believe that, though Israel will be destroyed,144,000 Israeli Jews will be spared and they will convert to Christianity. And this will be the signal for the Second Coming of Jesus Christ.

In this light, Barack Obama’s 16-month withdrawal plan for US troops from Iraq has been pre-empted. The Bush government has been negotiating with the government of Iraqi Prime Minister Noor al-Maliki for a timetable under which US troops will withdraw from all Iraqi cities by June 2009, and withdraw from all of Iraq by end of 2011, “depending on the situation on the ground.”

This is obviously meant to take the wind out of Obama’s 16-month withdrawal sail. Depending on the situation on the ground means full withdrawal from Iraq can be rescinded or reinterpreted after the November 2008 elections. McCain’s 100 years in Iraq (and Afghanistan) – or how ever long it will take for the biblical prophecies to be fulfilled – is therefore more likely to become the conventional American wisdom.

It is significant that on Aug. 20, as I mentioned in a column last week, Obama was ahead of McCain by only one point in the CNN poll of that date. As I write this, the CNN poll of Sept 01 puts Obama still ahead by only one point, despite all the hoopla and hoohah at the Democratic convention in Denver last week. That means there was not much of a bounce for Obama and Biden, as had been expected from that coronation.

The Republican convention, scheduled for this week in St. Paul, Minnesota, has been scaled down considerably in deference to the deaths and devastation that Hurricane Gustav is expected to visit on New Orleans and neighboring towns and cities.

McCain is not senile. God is on his side. Ask the Rev. Hagee. *****

Reactions to tonyabaya@gmail.com.Otther articles in acabaya.blogspot.com. Tony on YouTube in www.tapatt.org. .

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While it is admitted here that the people of Tibet have a history that goes back 3,000 years and the Chinese did not officially claim sovereignty over the Tibetan Plateau until around 1900, the realities of the 21^st Century make the liberation of Tibet from Chinese rule an impossible dream.

Obviously there is no hope of turning Tibet into a battleground for national liberation, as Vietnam spectacularly was in the 1960s. The total Tibetan population, including women and children, adds up to less than the total Vietnamese killed, combatants and civilians, during their struggles against the French and later the Americans. There are no jungles in which guerillas can hide. There is no supply route to sympathetic sources of munitions anywhere.

.

The on-going agitation in the name of a Free Tibet, timed specifically to coincide with the run-up to the 29^th Summer Olympic Games in Beijing, is clearly meant merely to embarrass the Chinese, by spoiling their coming-out party in August 2008.

This brouhaha has all the makings of an orchestrated demolition exercise, obviously manipulated and coordinated by some high-powered public relations outfit in New York or London or Paris, and given a glossy veneer by enlisting the public support of Hollywood icons like Richard Gere and Mia Farrow.

The idea is to make sure that CNN and the BBC and the rest of international media give the Free Tibet movement the attention that the publicists are being paid to promote.

I say this because contiguous to Tibet to the east is the Autonomous Region of Xinjiang, home to ethnic Uyghurs, who have been agitating for independence from China for decades – exploding bombs occasionally to remind the world that they are still fighting for a homeland – but no one pays any attention to them.

Why? Almost certainly because they have no publicist in New York or London or Paris coordinating their moves, and no Richard Gere or Mia Farrow to give their cause the Hollywood cachet that would compel liberals of the Western world to march out in their thousands to bash the Chinese.

There are actually more Uyghurs (about 15 million out of a total Xinjiang population of 19.5 million), than Tibetans (2.62 million in Tibet, plus another 4 million outside Tibet).

And Xinjiang is actually bigger (636,000 sq. miles) than Tibet (472,000 sq. miles).But no one sheds any crocodile tears for Xinjiang and its Uyghurs.

I recall from my stamp-collecting years during my teens that there used to be a country called East Turkestan which issued postage stamps in the 1920s.

East Turkestan was made up of Turkic-speaking peoples, all predominantly Muslim, spread out from what is now Xinjiang all the way to the Caspian Sea, near Turkey. But in the mid-1920s, Josef Stalin, as Soviet commissar for ethnic minorities, dragooned all these Central Asian peoples into Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan and Tajikistan soviet socialist republics within the USSR, as buffer states to protect the southern flank of the Russian homeland..

Xinjiang itself underwent several permutations throughout its history. But Han Chinese control in the 20^th century was reasserted with the entry of the recently victorious People’s Liberation Army in 1949 and its absorption as a special autonomous region in the People’s Republic in 1955.

So predominantly Muslin Xinjiang has at least as much claim to independence (from China) as predominantly Buddhist Tibet, but Xinjiang does not generate as much attention among Western liberals as Tibet does. It helps that Tibet has a Dalai Lama, living in exile in India, who is revered by Western liberals as a holy man on par with the Roman Catholic Pope; Xinjiang has no such icon. (The Dalai Lama has categorically said that he does not favor independence for Tibet, only greater autonomy.)

Especially in the current environment of Islamophobia, few Western liberals will try to grab the Olympic torch as a protest against China, in the name of some scruffy Muslims.

It is unfortunate that the Olympics have been prostituted to politics. In 1956, some Western European countries boycotted the Melbourne Olympics to protest the Soviet suppression of the Hungarian uprising, and some Middle Eastern nations did the same to protest the British-French-Israeli seizure of the Suez Canal

In 1980, the Americans and some of their allies boycotted the 1980 Moscow Olympics to protest the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. In retaliation, the Soviets and their allies boycotted the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics..

The Ancient Olympics, which ran for more than a thousand years from 776 BC to 393 AD, were held every four years among freemen in the Greek city-states and the Greek colonies in the Mediterranean and the Black Sea. Ironically, the Olympics were occasion for them to call a truce from their endless wars and quarrels among each other. The exact opposite of what has been happening to the Modern Olympics in the past 50 years.

A refreshing exception was in 1964. I was a member of the Philippine Yachting Team (Dragon class) in the Tokyo Olympics then. Our venue was Sagami Bay and the Enoshima Yacht Club, about an hour by train southwest of Tokyo. .

As there were only about 20 countries in competition, our opening ceremonies included the raising of national flags and the playing of national anthems, which was not possible in the general opening ceremonies in Tokyo, because of so many competing countries..

This was the first time that East Germany was competing in the yachting events. So how to reconcile with West Germany?

The solution was Solomonic. East and West Germans competed as one national team The common national anthem that they chose was neither the Deutschland uber Alles of the capitalist West, nor the Internationale of the communist East, but the last movement of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, with the words from Schiller’s An die Freude (To Joy): Alle Menschen werden Brueder…..” (All mankind will be brothers…) *****

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Before I get on with the topic at hand, I would like to report that my <A href=”/ym/Compose?To=acabaya@zpdee.net&amp;YY=47697&amp;y5beta=yes&amp;order=&amp;sort=&amp;pos=0″>acabaya@zpdee.net</A> account was blocked, by person or persons unknown, from April 14 to 28. I could not send or receive email during this period, and had to use my gmail account to send out my articles to my online readers. During this period last month, my website www.tapatt.org was also blocked for two days. We could not load new material, nor could we even open it. An error message would always appear: “This page is not available.” After we complained to Yahoo Geocities, an Avery Wood replied, apologizing for the disruption of service but offering no explanation for it. At least, www.tapatt.org was back in circulation. But on May 11, www.tapatt.org was again blocked by person or persons unknown. We have sent two emails to Avery Wood. He replied to the first, asking for more details, which we supplied him, but he has not replied since. To this day, my website, which archives my articles since 2002, remains blocked and inaccessible. (Even the transmission of this particular article has been delayed for 24 hours [and counting] because I have had no email or internet access again: my zpdee server has been down again, kuno, since May 20.) I have my suspicions on who is doing this to me and why, but I do not want to sound paranoid. Would anyone offer an explanation for this apparently deliberate and malicious harassment? Would anyone have any suggestion on how to avoid or overcome it in the future? Now for electoral reforms. During my TV interview with Harry Tambuatco on Destiny Cable last week, we discussed my objections to the Federalism resolution of Sen. Nene Pimentel on the grounds that federalists have not shown any empirical evidence that switching from a unitary to a federal system would “spur economic growth” etc. Harry asked, Are you against all changes? Are there any changes that you would like to see? By all means, yes. But these changes should be made through an elected Constitutional Convention AFTER the 2010 elections. Hurrying them through with a hastily convened constituent assembly BEFORE the 2010 elections merely creates a Trojan Horse, with President Arroyo crouching inside, scheming to become prime minister, in the manner of Vladimir Putin in Russia. And what changes would I like to see? First and foremost, I would like to see senators elected by region, instead of at large. By this means, all regions are represented in the Senate all the time. In the present system, in which senators are elected by nationwide vote, Central Luzon, Metro Manila, Southern Tagalog and Bicol are over-represented, Visayas and Mindanao are under-represented, and the Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao is not represented at all. When was the last time we had a Muslim in the Senate? As far as I can recall, that was in the 1970s or 80s, in the person of Mamintal Tamano, father (?) of the opposition spokesman Adel Tamano. No wonder the Bangsamoro want to secede To have no Muslim presence in the Senate, for one whole generation, is against all political commonsense Why didn’t the framers of the 1987 Constitution think of it? What other changes would you like to see, asked Harry. I would like to see qualifying exams for all candidates for all elective positions, from municipal councilor to president. This would disqualify, right from the start, the stupid and the ignorant, no matter how popular they may be with the squealing masa. We require qualifying exams, or their equivalents, for doctors, surgeons, med-techs, nurses, anesthesiologists, ophthalmologists, lawyers, dentists, psychiatrists, architects, engineers, accountants, economists, educators even for Grade I, electricians, mechanics, plumbers, computer programmers, airline and private pilots, captains and officers of maritime ships, call center agents, bus and jeepney drivers, truck drivers, private motorists, real estate agents, insurance agents, harbor pilots, air traffic controllers, radio and TV technicians, and just about every other modern occupation. Why the hell shouldn’t we require qualifying exams or their equivalents for those who want to manage or represent our barrio, our town, our city, our province, our region, our country?. I would like to see a total and permanent ban on all radio and TV political ads. Instead I would like to see the three government-owned TV channels – Ch 4, 9 and 13 – and their nationwide radio and TV networks, deputized by Comelec to be the sole venues for all political programming during the 45- or 90-day campaign period. Managed by a non-partisan commission made up of members from academe, the Churches and NGOs, the deputized TV channels will schedule EQUAL and FREE air time for all registered parties and candidates. This would level the playing field for all candidates and remove or drastically reduce the advantages of moneyed politicians. I would like to see the Comelec deputize all registered parties and candidates to remove all illegal campaign posters, illegal either because these posters are oversized or because they are pasted or hung illegally such as on trees, lampposts, LRT columns, private and public walls, bridges, overpasses, etc. Every election time, illegal posters and streamers are a visual plague that uglifies our urban and rural landscapes, and the Comelec is powerless to enforce existing bans because of lack of personnel. By deputizing all registered parties and candidates to enforce the bans, the Comelec would be using a self-policing mechanism. Candidate A would not want to be upstaged by candidates B, C, and D. So he would remove the illegal posters of his rivals, just as his rivals, candidates B, C and D would also make sure that candidate A will not post illegal posters and streamers. Removal of illegal posters and streamers, however, must be done in the presence of deputized policemen, to avoid plain vandalism and violence. Lastly, I would like to see the dismantling of political dynasties. The 1987 Constitution calls for such a move against political dynasts. But in the past 21 years, eight Congresses have been convened, yet no action has ever been taken against political dynasties? Not surprising, since political dynasts controlled and control these Congresses. On the contrary, political dynasties have proliferated like mushrooms, plunging this country deeper and deeper into what I call neo-feudalism, from which the only liberation may be a revolutionary government. I have written about these reforms in articles dating back to 2004. But since my archive-website has been blocked, I cannot cite the specific article/s. ***** Reactions to <A href=”/ym/Compose?To=tonyabaya@gmail.com&amp;YY=47697&amp;y5beta=yes&amp;order=&amp;sort=&amp;pos=0″>tonyabaya@gmail.com</A>. Other articles in www.tapatt.org and in acabaya.blogspot.com. .

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In his presentation last week at the Asian Institute of Management, on the 2010 presidential elections, political analyst Tony Gatmaitan made his usual pitches about the Lucena-Lingayen corridor, the relative strengths of the Kampi-Lakas, NP, LP, NPC and PDP-Laban and their  announced or expected nominees, the role of radio and TV ads in the campaign, etc. He spoke in a lecture sponsored by the Futuristics Center , of which I am a director.

Tony Gat did drop a bombshell of sorts that few in the audience may have expected, to wit, that Interior Secretary Ronaldo Puno was the “secret candidate” of Lakas-Kampi.

As one of the reactors to Tony Gat, I agreed that Puno was indeed a potential successor to President Arroyo – I did mention it in an earlier column – but my sense is that it will not happen in 2010 because President Arroyo intends to stay in power beyond that year, either as prime minister under a parliamentary set-up, or as president without term limits if we retain the presidential system.

That is really the reason for the continued and insistent agitation for charter change in both the Lower House and, now, the Senate, even after the people’s initiative of the Sigaw ng Bangaw was junked by the Supreme Court, and even after the obscene maneuver of then Speaker Jose de Venecia to convene the Lower House into a constituent assembly, without the participation of the oppositionist Senate, to amend the Constitution, was hooted down by the public, in 2006..

Puno can plan on 2016 or 2022. So also should Mar, Manny, Ping, Loren, Dick, Sonny, Bayani, Erap, Jejomar and other ambitious wannabes, unless an act of God or Allah or Mars (the Roman god of war) intervenes and spoils the best laid plan of mice and men (and power-drunk women).

I reminded the audience of the uncanny accuracy of my crystal ball. On Dec. 30, 2002, President Arroyo promised that she would not run in 2004. In my article titled She Will Run, published in May 2003, I wrote that she would, and she did.

After the party caucus of Kampi in February 2005, in which then Kampi President Ronaldo Puno stated the strategic goal of Kampi to become the biggest political party by 2007 – three years before the end of GMA’s non-extendable presidential term – I wrote in Prime Minister Gloria?  and GMA Forever, both published in 2005, that President Arroyo was planning to remain in power beyond 2010, as prime minister.

And, sure enough, in 2006 we saw the separate maneuvers of Sigaw ng Bangaw and De Venecia to engineer a shift to parliamentary. These articles are archived and can be read  in my website www.tapatt.org, unless someone is blocking access to it.

So when I say that President Arroyo is planning to remain in power beyond 2010 – by doing a Vladimir Putin – I am not speculating idly..

And what would be the issues in 2010? Tony Gat had his usual laundry list. I have mine.

I am concerned with only two issues: a) food sufficiency or insufficiency and its impact on a rapidly multiplying population; and b) the possible resumption of hostilities in Mindanao and Sulu.

I reminded the audience that by the year 2014 (or only six years from now), we will number 100 million; and by the year 2050 (or only 42 years from now), we will number 199 million. Where in the world will we find the food (and the water, the energy, the fuel, the schools, the housing and the jobs) for such a massive population, when we can barely provide for a population of “only” 90 million?

 In its Medium Term Development Plan, made public – I believe – in September or October 2001, the Arroyo administration articulated its strategic goal of focusing on only three sectors: agriculture, tourism and information technology.

The welcome proliferation of call centers and business processing enterprises, not only in Metro Manila but in many other urban centers in the provinces, is proof that President Arroyo was very successful in this sector, whether or not her administration did anything concrete to promote this industry..

The second preferred sector, tourism, is only a middling success. We drew in only 3.0 million tourists in 2007. Vietnam overtook us last year with 4.2 million. Indonesia surpassed us long ago; it now draws in six million, even though we each drew in one million in 1991. Let’s not even compare ourselves with Thailand (13 million tourists), Malaysia (16 million) and Hong Kong (26 million).

It is in agriculture that the Arroyo administration must be rated a failure. I cannot imagine how any government could claim to focus on agriculture without making a specific effort to be self-sufficient in the most important crop, rice.

Especially since we are host to the International Rice Research Institute, to become the biggest rice importer in the world is an irony beyond comprehension.  It is like Italy becoming the world’s biggest importer of pasta.

President Arroyo has vowed to make the country self-sufficient in rice by the year 2010. Why didn’t she think of this in 2001? If she had, there would have been specific measures taken as early as 2001 to increase production and to limit population growth. ..

As for Mindanao and Sulu, this problem looms as an 800-pound gorilla, more menacing than the food and population issue. The peace between the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) and the  Manila government has been tenuous at best. It now looks ephemeral and dicey.

Malaysia , a major player in the international monitoring team that has kept that peace, has just withdrawn most of its military contingent from Mindanao . Do the Malaysians know something that we don’t?

It certainly looks that way. In any negotiation, when one party wants to break off the negotiations without bearing the onus for the break-off, it will make demands that it knows the other party cannot meet, and thus put the blame on the other party for the impasse.

That seems to be the case here as the talks bogged down on the issue of ancestral domain. The Bangsamoro have demanded that their ancestral domain should include Palawan , clearly an unacceptable demand. Will the MILF now break off negotiations and resume hostilities? Even if the peace holds, there are other issues that complicate the problem.

Certainly the majority Christian populations in urban centers in the present Autonomous Regions of Muslim Mindanao (ARRM) do not relish the prospect of being included in the ancestral domain of the Bangsamoro. Will they now re-arm as they did in the 1970s?

There is also the rivalry between the MILF and the Moro National Liberation Front or MNLF from which the MILF had split in the 1990s. The MNLF wanted to set up a secular state, the MILF prefer an Islamic state under Sharia Law.

And keep in mind that the problem of Moro secession flared up in the 1970s after President Ferdinand Marcos’ plan to invade Sabah ( North Borneo ) was exposed

after the so-called Jabidah Massacre in which the core of that invasion force was massacred in Corregidor Island . As payback, Malaysia , with the aid of British intelligence, stoked the fires of separatism that lasts to this day. Malaysia has been accused of being partial towards the MILF.

Do the Malaysians know something that we don’t?  We will find out before 2010. Sen. Pimentel’s espousal of federalism before the end of President Arroyo’s term may be an attempt to stave off secession. But to the Bangsamoro, it may be too little too late. To them, it may look more like a sign of weakness. It is either Palawan or nothing. *****

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COMMENTARY: Antonio Abaya

Background check- Mrs. Michelle Obama

Is there a theme here? You may remember that last year Senator Obama said he
refused to wear a flag lapel pin because it represented a ‘substitute for true
patriotism.’ And what precisely is true patriotism? According to Senator Barack
Hussein Obama, it is opposing the war in Iraq .

Apparently nothing America did from 1982 to 2008 caused her heart to swell with
pride. Not our successful effort to defeat Soviet communism and liberate
millions of people in Eastern Europe ? Not our relief efforts
around the world, through which we spent billions to help the downtrodden?

Not anything? When she learned with all the rest of us how her fellow citizens
on United Flight 93 bravely fought back against jihadist
hijackers and  prevented another disaster on September 11th, did she not fill up
with pride? As Americans of all races and classes rallied together in defense of
our nation in the aftermath of September 11th, did
her spirit not jump with love for her homeland? Apparently not.

The Obamas are living examples of the American Dream. Both Michelle Obama and
her husband have Ivy League degrees. They make a joint income of over One
Million Dollars a year. They live lives that most ordinary Americans can only
dream of. Yet, Mrs. Obama, who wants to be First Lady, has been unable to find
the pride in America that millions of ordinary Americans feel every day.

Sadly, her attitude is not rare among leftwing American elites. We are
‘educating’ millions of Americans to be Globalists first and foremost, and we
are doing precious little about educating our children to be proud and Unashamed
Americans.

The Obamas are flying high politically right now, but I don’t believe many
Americans will want to cast their votes this November for a couple so out of
touch with traditional
American values.

‘For the first time in my adult life, I am proud of my  country,’ Michelle
Obama…..’What she meant was, this is the first time that she’s been proud of
the politics of America ,’ Barack Obama

HOWEVER, nowhere in there does she leave space for, allude to, or specify a
reference to American politics. She’s a Princeton and Harvard educated lawyer,
and she can’t specify between her country and its politics???

ALSO,  ’Why Is Michelle Obama’s Princeton Thesis *Restricted* until November
5th’?

1985 Princeton senior Thesis entitled: ‘Princeton-Educated Blacks and the Black
Community,’

Princeton University Senior Theses Full Record

TITLE: Princeton Educated Blacks and the Black Community [Restricted until
November 5, 2008] (96 pages).
AUTHOR: Michelle LaVaughn Robinson (1985), Sociology Department
ADVISOR: Not available
LOCATED AT: Mudd Library.

Michelle LaVaughn Robinson Obama lamented that white professors and classmates
always saw her as ‘Black first and a student second.’  She had surveyed alumni
to see whether they sacrificed their commitment to other blacks on the altar of
success, and foresaw for herself an uneasy future: ‘further integration and/or
assimilation into a White cultural and social structure that will only allow me to remain on the periphery of society; never becoming a full participant’…

As Michelle Obama wrote in her thesis introduction, ‘My experiences at Princeton
has made me far more aware of my ‘Blackness’ than ever before. I have found that
at Princeton no matter how liberal and open-minded some of my White professors
and classmates try to be toward me, I sometimes feel like a visitor on campus; as if I really don’t belong’…

Michelle Obama was guided in her choice of thesis topic by a consuming concern
that her success might compromise her black identity. As she wrote in her
conclusion: ‘I wondered whether or not my education at Princeton would affect my
identification with the Black community. I hoped that these findings would help
me conclude that despite the high degree of identification with Whites as a result of the educational and occupational path that Black Princeton alumni follow, the alumni would still maintain a certain level of identification with the black community. However, these findings do not support this possibility.’…

Michelle Obama’s fears of losing touch with her roots without ever being
embraced into the mainstream led her to promise, in her thesis
introduction, ‘to actively utilize my resources to benefit the Black community.’

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Dear Mr. Tony,          Nice article po. 

I read somewhere that Al Gore is being tapped to run for US Presidency.  The Democrats will sort of have a “failure of nomination” as Barrack & Hillary would each be unable to obtain the necessary majority of delegates. 

A super delegates’ convention would then ensue and declare Al Gore official candidate in an effort to heal the rifts in the party and mainly to prevent a possible loss at the polls if either of current protagonists make it as official candidate   How’s that for an Al Gore US Presidency.     Best regards,

Nards Sapon, (by email), April 01, 2008

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Tony,          One by one Hillary Clinton’s friends abandoned her like passengers on the Titanic and jumped into the smooth-sailing Obama flotilla – John Kerry, Christopher Dodds and Ted Kennedy. The media, too, was ready to write her obituary and bury her.

Well, thanks to Ohio . Hillary is alive and well and back on the campaign trails. If Mark Twain were alive today, he would say that the news of Hillary Clinton’s demise was greatly exaggerated. Hillary is another comeback kid.

Barack Obama burst upon the national scene like a rock star, dazzling everyone with his brilliant oratory. He even swept Caroline Kennedy off her feet, who endorsed and compared him to her own father.

But Obama is no Jack Kennedy. Kennedy was an authentic WWII hero before he ran for Congress. Kennedy’s eloquence and charisma inspired young people to serve in the government and gave them hope. The nagging question about Obama is: What has he done for America to earn the right to run for the presidency?

Soaring oratory can inspire and give hope like many television evangelists do. But unfortunately, we are electing a president, not a preacher. Hot air can inflate a balloon and make it soar to the stratosphere, but sooner or later it has to to come down.

He promises to bring the country together. We have had a candidate like that, but the moment he was elected, George W. Bush became a most divisive president. We have been there before and we don’t want to go there again. Obama has become a more polarizing figure than Hillary. The country is now divided along racial lines. Not an auspicious start for a uniter.

He belittles Hillary’s experience and implies that he has better judgment. What he probably possesses is the forgivable brashness of youth.

Virgilio I. Gonzales, (by email), California , April 01, 2008

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Dear Mr. Abaya,          Your article was as informative as it was entertaining. Yes, indeed, just when the dumb and ugly Americans finally have a Presidential candidate who is authentic and exciting, the special interests who control media and finance will do everything in their power to stop him from winning in November.
 
Even in Barack Obama’s own front yard, the Democratic Party, sinister forces are out to foil his bid for the Presidency. Hillary Clinton’s obstinacy in pursuing the Democratic Presidential nomination to the bitter end reveals more than just sheer grit and determination. Hillary knows that her numbers for winning the nomination just don’t add up. Yet she angrily pursues her candidacy, despite warnings that the resulting acrimony will only hurt the eventual Democratic nominee, who will mostly likely be Obama.
 
It was Hillary’s campaign that brought up Obama’s middle name, Hussein. And Hillary brings up Jeremiah Wright, Obama’s controversial pastor, every chance she gets to. It is no mere coincidence that Hillary Clinton is a senator from New York , the seat of power of the American Jewish lobby.
 
While the youth and a significant portion of the minorities, with the exception of Asians and Latinos, may be enamored of Obama, American Jews are aghast. Obama has proclaimed that he will use more diplomacy, and less force, if he becomes President. Obama has renounced the arrogant unilateralism in American neo-conservative foreign policy. He has telegraphed his willingness to listen more to the third world.
 
What Jews fear most is that Obama will not be as willing a puppet of the Jewish lobby as past American Presidents. It is also no coincidence that the most prominent U.S. Jewish politician, Senator Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut who ran as Al Gore’s V.P. in the 2000 Democratic ticket, now accompanies John McCain in his campaign sorties. The message is very clear: Jewish sentiment is against Obama.
 
In U.S. politics, the tail wags the dog. Jewish sentiment outweighs all other considerations. Jewish money is a big factor. Most banks and financial institutions in the U.S. are controlled by Jews. Media and entertainment is also controlled by Jews. So they also have a control on public opinion.
 
It will be extremely difficult for someone who is not trusted by the Jewish lobby to eventually become President of the U.S.A. They will do everything in their power to thwart someone like Obama. I do not know if assassination is part of the scenario. But I would not rule that out, especially if that were among the last options left.
Very truly yours,
 
Juan Deiparine, (by email), Toril, Davao City , April 01, 2008

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Good observations.

However, I would not vote for Hillary or Obama because they are both of the same ilk.  During this primary season, I feel the Press orchestrated the selection of candidates and left much of the country disenfranchised.  I have no clear candidate to vote for if I am to vote my convictions.  The idea of moderate conservatives and conservative liberals has muddied the waters.   Perhaps if our traditional system of Checks and Balances

is  used correctly, we could survive any of the candidates.  But as it stands there is no choice for me. 

Shelah Bellis Hockman, (by email), Owosso , Michigan , April 01, 2008

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Mr. Abaya,          You have drawn the most accurate picture of the coming election that I have read to date.  Obviously, you have a firm hand on what is happening here, and yes, I agree with most of what you say will happen.  IF there is an election, events will be manipulated in the last weeks to put McCain in the White house.  If that happens, we will continue down the road to our ruin.  China and Europe will become the world leaders. 

With all of the problems the Philippines is having, I hope your country can stay above the fray and continue to grow and become stronger.  I am moving there in two months to retire and enjoy the Filipino culture and your beautiful country. I am only concerned for the future of my family and where my country is heading. Thanks again for your opinions and your view of the Philippines .     Sincerely,

Bill Tritt, (by email), Philadelphia , PA , April 01, 2008

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Dear Tony,          Your analogy or perception of Obama understandably is based on the delicately prepared news releases of the Obama camp and media’s favorable articles always seemingly heralding their darling candidate . 

These are well scripted, well designed and fully choreographed releases like a Broadway show. Why? Simply to avoid the race card. Any candidate either Democrat or Republican playing the race card would be making a fatal mistake. The Obama camp is on guard and ready to attack anytime an invasion occurs.

Clearly I find this as the big deception and frankly he does not get my vote. No, he is no JFK either. He may talk of the proverbial change (and what are these changes?) but has not been forthright just what they are. He may be polished and may appear to be a new voice on the political block but JFK has served the military as a hero and this country with honor.

I am a patriot at heart and MCcain who has served this country honorably without hate gets my vote. He is a real hero and all indication based on his records as a senator has a bipartisan approach and typically reaches across the aisle necessary to pass a bill.

America’s Whites built this country through hard work. For many of us who live and work in America we see hard working Americans every day. They are the most fair and benevolent  people.on this earth. They will lay their lives on the line to defend oppressed people and economically deprived countries.

Unfortunately there is anti government, anti democracy, anti religion, anti good, and anti freedom that permeate the world order at this time.

Obama will not be elected president not by assassination but by association, deception and revelation of myriads of skeletons he is hiding in his closet. Jeremiah Wright is only the beginning. This week is the release of a liberal form he filled out 12 years before  As electors read more of skeletons coming out of his closet of the unmasking of the real Obama will occur.

For two blacks who have been privileged to graduate in prestigious universities as a result of the Affirmative Action program why are they very angry cads rather than grateful? For Michelle to spout the unforgivable phrase “for the first time I love America ” should have Martin Luther King squirming in his grave.

America has matured and has come a long way since I set foot in this beautiful country over half a century ago. The prospect of a black president is a testament to this country’s character. As a soldier I saw those for colored and for whites only signs which put me in a dilemma not being either. If there is racism is caused by the people themselves.

Speaking for our people, we Filipinos do not suffer from blatant discriminatory racism because we play our cards right. We are responsible, respect the laws, work hard, pay our taxes and are not a burden to society.

Good to talk to you, Tony, even though I disagree. Thanks, buddy.

Oscar Apostol, (by email), Roseville , CA , April 01, 2008

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