Nuts

Steve Sailer on the Republican plan to eliminate the inheritance tax:

Eliminating the inheritance tax on the richest of the rich is nuts . . . This really shouldn't be controversial. I can't think of a logical reason why we will have a progressive income tax but not an inheritance tax on the extremely rich . . . The Democrats should pick a round number like $10 million for couples for the minimum taxable estate, something that the average person would agree is plenty-with-a-capital-P, and stick to it. Heck, set it at $50 million, but there needs to be something, both to narrow the deficit and to keep wealth from piling up generation after generation into a hereditary super-aristocracy.

He's right. He might have added that when they pick a number, it should be indexed to inflation.
What is particularly appalling is that the Republicans favor this sort of thing(and all of their other tax cuts) in the face of their massive expansion of government (except, of course, in guarding our southern border). It can't be said too often -- the Republicans are the party of fiscal dishonesty. They run up big deficits when they get into power, and let others figure out how to clean up the mess later.

Dumber & Dumber

I don't know what is worse--the ladies at Code Pink who think we should say "yes" to the UN(via a childish public hissy fit); or Hindpocket at Power Line, who thinks that saying "no" to John Bolton must mean saying "no" to America. Regular readers know that I spend about 95% of my time bad mouthing the right. That is because they control the government and drive the political/media agenda, not because I have any soft spot for the political left.

Kirk v. Kirk

Almost every issue of The American Conservative catalogs the decline of the Right. The April 25 issues has two articles back to back which nicely illustrate the descent from Russell Kirk to Captain Kirk. The first is by William Lind of the Free Congress Foundation. Lind contrasts the older patriotism with the nationalism now gripping the Right:

From Burke to Kirk, this has been the essence of conservative patriotism, or as it used to be called, a love of our country: specific attachment to our own places . . . The local is real, and the first conservative principle is the Reality Principle. To a conservative patriot Wal-Mart is a far greater threat than some tin-pot dictator in a Third World country. . . Nationalism, in contrast looks outward, identifying not with anything tangible but with the abstract that is the state.

Marcus Epstein, in contrast, went to the recent Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington, described by Marshall Wittman as a "Star Trek convention for conservatives." Epstein, an apparent masochist, has attended three of these gatherings. He relates that, while manning the "conservatives for peace" table, the "most common response from attendees was to call the people manning the table leftists, unpatriotic, or communists." He then commits the dual sins of knowing a bit of history and defending the French:

Another [t-shirt] had a Frenchman waving a white flag and the words, "We Salute You." When the vendor asked me if I would like to buy the shirt, I told him that I didn't think the French were cowardly. He snapped back that they quickly negotiated peace in World War II and would not let us use their airfields during our latest war. I expained to him that 1.3 million French died in World War I, more than all American war deaths in history . . .

The infantilization of the American Right is disturbing -- there exists no significant force in American politics standing against what the late Sam Francis described as "Anarcho-Tyranny" at home and abroad -- but it is also entertaining.

Never Discuss the Family Business With Him

Gianni Russo is best known for playing the faithless Carlo Rizzi in Maro Puzo and Francis Ford Coppola's The Godfather is still around more than thirty years after he was garroted from the back seat by Peter Clemenza. The New York Times reports that the 62 year old sometime actor and former delivery boy for Frank Costello is planning a new career as a Sinatra style crooner. "The reluctant killer . . . has a publicist and a new dream: to be a big-name crooner, the kind who makes women swoon."

That would seem to disprove F. Scott Fitzgerald's belief that there are "no second acts in American life." It is not as if he plans to rely exclusively on his vocal talents though. The Times reports that, "Mr. Russo's singing act leans heavily on his 'Godfather' past, with cheeky references to Marlon Brando punctuated by the recorded sound of machine-gun fire."

Conservatives & Corporations

Jason, at Libertas is exercised over the release of The Corporation, a documentery about corporations. More specifically, he is upset about this interview with the film's creators and reproduces this quote:

The corporation is a legal construct that allows people to concentrate capital, do business, and be irresponsible for the actions the corporation takes in their name. It's an irresponsibility machine. It's a license to amplify the worst aspects of human nature, to exploit, to harm -- even kill -- in the name of shareholders. One image that comes to mind is hundreds of Magritte's businessmen with bowler hats on, but instead of blank faces or apples for heads, they each have a gaping great white shark's open mouth full of crooked teeth, and they all have body parts sticking out and blood dripping down their nice white shirts.

Their rhetoric about shark's teeth is over the top, but the description of a corporation as an "irresponsibility machine" is apt. The documentary interviews most of the usual left wing suspects such as Noam Chomsky, Michael Moore and Howard Zinn. It should have also included an interview with someone like Wendell Berry, who published an essay in Another Turn of the Crank a few years back that stated:

They are not interested in the good health-economic or natural or human-of any place on this earth. And if you should undertake to appeal or complain to one of these great corporations on behalf of your community, you would discover something most remarkable: you would find that these organizations are organized expressly for the evasion of responsibility. They are structures in which, as my brother says, "the buck never stops." The buck is processed up the hierarchy until finally it is passed to "the shareholders," who characteristically are too widely dispersed, too poorly informed, and too unconcerned to be responsible for anything. The ideal of the modern corporation is to be (in terms of its own advantage) anywhere and (in terms of local accountability) nowhere.

It never ceases to amaze me the way conservatives are so fond of such unconservative institutions such as corporations and the military. It wasn't always the case. People like Russell Kirk and the Southern Agrarians could be strongly critical of corporations and Industrialism. A small Catholic publisher, IHS Press, is substantially devoted to republishing the anti-capitalist and anti-corporate tracts of conservative heroes G.K. Chesterton and Hilaire Belloc.

Matters of Conscience

"Conscience clauses" that allow pharmacists to refuse to fill prescriptions they find morally objectionable (usually birth-control related) are becoming a hot topic in the culture war that grips the country. My first instinct is to be sympathetic to the pharmacists who wish to be able to refuse certain prescriptions as Crispin Sartwell argues in the Los Angeles Times (registration):

What you should ask yourself in this case is not whether you think people should have access to birth control, but whether you should be required to do things that violate your deepest convictions. Should a soldier be required to torture prisoners, for example? Should he refuse to do so if ordered? Should a liberal corporate peon be required to contribute to the Republican Party?

On further reflection, I find such arguments unpersuasive because the assume that dispensing prescription drugs is just another job. It is a tightly regulated profession with stringent entry requirements. Also, it is silly to compare it to being required to torture, which is both illegal and universially considered reprehensible.

When I see a blogger argue that being able to refuse to dispense drugs is a matter of "freedom" I have my doubts. John Brown argues that "a private business should have the right to decide what it wishes to sell and what it doesn't." I agree, but if he thinks they are simply private businesses, he should open a pharmacy and see if any other pharmacies have moral qualms about shutting him down. He also ignores the probability that "conscience clauses" will be used by druggists against their private employers who wish them to fill all prescriptions.

Action Shot

Being a blogger means never having to hold your self to the standards you demand of the big media, or so it seems for some. I noted last year how several bloggers were boasting about their various takedowns of the dreaded MSM, especially over this photo from the Associated Press which "proved" that that organiziation was guilty of working with terrorists because, I think it was Hindpocket at Power Line who said, "the photographer was obviously within a few yards of the scene of the murder, which raises obvious questions, such as 1) what was the photographer doing there; did he have advance knowledge of the crime, or was he even accompanying the terrorists? and 2) why did the photographer apparently have no fear of the terrorists, or conversely, why were the terrorists evidently unconcerned about being photographed in the commission of a murder?" Also, an anonymous source told Salon that the photographer might have been tipped that something was going to happen on that street. High Pockets treats that as an admission of guilt by the Associated Press.

Ryan at Dead Parrot Society suggests that the guys at Power Line, and others who made these accusations don't know what they are talking about:

Do these writers really believe their characterizations of how the stringer got his shots? I can't imagine they do, not in a day where a telephoto lens and a professional crop bring you right into a photo's face.
Here, compare these two versions of the same picture, both carried on Yahoo's feed of news photos. In all likelihood, even the photo on the left was cropped in from full frame; very few news photos aren't cropped at least somewhat to tighten in on the important part of the image. But you can see how easy it is to take a photo from distance and bring the viewer right in close.

His arguement makes sense, I am impressed that he uses facts and logic, instead of simply hurling empty accusations.

Now Hindpocket's partner, Elephant Guy has his snout in a snit because the picture won a Pulitzer Prize for breaking news photography. He calls it a pulitzer for "felony murder."

One of the things I learned when I started my blog is that it is harder than it looks. That is, if you care about what you are saying. I would never think of making the kind of serious accusations that the Powerliners and numerous others have made on the flimsy "evidence" that they produce.

Moral Values

For perhaps billions--including many non-Catholics-- the death of Pope John Paul II is a tragic loss. For others, it is simply another wedge issue.

Bookchat

Belatedly, I take up the challenge from Jesse Walker, to throw away a few minutes or so of my life.

You're stuck inside Fahrenheit 451. Which book do you want to be?

I would pick the as yet unwritten, Harry Potter Book Seven. That way I would be one of the most important and powerful people around.

Have you ever had a crush on a fictional character?

That's a little weird. Maybe Marie "Slim" Browning from To Have and Have Not, because she was played by Lauren Bacall in the Movie.

The last book you bought is:

I'm not really sure.

The last book you read is

Put Out More Flags By Evelyn Waugh.

What are you currently reading?

Several Things.

Five books you would take to a deserted island.

1 Lost in the Cosmos: The Last Selfhelp Book by Walker Percy. Percy covers all the critical issues: Wednesday afternoons, the Last Phil Donahue Show and "Why it is that of all the billions and billions of strange objects in the Cosmos--novas, quasars, pulsars, black holes--you are beyond doubt the strangest."
2 I'll Take My Stand by Twelve Southerners.
3 Dispatches from the Muckdog Gazette by Bill Kauffman. My review may explain why I would need an occasional Kauffman fix while on the Island.
4 The Marble City by Jack Neely, Knoxville's answer to Bill Kauffman.
5 The Simpsons A complete Guide to Our Favorite family. I assume I wouldn't have TV on this Island. This would be a good substitute.

Who are you going to pass this stick to (3 persons) and why?

I don't know. My first choice would be Jesse, but he already did it and didn't take it very seriously the first time.

Vote with Your Wheels

John Tierney has an article in the New York Times detailing the political affiliations of various car buyers, most of which is predictable. ". . . buyers of American cars tend to be Republican -- except, for some reason, those who buy Pontiacs, who tend to be Democrats. Foreign-brand compact cars are usually bought by Democrats -- but not Mini Coopers, which are bought by almost equal numbers of Democrats and Republicans."

While skimming over a later paragraph I came across came across this quote: "In truth, a lot of fans would be sore about ending the all-American monopoly. Nascar has become a covert ethnic-pride celebration for red-state whites of Northern European descent." This sounds like Steve Sailer, I thought, and looked up at the previous paragraph and saw that it is.

Well Said

The Wandering Hillbilly clearly states what needed to be said:

Ifn ye lack to read the cunservative side of thangs, then i recommend ye check out clark stooksburys blog name of clarkstooksbury, witch the bes thang bout it is how ye caint perdick whut he is a'gone say bout mos innythang. verr thoughtful n not the kind to repeat spin points, far as i kin see, witch that means he bleeves in the cunservative values that wuz importunt to my daddy n his generayshun. ye kin git a lil idee bout how this by readin one of his posts lack "Freedom" of Speech or sum of his longer ritin such as Red Team, Blue Team. ye mite notice rite away how this feller is a real riter that has published thangs in places lack the american conservative.

Normalcy, Anyone?

The military will run out of gas sometime in 2006, according to the military analysts quoted in this article in the Arizona Republic. "With recruitment lagging and no end in sight for U.S. forces in Iraq, the 'breaking point' for the nation's all-volunteer military will be mid-2006, agreed Lawrence Korb, a draft opponent and assistant defense secretary in the Reagan administration, and Phillip Carter, a conscription advocate and former Army captain."

Carter co-wrote a case for the draft in the Washington Monthly that has drawn a lot of attention. I oppose such a draft, but then again I oppose U.S. attempts to impose democracy around the world. When a draft is required to sustain Bush's Wilsonian foreign policy, I expect that more and more Americans will favor a return to Harding-style "Normalcy."

The Iraq War has remained for most Americans a "livingroom war," as Andrew Bacevich calls it, with real sacrifices made by a tiny minority:

The attack of Sept. 11 elicited from the American people a universal sense of shock, anger, and outrage. But when it came to tapping the energies inherent in that instantaneous emotional response, the administration of George W. Bush did essentially nothing.
Instead of a Lincolnesque summons to "think anew and act anew," President Bush instructed his fellow citizens to "enjoy America's great destination spots." Within weeks of the terrorist attack, he was urging folks to "Get down to Disney World in Florida." Rather than announcing that the imperative of victory had now transcended all other priorities—in his day, FDR had pointedly retired "Dr. New Deal," making way for "Dr. Win-the-War"—Bush thought it more important for Americans to "enjoy life, the way we want it to be enjoyed."

"Freedom" of Speech

Justin Raimondo points to this Washington Post(registration) story about Bush adminstration officials ejecting potential trouble makers from one of the president's Stepfordian 'town meetings.' "Three Denver residents yesterday charged that they were forcibly removed from one of President Bush's town meetings on Social Security because they displayed a bumper sticker on their car condemning the administration's Middle East policies. The three, all self-described progressives who oppose Bush's Social Security plan, said an unidentified official at an event in Denver last week forced them to leave before the president started to speak, even though they had done nothing disruptive, said their attorney, Dan Recht. Initially, the three believed Secret Service agents had grabbed them and ushered them out of the auditorium, Recht said. But he said that Lon Garner, the Secret Service agent in charge of the Denver office, told them the service investigated the matter and found it was a 'Republican staffer' who removed them because they had a 'No More Blood for Oil' bumper sticker on their car."
This is the norm the Bush administration, which likes to keep the president from being exposed to dissenting opinion. James Bovard told the story of retired steel worker, James Neel, who was arrested at a Bush event a couple of years ago while carrying a sign that read, "The Bush family must surely love the poor, they made so many of us." That case was thrown out of court:

At Neel’s trial, police detective John Ianachione testified that the Secret Service told local police to confine "people that were there making a statement pretty much against the president and his views" in a so-called free speech area. Paul Wolf, one of the top officials in the Allegheny County Police Department, told Salon that the Secret Service "come in and do a site survey, and say, 'Here’s a place where the people can be, and we'd like to have any protesters put in a place that is able to be secured.'" Pennsylvania district judge Shirley Rowe Trkula threw out the disorderly conduct charge against Neel, declaring, "I believe this is America. Whatever happened to ‘I don’t agree with you, but I’ll defend to the death your right to say it'?"

All the president's men shelter him from opposing viewpoints to avoid having him wind up like this other emperor:

So now the Emperor walked under his high canopy in the midst of the procession, through the streets of his capital; and all the people standing by, and those at the windows, cried out, "Oh! How beautiful are our Emperor's new clothes! What a magnificent train there is to the mantle; and how gracefully the scarf hangs!" in short, no one would allow that he could not see these much-admired clothes; because, in doing so, he would have declared himself either a simpleton or unfit for his office. Certainly, none of the Emperor's various suits, had ever made so great an impression, as these invisible ones.

"But the Emperor has nothing at all on!" said a little child.

"Listen to the voice of innocence!" exclaimed his father; and what the child had said was whispered from one to another.

"But he has nothing at all on!" at last cried out all the people. The Emperor was vexed, for he knew that the people were right; but he thought the procession must go on now! And the lords of the bedchamber took greater pains than ever, to appear holding up a train, although, in reality, there was no train to hold.

Huh?

I don't know why, but this site is pointing its readers to mine.

Little Mengeles

Jay Nordlinger is the managing editor of National Review. Most of the articles I have read by him in the last few years have been fawning profiles of the macho men in the Bush administration, like this one from The American Enterprise .

Another matter that Nordlinger addresses regularly in his Impromptus column in NRO is the rhetorical excess of leftists and liberals. His most recent column is no exception. He quotes Jesse Jackson saying "Today the Congress reconvenes to save a woman — Terri Schiavo — from starving to death, but then votes to starve millions every day," and "There is a fascist attack on civil rights and civil liberties. We cannot be silent." Outrageous stuff, to be sure. Fortunately, few people pay attention to Jackson anymore. I remember when he was a powerful media figure. Those days are long gone.

Below that, Nordlinger disdainfully quotes from an article by Leslie Gelb referring to "Republican Ayatollahs." This would seem to be an example of such extreme language except that in context it is clear that Gelb is not denouncing Republican extremism:

Mr. Cheney also does well at herding his party's ever-feuding foreign policy ayatollahs and keeping them faithful to White House policy. Republican ayatollahs come in three varieties: The old-fashioned conservatives of the Jesse Helms and John Bolton type, torn between their traditional isolationism and the impulse to nuke the bad guys and get it over with. The neoconservatives, mainly former Democratic conservatives, ever eager to wield U.S. power to change the world to suit our interests and values. And the classic realists . . . who like power, but who give equal weight to limits imposed by human nature, culture and politics.

Also, one should point out that the Ayatollah who has received the most publicity in the last few months is supposedly one of the good guys.

I am devoting all of this space to Nordlinger, ordinarily one of the minor stars in the neocon cosmos, because the most extreme words by far in his column are those he uses. Refering to the Terry Schiavo case he reproduces a brief exchange with an unidentified friend: "In a discussion with a friend, I mentioned something about Dr. Mengele's laboratory. He said, 'No, this is worse. Mengele had the pretense — indeed, the argument — that he was benefiting humanity [with his inhuman experiments]. Where's the argument here? They're just starving her to death."

Talk about not doing nuance! Nordlinger and his friend casually reduce Michael Schiavo, his lawyer and numerous judges to the level of not just ordinary Nazis--but worse than one of the most contemptible and repulsive monsters of the Third Reich. Note how black and white the issue is--"They're just starving her to death." End of story. There are no open questions about Terry Schiavo's intentions or level of consciousness.

I am sympathetic towards arguments in favor of saving Terry Schiavo. It is easy to see that her husband, who has two children with another woman, may not have his wife's best interests at heart. But I haven't seen anything that justifies the recent interference by the Bush administration and the Congress. But if one takes Nordlinger seriously, then Bush brothers--who are standing by while Judge George Greer opens up an Auschwitz in the Sunshine State--are both moral cowards of the first order worthy only of the contempt of decent people. And speaking of the people; some conservative have criticized poll results that show most people oppose congressional interference in the Schiavo case, but I haven't seen any reason to doubt that such results are largely accurate, so Nordlinger can't have much regard for the American people either.

His statement reminds me of the recent controversy surrounding Ward Churchill's reference to victims of 9/11 as "little Eichmanns." Churchill's use of such contemptable rhetoric has led to a campaign on the right to deprive him of his job in the department of "Ethnic Studies" at the University of Colorado. I wonder if any of the same people will be outraged by Nordlinger.

Update: Ben Stein confirms it. We now live in Nazi Germany:

I wonder if a poll of Aryan Germans would have found a majority who cared enough to pull a lever to save the Jews. I suspect a good majority -- voting in total secrecy, of course -- would have said, "Let them die. They're inferior and not worth providing food for." So now we are at that level.

Hideout

The guys at Libertas, "a forum for conservative thought on film" are big fans of Turner Classic Movies, (TCM) as am I. Unlike them, I don't feel the need to offer my daily reccommendations other than to say that it is the perfect TV hideout from the present sad state of American pop culture.
Their reccomendations from March 26 includes Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds.
One of the more famous films from one of the most celebrated directors doesn't need a plug from anybody. A casual movie fan will be aware of the movie even if he hadn't yet seen it. Turner Classic Movies shows most of the great movies like that. Pay attention long enough and you will see Gone With The Wind, Casablanca and most of the other greats. What Makes TCM so great are the films they show that aren't as celebrated. Take, for example, Shadow of a Doubt, another Hitchcock film that I hadn't heard of until I saw it on TCM a few months back. It stars Joseph Cotten as a handsome and debonair, murderous sociopath. Another great discovery I made is In a Lonely Place, starring Humphrey Bogart as a mercurial screenwriter who is suspected of murder he didn't commit, and whose violent behavior makes those who believe in his innocence have second thoughts.
I haven't yet checked the TCM April schedule, but I am sure that it contains hours of great entertainment for anyone who cares to look.

Never say die?

Thomas Fleming has one of the more worthwhile columns on the whole Terry Schiavo situation:

But supposing we still believe, despite the strong weight of evidence, that Mrs. Schiavo remains conscious at some level and might someday lead a normal life. The question then becomes not “What is the right thing to do,” but “Who is to decide?” As in so many human affairs, it is easier to have moral knowledge than knowledge of facts. We do know that, in our tradition, spouses are next of kin and empowered by law to make decisions when their wife or husband is incapable. That is why Mr. Schiavo, when the physicians concluded the case to be hopeless, was free to decide his wife’s fate. To change this legal tradition, in the heat of a passionate case, is a perilous undertaking.

I do not know what Mrs. Schiavo’s husband ought to do, but I do know that the decision belongs to him and not to either Jeb or George Bush. To those who wish to defend physical existence for its own sake at any cost, this will seem like Pilate’s decision. They are wrong. Pilate shirked his responsibility as Roman procurator by giving in to the mob. He should not have allowed the execution of Jesus, but neither should he have overturned both Roman and Jewish laws in order to strip families of their legal rights. The analogy, used with increasing frequency, between Mrs. Schiavo and Christ is blasphemous on many counts. She is not the God who willingly accepted death in order to redeem mankind. She is only a poor, frail mortal, like the rest of us, and her condition and death, so far from being a willing sacrifice, is the result, apparently, of binge dieting.

New Destructive Generation

Justin Raimondo correctly pegs the repellent Frontpage of David Horowitz:

Desperate for attention -- and, increasingly, for more funds from his right-wing backers -- Horowitz has been getting increasingly crazed lately, working himself and his dwindling band of supporters into a frothy-mouthed lather in a effort to convince himself that anything he says really matters.
What's interesting to note is that the Horowitzian technique hasn't really changed since his heyday as a New Leftist. Back then, his enemies were "capitalist running dogs" and agents of "the ruling class." Today, as then, there can be no honest disagreements with Horowitz: his enemies are all "terrorists" and agents of "Al Qaeda."
Horowitz, Plaut, and their fellow nutjobs are the real anti-Americans: fanatics who want to see their alleged enemies silenced, shut down, and jailed. That of course is the real intent of someone who labels their political opponents "pro-Al Qaeda."
No conservative, no matter what their view of the Iraq war, should countenance this kind of intellectual dishonesty -- and outright hooliganism. That's why we're urging all conservatives and libertarians of good will to boycott Horowitz, and all his works. People that irresponsible need to be marginalized.

Horowitz was a leftwing nutcase when that was the fashionable thing to be, now he is a rightwing crazy. It seems that the only consistency in his life is extremism.
At Frontpage, one of whose more hysterical writers threatens a lawsuit every time he gets his panties in a wad, most of the other contributors follow the Horowitz tone. Stephen Schwartz is one of the more looney of the Frontpagers, but he fits right in. Raimondo quotes Steven Plaut as describing Antiwar.com as "pro al Qaeda" even though if a Raimondoesqe foreign policy had been followed for the last fifteen years or so al Qaeda would be a marginal organization that noone had ever heard of.

The Coming Battle

If you ignore Andrew Sullivan's silly nonsense about "Stone Age conservative isolationism," he provides a compelling take on the coming battle on the right: "The race to succeed Bush will become, in part, a battle for the future of American conservatism. I have no idea how it will turn out. But I do have one clear prediction: the Republican internal battle in the next four years is going to be bloody. After the mid-term elections in 2006 it will be brutal."

The Question is . . .

When will Stephen sue?

The Barone of Hackery

Michael Barone has a remarkable column that I saw via Instapundit. It is remarkable because he has so little of substance to say on his chosen topic, the "trustfund left." Such a demographic may well, in fact probably does exist, but you get no substantive evidence fro Barone. He doesn't even use the cool word "trustafarian."
Instead he offers a vague description:

Who are the trustfunders? People with enough money not to have to work for a living, or not to have to work very hard. People who can live more or less wherever they want. The "nomadic affluent," as demographic analyst Joel Kotkin calls them.
These people tend to be very liberal politically. Aware that they have done nothing to earn their money, they feel a certain sense of guilt. At the elite private or public high schools they attend, and even more at their colleges and universities, they are propagandized about the evils of capitalism and globalization, and the virtues of environmentalism and pacifism. Patriotism is equated with Hiterlism.

And a vague idea of where they reside:

Where can you find trustfunders? Not scattered randomly around the country, but
heavily concentrated in certain areas. Places with kicky restaurants, places tolerant of alternative lifestyles, places with lots of art galleries and organic food stores and Starbucks competitors. The heaviest concentration is in the San Francisco Bay area, which, Kotkin says, has the largest percentage of trustfunders of any major metro area in the country. The Bay area stands out in stark relief on the political map. It voted 70 percent to 29 percent for John Kerry in 2004, up from the 64 percent to 30 percent margin it cast for Al Gore in 2000. Without the Bay area's 1.15 million-vote margin for Kerry, California would have come within 82,000 votes of voting for George W. Bush.

So on that slim basis their is a large class of rich liberals who don't work, vote for Democrats and think everybody else is Hitler. He cites Joel Kotkin as saying that the Bay area has a lot of trustfunders but he doesn't say how many. Then he assumes that this group is solely responsible for Kerry's huge margin in that area. He doesn't even consider that the Bay area might have a lot of wealthy people in the tech industry who tend to be liberal.
As Walker Percy said about a certain Wednesday afternoon a few years ago, the only thing about Barone's column that is notable is that nothing about it is notable. I guess it is easy to be a columnist when all you have to do is toss off a few generalities in order to demonize your political enemies.

Do Nothing Congress

It seems that I a always denouncing the American Spectator. I never got around to praising this fine article on the atrocity of sending young women and mothers into war last week. Now they have dissipated the good will that they built up with me by publishing a silly article urging President Bush to go on the offensive against a Congress controlled in both houses by members of his own party.
The author, Patrick Hynes believes president Bush, who won his first political office in 1994, the year that Republicans took over the House and Senate, "more than anyone else, helped to create" a Republican Congress. Newt Gingrich, call your office.
He also urges the president to denounce the Congress for wasting time with steroids hearings last week. Which would be fine except for the fact that I have reason to believe that Mr. Bush doesn't think it is a waste of time.
By all means Mr. President, go to war against the Republican Congress. Just be prepared to work closely with Speaker Pelosi in 2007.

Law & Etiquette

the professor takes note of the Schwartz v. Raimondo copyright imbroglio: "I think that AntiWar.com has the better of the law here, but I think that web etiquette is being violated all around. I think it's OK to link somebody's image if you're not causing them bandwidth problems, but I think that it's churlish not to take the link down if they complain. On the other hand, it's also churlish to complain too readily. "
It's good that he reviews the issue and notes that the law is on Antiwar.com's side, but he misses the point, I think. Schwartz didn't just complain, he threatened an utterly baseless lawsuit, for apparently the second time. I don't usually assume that people I disagree with on political issues are simply bad people, but Schwartz's behavior seems perfectly in keeping with his deranged writing at Frontpage. His obsession with referring to Raimondo as "Dennis"(which Reynolds was taken enough with to provide a smirking second-hand link to the other day) is only the tip of the iceburg. In this, Schwartz is in tune with the style of Frontpage and the rest of the Horowitz web empire (not the use of a Raimondo picture, not just a link).
Reynolds doesn't regularly read Antiwar.com which is sad. I have noted a tendency towards groupthink on the right which I discuss in my forthcoming review of Blog (already available to electronic subscribers of The American Conservative). I try to read a broad spectrum of opinion including Instapundit, The Corner and other sites on both the left and the right.

Sue Google?

Stephen Schwartz has been having fits because Justin Raimondo linked to a copyrighted picture of him in his Antiwar.com column last Friday. Schwartz seems to have problems understanding that a link simply points in the direction of another webpage. Perhaps he should sue Google.

Legal Question

Prof. Reynolds links to a blog that quotes Sen. Barbara Boxer as saying, "Why would we give lifetime appointments to people who earn up to $200,000 a year, with absolutely a great retirement system, and all the things all Americans wish for, with absolutely no check and balance except that one confirmation vote. So we're saying we think you ought to get nine votes over the 51 required." He concludes that Boxer wants to change the constitution.
Perhaps Reynolds, a law professor at the University of Tennessee and a graduate of Yale Law School can help me out. I searched the document for relevant passages. I found the following:

Article I, Section 5, Clause 2: "Each House may determine the Rules of its Proceedings . . ."
Article II, Section 2, Clause 2: "[the president] shall have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur; and he shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, Judges of the supreme Court, and all other Officers of the United States, whose Appointments are not herein otherwise provided for, and which shall be established by Law . . ."

Note that it specifies a two thirds vote to approve a treaty, but not to approve judges and other officers appointed by the president. I assume that since the second clause I quote is silent on the matter, the first controls and the Senate can make its own rules which currently provide for filibusters when 60 senators don't vote to cut off debate.
The good professor should explain why it is unconstitutional for the requirement to apply to judicial nominees, but not other votes.

Update: I just noticed the post below the one that Reynolds linked to. It describes the "plain words of the framers" saying that "51 votes to confirm a nominee is all that is required." Of course, the "plain words" say no such thing, especially since there would have only been 26 senators at the time of the founding.
You have to actually read the constitution sometimes.
UdateII: George Will comes to the same conclusion on the Constitutional issue and quotes from article I, section 5, clause 2 of the Constitution as well. I guess you aren't required to have read the Constitution to graduate from Yale Law School, or to teach it at the University of Tennessee.

Ha Ha Ha

I think it's official, Susan Estrich ill-advised attack on Michael Kinsley has made her a laughing stock. The Washington Post's Anne Applebaum is forced to spend a column addressing the issue:

In the paragraph I have remaining (this, girls, is truly the hardest thing about newspaper columns: making the idea fit the space) I'm not going to discuss the thorny question of whether some affirmative action policies do some good, of whether newspapers matter anymore anyway, or even return to the subject of Sinn Fein. Those are complex, gender-neutral issues, and I've now used up my allotted weekly slot on a "women's issue" instead. Happy, Susan Estrich?

Dubious Note

Dubious blogger, Glenn Reynolds holds Thomas Woods' endorsement against Jim Powell's new book, Wilson's War. I'd be more inclined to hold P.J. O'Rourke's endorsement against it; but with Thomas Fleming's magisterial Illusion of Victory, I doubt Powell's book is neccessary . I am confused as to why two strong supporters of the president's most Wilsonian of crusades as O'Rourke and Reynolds are, would be partial to a work critical of Woodrow in the first place.

Deep Thoughts

Suzanne Fields shares her deep thoughts on Condoleezza Rice, and her political future:

Call it Condimania. Her fans call themselves "Condistas." A team of teens who will be barely old enough to vote in 2008 have already opened the campaign, distributing "Condi for president" buttons.

The Germans call her "coquettish"; the French admire her chic pointy shoes. When I stepped into a beauty salon in Madrid the other day, the hairdresser curled the coif in back, handed me a mirror, and told me proudly: "That's the Condi flip."

It's not easy to further trivialize American politics, but Fields succeeds. She makes Dick Morris' ravings on the the same issue seem profound.

Historically Correct

I haven't read the Politically Incorrect Guide To American History beyond flipping through it in a bookstore. I imagine that if I read it I would find some areas of disagreement with the author, Thomas Woods; but the book's growing ranks of enemies make it sound interesting. The latest attack is by David Greenberg and appears in Slate.

But Woods' book is incorrect in more than just its politics. Take, for example, Page One, where Woods opens with what he calls the "first basic fact": "The colonists were not paragons of 'diversity.' " I don't know any historians who teach that the colonists were "paragons of 'diversity' "—whatever that phrase, scare quotes and all, is supposed to mean. Most students of early America, however, would agree that Woods' elaboration of his claim is far from accurate. The colonists, Woods continues, "came from one part of Europe. They spoke a common language. They worshiped the same God." He then briefly describes the major waves of British immigration that came to American shores in the 17^th and 18^th centuries, as laid out in David Hackett Fischer's Albion's Seed (though Woods does not cite Fischer).
It doesn't take a Ph.D. to see why Woods' statement is false. Obviously, one large segment of Colonial Americans didn't come from England and didn't, at least initially, share their religion or language: the millions of Africans shipped to the colonies as slaves. But then, slavery doesn't appear in Woods' account until his discussion of the pre-Civil War era, by which time the peculiar institution was 200 years old.

Greenberg, a history professor, is saying that African slaves were "colonists" as well. Africans were captured, sold into slavery, and brought to the colonies against their will. After the Civil War it took a constitutional amendment to grant citizenship to ex-slaves. Would Thomas Jefferson, who said; "nothing is more certainly written in the book of fate than that these [black] people are to be free. Nor is it less certain that the two races, equally free, cannot live in the same government," have described a slave from Africa as a fellow colonist?
From their, Greenberg's article is a mess. He notes the criticisms from some neocons, denounces some of Woods' theories without bothering to justify his positions. He makes some general comments about conservative anti-intellectualism that are not totally unjustified, but it is clear that he didn't do his homework. If he can't tell the difference between Sean Hannity and Pat Buchanan, whom he mentions as proponents of Woods' book; then he his a fool. It is more likely that he did not bother to find out first hand like he didn't bother to actually refute his claims about the Politically Incorrect Guide.

Safe For Democracy

I see that Liberty is putting more of their archive on the web, including my review of The Illusion Of Victory, by Thomas Fleming. Fleming's Book is about a previous war that the US won. It should be required reading for the democracy brigades.

Dull Blade

Maureen Dowd has wasted yet another column writing about her feelings about being criticized for her writing: "Guys don't appreciate being lectured by a woman . . . the metaphors used to describe my column play into the castration theme: my scalpel, my cutting barbs, razor-sharp hatchet, Clinton-skewering and Bush-whacking. 'Does she,' The L.A. Times's Patt Morrison wondered, 'write on a computer or a Ronco Slicer and Dicer?'"
I suppose some people might think that Dowd is "cutting" and "razor-sharp," I can't see why. I find her to be one of the weakest columnists working today. I can't remember anything that she has written that is, well, memorable. I find a couple of her colleagues at the Times, Paul Krugman and Nicholas Kristof, to be worth reading; if often full of it. They, at least have something to say.

Blame the Eco-Whackos

Maybe Neal Boortz can show everybody how stupid the "eco-whackos" are by building himself a house across from a refinery. . .

Ready. Set. ZZZ.

Every neocon in the world, no matter how boring or lame will eventually get a syndicated column. Case-in-point: National Review Online's Kathryn Jean Lopez will be starting hers next week. The NEA could have found someone with something, anything to say, such as Scott Richert, or Bill Kauffman or Steve Sailer. Instead, K-Lo will join the daily Republican echo chamber at Townhall.
I can't wait

Boo Hoo

Is it unraveling already? The American Spectator's George Neumayr complains that the Republicans are wimping out on tax cuts and Social Security reform. I want my taxes cut as much as the next guy, but the Republicans are the party of Big Government, no Monstrously Large Government. You would think that would be obvious by now, but not this howler from Neumayr:

Didn't rudimentary Reaganomics teach them that tax cuts are not a source of deficits but a solution to them -- a spur to reducing the federal government's size and a stimulus to the economy that makes Americans less dependent on the federal government? Tax cuts at once boost the economy (and can actually increase government tax revenues) while sending a signal to Washington that it must back away from the trough. Cut taxes and fiscal discipline may follow; suspend tax cuts and continued bloated government spending is guaranteed.

What planet does he live on? The budget was balanced after repeated tax increases in the 80s & 90s; along with a divided government with a Democratic president. President Hilary Clinton is more likely to cut spending and balance the budget than President Bush.

Film Comment

I have been following a debate at LIBERTAS, a "forum for conservative thought on film" about the film, American Beauty. One poster, Dave Ross thinks that it is the only film from the last quarter century to deserve its best picture Oscar. Jason, apparently co-editor of the site, disagrees:

The stock conservative villain (Chris Cooper) is a racist military guy who beats his wife, forces his son to watch Ronald Reagan movies, collects Nazi china, and is secretly gay(!). The hero (Kevin Spacey) is a pot-smoking, shiftless, narcissistic liberal who lusts after his daughter’s teenage friends. And Annette Bening - a fine actress, who is otherwise wasted in this role - plays a shrieking, conformist, uptight harridan … who is supposed to be an indictment of suburban womanhood. Instead she comes across as no-one so much as Hillary Clinton. The film seems to be a strange allegory for the Clinton years, with Kevin Spacey as Clinton, Annette Bening as Hillary, Mena Suvari as Monica Lewinsky, and the villain a composite Henry Hyde/George Bush/Ken Starr.

This silly rant sounds as if Jason didn't actually see the movie and is reading from some sort of rightwing, Hollywood-watchdog factsheet. Lester Burnham, Kevin Spacey's character only resembles Bill Clinton in the most superficial sense--his lust for a girl young enough to be his daughter. Other than that, Clinton is an ambitious schemer who lusts for power as much as women. Burnham on the other hand is devoid of ambition and ends up working at a fast food place. His other complaints are silly as well. While we can assume that the gay-psycho-Marine character is politically conservative, I don't see how Burnam is especially liberal. Here he provides further a further brief against American Beauty:

which gratuitously defecates on Reagan, our military, etc. I don’t see why is this so hard to understand - or why I should care what the film says about Kevin Spacey’s acting abilities, which are nil, so far as I can tell. The man is an absolute cipher, a kind of ‘man without qualities’ to borrow a phrase from Musil.

Sam Mendes directed American Beauty, and I’ve been in the editorial suite of his next film. It’s pretty obvious that his new film Jarhead is going to be another screed against the ‘dehumanizing’ U.S. military (Jarhead is an account of the first Gulf War, starring Jamie Foxx and Chris Cooper). And I noticed Mr. Mendes smiling gleefully during the Oscars at Chris Rock’s repeated jabs at Bush - so what is there not to understand here?

His defacation comment is just wierd. Reagan's only appearance is via an old movie on TV that the Psycho Nazi-plate collector is not forcing his son to watch. Note also, his review of the yet unreleased film Jarhead. Jason doesn't let the reader in on what the Internet Movie Database does--that Jarhead will be based on the 2003 book of former Marine, Anthony Swofford. So if it portrays military life as 'dehumanizing,' it will be coming straight from the horses mouth.

Thinking of Smedley

Whenever I read about Marine veterans like this person:

The man was beside himself with fury. He accused me and the AFSC of being
shameful and that the AFSC wanted to see all of our soldiers in Iraq "tried for
war crimes." I just sat at the hospitality table trying to let the veteran blow
off some steam – I couldn’t answer his concerns at that point anyway – I felt
his accusations were for the representatives of the AFSC.
The very, very
angry man finally screamed one thing that I couldn’t ignore. He was practically
frothing at the mouth when he roared: "You people are all cowards. You wouldn’t
die for anything."
That’s when I had had just about enough of Mr. Marine. I
stood up to him and I said: "You are wrong about that, sir. I would have gladly
gone to Iraq instead of my son. I would have died in his place without
question."

I comfort myself by remembering Smedley Butler:

I have visited eighteen government hospitals for veterans. In them are a
total of about 50,000 destroyed men-men who were the pick of the nation eighteen
years ago. The very able chief surgeon at the government hospital at Milwaukee .
. . told me that mortality among veterans is three times as great as among those
who stayed home. Boys with a normal viewpoint were taken out of the fields and
offices and factories and classrooms and put into the ranks. There they were
remolded; they were made over; they were made to "about face"; to regard murder
as the order of the day. They were put shoulder to shoulder and, through mass
psychology, they were entirely changed . . . Then suddenly, we discharged them
and told them to make another "about face"! This time they had to do their own
readjusting, sans mass psychology, sans officers' aid and advice, sans
nation-wide propaganda. We didn't need them any more . . . Many, too many, of
these fine young boys are eventually destroyed, mentally, because they could not
make that final "about face."

More Tyrrell

I previously noted Emmitt Tyrell's lame column on Jon Stewart's America, describing it as the worst book of 2004 (which is impossible since Tyrrell also released a book last year). Now I see that Tyrrell has made that the cover story in the March issue of the American Spectator. Imagine paying the outrageous ($7.95 last time I checked) to get a month old reprint of a syndicated column.

Gotcha!

Sometimes bloggers go to great lengths to catch big media people in falsehoods and errors. Matthew Hoy, for example thinks he has the goods on Paul Krugman:

"Nearly two months ago, in what appears now to be a fit of pique, New York Times columnist Paul Krugman made a promise to his readers.

In the next few weeks, I'll explain why privatization will fatally undermine
Social Security, and suggest steps to strengthen the program.

Well, as the graphic indicates, Krugman has suggested no real "steps to strengthen the program" in any subsequent column. Counting today's column, Krugman has written 15 pieces in the Times, but not one has contained the promised plan."

So Krugman, in a very general way, pledge to "suggest steps to strengthen" Social Security at some point in "the next few weeks." So what's the big deal? Krugman is still working on the Bush plan it would seem. Hoy should work to find genuine examples of dishonesty and incompetence among big media figures instead of trying to whip up a phony controversy. The professor disagrees, however.

Recruiters Lie?

Antiwar.com's Brandon Snider links to a cautionary tale about joining the Army. As would be soldier, Tyler Gilbert found out, signing a contract with the government is signing away your life:

. . . The Army recruiter seemed very nice at first. I mentioned bad stories I had heard, and he told me I could get money for college and I could support my family . . . He was like a stereotypical used car salesperson. Then he started to call constantly, and if I didn't call right back, he'd leave obnoxious messages. He called five to six times a day. He started to call a friend of mine to try to find me, too . . . I thought, "maybe I don't want to do this." Then I figured, "well, I could just try it." They never told me how difficult it was to get out.

. . . They asked me if I had seen a psychologist. I started to write down yes. The recruiter ripped up the paper in front of me and my wife and told me not to say that on the form.

They tried to get me to sign up for infantry. I said, "no." The recruiter made it seem like he had to call the Pentagon and that he pulled a lot of strings to get me assigned to tank driving. Once I got to Basic, I found out that they can still assign you to anything they want. . .

I can identify with his story somewhat, because I took a similar plunge back in the eighties. After being lied to (although on more trivial matters than Gilbert) and instructed to lie by recruiters, I signed up. Somehow, I made it through the Marine Corps infamously tough recuit training at Parris Island, South Carolina. Gilbert's experience is in some ways harsher than mine was; probably because the country is at war.
A key difference is the current difficulty in getting out of training that Gilbert describes. I remember several people leaving boot camp because they continually screwed up, or were hurt. One recruit stands out in my mind who never made past the first few days in the receiving barracks. I can still picture him, standing at attention at the front of the classroom, in tears, talking to his mother on the phone.
That a recruiter was intent on getting Gilbert, a 29 year old with dubious knees to join the infantry indicates that the Army is at very least, concerned about meeting recruiting goals. That they keep people in with injuries and the other serious problems that Gilbert describes indicates that they are desparate.
I joined the Marine Reserve in part because I was a rightwing, perhaps even neoconservative, supporter of an interventionist foreign policy. It felt wrong to just stay in college and let others carry the burden. If I were in that position today, I would probably learn to live with the hypocrisy.

Looking for bias

It must be getting tough for Brent Bozell and his chronies to justify their phony-baloney jobs. The first two items in Monday's "CyberAlert" stretch the concept of media watchdog to the limit. The Headline for the first states, "Oscar Audience Applauds Louder for Fareheit 9-11 Than The Passion." Wow. Is the Oscars audience a media source? Will we soon see "CBS Evening News with the Audience from the Oscars?"
The second "expose" is of an Andy Rooney commentary. Rooney, "Hail[ed] Liberal Presidents, Dismiss[ed] Reagan as a Divider." I don't defend Rooney's views. Once he has said, that Woodrow Wilson is great, "because of his idea for the League of Nations"; I have to conclude that Rooney is such a fool that I wouldn't trust him to tell me the time of day. But his slot on Sixty Minute is commentary. It is supposed to be biased.

Invite the world to help us invade . . .

Max Boot(registration), who urged the U.S. to "Take up the White Man's Burden," in his Savage Wars of Peace, now wants to have the rest of the world share that burden (via Steve Sailer):

The military would do well today to open its ranks not only to legal immigrants but also to illegal ones and, as important, to untold numbers of young men and women who are not here now but would like to come. No doubt many would be willing to serve for some set period in return for one of the world's most precious commodities — U.S. citizenship. Open up recruiting stations from Budapest to Bangkok, Cape Town to Cairo, Montreal to Mexico City. Some might deride those who sign up as mercenaries, but these troops would have significantly different motives than the usual soldier of fortune.

Boot is almost a parody of neoconservatism, whose two point plank was characterized by Sailer as, "invade the world, invite the world." Boot wants to invite the world to help us invade it, then give our loyal Gunga Dins citizenship. I won't bother to argue against Boot here. Anyone who thinks that whe should make up for recruiting shortfalls by trading citizenship for military service in Budapest and Cairo and Montreal(!) is beyond hope. The Times should drop Boot's column and just run a Rudyard Kipling poem in his place every week. It would be much more entertaining:

I sha'n't forgit the night
When I dropped be'ind the fight
With a bullet where my belt-plate should 'a' been.
I was chokin' mad with thirst,
An' the man that spied me first
Was our good old grinnin', gruntin' Gunga Din.
'E lifted up my 'ead,
An' he plugged me where I bled, An' 'e guv me 'arf-a-pint o' water green.
It was crawlin' and it stunk,
But of all the drinks I've drunk,
I'm gratefullest to one from Gunga Din.
It was "Din! Din! Din!
"'Ere's a beggar with a bullet through 'is spleen"
"'E's chawin' up the ground,
"An' 'e's kickin' all around:
"For Gawd's sake git the water, Gunga Din!

'E carried me away
To where a dooli lay,
An' a bullet come an' drilled the beggar clean.
'E put me safe inside,
An' just before 'e died,
"I 'ope you liked your drink" sez Gunga Din.
So I'll meet 'im later on
At the place where 'e is gone
Where it's always double drill and no canteen.
'E'll be squattin' on the coals
Givin' drink to poor damned souls,
An' I'll get a swig in hell from Gunga Din!
Yes, Din! Din! Din!
You Lazarushian-leather Gunga Din!
Though I've belted you and flayed you,
By the livin' Gawd that made you,
You're a better man than I am, Gunga Din!

More Condi

John Tabin pours a little cold water on the Draft Condi movement that has been touted by columnist, nitwit, Dick Morris. Tabin notes that this isn't the first time that Republicans have mooned over an idealized pontential black candidate:

This isn't the first time Republicans have gotten starry-eyed about an idealized
black candidate; there was buzz about a potential Colin Powell candidacy in the
fall of 1995. Hilariously, William Kristol was a booster a Powell, years before
Powell became undoubtedly Kristol's least favorite cabinet member.

Zero Tolerance

As if I needed further evidence that evidence that people in this country are childish on the subject of drugs, I see this story, via Hit & Run:

Sikeston, Missouri - Police and school leaders in Sikeston say the case
involving a 6-year-old girl and a bag of dirt needs to be taken
seriously.
"If she would have been 14, we would have been arrested her and
taken her to jail.” Sgt. Shirley Porter said.
It's a story you saw only on
Heartland News. One that generated an incredible response from you. More than a
1,000 of you logged onto our web site to voice your opinion on the Sikeston
first grade student disciplined for giving a bag of dirt and grass to a
classmate.
Police and school leaders felt it looked like a bag of marijuana.
The girl's mother tells Heartland News that her child did not realize the
difference between a bag of weed and the illegal kind. But, passing even a fake
drug is illegal and had the child been older, she could have been arrested.

Yes people do need to take it seriously when the police and school officials are so terrified of pot that they make a big deal out of a bag of dirt. At least they didn't call in a SWAT team.

Bush was right?

Michael Totten, quoting a few weak-minded liberals, suggests that people were wrong to oppose invading Iraq, and that Bush was right. Mark Brown, of the Chicago Sun-Times, said a couple of weeks ago, "After watching Sunday's election in Iraq and seeing the first clear sign that freedom really may mean something to the Iraqi people, you have to be asking yourself: What if it turns out Bush was right, and we were wrong?" Totten quotes Jeff Simmermon ,who was moved by stories Iraqis who were voting in the U.S. "You may think that you have felt dumb before, but let me tell you something: until you have stood in front of a man who knows real pain and told him that you are against your country's alleviation of his country's state-sponsored murderous suffering, you have not felt truly, deeply, like a total f*cking moron." He also quotes an Iraqi saying, "almost all Iraqis in America will vote Republican for the rest of their lives."
I don't know about Brown or Simmermon, but I didn't oppose the invading Iraq becuase I didn't think that Saddam was bad, or because I oppose self-government in the Middle East. I opposed it because Saddam wasn't a threat to the U.S. (even if he had turned out to have a few chemical weapons). Also, I am convinced that invading a country that didn't threaten us, while tying down and over-extending the military, doesn't enhance national security.
As to whether "Bush was right;" that argument doesn't hold water for anyone with access to google. I remember the fear mongering from the Bush administration from the fall of 2002, including talk about "aluminum tubes." Who can forget: "we don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud"? I also remember something called the "Axis of Evil." We invaded the weakest member even as the other two are well on their way to aquiring nuclear weapons.
Also, I am more impressed by Iraqis who plan to return to their country instead of staying here and voting Republican.

The People vs. the Powerful

Ryan Sager is upset that rank-and-file conservatives at the Conservative Political Action Conference are against an open-borders policy. "On the immigration panel mentioned above, Phyllis Schlafly took the hard line against immigration. 'The idea of giving any job to any willing worker is absolutely unacceptable,' Schlafly said. American workers won't and shouldn't work for the wages Mexicans and other Latin American immigrants are willing to accept, she said, and companies should be forced to pay them more. All of this met with wild applause from the audience."
I'm glad to know that the rank-in-file opposes the open-floodgates border policy of a president that they otherwise seem to worship uncritically. The context of Sager's remarks is a column arguing that social conservatives might alienate more libertarian Republicans enough to harm the party. He may or may not be right, I don't really care. The Republican party is destructive of both conservative and libertarian values these days. But I don't think that the immigration concerns of Schlafly and some movement conservatives, which seem to shared by the majority of Americans, as opposed to corporate and political elites, are going to harm the party.

Married in Springfield

Tim Graham of the Media Research Center whines about the gay marriage episod of The Simpsons, even though he didn't see it, on NRO's The Corner:

It sounds to me from reading press accounts that it would please GLAAD more than I thought, what with Marge greeting her lesbian sister with the lame line that just cause you're lesbian "doesn't make you less of a human bein'." Hollywood just always starts from the gay-left assumption that disapproval of sin equals thinking sinners are sub-human. That claim in itself matches "The Simpsons" -- it's a snarky cartoon of Christianity.

If this dork had bothered to see the program he would have discovered that Marge was very vocally pro gay marriage in the abstract, but was upset when it was her sister about to be married. It was hardly some gay rights soapbox. One also fights the tempation to scream, "It's a snarky cartoon period, idiot!". He helpfully quotes his "boss," Brent Bozell III saying, "At a time when the public mood is overwhelmingly against gay marriage, any show that promotes gay marriage is deliberately bucking the public mood." The episode didn't come close to "promoting" gay marriage and it is no crime to buck the public mood, whatever that means.

After a few years off, the gender wars seem to be heating up again. Harvard president, Lawrence Summers, under the impression that he has freedom of speech, suggested in a private talk that possibly innate ability and family pressures keep women from advancing in the sciences in greater numbers.
On a related front, Susan Estrich is upset because women aren't appearing on the Los Angeles Times editorial page in sufficient numbers. Estrich has guaranteed that she is the last woman on earth who will ever be in the Times due to a series of snotty emails that have been printed in the new Washington Examiner. I am not sure what qualifies her to be so arrogant and condescending towards someone she is attempting to influence. She lectures one of the more distinguished journalists of his generation that, "NO one tried harder to educate you about Los Angeles, introduce you to key players in the city, bring to your attention, quietly, the issues of gender inequality than I did," and then delivers the key remark: "People are beginning to think that your illness may have affected your brain, your judgment, and your ability to do this job."
Kinsley has Parkinson's Disease. I don't know how that effects his mind, but he will have more on the ball ten minutes after he dies than Estrich ever had. In a previously published set of exchanges, Estrich complained about a column that the Times ran by Charlotte Allen arguing that there are no female public intellectuals to follow in the footsteps of the late Susan Sontag:

There are female intellectuals with stellar credentials and bestselling books: Germaine Greer, Gloria Steinem, Barbara Ehrenreich, Naomi Wolf, Susan Faludi, Deborah Tannen, Natalie Angier. But there's a big difference between these women and their forebears. They are all professional feminists. They don't simply espouse feminism; they write about little else.

Perhaps Estrich is upset because she wasn't mentioned by Allen. Whatever her reasons, she has set the cause of women at the LA Times back probably twenty years.
Into the fray comes Maureen Dowd, the New York Time's answer to Chatty Cathy. Dowd accuses Summers of confusing the the "roles society assigns to women with what women might really want," by suggesting that women might not want to be scientists for 80 hours a week instead of being mothers. But perhaps she has it backwards. It's just possible that women don't want what middle-aged feminists want them to want. "Society" has been leaning on girls to be career-oriented for a while now. Remember "take our daughters to work day?" Dowd is also upset about revelations of how jocks treat women, refering to them as "road beef" and the like in Jose Canseco's book, Juiced. Her complaints about loutish behavior are fair, but she naively states that, "at the dawn of feminism, there was an assumption that women would not be as severely judged on their looks in ensuing years . . . It's just the opposite. Looks matter more than ever, with more and more women spending fortunes turning themselves into generic, plastic versions of what they think men want . . ."
She demonstrates perfectly the problem with feminism. They set out forty years ago to abolish human nature, and they failed. Women have completed the long march through the professions into medicine, law and the academy; but men still have most of the power. And that will almost certainly be the case in fifty or a hundred years from now.

Raise taxes?

Will President Bush agree to raising the income level that the Social Security payroll tax is applied to, thus raising taxes? Some conservatives are concerned at the possibility. They shouldn't worry. I predict that the president will stick to the Republican policy of running up a huge debt and leave it for a less-dishonest president to deal with.

Realistic Republicans

Texas Senator John Cornyn says it is "unrealistic to assume that the 10 million illegal aliens in the United States can be deported and that the only alternative is to create a temporary worker program that has them come forward on their own. " This hopeless notion that we can and should defend the border is distinguishable from the hard-headed realism behind Republican notions of planting democracy in Iraq and Afghanistan. Don't be expecting change, any time soon, from the Republican party's policy of "Invade-the-world, invite-the-world."

All hail the maximum leader!

The Freepers indulge in their daily worship service. What amazes is the way they think he is not just a great president, but practically perfect in every way, as this comment attests:

Remember that one-year memorial ceremony in NYC for the victims of 9/11, how absolutely maudlin it was, till George and Laura came down the ramp, began meeting with the families, and within several minutes, the heaviness was dispelled, rocketed out of there, replaced with the joy and comfort of the Lord expressed through these two? I'll never forget it. It didn't take long and the families were smiling, getting the Bush's autographs, slapping one another on the back, even in the midst of tears.

Everybody didn't play nice. Scrolling through, you notice replies to a comment that has been removed by the FreeRepublic's ever present thought police.

Winners & Losers

Pat Buchanan aims his advice at the Democrats, but Republicans might want to pay heed as well:

Why should Democrats drop the despondency and start to think? First, because Bush won a second term by nothing like the 49-state landslides of Nixon or Reagan – Bush got 31 states. And though he had led America to victory in two wars, a turnaround of 60,000 votes in Ohio would have made him the first president ever rejected in wartime, and he would have lost to an uncharismatic senator from Massachusetts with a voting record to the left of Teddy Kennedy's.

As Buchanan notes, Bush barely clung to power last year in victory that looks flacid compared to Republican triumphs in 1972 and 1984. If John Kerry had been a plausible NASCAR fan, he might have won.

Program Note

Jonah Goldberg has his panties in a bunch (excuse the lapse into GoldbergSpeak) because Tim Russert chose to have Pat Buchanan on Meet the Press with Natan Sharansky:

But what, exactly, was Russert's thinking? President Bush faces significant political opposition from the Democratic Party and its leftwing base -- not from the Buchanan wing of the Buchanan Party. Ted Kennedy or Michael Moore would be more accurate and representative of political reality. Is it that it's unseemly to have Democrats shown-up for their lack of democratic idealism? Or did Democrats simply refuse to come on? Or, was Russert more attracted to the box-office appeal of Sharansky and Buchanan trading punches?

I assume that the last reason Goldberg offered is the most likely. I didn't see the show, and I generally avoid televised punditry these days; but Buchanan is one of the few pundits occasionally worth watching. In spite of Goldberg, the opposition to the Iraq War is broader than the Michael Moore left. Even his National Review colleage, John Derbyshire is now calling for a pullout and denouncing the Wilsonian claptrap that passes for conservatism these days.

UnfreeRepublic

VDare has an article about thought control at FreeRepublic. This time, the issue is oppostition to the presidents immigration policies:

Members and readers of Free Republic would be surprised to know that many members of their community have fallen silent on the discussions about illegal immigration lately because free speech is an illusion on FreeRepublic.com. They are silent because they have been banned from the Web site without warning, cause, or explanation in most cases. For weeks the moderators have been suspending and banning new members that chimed in quickly on the immigration debates.

In spite of its name, FreeRepublic is devoted to slavish worship of the president and Ann Coulter. I was banned a couple of years ago. I never learned exactly why, but I think it is because I posted an article by Steve Sailer. In defense of the Freeper people, I knew or at least suspected that it was a thoughtcrime in their view and posted it anyway. To get the essence of FreeRepublic, check out their daily dose of presidential pictures with worshipful captions and comments.

Details

Stupid Justin Raimondo wants to know who won the Iraq elections. Doesn't he know that the only thing that matters is that they took place?

Reform is dead

The President's plan for Social Security reform is dead. How do I know? Because the worst, lamest, dumbest pundit in America says it will succeed.

But They Had an Election!

Pat Buchanan puts last week's Iraq election in context:

When kings, autocrats or despots are deposed and the people rejoice, it has not always meant democracy is assured. In modern history, people's revolutions have produced tyrannies far more monstrous than the ones they have pulled down.

But they had an election!

In 1917, progressives hailed the revolution in Russia that deposed the czar, for it cleansed the Allied cause of the taint of despotism. But that November, Bolsheviks swept Kerensky aside, seized power and began a 70-year reign of terror. In 1918, the detested Kaiser Wilhelm abdicated. The civilized world rejoiced. Fifteen years later, Hitler took power.

But they had an election!

The Stalinist regimes of Eastern Europe were all imposed from above on Christian peoples who belonged to the West and had been moving toward democracy. The communist nations of Europe were kidnapped children who never forgot who they were or where they came from.

But they had an election!

In the Arab Middle East, there is no memory of democracy. There is an unbroken history of despotism and domination – by Ottoman Turks, then by Western imperial powers. To understand what kind of nations liberated Middle East peoples will construct, consider the most powerful currents running in the region.

But they had an election!

Apples, Oranges

Everybody needs to get it straight. The president never said that Saddam's Iraq was an "immenent threat." He only said we had to go to war right away, or it would be too late:

If this threat is permitted to fully and suddenly emerge, all actions, all words, and all recriminations would come too late. Trusting in the sanity and restraint of Saddam Hussein is not a strategy, and it is not an option.

Which is completely different.

The Tyrrellian Crackup

I just assumed that R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr. was in a retirement home somewhere after the American Spectator imploded a few years ago. Yet this Mencken wannabe is still around, giving out his annual J. Gordon Coogler award for the worst book of the year. This year he award's Jon Stewart's America:

Stewart has with a small team of gag writers written America: A Citizen's Guide to Democracy. It is a satire, a pasquinade, a hoot at the American polity, a bemanuring of the High and Mighty. Stewart is extremely learned, knowing every nook and cranny of pop culture and most of the undergraduate liberal arts curriculum of Brown University.

This "bemanuring" let's call it, of the web is supposed to be funny. Yet the only parts of Tyrrell's pompous rant that are even remotely funny are the ones that quoted from Stewart's book.

The Forgetting

Hugh Hewitt:

Quick: What do you recall of Bill Clinton's eight SOTUs? He held up a
little card once, and suggested that it was the future of health
care.

And they went long. Very long.

He's right, but then I've already forgot what Bush said last night.

Biases

I didn't watch the State of the Union speech last night. I prefer the liberal media filter. I then turn to NRO's the Corner for the gossipy details.

Rock, Hard Place

Pat Buchanan spells out the U.S. dilemma in Iraq. Our presence is both the cause of the terrorist insurgency, and the only thing keeping it from prevailing at the present time.

Cold Hard Truth

John Derbyshire complains about a Levitra commercial coming on during prime time while one of his children was in the room. The cultural conservative in me is sympathetic except for the fact that he was watching the political pornography of The O'Rielly Factor on Fox News which is less suitable for children, or any sentient creature for that matter, than an attractive woman "winking, simpering and sighing, telling us what a great erection her man is getting nowadays, thanks to Levitra."