The January/February issue of The American Conservative will soon be out with my review of Manufacturing Hysteria. It is appropriate that it come out near the Martin Luther King holiday as the FBI' COINTELPRO harassment of King was one of my topics. I wrote:
The most famous target of Hoover and the FBI was Martin Luther King. The investigation of King was based the assumption that some of his associates were Communists, but the FBI’s level of attention suggests a more personal motivation. Hoover intervened to keep Marquette University from granting King an honorary degree and was especially agitated at King’s winning a Nobel Peace Prize. The bureau’s most egregious abuse of power in this case was a crude attempt to wreck King’s marriage by sending him illegally recorded tapes of his marital in"infidelities, accompanied by a crudely forged letter encouraging him to commit suicide before his “filthy, abnormal fraudulent self is bared to the nation.”
Writing in the Guardian, Glenn Greenwald discusses King's opposition to militarism and the Vietnam war, which should be highlighted along with his views on racism, poverty and civil rights:
King argued for the centrality of his anti-militarism advocacy most
eloquently on April 4, 1967, at Riverside Church in New York City -
exactly one year before the day he was murdered. That extraordinary speech
was devoted to answering his critics who had been complaining that his
anti-war activism was distracting from his civil rights work ("Peace and
civil rights don't mix, they say. Aren't you hurting the cause of your
people, they ask?"). King, citing seven independent reasons, was adamant
that ending US militarism and imperialism was not merely a moral
imperative in its own right, but a prerequisite to achieving any
meaningful reforms in American domestic life.
Somehow Glenn Reynolds and Michael Barone talk about polling and the election for more than thirteen minutes and never get around to discussing Nate Silver:
In the near term, at least, Barack Obama is a solid favorite to win the 2012 election. Since the economy is weak and the president is a KENYANSOCIALISTCHICAGOALINSKYITEMARXIST, his rightwing critics are straining for reasons that he is in the lead.
John Hindraker (via Memeorandum) thinks he has found it, and apparently, the fact that Republicans brought about the disaster in the first place and people don't trust them has nothing to do with it:
I am afraid the answer may be that the country is closer to the point of
no return than most of us believed. With over 100 million Americans
receiving federal welfare benefits, millions more going on Social
Security disability, and many millions on top of that living on
entitlement programs–not to mention enormous numbers of public
employees–we may have gotten to the point where the government economy
is more important, in the short term, than the real economy.
I would give his argument more credence if he defined his terms and used hard data—how much "over 100 million" and what does he mean by "welfare"? The term "public employee" is reasonably precise, but as Paul Krugman notes, government payrolls have shrunk under Obama.
William Jacobson sees another cause—a Liberal Media Conspiracy to demoralize Republicans and conservatives:
It’s November 7. Barack Obama has won. The Republican presidential
strategy has failed. The media is jubilant. The right-blogosphere is
going through a serious introspection. The left-blogosphere is dancing
on our graves and shoving it down our throats. Four years of fighting
the Obama agenda was for nothing.
Oh, I’m sorry. Let me correct that. It’s September 9, not November 7. The rest of the paragraph above can remain as originally written.
The most absurd part is Jacobson's assumption that right-blogosphere is capable of "serious introspection."
I don't know how the election will come out, but I'm becoming more confident that Obama will prevail and I'm certain that far from introspection, the rightwing will become more detached from reality and blame the Liberal Media, or Hollywood or fraud: anything but their own failings.
I read Michael Brendan Dougherty's article on Obama's Right Wing with interest. I would qualify as a member of that category except for the fact that I didn't vote for Obama in 2008 and I doubt I qualify as a conservative anymore.
I came close to voting for Obama in 2008 (I opted for Nader) and I favored his victory. This fall, I plan to vote for the President, which will be my first presidential vote for a Democrat and my first for a major party candidate since Reagan in 1984. I have little doubt that I will regret my vote, assuming that he wins, like I did after voting for Reagan.
The Obamacons Dougherty interviewed cite a variety of reasons for their apostasy but I was disappointed that none of them discussed the state of the broader conservative movement. I can think of many terms to describe the right-wing in the age of Obama, but the ones that spring to mind are "repulsive" and perhaps "insane." This applies to the leadership of the Republican party at the top, down to the creeps who at Weasel Zippers who think that Michelle Obama is some sort of fat cow.
Republicans amply demonstrated that they are terrible at governing between 2001 and 2008, and have attempted to make the country ungovernable in the Obama years. Since Mitt Romney seems to have no fixed beliefs other than that the rich are better than you and I, it's difficult to predict how he will govern. I suspect that Romney will prattle about abortion, etc. just enough to placate the rubes and will appoint the most conservative judges confirmable; but his primary concern will be the care and feeding of corporations. The only upside of a Romney victory will be that Republicans will stop actively trying to destroy the country.
The cultish nature of modern conservatism is obvious. Dan Riehl's response (via Memeorandum) to NRO's call for Willard to release more tax returns is simply example # 1,387,176 or so. For Riehl, National Review's editorial isn't simply a tactical error, but a betrayal:
Next time you opt to stab a GOP candidate in the back, how about having the balls to put your name on it? I don't think that's too much to ask.
I really, really want to play nice with everyone on our side, but when I see this high minded BS from people who've never even run for anything, it smokes my butt. . .And don't give me this, well, we can disagree BS, either.
You aren't even on any team you're a got damned cheerleader on the sidelines and right now you look silly in that frilly skirt you're wearing. So STFU if you don't have anything good to say, or just go the hell away. It isn't like anyone would miss most of NRO if it did, frankly. (emphasis added)
Get it NRO?—Mitt is now Leader of the Cause and the Cause must be served.
I don't normally think of Jim Antle or Robert Stacy McCain as being naive, but I can't otherwise understand their praise for Mitt Romney's non-pandering before the NAACP. Antle wrote that, "Romney isn't exactly known for his willingness to communicate
unpopular truths. He deserves credit for doing so here."
That's only true if you assume that the people in the room with Romney were his intended audience. I suspect that the NAACP crowd were simply props and Willard was pandering to the Republican base. And seeing some of the reactions; such as the comment from Skippy on Antle's post that "anyone belonging to the NAACP is a racist, or Rush Limbaugh's (via Memeorandum) idiotic ravings, it would appear that his pandering worked.
UPDATE: Antle replies.
The USA Today reports that the President plans to host an Independence Day barbecue for military families. Admittedly, it is not a particularly exciting story, but Glenn Reynolds is telling Instapundit readers that the president plans to celebrate the 4th " with a fundraiser in Paris."
Thelink goes to a Big Government story with a headline reading "Obama Campaign Celebrates Independence Day . . . With Fundraisers in Paris."(emphasis added)Big Government links to an article in the Hollywood Reporter, that has the real story:
Meanwhile, the Continental branch of the Obama fundraising effort will
kick off next week in Paris with an Independence Day reception at the
Rosenbloom Collection on the chic Rue du Chevaleret. Organizers Forrest Alogna, Pamela Boulet,Zachary James Miller, Valerie Picard, Joe Smallhoover and Curtis Young will host an early-evening event whose ticket prices range from $250 to $1,500.
I searched several of those names and I don't think they should be confused with the "Obama campaign," but at least the Big Government story doesn't claim the President himself is going to raise money in France on the Fourth of July, of all days. It is tempting to say that Glenn Reynolds is simply lying, but it is more complex than that. Reynolds, it would appear, needs to believe the worst about his enemies; so a story about some Americans in Paris fundraising for the President's reelection on the Fourth is streamlined into a factoid about how Obama is evil. Reynolds—it would seem— has internalized the wisdom of George Costanza:
UPDATE-- Costanza, I mean Reynolds makes a rare clarification: " Let me be clear: It’s the Obama Campaign. Obama himself won’t be in Paris."
The above video features NRA executive Veep Wayne LaPierre from 2011 expounding a conspiracy theory about how the Obama administration plans to implement gun control in his second administration: "get
re-elected, and with no
other re-elections to worry about, get busy dismantling and destroying our
firearms freedom." This sort of thinking is totally nuts but it explains the rightwing obsession with the Fast and Furious operation that was supposedly part of a nefarious Obama plan to—in David Limbaugh's words—"manufacture 'evidence' for tightening gun control legislation."
I reviewed the Steve Sailer book, America's Half-Blood Prince (cobbled together from VDare columns) for Chronicles and debunked a similar argument:
Sailer suggests that Obama will save his true self for a second term. “In Obama, ambition and caution are yoked. Becoming president is not his ultimate objective. Becoming a two-term president is. . . . Nixon’s first administration was one of the most liberal in American history. There were hints at the beginning of his second term, before Watergate . . .that Nixon, . . . intended to move toward his innate conservatism. That analogy suggests that a second Obama administration might more truly reflect the real Obama.” This is dubious. If Obama has studied recent history he will have noticed that recent second presidential terms have been become mired in scandal.
Sailer is correct that Obama wants a second term—every president does; but if he wants accomplish anything, he needs to act while he has the votes in Congress and the support of the public.
Since the Democrats lost control of the House in the last election, even routine measures such as increasing the debt limit have become near impossible. The whole notion that Barack Obama plans to use a second term—currently somewhat in doubt—to enact some secret radical agenda known only to Wayne LaPierre and other delusional cretins is absurd.
The simplest, and most likely explanation for this poll result (via Memeorandum) is that it is bogus:
President Barack Obama is rapidly losing support among African-American voters in North Carolina, a new poll out today from the Democratic-leaning Public Policy Polling shows.
The poll finds that Mitt Romney would get 20 percent of the African-American vote if the election were held today, compared with 76 percent for Obama.
If I'm confident of anything in the coming election, it is that black people are going to vote overwhelmingly for Barack Obama. Of course, that won't stop people from reading into this outlier pole what they want to see. Maggie Gallagher thinks that it is about gay marriage. Glenn Reynolds who spent most of 2008(you know, when the economy collapsed) proclaiming "dude, where's my recession," thinks that it is about the economy. I think that it's bullshit.
I fairly yearned to ask him what this
something was, and what was the matter
with his face, but it did not seem quite the
right thing to do, and presently he began
mumbling, as much to himself as to me, a
long and broken discourse, from which I
picked out that he had mingled with a group
of lusty young farmers in the market-place,
asking for the latest intelligence, and that
while they were conversing in a wholly
amiable manner, one of them had suddenly
knocked him down and kicked him, and that
thereafter they had pursued him with curses
and loud threats half-way to the tavern.
This and much more he proclaimed between
mouthfuls, speaking with great rapidity and
in so much more marked a brogue than usual,
that I understood only a fraction of what he
said.
He professed entire innocence of offence
in the affair, and either could not or would
not tell what it was he had said to invite
the blow. I dare say he did in truth richly
provoke the violence he encountered, but at
the time I regarded him as a martyr, and
swelled with indignation every time I looked
at his nose.
I remained angry, indeed, long after he
himself had altogether recovered his equanim-
ity and whimsical good spirits. He waited
outside on the seat while X went in to pay
for the baiting of the horses, and it was as
well that he did, I fancy, because there were
half a dozen brawny farm-hands and villagers
standing about the bar, who were laughing
in a stormy way over the episode of the
" Copperhead Paddy " in the market.
Gradually the old blood-feud with the Brit-
isher became obscured by fresher antagonisms,
and there sprouted up a crop of new sons of
Belial who deserved to be hated more even
than had Hamilton and Marshall. With me
the two stages of indignation glided into
one another so impreceptibly that I can now
hardly distinguish between them. What I do
recall is that the farmer came in time to neg-
lect the hereditary enemy, England, and to
seem to have quite forgotten our own historic
foes to liberty, so enraged was he over the
modem Abolitionists. He told me about them
as we paced up the seed rows together in the
spring, as we drove homeward on the hay-load
in the cool of the summer evening, as we
shovelled out a path for the women to the
pumps in the farm-yard through December
snows. It took me a long time to even ap-
proximately grasp the wickedness of these
new men, who desired to establish negro
sovereignty in the Republic, and to compel
each white girl to marry a black man.
The fact that I had never seen any negro
" close to," and had indeed only caught pass-
ing glimpses of one or more of the colored
race on the streets of our nearest big town,
added, no doubt, to the mystified alarm with
which I contemplated these monstrous pro-
posals.
I would guess that the window of opportunity to accomplish anything in Afghanistan closed sometime in 2002, yet we are still there. Does every occupation have to turn into a quagmire?
Law professor, half-wit; William Jacobson is mad at people who publicly supported Barack Obama in 2008, and Amber Lee Ettinger in particular, she of the famed Obama Girl video:
From what I gather, Jacobson began blogging because he couldn't understand how anyone could oppose the political party that dragged the country into two foreign quagmire and brought about the worst financial collapse since the Great Drepression.
Citing an article stating that Ettinger won't be endorsing anybody this election cycle, Jacobson excretes, "no, you are not excused, fool" even though she didn't ask to be. What an idiot.
Longer Glenn Reynolds: I was against coal pollution until Obama was, now I am against him: "WAR ON COAL: New ad targets Lamar Alexander. Not sure what he’s thinking here."
The link is to this ad:
Reynolds adds, "Maybe there’s something I’m missing here, but it seems to me that Alexander should be emulating Bob Corker." That link is to a clip from Fox News and features Sen. Corker saying nothing about coal or mercury pollution but instead engaging in generic vitriol against Obama.
In case the real issue to Reynolds isn't clear enough, here he is again from a few days ago: "NOW WHY WOULD HE DO THAT? Lamar Alexander Siding With Obama On Coal?" Perhaps he breathes and eats.
While searching my name in recent weeks, I discovered that my blogging at The American Conservative has frequently annoyed people.
One Charles Patrick Adkins, for example, who took umbrage at my use of the term "rightwinger" in this post. Adkins ranted and raved about me:
Now, I have not the least clue who Clark Stooksbury is, nor do I
quite honestly give two flips really; but this quoted above, is why I
distance myself from the Paleoconservative right. Because they are in
bed with the liberal left. I mean, seriously? “Right-Wingers??!” that
term being used on “The American Conservative?!?” Does anyone else see a
problem with that, besides me?!?!
He produced some non sequitors:
I guess one can expect this from a magazine that is quite known for its Anti-Israel and Anti-Jewish Bias.
He begged:
I have been blogging full time since 2006. First as a "skeptical left of
center" and then as a right-libertarian. Needless to say, in the last 7
years my politics has changed greatly. I have been out of work all that
time. Yes, I do live with my parents. I have to. I am all they have. I
am an only child and they are in their mid-60's. . .
Another critic with a blog called His Vorpal Sword mentions my post titled Hanoi Jane Approximately without the benefit of a link and tarred me with a Scarlet "M" for misogyny. I discovered on his about page that the blogger, Hart Williams is a very distinguished, "published author, novelist, literary critic and screenwriter. . ." He again notes on the about page " imdb lists him as a screenwriter" and indeed it does. It turns out that Mr. Williams is the distinguished writer of such classics as Gandi and The English Patient. Oops, I meant that he wrote Hard to Swallow and Caught from Behind 3, among other classics. I haven't seen any of his pictures, but it was the misogyny watchdog's job to find ways to get Little Oral Annie on her knees and I'm sure he put a lot of thought into it.
Another mortal enemy resides at the blog The Other McCain. Stacy McCain wrote, in a comment on this post, "don’t get me started on Stooksbury, a guy who got his nose out of joint
over my panning of Crunchy Cons, identified me as an enemy on that
basis, and never got over it." I think he may have it backwards. It was McCain who was worked up over my criticism of Donkey Cons, which he co-wrote, in Chronicles. I dislike (and that's putting it nicely) McCain's politics, but I always assumed that we had a friendlier rivalry—I even semi-seriously suggested that him as a ghost for Sara Palin and McCain offered what appeared to be sincere thanks.
They must be terrified of Elizabeth Warren. After weeks of obsessing over her claim to be 1/32 Cherokee, The Boston Herald has opened up the latest front against her:
Elizabeth Warren, who has railed
against predatory banks and heartless foreclosures, took part in about a
dozen Oklahoma real estate deals that netted her and her family hefty
profits through maneuvers such as “flipping” properties, records show.
The article lists several instances of Warren buying and reselling property or loaning money to relatives without alleging any wrongdoing or providing much in the way of context. Since she just won the Democratic nomination with 96% of the vote and is within the margin of error (via Steve M.) against Scott Brown, the attacks don't seem to be working.
For some reason, the Herald's idiocy is worthy of a Memeorandum thread.
This tendentious George Will column (via Memeorandum) has its good points, but this is a dumb question: "Why, exactly, would it be less “divisive” for the court to uphold the
broadly disliked Obamacare 5 to 4 than to overturn it 5 to 4?"
The relatively easy answer that upholding by a 5 to 4 vote maintains the status quo and allows the political branches to decide the issue—if Obamacare is as unpopular as Wills believes it to be, then President Romney and a Republican Congress will have an opportunity to repeal it next year. My guess is that Wills is afraid the either Romney won't win, or even worse, he'll win but the Republicans will fail to repeal.
If, on the other hand, the Court overturns Obamacare, it will be injecting itself into a hotly contested election in an unseemly fashion.
(cobbled together from VDare columns) for 
: