Stimulus Socialism

We are now roughly three weeks into the Barack Obama presidency, and with the push for a radical socialist makeover in the Democratic stimulus package, the contours of this nation's partisan and ideological chasm are now on full display.

Let's first take stock of where things stand: Unemployment is pushing 8 percent, and the scope and speed of job losses compared to the 1990-1991 and 2001 recessions is said to be "unprecedented." Meanwhile, the latest public opinion data show Americans are "are more concerned about losing their jobs than at any point in more than a decade."

Given all of this, it'd be hard to argue against the need for a vigorous governmental response on the economy. The real question is what to do, and as the administration and Congress have shown throughout the debate on the stimulus package, leftist ideological fundamentalism has turned the focus away from economic recovery toward Democratic pork-barreling and interest group socialism.

The morning's lead editorial at the Wall Street Journal captures the administration's tremendous lost promise on economic leadership, "The Stimulus Tragedy":

Everyone agrees that some kind of fiscal stimulus might help the economy, and that running budget deficits is appropriate in a recession ... [but] Mr. Obama chose to let House Democrats write the bill, and they did what comes naturally: They cleaned out their intellectual cupboards and wrote a bill that is 90% social policy, and 10% economic policy ....

Some Democrats claim these transfer payments are stimulating because they go mainly to poor people, who immediately spend the money. Tax cuts for business or for incomes across the board won't work, they add, because those tax cuts go disproportionately to "the rich," who will save the money. But a saved $1 doesn't vanish from the economy, unless it is stuffed into a mattress. It enters the financial system, where it is lent to others; or it is invested in the stock market as capital for businesses; or it is invested in entirely new businesses, which are the real drivers of job creation and prosperity.

This is simple economics and common sense. Yet, the Democratic-left is so determined to use its power to satisfy every pent-up demand for social spending that reason be damned.

I looked around at some of the top radical blogs for a flavor of the demands for economic redistribution on the left.

Here's Firedoglake responding to opponents of the bill:

Fantastic. Not only is this a failure of basic humanity, it's a failure of economics as well. For all the Republicans' and conservative Democrats' wailing about all the "wasteful" and "un-stimulative" spending in the bill, none of them see any problem with the $300 billion in tax cuts, despite the fact that they're roughly one-fifth as effective as those food stamp increases that just got whacked.

These cuts to the stimulus aren't economics, they're conservative politics: "You don't want the government taking your hard-earned money and giving it to Those People, do you? It should be given to the corporations so they can create more jobs!" These wankers would rather let us spiral into another Depression than give kids and poor people even a fraction of the compassion they gave the pirates and clowns who got us into this mess.

Here's Obsidian Wings on potential cuts to porcine state social programs:

It honestly boggles my mind to see so much money taken out of this particular category. Again, these cuts would be palatable if there were some semblance of a policy rationale for doing so. But there’s none. Instead, the fate of state budgets everywhere must take a backseat to the desires of Senators Nelson and Collins to be perceived as very serious centrists. Forty billion dollars is a lot to pay to help protect two Senators’ ideological self-image. Perhaps the two Senators could write a sympathy card to laid-off state workers reminding them of how important abstract concepts like centrist budget hawkery are to the nation's well-being.

Now, check out Kathy at Liberty Street with a bit of authoritarian outrage:

With the Senate dithering and Majority Leader Reid not forcing the Rep “Do-Nothing” ublicans to actually filibuster, we really need to be more concerned with our government failing ... $800 billion is not a big enough stimulus plan, especially with 42% of it going to tax cuts. Maybe it is time to eliminate the Filibuster Rule (Sen Bill Frist threatened to do that a few years back) and just steam roll the obstructionists.

Actually, before last night's recissions the proposed legislation stood at $920 billion and counting. That's more money that the United States has spent in nearly six years of fighting the war in Iraq.

So all of this leftist outrage is quite revealing of partisan loyalties and ideological commitments. For the left, attacks on conservative budget policies and "deficits" are merely cudgels with which to trash the GOP for its alleged disregard for the "less fortunate" and to advance a socialist takeover of the state. Meanwhile, simple economics indicate that a careful combination of tax cuts and targeted spending for critical infrastructure would be best for stimulating the economy.

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Photo Credit: "LONG LINES: Applicants wait for interviews at a jobs fair in McLean, Va. The nation's unemployment rate hit 7.6%, new data showed. Treasury moved to revamp its bank-bailout plan as the Senate was poised to vote on Obama's economic-stimulus package" (Wall Street Journal).

Power-Dressing is Back!

These guys are not models. They are Michael Gardner and Bill Brewer, hiring partner and co-founder at Bickel & Brewer, the law firm featured in the Wall Street Journal's, "Inside a Bastion of Old-School Power Attire."

The return of old-school power dressing is something of a "duh" moment for Bill Brewer, co-founder and managing partner of the law firm, which has offices in Dallas and New York City. He never really got the appeal of khakis and rubber-soled Gucci loafers at the office. He prides himself on custom three-button suits with a center vent and shirts from Bruce Clark in New York. His voice tightens with disdain when he describes "those square-toed club shoes" that some young recruits wear to the office.

"I think people expect high-powered lawyers to look like high-powered lawyers," Mr. Brewer says. "Anything else is sending the wrong signal."

This is a great article.

I noted the other day that when I first started teaching at Long Beach City College I wore a coat and tie every day, and some days I wore a blue pin-striped suit. For various reasons I'm dressing much more casual now (mostly it's because I'm heavier, I need a new wardrobe, and my mood has been somewhat out of it), but when the time is right, I'm going to get all decked out again for lectures. There's just nothing that compares to feeling like a million bucks teaching in a crisp ensemble with a pair of spit-and-polish cap-toe oxfords (my dad wore Brooks Brothers and Cable Car suits when I was a kid, so there's some family history there).

In any case, Christina Binkley, the author of the article, also has an interesting blog post on Bickel & Brewer, and parents should be sharing this passage with their kids:

We’re not all litigators, but many of us in public or client-facing jobs communicate our professional roles through our clothes. Research once showed that Dan Rather’s evening newscast was deemed more trustworthy when he wore a sweater or sweater vest. I was dismayed several years ago when the orthopedic surgeon treating my son was wearing shorts under his white smock. He might have been being practical — dressing both for work and his after-work hike? — but I wondered how focused he was on his work that day.

In recent years, workplaces have transformed themselves to take employees’ lifestyles into consideration. Casual dress codes are comfy and it’s nice to have a sense of ease in our increasingly hectic, demanding world. I’m writing this in blue jeans and a black turtleneck. Still, it can be comforting, when hiring a lawyer, doctor, accountant and other professionals, to not be introduced to their lifestyle. Sometimes, we only want to see their game face.

Western Enablers of Palestinian Psychopathology

Sigmund, Carl and Alfred have an interesting read on the psychology of Western enabling of the hatred, racism, and bigotry of Palestinian psychopathology. Here's a snippet:

The West must return to embracing and standing for the values and freedoms that have lead to their unquestioned economic and societal success and the greatest level of human happiness in the history of the world. We must not compromise those values of reverence for life or liberty; nor must we cooperate with those who would enslave the human mind and limit the pursuit of happiness in this world.

If peace is ever to come to the Middle East, we must treat the real and underlying issue, the hate and bigotry that permeates the region and which distorts and cripples the humans who live there.

Social Conservatives Abandoning Republican Party?

Tony Perkins offers some provocative comments on the tenuous ties between the social conservative right and the Republican Party under new RNC Chairman Michael Steele:

There is not the strong connection to the Republican Party that there once was. I'm more representative of the younger generation and I don't have as strong allegiance to the Republican Party. And to the degree that they try to avoid the values issues and put them at the back of the bus, I don't have a lot of desire to mess around with that ...

Read the whole thing (via Memeorandum). I'm surprised at Perkins' generosity toward Barack Obama, who represents a presidential beachhead for the left's war on traditionalism in this country.

But see also Robert Schlesinger's essay, "Republican Party and Religious Right Heading for a Split?":

Conservatives have for a long time argued that Republicans talk the talk at election time to get votes, but are insufficiently committed when it comes to actual policies ...

... this also illustrates the broader dilemma facing Republicans right now: For what do they stand? The tensions between the various conservative coalition members were easier to smooth over when the movement was ascendant, but there's nothing like unceremoniously getting kicked into the wilderness to exacerbate tensions. Having to map a route back to power means having to resolve the differences inherent in the minimal government portion of the party—cut taxes and don't regulate things—and the religious conservatives who are less wary of using government provided it's a means to God's ends.

This is a no-brainer for me.

The GOP must stay true to core values. Party attempts to stay competitive by embracing disastrous leftist social policies will kill the party, and the various remnants of the political right will end up composing a fractured party system resulting in a long-term consolidation of Democratic Party dominance for a generation or more. I can foresee something like the turmoil on the populist left during the Second Party System of the mid-1850s, where factional competition and social strife among the Democrats split the party's coalition and paved the way for a Republican realignment in 1860 under Abraham Lincoln.

That outcome, while troubling for the direction of the country, is nevertheless preferable to the GOP's capitulation today to the culture of death that's central to the Democratic Party's agenda, as demonstrated by the rationalization of pro-abortion advocacy so extreme that live babies are being thrown away in toxic waste bags after botched late-term abortions at zip-and-rip "family planning" clinics in Florida.

Executing Rush Limbaugh?

Well folks might remember my essay on the left's derangment with Fox News, "Fear and Imbalance! Fox News is the Enemy!"

Well Captain Fogg, the subject of our earlier investigation, is at it again, making death wishes for Rush Limbaugh and the folks at Fox News:

There's often some good to be found in our increasingly entropic economy - like a pearl in a tainted oyster. I take comfort in the cosmic joke that is our mortal life; knowing that Rush Limbaugh and Dick Cheney and everyone at Fox News will go the way of Pol Pot, Nicolae Chaucescu [sic], and Madman Muntz in due time.

I'm not sure about the "Madman Muntz," but I vividly remember the execution of Nicolae Ceauşescu, on Christmas Day, 1989. Only liberals could compare a conservative media star like Rush Limbaugh to Pol Pot and Nicolae Ceauşescu. Indeed, check out Maggie's Farm's post, "Lynching Rush," and the link there to George Reisman:

Serious Leftists, i.e., those who want to establish and maintain actual government ownership or control over the economic system are all implicitly totalitarians. On the one hand, they want to take total control over people’s lives under the pretext of improving and enriching their lives. But their policies are so bad, cause so much destruction and human suffering, that the potential is created for an explosive outburst of hatred and vengeance against them once the public draws the logically inescapable conclusion that it is they and their policies who are responsible. To stay in power and keep socialism in existence, they have to prevent this from happening by crushing all possibility of dissent.

Limbaugh is a major thorn in the side of the Left. They need to remove him, because his criticisms serve to slow their advance and might even help to stop them in their tracks.

That sounds about right.

I'm sure Capt. Fogg and his allied henchmen would love to line up Limbaugh and O'Reilly, et al., just like the Romanian mob did with Ceauşescu. That's the comparison that works here, not this notion that Rush Limbaugh is a genocidal dictator or that "America is failing, Fox News is why."

Ruth Bader Ginsburg's (Hot) Replacement

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was treated for early-stage pancreatic cancer on Thursday. Ginsburg, who is 75, recovered from colorectal cancer in 1999, but the prognosis for pancreatic malignancies is poor even with early detection.

So, naturally, speculation has turned to Ginsburg's replacement on the Court, and, wouldn't you know it, identity politics is already driving early speculation:

If Ginsburg is the next justice to retire, we'll no doubt hear a lot of nonsense about how her replacement should be the "best-qualified person" for the job, as if that concept were meaningful. It isn't, because there are thousands of people who would be fine SCOTUS justices, and whether any one of them in particular ought to be chosen depends on a myriad of factors, including the (in my view correct) judgment that it's not acceptable to have an all-male SCOTUS, any more than it would be acceptable to have an all-female one.

Okay, the Court is already down one "girl" seat with Alito's replacement of Sandra Day O'Connor in 2006, so the pressure is on. But, seriously, is identity politics and HOTNESS more important than merit? I guess so, since Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm's is already leading the list of possible replacements for Ginsburg (via Memeorandum).

Now that would be fun (see Jennifer Granholm as Sarah Palin?"). Having run Michigan into the ground, it would defy reason for President Obama to appoint the the former "Miss San Carlos." But hey, if Representative Hilda Solis can make the grade for Labor Secretary after 16 years of unpaid tax liens, anything's possible.

Neoconservative Derangement

Now this is what blogging's all about!

John Podhoretz, in "The Daily Dearborn Independent Dish," responds to Andrew Sullivan's anti-neocon hysteria:

Andrew Sullivan no longer is interested in winning in Iraq, in fact is probably quietly eager for a defeat there, doubtless out of a combination of a certain degree of conviction, a ravenous hunger for leftist Web traffic, and because having decided a few years ago he’d picked the wrong horse in supporting it, he finds it unbearable to imagine that the wrong horse may prove to be the right horse after all.

So he must hold the neoconservatives to blame, first, for gulling him into support — you know, we Jews are fiendishly clever, with our Svengali hypnotic powers overcoming the will of poor, weak-minded Catholic bloggers — and must now be held to account for holding views about Israel and Iraq and democracy we never held and have, in fact, been attacked by some of our oldest friends who do hold them. But of course, those attacks by our old friends aren’t real, nor are the divisions among neoconservatives real. Because we Jews are all in it together.

At least Henry Ford knew how to make a car.

The Ford reference is to the car manufacturer's anti-Semitic journal, "The Dearborn Independent," which published the English version of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

Sullivan long ago went over to the dark side, so I don't have a lot to add to Podhoretz. What's interesting is that Sullivan's post starts with a quote from E.D. Kain at the Ordinary Gentlemen, "The Democracy Fallacy."

E.D.'s current writing is of the kind that generates a lot of heat but little light, and that's too bad, considering his estimable talents.

Things didn't have to turn out this way, however. It's turns out that E.D.'s an intellectual hanger-on. He's joined up with the progressive nihilists at Ordinary Gentlemen for some fun and exposure, or so it seems. Up until a couple of weeks ago E.D. was the publisher of NeoConstant, which was originally an online magazine of neoconservative commentary and opinion. He had solicited essays from American Power for publication there, but E.D.'s apparently caught some strain of neoconservative derangement, with a special affliction of antiwar ideological recoil, so he deleted the entire blog a few days back. The domain name has remained the same (neoconstant.com), but the blog's new incarnation is the lame "New Constantine," whatever that's supposed to mean. I guess the name's a reference to the Roman Emperor, Constantine the Great (306–337), who relocated the heart of the empire to the "Second Rome" at Constantinople in 330 a.d. I think E.D.'s historical analogies are less precise than his single-minded effort to eradicate any evidence of his former neoconservative identification.

Note that E.D. deleted NeoConstant without a word of notification to those he had approached for syndication at the site, so his actions are not just unprofessional, but immature as well.

That's to be expected for someone who's been completley hoodwinked by folks like Freddie de Boer and the Young Turks of the Culture 11 fiasco.

I hadn't planned on engaging E.D. He's a nice guy, but like Sullivan, he too has gone over to the dark side. And now that he's instigating such supreme flame wars, well, the blogging gloves are coming off.

More later ...

Sarah Palin's Cultural Populism

I have to congratulate Yuval Levin, writing at Commentary, for his breathtakingly accurate analysis of Sarah Palin's vice-presidential candidacy, and especially the cultural prairie-fire she stoked with her rise to national prominence. The essay's entitled, "The Meaning of Sarah Palin."

There are a number of passages I'd like to quote at length, but Levin's discussion of the visceral revulsion to Governor Palin's candidacy, and her potential ascent to within a heartbeat of the presidency, is just priceless:

Palin’s social conservatism had never been the core of her political identity in Alaska. She always expressed general support for traditionalist views in interviews and debates, and it was widely known that she had also chosen to proceed with her fifth pregnancy after discovering the child had Down syndrome—a discovery that in about nine of ten cases leads parents to opt for abortion. But Palin never went out of her way to raise abortion or other social or cultural issues, and in her first two years as governor had not sought to change state policies in these areas. She was a good-government reformer with social conservative leanings, not the other way around.

But this was not how Palin was received on the national scene. Instead, her views on matters of cultural and social controversy very quickly became the chief focus of media attention, liberal criticism, and pundit analysis. Palin was assigned every view and position the Left considered unenlightened, and the response to her brought into the light all manner of implicit liberal assumptions about cultural conservatives. We were told that Palin was opposed to contraception, advocated teaching creationism in schools, and was inclined to ban books she disagreed with. She was described as a religious zealot, an anti-abortion extremist, a blind champion of abstinence-only sex education. She was said to have sought to make rape victims pay for their own medical exams, to have Alaska secede from the Union, and to get Pat Buchanan elected President. She was reported to believe that the Iraq war was mandated by God, that the end-times prophesied in the Book of Revelation were nearing and only Alaska would survive, and that global warming was purely a myth. None of this was true.

Her personal life came under withering assault as well. Palin’s capacity to function as a senior elected official while raising five children was repeatedly questioned by liberal pundits who would never dare to express such views about a female candidate whose opinions were more congenial to them. Her teenage daughter’s pregnancy was splattered all over the front pages (garnering three New York Times stories in a single day on September 2). Some bloggers even suggested her youngest child had not issued from her, but from her daughter instead, and that she had participated in a bizarre cover-up. I attended a gathering in Washington at which a prominent columnist wondered aloud how Palin could pursue her career when her religious beliefs denied women the right to work outside the home.

Palin became the embodiment of every dark fantasy the Left had ever held about the views of evangelical Christians and women who do not associate themselves with contemporary feminism, and all concern for clarity and truthfulness was left at the door.

To be sure, some criticisms of Palin were entirely appropriate. She had no experience in foreign or defense policy and very little expertise in or command of either. In a time of war, with a seventy-two-year-old presidential candidate who had already survived one bout with cancer, this was a cause for very real concern. And Palin did perform dreadfully in some early interviews. Some of her more level-headed critics did make their case on these grounds. But the more common visceral hostility toward her seemed to have little to do with these objections. Rather, the entire episode had the feel of a kind of manic outburst; it was triggered by a false understanding of who Palin was, and once it began, there was no stopping or controlling it.

The reaction to Palin revealed a deep and intense cultural paranoia on the Left: an inclination to see retrograde reaction around every corner, and to respond to it with vile anger. A confident, happy, and politically effective woman who was also a social conservative was evidently too much to bear. The response of liberal feminists was in this respect particularly telling, and especially unpleasant.

Don't even think about skipping the rest of this fantastic piece. Levin is equally penetrating on Palin's extraordinary impact on the conservative right, the raw, even primeval, partisan emotion she exposed among American conservatives in search of a savior.

I'm going to lean a little on Yuval in challenging his claims of Palin's faults and the McCain ticket's weaknesses (for one thing, I'd argue the GOP ticket had more of "core vision" than Yuval allows), but if nothing else, the essay's explication of the nation's social fissues across the economic and cultural realms is pure masterwork. So again, readers should be sure to take time for the whole thing.

Hat Tip: Conservatives for Sarah Palin.

Disillusionment With Obama

I'm still figuring it out, but Barack Obama's the first president in memory to have his "presidential honeymoon" come to an end before the second week of the new term.

Chris Bowers was throwing his hands up in frustration on Tuesday, asking "What Does Obama Want Us To Do?" Josh Marshall's reverted to the tried-and-true psychological escape, blame, asking "why would Republicans be trying to drive the country off a cliff?"

But especially interesting is the comments from Theda Skocpol:

Obama is, sadly, much to blame for giving the Republicans so much leverage. He defined the challenge as biparitsanship not saving the U.S. economy. Right now, he has only one chance to re-set this deteriorating debate: He needs to give a major speech on the economy, explain to Americans what is happening and what must be done. People will, as of now, still listen to him -- and what else is his political capital for?

Speaking as a strong Obama supporter who put my energies and money into it, I am now very disillusioned with him. He spent the last two weeks empowering Republicans - including negotiating with them to get more into Senate and his administration and giving them virtual veto-power over his agenda -- and also spending time on his personal cool-guy image (as in interview before the Super Bowl). The country is in danger and he ran for president to solve this crisis in a socially inclusionary way. He should be fighting on that front all the time with all his energies - and he certainly should give a major speech to help educate the public and shape the agenda. That is the least he can and should do. Only that will bypass the media-conserative dynamic that is now in charge.

Skocpol's a well-known Harvard political scientist (her name's pronounced "Scotch-pol"), so to see her admit to her own Obamessianism is striking. While she pins the responsibility on Obama for his own failings, notice that dig there at the end on the "media-conservative dynamic."

In any case, the president has apparently forsaken his cool-guy image-building momentarily with his essay this morning at the Washington Post: "The Action Americans Need" (via Memeorandum).

But for the political analysis of the administration's predicament, see Jeanne Cummings, "Obama Losing the Stimulus Message War."

Remembering Karen Carpenter

The Educated Shoprat has a great post tonight reminding us that today's another important "day the music died," in this case the loss of Karen Carpenter, February 4, 1983.

Shoprat writes:

I did not realize the magnitude of this tragedy until several years later when I began to realize just how incredibly talented this lady was.

Oh, I get sad thinking about how much I miss Karen Carpenter.

When "Close To You" was on the charts in 1970 I was 9 years-old. I dreamed that she was singing about me, and that the angels would sprinkle golden starlight in my hair and girls would love me. I don't know if that's strange to say it, but that's how I felt. Over the next few years The Carpenters were playing regularly on the family turntable. When Karen Carpenter died, like Shoprat, the impact of the loss wasn't immediately apparent. But nowadays, when I hear their songs, I'm transported back to an age of innocence in my own life that few other sounds of music can do. Very few other vocalists - living or dead - leave me so rejoiced as does the beauty of Karen's vocals. My favorite today is "For All We Know," not just for the incredible, quiet wonder of Karen's voice - and the song's simple essence affirming that our lives are bound by love - but also because my wife selected the Carpenters to play at our wedding. It was a church wedding, and our minister was reluctant, but it ended up okay after all.

Iraqi Women Raped Into Suicide Jihad

I'm interested to see how the left's peace advocates will spin this: Australia's Herald Sun reports that Samira Jassam, known as "the mother of the believers," orchestrated the rape and forced recruitment of 81 women into suicide martyrdom operations in Iraq:

A WOMAN suspected of recruiting more than 80 female suicide bombers has confessed to organising their rapes so she could later convince them that martyrdom was the only way to escape the shame.

John at Powerline responds: "Our enemies can sink to depths of depravity that most of us would be hard-pressed even to imagine ... This is the kind of thing that makes me skeptical that the solution to the problem of Islamic terrorism is diplomacy."

But check out Warner Todd Huston at RedState:

This is the sort of corruption that liberals and Barack Obama do not understand. In order to further “Jihad” these people are willing not only to kill themselves and others, but to rape even their own women in order to destroy their mental balance so that they are more easily brainwashed to become suicide bombers.

What sort of religion encourages the rape and death of its own children?

Democrats cannot conceive of this sort of corruption of the soul employed for religious control and power over a people. So, instead of facing reality, they bury their heads in the sand and pretend that the enemy is really “just like us,” after all.

No lefties are commenting at Memeorandum, but Libby Spencer applauds such innovations, so I'll keep my eyes open.

Democratic Economic Incompetence

President Barack Obama warned the nation today of economic "catastrophe" if Congress fails to pass the disastrous economic stimulus package under consideration in Washington.

Perhaps we'll see more sky-is-falling desperation from the administration, given that the public is quickly souring on this larded-legislative boondoggle. Gallup's new poll finds huge public consensus on the need for government action, but only 10 percent of Americans believe Obama's plan "will improve the economy in 2009" (source). Nancy Pelosi's rank dishonesty certainly can't be helping the Democratic agenda either:

So, what's a hard-left partisan do? Why, cry wolf and blame the GOP, of course:

Behind all the back and forth over the Stimulus Bill is a simple fact: the debate in Washington is rapidly moving away from any recognition that the US economy - and the global economy, for that matter - is in free-fall ...

The other key into the current debate is that the Republican position is ominously similar to their position on global warming or, for that matter, evolution. The discussion of what to do on the Democratic side tracks more or less with textbook macroeconomics, while Republican argument track either with tax cut monomania or rhetorical claptrap intended to confuse. It's true that macro-economics doesn't make controlled experiments possible. And economists can't speak to these issues with certainty. But in most areas of our lives, when faced with dire potential consequences, we put our stock with scientific or professional consensus where it exists, as it does here. Only in cases where it goes against Republican political interests or economic interests of money-backers do we prefer the schemes of yahoos and cranks to people who study the stuff for a living.

Of course, at some level, why would Republicans be trying to drive the country off a cliff? Well, not pretty to say, but they see it in their political interests. Yes, the DeMints and Coburns just don't believe in government at all or have genuinely held if crankish economic views. But a successful Stimulus Bill would be devastating politically for the Republican party. And they know it. If the GOP successfully bottles this up or kills it with a death of a thousand cuts, Democrats will have a good argument amongst themselves that Republicans were responsible for creating the carnage that followed.

It's not too smart to deny the reality that this legislation is the Democrats' folly. They passed it in the House, and they'll be thanking the GOP from saving them from utter disaster if it fails in the Senate.

The real pleasure of seeing the extreme incompetence of this administration, and so soon, is only surpassed by the equally-extreme mortification on the radical-left that their historic moment of revolutionary transformation is evaporating faster than one of candidate Obama's ethereal post-partisan stump speeches.

No Male Heterosupremacy Outrage in Octuplets Case?

When I first saw the story of Nadya Suleman I was just fascinated by the medical science of multiple birth pregancies. Also particularly interesting was the mother's adamant prior refusal to "reduce" the number of fetuses during pregancy. Eight was enough, and she wasn't going to settle for less.

But then the Los Angeles Times ran some stories on the background of of the mother and the reproductive ethics of the case, and it's all turned out to be something of a tragedy of social commentary. Ms. Suleman is by no means a typical candidate for the aggressive fertilization she received, and her personal life - including six children already - has raised all kinds of questions of impropriety, to say the least.

I wasn't hip on the feminist angle, however. Via Robert Stacy McCain, it turns out the radical feminists have been silent on the ethics of Ms. Suleman's case, what Darleen Click calls "an unethical abdication of responsibility."

On Jan 26 when Kaiser Permanente announced the arrival of surviving octuplets the story has run from increasingly creepy details and outrage about the mother to sudden articles about ethical concerns. It has been interesting to note what, or who, has been fairly quiet on this event.

The radical feminist (aka Vagina Warrior) blogsphere.

Ace noted the lack of commentary, figuring since there was no male villain in the piece there was little for the VW’s to focus on.

But hints of what is really the core issue for VW’s - who have no problem with nasty mockery of Michelle Duggar - can be found with series of entries on Slate’s XX (as in female chromosome) blog space and then confirmed by Salon’s Judy Berman who curiously posits …

Meanwhile, feminists are asking serious questions about what Suleman and her octuplets mean for the future of women’s health.

… then immediately focuses on law and questions of racism.

Lynn Paltrow, executive director of National Advocates for Pregnant Women — “What I would check if I had the time is the extent to which coverage of this story — whether negative or positive — is framed as a question of ethics. When the pregnant woman is not brown or black and the drugs/technologies are provided by big pharma, the discussion focuses on questions of ethics. But if the issue is childbearing by low-income women of color, and the drug is homegrown/ illegal then the debate is a question of punishment through the criminal justice or civil child welfare system.”

Darleen links to Amanda Marcotte's post at Pandagon, "Not a Biological Clock Gone Haywire," which is worth reading for insight into the mindset of today's feminism. Even better, though, is this essay on Michelle Duggar (a mother of 18 and the subject of a reality show on TLC) over at Women’s Space, "Why is Michelle Duggar Fair Game?":

I think it might be a worthwhile exercise to do some thinking on why it is that Michelle Duggar seems to be fair game for pretty much everyone, including for feminists. It’s open season on the woman – mock her, make fun of her hair, her appearance, her clothes, her body, her reproductive organs, other of her internal organs, her vagina, attack her, depict her as a pig, call her brainwashed. (If you haven’t seen this, then look here for the latest, also here, here, here, and sadly, here and be sure to read the comments.) ...

Long discussion of other cultures, with pictures, then ...

Instead of scapegoating this one woman and targeting her as though she is the enemy, why not make it our business to critique the real enemy – systems and institutions of male heterosupremacy which make the choices Duggar and women like her have made the best deal they feel they can cut?

I thought I kept up with this stuff ... whew!

Obama Restart Hopes to Avert Self-Inflicted Meltdown

The Los Angeles Times reports that President Barack Obama, humbled by scandalous missteps, hopes to put the political spotlight back on his economic stimulus agenda:

In only his second week in office, Barack Obama is punching the restart button on his presidency.

On Tuesday, Day 14 of a tenure that began with high hopes and soaring promises of bringing a new competence to Washington, Obama essentially admitted that he had lost ground in confronting his biggest challenge - fixing the country's crippled economy - due to the "self-inflicted injury" of naming appointees who had failed to pay their taxes.

He shed two of those appointees and then took to the airwaves - conducting not one but five Oval Office network television interviews in which he sought to seize control over the economic stimulus debate. Republicans have found traction on the issue by painting themselves as defenders of taxpayers and homeowners, while portraying Democrats as frivolous big spenders.

"I'm frustrated with myself, with our team," Obama told NBC's Brian Williams in a comment that was typical for his afternoon of televised mea culpas. "But ultimately my job is to get this thing back on track, because what we need to focus on is a deteriorating economy and getting people back to work."

The frustration's not likely to end anytime soon, given the supercharged expectations the Obama campaign banked on during the election.

In fact, as Victor Davis Hanson argues, this administration's off to one of the worst starts ever, and without a downshifting of Democratic hype, a full-on political meltdown is practically inevitable:

Some of us have been warning that it was not healthy for the U.S. media to have deified rather than questioned Obama, especially given that they tore apart Bush, ridiculed Palin, and caricatured Hillary. And now we can see the results of their two years of advocacy rather than scrutiny.

We are quite literally after two weeks teetering on an Obama implosion—and with no Dick Morris to bail him out—brought on by messianic delusions of grandeur, hubris, and a strange naivete that soaring rhetoric and a multiracial profile can add requisite cover to good old-fashioned Chicago politicking ....

This is quite serious. I can't recall a similarly disastrous start in a half-century (far worse than Bill Clinton's initial slips). Obama immediately must lower the hope-and-change rhetoric, ignore Reid/Pelosi, drop the therapy, and accept the tragic view that the world abroad is not misunderstood but quite dangerous. And he must listen on foreign policy to his National Security Advisor, Billary, and the Secretary of Defense. If he doesn't quit the messianic style and perpetual campaign mode, and begin humbly governing, then he will devolve into Carterism—angry that the once-fawning press betrayed him while we the people, due to our American malaise, are to blame.

Mark Thompson and the Scientific Falsification of God

It's certainly cliche to suggest that faith in the public square is in retreat. Of course, while polls show that Americans by a huge majority "believe in God or a universal spirit," there's nevertheless an extremely vocal and increasingly influential contingent on the progressive left that is intent not only to deny the potential epistemological basis for religious faith but to excoriate anyone who deigns to make a reasoned case to that effect.

I normally don't get involved in these tussles, but with the vicious neo-Stalinism we've seen on the left in response to California's Proposition 8 and the Warren invocation (and that's just for starters), it's pretty clear that the hordes have swept over the windswept passes of the barbarian steppes and folks of good standing need to stand a post and do battle in defense of eternal goodness and right.

What got me going on this is Mark Thompson's crudely pedestrian essay, "Falsifying the Unfalsifiable," over at the Ordinary Gentlemen.

Readers may recall that Mark is the publisher of Publius Endures. Once a staunch libertarian, Mark has sold out to the Obamessianism that has engulfed the land following "our national holiday from reason that was the Obama presidential inauguration" (to quote myself). In one of the strangest introductions to a blog post I've ever seen, Mark cites Homer Simpson - that's right, that Homer Simpson - as an authority on the ontology of religious faith and evangelical trust, arguing that the Simpson's get right to "the crux of the problem." And to think, Robert Stacy McCain generously called these guys "intellectuals." Go figure?

In any case, here's a key snippet of the point that Mark is trying to elaborate (and elaborate ... frankly, ad nauseum, at least 25 times at the piece):

For the religious person, there is simply no way to prove through science that god exists or does not exist - as long as there is something in the universe that cannot rationally be explained, there is a basis for trusting in the existence of god. For the atheist, there is likewise simply no way to prove through science that god exists or does not exist - as long as a scientific or rational explanation for anything in the universe is theoretically possible, there is a basis to trust in the ability of reason to explain everything, and no basis to trust in the existence of god.

And this is why I think Chris - and E.D. - are absolutely correct in stating that the proper response to the question of the existence of god is “Who Cares?” The existence of god simply cannot be proven or disproven through pure reason, and neither side does themselves any favors when they insist otherwise.

I think Mark wants to say "there is no basis for trusting in the existence of God" in the first paragraph, but if it's not clear in the passage cited, we've got redundancies galore at the post to confirm the point.

And this is why I'm spending time to correct Mark, and, frankly, to reveal him even further as the rank nihilist that he is.

I'm still figuring out where Mark and his gang are coming from, but they certainly aren't conservative, despite the circle-jerk exclamations for Culture 11 found repeatedly at the blog. Think about this in the context of this essay from the Calgary Herald, "At Least Atheists Got Mentioned":

People appear very keen for a lot of things to change on the Obama watch. One of those hopes is that Christianity would revert more to a private choice rather than the state religion it often appeared to be under George W. Bush.

Now before I debunk this slimy palaver, I just came across Troy Anderson denouncing those of faith who respond to such bunk as "Christian apologists."

Really, Christian apologists?

So we've got those on the left hip to the "Age of Obama" who are looking to see Christianity revert to a "private choice" rather than a "state religion"? And those who debate in favor of the existence of God are "Christian apologists"?

Sometimes I doubt this is the same United States of America where I grew up?

When Mark Thompson slops out such intelletually deadening prose as " the lunacy of religion attempting to masquerade as science," I'm frankly at a loss at the metaphysical methodology of the enterprise.

The fact remains, and it has thus been, that there is no epistemological basis for asserting religion as science in the first place. It's a sickly straw man to posit intelligent design as threatening nearly fifty years of post-Engel secularism in U.S. constitutional jurisprudence. If we see science as the scholarly generation of explanatory theory based on logically derived predictions based on observable phenonomen, it makes little sense to suggest religion is "masquerading as science." There is no data with which to subject the claim that "God exists" to falsification. Sure, we can debate the scientific legitimacy of the Gospels, but to find proof for the verity of the divine is nonsense. Perhaps Mark Thompson can clarify the point in a future post, but thus far he's been too busy playing ring around the rosie with Freddie and the rest of this nihilist gang.

The larger question in any case is the problem of Judeo-Christian ethics. When Christopher Hitchens argued early this decade for the morality of regime change Iraq, it's unlikely he was drawing on any other well of fundamental right outside of the Biblical narrative of Mosaic universality.

It is, of course, precisely this Western Judeo-Christian heritage that the progressive left seeks to destroy. Andrew Sullivan is no conservative when he promotes a gay radical licentiousness that knows no moral boundaries. Thus, the solution: just rebrand the model in your own image and label adherents to classic teachings as "Christianists." I mean really, Mark Thompson cites E.D Kain as suggesting "who cares"?

Well, excuse me, but damn! I'd think we all would. The West is best. QED.

I'll have more on this later, so I'll close with Licia Corbella's rebuttal to the privileging of atheism over religion in the public square:

The atheist ethic has killed more people than any religion by a staggering margin. Fascism, Nazism and Communism have murdered many tens of millions of people. Think of the former Soviet Union, Cambodia, Vietnam, the Nazis, Communist China etc. Mao Zedong's regime alone murdered 70 million countrymen. Stalin, 20 million. Their successors millions more. To this day, Falun Gong and Christians are jailed in China and then killed to harvest their organs.

It's no coincidence the freest, most prosperous nations in the world are virtually all Christian-based, not atheist or even Muslim, Buddhist or Hindu. As the Bible says: "Where the spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty."

With the exception of Japan, which had its democratic system imposed on it by the U. S. after the Second World War, and Israel, which is Jewish, no non-Christian country is truly free.

Atheists make up a very small minority of the "believers" in our society and yet it is their religion that is constantly being rammed down the throats of the majority.

They better be careful what they wish for. So should all people who love freedom, regardless of what they believe.

Obama's Ethical Performance Breakdown

What does a "chief performance officer" do? Well, according to the Washington Post's analysis of the new position created by the Barack Obama presidential transition, one of the responsibilities is governmental transparency and accessibility:

Releasing information publicly will help engage the general public in the work of government, as well as allowing measurement experts in academia and business to parse data and offer ideas to improve federal management. Transparency also creates an incentive for agencies to do a better job of collecting and using data.

The Post's essay is dated January 7, 2009, and the article specifically mentions by name Nancy Killefer, President Obama's nominee for the position.

So today's news that Ms. Killefer has withdrawn from consideration as the chief performance nominee ought to really tell us something about both the competence and integrity of the new boss in Washington and the Democratic "values" that have taken over the town.

Was Ms. Killefer taking the appointment seriously when the transparency of her very own credibility was at stake, her credibility as the administration's top officer charged with governmental transparency? Did it take the media's amazing snap from its Obamessianic slumber - with the growing attention in the press this last week to the slew of ethical fiascos among a host of Obama appointees - for her to see the light?

It seems not too long ago that the Democratic congressional majority was championing a new ethics of responsibility in Washington, and throughout campaign 2008 the online left routinely scourged the GOP for its corruption, starting with Vice President Dick Cheney on down to the lowest congressional backbencher. But now where is the left on what's emerging to be a banana republic's version of governmental propriety?

Tim Geithner got a pass at Treasury, but his chief of staff's a long-time lobbyist doing deals inside the Beltway. So much for those lobbying standards President Obama established when he announced a new day on the Potomac? Maybe the Geithner Treasury's ethical end-run was a bit much, as it now seems that Thomas Daschle's bid for health secretary is sailing into some stormy waters. With the New York Times editorial board calling for Daschle's name to be withdrawn, it's pretty obvious that the bloom is off the roses along the corridors of power of the new Democratic era.

Actually, it's breaking that Daschle's now withdrawing himself (and I wasn't going to bet on it), so perhaps folks on the left are noting the clarity of hypocrisy that's now finally coming into focus just a couple weeks after our national holiday from reason that was the Obama presidential inauguration.

George Packer, at the New Yorker, is warning that President Obama "can’t afford hypocrisy." But that's a bit like saying Kurt Warner can't afford to throw an interception. What's done is done now, and the country's already living with a reign of impropriety, and the train's barely left the station. There's no second chance for Warner's Hall of Fame bid, and we're barely into the first 100 days and Obama will be lucky to win a second term the way the Democratic scandals are already rocking the administration.

No worry for the online fever swamps of the left, naturally. They'll just give the finger to anyone who's got the temerity to point out the hypocrisy of the president, his campaign, and his party. Meanwhile, that much touted "transparency and accessibility" is going down the memory hole faster than you can say Zoë Baird.

The Left's Normalization of Evil

I was reading Kathy's essay at Comments from Left Field yesterday, which is a response to Michael Yon's "How Can the World Be Blind to Israel’s Existential Threats?"

My first inclination was to write a post rebutting her main argument. But there really wasn't one. Kathy doesn't respond to Yon's case for Israel. She scourges him for standing up for freedom and right while elevating Hamas terrorists to the level of beknighted freedom figthers. I've debated and denounced these horrendous leftists before. Kathy might as well have been storming the hallways of hotels in Mumbai, killing the innocents, and it would have been days before the media began to focus on the true intent of death and destruction - the murder of the Jews. People like this elevate evil above the standards of democracy and freedom. It's hard sometimes to continuously, endless, debunk and repudiate this godless insanity, but it needs to be done.

Thank goodness then that Judea Pearl keeps up the good fight. This week is the seventh year since the death of his son Daniel, and it's a world that the former Wall Street Journal reporter would barely recognize:

Those around the world who mourned for Danny in 2002 genuinely hoped that Danny's murder would be a turning point in the history of man's inhumanity to man, and that the targeting of innocents to transmit political messages would quickly become, like slavery and human sacrifice, an embarrassing relic of a bygone era.

But somehow, barbarism, often cloaked in the language of "resistance," has gained acceptance in the most elite circles of our society. The words "war on terror" cannot be uttered today without fear of offense. Civilized society, so it seems, is so numbed by violence that it has lost its gift to be disgusted by evil.

The entire essay is must reading.

Professor Pearl offers one explanation for the normalization of evil: the glorification of leftist indocrination of America's college campuses.

I'll have more later ...

Rendition, Extraordinary Rendition, and Leftist Hypocrisy

It's a sure sign of political hypocrisy and moral bankruptcy: The more feverishly the left works to discredit and spin the news that the Obama administration will continue the Bush-era policy of terrorist renditions, the more close real world events have shown their messiah to be a normal politician who campaigned on a bill of falsehoods and ethereal platitudes.

Scott Horton's going on the offensive, for example, alleging that Greg Miller of the Los Angeles Times got punked. Apparently, there are "renditions," then there are "extraordinary renditions," and never the twain shall meet:

There are two fundamental distinctions between the programs. The extraordinary renditions program involved the operation of long-term detention facilities either by the CIA or by a cooperating host government together with the CIA, in which prisoners were held outside of the criminal justice system and otherwise unaccountable under law for extended periods of time. A central feature of this program was rendition to torture, namely that the prisoner was turned over to cooperating foreign governments with the full understanding that those governments would apply techniques that even the Bush Administration considers to be torture. This practice is a felony under current U.S. law, but was made a centerpiece of Bush counterterrorism policy.

The earlier renditions program regularly involved snatching and removing targets for purposes of bringing them to justice by delivering them to a criminal justice system. It did not involve the operation of long-term detention facilities and it did not involve torture. There are legal and policy issues with the renditions program, but they are not in the same league as those surrounding extraordinary rendition. Moreover, Obama committed to shut down the extraordinary renditions program, and continuously made clear that this did not apply to the renditions program.

This is pure bull of course. Not even Hilzoy's painstaking attempt to deflate the issue can hide the key point: Barack Obama will preserve a central anti-terrorism tool that served as the key antiwar cudgel to demonize the Bush administration as the reincarnation of the Third Reich.

It does not matter what it's called: The ideological left - on principle - considered torture AND enemy rendition as one and the same. For the past seven years the nihilists have excoriated the "evil BushCo" regime for its state-sponsored terror-regime, but now that the policy shoe's on the other foot, it's time for the left to parse and twist itself out of hypocritical jam. Andrew Sullilvan's the worst. In a post last year, two days after Obama was elected, he cites Alex Massie, who is quoted saying:

The Iraq War was ... unpopular across much of the world, but its Guantanamo and rendition and secret CIA prisons around the world that have done far more damage to the United States' reputation.

To the left, it's obviously all of a piece, which is why the hordes of the nihilist fever swamps, as noted, are working overtime to square the new administration's policy with the Democratic campaign's outlandish promises from all last year.

As QandO shows (citing Progressive Justice), Human Rights Watch, the leading progressive NGO for international human rights, called for a blanket abolition of the Bush administration's policy of enemy rendtions. The group called on the U.S. government to "repudiate the use of rendition to torture as a counterterrorism tactic and permanently discontinue the CIA's rendition program ..." But according to Greg Miller's report at the Times, Human Rights Watch now says under "limited circumstances, there is a legitimate place" for renditions.

The problem is that those "limited circumstances" are in essence simple assurances by the Obama administration that the U.S. will not render suspected terrorists abroad if the possibility for coercive interrogation exists. It's a classic double standard. CIA Director Michael Hayden guaranteed in 2007 that the U.S. was not rendering suspected terrorists to foreign governments for torture. He said renditions were being conducted "lawfully" and "responsibly," which is now what leftists say the Obama administration will do with its continuation of the previous government's policy.

Andrew Sullivan, who has gone through fits of hysteria over the Bush adminstration's "torture" policies, pulls a play out of Hayden's book when he says:

What some on the far right seem not to grasp is that opposition to torture is not about being soft on terrorism. It is about being effective against terrorism - ensuring that intelligence is not filled with torture-generated garbage, that we retain the moral high-ground in a long war against theocratic violence, and that we can better identify, capture, kill or bring to justice those who threaten our way of life. Rendition and temporary detention are tools in that effort - tools that now need to be as closely monitored and assessed as they were once recklessly abused.

These people are not only hypocritically bankrupt, but their comprehensive program of leftist relativism is designed to destroy this country. Now that Barack Obama's in power the left can do no wrong. Bush hatred has been transformed to Obamessianism. Those on the "far right" will be demonized and ostracized for their previous policies, facts and logic be damned. Meanwhile, previously reviled policies will be continued.

It's a shameful situation we're in with the Democrats, but to be expected after the most dishonest media-enabled Democratic presidential campaign in history.

James Harrison Didn't Think He'd Score on Interception

James Harrison, who scored in yesterday's incredible 100-yard interception return, says of the play: “To be honest, I really didn’t think I’d make it all the way back” ... “My teammates threw some vicious blocks.”

Here's Bill Plaschke of the Los Angeles Times:

From a stirring national anthem to a tingling late finish, the Steelers' 27-23 victory over the Cardinals was the greatest Super Bowl ever, one whose Roman numbers should have been XXL for its double-extra-large helping of theatrics and dramatics.

Are we agreed on this? Cardinal fans aren't too thrilled, obviously. How about the "Boss time" of the halftime show? Did that performance contribute to the "greatest Super Bowl ever"? Jeralyn's totally floored. Dan Riehl not so much ...

Family Values at American Power

I thought some folks might grumble at bit at yesterday's post on Ann Althouse.

Cracker asks in the comments:

Professor you have referred to this blog as a "family blog".

You have recently commented on the suspect "values" of Family Broadcast Companies.

If my daughter is studying "Civics" in her 7th grade class.....and I recommended not only to her, but other classmates of hers that "American Power" has a good take on "conservatism" as it stands right now in our country and there is No indicator that you have to be 18 to view its content.

How do you suggest I respond to her, and her classmates, and perhaps her instructor ..... questions about the blog authors obsession with another blog authors breasts (nipples, tube tops, farrah etc etc.) ... as related to family values, content responsibility, and of course any hypocracy indicators that could possibly be applied not only to the "American Power" blog, but in a wider net, the entire conservative movement right now....

Check the comments for my response at the post.

I'll add further here that I'm not for one moment "obssessing" with Althouse's breasts. In fact, I'm not sexually objectifying Althouse at all. Like perhaps millions of adolescent boys in the mid-1970s, I had a poster of Farrah Fawcett on the wall in my bedroom. Does that disqualify me today, as late-40s heterosexual male observer of popular culture from commenting on a fellow blogger's dress and sexuality in a picture from the 1970s?

Check Althouse's comments if you want sex talk, where one visitor says: "Those some nice looking tits. Great rack. You could serve dinner on those things." This commenter also suggests when he meets Althouse "we are definitely going to get to 2nd base."

Althouse responds: "Not if you keep chickening out."

And besides, as noted yesterday, Althouse is a notorious breast blogger, and she's instigated some of the web's greatest flame wars with her observations on Jessica Valenti's breasts. By posting pictures of herself in a tight-fitting shirt, does Althouse succumb to same self-objectifying promotion as other women whom she's criticized? Valenti didn't like it when Althouse accused her of poking her breasts out while standing for a photo opportunity with former president Bill Clinton:

Last year I had my own run-in with online sexism when I was invited to a lunch meeting with Bill Clinton, along with a handful of other bloggers. After the meeting, a group photo of the attendees with Clinton was posted on several websites, and it wasn't long before comments about my appearance ("Who's the intern?; "I do like Gray Shirt's three-quarter pose.") started popping up.

One website, run by law professor and occasional New York Times columnist Ann Althouse, devoted an entire article to how I was "posing" so as to "make [my] breasts as obvious as possible". The post, titled "Let's take a closer look at those breasts," ended up with over 500 comments. Most were about my body, my perceived whorishness, and how I couldn't possibly be a good feminist because I had the gall to show up to a meeting with my breasts in tow. One commenter even created a limerick about me giving oral sex. Althouse herself said that I should have "worn a beret . . . a blue dress would have been good too". All this on the basis of a photograph of me in a crew-neck sweater from Gap.

Perhaps folks take all of this a bit too seriously. There's was a personal context to my post that didn't need elaboration, or so I thought. It doesn't matter anyway. While this is a "family blog," what I wrote last night is hardly disqualifying. My earlier reference to being a "family blog" was to crude vulgarity, which I do not employ. Plus, every once in a while I'm going to shake it up around here and discuss off-topics that are completely germaine to the blogging medium. In any case, I'm a man, and as Little Miss Attilla notes, "There is a marked tendency for heterosexual men to be interested in women." For some proof of that maxim, see Robert Stacy McCain, breast-blogger extraordinaire, who pronounced last November "International Natalie Portman Cleavage Day in the blogosphere."

Look, I often have young students sitting in the front row in my classrooms showing so much cleavage it's as if their endowments are about to burst out on their desktops. Actually, I think it's a bit much. I will, of course, continue to write about these things as a participant in the web's social commentary. I would think folks would find this much more acceptable than the Democratic Party's agenda of providing abortion services to 15 year-old girls or Disney-ABC's "family" programming that glorifies teenage pregnancy and underage drinking.