Partisan Opinions on Israel's Elections

Here's a follow-up to my post this morning, "Israel, Terrorism, and the Well-Intentioned Left."

Caroline Glick argues that Israel's national elections tomorrow are the country's "most fateful" ever:

In late 2006, citing the Iranian nuclear menace, Israel Beiteinu leader Avigdor Lieberman joined the Olmert government where he received the tailor-made title of strategic affairs minister. At the time Lieberman joined the cabinet, the public outcry against the government for its failure to lead Israel to victory in the war with Iran's Lebanese proxy Hizbullah had reached a fever pitch. The smell of new elections was in the air as members of Knesset from all parties came under enormous public pressure to vote no confidence in the government.

By joining the government when he did, Lieberman single-handedly kept the Olmert government in power. Explaining his move, Lieberman claimed that the danger emanating from Iran's nuclear program was so great that Israel could not afford new elections.

But what did he accomplish by saving the government by taking that job? The short answer is nothing. Not only did his presence in the government make no impact on Israel's effectiveness in dealing with Iran, it prolonged the lifespan of a government that had no interest in forming a strategy for contending with Iran by two years.
In light of this fact, perhaps more than any other Israeli politician, Lieberman is to blame for the fact that Israel finds itself today with no allies in its hour of greatest peril. Had he allowed the people to elect more competent leaders in the fall of 2006, we might have been able to take advantage of the waning years of the Bush administration to convince the US to work with us against Iran ....

In 2006, Likud leader Binyamin Netanyahu took it upon himself to engage the American people in a discussion of the danger Iran poses not only to Israel but to the world as a whole. In late 2006, he began meeting with key US governors and state politicians to convince them to divest their state employees' pension funds from companies that do business with Iran. This initiative and complementary efforts by the Washington-based Center for Security Policy convinced dozens of state legislatures to pass laws divesting their pension funds from companies that do business with Iran.

Netanyahu also strongly backed the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs' initiative to indict Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as an international war criminal for inciting genocide. Both the divestment campaign and the campaign against Ahmadinejad have been Israel's most successful public diplomacy efforts in contending with Iran. More than anything done by the government, these initiatives made Americans aware of the Iranian nuclear threat and so forced the issue onto the agendas of all the presidential candidates.

Instead of supporting Netanyahu's efforts, Livni, Barak and Lieberman have disparaged them or ignored them.

Because he is the only leader who has done anything significant to fight Iran's nuclear program, Netanyahu is the only national leader who has the international credibility to be believed when he says - as he did this week - that Israel will not allow Iran to acquire nuclear weapons. Likud under Netanyahu is the only party that has consistently drawn the connection between Iran, its Palestinian, Lebanese, Iraqi and Afghan terror proxies, its Syrian client state and its nuclear weapons program, and made fighting this axis the guiding principle of its national security strategy.

Read the whole thing (here) for Glick's criticisms of Tzipi Livni and Ehud Barak.

Now, compare Glick to Glenn Greenwald:

Israel is holding its national elections tomorrow. Not only is it virtually certain that the right-wing militarist Benjamin Netanyahu of the Likud Party will become the new Prime Minister, but it is highly likely that the ultra-right, anti-Arab nationalist and West Bank settler Avigdor Lieberman of the racist Yisrael Beitenu (Israel Our Home) Party will perform scandalously well. Polls show Lieberman’s party winning between 15 to 20 of the 120 seats in the Knesset, perhaps even surpassing Israel’s Labour Party for third place and even an outside change for second place. Lieberman’s party will form a vital component of Netanyahu’s ruling coalition and will secure a key Cabinet post for Lieberman himself ....

In February, 2000, Austria held a national election in which the far-right, anti-immigrant party of Joerg Haider stunned the world by attracting 26% of the vote and becoming a part of the ruling parliamentary coalition headed by the Austrian People's Party (though Haider himself had no position in the government). This is how the United States reacted to those results:

The United States is temporarily recalling its ambassador from Vienna following the swearing in of a new coalition government that includes the far-right Freedom Party. . . .

Speaking at a news conference in Washington, Mrs Albright said: "We have decided to limit our contacts with the new government and we will see whether further actions are necessary to advance our support for democratic values."

The U.S. wasn’t the only country to punish Austria for this outcome:

Israel has recalled its ambassador and has announced that Joerg Haider, the party's figurehead, will not be allowed into the country.

"Israel cannot remain silent in the face of the rise of extremist right-wing parties, in particular in those countries which played a role in the events which brought about the eradication of a third of the Jewish people in the Holocaust," a foreign ministry statement said.

The Haider/Lieberman comparison isn’t perfect. Haider had made a handful of stray reprehensible comments which were anti-Semitic or even sympathetic to former Nazi Party members, but the platform on which he actually ran had nothing to do with that. It was the standard nativist, anti-immigrant cant sweeping much of the European Right at the time. Arguably, though, Lieberman’s Arab-hating bile is even worse. Whereas Haider, an Austrian citizen, was demonizing foreign immigrants seeking to enter the country, Lieberman himself is an immigrant to Israel and is demonizing citizens who have been Israelis far longer than he has.

The U.S. already pays a very substantial price for its decades-long, blind and one-sided support for Israeli actions. The New York Times yesterday published an Op-Ed from Alaa Al Aswany -- an obviously pro-Obama, pro-American Egyptian describing the pervasive anger in Egypt that has already arisen towards Obama as a result of his deafening silence on the Israeli attack on Gaza ....

If, as it appears, the face Israel is now choosing for itself is that of Benjamin Netanyahu and Avigdor Lieberman, then the cost to the United States of ongoing, one-sided support for Israel is going to skyrocket, and the need for serious change in U.S. policy towards Israel will be even more acute.

Now, readers can behold the contrast between a neoconservative commentator - Glick - and a far-left progressive/civil libertarian commentator - Greenwald - and judge for themselves.

Glick opposes Lieberman on political and policy grounds, and sees him as weakening Israeli national security. She supports Netanyahu because he's made the most successful "public diplomacy efforts in contending with Iran."

In contrast, Greenwald attacks Lieberman as a "far-right extremist," portraying his positions as analogous to Austria's neo-Nazi Freedom Party. To top it off, Greenwald used the methodology of guilt-by-association to impugn the credibility of Benjamin Netanyahu, who may well form a governing coaltion with Lieberman.

This hysterical smear is then used as a basis for the United States to repudiate the Israeli government.

Now, recall this morning's post, where Gary Novak asked, "At what point do those who participate in the normalization of evil cease to be useful idiots and become evil themselves?"

Consider Greenwald's post a test-case for Novak's query.

Newsweek as Journal of Opinion

It's been coming for some time now, but as the New York Times reports, Newsweek magazine is undergoing a big makeover, essentially transforming itself into a journal of opinion:

Newsweek is about to begin a major change in its identity, with a new design, a much smaller and, it hopes, more affluent readership, and some shifts in content. The venerable newsweekly’s ingrained role of obligatory coverage of the week’s big events will be abandoned once and for all, executives say.

“There’s a phrase in the culture, ‘we need to take note of,’ ‘we need to weigh in on,’ ” said Newsweek’s editor, Jon Meacham. “That’s going away. If we don’t have something original to say, we won’t. The drill of chasing the week’s news to add a couple of hard-fought new details is not sustainable.”

Newsweek loses money, and the consensus within its parent, the Washington Post Company, and among industry analysts, is that it has to try something big. The magazine is betting that the answer lies in changing both itself and its audience, and getting the audience to pay more.

A deep-rooted part of the newsweekly culture has been to serve a mass audience, but that market has been shrinking, and new subscribers come at a high price in call centers, advertising and deeply discounted subscriptions.

As readers here may recall, the shift at Newsweek to a journal of opinion is already well underway. The magazine's still newsy and glossy, but its recent marquee essays would be right at home at the American Prospect or Washington Monthly - that is, hardline leftist outlets for big government advocacy and the culture of anything-goes nihilism.

Recall, Newsweek's big cover story last month, "The Religious Case for Gay Marriage" (which was a disaster, as I pointed out at the time).

Also, Jon Meacham's essay this week on the growth of big government, "We Are All Socialists Now," is even worse, being an essay that's founded in a degree of journalistic dishonesty that seems to have been emboldened by the election of Barack Obama.

Only time will tell if Newsweek's making the right decision.

I doubt the reading public needs more left-wing editorial sources. Other newsweeklies are making changes as well (U.S. News has gone monthly in print, but is aiming to keep a major online news presence), so we'll see how the American print media shakes out even further going ahead.

As longtime Newsweek reader, I'm simply dismayed that the route to survival for the magazine is to sell-out its credibility as an objective news source by attempting to rescue itself by pigging-backing off of Obamesssianism.

Israel, Terrorism, and the Well-Intentioned Left

Here's an interesting set of readings on Israel and terrorism worth mentioning:

Michael Totten's got a "A Dispatch from the Border with Gaza," which includes this passage on Colonel Miri Eisen's strategic assessment on the Palestinian rocket threat to Israel:

I visited Sderot and the Gaza border region again with some of my colleagues on a trip organized by the American Jewish Committee. IDF Colonel Miri Eisen accompanied us and gave us the Israeli perspective on what was happening ....

Colonel Eisen held up a map that showed which cities in Israel would be under attack if the same kinds of rockets flying out of Gaza today were being launched from inside the West Bank.

Every major population center in the country would be under attack except Haifa. Yet Haifa is within Hezbollah's rocket range out of Lebanon in the north. When Hezbollah fired its medium-size Katyusha rockets at Haifa in 2006, Haifa was on fire and emptied of people and cars. It was like a city at the end of the world. It's possible, though very intolerable, to live under Qassam rocket attack. It isn't possible to live long at all under Katyusha rocket attack.

If this nightmare scenario ever unfolds, Israel will be in a fight for its life.

In quoting, I've skipped over a lot of the text, plus photos, so be sure to check the link.

Also worth reading is the exchange at the Wall Street Journal, "Terrorism, Evil and Mourning a Pearl of Great Price." Be sure to check the link. Bill Moyers responds to Judea Pearl, but the final letter from Gary Novak of San Diego is something worth considering:

Judea Pearl's opinion piece effectively poses a question many well-intentioned leftists who take their enlightenment for granted have never considered: At what point do those who participate in the normalization of evil cease to be useful idiots and become evil themselves.

Facebook Wake-Up Call

I just got a Facebook invitation this morning. This is about the fourth one I've received, and they come with this message:

Hi Donald,

I set up a Facebook profile where I can post my pictures, videos and events and I want to add you as a friend so you can see it. First, you need to join Facebook! Once you join, you can also create your own profile.

Thanks,
______

I haven't joined up yet, but only out of procrastination. Still, the report from TechCrunch on Facebook's deceptive claims as a social-networking safe haven are interesting: "Wake Up Call: Facebook Isn’t A Safe Haven":

Facebook just turned 5 years old. But a week that should have been filled with reflection and good times was instead marred by a series of breaking news reports detailing sex scandals, phishing, and other malicious activity on the world’s largest social network.

In his blog post announcing the 5-year milestone, founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg wrote that “Facebook has offered a safe and trusted environment for people to interact online, which has made millions of people comfortable expressing more about themselves.” But is Facebook really as safe as everyone seems to think?

The peice recounts a number of sexual-lurking and other dangers in the news this week, then continues:

Since launching in 2004, Facebook has benefited from its public perception as a safe, clean site - especially compared to its biggest competitor, MySpace. Whereas MySpace allows users to customize their profile pages with graphics and audio (sometimes to the point of making them obnoxious), Facebook has maintained a more pristine environment, which certainly helps bestow a feeling of safety.

Facebook is also theoretically more secure. When it first launched, only users with valid university (.edu) Email addresses could sign up. Over the years the site expanded to allow high school students, and eventually opened up to everyone. But each group of students or coworkers is still segmented into different ‘networks’ - you can’t browse through anyone’s profile unless you belong to their university or company network, usually verified through Email. These roadblocks add up to make creating fake profiles more of a challenge, but as we’ve seen in the last week, they can be overcome.

Perhaps most important to note is Facebook’s relatively good security record up until this point. Parry Aftab, an independent online security expert who heads WiredSafety, says that there have been fewer sexual predator attacks on Facebook than its competitors and that her studies have found its security measures to exceed those seen elsewhere. She also notes that in general, users have behaved better on Facebook, and that teenagers have reported that they “feel safer” on the site.

But Aftab says that given how quickly Facebook has grown - it jumped from 100 million users last August to over 150 million users today - she isn’t surprised that some registered sex offenders slipped through the cracks. In her words, “if you have 150 million users, you’re going to have all kinds of bad people”.

So what measures can Facebook take to maintain its wholesome image?

Read the whole thing. It's an interesting piece for parents with social networking kids. My oldest boy's mostly logging on for Apple iPod downloads songs all the time (not Facebook, etc.), and I'm usually sitting right next to him on the other laptap in our living room, but we've all heard the horror stories ...

Gay Marriage Terrorism

I've written quite a bit previously on the Stalinist intimidation tactics of No on H8 activists. So, it's no surprise to see the diabolical depths to which the left will sink in threatening marriage traditionalists who exercized their rights via the political process in last November's election.

Check this out from the New York Times (via Memeorandum):

FOR the backers of Proposition 8, the state ballot measure to stop single-sex couples from marrying in California, victory has been soured by the ugly specter of intimidation.

Some donors to groups supporting the measure have received death threats and envelopes containing a powdery white substance, and their businesses have been boycotted.

The targets of this harassment blame a controversial and provocative Web site, eightmaps.com.

The site takes the names and ZIP codes of people who donated to the ballot measure — information that California collects and makes public under state campaign finance disclosure laws — and overlays the data on a Google map.

Visitors can see markers indicating a contributor’s name, approximate location, amount donated and, if the donor listed it, employer. That is often enough information for interested parties to find the rest — like an e-mail or home address. The identity of the site’s creators, meanwhile, is unknown; they have maintained their anonymity.

Eightmaps.com is the latest, most striking example of how information collected through disclosure laws intended to increase the transparency of the political process, magnified by the powerful lens of the Web, may be undermining the same democratic values that the regulations were to promote.

With tools like eightmaps — and there are bound to be more of them — strident political partisans can challenge their opponents directly, one voter at a time. The results, some activists fear, could discourage people from participating in the political process altogether.

All Americans have the right to participate in the political process through campaign contributions and interest group activism. Still, I simply cannot find a legitimate reason for the left to threaten marriage traditionalists in this way. I've debated folks on the left on precisely this issue. They say boycotts and targeting are perfectly acceptable methods given the historic discrimination faced by gays and lesbians. I'm not convinced. I've noted previously that there's little credibility in comparing the homosexual marriage agenda to the black American freedom struggle, but that's the analogy radical leftists want to maintian.

I hope I'm wrong, but I won't be surprised when gay radicals (see here and here, for example) explode their own 16th Street churches in a remake of the violence against black Americans in the 1960s. Note that this time, the radical left will be on the side of terror, not freedom.

(P.S: Notice how the hosts of "eightmap" have kept their identities private, just like any true underground terror cell would.)

**********

UPDATE: Here's this from "Kathy" at Liberty Street, who is also writes for Comments at Left Field:

I think this is very creative and ... very neat. This is an appropriate use of technology and it brings openness and transparency to a part of the political process.

Speaking Truth to Democratic Big Government

Here's how the Los Angeles Times described the Democratic majority's economic stimulus package last week:

With Congress moving toward passage of an $800-billion-plus economic stimulus plan, big government is back. Unabashed. With a vengeance.

The stimulus is bigger than the Pentagon's entire budget. It's more than the United States has spent on the war in Iraq. And its hundreds of provisions reach into almost every aspect of American life - including workers' paychecks, local schools, digital television and modernizing medical records.

Perhaps not since the Great Depression has Congress set out to expand and redefine so dramatically the government's role in the economy, all in one bewilderingly complex blueprint.

Now, this morning's Washington Post reports that a number of top economists concur on the virtually unprecedented scale of the left's stimulus agenda:

With Congress moving closer to adopting a $820 billion stimulus package and the Obama administration poised to unveil a new bank bailout plan, economists say that the federal government is taking its biggest role in the economy in a generation.

States that once aspired to blaze trails independent from Washington are turning to it for money, banks and businesses that once decried regulation now are seeking federal capital, grants or tax cuts and individuals are looking for tax relief.

"This is a seismic shift in the role of government in our society," said Allen Sinai, chief global economist for Decision Economics. "Those who believe the government can be an effective, positive instrument for good will have another chance to try it," said Sinai, a political independent.

To reiterate Sinai's comment above, this is indeed a "seismic shift," and it foretells a major reorientation of the relationship between government and the individual in society.

Yet, there's a fundamental level of disingenuity in all of the public debate on this. People do not like identifying the ideological implications of this shift to unprecedented state expansion. When conservative commentators attacked the Democrats in 2008 as "socialist" for their big government planning, on health care, tax increases, and government regulation, the left-wing media and bloggers attacked them with an existential ferocity.

This week's cover story at Newsweek continues the essential dishonesty, "We Are All Socialists Now." Authors Jon Meacham and Evan Thomas name not President Barack Obama and the Democrats for our current shift to a European socialist state, but ... wait for it ... George W. Bush:

The U.S. government has already—under a conservative Republican administration—effectively nationalized the banking and mortgage industries ....

We remain a center-right nation in many ways—particularly culturally, and our instinct, once the crisis passes, will be to try to revert to a more free-market style of capitalism—but it was, again, under a conservative GOP administration that we enacted the largest expansion of the welfare state in 30 years: prescription drugs for the elderly.

This is so dishonest, it's almost sick. Republicans in Congress, during last year's bailout debate, wanted to use big government to rescue markets (and base conservatives howled in disgust every step of the way). Democrats today want to use big government to expand the welfare state to levels that put the Great Society to shame.

The left, in other words, wants to nationalize markets in furtherance of its ideological and programmatic foundations. A look at the House Appropriations Committee's press release, "Summary: American Recovery and Reinvestment," with its smorgasbord of big goverment, pork-barrel spending largesse, should put to rest talk of conservatives as creating the "biggest expansion of the welfare state in 30 years." The Johnson administration created Medicare in 1965. Both parties have accepted the need to support the health care of American retirees.

But recall it was also the same "conservative GOP administration" that campaigned for an entire year, unsuccessfully, for the privatization of Social Security as the marquee program in a conservative shift to an "ownership society." The Wall Street Journal laid out the scope of the Bush administration's vision in its essay, "In Bush's 'Ownership Society,' Citizens Would Take More Risk":

President Bush's campaign to revamp Social Security is just the boldest stroke in a much broader effort: To rewrite the government's social contract with citizens that was born of Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal and expanded by Lyndon Johnson's Great Society.

In what Mr. Bush calls an "ownership society," Americans would assume more of the responsibilities - and risks - now shouldered by government. In exchange, the theory goes, they would get the real and intangible benefits of owning their own homes, controlling their retirement savings, and using tax credits or vouchers to shop for education, job training and health insurance.

The emphasis would be on the individual, supplanting a 70-year-old approach in which citizens pool resources for the common good - and government doles out benefits. In the Bush vision, the nation's social safety nets would still exist, but on a smaller scale, targeting the most needy. Others would move to private-market alternatives of their own choosing.

I have seen really nothing in the last year of economic turmoil to convince me that conservatives have abandoned the lost hopes of the Bush administration's vision for an even greater society of individualism and prosperity.

And if there's any evidence that hopes for an opportunity society have been abandoned, it's in the the priorities of the current Barack Obama administration, who has called the challenges facing the country today unequaled in history, and he's announced an unprecedented agenda for massive governmental change to avoid a "catastrophe."

So, while folks may indeed take issue with Republican craveness at Wall Street bailouts - as well as the party's larger historical capitulation to the welfare state since Barry Goldwater's defeat in 1964 - at the most basic level of ideology, today's left is on the cusp of achieving it's wildest dreams of the quasi-Marxist Europeanization of American life.

It's time for a little honesty about all of this.

Two Weeks of Obama's New America

Melanie Phillips, discussing President Barack Obama's first two weeks in office, asks, "America - what have you done?" After cataloging the president's multiple missteps, his ethereal mirage of propriety and rectitude, and not to mention the administraion's abandonment of clarion calls for "hope and change," here's the payoff line:

I have argued before however that, given Obama’s radical roots in the neo-Marxist, nihilist politics of Saul Alinsky, it is the undermining of America’s fundamental values that is likely to be this President’s most strategically important goal. I have also suggested that, since this agenda is promoted through stealth politics which gull the credulous middle-classes while destroying the ground upon which they are standing, his second-tier appointments should be closely scrutinised.

Phillips then goes on to discuss Obama's selection of David Ogden for deputy Attorney-General. Ogden has argued apparently that "it was an unconstitutional burden on 14-year old girls seeking an abortion for their parents to be notified - because there was no difference between adults and mid-teens in their ability to grasp all the implications of such a decision."

America, what have you done? is right...

How New Deal Policies Prolonged the Depression

There's an interesting, albeit typical, meme this weekend across the leftosphere suggesting that the easing of Democratic public works spending in the late-1930s was the main causal factor precipitating the "Roosevelt Recession" of 1937-38.

Responding to Senator Mitch McConnell's remarks this week that "big spending programs of the New Deal did not work," Glenn Thrush wrote yesterday:

Lots of historians, economists and bloggers disagree of course, saying that the Depression was, in fact, eased by FDR's programs - and the "Roosevelt Recession" of the late 30s was the result of his scaling back on public works too quickly.

Thrush's post set off a round of rebuttals to Senator McConnell's thesis.

Steve Benen parrots Thrush:

It's especially interesting to hear McConnell say WWII improved the economy. How, exactly, does McConnell reconcile this? FDR's government spending didn't help the economy, but FDR's government spending for a world war did help the economy? As Krugman recently explained, World War II was an "enormous public works project ... which finally provided a fiscal stimulus adequate to the economy's needs."

But check out Matthew Yglesias:

To be precise, the historical record shows that throughout FDR’s first term, the country was on a path to recovery—albeit from a very low point. Then there was a recession-within-a-depression associated with efforts to return to McConnell-style policies of fiscal restraint. By 1940, things were much better than they had been in 1932. But still, as he says, not very good. Thus far we don’t have a very solid case against stimulus spending. And now things get worse. The conclusion McConnell wants is that “big spending programs” couldn’t help fight the Depression. But World War II was, among other things, a huge spending program.

I just love how Democrats love wartime spending when it works to make the case for big government. Amazingly, all those attacks on out of control deficit spending disappear upon change of party control in Washington. Even Yglesias himself included a $1.2 trillion projected budget defict for 2009 as part of the "wreckage" of the Bush administration!

As for public works spending and the 1937 recession, let's check in with economists Harold Cole and Lee Ohanian, and their essay, "How Government Prolonged the Depression":

Some New Deal policies certainly benefited the economy by establishing a basic social safety net through Social Security and unemployment benefits, and by stabilizing the financial system through deposit insurance and the Securities Exchange Commission. But others violated the most basic economic principles by suppressing competition, and setting prices and wages in many sectors well above their normal levels. All told, these antimarket policies choked off powerful recovery forces that would have plausibly returned the economy back to trend by the mid-1930s.

The most damaging policies were those at the heart of the recovery plan, including The National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA), which tossed aside the nation's antitrust acts and permitted industries to collusively raise prices provided that they shared their newfound monopoly rents with workers by substantially raising wages well above underlying productivity growth. The NIRA covered over 500 industries, ranging from autos and steel, to ladies hosiery and poultry production. Each industry created a code of "fair competition" which spelled out what producers could and could not do, and which were designed to eliminate "excessive competition" that FDR believed to be the source of the Depression.

These codes distorted the economy by artificially raising wages and prices, restricting output, and reducing productive capacity by placing quotas on industry investment in new plants and equipment. Following government approval of each industry code, industry prices and wages increased substantially, while prices and wages in sectors that weren't covered by the NIRA, such as agriculture, did not. We have calculated that manufacturing wages were as much as 25% above the level that would have prevailed without the New Deal. And while the artificially high wages created by the NIRA benefited the few that were fortunate to have a job in those industries, they significantly depressed production and employment, as the growth in wage costs far exceeded productivity growth.

These policies continued even after the NIRA was declared unconstitutional in 1935. There was no antitrust activity after the NIRA, despite overwhelming FTC evidence of price-fixing and production limits in many industries, and the National Labor Relations Act of 1935 gave unions substantial collective-bargaining power. While not permitted under federal law, the sit-down strike, in which workers were occupied factories and shut down production, was tolerated by governors in a number of states and was used with great success against major employers, including General Motors in 1937.

The downturn of 1937-38 was preceded by large wage hikes that pushed wages well above their NIRA levels, following the Supreme Court's 1937 decision that upheld the constitutionality of the National Labor Relations Act. These wage hikes led to further job loss, particularly in manufacturing. The "recession in a depression" thus was not the result of a reversal of New Deal policies, as argued by some, but rather a deepening of New Deal polices that raised wages even further above their competitive levels, and which further prevented the normal forces of supply and demand from restoring full employment. Our research indicates that New Deal labor and industrial policies prolonged the Depression by seven years.

Today's leftists seem to be overlooking arguments like this (although they can't pass up the chance to trash McConnell). What's interesting is how these folks almost universally cite Paul Krugman (and just Paul Kruman) as their source of authority, as did Josh Marshall as well, a few days back, in an attempt to smear Republicans as obstructionist.

But what do you know?

Via Memeorandum, here comes Krugman now with a just-in-time take down of the "centrists" in the Senate who have cut some pork out of the Democratic stimulus package, which was apparently, "already too small." On top of that, Firedoglake's got a follow-up smear against this "gang-of-four," Senators Collins, Specter, Lieberman, and Nelson, who have used their "power to deny Americans between three-quarters and one and a quarter million jobs."

Smells like more calls for "Stimulus Socialism" to me?

As always, I'll have more later ...

Afghanistan: Graveyard of Islamist Extremism

Last week's Newsweek cover story featured a sensational Fareed Zakaria essay comparing Afghanistan to Vietnam: "The analogy isn't exact. But the war in Afghanistan is starting to look disturbingly familiar."

The analogy is, of course, that the U.S. might well lose the Afghan war. After toppling the Taliban in 2001 amid warnings that the American military, like all previous great powers, would be bogged down in the "graveyard of empires," the U.S. is again on target for another quagmire.

Upon reading Zakaria, I was immediate struck by another analogy: Opponents of the Iraq war made the same argument from 2003 to 2006, that the war in Mesopotamia was "America's next Vietnam."

Taking up the new round of Vietnam analogies, Max Boot responds in his essay today, "Deja vu in Kabul":

It is striking the extent to which the arguments now being made about Afghanistan were previously made - and discredited - in the case of Iraq. The only thing we haven't heard yet is a proposal to dismember Afghanistan into mini-states. But with Joe Biden in the White House, we can expect that brainstorm to pop up soon.

Actually, another "Joe" has been brainstorming, but in the direction of victory. In his Wall Street Journal essay yesterday, Senator Joseph Lieberman argued that the real quagmire in Afghanistan will be al Qaeda's:

... there are already whispers on both the left and the right that Afghanistan is the graveyard of empires, that we should abandon any hope of nation-building there, additional forces sent there will only get bogged down in a quagmire.

Why are these whisperings wrong? Why is this war necessary?

The most direct answer is that Afghanistan is where the attacks of 9/11 were plotted, where al Qaeda made its sanctuary under the Taliban, and where they will do so again if given the chance. We have a vital national interest in preventing that from happening.

It is also important to recognize that, although we face many problems in Afghanistan today, none are because we have made it possible for five million Afghan children - girls and boys - to go to school; or because child mortality has dropped 25% since we overthrew the Taliban in 2001; or because Afghan men and women have been able to vote in their first free and fair elections in history.

On the contrary, the reason we have not lost in Afghanistan - despite our missteps - is because America still inspires hope of a better life for millions of ordinary Afghans and has worked mightily to deliver it. And the reason we can defeat the extremists is because they do not.

This, ultimately, is how the war on terror will end: not when we capture or kill Osama bin Laden or Mullah Omar - though we must do that too - but when we have empowered and expanded the mainstream Muslim majority to stand up and defeat the extremist minority.

That is the opportunity we have in Afghanistan today: to make that country into a quagmire, not for America but for al Qaeda, the Taliban and their fellow Islamist extremists, and into a graveyard in which their dreams of an Islamist empire are finally buried.

Obama's Stimulus Alarmism

Here's President Obama's message to nation today, via YouTube:

I've written previously on the Democrats' sky-is-falling stimulus alarmism, but Fred Barnes nails it, arguing that Obama sounds like Al Gore on global warming:

The more the case for man-made warming falls apart, the more hysterical Gore gets about an imminent catastrophe. The more public support his bill loses, the more Obama embraces fear-mongering. "The failure to act, and act now," the president said last week, "will turn a crisis into a catastrophe."

The "catastrophe" meme is reprised again at the video.

Sexual Subtext in Obamessianism

Conservatives have made a cottage industry out of ridiculing the Democratic-left for its freaky cult of Obama. But seriously, in reading Judith Warner's essay on "dreams of Obama," we can see that it's much, much worse than previously imagined:

The other night I dreamt of Barack Obama. He was taking a shower right when I needed to get into the bathroom to shave my legs, and then he was being yelled at by my husband, Max, for smoking in the house. It was not clear whether Max was feeling protective of the president’s health or jealous because of the cigarette.

Ed Driscoll responds to this, saying:

Who dreams of having the President of the United States in their shower while their spouse is yelling at him for smoking? Worse, who admits to this in public?

Yep, it's a bit freaky, but note that Warner sought feedback on this via e-mail inquiries, and the results indicate a pandemic scope to the left's psychological disfunction:

Many women — not too surprisingly — were dreaming about sex with the president. In these dreams, the women replaced Michelle with greater or lesser guilt or, in the case of a 62-year-old woman in North Florida, whose dream was reported to me by her daughter, found a fully above-board solution: “Michelle had divorced Barack because he had become ‘too much of a star.’ He then married my mother, who was oh so proud to be the first lady,” the daughter wrote me.

But read the comments at the post, where thankfully not everyone's lost their minds:

Thank goodness I skipped the fantasy stage and went straight to contempt , oh, sometime back in 2007 when I was about 80 pages into the carefully packaged story line of “Dreams from My Father.” The man is a phony, through and through. Just about every word he speaks is hollow.

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.

**********

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.