Update on Michele Bachmann

This entry updates my earlier post on Michele Bachmann ...

Representative Bachmann's clearly raising the ire of the nihilists at Firedoglake, "Michelle Bachmann, Vigilant Guardian of the Constitution."

Funny how all these Bush/Cheney Republicans have suddenly discovered there's this thing called "the Constitution," isn't it?

A friend who speaks wingnut tells me this is good old right-wing/Bircher/Evil Federal Reserve/One World Government paranoia, as Bachmann later hints at with her weird question about an "international monetary standard." But I think she's just an idiot.

Previously Firedoglake posted a Photoshop of Ms. Bachmann with Nazi paraphernalia. We're seeing nothing less than a campaign by hardline radicals to personally destroy Michelle Bachmann, not unlike the left's current program to bankrupt Sarah Palin with endlessly frivilous ethics lawsuits against the Governor and her family.

See also John Hinderaker's comments on Ms. Bachmann, "Bachmann Quotes Jefferson; STRIB Is Shocked:

Congresswoman Michele Bachmann is one of Minnesota's most effective spokesmen for conservatism, so our local media have collaborated with Democrats in trying to defeat her. The most recent attack on Michele arose out of my radio show last Saturday.

See also Representative Bachmann's essay at Townhall, "A Government Power Grab" (via Memeorandum).

Up Next: Federal Student Loan Bailouts?

I worked my way through college.

I held jobs while attending community college, and I worked full-time after I transferred to Fresno State. When I entered graduate school I had no student debt. And I continued working my first year of the Ph.D. program at a local Chevron station, turning down thousands of dollars in federal student loans that were available. I wanted to be careful. During my last couple of years in grad school, I borrowed to finance my dissertation research, which meant I could write full time instead of conduct TA seminars at the university. I've already paid off one of my student loans, and on two big loans outstanding, I pay less than five hundred a month. For a professor, that's manageable.

Basically, I did what most people do, or at least that's what I think most people do, or should do ... be responsible. I'm proud of my achievement in that sense. That just seems like the American way.

So readers can see how I might be a little turned off by Allahpundit's receptiveness to growing demands for a TARP-style federal bailout of student loan debtors: "Stimulus idea: How about massive forgiveness of student loans?"

Read the essay at the link.

The guy at Retake Education pretty much captures my sense (outrage?) at all of this:

Screw you Allahpundit. Is this what the supposed Right has come to? Hey, we’re throwing tons of money at the problem at rewarding people who acted irresponsibly at the expense of those who didn’t, why not throw some more cash on the fire while we’re at it? Screw people who were too stupid to jump on the federal gravy train when they were in college, or who stupidly paid back their loans as promised by sacrificing in the short term. What a bunch of losers they are! And all those folks who worked their asses off while they were in school so that they wouldn’t have to take out loans? Screw ‘em. And, ahem, people who are working full time jobs while going to school at night so that they can better themselves? Screw ‘em!

What a moronic, insulting idea. Allahpundit and Hot Air should be ashamed to even be thinking this.

See also, "Asking for Student Loan Forgiveness," via Memeorandum.

"I thought I was sitting opposite a Hamas spokesman or a would-be-suicide bomber"

That's the quote from Khaled Abu Toameh, an Israeli Arab journalist at the Jerusalem Post, in his essay, "On Campus: The Pro-Palestinians' Real Agenda":

During a recent visit to several university campuses in the U.S., I discovered that there is more sympathy for Hamas there than there is in Ramallah.

Listening to some students and professors on these campuses, for a moment I thought I was sitting opposite a Hamas spokesman or a would-be-suicide bomber.

I was told, for instance, that Israel has no right to exist, that Israel’s “apartheid system” is worse than the one that existed in South Africa and that Operation Cast Lead was launched only because Hamas was beginning to show signs that it was interested in making peace and not because of the rockets that the Islamic movement was launching at Israeli communities.

I was also told that top Fatah operative Marwan Barghouti, who is serving five life terms in prison for masterminding terror attacks against Israeli civilians, was thrown behind bars simply because he was trying to promote peace between Israelis and Palestinians.

Furthermore, I was told that all the talk about financial corruption in the Palestinian Authority was “Zionist propaganda” and that Yasser Arafat had done wonderful things for his people, including the establishment of schools, hospitals and universities.

The good news is that these remarks were made only by a minority of people on the campuses who describe themselves as “pro-Palestinian,” although the overwhelming majority of them are not Palestinians or even Arabs or Muslims.

The bad news is that these groups of hard-line activists/thugs are trying to intimidate anyone who dares to say something that they don’t like to hear.

Related:

* "Politicians Fret as Muslim Population Swells in Europe Amid Little Integration."

* "'Global War On Terror' Is Given New Name."

Rule 5 Rescue: Scarlett Johansson

My friend Philippe, the publisher of New Testament News, left these comments at an earlier post:

Rule 5 blogging ... is probably the best tool I have ever used to sift the chaff from the wheat ... So a big thank you for that, Donald! :-)

I only wish I had used more of rule 5 blogging earlier.

Well, I'm passing the good word along to Robert Stacy McCain, "The Hustler."

Previously:

* "Rule 5 Rescue: Helen Mirren."

* "Rule 5 Rescue: Paulina Porizkova."

Photo Credit: Scarlett Johansson, via Vanity Fair’s "Spotlight" series.

HopeNchange Deficits

Via Glenn Reynolds, "Bush Deficit vs. Obama Deficit in Pictures":

Culture 11's Postmodern Postmortem

I can't say that I'd hadn't heard of Culture 11 until it's demise. But check out Dan Riehl. He hadn't, yet he beautifully manages to pin down Culture 11's insignificance to the blogosphere:

But I've been knocking around the Internet for too many years to count and blogging daily for five on the Right. There are few if any major memes I miss, even if I don't blog on them.

I never even heard of this Culture11 site until I read that it was gone. If someone wants to know why it failed, extrapolate that out to other bloggers and web surfers, that was it.

Having never seen it, all I can conclude is that it really must have sucked.

The Culture 11 page is still up ... there's just no new commentary. For a lot of not-so-closeted postmods, it was "Oh, the humanity" over the news. The essayists at Ordinary Gentlemen were crying on each other's shoulders when the site went belly up. Of course, it went belly up for for good reason: Culture 11 wasn't conservative. You can call it "postmodern conservatism" or "liberaltarian," or what have you. But it wasn't conservative. Even conservatives who think Culture 11 was such a great place, can't figure out what to call conservatism. They hate it that much.

Anyway, I'm going on about this since Charles Homans has written a big postmortem on Culture 11, "Culture Shock: What happened when one conservative Web site ventured outside the movement bubble." Homans' got a decent grip on what he's talking about, and the piece is a good read. But Washington Monthly is hopelessly progressive, and that helps explain why pomos like Andrew Sullivan, or confused libertarians like Daniel Larison and David Weigel, think its such an "important" piece. But read Homans' article in full (and the aforementioned pomo-liberaltarians cited herein, all found at Memeorandum). One of the sentences at the piece that captures the essence of the pomo-zeitgeist is from the discussion of Jonah Goldberg's commentary on today's college culture: Conservatives "have a problem with young people."

That's what everyone keeps saying? From David Brooks to David Frum to Meghan McCain, it's all about, "Dude, you've got to attract the up-and-comers or you'll be the permanent minority." So what are conservatives supposed to do to prevent that? Join the progressive majority, of course. But first they'll have to off-load the "Christianists," although that might be hard, considering that these evil evangelicals make up about a quarter of the electorate, and there's little genuine support for the notion that faith-based voters will abandon the GOP.

"But that's not a big enough constituency for a minimum winning coalition," critics will say. "We've got to reach out the next wave of socially progressive voters." Perhaps. But in so doing conservatives won't be able to call themselves that anymore. Gay marriage? Pro-choice on abortion? Tax-and-spend for a "green economy"? You've got to be kidding me, right? The pomos should just join the Democratic Party? Andrew Sullivan's already mouthing the Obamacrats' social-policy talking points. It should be a no-brainer for these idiots. It's mind boggling sometimes, really. You'd think today's conservatives were never kids. I know college campuses. For the life of me I can't think of one liberal policy outside Pell Grants that will really help the life chances of today's young. I've got students in my classes who are fresh out of high school with kids in kindergarten (so some girls are having babies before they're 15 years-old). I've got inner-city students who've had their children murdered. Others didn't learn to speak English until first grade, as only Spanish was spoken in the home. And don't even get me going about academic skills. Decades of "progressive" education and the collapse of rigorous expectations for the disadvantaged have sapped whatever will to upward mobility we might otherwise see in poor and minority communities. Attend classes in any humanities and social sciences department nowadays and you'll have radical ideology rammed down your throat, contrary to Michael Bérubé might say otherwise. Yeah, go to Berkeley or Harvard Yard and you'll get your Yglesias wannabes. They should move to Sweden.

There are untold numbers of young conservatives, and they're not all white Christians. I read hundreds of term paper assignments every semester, and I'm always pleased to see what's frankly a pushback among the "silent" faction that thinks Obamessianism is a joke. These kids think childhood pregnancy and liberal abortion policies are a disaster. Perhaps its religion or strong family cultures, but traditional values are not out of step with a large segment of today's young people. The meme that conservatives and the GOP absolutely must court young "progessives" is the big lie of the Daily Kos-David Frum-Andrew Sullivan new-left-pomo axis. While the youth vote turned out in large numbers in 2008 for the Democrats, the results in the long run may be specific to the issues of this election and the charisma of this president. The suggestion that demographics-is-destiny for the GOP is thus time-bound to the extant backlash against the Bush administration in particular, and may be an ephemeral trend overall. The push to capture the youth vote assumes as well continued high rates of participation among the young, social progressive age cohort. But 2008 was a perfect storm of leftist-social activism, and it's a flawed determinism to suggest that the stars will stay aligned for future elections. Complacency at having achieved change, and outright revulsion at Democratic incompetence and totalitarianism, will turn off many younger Democratic backers as the euphoria of change wears off. And on gay marriage, the issue that seems to be a proxy for the pomo battle lines, polls in California and nationally show large majorities who favor alternative equilibria to full-blown same-sex marriage rights, and these findings are stable for the last year or so, at a time when gay rights activism has received unprecedented coverage in the press.

If conservatism is to mean anything, it's that society changes along with the forces of proscription and tradition. To push too rapidly is to court reaction. This is exactly what the No on H haters are doing, and we only have to look to gay activists themselves for proof of a pushback to folks like Andrew Sullivan and the Extraordinary Gentlemen.

Culture 11's death was well deserved. And the folks now singing its praises ought to enjoy the good times while they last. The "emerging progressive majority" is anything but.

Why Progressives Oppose the Geithner Bank Plan

Glenn Greenwald has a hilariously hubristic post up harrumphing the left's "superior" principles in opposing the Obama administration's policies. That's in contrast, of course, to how the "lock-step" conservative-right laid down in submission to the Bush administration's every power grab:

Over the last month, the Obama administration has made numerous decisions in the civil liberties area that are replicas of some of the most controversial and radical actions taken by the Bush administration, and the most vocal critics of those decisions by far were the very same people – ostensibly on "the Left" - who spent the last several years objecting to the same policies as part of the Bush administration’s radicalism. Identically, many of Obama's most consequential foreign policy decisions - in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Pakistan - have been criticized by many on the Left. Opposition to Obama’s bank bailout plan is clearly being driven by liberal economists, pundits and bloggers, and much of the criticism over the AIG debacle came from liberals as well. There was pervasive liberal criticism over some of Obama's key appointments, including Tom Daschle, John Brennan and Tim Geithner. That's more independent progressive thinking in two months than the "conservative movement" exhibited with regard to Bush in six years.

Yeah. Right.

One would hope Greenwald might provide a few links to all of those on "the Left" who are so vigorously opposing the new administration's "consequential foreign policy" decisions. As far as I can tell, the criticisms, on Afghanistan for example, are more about the Bush administration getting us involved in the first place than about Obama's babbling incoherence since taking office (Matthew Yglesias is a case in point).

But on the Geithner plan, the left is not opposing Obama because of any "massive expansion of government." In fact, it's the opposite. As James Pethokoukis shows, the left is upset because Obama's not doing enough to reward the progressives with more big government programs:

Liberals are mad that private investment funds are involved. Many liberals speak scornfully of the so-called "hedge fund Democrats" such as Chuck Schumer who are pro-Wall Street and pro-globalization. The whole Geithner plan, in that it uses private investment money, smells like a creation of the hedge fund Democrats to make fat profits for their campaign contributors with little risk. Profits are privitized and risk is socialized. And why should Wall Street, which caused the problem, they argue, profit from fixing it? The big stock market rally only emphasized the point.

***

Liberals are mad Uncle Sam won't get all the profits. I think this is the big one. Liberals aren't worried that the Geithner Plan won't work. They're worried it will. See, when the Paulson Plan came out last September, the Bush White House insisted the scheme would eventually make money for the government since it was buying all these artificially undervalued, distressed assets that would one day rise in price. Former hedge fund manager Andy Kessler agreed, and publicly estimated that the $700 billion toxic asset buy could generate more than $2 trillion for the government. A few days later, New York Times columnist Tom Friedman was already spending that dough in an effort to "green the bailout", insisting the profits from the Paulson Plan be invested in a "smart transmission grid or mass transit." But the Geithner Plan splits the profits 50-50, and the government's share may further be eroded by $750 billion in new capital injections. Not much money left over for a Green New Deal.

So, Glenn Greenwald can just shut up. Every political constituency wants more for their cause. The right supported an expansion of state power to protect Americans. The left wants an expansion of state power to expropriate Americans. And that's the real "meaningful difference between the 'conservative movement' and many progressives."

Strip-Searches Go to the Supreme Court

Recalling how leftists said Representative Michelle Bachman should be "stripsearched every time she comes close to the President," check today's story at the New York Times on strip-searches and the Fourth Amendment, "Strip-Search of Girl Tests Limit of School Policy." The plaintiff, Savana Redding, was 13 years-old when she was subjected to a humiliating strip-search under her school's "zero-tolerance" anti-drug policies:

The case will require the justices to consider the thorny question of just how much leeway school officials should have in policing zero-tolerance policies for drugs and violence, and the court is likely to provide important guidance to schools around the nation.

In Ms. Redding’s case, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, in San Francisco, ruled that school officials had violated the Fourth Amendment’s ban on unreasonable searches. Writing for the majority, Judge Kim McLane Wardlaw said, “It does not require a constitutional scholar to conclude that a nude search of a 13-year-old child is an invasion of constitutional rights.”

“More than that,” Judge Wardlaw added, “it is a violation of any known principle of human dignity.”

But Michelle Bachmann's not worthy of that dignity, apparently. See also, Ed Morrissey, "Strip-searching teenage girls in school?", and Memeorandum.

Obama Honeymoon is Over

Via Jeff Goldstein and Robert Stacy McCain, President Barack Obama's poll numbers in the latest Zogby survey have dropped to 50 percent approval:

The honeymoon is over, a national poll will signal today as President Obama’s job approval stumbles to about 50 percent over the lack of improvement with the crippled economy.

The sobering numbers come as the president backpedals from two prime-time gaffes - one comparing his bowling score to a Special Olympian and another awkwardly laughing about the economy, which prompted Steve Kroft of “60 Minutes” to ask “are you punch-drunk?”

Pollster John Zogby said his poll out today will show Americans split on the president’s performance. He said the score factors out to “about 50-50.”

Some polls show Obama coasting with a 65 percent job approval, but not in Zogby’s tally.

“The numbers are going down,” Zogby told the Herald. “It’s not because of the gaffes, but a combination of high expectations and that things aren’t moving fast enough with the economy.”

The Other McCain adds this:

This has got to scare Democrats to death, because the whole point of hitching their wagons to Obama's star was that Obama was popular. In fact, one might say that Plouffe, Axelroad & Company developed a formula in which "popular" was an acceptable synonym for "successful." But the gross incompetence of the Obama administration can't be solved by P.R. gimmicks.

See also, Gallup's new survey data, "AIG, Congress, Geithner Target of Bonus Backlash." Only President Obama escapes the public wrath, but barely, with a mediocre 54 percent majority saying they're satisfied the way he's handled the AIG controversy.

See more analysis at Memeorandum.

From Steve Benen's Commenters...

William Jacobson wrote a great piece yesterday taking down Alex Knapp, an alleged libertarian, but I thought it worth sharing some of the comments from Steve Bennen's post harrumphing Knapp's meme. This stuff is all ignorant grandstanding - these people wouldn't know what freedom looked like it if hit them on the head:

A lot of this is Michelle Malkin's (aka 'The Kabuki Queen') thespian production.

***

I often wonder why so many middle class people vote for these Republicans - that party has done absolutely nothing to help them with education, healthcare, tax breaks. The GOP are certainly crafty in their duplicity.

***

Don't feel sorry for them. Their blind-stupid votes for repugs forced the rest of us to suffer under a government we didn't deserve.

I only wish they could actually suffer from this administration the way we and the whole world suffered from Smirky/Darth.

***

It's hard to feel sorry for folks who spent 8 or 10 hours a day listening to talk radio or watching Fox blather instead of--shucks--reading a book or taking a walk or teaching their kids and grandkids how to use a screwdriver or any number of other things that make more sense.

***

These people are not conned.

What we see here is social conservative personality disorder.

The social conservaitves' standard ploy is almost invariably to do nothing and make a spectacle out of it, consequently they are self-righteously indignant at the idea of anyone else doing anything.

As if they had the slightest clue.

It's a learning disability.

***

I've been a full-time resident in Florida (southwest) now for almost 6 years. I'm not sure what makes people down here so crazy, except that a majority of the residents aren't native to the state (ncluding me) and are largely from the mid-west and atlantic states. TONS of them from Minnesota, Michigan, Iowa and so forth. The ones from the atlantic states (i.e., New York, Mass, PA) tend to be moderates at least, and some liberals. The rest seem to be folks from the mid-west who are very financially secure, many of them with second homes down here. I'd say it's in the water or something, but I've not been infected by their b.s. What I DO know is that the folks I know the best down here listen to ONLY Fox News for their information and read the local papers here, which all lean to the right. And trying to find either a moderate or left-leaning radio talk show is close to impossible. A few folks I know "woke up," but the great majority are just as right-wing Republican as always. The one thing these people all have in common is that they are very well off, if not "rich." Any ideas that threaten their status quo is seen as a threat, and it doesn't help that many of them are as old as dirt. Well...I'm as old as dirt myself I guess (61), but have always been a free-thinker and a Libra. It makes a difference. Needless to say, I don't get invited to many parties these days!

***

So, the wingnut followers are now literally protesting against straw men. They are upset that Obama is taking away their guns (no gun laws are proposed), raising their taxes (he's actually lowering them), and in some vague way imposing on their freedoms (he's actually cut back on domestic spying and other unconstitutional Bush practices).

The scary part is that they really believe this stuff -- gun restrictions, tax increases, liberty reductions.

***

As one of the commenters on Knapp's site pointed out, the Tea Party part is humorous - but the "Going Galt" part is downright hysterical. Apparently, wingers can't read - otherwise they'd be aware that the John Galt of "Atlas Shrugged" is not who they think he is...

In the end, it doesn't matter, because they are getting exactly as much media attention as they deserve.

***

Faith in Our Fathers

Some readers might have come across Sippican Cottage's commemoration of his recently-passed father, a ball gunner on a B-24J bomber during the Pacific campaign in World War II. It was quite moving, and as we're always touched by poignant memorials to our fathers who served in the "Good War," let me share Bloviating Zeppelin's piece on his dad, Richard, was an Army Air Corps bomber pilot in the war. BZ's original memoriam is here, but he's also got a letter his grandather wrote to his father before the latter shipped off to fight:

You are indeed a fortunate individual in that you are on the threshold of the new America that will arm itself to insure the retention of its principles of freedom, and by the very reason of your being a part of this greater respect and a deeper love of those principles for which America stands.

So in the realization of a real success in the job you have ahead of you and I have complete confidence that you will be a success which can be measured only in terms of Honesty, Simplicity, Tolerance and Respectability -- there can be no greater honor or reward that could possibly come to me than in being ---

Your Dad

Read the whole thing, here.

Hat Tip: Vinegar and Honey.

Michele Bachmann: Keeper of the Conservative Flame

Regular readers may remember my post from last fall, "Michele Bachmann and the Conservative Future." At the time, Representative Bachmann was facing a battle for her political life after the netroots hordes excoriated her for speaking truth to power about the Democratic-socialists in the United States Congress. I quickly logged on to her website, Michelle Bachmann for Congress, and made a contribution. I'm now on her mailing list, proudly so.

Well it turns out Ms. Bachmann's in the news for the commments she made over the weekend during a Northern Alliance program with John Hinderaker and Brian Ward. It turns out Ms. Bachmann was discussing her current work in resisting the collectivists in Washington. When discussing her use of modern social-networking technologies to keep in contact with her constituents, Ms. Bachmann remarked:

I’m a foreign correspondent on enemy lines and I try to let everyone back here in Minnesota know exactly the nefarious activities that are taking place in Washington.

Minnesota's Smart Politics puts this in the context by providing quotes of her earlier statements:

I would say there are probably 30 keepers of the flame over here…The main thing we can do right now is be foreign correspondents reporting to you from enemy lines ....

I want people in Minnesota armed and dangerous on this issue of the energy tax because we need to fight back. Thomas Jefferson told us ‘having a revolution every now and then is a good thing,’ and the people – we the people – are going to have to fight back hard if we’re not going to lose our country. And I think this has the potential of changing the dynamic of freedom forever in the United States.

I'll be the first to say, unequivocally, this is not controversial.

Really, as the old saying goes, "politics ain't beanbag." As far as I'm concerned, the Obamacrats are indeed the enemy, out to destroy this country, and Michelle Bachmann knows it: "Michele Bachmann isn’t afraid to stand up to the Democrats and say what she believes." Naturally, the lefties don't like it. The closer she hits to home, the harder the nihilists hit back. Here's a sample of the comments from the Smart Politics thread:

Unfortunately, this is what happens when politicians are incapable of understanding the issues, unwilling to listen to people who can fix the situation, and would prefer to take the whole country down rather than work with or learn something from someone new.

***

I want this nutjob - and others like her - stripsearched every time she comes close to the President. It would NOT at ALL surprise me if at one point people like her get the insane idea that they need to "save" the nation and do stupid things.

The last comment is particularly totalitarian. Exercizing your First Amendment rights gets you - "and others like her" - "stripsearched"?

But check out Firedoglake as well as well, with a post attacking Representative Bachmann as Nazi stormtrooper:

This is beyond unhinged. It sounds like a press release from Stormfront.

Let's imagine for a moment the Faux News/National Review/InstaMalkin/RedState freak out if, say, Debbie Wasserman Schultz gave a radio interview with Kos in 2005 and referred to the Bush administration and the GOP congress as an evil, foreign enemy.

How loud and non-stop would the drumbeat of right-wing outrage get before she'd be forced to apologize on the House floor?

But that's the thing about the right-wing. They engage in this kind of political hate speech so often, it literally goes unnoticed when one of their sitting members of Congress calls the President "the enemy."

Well, I don't know about Debbie Wasserman Schultz, but Markos Moulitsas is up for the job:

I have been sweating rumors that Bush will replace Cheney with someone more exciting, charismatic, engaging, friendly, and, well, less evil ... I won't rest easy just yet ... Bush needs Cheney so he, himself, can look less evil. Literally.

God bless Representative Michelle Bachmann. She speaks for me!

"Jail the Rich" Protests in San Francisco

Via Gateway Pundit, "jail the rich" demonstrations in San Francisco (from the Chronicle):

Umbrellas mixed with protest signs Saturday in San Francisco, where demonstrators marked the sixth anniversary of the war in Iraq with speeches, chanting and a march up Market Street that stretched about three blocks.

In typical San Francisco fashion, the demonstration, which began at Justin Herman Plaza, attracted support for a broad medley of causes.

Protesters carried signs about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Israel-Palestinian conflict, 9/11 conspiracies, jail time for Wall Street bankers, single-payer health care and Proposition 8, the same-sex marriage ban. There were grandmothers for peace, brass bands for peace and dozens of dogs for peace.

The protest remained peaceful, if slightly soggy, until the main group arrived at Civic Center Plaza. There, scores of pro-Israel protesters waving Israeli flags were waiting for the larger contingent, which included many pro-Palestinian protesters ....

Much of the protest focused on the economic crisis. One man ran through the crowd dressed as a banker, with fake money spilling out of his hat and briefcase. Judy Greenspan, a third-grade teacher in Richmond who recently received a pink slip, led the crowd at Justin Herman Plaza in a chant, "Jail the rich, bail out the poor, stop the foreclosures, stop the war."

The video above chronicles the "police oppression."

The New Humanism

I was reminded of Repsac3, and his merry band at American Nihilist, upon reading Roger Scruton's essay, "The New Humanism":

Like so many modern ideologies, the new humanism seeks to define itself through what it is against rather than what it is for. It is for nothing, or at any rate for nothing in particular. Ever since the Enlightenment there has been a tendency to adopt this negative approach to the human condition, rather than to live out the exacting demands of the Enlightenment morality, which tells us to take responsibility for ourselves and to cease our snivelling. Having shaken off their shackles and discovered that they have not obtained contentment, human beings have a lamentable tendency to believe that they are victims of some alien force, be it aristocracy, the bourgeoisie, capitalism, the priesthood, or simply the belief in God. And the feeling arises that they need only destroy this alien force, and happiness will be served up on a plate, in a garden of pleasures. That, in my view, is why the Enlightenment, which promised the reign of freedom and justice, issued in an unending series of wars.

Repsac3 has declared he's Unitarian, which has been discredited as disguised humanism amenable to atheism. It's nihilism, in other words, pure nothingness, just as Scruton shows.

Saber Point on Obama

My friend Stogie at Saber Point is short and sweet on Barack Obama, "Barack Obama: Naive, Ignorant and Dangerously Incompetent":

Barack Obama is the biggest jackass to insult the office of the Presidency since Jimmy Carter. What we said about him in the presidential campaign has proven completely true. He is naive, ignorant, inexperienced, and burdened with a radical left ideology that simply doesn't work in the real world. However, his massive shortcomings are exacerbated by his massive ego, fantasies and delusions. He is every bit the bad news we told you he would be, America; but in your self-delusion, you voted for the asshole anyway.

Speaking of bad news, President Obama is in some hot water for his letter to former French Prime Minister Jacques Chirac, where he indicated that "we will be able to work together, in the coming four years, in a spirit of peace and friendship to build a safer world ..." The Christian Science Monitor tried to defend the President, but Fausta provides the decisive smackdown: "Obama’s Letter to Chirac."

News From Protein Wisdom

I checked Protein Wisdom's page this morning and the screen was blank, except for the Pajamas Media ad and a "gone fishing" notice. I thought that was it, Jeff Goldstein was hanging up his keyboard after Roger Simon put the kibosh to Pajamas' blog ad network.

But that wasn't it after all. Jeff's got a somewhat ominous post up now, "In response to a public lynching: Patrick Frey has no honor. In my opinion. Which qualifier, like, saves me from a libel suit I think...":

Now that I’ve stepped back and cleared my head a bit…

From a comment I left over at Stacy McCain’s:

Patterico writes:

Oh, and Serr8d: I reject your implication that I am unprincipled. To put it kindly: bugger off. I *think* Robert recognizes that I am not unprincipled, and I think that fair-minded people who actually take the time to read my words (and not how they are characterized elsewhere) will agree.

Okay, let’s put an end to this convenient and self-serving fiction once and for all.

Patterico used a trumped up charge of a non-existent “death threat” to ban me from his site.

Once he’d established the pretext for disallowing me to defend myself — and giving his commenters the freedom to attack me without my having recourse to respond directly to them (something I’ve never disallowed him to do on my site) — he then encouraged people to support his “honor” at the expense of mine. He set up a lynch mob and then pretended to wash his hands of the whole thing.

One of his commenters, after having already declared that I was guilty of acting in bad faith with respect to debating Patterico on the issues of language (another ridiculous charge, inasmuch as I’ve consistently and patiently answered his questions, even going so far as to write a primer for him on semiotics, sent via email; and as anyone who’s been following my posts on the topic, or who read my Hot Air essay knows, I am committed to the argument, and have always welcomed those who wish to debate it), decided he’d “look at the evidence” and decide who was at fault for the way this has all turned.

There's (lots) more at the link.

As for "the argument," I haven't followed the debate between Jeff and Paterico's all that closely. I certainly didn't know it was getting this intense. I read Paterico's post on the post-CPAC conservative crack-up, "David Frum Does Not Speak for Me Any More Than Rush Limbaugh Does." He hammered Frum and Limbaugh, although he gave little indication of a preferred path forward for conservatives (other than "don't be too hard on those poor liberals"). Patterico's subsequently got in a "last word" at his blog, "Purity, Common Sense, and The Case of the Missing Comment

Jeff's earlier response at Hot Air, both more cerebral and pointed, is found in "How I learned to stop worrying and love the f-bomb."

Obviously, from a look at Jeff's links, the debate's continued to escalate.

So, folks will have to sort through some of these threads themselves, if they're interested.

I like Jeff. He's posted some of my stuff to Protein Wisdom, so I'm not impartial. But on the merits of argumentation (and in context to my past readings of Patterico, who favors gay marriage), I think Jeff's makes the more rigorous case for a possible conservative vision. What's particularly good about Jeff is that he's willing to fight! I see so much pansied compromise, from the David Brookses and David Frums, who are saying we just can't have a socially conservative party, blah, blah, blah. As I've noted here a few times already, conservatism's going to come back strong through an alliance of "hard" classical liberalism (like Jeff's) and core-values conservatism (which I've been promoting). We can come up with some different labels, but if conservatives are to remain at the core of the GOP coalition, these two contingents are going to be essential to a party comeback. If Patterico's going with the "progressive Repubicans," despite his protests to Frum, count me out. There are some principles involved here, and capitulating to the right's Obama-enablers violates most of those conservatives should hold sacred.

Cases in False Equivalence: Tea Parties and Iraq

Via Memeorandum, Alex Knapp perfectly demonstrates the left's false equivalencies, "Tea Parties, Going Galt, Iraq, and Delicious Irony":

The folks in the blogosphere largely cheerleading the Tea Parties are the same folks in the blogosphere who cheerleaded the war in Iraq. So apparently, government intervention to the tune of $650 Billion is okay to spend when it comes to an unnecessary war that in no way advances American interests, but not okay when it comes to building bridges, cutting taxes, helping state governments meet budget shortfalls, or making sure that Americans don’t get covered in lava. Gotcha.

Check Knapp's post for more "delicious ironies" of false equivalence. But this line is classic: "At the time, I did support the Iraq invasion, which in hindsight was stupid." Stupid on Iraq, like Andrew Sullivan.

As for the "unnecessity" of Iraq? This is the left's "Big Lie, and it's an old debate, with consequences. As Arthur Borden has noted:

President Bush was right to confront Iraq. While the decision to go to war is in the past and cannot be reversed, the emerging consensus that it was a mistake is not. Unless we can revisit the debate over the invasion, and comprehend President Bush's reasons for removing Saddam Hussein, we will be unprepared to debate policy toward Iran - and potentially ill-equipped to prevent Tehran from achieving the regional domination through weapons of mass destruction (WMD), which we denied Baghdad.

Borden's book lays out this argument in detail: A Better Country: Why America Was Right to Confront Iraq.

See also, Legal Insurrection, "Confused Blogger Hates Tea Parties (Title Changed to "Instalanche Loving Blog Hates Instapundit")."

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UPDATE: Interestingly, I cited Andrew Sullivan above as an illustration of the left's total hypocrisy on this - you know, "I supported the war before I was against it" baloney. Well, my sixth sense must be working this morning, as Mr. Sullivan's got a post reiterating Knapp's false equivalencies:

My sense is that it is a delayed reaction in some ways to Bush, and his betrayal of conservatism. For all sorts of reasons, most of the current tea-partiers backed the GOP under Bush and Cheney, although some, to be fair, did complain about some of it. The pent-up frustrations behind conservatism's collapse under Republicans were trumped, however, by the fruits of power, partisan hatred of "the left", defensiveness over the Iraq war and torture, and, above all religious devotion to the Leader. Now that Bush has been removed, the massive damage done, and a pragmatic liberal is trying to sort out the mess in a sane, orderly fashion, they've gone nuts.

There's more at the link, and Memeorandum.

And in case you missed, see last night's post, "Andrew Sullivan: Unrepentant, Still Clinical

Obama’s Economic Brain Trust

From John Heilemann's essay at New York Magazine, on Tim Geithner and Larry Summers:

When Obama appointed Geithner and Summers back in November, the reaction in Washington and on Wall Street was the same: first relief and then elation. (The day the news of Geithner’s selection leaked, the Dow rose 6.5 percent.) They were brilliant, experienced, crisis-tested, market-minded but progressive, a kind of economic-policy dream team. Since then, they have worked side by side along with Fed chair Ben Bernanke to quell an economic crisis as monstrous as any since the Great Depression—while formulating an economic agenda as ambitious as any since FDR’s. They’ve unveiled big plans, talked big talk, and crafted and shepherded into law the biggest fiscal-stimulus package in American history.

But Obamanomics represents something even bigger than all that. At a moment when the fundamental precepts of market capitalism and government’s relationship to the economy are up for grabs, the Obamans are attempting nothing less than a redefinition of progressivism, which could alter the terms of political engagement and the ideological balance of power for decades to come. With their budget, they have laid out a vision that, as former Labor secretary Robert Reich puts it, “reverses and repudiates the economic philosophy that has dominated America since 1981.” Obamanomics isn’t merely the end of Reaganomics, in other words. It’s the end of Rubinomics, too.

An agenda this transformative is bound to stir up criticism, and so it has—from the left and the right, Wall Street and Main Street, arch-Establishmentarians and hot-eyed populists in roughly equal measure. The complaints of these factions vary wildly, but they share a point of agreement: that the administration so far has badly mishandled the banking crisis; that it’s dithered, dawdled, and dinked around instead of delivering bold, decisive action. For Obama, confronting this issue poses a vexing dilemma. Saving the banks is the sine qua non for the country’s emergence from its ever-deepening miasma, but in doing so, Obama risks incurring a tsunami of bailout rage. If, on the other hand, he appeals too much to populism, he risks driving elites away. Either outcome could deny him the support he needs for the rest of his agenda. Getting the economics right may be devilishly difficult—but the politics are even trickier, and just as crucial.

I love the understatement: "An agenda this transformative is bound to stir up criticism ..."

You think?

See Michelle Malkin, "Today, hapless, truth-challenged tax cheat Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner officially unveils another $1 trillion magic trick. Instead of letting failed banks fail, we’ll have another desperately massive and massively desperate attempt to prop them up through a 'public private partnership investment program'."

Cartoon Credit: Michael Ramirez. See also, Memeorandum.

Secure Computing Commissar's Web Filtering

The progressive Internet commissars may have your number!

Don't miss the " Trusted Source" web filtering URL checker! It works like postmodern magic!

Michelle Malkin's extreme! Pamela Geller's blog is markd as "hate/descrimination." American Power sneaked by the progressive thought-filtering police: "wiki/blog."

From Omessiah's secret police:

Comrades! Those who question the supreme leadership of The One are guilty of Extreme thought crime! They must be silenced for the good and fairness of the people! Fear not, SUPERFILTER is there for us comrades. Another throught criminal sent to the ether-gulag - it shall indeed be a glorious day! Praise supreme leader!

Punch Drunk Obama: Inappropriate Affect

Steve Croft to President Barack Obama on last night's 60 Minutes (which I watched during dinnertime): “Are you punch-drunk?”

Gaius identifies Obama's case of "inappropriate affect” : "Emotional responses that are out of context, such as laughter when hearing sad news."

Everything's funny to this president.

Full interview transcript, here.

Sexsomnia

This is Haley Batty, "sexsomniac":

"I can have sex three or four times a night if the guys have the stamina, but in the morning I won’t know anything about it ..."

Hat Tip: Glenn Reynolds.

Congratulations to Ann Althouse!

Ann Althouse is getting married.

"Let there be no doubt about it": Blogging is good for your love life.

Congratulations!

Photo Credit: "Goodbye to Cinncinati."

Andrew Sullivan: Unrepentant, Still Clinical

Get a load of this:

I should say I regret nothing about my blogging about Sarah Palin last year and would do it again - with feeling - if such a duplicitous farce of an apparatchik were to be advanced as a possible leader for the US in the future. None of the crucial factual evidence for her constant fabulisms was ever provided and the MSM, as uninterested in the truth as they are eager for their own reputations, curled up into a little ball of deference. As for my use of the term Christianist, here's my defense of the word, from 2006 ...

Andrew Sullivan's in his own clinical world. If folks missed it during the election, the best response to Sullivan's paranoid psychosis is AOSHQ, "Don't Go Over There, But Sullivan Is Pushing (of Course!) Trig Trutherism Now":

He's gone fucking bananas, due to AIDS or steroids or other reasons, and if we're not observing a minimum level of politeness and civility anymore - if innocent 16 year old girls are now valid targets - I see no reason to continue extending the courtesy of polite silence to Sullivan ... Let's see a brain scan, buddy. Let's get some answers to these questions. Medical fucking answers.

What's especially interesting in Sullivan's pathetic self-defense, is how he's responding to another pathetic self-defense, this time at the home of the Extraordinary Gentlemen, where the gang's reduced to calling off accusations of "Sullivan Group Think." That's right, you can't make this stuff up! For example, here:

I’m disinclined to place much stock in those folks who feel like epitheting via Andrew’s name is a damning criticism of anyone’s writing or thought process ... Look, the fact of the matter is that it is a rare (perhaps non-existent) human being who isn’t influenced by someone’s body of work and thought, and the beauty of our modern polities is that we have free rein to decide for ourselves who it is that we choose to be influenced by. The “group think” meme seems to assume that those of us who respect and even — dare I say it? — admire Andrew Sullivan, do so without any speck of criticism for what Andrew says or how he says it. Of course, that simply isn’t true of 99% of the cases, and it certainly isn’t true of this site, where as much criticism gets layed at Andrew’s feet as does praise.

Oh. My. God! You have got to be kidding me!

"Layed" at Andrew's feet? Yo, there's got to be a double entendre in there somewhere! And calling Mr. Webster!

And don't forget to check the Sitemeter folks. Oh, say wot you Ordinary Gentlemen! It's all Sullivan! Thy up to a bit of "bareback" blogging, eh mates? NTTAWWT!

The Sitemeter's spinning Andrew's gold right now, Sunday night, but pretty soon you'll see Ross Douthat, Daniel Larison, Will Wilkinson over there as well. They'll be chanting: "Oh, Great Sully!" Palin-bashing "liberaltarians" of the world unite! You have nothing to lose but your "National Greatness"!

Great Powers and the Indian Ocean

Robert Kaplan's lead article at the latest issue of Foreign Affairs is a classic, "Center Stage for the 21st Century: Power Plays in the Indian Ocean":

The greater Indian Ocean region encompasses the entire arc of Islam, from the Sahara Desert to the Indonesian archipelago. Although the Arabs and the Persians are known to Westerners primarily as desert peoples, they have also been great seafarers. In the Middle Ages, they sailed from Arabia to China; proselytizing along the way, they spread their faith through sea-based commerce. Today, the western reaches of the Indian Ocean include the tinderboxes of Somalia, Yemen, Iran, and Pakistan -- constituting a network of dynamic trade as well as a network of global terrorism, piracy, and drug smuggling. Hundreds of millions of Muslims -- the legacy of those medieval conversions -- live along the Indian Ocean's eastern edges, in India and Bangladesh, Malaysia and Indonesia.

The Indian Ocean is dominated by two immense bays, the Arabian Sea and the Bay of Bengal, near the top of which are two of the least stable countries in the world: Pakistan and Myanmar (also known as Burma). State collapse or regime change in Pakistan would affect its neighbors by empowering Baluchi and Sindhi separatists seeking closer links to India and Iran. Likewise, the collapse of the junta in Myanmar -- where competition over energy and natural resources between China and India looms -- would threaten economies nearby and require a massive seaborne humanitarian intervention. On the other hand, the advent of a more liberal regime in Myanmar would undermine China's dominant position there, boost Indian influence, and quicken regional economic integration.

In other words, more than just a geographic feature, the Indian Ocean is also an idea. It combines the centrality of Islam with global energy politics and the rise of India and China to reveal a multilayered, multipolar world. The dramatic economic growth of India and China has been duly noted, but the equally dramatic military ramifications of this development have not. India's and China's great-power aspirations, as well as their quests for energy security, have compelled the two countries "to redirect their gazes from land to the seas," according to James Holmes and Toshi Yoshihara, associate professors of strategy at the U.S. Naval War College. And the very fact that they are focusing on their sea power indicates how much more self-confident they feel on land. And so a map of the Indian Ocean exposes the contours of power politics in the twenty-first century.

Yet this is still an environment in which the United States will have to keep the peace and help guard the global commons -- interdicting terrorists, pirates, and smugglers; providing humanitarian assistance; managing the competition between India and China. It will have to do so not, as in Afghanistan and Iraq, as a land-based, in-your-face meddler, leaning on far-flung army divisions at risk of getting caught up in sectarian conflict, but as a sea-based balancer lurking just over the horizon. Sea power has always been less threatening than land power: as the cliché goes, navies make port visits, and armies invade. Ships take a long time to get to a war zone, allowing diplomacy to work its magic. And as the U.S. response to the 2004 tsunami in the Indian Ocean showed, with most sailors and marines returning to their ships each night, navies can exert great influence on shore while leaving a small footprint. The more the United States becomes a maritime hegemon, as opposed to a land-based one, the less threatening it will seem to others.

Moreover, precisely because India and China are emphasizing their sea power, the job of managing their peaceful rise will fall on the U.S. Navy to a significant extent. There will surely be tensions between the three navies, especially as the gaps in their relative strength begin to close. But even if the comparative size of the U.S. Navy decreases in the decades ahead, the United States will remain the one great power from outside the Indian Ocean region with a major presence there - a unique position that will give it the leverage to act as a broker between India and China in their own backyard. To understand this dynamic, one must look at the region from a maritime perspective.

Readers can access the full article at Foreign Affairs, but they've revamped their website, and free articles require registration (especially recommended for regulars of American Power). I rarely post subscription-only essays, but if I do, I'll make the key sections of articles available at my posts.

Image Credit: Foreign Affairs.

Bush Administration's Predator Air Strikes Degrade Al Qaeda in Pakistan

I was surprised to read the positive treatment, in the L.A. Times, of the Bush administration's policy of Predator drone stikes on Al Qaeda in Pakistan's tribal areas: "U.S. Missile Strikes Take Heavy Toll on Al Qaeda, Officials Say":

An intense, six-month campaign of Predator strikes in Pakistan has taken such a toll on Al Qaeda that militants have begun turning violently on one another out of confusion and distrust, U.S. intelligence and counter-terrorism officials say.

The pace of the Predator attacks has accelerated dramatically since August, when the Bush administration made a previously undisclosed decision to abandon the practice of obtaining permission from the Pakistani government before launching missiles from the unmanned aircraft.

Since Aug. 31, the CIA has carried out at least 38 Predator strikes in northwest Pakistan, compared with 10 reported attacks in 2006 and 2007 combined, in what has become the CIA's most expansive targeted killing program since the Vietnam War.

Because of its success, the Obama administration is set to continue the accelerated campaign despite civilian casualties that have fueled anti-U.S. sentiment and prompted protests from the Pakistani government.

I'm also a little surprised that President Obama is actually willing to carry on with a robust antiterror policy of his reviled predecessor.

What does not surprise me is the response on the left, especially that of Matthew Yglesias (via Memeorandum):

I can’t imagine that an American president ever would or should completely disavow the right to launch this sort of attack. But still, I think people should be concerned about our government’s growing enthusiasm for this tactic and the possibility that the Obama administration will start to rely on it even more heavily. Simply put, there’s little evidence to suggest that this kind of thing can achieve a strategic victory over al-Qaeda, though it may or may not reduce short-term vulnerabilities ... The impact of these strikes on public opinion in the Muslim world writ large, and specifically on political dynamics inside Pakistan, can easily outweigh the gains from killing even a bona fide bad guy.

Yeah. Right.

Al Qaeda's utterly decimated and Yglesias is (1) in classic neo-Marxist anti-imperial denial, and (2) public opinion in the Muslim world was badly shaken by last November's Mumbai attacks (see, "Muslims Condemn Mumbai Attacks, Worry About Image"); the evils that descended on the people of Mumbai, and most wrenchingly, Rabbi Gavriel Holtzberg and his wife Rivka, were planned and executed by many of the same remnant forces U.S. predator drones are now destroying.

The folks on the antiwar left are just awful people. As I've written previously, Matthew Yglesias has never met a policy of appeasement he didn't like.

Photo Credit: "The Radical Foreign Policy of Matthew Yglesias."

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UPDATE: I just found Daniel Byman's, "Taliban vs. Predator: Are Targeted Killings Inside Pakistan a Good Idea?" Here's a key nugget:

What the Obama administration’s reliance on Predator strikes ultimately shows is just how flummoxed U.S. policymakers are when it comes to Pakistan. Stopping al Qaeda from using Pakistan as a base will depend on strengthening the government of Pakistan and stiffening its will to go after its own homegrown jihadis - a tall order indeed. The current political leadership is weak and not fully committed to democracy and true reform. Civilian control over the military is nonexistent, and, in addition to the jihadist problem, bitter ethnic, sectarian, and political divisions threaten Pakistan’s unity. As the Obama administration begins the slow process of addressing these issues, the sad truth is that relying on bolts from the blue to keep al Qaeda and the Taliban weak and off balance is a sensible course to follow.