Commentary and analysis on American politics, culture, and national identity, U.S. foreign policy and international relations, and the state of education
- from a neoconservative perspective! - Keeping an eye on the communist-left so you don't have to!
My blog buddy William Jacobson's posting on Michelle Malkin'shate mail, so be sure to check it ou: "Just Say It - "All Immigration Laws Are Racist." Speaking of the left's "racist" allegations against Arizona's new immigration enforcement law, William notes:
At its heart, the accusations of racism stem from the view which many critics of the Arizona law share, but will not state: All our immigration laws are racist because the vast majority of illegal immigrants are non-white, and of those, a majority are Mexican. Immigration laws, therefore, must be racist, and those who seek enforcement of the laws are racists.
This is the argument which is not made, because it inevitably leads to an open border policy which is a non-starter politically. Open borders are advocated by many groups, but not explicitly by any major political party or politician.
Hence the tension. You will hear charges of racism no matter what is done to enforce the immigration laws.
Perfectly said, and extremely intersting, given that -- once again -- the left's latest attacks on Michelle reveal where today's true bigotry and racial obssession are found. See, "Breaking news: I am not white!":
The hate mail is on an increase again thanks to my outspoken defense of Arizona’s immigration enforcement measure. Too many to choose from, but here’s a typical response:
from Ruben ruben_baruch@sbcglobal.net to writemalkin@gmail.com date Thu, Apr 29, 2010 at 7:42 AM subject The color of your skin
Dear Michelle:
I have never met you or heard from you until today.
I didnt’ need to hear you for too long to know the kind of person you are or what are your personally.
I just wondering how or where did you learned to speak like the way you do.
Because you are are not white, and that is obvious, I would like to invite you to take a walk around or drive in Arizona and see and feel in your own skin the racism that exist [sic] in that state. I really would like you to experience first hand the racial prejudice ...
As I reported on air this afternoon via Michelle Moore’s updates, Illinois sent in the riot squad to stop the couple hundred peaceful protesters from … doing what it isn’t exactly clear. Protesters sang “God Bless America” and apparently that was enough to invoke the riot squad. Illinois may be running a deficit but sure has money to burn for silly and unnecessary things.
Additional links at the post (via Memeorandum). But Dana adds:
Who gave the order to call in the riot police on protesters? Word is that Secret Service from inside the venue and the presidential team pressured local law enforcement, who were against the idea. Local cops were overruled, I’m told by various sources, including a few members of local press. Moore reported that she overheard Secret Service telling the riot squad to “push them back, out of sight.“
Intimidation tactic. Plain and simple. There was no violence, no arguments, just a couple hundred patriots who sang patriotic songs and wore red, white, and blue. Unbelievable.
*UPDATE
Doug Edelman identifies this man as the one who called in the riot squad and said to “push them back, out of sight” ...
The tea partiers were completely peaceful throughout, as they always are.
The latest national survey by the Pew Research Center for the Press, conducted April 21-26 among 1,546 adults, finds that as many say the Republican Party (36%) as the Democratic Party (37%) could do better in improving the job situation. Four years ago, the Democrats enjoyed a 47% to 29% advantage on this issue. Similarly, the public is evenly split over which party could do a better job of dealing with banks and financial institutions (36% each). Nor is there a consensus on who can reduce the federal budget deficit (38% Republican vs. 35% Democratic Party).
The Democratic Party holds a significant edge on only one of six issues tested – dealing with the nation’s energy problems. Even there however, its 40% to 32% advantage over the GOP is far narrower than its 22-point lead last August (47% to 25%).
While not the most salient issue overall, the findings on foreign policy are also troubling to the Dems (respondents favor the GOP by a margin of 39 percent to 34 percent).
Members of Congress face the most anti-incumbent electorate since 1994, with less than a third of all voters saying they are inclined to support their representatives in November, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.
Dissatisfaction is widespread, crossing party lines, ideologies and virtually all groups of voters. Less than a quarter of independents and just three in 10 Republicans say they're leaning toward backing an incumbent this fall. Even among Democrats, who control the House, the Senate and the White House, opinion is evenly divided on the question.
It'd be an understatement to say I can hardly wait for the November elections. A couple of weeks ago Sean Trende published "How Bad Could 2010 Really Get For Democrats?" According to the article, on the possibility of the GOP takeover of Congress this year:
A 1994-style scenario is probably the most likely outcome at this point. Moreover, it is well within the realm of possibility - not merely a far-fetched scenario - that Democratic losses could climb into the 80 or 90-seat range. The Democrats are sailing into a perfect storm of factors influencing a midterm election, and if the situation declines for them in the ensuing months, I wouldn't be shocked to see Democratic losses eclipse 100 seats.
I'd stress again that most of what we've been seeing is general dissatisfaction with the nation's direction and intense unhappiness with incumbent Members of Congress. But the Dems hold the majority, and as the polls keep coming in with devastating findings for the party in power, I'm thinking, like Trende, I won't be shocked by the loss of 100 seats as well.
Last Sunday, while at the checkout stand at my local Ralphs, folks inside the store started gasping at a huge swarm of bees that began swirling out in the parking lot. I took my groceries home and came back with my camera. The bees had mellowed out by then:
You can see the hive as I got down a little bit:
And then a little closer:
I'm using my little Nikon Coolpix L20 Digital Camera with 3.6 Optical Zoom. It's been fantastic for point-and-click at tea parties, although not so great for closeups like these. Speaking of which, I'll have what Ann Althouse is having (er, using). Here's another angle of the hive. A couple of bees started to come at me, and while I'm not sure if these were the "killer" Africanized bees, I didn't feel threatened. That said, they were densely packed and potentially dangerous if someone were to get attacked by the swarm:
Africanized bees defend their colonies much more vigorously than do European bees. The colonies are easily disturbed (sometimes just by being nearby). When they do sting, many more bees may participate, so there is a danger of receiving more stings. This can make them life threatening, especially to people allergic to stings, or with limited capacity to escape (the young, old, and handicapped), and to confined livestock or pets. Once disturbed AHB will continue the attack for a long distance.
Texas Governor Rick Perry's in thenewstoday with the report that he killed a coyote while out for his morning jog:
Perry said he will carry his .380 Ruger - loaded with hollow-point bullets - when jogging on trails because he is afraid of snakes. He'd also seen coyotes in the undeveloped area.
When one came out of the brush toward his daughter's Labrador retriever, Perry charged.
"Don't attack my dog or you might get shot ... if you're a coyote," he said Tuesday.
I just shot a rattler this mornin' that was threatening my cat. Ain't no thang around these parts; we all has firearms. Then I ate me that rattler and made mah woman a necklace out of his bones.
There are some differences, I admit. I'm not running for reelection, which (along with my natural modesty) is why I'm also not dressing up my story with quotable quotes like "he became mulch."
And I don't have fans like Michelle Malkin to use my alleged accomplishment as proof that politicians she doesn't like are less than men:
This could cost Texas Governor Rick Perry the endorsement of PETA, but to save the life of his dog, it’s worth it...
In a related story, Florida Governor Charlie Crist screamed like a woman and jumped on a chair when he saw a mouse run out from under his tanning bed.
If you find that outburst about Crist weird and unseemly, remember: the sourcing is every bit as good as Perry's and mine.
Okay. Right.
Yeah, I'll give it to Roy that Michelle spoofin' Charlie Crist for "screaming like a woman" might be a little "wierd" or "unseemingly," except that Michelle didn't write the post. Doug Powers did. What's wierd is the striking contrast between Roy's lazer-like focus on his "Bikini Burlesque" (NSFW) babes and his total gender identity fail on the blogging at Michelle's. And it's even more weird given that Roy's a self-proclaimed expert on the happenings of the "Right Wing Blogosphere."
I know it's hard out there, Roy. But sheesh, I thought you were "da man" (NSFW)!
The Supreme Court on Wednesday reversed a lower court decision that could have required removal of a cross that has stood in California's Mojave National Preserve for generations.
Although it splintered in its reasoning, the court suggested strongly that the cross should remain because Congress has transferred the small plot on which it stands to a private group, addressing constitutional concerns.
"The goal of avoiding governmental endorsement does not require eradication of all religious symbols in the public realm," wrote Justice Anthony Kennedy. "This cross," he wrote, "evokes thousands of small crosses in foreign fields marking the graves of Americans who fell in battles."
The cross was originally erected on the site in 1934 by members of the Veterans of Foreign Wars, to honor American soldiers who died in World War I. The cross has been maintained or rebuilt over the decades by members of the veterans group.
No. In the days when the Internet was young, our hopes were high. As with any budding love affair, we wanted to believe our newfound object of fascination could change the world. The Internet was lauded as the ultimate tool to foster tolerance, destroy nationalism, and transform the planet into one great wired global village. Writing in 1994, a group of digital aficionados led by Esther Dyson and Alvin Toffler published a manifesto modestly subtitled "A Magna Carta for the Knowledge Age" that promised the rise of "'electronic neighborhoods' bound together not by geography but by shared interests." Nicholas Negroponte, then the famed head of the MIT MediaLab, dramatically predicted in 1997 that the Internet would shatter borders between nations and usher in a new era of world peace.
Well, the Internet as we know it has now been around for two decades, and it has certainly been transformative. The amount of goods and services available online is staggering. Communicating across borders is simpler than ever: Hefty international phone bills have been replaced by inexpensive subscriptions to Skype, while Google Translate helps readers navigate Web pages in Spanish, Mandarin, Maltese, and more than 40 other languages. But just as earlier generations were disappointed to see that neither the telegraph nor the radio delivered on the world-changing promises made by their most ardent cheerleaders, we haven't seen an Internet-powered rise in global peace, love, and liberty.
And we're not likely to. Many of the transnational networks fostered by the Internet arguably worsen -- rather than improve -- the world as we know it. At a recent gathering devoted to stamping out the illicit trade in endangered animals, for instance, the Internet was singled out as the main driver behind the increased global commerce in protected species. Today's Internet is a world where homophobic activists in Serbia are turning to Facebook to organize against gay rights, and where social conservatives in Saudi Arabia are setting up online equivalents of the Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice. So much for the "freedom to connect" lauded by U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in her much-ballyhooed speech on the Internet and human rights.
Sadly enough, a networked world is not inherently a more just world.
A Riverside County man took his mobile medical marijuana collective on the road several months ago. But authorities say he's running more than a pot collective out of his RV, and they've threatened to put him in jail.
Stewart Hauptman is a former jockey with arthritis in his knees. He says he's successfully used medical marijuana for quite some time to help deal with the pain.
"When it started to help me, I thought about other patients that might need the same type of help that I was getting," said Hauptman.
So he converted his 1985 Pace Arrow motor home into a medicinal marijuana collective with shelves and baskets for the pot.
"It's a mobile RV, it's a one of a kind. It was just my understanding what people need in this lifetime, they want service," said Hauptman.
It would appear Hauptman has everything he needs to conduct business. He has his articles of incorporation and a seller's permit, but he's missing perhaps the most important thing& the marijuana. That's because everywhere he tries to conduct business, law enforcement tells him it's against the law.
"They're not allowing me anywhere to go, that's why it sits here in my driveway," said Hauptman.
A third of registered voters are inclined to reelect their representatives in Congress, the fewest since the Republican Party rode voter discontent to control of the House and Senate 16 years ago, according to a new ABC News-Washington Post poll.
Nearly six in 10 said they'll instead look for someone new come the fall elections.
The impact on congressional races is uncertain, and the finding may chill incumbents of all stripes. But the dynamic does have a partisan cast: Republicans and swing-voting independents alike are far more likely than Democrats to be looking for change in Congress.
President Barack Obama's victory in Election 2008 was one of the greatest political triumphs in American history. But as things look now, he may also be remembered as recording the most massive midterm electoral losses in American history. If Sean Trende's right, we could see Democratic Party losses into the 100s. Talk about CHANGE!
And for a refreshing take, at left is Republican activist Kristee Kelley at the 2010 Indiana GOP State Dinner. As she writes at Theo's:
I tend to err on the side of modesty. I don't feel as though I have to show all my goodies to attract attention ... That said, I can't let the asinine Islamic cleric earthquake comments slide without protest.
Taking one for the team ...
Now that's what I'm talking about!
Now if we could just get Opus #6 off the ski slopes for a contribution we'd be stylin!
I feel almost a little obligation here, having reported the Erin Andrews peephole sensation more than any other blogger on the web. One of the biggest controversies surrounding Andrews' peephole controversy was the backlash against USA Today sports columnist Christine Brennan for arguing that Andrews had it coming:
"If you trade off your sex appeal, if you trade off your looks, eventually you're going to lose those ... She doesn't deserve what happened to her, but part of the shtick, seems to me, is being a little bit out there in a way that then are you encouraging the complete nutcase to drill a hole in a room."
"Women sports journalists need to be smart and not play to the frat house. There are tons of nuts out there."
Brennan later backed off the comments, saying that:
"Twitter is a great format for many things, but not for serious reflection on an important topic such as this. "
Given the intensity of the story, and the unprecedented coverage it got (roughly 10 days of 24/7 media saturation), it's easy to understand Brennan's regrets. But other commentators made similar remarks at the time, and Andrews' later GQ photoshoot -- published that August, but shot before the peephole crime -- definitely lent credence to Brennan's "playing to the frathouse" line. And now with Andrews' hyped celebrity on DWTS, it's something of a mystery as to what lessons the ESPN hottie took away from it all. She doesn't seem to have toned it down much. Indeed, I can't ever recall seeing her more made up than at this clip of her appearance on Jimmy Kimmel's last night. She's 32 and gorgeous, and I while she says she's currently isolated from sports talk, I somehow doubt that sportscasting's on the Erin Andrews horizon too much longer:
Also, flashback video of Christine Brennan on Reliable Sources last year:
Like everyone said at the time, let's hope something like this never happens again.
And a special thanks to Chris Smith of The Other McCain for his wise counsel on blogging this story.
Activists from the Lyndon LaRouche PAC set up shop on at the main crosswalk yesterday at Long Beach City College. I was walking back to my office across Carson Street when I spoke to the woman in the green shirt. I asked her, "How can you justify the Hitler mustache on President Obama? That's extreme." She then went into some whacked comparison between the U.S. and Nazi Germany. I disagreed politely and mentioned that I was professor of political science. She then proceeded to lobby me for classroom visits to meet my students! I almost laughed. I ran up to get my camera in my office. The scene upon returning:
A second woman was working the table. She was even more strident in her views of the U.S. as a Nazi regime:
Once I started taking pictures the woman in the green shirt clammed up. She refused to give me her name on the record for this report, and instead held up the LaRouche pamphlet and told me to contact the PAC's office. Not so confident and proud about the U.S.-Nazi analogy after all:
I have no problem with their activities, actually. It's their right. What bothers me is how the idiot leftist media makes these folks out to be tea partiers when they're not. They'reDemocrats:
Longtime readers will recall the first time I came across the LaRouchies: At the Adam Schiff town hall last summer. Interestingly, Wikipedia discusses the LaRouche PAC healthcare policies with a picture of the group's table from the event:
LaRouche's organization opposed the Obama administration's health care reform proposals, and its comparisons of U.S. President Barack Obama to German dictator Adolf Hitler in 2009 generated controversy. LaRouche called Obama's actions "impeachable," without actually calling for impeachment, due to his support of health insurance reform that LaRouche says is comparable to Hitler's Action T4 euthanasia program. The LaRouche movement has printed pamphlets with a picture on the front showing Obama and Hitler laughing together, and have made posters of Obama wearing a Hitler-style mustache. In Seattle, police have been called twice in response to people who were offended by the posters threatening to tear them apart or to assault the LaRouche supporters holding them.
As town hall meetings on this issue during the summer of 2009 began to attract very large and angry crowds, the comparison of Obama to Hitler began to show up on many signs and banners. The Atlantic wrote that LaRouche supporters "patented the Obama-is-Nazi theme."[149] The Anti-Defamation League issued a report titled, "Lyndon LaRouche, Holocaust Imagery & the Health Care Debate".
Nancy Spannaus, a LaRouche spokeswoman, told the Washington Times that the Obama policy was "a direct copy of the policy Hitler declared in October 1939, when Hitler issued the order for euthanasia against those determined, by a board of medical experts, to have 'lives unworthy to be lived.'" She said that the LaRouche alternative was to "cancel the bailout and HMOs, implement bankruptcy reorganization of the financial system, and return to the Hill-Burton system that made our health care the best in the world.
I've been totally busy at work and haven't been able to blog much today. Last night's Eagles gig was simply unbelievable. I was expecting a great show but the band's performance exceeded my expectations by far. I'll have more running comments on the show later, although I found this mini-review from a younger concert-goer that's worth sharing:
... on Sunday evening I went with my mom & my friend Simone (my brother's gf) to see The Eagles in concert at the Honda Center in Anaheim. It was SO FUN! Seriously, they were so good. I mean, what the hell do I know? They sounded great to me. I had fun. My mama had fun, my friend had fun. What else is there?? I pretty much knew all of their songs with the exception of songs off their new album (which I totally want to buy now!). Those guys are some seriously old, talented dudes. And I mean that totally respectfully. I'm guessing there was some pretty hard partying on their behalves in the 70's, and they earned those wrinkles, amongst other things. They played "Hotel California" just 3 songs in... so of course the crowd went wild. I also thought it was really cool that they played it so early into the set, they really gave the people what they wanted early on & that helped set the mood for the rest of the show. As it turns out we are all old fuddy duddies (technical term) and didn't stay to the very end. I'm sort of kicking myself for that because I didn't get to hear my favorite Eagles song, "Take It Easy".
Well, I'm happy to report that those "old dudes" played "Take It Easy" during the encore, as well as Joe Walsh's "Rocky Mountain Way." For the finale, Don Henley stepped away from his drumset to sing "Desperado" in the spotlight. We left the arena close to midnight. The band played a 3 1/2 hour set, and they waved goodbyes for what seemed like 10 minutes before walking off stage. As readers know, I've been to hundreds of concerts, and this was by far the best show I've seen in quite sometime -- and that's really saying a lot.
As usual, the piece is one of those balloon poppers LAT's so famous for. Note especially the quote from political scientist Larry Gerston:
"I don't know why Chuck DeVore has not done better. It is a mystery to me," said Larry Gerston, a political science professor at San Jose State University. "It does shock me that a guy like that, a good-looking guy with a good pedigree as far as the right wing's concerned, who says all the right things about abortion, healthcare, you name it, still he has not managed to move nearly as far as he needs to be considered in the swing of things."
Actually, DeVore reported $1.8 million in his first quarter campaign statement, more than Tom Cambell, who announced a $1.6 million haul. And the DeVore campaign has announced that billboards will go up across the state beginning today.
DeVore's voter outreach includes billboards, radio ads, yard signs that supporters can print, mailers and intense use of social media. Some of these pieces show how humble his campaign is: His daughter designed the billboards; his radio ads end "This is Chuck DeVore. Not only do I approve this message, I wrote it."
DeVore has also been an enthusiastic campaigner since he joined the race in November 2008 and has vastly outpaced his rivals on the campaign trail, holding 330 events across the state.
DeVore's Tax Day schedule showed the type of coalition he is trying to build among social conservatives, voters enraged by the Obama administration and long-time committed Republican activists. After hitting the Family Action PAC in Newport Beach, he spoke at tea parties in Irvine and Oceanside and capped the day off with a speech to a Republican women's club in Fallbrook.
By stitching together supporters in these various groups, all of which are vital in a GOP primary, DeVore sees a path to victory.
Polls show that many of Campbell's supporters are conservative Republicans, which DeVore said doesn't square with some of the law professor's positions. At least two independent expenditure groups are already spending as much as $2 million on television ads, mailers and robo-calls to tell voters about Campbell's liberal social stances — he favors abortion rights and same-sex marriage — and about his support for temporary state tax increases.
Once these positions become better known, some Campbell supporters will desert him and find a natural home in the DeVore camp, the candidate believes.
"I'm liking everything where it is and I'm going to press on forward and be the happy warrior because I think I am going to win this," DeVore said.
DeVore also notes that state ballot information identifies him as an "assemblyman" and not a "miltary reservist." But when more information about him is available, support surges. See SFGate, "Why DeVore is surging next to Fiorina in new Senate poll: He's a military guy." (At the Oceanside April 15th tea party, vets and military famlies got all fired up for DeVore.)
The takeaway here is that roughly a third of GOP primary voters are still undecided. And having seen the enthusiasm at the DeVore rallies, media honchos ought not bet against the grassroots just yet. With still over a month to go, events will test the dictum that "campaigns matter." Sure, DeVore's got the underdog role cornered, but in 2010 that's a campaign asset MSM outlets are downplaying like no tomorrow.
Also earlier this weeek, I'm chillin' with my new haircut. Grooming courtesy of Murray's Pomade. The company's Obama promotion is no joke:
Nothing says ‘I Love My President’ like a tin of pomade. At least, that’s what the folks at Murray’s must have been thinking when they debuted the ‘Murray’s for Obama’ specialty tin, which is filled with their legendary hair pomade and conditioner. The orange-red can is stamped with a drawing of President and first Lady Obama rocking some pretty classic ‘fros. We totally love Murray’s—that s**t works, but we wonder if they took too much liberty with the Obamas likeness.
The dude's banned at the University of Wyoming, and you gotta love these "security threats" :
Attorneys cite security threats as the only reason for the University of Wyoming barring University of Illinois-Chicago Professor Dr. William Ayers, according to court documents filed in federal court for UW and UW President Tom Buchanan on Saturday.
Four separate individuals with varying levels of experience with threats were cited in affidavits: UW Communications Specialist Milton Ontiveroz, UW College of Education Dean Kay Persichitte, President of Platte Valley Bank in Wheatland Keith Geis and Gillette resident and UW alumnus Sherilyn Likewise ....
Out of the “around 70” calls that Ontiveroz states he received on March 29 regarding individuals’ dissatisfaction with Ayers’ originally scheduled UW visit, he cites three communications specifically.
According to Ontiveroz, a caller from Casper said, “If Mr. Ayers was allowed to speak on campus that he and his friends would ‘take care of Mr. Ayers the Cowboy way.’”
It does not state what the “Cowboy way” refers to specifically ...
The most detailed true-color image of the entire Earth created to date. Using a collection of satellite-based observations, scientists and visualizers stitched together months of observations of the land surface, oceans, sea ice, and clouds into a seamless, true-color mosaic of every square kilometer of our planet. Much of the information contained in this image came from a single remote-sensing device-NASA's Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer, or MODIS. Flying over 700 km above the Earth onboard the Terra satellite. (NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center)
People of color who've observed the ascent of the so-called tea party movement didn't need a poll to tell them that this spasm is merely a racist backlash to the election of the nation's first African American president.
By failing to critique the tea party's Obama-as-socialist/illegal alien/terrorist rhetoric, the mainstream media have been complicit in legitimizing these canards.
The "anti-government" propaganda that the tea party spews about the healthcare overhaul was never in evidence during George W. Bush's massive expansion of government spending. And the privileged all-white tea party mobs who storm the Capitol in "outrage" over the Wall Street bailout have never felt motivated to challenge the GOP's welfare-for-corporate-America, free-enterprise-for-the-poor platform.
Of course it's no surprise that LAT fails to indicate Sikivu Hutchinson as a radical black atheist and editor at the communist feminist portal, Blackfemlens:
Blackfemlens seeks to counter the sexist whitewash of the American media regime by offering women of color a progressive space to comment on politics, urban affairs, literature, and the arts.
Nope, Sikivu Hutchinson's just some mainstream concerned Angelino writing a regular old mainstream letter to the mainstream editorial board.
Dr. Sikivu Hutchinson brings a wealth of experience to the Commission. She was most recently Chief of Staff for Los Angeles Unified School Board member Genethia Hayes where she researched and provided analyses on issues before the school board, supervised the staff, served as community liaison and facilitated parent and community meetings.
Dr. Hutchinson has a doctorate in Performance Studies from New York University and a Bachelors of Art in anthropology from the University of California at Los Angeles. She has lectured on Critical Studies at California Institute of the Arts, where she developed and taught courses on Ethnic Studies and Women's Studies and has lectured on Liberal Studies at California State University Los Angeles. She also has developed and taught courses on racial identity and post modernism at Cal Arts, and has published several scholarly works on race and gender, including "Moving to the Center: Culturally Relevant Education and Student Agency in LAUSD," in California English, April 2002.
James B. Webb told me directly that he blogs under a pseudonym. But since now we're up to the second bet he's turned down, the guy's posting an obviously bogus I.D. in a pathetic attempt to score a couple of points. I guess more fun and games is all we'll get, considering the desperation at being pinned down on the intellectual merits, IYKWIMAITYD.
JBW NOVELTY I.D. FAIL. This guy's slappin' down some screen names faster than you can say "Dirk Diggler":
I don't like the in-your-face message that we don't care about what other people hold sacred. Back in the days of the "Piss Christ" controversy, I wouldn't have supported an "Everybody Dunk a Crucifix in a Jar of Urine Day" to protest censorship. Dunking a crucifix in a jar of urine is something I have a perfect right to do, but it would gratuitously hurt many Christian bystanders to the controversy. I think opposing violence (and censorship) can be done in much better ways.
Actually, I think folks around the 'sphere are so tired of the literally murderous creep of political correctness that they're responding with some abandon.
It's a sentiment I've seen more and more periodically, that we need to defend capitalism. Sounds kind of strange. And it's not just a loss of confidence in markets amid the current recession. It's a broader critique from all over on the existentialism of the current order. On that, Yuval Levin's essay, at National Affairs, is a modern classic. See, "Recovering the Case for Capitalism." At the introduction, Levin prefaces things with a discussion of Adam Smith's moral economy, and it's a nice refresher. But later there's a couple passages really worth pondering, one on the crisis of capitalism in shifting the moral focus away from those most in need of our attention and resources, and second on the element of social capital needed to sustain markets as the essential mover of human freedom. The whole thing's worth printing and saving, but I like these sections:
There is not today, and perhaps there never has been, a serious economic critique of the fundamental tenets of capitalism. There are only moral critiques. Even those opponents of capitalism who proposed alternative systems — like the socialists and communists of centuries past — generally offered moral systems, and not genuine economic theories.
The moral critiques of capitalism have tended to fall into two categories. One, popular with those socialists and communists as well as with many less hostile liberal critics, is that capitalism is unjust to the poor. This meant at first that capitalism degraded the condition of the poor: Some early critics of capitalism contended that the circumstances of workers, especially in manufacturing occupations, were worse than anything the poor had ever experienced before the advent of free-market economics and the Industrial Revolution. But no such case could be sustained today. It is true that inequality persists, of course, but the standard of living of the poor has risen dramatically under capitalism, and the potential for escaping poverty is nowhere greater than in capitalist economies. So today, the focus of such critics is on inequality itself. The condition of the poor, they say, generally does not improve as swiftly as that of the rich, so that the gap between the wealthiest and poorest is expanding — to the detriment of social cohesion and basic justice. There is some truth to this, at least sometimes, but it only amounts to a moral indictment of capitalism if we believe that an equality of conditions is the essence of justice. Otherwise it would be foolish to reject the greatest source of material progress for the poor in human history on the grounds that it allows others to progress even faster. Moreover, it is far from clear that some systemic feature of the market economy holds back the poor. Today in America, the causes of persistent poverty have far more to do with culture than with economic injustice.
But that very point brings us to the second and more serious moral critique of capitalism: that it empties social life of any higher meaning, and so leaves society morally bankrupt even as it grows materially wealthy. Is capitalism in fact just a means of replacing material poverty with spiritual poverty? Is the market a money-making machine that burns social capital for its fuel, leaving in its wake a society of opulent nihilists? ....
Adam Smith expected ... that the market would discipline society and set bounds on our appetites. But as it turns out, our capitalist age is generally not an age of discipline. Far from it: Our society in most respects is a study in unbounded appetite. Our chief public-health problem is obesity. Our foremost social pathologies result from an absence of sexual restraint and personal responsibility. Our popular culture much of the time is a diabolical mix of Babylonian decadence and Philistine vulgarity. And our public life is a gluttonous feast upon the flesh of the future — we use more than we need, spend more than we have, and borrow more than we can pay. For all of our immense wealth, we somehow manage to live far beyond our means. In fact, it is almost fair to say that we lack for nothing except discipline. But as Adam Smith could tell us, discipline above all is what we require to be free. This is no small problem for the case for capitalism.
So what happened? In part, Adam Smith surely understated — and perhaps underestimated — the challenges of sustaining moral norms amid economic dynamism. His expectations rested on an assumption of what to us seems like exceptional social and moral consensus, but what to him was the reality of British life in the late 18th century. The loss of such consensus, brought about in no small part by our capitalist economy itself, is a defining fact of American life in the 21st century. And the challenge of sustaining our way of life in light of that loss is the defining problem of our political economy.
Clearly, the case for capitalism requires us to roll back policies that have distorted the market's ability to produce this wealth and cultivate these virtues. The American welfare state needs to be dramatically trimmed and reformed — aimed at helping the needy become more independent rather than making the middle class less so. The cozy relations between government and big business must be rolled back as well, lest the system cease to serve the common consumer, and so lose his allegiance. Friends of capitalism have grown increasingly alert to this danger in the wake of the recent economic crisis, and are beginning to formulate the arguments and develop the means to resist it. The distinction between "pro-market" and "pro-business" will be an important part of the case for capitalism in the years to come, and American history offers useful examples of how it can be drawn responsibly.
Properly understood, the case for capitalism is not a case for license or for laissez faire. It is a case for national wealth as a moral good; for the interest of the mass of consumers as the guide of policy; for clear and uniform rules of competition imposed upon all; for letting markets set prices, letting buyers make choices, and letting producers experiment, innovate, and make what they think they can sell — all while protecting consumers and punishing abuses. It is a case for avoiding concentrations of power, for keeping business and government separate, and for letting those who can meet their own needs do so. It is a case for humility about our ability to know, and therefore about our capacity to do ....
Our purpose is to protect and strengthen our way of life, to stand up for a social and economic system that has lifted billions out of poverty and vastly improved our world in countless ways, and to avert a careless slide toward social-democratic melancholy and decline. This general purpose, of course, has to take form in specific instances and choices, and exactly how the broad conceptual argument for capitalism should be translated into policy is always a matter of case-by-case prudence. But that does not mean that we can do without the broader argument — the argument first framed by Adam Smith, and refined by two centuries of theory and practice, especially in our country. It is an argument for individual freedom amid moral order, and for prosperity sustained by sympathy and discipline. It is an odd modern hybrid: a conservative case for the liberal society. As such, it is also an integral piece of the case for America.
President Obama, who as a candidate vowed to use the term genocide to describe the Ottoman mass slaughter of Armenians nearly a century ago, once again declined to do so on Saturday as he marked the anniversary of the start of the killings.
Trying to navigate one of the more emotionally fraught foreign policy challenges, Mr. Obama issued a statement from his weekend getaway here commemorating the victims of the killings but tried to avoid alienating Turkey, a NATO ally, which adamantly rejects the genocide label.
“On this solemn day of remembrance, we pause to recall that 95 years ago one of the worst atrocities of the 20th century began,” Mr. Obama said in the statement, which largely echoed the same language he used on this date a year ago. “In that dark moment of history, 1.5 million Armenians were massacred or marched to their death in the final days of the Ottoman Empire.”
When he was running for president and seeking votes from some of the 1.5 million Armenian-Americans, Mr. Obama had no qualms about using the term genocide and criticized the Bush administration for recalling an ambassador who dared to say the word. As a senator, he supported legislation calling the killings genocide, and in a statement on Jan. 19, 2008, he said that “the Armenian genocide is not an allegation, a personal opinion, or a point of view, but rather a widely documented fact.”
Two years later, as president, he used none of that sort of language, though as he did a year ago, he hinted to Armenians that he still felt the same way. “I have consistently stated my own view of what occurred in 1915, and my view of that history has not changed,” he said. “It is in all of our interest to see the achievement a full, frank and just acknowledgment of the facts.”
His statement came as the issue has grown as a source of tension between the United States and Turkey, and as a reconciliation effort between Turkey and Armenia that Mr. Obama has championed has seemingly stalled.
In March, the House Foreign Affairs Committee voted narrowly to condemn the killings as an act of genocide, defying a last-minute plea from the Obama administration to forgo a vote because it would threaten the Turkish-Armenian reconciliation efforts. Turkey briefly recalled its ambassador from Washington in protest.
I ... share with Armenian Americans – so many of whom are descended from genocide survivors - a principled commitment to commemorating and ending genocide. That starts with acknowledging the tragic instances of genocide in world history. As a U.S. Senator, I have stood with the Armenian American community in calling for Turkey's acknowledgement of the Armenian Genocide. Two years ago, I criticized the Secretary of State for the firing of U.S. Ambassador to Armenia, John Evans, after he properly used the term "genocide" to describe Turkey's slaughter of thousands of Armenians starting in 1915. I shared with Secretary Rice my firmly held conviction that the Armenian Genocide is not an allegation, a personal opinion, or a point of view, but rather a widely documented fact supported by an overwhelming body of historical evidence. The facts are undeniable. An official policy that calls on diplomats to distort the historical facts is an untenable policy. As a senator, I strongly support passage of the Armenian Genocide Resolution (H.Res.106 and S.Res.106), and as President I will recognize the Armenian Genocide.
Obviously, it's time for Larry King to retire, but there's no excuse of self-hating Jew Sarah Silverman. From Lori Ziganto:
I know. I had forgotten that show was still on the air, too. Well, I suppose even Michael Moore needs a show to appear on where he is actually slightly more attractive than the host. Anyway, Larry “I literally am older than dirt” King is at it again. Not content with just exposing his serial cheating this week, he also had to expose his creepy and sexist tendencies ....
LARRY KING, HOST: We can’t leave without asking you, my producers say I must ask you. Sarah Palin, what do you think? Sarah Palin? I got to say her name because we have to say it every night.
Sarah Palin. What do you say?
SARAH SILVERMAN: Oh, about what? Her posing in “Playboy”? I think she should go for it.
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