Gay Abandonment of the Traditional American Family

Jeanne Carstensen claims she's got the universal answer for the conservative pushback on gay marriage:

While conservative churches are busy trying to whip up another round of culture wars over same-sex marriage, Rodriguez says the real reason for their panic lies elsewhere: the breakdown of the traditional heterosexual family and the shifting role of women in society and the church itself. As the American family fractures and the majority of women choose to live without men, churches are losing their grip on power and scapegoating gays and lesbians for their failures.

Read the whole thing.

Carstensen is drawing on her interview with Richard Rodriquez, a thoughtful commentator on diversity issues who is gay and Catholic.

I think Rodriquez raises crucial issues about the role of the family.

But the theme seems to be that strengthening traditional families is a social vice. For Rodriguez, to strengthen families is to marginalize lifestyles that work to destroy conservative traditions, those that promote the emerging dominance of postmodern social organization and spiritual decay. And this must be opposed.

To me, that's the bigger project on the left: Tradition is the abomination, because it places moral strictures and limitations on what societies can do. Tradition emphasizes inherent goodness, like monogamous heterosexuality to the preservation of the lives of the unborn.

This part about fear of women in the workforce is a canard, and is simply one more way that the left can demonize those who refuse to go along with a moral relativism that privileges new-age anything-goes licentiousness and demeans the rigors of a moral life based in tradition and historical meaning.

Rodriguez, of course, can't explain why someone like Sarah Palin lives a life of conservative values, faith and family, with no apologies.

Food for thought, dear readers.

More at Memeorandum, including Andrew Sullivan, of course.

Picture of the Day, 11-25-08

Via the New York Times:

Sgt. Joseph Crandell, saw his 7-month-old daughter, Lena, for the first time as he was welcomed back to Germany by his wife, Layla. Lena was not yet born when Sergeant Crandell left for duty in Iraq. Part of his regiment was withdrawn from Iraq for Christmas leave.

My blessings and thanks go out the Crandall family during this holiday season.

Photo Credit: New York Times

Obama's Tidal Wave of Death

Jill Stanek sounds the warning on Barack Obama's administrative appointments, "The Tidal Wave of Death":

I haven't written on Barack Obama's cabinet appointments because frankly I found it too depressing. This is like watching a Culture of Death tsunami. Nothing we can do to stop it.

There's Tom Daschle, Obama's new Secretary of Health and Human Services, a rabid pro-abort who also hates abstinence education and supports nationalized healthcare (taxpayer funded abortions).

I've previously written on Alta Charo, Obama's new ethics advisor. Charo has ties to the human embryo experimentation industry and - surprise - supports federally funded embryonic research. She also opposes conscience rights of health care professionals to refuse to participate in abortion.

Then there's former NARAL legal director Dawn Johnsen, who will serve on Obama's Department of Justice review team.

I had supposed the topper was Obama's appointment of Ellen Moran ... as his communications director. She'll be leaving her job as executive director of EMILY's List, a group that raises $$ to elect pro-abort Democrat women.

But no, yesterday Obama named Melody Barnes to head his Domestic Policy Council. She previously served on the boards of both Planned Parenthood and EMILY's List.

There are more, but I'm drained.

Related: There's also news today on Obama's support for the Freedom of Choice Act, passage of which may force the closure of one-third of the hospitals in the country.

Repudiation of the Dark Side?

Here's this, from the letter on behalf of 200 psychologists requesting that President-Elect Obama renounce rumors of John Brennan's nomination to the CIA (via Memeorandum):

In order to restore American credibility and the rule of law, our country needs a clear and decisive repudiation of the “dark side” at this crucial turning point in our history.

God, that's sounds so horribly beyond the pale.

But I mean, c'mon, even Nancy Pelosi supported waterboarding in 2002, when briefed by the CIA on enhanced interrogation techniques (with three other top congressional Democrats).

You do what you have to do to fight and win. Democrats even know that - when the electoral winds are blowing that way, at least.

Colombian Guerillas Enjoy Safe Haven Inside Venezuela

Venezuela's Hugo Chavez regime is providing the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia safe refuge in the southwest terrority of the country, as the Wall Street Journal reports.

The rebel group, which has fought a civil war with the government of Colombia for over four decades, is a classic Marxist insurgency and in recent years has turned to drug smuggling and arms trafficking to expand its operations.

Chavez, who heads Venezuela's United Socialist Party, backs the rebels:

Mr. Chávez, who has governed Venezuela since 1999, has made no secret of his admiration for the guerrillas across the border. The populist former army officer calls Fidel Castro "father" and once tried to topple Venezuela's government in a failed 1992 coup. Mr. Chávez considers the FARC ideological brothers and possible allies against a U.S. invasion he believes might come from Colombia.

Chavez suffered a blow this week when the country's political opposition won power in local elections across the country. With the price of oil coming down worldwide, many Venezuelans have turned against the regime, rebelling against the government's support of anti-American regimes internationally.

Nevertheless, no doubt Libby Spencer and the Newshoggers gang still love Hugo (once a communist...).

Progressives and the Defense Budget

Yesterday I noted that Chris Bowers was acting rational. Today I'm not so sure. He's got a post up today that endorses an extremist view of fiscal policy and budgetary authority:

The most important appointment decision Obama will make during the transition, bar none, is who becomes, or remains, Secretary of Defense. As I have noted in the past, the Department of Defense oversees the expenditure of 52% of all discretionary spending, rendering it literally impossible for any other cabinet Secretary to oversee as much federal money. Further, keeping Gates on would only worsen Democratic image problems on national security, as he would be the second consecutive non-Democratic Secretary of Defense nominated by a Democratic President. The message would be clear: even Democrats agree that Democrats can't run the military ....

Secretary of Defense is the big enchilada. Arguably, due to the vast percentage of federal spending it receives, it is more important than all other cabinet secretaries combined. The President may be Commander in Chief, but it is the Secretary of Defense who is decides how most federal revenue is spent. We need change in the Department of Defense, and keeping Gates along with his entire team of advisors and assistants doesn't fit the bill.

Reading this, perhaps we can understand why Obama's strongly resisting the pressures from the netroots.

The Secretary of Defense decides how MOST federal revenue is spent? That's a new one.

The truth is that defense expenditures account for roughly 20 percent of federal expentitures. The biggest proportion of spending is consumed by PAYMENTS TO INDIVIDUALS, and particularly income security expenditures. These outlays include programs for the elderly, the poor, the disabled, and funding healthcare beneficiaries - that is, social programs.

Naturally, as a progressive, Bowers wouldn't think about including social programs in the types of programs where money is "spent." Those are are essentially untouchable from a far left-wing perspective. Bowers, frankly, is advocating the fiscal logic of the anti-imperialist left, seen for example in this page from the socialist War Resisters League, "Where Your Income Tax Money Really Goes." The pie chart above suggests what federal expenditures look like without including entitlements and automatic social outlays.

If we really want to think about who controls fiscal power in the federal government, think Thomas Daschle, the recently named nominee-designate as Secretary of Health and Human Services. Daschle, as "health czar," is expected to have tremendous power in reforming the deliverery and access to healthcare in this country. Perhaps more importantly, Dashcle will oversee Social Security and Medicare, the most expensive entitlement programs in the nation. If these two granddaddies of the welfare state aren't reformed, they will consume the entire federal budget within a few decades.

If we're going to start talking about real budgetary choices, think social policy and entitlement reforms. Right now though, the incoming Obama administration is ramping up spending plans, and not on defense. The direction of federal budget expenditures will be one of the most important policy legacies the Obama administration will leave. Unfortunately, the left's antiwar crowd isn't talking about that.

Inside the Minds of Islamic Militants

Farhad Khosrokhavar, a preeminent research scholar in France, and a Shiite Muslim who speaks Arabic, is interviewed at today's Los Angeles Times.

Khosrokhavar conducted interviews with Islamic militants held in French prisons. He was able to connect with his subjects to a surprising degree. This passage is particularly interesting:

I was struck by the Bosnia veteran I interviewed. He studied in Malaysia. He was able to seduce a Bosnian woman and a Japanese woman, which was like apples and oranges according to him, and get the Japanese woman to convert. He had two wives at the same time. He was very intelligent, very human. But he was a cold monster. He could kill without any hint of an afterthought. A Dr. Jekyll-Mr. Hyde, but he saw it as coherent. He saw no crisis. Usually one side hates the other in a Dr. Jekyll-Mr. Hyde personality. But he was not schizophrenic in the least.

We'd have to read Khosrokhavar's research to see what kind of generalizations we might gather from such views.

However, John Rosenthal has published an essay summarizing the implications of Khosrokhavar work, "The French Path to Jihad."

Here's more from Khosrokhavar's interview, comparing counterterror efforts in the U.S. to Europe:

In the United States, in spite of 9/11, it is a society which understands religion much better than in Europe. Muslims can be practicing and devout without being treated as if they were fundamentalists. Europe is clearly different from the U.S. Islam is the religion of the oppressed in Europe. Most Muslims are working class. There is an underclass that is comparable to the black or Latino underclass in U.S. cities.

The major threat in Europe is small groups that are difficult to spot. Like the two Lebanese who planted suitcase bombs on a German train in 2006. Jihadists are fascinated by 9/11. They want to do something cosmic, apocalyptic, but the intelligence services are all over them. They cannot succeed. The small groups, of less than five, are the most dangerous.

Kindergarten Thanksgiving Costumes Banned as "Dehumanizing"

Multicultural activists have succeeded in getting a Thanksgiving costume tradition banned from kindergarten classes in Claremont, California, the Los Angeles Times reports:

For decades, Claremont kindergartners have celebrated Thanksgiving by dressing up as pilgrims and Native Americans and sharing a feast. But on Tuesday, when the youngsters meet for their turkey and songs, they won't be wearing their hand-made bonnets, headdresses and fringed vests.

Parents in this quiet university town are sharply divided over what these construction-paper symbols represent: A simple child's depiction of the traditional (if not wholly accurate) tale of two factions setting aside their differences to give thanks over a shared meal? Or a cartoonish stereotype that would never be allowed of other racial, ethnic or religious groups?

"It's demeaning," Michelle Raheja, the mother of a kindergartner at Condit Elementary School, wrote to her daughter's teacher. "I'm sure you can appreciate the inappropriateness of asking children to dress up like slaves (and kind slave masters), or Jews (and friendly Nazis), or members of any other racial minority group who has struggled in our nation's history."

Raheja, whose mother is a Seneca, wrote the letter upon hearing of a four-decade district tradition, where kindergartners at Condit and Mountain View elementary schools take annual turns dressing up and visiting the other school for a Thanksgiving feast. This year, the Mountain View children would have dressed as Native Americans and walked to Condit, whose students would have dressed as Pilgrims.

Raheja, an English professor at UC Riverside who specializes in Native American literature, said she met with teachers and administrators in hopes that the district could hold a public forum to discuss alternatives that celebrate thankfulness without "dehumanizing" her daughter's ancestry.

"There is nothing to be served by dressing up as a racist stereotype," she said.

Angry parents crowed into a school trustees meeting last Thursday to listen to the board announce the cancellation of the events. Many parents knew the decision had been made prior to the meeting, suspecting school officials caved to political correctness.

Some parents are going to send their children to school this week in costumes anyway.

What's interesting about the Pilgrim experience is that those early colonists might not have survived without the help of Native Americans. I don't think children are "dehumanizing" the Indians by dressing up in outfits that commemorate that history:

Kathleen Lucas, a Condit parent who is of Choctaw heritage, said her son - now a first-grader - still wears the vest and feathered headband he made last year to celebrate the holiday."My son was so proud," she said. "In his eyes, he thinks that's what it looks like to be Indian."

Photo Credit: Los Angeles Times

A Passive-Aggressive Socialist State

Here's Abe Greenwald on creeping socialism in the United States:

A passive-aggressive socialist state — that’s the change we’ve been waiting for? That’s worse than a purely aggressive one. You’ll fight like hell if some goons barge into your home and make you put half your wages into fund X. But if you’re just “nudged” into it bit-by-bit, you’ll surrender your free will over the long haul without a fight.

Kind of like "Boiling Frog Socialism."

Obama Honeymoon Off to Early Start

Gallup reports that the "honeymoon" in public opinion afforded a new president has already begun for Barack Obama, with a new poll finding two-thirds of Americans confident in the president-elect's abilities:

Between 63% and 67% of Americans have said they are confident in Barack Obama's ability to be a good president in the weeks since his election on Nov. 4, a sentiment that doesn't yet appear to be have been affected, positively or negatively, by news coverage of the president-elect's staff and Cabinet appointments, or by reports of his economic and other policy plans ....

Obama has apparently been given a honeymoon of sorts after his election, with a substantial majority of Americans (significantly higher than the percentage who voted for him) saying they are confident in his ability to be a good president. This positive sentiment has persisted to date even as reports of possible and actual Obama appointments have dominated news coverage of the nascent Obama administration.

Obama's challenge will be to continue this good will for the roughly two months left before his inauguration, and then to translate it into public support as he begins his duties as chief executive next Jan. 20. Gallup will continue to track and report Americans' views of their newly elected president between now and then.

A honeymoon is just that: An emotional outpouring that tends to dissipate over time. The election showed politics to be deeply polarized across the parties, so we'll see a return to the patterns of the last few years by the end of 2009.

Yet, I expect Obama to have a longer honeymoon than is the norm (the first "100 days" is a benchmark).

While the economy continues its long shakeout, Americans will be looking to Washington to restore pride and confidence in the nation and its institutions. The office of the presidency is the natural beneficiary of such sentiment. The challenge for Obama will be not to stoke unreasonable expectations while simultaneously achieving some significant policy successes.

The Secret Theory of Progressivism?

The most interesting, and frankly heartening, political development lately is Barack Obama's tilt to "pragmatism" following the election, which is actually secret code (entirely for political consumption) for "I'm abandoning all the ideologically left-wing policies I championed during the Democratic primaries for immediate political expedience."

This turn, of course, has sent the radical netroots hordes into fits of apoplexy. From Jane Hamsher to Markos Moulitsas to Andrew Sullivan, the smear merchants of the left are pledging "accountability," no matter which party controls the White House.

Famous last words.

If you parse the discourse emerging this week, there's a tremendous effort on the left to smack down any conservative rationalism in discussing effective policy options going forward, especially on the economy. This whole pushback over the Roosevelt administration's response to the Great Depression is a quick eye-opener, for example. This morning, Steve Benen declared, after praising Paul Krugman's statements that FDR bungled the New Deal economic recovery program, AND that America's massive WWII industrial mobilization effort was an "enormous public works project," that the New Deal "was too conservative."

Keep in mind that with the exception of Lyndon Johnson, the Roosevelt administration saw the most substantial expansion of the interventionist state in American history. From erecting a massive regulatory structure in banking and finance, to creating the largest public corporations in U.S. history, to establishing enormous public works projects as the economic employer of last resort, to creating the Social Security/public assistance welfare state that is today bankrupting the country, it takes a lot of chutzpah to argue that Roosevelt was TOO CONSERVATIVE!

I mean, really ... the left today is classically postmodern, if not Orwellian in its ideological contortions: Up is down, right is left, and extreme liberal is conservative. It practically takes a Ph.D. from Stanford to figure it all out (like Victor Davis Hanson).

But just take a look at this new leftist conspiracy meme of the "secret theory of progressivism" that's driving folks crazy:

Clearly, theories about Obama's secret progressivism are alive and well. These theories strikes [sic] a serious blow to the notion that progressives occupy the "reality based community." Many progressives are seriously arguing that Obama's centrist campaign rhetoric and centrist advisors are part of a larger, secret, and fundamentally deceitful plan to institute a progressive agenda and provide it political cover.

One wonders what will become of the "Obmaa [sic] is a secret progressive" theories if and when Obama begins to implement center-right policy. Some of these conspiracy theorists will probably switch camps and start agitating for Obama to become more progressive. However, given the surprising staying power of these theories over the last year, it is also a safe bet that some progressives will argue that center-right administration and legislation are also part of a larger, secret plan to promote progressivism.

That's Chris Bowers at Open Left. He appears rational here, but he's one of the biggest theorists of netroots progressivism on the web, so I take his essay as something of a plausibility probe, in the hopes that "The One" hasn't fully sold the nihilist netroots down the river of winner-take-all electoral viability and post-election triangulation.

Addendum: To be fair, I too think Obama's assembling a centrist administration to provide cover for the inevitable left-wing surge of policy proposals that we'll see next year. As I argued previously, the Democrats have been frustrated with divided party government since the Lyndon Johnson administration. With few restraints in Congress come January, all Obama has do is yell "jump!" and Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid will be yammering "how high"?

Bowers can just relax: It's not a conspiracy in the works. It's called a transition to power, and once all the building blocks are in place, we'll get our new "New Deal," especially if markets continue the once-in-a-lifetime shakeout we've witnessed this last couple of months.

It Started With a Kiss, Now We're Up to Bat...

I was blown away when I first saw this video of Michelle Branch with Carlos Santana on guitar. I was just getting ready for work one morning and VH1 was playing on the TV. I was immediately struck by the authority of Branch's towering vocals, so youthful (and comely), which were accompanied by the familiar sounding riffs of the Latin guitar master.

Please enjoy, "The Game of Love":



I'll have more blogging tonight, dear readers.

Is Hillary Obama's Colin Powell?

The likely nomination of Hillary Clinton as Barack Obama's secretary of state is baffling to many.

How could two supremely ambitious rivals bury competing agendas and political differences for the common good of a new era of Democratic power? Or, more frankly, why would Hillary want to subordinate herself to a President Obama, who she clearly bested during the primaries on questions of readiness to lead in foreign policy?

I still haven't figured it out myself, but I have the feeling that a Secretary Clinton may end up being the Obama administration's Colin Powell. At times, Powell was more popular the President Bush, and as a foreign policy realist outside of the neocononservative cocoon driving the administration's war on terror and Iraq policy, his stature protected a foreign policy independence that might have gotten a lesser contemporary fired.

We may see a similar dynamic under the new administration.

For some perspective, check out today's Los Angeles Times, "Clinton's Potential Pitfalls Seen in FDR's Secretary of State." The article examines Franklin Roosevelt's relationship to Cordell Hull, who was a marginalized as something as an administration outsider who fell out influence in the president's inner circle:

Cordell Hull was a veteran lawmaker with a worldwide reputation when Franklin D. Roosevelt appointed him secretary of State in 1933, in part to win needed support from Hull's army of Democratic admirers.

But the dignified Tennessean was never close to FDR. As time passed, he was "muscled out by others in the administration," said Michael Hunt, a diplomatic historian at the University of North Carolina.

Barack Obama's election as president has drawn other comparisons with Roosevelt's, especially for the economic crisis he inherits. But the example of Hull, a marginal figure despite the fact that he served into the 1940s and later won the Nobel Peace Prize, may point to potential pitfalls for Hillary Rodham Clinton if she takes the top diplomatic post, as seems increasingly likely.

Clinton would come to the role with global star power, a first-name relationship with world leaders, and a long familiarity with foreign policy.

But her relationship with the president and the new administration -- so key to success in the job -- is coarsely mixed. And her future ambitions could affect her pursuit of the administration's goals.

"I can imagine lots of room for friction," Hunt said, adding that strains between presidents and their top diplomats have been "a leitmotif of U.S. history."

The presence of her husband, former President Clinton, raises a range of additional questions.

From all outward appearances, Sen. Clinton and Obama have made peace. Yet they were rivals in the most protracted presidential primary in history, and that battle is certain to tint her arrival in the administration and on the world scene.

Throughout a long career, Clinton has been known for her diligence and grasp of details. Like the president-elect, she is thorough and methodical.

She met world leaders on a ceremonial level as first lady, but also knows many from her last five years as a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee who dealt with Iraq and Afghanistan. International leaders are aware that she is one of the most influential politicians in the United States.

"She'll bring stature and seriousness to a job that needs a real heavyweight," said former Ambassador Nancy Soderberg, who held a series of top-ranking foreign policy positions in the Clinton administration.

Top foreign policy experts of both parties, including former Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger, have praised her skills. In her campaign, Clinton was supported by a large team of experienced foreign policy experts, many of whom she could bring to the State Department.

But world leaders who are impressed by her high profile also may wonder whether she speaks for Obama, said one former Clinton foreign policy official who spoke on condition of anonymity when assessing her aptitude for the diplomatic post.

The article notes that successful secretaries have been close to their bosses, like James A. Baker III was to the first President Bush, and how Condoleeza Rice is to Bush 43.

Colin Powell stepped down after one term in office, largely from the deep strain he endured in the diplomatic run-up to the war. Michael Hirsch, in "Hillary Rodham Powell?", says a future Obama-Clinton relationsip may indeed end up like that of Bush-Powell:

Foggy Bottom is simply too far away from the White House to be an independent power base. As secretary of state, Hillary would take over a huge, prestigious organization. But it would, for the most part, be a gilded cage. And to the extent that she might fail to do Obama's bidding, she would be ignored, neutralized and ultimately rendered irrelevant. Perhaps she ought to give Powell a call before she accepts the job.

For some additional perspective, from the policy side, see Ross Douthat, "Getting Out of Iraq."

The War Against Men?

Via Protein Wisdom, the Dallas Area Regional Transit Authority is running advertisements like the one below, from The Family Place, a local domestic violence resource center:

Here's Pablo from Protein Wisdom's Pub:

These ads appear on Dallas Area Regional Transit buses. They were placed there by The Family Place, a Dallas area domestic violence group. Their logic:

We designed the campaign to reach women. Our counselors tell us over and again that when mothers realize violence in the home is hurting their children, they are motivated to seek help. Dallas Police Department statistics show that more than 90% of family violence reports involve women reporting abuse from men. Year-to-date, we have provided emergency shelter to three men, 269 women and 332 children. Thus, the campaign is focused toward women—the majority of our client base.

Read the rest...

The post notes that women were more frequently the perpertrators of domestic violence than men, and a large proportion of reported cases were instances of reciprocal violence (source).

Something to think about, anyway.

See also, Glenn Sacks, "Protest Anti-Father DART Ads."

Related: Christina Hoff Summers, "The War Against Boys."

What Will Obama Do With Guantanamo Detainees?

Readers may remember the story of Abdullah Saleh Al-Ajmi, a one-time detainee at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, who was released from American custody in 2005. Al-Ajmi returned to Iraq to commit a suicide bombing in Mosul in March 2008.

That's a bit of history Barack Obama must not forget as he prepares to close the American military detention center at Guantanamo.

As the Los Angeles Times reports, many of the prisoners remaining at the facility are too dangerous to be released, and their legal status leaves questions as to whether judicical convictions are possible in the current legal environment:

President-elect Barack Obama's vow to close the U.S. detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, cheered human rights organizations and civil libertarians, but could force the new administration to consider a step those groups would abhor.

Some Obama advisors predict that his administration may have to decide whether to ask Congress to pass legislation allowing a number of detainees to be held indefinitely without trial. But civil libertarians think that even a limited version of such a proposal would be as much at odds with U.S. judicial custom as the offshore prison.

The debate suggests that the decision to close Guantanamo may be the easy part for Obama. Much harder will be sorting out the legal complexities of holding, prosecuting, transferring or releasing the roughly 250 prisoners.

Obama has never embraced an indefinite detention law, and his supporters think he will take steps to avoid that outcome. However, sharp divisions have emerged among Obama allies on how to proceed. The civil libertarians, legal scholars and lawyers who were united in condemning the Bush administration's policies differ on what to do with the prisoners at Guantanamo.

All agree that a crucial first step is to thoroughly review each detainee's case to see how many could be put on trial in U.S. courts and how many could be released to their home countries.

People close to Obama's transition team say officials have been busy filling key administration posts and have not decided how to deal with the aftermath of Guantanamo. Obama has said repeatedly that he plans to close the prison.

But some experts on detention policy, including close Obama allies, are convinced that problems posed by many of the detainees are insoluble: They may be too dangerous to release but will never be able to stand trial in U.S. courts because of tainted evidence or allegations of mistreatment.

For those prisoners, closing Guantanamo could require congressional approval of a law allowing long-term detention.

The bitter irony here is exquisite.

One of the most vociferous challenges to the Bush administration has been the allegations by the hard left of violations civil liberties of non-uniformed enemy terrorists. Now we'll have an administration led by a Harvard-trained civil rights attorney, and it's already clear he's doesn't know what to do with some of the world's most violent fanatics.

Think about it: The very terrorists who for years civil libertarians have championed as deserving human rights protections may in be imprisoned for life without possibility of a trial because allegations of abuse or tained evidence - legal claims that would be afforded to any petty burgler in domestic criminal cases - would in effect set them free to again kill the innnocents.

President Bush made the right decision in the first place: Hold the terrorists indefinitely as unprivileged enemy combatants for the duration of the conflict. We have now won the Iraq war, and in a few more years we may see victory in Afghanistan, where most of the original terrorists were captured.

Perhaps by that time the U.S. and the international community wiil have devised a new legal regime to decide the fate of those who might seek to return to the battle of global terror and renew the fight against the Western democracies.

Obama Administration to Be Among Most Far-Left Ever

Well, at least one blogger's willing to come right out and say it: Barack Obama really is at the extreme left of the political spectrum, even farther left than was Franklin Delano Roosvelt, and on par with Lyndon Johnson:

Obama's agenda is farther to the left than anything we've seen since at least Lyndon Johnson, and Congress has never in its history seen a Democratic Party so united in its leftward tilt. It doesn't matter whether Obama has centrists and moderate Republicans as part of his coalition. What matters is if he can unite (enough of) this country behind a common purpose to get things done.

Geez, I thought I'd never see the day!

Now if these folks will just come out and admit that "progressive" is just a euphemism for a neo-socialist agenda, then my job will be done.

Al Qaeda Thanks Iran for Attack on U.S. Embassy in Yemen

Check out this eye-opener: "Iran Receives al Qaeda Praise for Role in Terrorist Attacks":

Delivery of the letter exposed the rising role of Saad bin Laden, son of the al-Qaeda leader, Osama as an intermediary between the organisation and Iran. Saad bin Laden has been living in Iran since the fall of the Taliban in Afghanistan in 2001, apparently under house arrest.

The letter, which was signed by Ayman al-Zawahiri, al-Qaeda's second in command, was written after the American embassy in Yemen was attacked by simultaneous suicide car bombs in September.

Western security officials said the missive thanked the leadership of Iran's Revolutionary Guards for providing assistance to al-Qaeda to set up its terrorist network in Yemen, which has suffered ten al-Qaeda-related terror attacks in the past year, including two bomb attacks against the American embassy.

In the letter al-Qaeda's leadership pays tribute to Iran's generosity, stating that without its "monetary and infrastructure assistance" it would have not been possible for the group to carry out the terror attacks. It also thanked Iran for having the "vision" to help the terror organisation establish new bases in Yemen after al-Qaeda was forced to abandon much of its terrorist infrastructure in Iraq and Saudi Arabia.

There has been intense speculation about the level of Iranian support for al-Qaeda since the 9/11 Commission report into al-Qaeda's terror attacks against the U.S. in 2001 concluded that Iran had provided safe passage for many of the 9/11 hijackers travelling between Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia prior to the attacks.

Scores of senior al Qaeda activists - including Saad bin Laden - sought sanctuary in Iran following the overthrow of the Taliban, and have remained in Tehran ever since. The activities of Saad bin Laden, 29, have been a source of Western concern despite Tehran's assurances that he is under official confinement.

But Iran was a key transit route for al Qaeda loyalists moving between battlefields in the Middle East and Asia. Western security officials have also concluded Iran's Revolutionary Guards have supported al-Qaeda terror cells, despite religious divisions between Iran's Shia Muslim revolutionaries and the Sunni Muslim terrorists.

As Jihad Watch notes:

So much for the notion that Sunnis and Shias can never cooperate...

I'll update when I get word that, Cernig, the nihilist left's anti-Western wannabe intelligence pro, confirms this is all a hegemonic plot hatched by Halliburton operatives with a moles in Western security agencies feeding disinformation to the right-wing Judith Miller press-types to boost the case for regime change Iran.

War Mobilization Ended the Great Depression

There's a little controversy online today over the effacy of the New Deal recovery programs in restoring growth to the Amercan economy in the 1930s. Here's George Will discussing a "new" New Deal on "This Week":

Here's the take over at Think Progress:

This morning on ABC’s This Week, conservative columnist George Will echoed the false right-wing meme that FDR’s New Deal policies made the Depression worse:

Before we go into a new New Deal, can we just acknowledge that the first New Deal didn’t work?

To back the argument, Think Progress makes an obligatory - though-irrelevant - reference to "Nobel-laureate" Paul Krugman, who's recently promoted his work on "Depression economics." Yet Krugman's Nobel prize, of course, was for his research on international trade theory and economic geography, a far cry from Keynesian demand-side economics used to justify a spending binge, or whatever other new-left growth theories that have come around to rescue that failed Keynesian paradigm.

Think Progress also posts a graph from economist Brad DeLong, which suggests that private domestic investment had returned to pre-1929 levels by 1937. Of course, investments in capital and labor would normally take time to stimulate the economy, so it's not especially clear as to how that's supposed to debunk Will's recitation of the facts in 1937 on the continuing collapse of economic growth during the New Deal period of the Franklin Roosevelt administration.

It's basic historical knowledge that the Great Depression ended as a result of wartime production, which restored a full employment economy by 1943. Even Wikipedia's main page gets it right:

The Depression continued with decreasing effect until the U.S. entered the Second World War. Under the special circumstances of war mobilization, massive war spending doubled the GNP (Gross National Product) Civilian unemployment was reduced from 14% in 1940 to less than 2% in 1943 as the labor force grew by ten million. Millions of farmers left marginal operations, students quit school, and housewives joined the labor force.

Unemployment was still 14 percent in 1940!

Yeah, sure, let's just jump-start a "new" New Deal!

These progressives are brilliant! And just think, the Huffington Post (Arianna's in the video above) and Think Progress are two of the top-five bloggers ranked today. Figure that?

At least Barack Obama plans a round of tax cuts with his proposal today to spend upwards of $700 billion to stimulate the economy. I guess those conservative think tanks might know a thing or two after all.

The GOP and Black America

Sophia Nelson is a black Republican and former GOP congressional staffer and committee counsel. She's got a long essay at the Washington Post discussing the paucity of black Americans in the Republican party.

Ninety-five percent of black voters turned out for Barack Obama this year, and Nelson was one of them. She doesn't really explain her personal decision, other than suggesting that the GOP's basically blown off black Americans and the party's lack of vigorous outreach has apparently left her feeling like a jilted lover.

Ta-Nehisi Coates, at the Atlantic, has a brief post on Nelson, and here's an interesting perspective on the GOP from "Ivan," in the comments:

The article strikes me as misguided in its prescriptions, as the Republicans have a much bigger problem with people of color than "lack of outreach" and "not talking to them": namely, that it is a safe haven for racists of various stripes. Worrying about outreach in its current situation is like worrying about a car's paint job when the engine won't even run. The GOP needs to make it clear, both in style and in substance, that racists are no longer welcome, and it needs to do so consistently and for a long period of time to convince people that its racism is in the past (the way Democrats did by supporting civil rights and rejecting the Dixiecrat wing). In essence, they need to disown the Southern Strategy.

The big problem for the GOP is that they've become dependent on that wing of the party for electoral successes, so over the short term such a rejection will be very costly in electoral terms. But if they don't do this, they're dead in the long term, not just because of fast-growing minority populations (Latinos don't like the GOP crypto- and not-so-crypto-racist policies and rhetoric any more than Blacks) but because it aggressucely alienates the young-voter demo, whites included.

Basically, the GOP made a deal with the devil when they welcomed the Dixiecrats into the party. It gave them a generation's worth of dominance at the Presidential level, but now the bill is coming due and the compounded interest looks brutal.

Ivan puts a reasonably plausible face on the common left-wing smear of the GOP as a party of racists.

The problem, of course, is that since Ronald Reagan's landslide reelection in 1984 - where the GOP won 49 out of 50 states - it strains logic to suggest the post-1960s Republican Party is an exclusively Southern-based political machine. Sure, the party appealed to issues that generated subtantial support among white Southerners, many of whom were Democrats and would cross party lines to vote for Republicans when latent racial issues were salient.

But one key theme associated with this debate is the "Southernization of the America," a topic developed by historians and sociologists, and which was discussed in an Economist essay in 1994 (see also this entry at Wikipedia). The party appealed to cultural and economic issues that were increasing important to white working class voters, and these issues were nationalized. It's frankly not racist to be outraged that white workers were being passed over in the workplace due to aggressive racial quota programs, or that qualified disadvantaged white students were being shut out of placement at competitive universities because of race-based affirmative action.

Indeed, as Thomas Edsall has argued, agressive welfare-state liberalism, and extremely race-conscious policies, drove moderate-to-conservative white working class voters from the Democratic Party in droves:

Public policies backed by liberals have driven these new alignments. In particular, busing, affirmative action, and much of the rights revolution in behalf of criminal defendants, prisoners, homosexuals, welfare recipients, and a host of other previously marginalized groups have, for many voters, converted the government from ally to adversary. The simultaneous increase, over the past two and a half decades, in crime, welfare dependency, illegitimacy, and educational failure have established in the minds of many voters a numbing array of "costs" - perceived and real - of liberalism.

Everyday Americans, frankly, were revolting against the excesses of the rights revolution and the cost of welfare state liberalism that to this day has not reduced poverty in America, and has contributed to the decay of the black American family, the radicalism of the gay rights militant movement, and irresponsibility in foreign policy and war.

Today, the GOP's failure to come up with a new governing vision, and the dramatic personality-driven politics of the Democratic Party under Barack Obama, explains the party's drubbing at the polls, among all demographics. In fact, Obama simply consolidated a black voting constituency that has turned out for Democratic candidates at rates of 80 percent since the Lyndon Johnson administration.

Those black Americans who refuse to abandon a victim's mentality aren't likely to be attracted to the more individualistic and responsibility-driven ethic that's been the basis for GOP conservative economic and social values for generations. To the extent that we've had a Democratic political realignment this year, it's largely been a matter of economic trauma. If and when the Democratic Party restores confidence and growth in the American economy, and voters find more opportunity across the free market system, we may see more of a return to a normal pattern of party competition based on relative evaluations of the parties' statements of core convictions and support for decency, mobility, and responsibility.

Until then - until the GOP can credibly restore its image of economic fairness and meaningful traditional values - the Democrats can get away with a politics of grievance that treats black voters as the same sharecroppers that Southern Democratic Party bosses exploited before the 1960s.

Liberal Hollywood Threatens Prop 8 Backers

The Los Angeles Times reports that Hollywood's left-wing activist community is preparing to boycott individuals and companies who contributed to California's Proposition 8:

Should there be boycotts, blacklists, firings or de facto shunning of those who supported Proposition 8?

That's the issue consuming many in liberal Hollywood who fought to defeat the initiative banning same-sex marriage and are now reeling with recrimination and dismay. Meanwhile, activists continue to comb donor lists and employ the Internet to expose those who donated money to support the ban.

The piece discusses the case of Richard Raddon of Film Independent, a production company. Raddon is Mormon. He gave $1,500 to the Prop 8 campaign.

Raddon has been a particularly polarizing figure because Film Independent's board includes many independent film stalwarts, including Don Cheadle, Forest Whitaker, Fox Searchlight President Peter Rice and Oscar-winning writer Bill Condon. One of the group's explicit missions is to promote diversity.

Last week, Raddon offered to resign. According to one board member, a conference call was hastily arranged, and after much discussion the board voted unanimously to keep him.

Yet the anger continues to stew.

"There is still roiling debate within the organization," says distributor Howard Cohen, an advisor to the film festival who is gay. "Is it OK to let this go? There are a lot of gay people who work at Film Independent. The issue has not been closed."

No one is certain how the current protest will affect Film Independent's Spirit Awards in the spring, a popular event recognizing work that "challenges the status quo." And there are already indications the Los Angeles Film Festival could be affected.

Gregg Araki, director of the critically acclaimed gay cult hit "Mysterious Skin" and an influential figure in "new queer cinema," has said he won't allow his films to be shown there, while others, such as "Milk" producers and gay activists Dan Jinks and Bruce Cohen, say they're going to "study in depth all the facets of our specific situation before making a decision."

Araki says Raddon should step down. "I don't think he should be forcibly removed. The bottom line is if he contributed money to a hateful campaign against black people, or against Jewish people, or any other minority group, there would be much less excusing of him. The terrible irony is that he runs a film festival that is intended to promote tolerance and equality."

Others are leery of punishing free speech, even if they consider it hateful. "I can't quite stomach the notion that you fire somebody because of what they believe. It doesn't feel right to me," says Christine Vachon, a pillar of gay cinema who produced such films as "Boys Don't Cry" and "Far From Heaven."

Raddon declined to comment, but Dawn Hudson, executive director of Film Independent, says, "Are we happy with his donation? No. But he has a right to his religious and personal beliefs.

And that's the point: Gay activists don't respect Raddon's rights, his political beliefs, or his religion. The movement's totalitarian, and many inside the industry are recoiling against the gay liberal extremism.

Pilgrim at Say Anything identifies the gay rights activists as "the new brownshirts":

Let me say this - just because you didn’t support gay marriage doesn’t make you homophobic and certainly doesn’t make someone a bigot. Gays already have the right to marry. Nobody is denying them that. They simply do not have the extra right to marry someone of their own sex.

So ... it’s really about having an extra right granted to them that other people don’t have.

Anyway, these people are actively going after anyone they can show to have supported Proposition 8 and that, folks, is genuinely scary stuff. It’s even making many in the gay community uncomfortable ...

Yes, all of this is making a lot of reasonable people uncomfortable, and that's exactly what the gay rights ayatollahs want. They'll harass, heckle, and hound Americans of good will until they feel so terrorized they'll simply give up the fight, capitulating to a creeping left-wing authoritarianism bubbling-up from depths of the nihilist Democratic Party base.