A Malignant Outrage

A couple of weeks back, Michael Goldfarb had this to say about the Democratic-left's outrage at Joe Lieberman's continuing tenure as the chair of the Senate's Homeland Security Committee:

The Democratic party and the left won a stunning victory in this election, and while they should be savoring it (and most are) a few are busy trying to settle old scores. It’s pathetic, but it’s also cause for some optimism: these people are a cancer on the Democratic party that even a landslide victory couldn't cure.

The anger hasn't gone away, of course. Leftists are still resigning themselves to Barack Obama's shift to the political center. But Dibgy at Hullabaloo is braying tonight about the decreasing likelihood of war crimes prosecutions for Bush administration officials next year:

I have always been in favor of prosecutions for the unitary executive torture regime. Recently, however, I have reluctantly concluded that the best we could hope for is a "9/12" Commission investigation since Obama has been making it quite clear that he doesn't intend to pursue government officials through the Justice system (and congress is congenitally incapable of it.) I was impressed by Charles Homan's article in Washington Monthly that at the very least we needed to establish some official narrative of illegality and abuse of power lest this become an established option for future presidents ....

[Discussion of Dahlia Lithwick ] ....

I have been being overly "pragmatic" (depressed is more like it) in assuming that a 9/12 commission will be better than nothing. It would actually be worse than nothing, creating a shallow self-serving narrative of fine, hard working public servants who may have strayed over the line from time to time because they were only trying to keep us safe. It's always been out there ....

This movement conservative zombie was created at the time of Nixon and his pardon, extended through Iran Contra, went through the insane era of partisan investigations in the 1990s which culminated in a trumped-up, partisan impeachment, a stolen election and the lawbreaking Bush years. Nobody has ever paid a price for any of that.

This really is a psychology of vengeance. President Lyndon Johnson's adminstration is widely considered to a have launched the contemporary "imperial presidency," and the dramatic enhancement of executive power in the 1960s grew with American intervention in Vietnam and later developed into a subterranean gray zone of that fed right into the Watergate-era abuses.

Digby conveniently ignores that equally significant era.

Indeed, her essay illustrates Goldfarb's point perfectly: If this is not the kind of maligancy that Goldfarb's talking about, I don't know what is.

Picture of the Day, 11-27-08

Family members wait to recover the dead, Mumbai, India.

For more information, see Amit Varma, Richard Fernandez, and Ultrabrown.

See also, Memeorandum and RealClearPolitics.

I've provide additional analysis tomorrow.

Photo Credit: New York Times

If I Saw You in Heaven...?

Thanksgiving is a time for being with loved ones.

I thought of a song I could share, as a poignant reminder of why we give thanks for our blessings: So, please enjoy Eric Clapton's, "Tears in Heaven":

I imagine most music fans know that Clapton wrote "Tears in Heaven" as a requiem for his son, Conor, at 4 years-old, fell 53 floors to his death in New York in 1991.

Check the Wikipedia entry. It turns out that Clapton asked Will Jennings to co-write the song with him. Jennings was reluctant to tackle such a deeply personal assignment:

Eric and I were engaged to write a song for a movie called Rush ... and he said to me, 'I want to write a song about my boy.' Eric had the first verse of the song written, which, to me, is all the song, but he wanted me to write the rest of the verse lines and the release ('Time can bring you down, time can bend your knees...'), even though I told him that it was so personal he should write everything himself. He told me that he had admired the work I did with Steve Winwood and finally there was nothing else but to do as he requested, despite the sensitivity of the subject. This is a song so personal and so sad that it is unique in my experience of writing songs.

Clapton stopped performing "Tears in Heaven" in 2004, when he no longer felt the loss of his boy.

Here's to wishing all of my visitors a wonderful Thanksgiving.

I love my family, my friends, my students, my teachers, my country, and God above (with due apologies to anyone I've left out).

Be with your loved ones, and be well!

God Bless America!

"A Day of Public Thanksgiving to God"

Nothing better illustrates the polarization we see in society today than how the respective political factions commemorate our most sacred national holidays and festivities.

At this morning's Wall Street Journal, Ira Stoll wrote of the founders of our nation, and about the historical personages like John Adams who recognized the blazing moral goodness of this country's founding. America's early elites raised their arms in thanks to a divine providence that blessed this land:

When was the first Thanksgiving? Most of us think of the Pilgrims at Plymouth in 1621. But if the question is about the first national Thanksgiving holiday, the answer is that the tradition began at a lesser-known moment in 1777 in York, Pa.

In July 1776, the American colonists declared independence from Britain. The months that followed were so bleak that there was not much to give thanks for. The Journals of the Continental Congress record no Thanksgiving in that year, only two days of "solemn fasting" and prayer.

For much of 1777, the situation was not much better. British troops controlled New York City. The Americans lost the strategic stronghold of Fort Ticonderoga, in upstate New York, to the British in July. In Delaware, on Sept. 11, troops led by Gen. George Washington lost the Battle of Brandywine, in which 200 Americans were killed, 500 wounded and 400 captured. In Pennsylvania, early in the morning of Sept. 21, another 300 American soldiers were killed or wounded and 100 captured in a British surprise attack that became known as the Paoli Massacre.

Philadelphia, America's largest city, fell on Sept. 26. Congress, which had been meeting there, fled briefly to Lancaster, Pa., and then to York, a hundred miles west of Philadelphia. One delegate to Congress, John Adams of Massachusetts, wrote in his diary, "The prospect is chilling, on every Side: Gloomy, dark, melancholy, and dispiriting."

His cousin, Samuel Adams, gave the other delegates -- their number had dwindled to a mere 20 from the 56 who had signed the Declaration of Independence -- a talk of encouragement. He predicted, "Good tidings will soon arrive. We shall never be abandoned by Heaven while we act worthy of its aid and protection."

He turned out to have been correct, at least about the good tidings. On Oct. 31, a messenger arrived with news of the American victory at the Battle of Saratoga. The American general, Horatio Gates, had accepted the surrender of 5,800 British soldiers, and with them 27 pieces of artillery and thousands of pieces of small arms and ammunition.

Saratoga turned the tide of the war -- news of the victory was decisive in bringing France into a full alliance with America. Congress responded to the event by appointing a committee of three that included Samuel Adams, Richard Henry Lee of Virginia and Daniel Roberdeau of Pennsylvania, to draft a report and resolution. The report, adopted Nov. 1, declared Thursday, Dec. 18, as "a day of Thanksgiving" to God, so that "with one heart and one voice the good people may express the grateful feelings of their hearts, and consecrate themselves to the service of their divine benefactor."

It was the first of many Thanksgivings ordered up by Samuel Adams. Though the holidays were almost always in November or December, the exact dates varied. (Congress didn't fix Thanksgiving on the fourth Thursday in November until 1941.)

In 1778, a Thanksgiving resolution drafted by Adams was approved by Congress on Nov. 3, setting aside Wednesday, Dec. 30, as a day of public thanksgiving and praise, "It having pleased Almighty God through the Course of the present year, to bestow great and manifold Mercies on the People of these United States."

After the Revolution, Adams, who was eventually elected governor of Massachusetts, maintained the practice of declaring these holidays. In October of 1795, the 73-year-old governor proclaimed Thursday, Nov. 19, as "a day of Public Thanksgiving to God," recommending that prayer be offered that God "would graciously be pleased to put an end to all Tyranny and Usurpation, that the People who are under the Yoke of Oppression, may be made free; and that the Nations who are contending for freedom may still be secured by His Almighty Aid."

A year later, Gov. Adams offered a similar Thanksgiving proclamation, declaring Thursday, Dec. 15, 1796, as "a Day of Public Thanksgiving and Praise to Our Divine Benefactor." He recommended "earnest Supplication to God" that "every Nation and Society of Men may be inspired with the knowledge and feeling of their natural and just rights" and "That Tyranny and Usurpation may everywhere come to an end."

Compare this to Karl Jacoby, in his essay at the Los Angeles Times, "Which Thanksgiving?"

Jacoby, an associate professor of history at Brown University, can't miss the opportunity to remind us of America's history of oppression, in this case, against Massasoit and the Wampanoags of Plymouth, who (according to tradition) shared a genuinely multicultural feast of thanks with some of the original settlers of North America:

About 50 years after Massasoit and his fellow Wampanoags enjoyed their harvest meal at Plymouth, the Colonists' seizures of Wampanoag land would precipitate a vicious war between Plymouth Colony and the Wampanoags, now led by Massasoit's son, Metacom.

Most of the other peoples in New England at first tried to avoid the conflict between the onetime participants in the "first Thanksgiving." But the confrontation soon engulfed the entire region, pitting the New England Colonies against a fragile alliance of Wampanoags, Narragansetts, Nipmucs and other Native American groups. Although these allies succeeded in killing hundreds of Colonists and burning British settlements up to the very fringes of Boston itself, the losses suffered by New England's indigenous peoples were even more devastating. Thousands died over the two years of the war, and many of those captured were sold into slavery in the British West Indies, including Metacom's wife and 9-year-old son.

Perhaps multi-culti academics will never cease reminding us that America is a historical abomination, built on Native American genocide, slavery, imperialism, racism, and untold more atrocities of the founding crisis.

In the meanwhile, most American families will sit down tomorrow and enjoy a feast of thanks for the blessings they have enjoyed as citizens of America, as imperfect as that national union may be.

Thinking Clearly About Global Terrorism

UPDATE: Hot Air has got an excellent running thread of updates, including this comment:

There have been six separate explosions at the Hotel Taj, apparently, and 10 separate attacks across the city in all, according to IBN. I would never have guessed that any terror group was capable of pulling this off, be it AQ, Hezbollah, or whoever.

**********

Contemporary terrorism is widely recognized as a key manifestation of transnationalism in world politics. While we may see relatively localized or isolated insurgencies (FARC) or movements for national liberation (IRA), the types of attacks that have come to characterize the post-9/11 war on terror have all the hallmarks of non-state actors taking advantage of the network politics inherent in today's globalization.

I'm thinking about this with reference to today's terrorist attack in Mumbai, India. The New York Times identifies the group claiming responsibility as "the Deccan Mujahedeen." With at least 75 people dead, the attacks are being called "particularly brazen and dramatically different in their scale and execution."

President-Elect Barack Obama had condemned the attacks. Unfortunately, some on the Democratic-left are not so serious in their appraisal of the nature of the current threats.

Apparently, the Bush administration warned today of a possible terrorist threat to the New York subway system, to which Brilliant at Breakfast responded:

I just have one question: If George W. Bush has kept us safe, why do they need to try to scare people right before the holidays? Whether Bush likes it or not, he's still in charge until January 20.

The timing of yet another "nonspecific" warning to which we shouldn't react with alarm, right before a holiday, coinciding with today's horrific attacks in Mumbai, and fast on the heels of media scrutiny given to the bailout of Citigroup, done on the weekend when no one was paying attention and right after one of Bush's Saudi buddies took a bigger stake in the company, is all too reminiscent of threats the Bushistas have done in the past when their doings were drawing attention.

The title of the essay is, "Happy Thanksgiving, Suckers!!"

Upon reading things like this from the radical netroots I must admit that Barack Obama has so far adopted a centrist approach to filling his cabinet. I know that his domestic policy proposals next year will be some of the most aggressively liberal seen in this country in decades, but if the administration hews to a realist model of international relations, all will not be lost (crossed fingers here).

Now, note something else about the globalized nature of terror I mentioned, from Sanjeewa Karunaratne, at the Asian Tribune, which illustrates why the leftist thinking at Brilliant at Breakfast is potentially catastrophic:

Growing ... evidence suggests terrorist organizations share intelligence, technology, resources and training. Moreover, these organizations fully or partially fund their campaigns through arms, drugs trafficking, smuggling, piracy and other illegal activities. By nature, these activities involve systematic collaborations between groups operating in different geographical regions. These affiliations make terrorism, not localized, but a world-wide problem. Someone’s terrorist today is everybody’s terrorist ...

P.S.: It's not just radical netroots people who have no clue about the kind of resolve needed in today's world. See Joan Walsh for example, "I'm Grateful for Barack Obama":

Watching these scenes from Mumbai, I am a little more sympathetic to arguments that Obama needs experience and stability at Defense as he takes charge. But just a little. It would be wrong to let an ugly terror attack, wherever it occurs, shake our values and our commitment to a sane foreign and defense policy. We tried that seven years ago and look where it got us.

A little more experience? You think?

And what did it the last seven years "get us"?

Victory in Iraq and no attacks on the American homeland. But Walsh, like Brilliant at Breakfast and so many others, has no clue as to what's really happening in the world today, and what it takes to protect a nation while an arc of terror builds across the international architecture.

Atheist Nihilism

Readers may enjoy FrontPageMagazine's interview the Jonas Alexis.

Alexis is the author of the book, "In the Name of Knowledge and Wisdom: Why Atheists, Sceptics, Agnostics, and Intellectuals Deny Christianity."

Here's a couple of key passages:

FP: Why has atheism become so popular today?

Alexis: Atheism is so popular because many people—even those who claim to be atheists—do not seriously examine the worldviews and detrimental ideologies that post beneath the surface. The famed mathematician and philosopher Bertrand Russell was an avowed atheist until he debated the philosopher Frederick Copleston. Once Copleston logically showed Russell that atheism is existentially and experientially untenable, Russell immediately changed his atheism into agnosticism. In the Name of Knowledge and Wisdom simply shows that the atheist position is irrational and unliveable.

*****

FP: Why is nihilism so rampant in our pop culture today?

Alexis: ... In a nutshell, nihilism is so rampant because the nihilistic culture has no moral framework or principle upon which a person should base his or her life.

FP: What danger is there to a society embracing the concept that God is dead -- as the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche proposed in the nineteenth century?

Alexis: G. K. Chesterton made the point that “the first affect of not believing in God is to believe in anything.” Among the “anything” that people begin to believe is the idea that all “truth” is relative. This, by the way, is a self-defeating position. If all truth is relative, then the statement that “a ll truth is relative” is either a relative statement in itself, or it is an absolute claim. It cannot be both. If it is a relative claim, then why not include other statements such as “all truth is not relative”? Moreover, it does not take a student of philosophy to show that the claim is absolutely ridiculous. If the statement is relative, we can easily dismiss it on the basis of uncertainty because the person making the claim is not even sure that the claim is right or wrong.

Read the whole thing, here.

Feminists for Stay-Home Moms

Here's Duncan Black on Ruth Marcus' commentary on Michelle Obama's decision to be "Mother-in-Chief":

It's pretty much impossible for a First Spouse to maintain a normal life - continue her career smoothly - and trying to create a tiny bit of normalcy for her young kids is going to require heroic effort. It really doesn't mean anything beyond that.

Well, actually, it does mean something more than that.

Here's Charli Carpenter, who is an Assistant Professor at University of Massachusetts-Amherst:

To those for whom breaking the gendered glass ceiling would have felt as or more transformative than seeing a US President of color, this "Mother-in-Chief" approach could seem like a regressive subordination of women's political equality to racial equality. By this standard, Palin, with all her flaws, would have been a better feminist role model - to say nothing of Hillary Clinton, who would have combined a gender-egalitarian agenda with her trail-blazing role as the first female Commander-in-Chief. By comparison, Michelle Obama may seem at first glance to be defining her role no differently than Laura Bush, a help-meet rather than political partner. Perhaps this is a throwback to an earlier age. Perhaps feminism has been traded for racial equality in this election.

Think again. The fact that people have assumed that Michelle would take on a formal political role as first lady only underscores how normative women's political participation is today. Her unwillingness to prioritize that over her duties to her children is not a step backward but a step forward for the feminist movement: what Michelle is modeling is not indifference to politics, but policy attention to work-life balance, the missing element in the first feminist revolution [source].

Exit Question: Would liberals give a new conservative First Lady as much deference on the decision to stay home with the kids, or would she be demonized as a religious right "fem bot" hell-bent on consigning women to hard labor in the kitchen, barefoot and pregnant?

Judge Admits Heckling Attorney General as "Tyrant"

Here's another example that Bush derangement has gone mainstream.

Richard Sanders, a justice of the Washington State Supreme Court, has admitted to heckling U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasy at a Federalist Society dinner last week. Mukasy collapsed, in what doctors identified as a fainting spell, while making his comments. During Mukasy's talk, Sanders stood and yelled "Tyrant! You are a tyrant!"

Sanders had previously denied inquiries seeking to confirm that he was the heckler.

Michelle Malkin made repeated requests to Sanders. Here's the letter Sanders sent Malkin upon finally admitting that he indeed called Mukasy a "tyrant":

I want to set the record straight about a dinner I attended on November 20, in Washington, D.C., sponsored by the Federalist Society — a conservative and libertarian legal group of which I am a member. Attorney General Michael Mukasey was the keynote speaker.

In his speech, Attorney General Mukasey justified the Bush administration’s policies in the War on Terror, which included denying meaningful hearings for prisoners in Guantanamo, and other questionable tactics, all in the name of national security. Mr. Mukasey said those who criticize the Administration for abandoning provisions of the Geneva Conventions fail to recognize that “… Al Qaeda [is] an international terrorist group, and not, the last time I checked, a signatory to the Conventions.” Although the United States is a signatory, and these Conventions prohibit torture, the audience laughed. Attorney General Mukasey received a standing ovation. I passionately disagree with these views: the government must never set aside the Constitution; domestic and international law forbids torture; and access to the writ of habeas corpus should not be denied.

The program provided no opportunity for questions or response, and I felt compelled to speak out. I stood up, and said, “tyrant,” and then left the meeting. No one else said anything. I believe we must speak our conscience in moments that demand it, even if we are but one voice.

I hope those who know my jurisprudence will agree that to truly love the Constitution is to uphold it, to speak out for it, not just in times of peace and prosperity, but also in times of chaos and crisis.

I did not “heckle” Attorney General Mukasey, and I did not disrupt the meeting, as those who watch the video of his speech on the Federalist Society’s website will discover. I left before Mr. Mukasey had his frightening collapse. I learned of his collapse later, from news reports. It should go without saying that, despite our vastly different views on what constitutes upholding the rule of law, I hope he continues to recover and remain in good health.

Actually, I don't think it "goes without saying" that Sanders should want Mukasy to remain in good health.

Historically, "tyrants" were those whose heads the mob wanted on pikes.

Sanders, in my opinion, as an official member of the Washington state judiciary, whose courts represent one of the routes to federal ajudication in our constitutional system of federal law, has at the least committed judicial misconduct, and his actions more likely reflect the literal repudiation of the legal authority of United States government - in other words, treason.

Of course, leftists are defending Sanders for his wonderfully "impassioned dissent."

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.