Change! Blacks Better Off Under Obama

Gallup reports that black Americans say they are faring better under the Obama administration, "Major Gains in Blacks’ Ratings of Their Standard of Living":

Gallup Poll Daily tracking of Americans' assessments of their standard of living finds continued improvement among blacks after a dramatic 31-point spike in January. Blacks' score on Gallup's Standard of Living Index dropped to as low as -1 during the height of the financial crisis last October, remaining low in November and December, but it now stands at +62.

But you're going to love the bottom-line analysis:

It is unlikely that the election of a new president would have much of an immediate effect on most individuals' actual standard of living. Most Americans would continue to work in the same jobs that they had before the election, with the same income and the same expenses. But having a president that one believes in may just lead people to have a much sunnier outlook, not only on the government but on other aspects of life, and may cause them to rate conditions in a variety of areas more positively.

You see? Change we can believe in! (Emphasis added.)

Hugh Jackman Returns!

I spent time with my family this weekend. I took my boys to see Wolverine last night, and the whole family had breakfast this morning at Cheesecake Factory.

I've had the most fun with the "superheroes" flicks over the last few years, since I get to enjoy them through the experience of my boys. But my youngest son, 7, is the best. He's just totally into all of the Marvel guys, and we read comics and watch the older movies on DVD. On Halloween, my little "super" has been "The Incredible Hulk" and "Spiderman," and a couple of others.

During the movie (slight spoiler alert), when Wolverine emerges from the submersion tank and breaks away with the adamantium upgrade, my son blurted out, "he's nakie!" I just started laughing to myself! I just love to see him enjoying it, so full of wonder and exclamation.

Anyway, the movie reviews were so-so, but I love Jackman's Wolverine simply because the dude's hot!

Anyway, check out the background story on Hugh Jackman at the Los Angeles Times, "Hugh Jackman Returns to Signature Role as Wolverine."

More later ...

Progressives Don't Want Specter!

Arlen Specter's getting the lefties all riled up with his comments today to David Gregory on Meet the Press: "I did not say I would be a loyal Democrat. I did not say that."

Steve Benen pretty much sums it up:

In the four whole days he's been a Democrat, Specter has voted against the Democratic budget, rejected a Democratic measure to help prevent mortgage foreclosures and preserve home values, announced his opposition to the president's OLC nominee, and this morning rejected a key centerpiece of the Democratic health care plan.

Benen suggests that Specter's initial signaling to the Democrats "practically begs for a primary."

William Jacobson's got a roundup on the additional outrage on the left, and see also Memeorandum.

Obama's Army of Followers

From the Associated Press, "Obamas take a walk, holding hands in the evening":

I'm guessing these folks weren't among the panicked New Yorkers during the recent Air Force One flyover in Manhattan!

California's Big Government Laboratory

George Will irks me sometimes, especially on foreign policy, but he nails it today with his essay on California as the laboratory of big-government liberalism, "No More California Dreaming."

Note in particular Will's comments on Proposition 1A, the May 19 ballot measure that proposes $16 billion in new taxes in exchange for the promise of "spending caps" in future budget years:

Proposition 1A would create a complicated - hence probably porous - spending cap and a rainy-day fund. Realists, however, do not trust the Legislature to obey the law, which may be why some public employees unions cynically support 1A ....

If voters pass 1A's hypothetical restraint on government spending, their reward will be two extra years (another $16 billion) of actual income, sales and vehicle tax increases. The increases were supposed to be for just two years. Voters are being warned that if they reject the propositions, there might have to be $14 billion in spending cuts. (Note the $15 billion number four paragraphs above.) Even teachers might be laid off. California teachers - the nation's highest-paid, with salaries about 25 percent above the national average - are emblematic of the grip that government employees unions have on the state, where 57 percent of government workers are unionized (the national average is 37 percent).

Flinching from serious budget cutting and from confronting public employees unions, some Californians focus on process questions. They devise candidate-selection rules designed to diminish the role of parties, thereby supposedly making more likely the election of "moderates" amenable to even more tax increases.

But what actually ails California is centrist evasions. The state's crisis has been caused by "moderation," understood as splitting the difference between extreme liberalism and hyperliberalism, a "reasonableness" that merely moderates the speed at which the ever-expanding public sector suffocates the private sector.

California has become liberalism's laboratory, in which the case for fiscal conservatism is being confirmed. The state is a slow learner and hence will remain a drag on the nation's economy. But it will be a net benefit to the nation if the federal government and other state governments profit from California's negative example, which Californians can make more vividly instructive by voting down the propositions on May 19.

Failing Teachers Get a Pass at L.A. Unified

Unless you're a parent or an educator, teacher tenure probably isn't the hottest of hot-button issues on your political agenda. But as we watch the debates over national education reform heat up in the years ahead, especially considering the refusal of the Barack Obama administration to support the Opportunity Scholarship Program in Washington D.C.'s public schools, keep in mind this Los Angeles Times investigative report on firing teachers at Los Angeles Unified School District.

This part right here is actually heart-rending:

Jettisoning a teacher solely because he or she can't teach is rare. In 80% of the dismissals that were upheld, classroom performance was not even a factor.

When teaching is at issue, years of effort - and thousands of dollars - sometimes go into rehabilitating the teacher as students suffer. Over the three years before he was fired, one struggling math teacher in Stockton was observed 13 times by school officials, failed three year-end evaluations, was offered a more desirable assignment and joined a mentoring program as most of his ninth-grade students flunked his courses.

As a case winds its way through the system, legal costs can soar into the six figures.

Meanwhile, said Kendra Wallace, principal of Daniel Webster Middle School on Los Angeles' Westside, an ineffective teacher can instruct 125 to 260 students a year - up to 1,300 in the five years she says it often takes to remove a tenured employee.

"The hardest conversation to have is when a student comes in and looks at you and says, 'Can you please come teach our class?' " she said.

When coaching and other improvement efforts don't work, she said, "You're in the position of having to look at 125 kids and just say, 'I'm sorry,' because the process of removal is really difficult. . . . You're looking at these kids and knowing they are going to high school and they're not ready. It is absolutely devastating."

Read the whole thing, here.

The article cites Obama's major address on education in March, where he announced,"It is time to start rewarding good teachers and stop making excuses for bad ones ... I reject a system that rewards failure and protects a person from its consequences."

But as the Times piece indicates, the nation's tenure system itself may protect bad teachers from facing the consequences of their poor teaching. And, think unions!

Jack Kemp, 1935-2009

Jack Kemp, in my mind, was the premier Republican on race relations in American politics. No one spoke to the power of markets and opportunity to empower black Americans as he did. His agenda as HUD Secretary in the first Bush administration would still be light years ahead if its time if applied today. We need more conservatives like him. What a wonderful man, and a great loss to the nation.

See Kemp's obituary at the New York Times, and also Associated Press (via Memeorandum).

Plus, check Quin Hillyer's comments on Kemp from just a couple of months ago, "What conservatives need right now is another Jack Kemp for a younger generation."

Renewing Socialism? Don't Even Think About It ...

Leo Panitch, a professor of political science at York University, Toronto, is the author of Renewing Socialism, and is the editor of a reader in international political economy, American Empire and the Political Economy of Global Finance.

Professor Panitch obviously takes his Marxism seriously, and he makes the case for the resurgence of Marxist theories as the basis for a new-age political economy of socialism at the new Foreign Policy, "Thoroughly Modern Marx."

Here's a passage from the essay, where Panitch waxes eloquently on "the way to bring about radical change" amid global economic "crisis":

The irrationality built into the basic logic of capitalist markets—and so deftly analyzed by Marx—is once again evident. Trying just to stay afloat, each factory and firm lays off workers and tries to pay less to those kept on. Undermining job security has the effect of undercutting demand throughout the economy. As Marx knew, microrational behavior has the worst macroeconomic outcomes. We now can see where ignoring Marx while trusting in Adam Smith’s “invisible hand” gets you ....

Although he made the call “Workers of the world, unite!” Marx still insisted that workers in each country “first of all settle things with their own bourgeoisie.” The measures required to transform existing economic, political, and legal institutions would “of course be different in different countries.” But in every case, Marx would insist that the way to bring about radical change is first to get people to think ambitiously again.

This is a man who's apparently made his entire academic career as a Marxist political scientist. He is, in other words, the real thing - an academic scribbler giving theoretical strength to madmen in authority.

I mean, what is this, workers need to "settle things with their own bourgeosie"? Well, of course that's simply a euphemism for the final solution to the capitalist problem. I wonder if this Panitch guy really believes his theories, or, rather, if he understands the implications of them. Read the whole essay. He genuinely wants to eviscerate markets, the price mechanism, and private property. Although radical leftists will disavow the connections (they're "progressives" nowadays), Marxist economic theory has been tried. With applied socialism we got the Marxist-Leninism of the Russian Bolshevik Revolution, and later the forced collectivization of the rule of Josep Stalin. We could go down the list from Chairman Mao to Comrade Fidel in Havana. The Marxist model is the foundation for all of these regimes, and since when did the "dialectical" get separated from the "socialism" in the theoretical model of dialectical materialism? I think today's economic "crisis" has engendered historical amnesia.

NOTHING'S CHANGED!

Forget all the revisionism. Forget Althusser and Gramsci, or whichever contemporary postmodernist who's detailed some unreadable post-revisionist synthesis of the foundational praxiology of Marxian orginalism - or whatever else you might find on left-wing syllabi throughout the academy. Marxists hate the individual. They hate the political economy of liberty. You cannot make a functioning society on the basis of increasing immiseration of the entrepreneurial/investing classes. It defies not just logic and imagination, but empirical reality. No economic system in the history of the world, not one, has provided a greater good for a greater number in terms of material well-being and human happiness. When leftists like Panitch excoriate markets as engendering the "worse macroeconomic outcomes," the solution is to eliminate the "microrational behavior" that led to that equilibrium in the first place. Translated: Kill the capitalist producers and consumers who multiplied by the millions make up the microfoundations of the political economy of human freedom.

But we don't have to rehash the classical economic arguments that have been reproduced in traditional economic tracts over the centuries to understand the poverty of socialism. (Pick up any mainstream economics textbook and you'll still see the basic suppy and demand curves of capitalism's unregulated market as the basis for economic growth and societal prosperity.) No, just look at those collectivist societies today that still cling to the burnt totalitarianism of the 20th century. The new Foreign Policy contains compendium of essays outlining and analyzing the current structural foundations for "the next big idea." It's all about transcendance!

But the most imporant piece in this entire edition is the photo essay by Tomas van Houtryve on Communist North Korea, "The Land of No Smiles:

Renowned documentary photographer Tomas van Houtryve entered North Korea by posing as a businessman looking to open a chocolate factory. Despite 24-hour surveillance by North Korean minders, he took arresting photographs of Pyongyang and its people—images rarely captured and even more rarely distributed in the West. They show stark glimmers of everyday life in the world’s last gulag.

Be sure to check the entire slideshow, but these two images capture the deathly nightmare of the socialist vistion:

UNEASY STREET: Van Houtryve arrived in Pyongyang, the North Korean capital, during a normal work week in February. He found its main thoroughfare entirely empty. “Nobody’s out. No couples with babies, nobody taking a walk,” van Houtryve says. “You could wait 10 minutes before you ever saw a car.” Only a few old Mercedes—the exclusive privilege of top bureaucrats—cruise Pyongyang’s streets. North Korea has just a few hundred thousand cars for more than 20 million people. The country has only 1,000 miles of paved road.

SHOP GIRL: This is shopping in North Korea. The clerk sits in the dark, unheated special store, waiting to turn on the lights for foreigners, the only permitted customers. “She’s wearing a ski jacket or parka; the rest of this time they’re sitting there with the lights off, freezing,” van Houtryve says. The goods—toys, televisions, and the like—are imported from China. The store only accepts euros.

At his essay, Panitch dismisses President Barack Obama's environmental proposal for a cap-and-trade system as tinkering around the edges. Panitch exhorts his followers to think big!, to completely overcome "the logic of capitalist markets."

Yes, and when we do that, we'll too be wearing ski parkas in our state-run apartment buildings (if we were lucky enough to score a lottery ticket putting us at the top of the waiting list), while the streets outside remain totally desolate from society's absolute absence of economic intercourse and human freedom.

Full Metal Saturday: Bar Refaeli

It's been busy blogging around here the last few days. In fact, I hope readers send viral my first hand report from yesterday, "Pasadena "May Day! May Day!" Anti-Socialism Rally."

And I'm going to busy today as well, running my boys around to art classes and math tutoring. So I'd better started with my "Full Metal Reach Around" and "Rule 5" action. Check out Bar Rafaeli and "The 2009 Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition Cover":

Those just tuning in to my Saturday "Reach Around" tradition might check out how it's done at No Sheeples Here!: "Full Metal Jacket Reach-Around." Plus, TrogloPundit's got, "A little early Rule #2 action." And the guys at Maggie's Farm get hot with some linky love of their own!

"Rule 5" is key to the genre, so I'm happy to find David at Thunder Run doing some hot Rule 5-ing! And don't forget to check out Wellywanger!

I'm checking over at Monique Stuart's, and she's branching out into "hotness" analysis. Suzanna Logan's on the case as well. And as Fausta Wertz illustrates, even German Chancellor Angela Merkel's good for a little Saturday fun! And more at Pat in Shreveport's, "Saturday Linkage with Russell Crowe."

See also:

* Astute Bloggers, "MAY 2ND 1989: THE IRON CURTAIN OVER HUNGARY COMES DOWN."

* AubreyJ, "Short note from AubreyJ ..."

* The Blog Prof, "NY Gov Patterson Settles Racial Discrimination Suit."

* Common Sense Political Thought, "Just give us the dirt."

* Crush Liberalism, "Photo of the week, “Barney Frank” edition."

* Gayle's Place, "Let Me Become an Illegal Alien, PLEEEAAASE!"

* Hummers and Cigarettes, "Progressives: Finding Humor In Their Hypocrisy."

* Instapundit, "CONCORD MONITOR: The More Restraints On Earmarks The Better."

* Legal Insurrection, "Why Is Deval Patrick On Anyone's List?"

* Little Miss Attila, "Stacy McCain Tries to Annoy Feminists ..."

* Michelle Malkin, "Obama’s choices: Gird your loins," on David Souter's retirement.

* Midnight Blue, "@FollowFriday," on Sarah Palin on Twitter.

* Moe Lane, "Joe Sestak not making way for Arlen Specter?"

* PFB Blog, "Sexist Beyonce Says Michelle Obama is her “hero”."

* Pundit & Pundette, "Creating demand for bigger government."

* The Real World, "LIE: TAX CUT FOR 95% OF AMERICANS."

* The Rhetorican, "Clash of the Enlightened Beings Continues!"

* Riehl World View, "He Who Judges."

* Right Wing Sparkle, "Kathleen Parker Finally Gets Something Right."

* Robert Stacy McCain, "Video: Gay gynephobia."

* Snooper Report, "The changing World."

* Sparks From the Anvil, "Waterboarding Pales in Comparison to the Comfy Chair."

* Sundries Shack, "Souter’s Gone. Let the Democratic Carnage Begin!"

Teacher Scolds Student for Reading Fox News Webpage

Check this out, from Rush Limbaugh: "Teacher Scolds Student for Reading Fox News Webpage":

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Mitchell, 18 years old, Traverse City, Michigan. Hello, and welcome to the Rush Limbaugh program. Hi.

CALLER: Hey, how are you doing?

RUSH: Good.

CALLER: I was just calling to talk to you. I'm a senior in high school and today I was on the Internet reading Fox News, and my teacher came up behind me and found out I was reading Fox News and yelled at me in front of the whole class and said I was not allowed to read Fox News in class, that I'm only allowed to read BBC and stuff of that nature.

RUSH: Wait a second. I want to get a picture here. You've got your computer on in class. You're legally allowed to have the computer on in class?

CALLER: Yes. There's a whole bunch of computers in the classroom. It's a computer classroom and I'm sitting there, and he comes up behind me and I'm reading Fox News.

RUSH: What is the class? Is it computer science? What is the class?

CALLER: It's a video production class, and I'm already done with the video I was producing, so...

RUSH: So you're reading Fox News, the teacher comes up and spots that, says, "You can't read that!" in front of the whole class?

CALLER: In front of the whole class. And then he proceeded to give me a ten-minute lecture on why I can't read Fox News.

RUSH: Summarize it in 30 seconds.

CALLER: Something like they actually know that they have, you know, conservative views they're trying to push on me and all these different things that there are speaking points that they tell their reporters to report on to get me to believe certain ways and that I can only listen to BBC and other news venues.

RUSH: Did your teacher say anything about me?

CALLER: No, but I pulled up the Rush Limbaugh page directly after that, just to tick him off some more, but he walked away because he was so mad at me before I could show him.

RUSH: Well, you must try. That's great. Now, this is fabulous. That's guts! That's courage! Tell him he can't listen to Fox, pulls up my website. Do it again with the teacher behind you. Be defiant there. Because we lie. We lie. We're "spreading propaganda." It's scary. It is really scary to find out just how ignorant and stupid so many American teachers in this country are. They're just activists. They're nothing more than activists. They're not teachers at all.

END TRANSCRIPT

Score another one for the "there's no left-wing indoctrination in the schools" proponents!

Pasadena "May Day! May Day!" Anti-Socialism Rally

Roughly 100 demonstrators turned out this afternoon in Pasadena for a "May Day! May Day" anti-socialism protest against the Barack Obama administration. Gathering at the City Hall in Pasadena's majestic civic center, the event was a follow-up to the Pasadena Patriots' Tea Party held on April 11. Former Saturday Night Live star Victoria Jackson gave the keynote speech. She was preceded by Big Hollywood's Andrew Breitbart.

Here's Victoria Jackson a few minutes before the first speakers took the podium:

One of the most enjoyable moments of the day was listening to "Patrick Henry" give his speech, a patriotic reenactment of Henry's "give me liberty or give me death" rallying cry from Richmond, Virginia, in 1775. This gentleman was quite talented, and his costume seemed quite authentic.

The pot of revolutionary tea boiled over bit when Andrew Breitbart took the stage. About 5 minutes into his talk, a local Barack Obama supporter, who had heard the loudspeakers from his apartment across the street, joined the crowd and began yelling at Breitbart: "Hey, he's our president," and "I came over here because I heard all this hatred." According to the Pasadena Star-News:

One man, Matt Clark, a 69-year-old Pasadena resident heard the protest from his nearby apartment. He yelled back at protestors to stop criticizing President Obama, and was briefly allowed to take the stage.

He was quickly booed off.

"I kept hearing derogatory things about the president from up in my apartment," said Clark after his short-lived appearance on stage. "I don't really know what they are protesting about, but what I heard was not right."

Breitbart had made no derogatory remarks, so I think Mr. Clark was offended that demonstrators referred to President Obama as "socialist." As seen in the photograph below, both Breitbart and Clark became animated. After this scene, Mr. Clark threw up his hands of left the protest.

The disruption distracted a bit from what Breitbart had to say: "The Repubican Party is dysfuncational and embarrassing," he exclaimed. Then, extolling the grassroots anti-tax protests, Breitbart announced, "There isn't another movement that has the best interests of this country in mind." The reference to "another movement" was to today's International ANSWER demonstration in downtown Los Angeles, where protesters marched for a blanket amnesty for the untold millions of illegal aliens in the country. Noting the relatively sparse crowd in Pasadena, Breitbart warned, "We better learn how to protest" if conservatives are going to match the activism of the radical left:

This woman shown below was hanging out with the event organizers. She's holding an outstanding poster, "Socialism is Not the Answer":

Here's the crowd after Victoria Jackson finished speaking. I counted over 100 people in attendence before Andrew Breitbart began speaking, and probably a dozen or so people trailed away by the time Ms. Jackson was finished:

I asked this woman below if I could get her picture just before I left. She was very gracious, and happy I'd taken interest in her poster:

I'll be writing more about the Tea Party protests as things on the conservative side move forward.

Nothwithstanding Mr. Clark's one-man counter-demonstration, today's event felt dramatically subued compared to the April 15th Tax Day Rallies that swept the nation last month. Politically, for me, the Pasadena rally showed that movement organizers need to realize that angry protesters denouncing the Democrats in Washington as "socialist" isn't enough. Frankly, today's event was something of a rehash of the "Orange County Tax Day Tea Party." I certainly don't want to demean the Pasadena rally. I love the Tea Parties. I love to see conservatives gettting out to champion the cause of freedom and to protest the unbelievable incompetence and hubris that is the Barack Obama administration.

However, Californians will vote on a slew of state tax measures in less than three weeks. Today's theme should not have been Obama's socialism (which is an old story, and likely to get more painful for Joe Sixpacks in neighborhoods around the country, and not to mention the unborn); organizers should have instead focused on the conservative movement's proactive agenda to take back the country. You've got to hammer a positive message if folks are going to listen. The talk has got to be about action and not plain grievance. Why didn't event planners hoist an effigy of "Benedict" Arnold Schwarzenegger?

Polls show the Propostion 1A ballot package trailing badly in public opinion. That's a message that the media should be picking up on, not just some cranky Obama-backer rousted from his barcalounger by the loudspeakers. A defeat for 1A will deliver a powerful anti-tax message to the nation, not unlike the popular tax revolt that followed California's Proposition 13 in 1978.

There's still time, and today was something of tough day for counteracting left-wing media bias in any case (with the local media covering the socialist May Day events around the clock). But event planners need to keep their eyes on the ball, and they'll need even better planning and coordination. Victoria Jackson's passionate, but she didn't even mention the national political promise in repudiatng Arnold Schwarzengger's tax hikes at the polls on May 19th. The Tea Party planners must realize and exploit the possibilities of federalism in the U.S. system, which in the case of a new Golden State tax revolt, will be perfectly tuned to the national message of restoring liberty in the age of Obamessianism.

I'll have more reporting and analysis on these developments in the weeks ahead.

Amnistia! May Day Protesters for Mass Legalization

International ANSWER, the neo-Stalinist antiwar organization, was a major organizer for today's mass demonstration in downtown Los Angeles demanding blanket amnesty for illegal aliens. Protest organizers are trying to hide the explicit reconquista agenda seen at the 2006 demonstrations, but only the media packaging has changed. Amid the red, white, and blue, protesters are waving plenty of Mexican flags along the march. From the Los Angeles Times:

Kim Priestap is also blogging the protests, "Illegal Immigration Protests: Bolshevik Revolution Redux?":

Today's protests are an attempt at an immigrant revolution. The protests' organizers, ANSWER, a communist organization founded by Ramsey Clark, have convinced the illegal and legal immigrants that they are the oppressed "proletariat" exploited by the "bourgeoisie," which is why they use language (we clean your toilets, we watch your children, we pick your fruit and vegetables) that pits the illegal and legal immigrants against the middle class. This is classic communist propaganda meant to "empower" the masses of the "oppressed" immigrants and to intimidate congress and the American people into giving illegal immigrants full amnesty.

I'll be heading up to Pasadena early this afternoon to cover tonight's May Day! May Day! anti-socialist demonstration, part of the ongoing Tea Parties seeking to counter the Obama administration's collectivist program.

The mass media/progressive-left alliance has been attacking the Tea Parties as racist and reactionary, a rebellion against the "black man" in the White House.

The funny thing is, of course, the progressive-ANSWER alliance really does want a revolution, and the mainstream press is all too eager to give it to them.

I should have a full report from Pasadena available in the morning, so stay tuned.

UPDATE: I've fixed the pictures and links to the Los Angeles Times from this morning. Here's the latest report from the Times, "Hope and urgency at marches for immigration reform."

"An Abiding Hatred of Academia"

Via Robert Stacy McCain's comments, here's Mike LaRoche on his one-year blog anniversary:

Next week, my time at an academic institution with which I have been affiliated for nearly a decade comes to an end. And not a moment too soon. I love the subject I teach - history - but I have developed a deep and abiding hatred of academia that I doubt will ever abate. Twice in the last seven years, two different colleagues have tried to ruin me professionally and financially. But I am still standing, much to the chagrin of those two sons-of-bitches, no doubt.

In three months, I will be moving to another city in the great state of Texas to begin a new phase in my career as a historian. It is a move I should have made earlier, in retrospect, but better late than never. I will have more to say about the coming move in a later post.

I have to admit I share the pain sometimes, but I'm extremely lucky to be working with fellow political scientists ranging from moderate to conservative, including one former Reagan White House staffer.

I can't, of course, say that about the rest of my division colleagues (including a couple of International ANSWER activists), but conservatives can't give up the battle for control of America's cultural institutions, especially in education, the mass media, and Hollywood.

GOP at Risk of Becoming Monochromatic Party?

Here's Ronald Brownstein on the implications for the GOP of Arlen Specter's defection to the Democratic Party:

In one sense, Specter's defection merely continues a generation-long trend. Since the 1960s, each party's electoral coalition has grown more ideologically homogenous as conservatives have migrated away from the Democratic Party, and liberals and moderates have moved away from the GOP. That ideological resorting has thinned the ranks of Republican House and Senate members from left-leaning areas such as the Northeast and the West Coast and has culled Democrats from conservative regions, principally the South.

This ideological and geographic sorting-out has narrowed each party's reach. But Democrats in recent years have maintained a broader coalition, both in Congress and among voters, by demonstrating more receptivity to diverse views. In the Senate, for instance, Democrats hold 22 of the 58 seats representing the 29 states that twice voted for George W. Bush. And just 40 percent of self-identified Democrats consider themselves liberals, according to Gallup polling; the rest identify as moderate or conservative.

By contrast, the GOP is becoming an increasingly monochromatic party, dominated by the most conservative voters and regions. This process enormously accelerated under Bush and Karl Rove, who built their governing strategy on energizing the Republican base rather than on expanding it by courting swing voters. Today, Democrats hold their largest advantage in party identification over Republicans since President Reagan's first term, and 70 percent of the shrunken GOP core identifies as conservative. After Specter's leap, Republicans hold just two of the 36 Senate seats in the 18 mostly affluent and secular "blue-wall" states that twice voted against Bush -- and that have now voted Democratic in each of the past five presidential elections.

Notice Brownstein's framing: The Democrats have reached out "more receptively" and "maintained a broader coalition," while the Republicans have "thinned the ranks " and have become "an increasingly monochromatic party."

The Repubicans, in other words, have emerged as a "fearmongering neo-fascist hate-machine."

That's all well and good for the Democratic/progressive Republican political establishment that wants to turn the GOP into the party of gay marriage and cap-and-trade.

But as the power of the Tea Party movement is demonstrating, Republicans won't return to power by "running as a less enthusiastic version of big-government Democrats."

See also, Nice Deb, "For You Slow Learners Who Still Haven’t Figured Out The Tea Parties."

GOP-Smearing Image Credit: David Hoogland Noon.

Let Them Wear Lanvin Sneakers!

First Lady Michelle Obama volunteered at a D.C. food bank on Wednesday sporting $540 Lanvin sneakers:

Red State has the story, "Michelle Antoinette and the Don’t-Go-To-The-Mall Administration:"

It goes without saying that a Republican First Lady who showed up at a food bank during a recession wearing $540 sneakers would never hear the end of it, let alone one who had lectured voters on learning to make do with less. But you know, it goes deeper than that. Remember how Barack Obama relentlessly mocked George W. Bush, in the tone of a petulant teenager who can’t believe what Dad told him to do, for advising Americans to “go shopping” after September 11? Well, President Bush was absolutely in the right: the nation needed reassuring, and it needed to both sustain the consumer confidence and consumer demand that are the engines of our economy, and demonstrate to the world that we don’t change our routines to satisfy terrorists.

It's worth a click just for the ghoulish picture of the First Lady!

Resisting the "Post-American" Meme

Via GrEaT sAtAn'S gIrLfRiEnD, check out Mark Davis, "We will regret 'post-American' outcome":

One generation never knows exactly what world it will pass to the next. But there is an alarming term making the rounds these days that seems a likely adjective for the era we are being guided toward:

"Post-American."

This is to be distinguished, I suppose, from "un-American," indicative of actual loathing of the substance and behaviors of our nation. "Post-American" is pitched as the attitude that accepts and may even embrace the passing of America's era of global leadership.

I would hope it is impossible to be ambivalent about such a monumental global moment. Surely there are only those people who cheer this development as refreshing and timely and those who dread it for the certain dangers it poses.

Count me among the second group, and I would like a word with the first.

I have always believed that there are many ways to love America. Sharing my politics is not a precondition. But I have watched elected officials denigrate a war in progress (that we are now winning), soften borders that once protected us, erode cultural standards that once united us, and now attack an economic crisis not with an energizing call to boldness and courage but with astonishing spending designed to spawn dependency and thus political obedience.

Is it any wonder that the America my father handed to me seems nearly extinct?

President Barack Obama is not the cause of this disease, but he is a carrier. His words and actions reveal that he considers the United States to be an important nation but not the singular land every generation since America's birth has been taught about. That teaching, of course, changed a long time ago. For almost a half-century, schoolchildren have digested thick units that make sure to scold us for slavery, Jim Crow laws, Japanese internment camps and other sins.

Where is the curriculum that teaches that beyond our flaws, we have been the greatest society the world has known? We have built that legacy with a devotion to liberty and leadership unmatched in modern times. Yet we are led today by people who see the United States as merely the name between Ukraine and Uruguay on the United Nations lobby directory.

What we used to widely feel has been given a fitting name: American exceptionalism. It does not teach that we are without sin or that we cannot learn. It teaches that against the backdrop of history, no country has freed, fed or inspired more people than the United States. No nation has contributed more to science, culture or enlightened thought.

Today, that magnificent view is dismissed as tired jingoism.

More at the link.

Pasadena Patriots' Anti-Socialist Rally

From the press release, "Pasadena Patriots to Hold Huge 'May Day Anti-Socialism Rally":

Following their highly successful April 11 Anti-Tax Tea Party protest, The Pasadena Patriots is organizing an exciting and unique May Day-themed rally to protest against increased government socialism and higher taxes at the state and national level. The event will kick off with a rally at Pasadena City Hall at 4pm on May 1 with VIP guest speakers including political pundit Andrew Breitbart, SNL's Victoria Jackson, comedian Evan Sayet as well suprise guests and actual survivors of the socialist nightmare abroad ....

Why are we doing this? Big government politicians in Washington are threatening the American way of life with increased nationalization of private business, an unprecedented expansion of the federal government, higher taxes, as well as alarming talk of regulating free speech and targeting specificindustries and individuals with “windfall taxes” to “spread the wealth.”

In the state of California, powerful unions and freespending politicians have driven our state to the brink of bankruptcy and excessive taxes including the draconian Proposition 1-A continue to drive businesses away from the state. Americans must recognize the real cost of this path to socialism, both in dollars and in our liberty. The Pasadena Patriots encourages citizens to join the Pasadena May Day rally and fight for capitalism, low-taxes, and the freedom of the individual before it is too late.

The Pasadena Tea Party’s May Day rally and parade will take place at 4pm on Friday, May 1, 2009 on the steps of the Pasadena City Hall located at 100 N. Garfield Ave., Pasadena, CA 91109.

I'll be there.

I should have a Pasadena May Day! May Day! photo-essay available Saturday!

Related: Mark Mecker, "President Obama Mocks the Tea Party Patriots Across the Nation."

Do You Feel Safer?

That's the query in the new House Republican ad buy that features President Barack Obama shaking hands with Hugo Chavez and images from the September 11 attacks:

Because it features Obama meeting with members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, the ad's been attacked as "racist": “It is not only inflammatory to the Latino community but the singling out of a groups for that categorization is racist.”

Right on cue ...

Professor William Robinson: "Gaza is Israel’s Warsaw"

For those just getting up to speed on the William Robinson controversy (discussed here), here's a portion from the e-mail that's the basis for the investigation:

Gaza is Israel’s Warsaw - a vast concentration camp that confined and blockaded Palestinians, subjecting them to the slow death of malnutrition, disease and despair, nearly two years before their subjection to the quick death of Israeli bombs. We are witness to a slow-motion process of genocide (Websters: “the systematic killing of, or a program of action intended to destroy, a whole national or ethnic group”), a process whose objective is not so much to physically eliminate each and every Palestinian than to eliminate the Palestinians as a people in any meaningful sense of the notion of people-hood.

Check the comments from my post from this morning - and the links therein, if you've got the stomach - for some sample pushback from the anti-Israel forces arrayed against those speaking truth to moral clarity.

Ken Davenport's responded to my earlier essay, "Your Tax Dollars at Work."

See also, David Horowitz, "Finally a University Takes Action Against a Faculty Agitator in the Classroom." And, Inside Higher Ed has a report, "Crossing a Line."

At UCSB, see the campus mobilization efforts to defend Robinson, "Committee to Defend Academic Freedom at UCSB." It turns out that Noam Chomsky's coming to Robinson's defense, "Scholars Condemn Attack on Academic Freedom at UC-Santa Barbara."

Public Takes Conservative Turn on Abortion

Actually, the full survey report is, "Public Takes Conservative Turn on Gun Control, Abortion." But I'm particularly interested in the findings on abortion:

Between August and late October 2008, the proportion supporting legal abortion ranged from 57% (in mid-October) to 53% (in late October), before declining to 46% currently. Though opinion among some subgroups varied significantly across those surveys, some trends are apparent, aside from the falloff in support among men.

There has been notable decline in the proportion of independents saying abortion should be legal in most or all cases; majorities of independents favored legal abortion in August and the two October surveys, but just 44% do so today. In addition, the proportion of moderate and liberal Republicans saying abortion should be legal declined between August and late October (from 67% to 57%). In the current survey, just 43% of moderate and liberal Republicans say abortion should legal in most or all cases.

Among religious groups, support for abortion has steadily declined since August among white mainline Protestants (from 69% then to 54% currently). And just 23% of white evangelical Protestants now favor legal abortion, down from 33% in August and mid-October and 28% in late October.

The change has been less pronounced among white non-Hispanic Catholics: In August, 51% said that abortion should be legal in most or all cases; in both October surveys, 55% favored legal abortion. In the current survey, 49% of white non-Hispanic Catholics say that abortion should be legal while 42% believe it should be illegal.

I have a feeling that the decline in support for abortions has a more than a little to do with the "galling ghoulishness" of our new president. With Obama setting out to make abortions more available - and life less precious - it's no wonder that Americans are becoming more pro-life.

There's more public opinion from Pew at Memeorandum, and the racial breakdown of the electorate in 2008.