Commentary and analysis on American politics, culture, and national identity, U.S. foreign policy and international relations, and the state of education
- from a neoconservative perspective! - Keeping an eye on the communist-left so you don't have to!
Yesterday left-wing extremist Blue Texan at Firedoglake erupted in outrage at the right's relatively mild reaction to the death of former Senate Majority Leader Robert Byrd. See, "Conservatives Trash Robert Byrd While His Body is Still Warm." Check the link. For reminding folks of Senator Byrd's disgraced past as an Exalted Cyclops of the Ku Klux Klan, Blue Texan writes, "As always, the right remains a paragon of class."
I can't speak for fellow right-bloggers, but my personal policy is to denounce racism when I see it. That's apparently not the way it works with Blue Texan and Firedoglake. The hypocrisy is stunning of course. FDL is home to at least two of the biggest racist bigot bloggers on the web, Jane Hamsher (more here) and Tom Boggiani.
All in a day's work, I guess. Don't rest, friends. Expose these people for the enemies of truth and decency that they are.
Since I've been accused of leading "something of a crusade" against former Post blogger Dave Weigel, how could I resist this announcement? Weigel, who left the Post amidst a controversy where he bashed tons of conservatives, has joined the leftwing convention at MSNBC (video right).
According to a Tweet from "Countdown" host Keith Olbermann, Weigel has come on board as a contributor. "And confirming, @DaveWeigel is now MSNBC contributor @DaveWeigel Welcome aboard and my condolences, uh, congratulations!" wrote Olbermann.
Now Weigel has joined the team of Rachel Maddow and Ed Schultz. This from the guy who just today told the world of his wonderful career saga that started out as editor of a campus conservative paper at Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism. "Was I really that conservative? Yes," he wrote, somehow expecting readers to believe him. While he admitted some of his troubles came from "hubris," much of what he wrote most already knew, that he was no friend to the right. "At Reason, I'd become a little less favorable to Republicans, and I'd never been shy about the fact that I was pro-gay marriage and pro-open borders."
Throw in Weigel's parade of assault on conservatives, prominent figures on the right from Rush Limbaugh to Matt Drudge and Newt Gingrich and the bigger question becomes, does he agree with the right on anything? The answer is: it doesn't matter anymore. He's gone from an organization fighting to keep its credibility to one fighting to lose what little it has.
Early one morning in March, two Chicago-area brothers were dozing on an Amtrak train when it stopped in Buffalo, N.Y. A pair of uniformed Border Patrol agents made their way through the car, asking passengers if they were U.S. citizens. No, the vacationing siblings answered honestly, with flat, Midwestern inflections: We're citizens of Mexico.
And so it was that college students Carlos Robles, 20, and his brother Rafael, 19 — both former captains of their high school varsity tennis team — found themselves in jail, facing deportation.
Their secret was out: Despite their upbringing in middle America, their academic success and their network of native-born friends, they had no permission to be in the United States. Their parents had brought them here illegally as children.
The Robles brothers, now out of jail but fighting removal in Immigration Court, are among thousands of young illegal immigrants in similar situations, living at risk of being expelled to countries they barely remember.
Two weeks ago, a Harvard University student who came from Mexico at age 4, Eric Balderas, joined their ranks after he was arrested by immigration agents at an airport in San Antonio.
They are known in some circles as "Dream Act" kids, named after proposed legislation that would grant them legal status.
Their cases underscore a contradiction in the Obama administration's approach to immigration enforcement. Even though the president supports the Dream Act — which would provide a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants brought here as children who enroll in college or the military — his enforcement bureaucracy continues to pursue deportation cases against the increasing number of students who would be protected by it. It's part of a push that is on track to remove a record 400,000 illegal immigrants this year.
Sorry. Don't feel sorry for these people. Here's what's really happening behind the media's sob-story headlines. It's the "Dream Act" immigration scam. First they come at you with cap and gowns and sad faces. Then once they suck some of the undocumented into the program, they pump them full of indigenous supremacy indoctrination. It's all of a piece. You can see how it all comes together. The "Dream" activists work side-by-side with the left wing extremists, working to delegitimize the U.S. and advance the Democratic Party's neo-socialist agenda. And despite the media spin, it's hard for Americans to be sympathetic in the face of crass exploitation of the migrant poor for the communist reconquista agenda:
For a president and an administration with the media in its pocket, it's amazing they haven't convinced the American public that it's OK to protect lawbreakers by racial profiling.
I know, I know – if you believe the left's rant, only conservatives are racist bigots. But the truth is, the liberals lead on that one, and they're proud of it.
When they demand special rights for a certain class of "brown" people, they're racially profiling and are bigots.
They should be ashamed. Not only have they opened racial divisions in this country that were virtually closed decades ago, but they cater to it and are moving this country to the breaking point.
The issue is illegal aliens: foreigners who cross our borders illegally, stay in this country illegally, take jobs using fake identification – both of which are illegal – and feed at the trough of American generosity for food, housing, medical care, education and whatever else they can get.
On top of that, too many get involved in criminal activities from petty crimes to felonies. The costs to the criminal justice system and the numbers of incarcerated illegals prove the point.
Arizona hit the breaking point: bankrupt hospital emergency rooms, overcrowded schools, enormous social costs on every level, escalating crimes, record-setting kidnapping rates and violence against private citizens as well as police officers and Border Patrol, including murder.
It's a basic responsibility of the federal government to protect the borders and the citizens living within them. There are laws on the books to accomplish that.
But for political and philosophical reasons, politicians for decades have chosen not to enforce the law. They've chosen not to think first of the welfare and safety of the country and all Americans. They do what they please, hoping it will buy them votes and change the face and culture of this country permanently to their advantage. Their attitude is: The country be damned.
Starting last month, Dan Gainor, vice president for business and culture at the Media Research Center, the conservative media watchdog group, went on something of a crusade.
Angered by a joke that David Weigel made about Matt Drudge on his Twitter feed, Gainor contacted conservative groups asking them to stop cooperating with Weigel, who had recently taken his blog about the conservative movement to the Washington Post.
“We encouraged conservatives not to deal with him,” he said. “We contacted other conservative organizations and said, ‘This guy is no friend of the conservative movement. We recommend that you deny him access.’ Some did.”
When MRC asked the Heritage Foundation to disinvite Weigel from its weekly Tuesday blogger briefing, Rob Bluey, the briefing’s organizer, said the meeting was on the record and occasionally attended by liberal journalists, and declined to go along with the group’s request.
Most of the group’s other efforts also failed, but the MRC’s reservations about Weigel — voiced in an early letter to Post Executive Editor Marcus Brauchli, and given public airing on Post Ombudsman Andy Alexander’s piece on the affair on Friday — have played a major role in shaping the debate over whether the Post made the right move in accepting Weigel’s resignation in the wake of leaked emails in which he disparaged prominent conservative figures. Alexander wrote that the “biggest loss” from the whole affair was “The Post’s standing among conservatives.”
But even as MRC and its fellow conservative media watchdog group Accuracy in Media enjoyed a “we told you so” moment over his resignation, other conservative voices — including many of those conservatives whom Weigel covered — have come out supporting his work.
And actually, the rest of of the piece cites commentators and journalists who're all backing Weigel. Maybe Politico's looking to hire Weigel as well!
My position, at this point in politics, is that it's pretty much impossible to be friends with someone who's simultaneously working to utterly destroy all that I hold vital in culture, politics, and national security.
I've loved her music (and I'm always moved by cancer survivors --- cancer's a relentless killer). I'll update on the new release later. Until then, enjoy "Come to My Window":
Added: I don't think Kagan's nomination will be defeated. Still, the Politico piece suggests Republicans will get mileage from trashing leftist judicial activism. There's also the threat of a filibuster. See The Hill, "Sessions leaves Kagan filibuster on the table." And while yesterday's Los Angeles Times sough to paint Kagan as a centrist ("Kagan's a not-so-leftist liberal"), the only thing that's changed since her socialist college days is the scale of her naked ambition and bogus appeals to moderation. The American Prospect is setting up some defensive talking point, in any case. See, "A Guide to the Kagan Smears."
And Ann Althouse has all kinds of Supreme Court blogging here.
Now, as a general rule, I try to be very open minded about who gets into the Blogads Conservative Hive. If they're generally friendly to conservatives and seem to have a mostly conservative audience, I don't mind having them on board. So, aside from conservative blogs, there are Libertarian blogs in the Hive and there are blogs I'd call center-right. It goes without saying that there are plenty of issues where members of the Hive, myself included, don't see eye-to-eye.
Still, to the best of my recollection, there have only been two bloggers ever denied a spot in the Blogads Conservative Hive for ideological reasons. One of them was Charles Johnson from Little Green Footballs whom, ironically, I sponsored at Blogads and invited to the Hive, and then later booted from the Hive after his blog went completely off the rails to the Left. In that case, I didn't even get to discuss it with Charles because my emails bounced (I assumed he blocked them -- yes, I've been told he does that sometimes)...although I really tend to doubt that he cared since I'm undoubtedly just conservative creep #8,642 to him at this point.
The other blog denied entry into the Blogads Conservative Hive for ideological reasons was FrumForum.
I love it!
Charles Johnson and David Frum get the RWN boot. Talk about delicious fail!
At the video, former Senate Majority Leader Robert Byrd, in a 2007 floor speech, decries as barbaric Michael Vick's dog-fighting operation.
Byrd was 92 and the longest serving member of the U.S. Senate. A former member of the Klu Klux Klan and "Exalted Kleagle," Bryd was the only senator to vote against both Thurgood Marshall and Clarence Thomas for confirmation to the Supreme Court. As late as 2001 Byrd was known to still deploy the epithet "nigger" in political debate. But the Democratic Party and leftist leadership groups nevertheless championed racist Senator Byrd as a lion of the Senate. The man should have retired decades ago, along with the hatred with which he represented.
Lots of coverage on Afghanistan today at Memeorandum. Of special note is Jules Crittenden's post, "Quagmire!" (on the Christian Science Monitor).
If it was me in charge, I'd be making the case to stay in Afghanistan as long as necessary --- it's the central front in our ongoing GWOT (with AFPAK). It's been a long time, though, and with Barack Hussein in power, we have no leadership in foreign affairs.
We won't build a centralized democracy in Afghanistan, but a decentralized model might work:
Power sharing would be easier under a decentralized democracy, in which many responsibilities now held by Kabul would be delegated to the periphery. Some of these powers would surely include the authority to draft and enact budgets, to use traditional alternatives to centralized justice systems for some offenses, to elect or approve important officials who are now appointed by Kabul, and perhaps to collect local revenue and enforce local regulation.
Increasing local autonomy would make it easier to win over Afghans who distrust distant Kabul and would take advantage of a preexisting base of legitimacy and identity at the local level. The responsibility for foreign policy and internal security, however, would remain with the central government, which would prevent even the more autonomous territories from hosting international terrorist groups or supporting insurrection against the state.
A decentralized democracy along these lines should be an acceptable option for the United States. Its reliance on democracy and transparency is consistent with American values. Individual territories with the freedom to reflect local preferences may adopt social policies that many in the United States would see as regressive. But the opposite could also occur, with some places implementing more moderate laws than those favored by a conservative center. By promoting local acceptance of the central government, this option would remove much of the casusbelli for the insurgency. And it would preserve a central state with the power and incentive to deny the use of Afghan soil for destabilizing Pakistan or planning attacks against the United States.
A decentralized democracy would comport with much of the post-Cold War experience with state building elsewhere. A range of postconflict states in Africa (Ethiopia and Sierra Leone), Europe, (Bosnia and Macedonia), the Middle East (Iraq and Lebanon), and Asia (East Timor and, tentatively, Nepal) have used some combination of consociationalism, federalism, and other forms of decentralized democratic power sharing. Although it is too early to make definitive claims of success, to date not one of these states has collapsed, relapsed into civil war, or hosted terrorists. And some, such as Bosnia and Ethiopia, have remained tolerably stable for over a decade. This is, of course, no guarantee that decentralized democracy would work in Afghanistan. But its track record elsewhere and its better fit with the country's natural distribution of power suggests that it offers a reasonable chance of balancing interests and adjudicating disputes in Afghanistan, too ....
Afghanistan is not ungovernable. There are feasible options for acceptable end states that would meet core U.S. security interests and place the country on a path toward tolerable stability. The United States will have to step back from its ambitious but unrealistic project to create a strong, centralized Afghan state. If it does, then a range of power-sharing models could balance the needs of Afghanistan's internal factions and constituencies in ways that today's design cannot, while ensuring that Afghanistan does not again become a base for terrorists. In war, as in so many other things, the perfect can be the enemy of the good. The perfect is probably not achievable in Afghanistan -- but the acceptable can still be salvaged.
This is pretty funny. Sadly it's the missed photo-op of the day. I only caught the tail end of our conversation with Badge No. 3478, an arrogant boob too dim to understand that he serves the public and not the other way around. Read 5 Feet's account for the details ....
Didn't get a chance this weekend. It's playing up in L.A. and my wife's been working. Might get there later in the week. The homepage is here. And from LAT:
From the frightening chaos of daily firefights to the backbreaking boredom of digging bunkers in unforgiving terrain, in "Restrepo" (pronounced re-STREP-o) which deservedly won the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance earlier this year, the filmmakers have given us war at its most elemental. For all the high-tech equipment and the precision of high-flying bombers that have come to define modern warfare, the film is a reminder that much fighting is still done if not quite hand to hand, then alarmingly close enough to see the enemy's breath fog the frigid mountain air.
In case it’s not obvious, Jesse and I are both on Journolist. Unlike a lot of people, I have no doubt that it was someone on the listserv --- someone who agreed to keep the listserv private --- that leaked the emails to the gossip blog Fishbowl. I know back-stabbing hater behavior when I see it, and this is textbook. Dave rather recently got the plum job at the Washington Post, and that’s the sort of thing that brings haters out of the woodwork. Whoever decided to ruin him probably thinks of him or herself as a good liberal, and probably thinks they deserve the job that Dave got. Well, you’re not, and I’ll bet a million dollars that you don’t. So congrats. Enjoy your moment of successful hating today. Tomorrow morning, whoever you are, you’re going to wake up the same hack you always were. Except now you’ll be covered in slime and responsible for taking someone out of a job where they were actually doing good, useful work. You fail on every level, asshole. Maybe if you spent more time working and less time hating on people with more talent than you, you wouldn’t be driven to perform gross acts of haterade.
More talent?
Right. At, uhmm, teabagging them before they teabag you, I guess:
I am a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for me to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites. Thank you for shopping through my links.
