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!
What's driving the Facebook derby? The massive yet unproven moneymaking potential of the world's most popular social networking site, which boasts more than 500 million users. The company has raised nearly $1 billion without tapping the public markets, creating pent-up investor demand for the next big Internet IPO. The anticipation is similar to the frenzy surrounding the 2004 initial public offering of Google, the world's most popular search engine. Google raised $25 million before going public.
"There's this expectation that just like Google went through the roof, Facebook will too," UC Berkeley law professor Robert Bartlett said.
Facebook is the undisputed — and seemingly invincible — leader in social networking, the latest trend to grab eyeballs and dollars on the Web. Seven years ago, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg came up with a new way for college students to connect, sparking an online revolution in the process. Now the billionaire digital age mogul talks boldly of doubling Facebook's users to 1 billion. There are no guarantees that Facebook won't stumble like News Corp.'s MySpace before it, but the money continues to pour in.
Facebook's explosive popularity got a boost last year with the movie "The Social Network." At the time, Thiel tried to capture the exuberance in an interview with The Times.
"Great consumer companies grow fast, and this is definitely one of the greatest consumer companies in all of history," he said. "It is culturally really important, and it represents a permanent shift, sort of like television or radio if they were invented by a few people in one company. That it's a consumer-facing company makes it very interesting to people. People can relate to it. People have ideas of what it should do different or better. It's somewhat of a unique thing. There's a lot of intensity surrounding it."
Facebook owes its status to its increasing ubiquity. It has become the place people go to find their friends, sort of like a modern-day phone book. While Facebook quickly has captured the attention — surpassing Google as the most visited website in 2010, according to Internet analytics firm Experian Hitwise — it has been slower to tap revenue streams such as advertising, payment systems and e-commerce. But some advertisers are bullish on its prospects.
"It's the real deal," Michael Lynton, chairman and chief executive of Sony Pictures Entertainment, said in an interview late last year.
This week begins the inauguration and swearing-in ceremonies for newly elected officials all over the country. One thing many of us have in common is that the voters rewarded us for our outspoken opposition to ObamaCare.
The electorate's decisive rejection of the Obama administration's policies reveals a pervasive concern over the federal government's disregard of fundamental aspects of our nation's Constitution. No legislation in our history alters the balance of power between Washington and the states so much as ObamaCare does.
The tactics used to pass the health-care bill gave all Americans ample warning of the constitutional wrongdoing that was about to occur. Concerns were raised in the summer of 2009 over the constitutionality of the individual mandate and other portions of the bill, yet the president and Congress proceeded full-steam ahead. In the Senate, the much-ridiculed "Cornhusker Kickback" gave Nebraska an all-expenses-paid Medicaid expansion program. Due to public pressure, the provision was eventually removed from the final law.
Following Senate passage, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi planned to "deem-and-pass" the federal health-care bill, a constitutionally suspect procedure of passing a bill without actually voting on it. Instead, the speaker allowed the House to vote on the Senate version of the bill without amendments, and Congress subsequently used a parliamentary maneuver called budget reconciliation to "fix" the flawed bill. In the end, not a single Republican voted for the legislation.
Unwilling to acquiesce to such a blatantly unconstitutional act, Florida and 19 other states challenged the new law and its requirement that nearly every American purchase health insurance. The lawsuit is based on the common sense notion that an individual's decision not to purchase health insurance is not an act of "commerce" that can be regulated under Congress's constitutionally enumerated powers. Unsurprisingly, the Obama administration has invoked shifting and contradictory arguments in its efforts to defend the indefensible.
More at the link, and the interview above was with Greta last night.
Edmund Gerald Brown Jr. was sworn in as California's 39th governor Monday — 36 years after first taking the same oath — warning of shared sacrifice and hard choices ahead to help the state out of its financial crisis.
Striking a serious tone but with a strong undercurrent of optimism, Brown read, uncharacteristically, from prepared remarks. In a 17-minute address, the Democrat spoke of the coming austerity and of overcoming adversity. But he also said he hoped to restore people's faith in government.
The new governor said the spending plan he is scheduled to unveil next week would include painful cuts.
"The budget I propose will assume that each of us elected to do the people's business will rise above ideology.... It is a tough budget for tough times," he said. "Choices have to be made and difficult decisions taken. At this stage of my life, I have not come here to embrace delay or denial."
He vowed that his spending plan would have "no more smoke and mirrors" and "no more empty promises" — one of three principles Brown said would guide his administration. Reiterating campaign promises, Brown also said he would work to return power to cities and counties and enact "no new taxes unless the people vote for them."
What's not mentioned is California's pension crisis, discussed at the 3:00 minute mark by Matt Welch at the clip below. And of course, the public employees' unions lavished on a big inaugural party to celebrate, although Brown may have tipped his hand a bit, "Jerry Brown's cameos at union fetes may be signal":
Perhaps never in California history has the political symbolism of a hot-dog feed been so closely analyzed.
Two hours after Gov. Jerry Brown was inaugurated Monday, hot dogs became another chapter in his relationship with public employee unions whose support was instrumental to his return to the governor's office - and whose cooperation will be critical to his success dealing with California's $28 billion budget deficit.
The 18,000-member Orange County Employees Association, the county's largest union, threw a free hot-dog party on the Capitol grounds after Brown's swearing-in. Organizers expected Brown to speak briefly at what they dubbed the "People's Inauguration Party."
But Brown and his wife, Anne Gust Brown, bypassed the microphone set up inside the massive tent and instead grabbed dogs and greeted a few of the dozens of people waiting in line for a free sandwich.
Within minutes, the Browns left. There was no speech.
While event organizers tried to put a positive spin on it, some of the people waiting for Brown to speak booed, thinking he blew off the speech to make a point.
I'm not convinced that Brown's cold shoulder was for nothing more than media consumption. If those hard choices he spoke about during his inauguration speech mean anything then frankly a lion's share of the shared sacrificies will have to be borne by public unions. See Steven Malanga, "The Beholden State."
Well, I wonder what hashtag the extreme gender feminists will come up with now?
I reported earlier on the Trotskyite defense of Julian Assange, which frankly offered a brutal take-down of the feminist-left's "legitimizing the suppression of nonconformists and political dissidents." And now comes news that antiwar icon Daniel Ellsberg is dissing the rape allegations, on Twitter:
I wonder if Ellsberg has also personally heard the accounts of Assange's accusers, and found them unconvincing. I doubt it.
I suspect that he just assumes that they would sound like liars, were he to speak to them, because Assange sounded sincere. And why would he not make that assumption? One of the key narratives of the rape culture is that false accusations are extremely common. (They are not.)
Or maybe he just assumes that rapists are easily identifiable, that he can suss out a rapist by talking to him. Unlike the stupid women who trust them, date them, marry them, work alongside them unawares. Until.
It's funny, ahem, how much implicit victim-blaming is embedded in the assertion to know a man has been wrongly accused.
The truth is, it doesn't really matter what Assange or his accusers sound like to Ellsburg, or anyone else. Because sounding honest and being honest are often mutually exclusive concepts.
This is a fascinating development. It's hardly constroversial to suggest that Daniel Ellsberg is a far more iconic figure on the progressive left than is Michael Moore. But clearly his support for Assange has struck a nerve among hardline anti-rape culture feminists. And while SadyDoyle's 15 minutes are up, no doubt we'll be seeing another man-hating extremist take the baton. Seriously. How far will this go? Personally, I'm hoping to see Glenn Greenwald strapped to the stocks and lashed to a bloody pulp, although so far he's stayed clear of the feminist backlash. He does have a new essay typically attacking the media's "pro-war agitprop" during the Iraq war (via Memeorandum). And linked there is another piece on WikiLeaks from Newsweek: "Why Journalists Aren’t Standing Up for WikiLeaks." But the big story is this soap opera of whiny feminist progressives who just can't catch a break. And speaking of breaks: Julian Assange is trying to break governments. Feminists are crying over broken condoms. (But to be fair, it's more complicated, for sure, but following the revolt of the violent femmes this last couple of weeks does feed the cynicism just a bit.)
The interview's in two parts. Michael Moore is all about one outrageous comment after another. At the first clip, at 3:30 minutes, he argues that Republicans are like "the people who're still living in their parents' basement." Seriously. That whole stretch of comments is jaw dropping (he contradictorily argues that Democrats are the new conservatives while at the same time claiming the Republicans are against progress). But it's the segment at the second clip where Moore becomes the most agitated. He goes off on a bumbling rant about the how the Bush years caused these trillion dollar deficits, but when Anderson Cooper calls out President Obama the dude goes mum (and compare that to the Trotskyites, "Obama’s Reign of Terror in Afghanistan"). And Michael Moore's an icon for the progressive left? Well, yeah. He plays the race card at about 7:30 minutes at top: "It's about a black man in the White House," which events have repeatedly shown it's not. But RAAAAACISM is all the Dems have left, as we all know. And pay attention to Moore's argument that any criticism against the president is insane and racist. It'd be infuriating if it wasn't so stupid. Moore decries the "insanity" while proving that he lives in a world of make believe.
Just read it at the link above. I love Cassy's writing. She's completely unbothered by the strictures of PC totalitarianism. She's right to stress the potentially damaging effects on a child's health and social well-being from encouraging an opposite gender orientation as young as age 2. When one is older perhaps they'll have the maturity to adapt to society's prejudices. While it's certainly fine to say "to each his own" for adult individuals, there remains the responsibility for parents to set their kids on the appropriate normative (and moral) course for their lives ahead.
And in another installment of my informal series on contemporary feminist schizophrenia, here comes the news that Anne Hays, pictured, has launched a boycott against The New Yorker Magazine for its two week consecutive failure to feature at least 5 women writers. Hays published a letter to the editor at Facebook, sent back her two most recent issues, and demanded a refund. And from her letter:
The New Yorker 4 Times Square, 20th Floor New York, NY 10036 Dear Editors of the New Yorker,
I am writing to express my alarm that this is now the second issue of the NYer in a row where only two (tiny) pieces out of your 76 page magazine are written by women. The January 3rd, 2011 issue features only a Shouts & Murmurs (Patricia Marx) and a poem (Kimberly Johnson); every other major piece: the fiction, the profile, and all the main nonfiction pieces, are written by men. Every single critic is a male writer.
We were already alarmed when we flipped through the Dec 20th & 27th double-issue to find that only one piece (Nancy Franklin) and one poem (Alicia Ostriker) were written by women. A friend pointed out that Jane Kramer wrote one of the short Talk of the Town segments as well, though it barely placated our sense of outrage that one extra page, totaling three, out of the 148 pages in the magazine, were penned by women. Again, every critic is a man. To make matters more depressing, 22 out of the 23 illustrators for the magazine are men. Seriously!
Women are not actually a minority group, nor is there a shortage, in the world, of female writers. The publishing industry is dominated by female editors, and it would be too obvious for me to point out to you that the New Yorker masthead has a fair number of female editors in its ranks. And so we are baffled, outraged, saddened, and a bit depressed that, though some would claim our country's sexism problem ended in the late 60's, the most prominent and respected literary magazine in the country can't find space in its pages for women's voices in the year 2011.
I have enclosed the January issue and expect a refund. You may either extend our subscription by one month, or you can replace this issue with a back issue containing a more equitable ratio of male to female voices. I plan to return every issue that contains fewer than five women writers. You tend to publish 13 to 15 writers in each issue; 5 women shouldn't be that hard.
A dismayed reader,
Anne Hays
Is it me, or does Hays contradict the thesis of gender discrimination by indicating that the "publishing industry is dominated by female editors"? And you know, maybe the editors at The New Yorker don't pay attention to byline quotas at the magazine, considering the publication has been a leading voice of progressive politics for decades (and it publishes lots of women writers). Indeed, here's a comment at Margot Magowan's post on Hays at the San Francisco Chronicle:
Ya know Margot, you and Zennie are always looking for something to whine about that's not there. Your issues are long gone. Are you aware that Tina Brown was the first female editor of the New Yorker? And did you bother to research why women may or may not be writing for the New Yorker? Are there any serious female journalists or fiction writers who might write something worth printing in the New Yorker? Maybe it's a sign that women are engaged in other professions these days? Or maybe young women have forgotten how to write since most are into social media?
I'm a feminist who is near 60 years of age and I don't find the discrimination anymore that you complain about. I'm still working and I still demand a salary that rivals my male counterparts. Maybe you need to follow general trends instead of blaming gender discrimination for everything (as Zennie blames racism).
With a GOP majority now in the House, the role of the tea party in politics and policy will change. The Times' piece points out the polarizing tendency between purity and pragmatism, and considering the longstanding insight that Members of Congress are "single-minded seekers of reelection," I'm confident that purity will be taking a backseat to pragmatism and party unity. As noted at the article:
Many grass-roots movements have learned how hard it is to remain outsiders in a place run by insiders and still accomplish something, said Martin Cohen, a professor of political science at James Madison University, who is studying the tea party movement and its parallels to the rise of the Christian right in the 1980s and 1990s.
In Washington, vowing not to compromise can be a self-imposed exile into irrelevancy. Ideological purity is in short supply. The lure of a party power can be strong. And the currency of the movement is its grass-roots engagement, Cohen said, something famously tricky to maintain in the face of defeats.
"If I had to bet on whether they would change Washington or whether Washington would change them, I would bet on Washington," he said.
Since the Julian Assange/Sady Doyle thing's been going on, I've been re-reading Christina Hoff Sommers', Who Stole Feminism?: How Women Have Betrayed Women. I was hoping to just type up a big summary with some awesome block quotes from the book, but that takes a long time. I'll look for some of her articles later, but in the meantime, there's an interview with Scott London, probably from the mid-1990s when the book came out: "The Future of Feminism: An Interview with Christina Hoff Sommers."
Check it out:
Over the last decade or two, many women in the United States have distanced themselves from the feminist movement. It appears that a growing number of them associate feminism with anger and hostile rhetoric and have therefore concluded that they are not really feminists. This was reflected in a recent Time/CNN poll which showed that although 57 percent of the women responding felt there was a need for a strong women's movement, a full 63 percent said they didn't consider themselves feminists.
This fact is not surprising to Christina Hoff Sommers, author of the controversial polemic Who Stole Feminism: How Women Have Betrayed Women. Sommers contends that feminism has taken a wrong turn in recent years. It has become too self-absorbed, too unrepresentative, and too punitive to dissenters, she says. The conviction that women remain besieged and subject to a relentless male backlash has turned the movement inward. "We hear very little today about how women can join with men on equal terms to contribute to universal human culture," she writes. "Instead, feminist ideology has taken a divisive gynocentric turn, and the emphasis now is on women as a political class whose interests are at odds with the interests of men."
Christina Hoff Sommers is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and former professor of philosophy at Clark University in Massachusetts. I met with her in Los Angeles shortly after the publication of Who Stole Feminism?
Scott London: What inspired you to write this book?
Christina Hoff Sommers: In the late 1980s, I began to have disagreements with some of my colleagues in philosophy. In 1988, I actually went to the American Philosophical Association and read a paper critical of key points in academic feminism. I thought it would be a lively debate and that people would be angry. That often happens in the American Philosophical Association. But you always part as friends and go out for drinks and so on. But we did not part as friends at that event. People were furious. They were hissing. One woman almost fainted. I had never experienced anything like it. That evening I was excommunicated from a religion I didn't even know existed.
London: Did you consider yourself a feminist at that point?
Sommers. Yes. As a philosopher, you have to want dissent. That keeps you honest and keeps the research credible. But they didn't appreciate any kind of dissent in the movement and that spelled trouble. There is a system of quality control in scholarship, it is called criticism. But they were disallowing it.
London: The tone of feminism has become angrier and more resentful, and the explanation is often that there has been a "backlash" in the culture. Isn't there some truth to that?
Sommers: It's a myth. The eighties, which Susan Faludi called the "backlash decade," was a period when women made more progress than they did during most of the postwar period combined in terms of improved earnings. Women are now approaching parity with men in law school, medical school, business school. There are more women than men in college. A lot of this happened in the so-called backlash decade. So that, in itself, is a myth. What historians and economists will have to explain was how there was so much progress in so short a time. That's the big story of the eighties, not the backlash. They got it backwards. Now, why they got it backwards is interesting: because the leadership and some of the more extreme feminists are addicted to a language and a rhetoric of oppression. They want to view American women as a subordinate class. They say we are oppressed by the "patriarchy." All of that is very silly. And it's also very inaccurate. Women today have so many advantages today they didn't have in previous times and in many places around the world — most places around the world. So not to pass along the good news to young women seems to me to be wrong. That is part of the reason why I wrote the book — to give young women a different perspective. The perspective now, from my point of view, is that the better things get for women, the angrier the women's studies professors seem to be, the more depressed Gloria Steinem seems to get. So there is something askew here, something amiss.
You know this whole radical progressive schism over the Assange rape allegations has gotten out of control when one of the world's leading revolutionary parties is pushing back against the feminist left's charges against the WikiLeaks frontman. See the Socialist Equality Party's, "The Nation Joins the Campaign Against Julian Assange."
This article is just too darn good --- and I hate to admit it because I'm so bloody anti-communist! The writer David Walsh, a top editor at World Socialist Web Site, just hammers Katha Pollitt and her recent piece on the rape allegations. See, "The Nation joins the campaign against Julian Assange." There's a lot to digest, and for a progressive/communist organization, I'm even a little surprised at the not so subtle political incorrectness. More on that below. The introduction is worth sharing first of all:
The Nation magazine in the US, with its publication of “The Case of Julian Assange” by columnist Katha Pollitt (posted December 22, 2010), has joined the right-wing campaign against WikiLeaks co-founder Assange, a campaign directed by the highest levels of the American state.
The sexual assault charges against Assange in Sweden are part of an orchestrated effort to divert public attention from the content of the WikiLeaks exposures—the duplicity, hypocrisy and criminality of American and world imperialism—and bury the important revelations in a pile of scandalous garbage. Pollitt has eagerly lent a hand to that effort.
Such a development was predictable, given the history of the journalist and the publication, but that does not make it any less reprehensible… or educational. The arguments employed by Pollitt shed further light on the politically rotten character of contemporary feminism and identity politics generally.
This is conspiracy theorizing par excellence, which I doubt could be improved upon by anyone to right or left of the author. But notice this as well:
This is not the first time we have noted the alliance of the extreme right and feminism. [http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/oct2009/pola-o08.shtml] The latter has assumed deeply reactionary characteristics, misappropriating the movement for women’s rights that at one time was an element of the struggle against oppression.
Pollitt goes on to lambaste Assange’s supporters who have denounced the trumped-up and politically motivated character of the “rape” charges, including Truthout’s Dave Lindorff, filmmaker Michael Moore, MSNBC talk show host Keith Olbermann and feminists Naomi Wolf and Katrin Axelsson. “What's disturbing,” she writes, “is the way some WikiLeaks admirers have misrepresented the allegations, attacked the women and made light of date rape.”
Date rape has nothing to do with it, by the women’s own statements. The case involves consensual relations. Each of the women actively sought a sexual involvement with Assange.
I had to highlight that passage about the "deeply reactionary characteristics" of contemporary feminists. Sounds about right. And that last part about consensual relations is basically what Robert Stacy McCain said with "You buy the ticket, you take the ride" --- although I doubt The Other McCain would enjoy being lumped in with some Trotskyite revolutionary internationalists.
And here's my favorite:
Feminist opinion—as the Assange case and the Polanski affair before it have demonstrated—has become one of the means of legitimizing the suppression of nonconformists and political dissidents, and of changing the subject from the great social issues, above all, class oppression and social inequality, to stale and self-pitying concerns.
That whole thing could be placed in bold, but then none of it would be. I think folks catch my drift, in any case. "The means of legitimizing the suppression of nonconformists and political dissidents" has been the issue I've been exposing here this last few weeks. I'm especially interested in this since radical feminists are among the most fanatical activists you're likely to come across --- and I definitely get my quota of these types online. And clearly Sady Doyle's in a class all of her own. And while I'm getting a kick outta blogging the #MooreandMe campaign, I had to laugh out loud when I noticed that she'd unblocked me on Twittter the other day. Yep, she wants to see me tweets and she wants to read my blog. She won't link, but she's reading. And while of course there's nothing I could say to change any of her views --- considering that for Ms. Sady my effort to document her Stalinism confirms her whole program of Dworkinite feminist machinations (misogyny, blah, blah.) --- it's certainly worth it from my point of view. Some of her acolytes have been making sensational claims puffing up the impact of #MooreandMe to the scale of the civil rights movement of the 1960s. Michael Moore really is a god if women today have placed him on par with Martin Luther King, Jr. The flip side is that of course such inflation of accomplishments reveals how little today's feminists have left to achieve. Hey, once you bring down MLK let's go for dethroning the 16th President of the United States from the pantheon of America's greatest leaders. Shoot. Saving the Union from irreparable and violent dissolution? That's nothing compared to getting the Flint Fatso to confess on Rachel Maddow on MSNBC that "every woman who claims to have been raped has to be, must be taken seriously ..." Blah, blah. Gosh. I mean, wow. That has to be Michael Moore's Appomattox. Ms. Sady is the rail splitter of the radical gender feminist contingents! Surrender!
Australia must plan and build for extremes of climate
FOR many city dwellers watching the Queensland floods on plasma screens, the prospect of camping on baking roofs surrounded by putrid floodwaters submerging homes, farms and towns is barely imaginable. So, too, is the stoicism with which outback and regional Australians are facing the crisis, especially after a decade or more of crippling drought.
The rest of Australia, and indeed the world, can only admire the hardiness and resilience of those who have been ravaged by the continent's climatic extremes repeatedly and who have become resigned to them. As one family whose home is on the banks of Rockhampton's Fitzroy River philosophically told The Australian's Graham Lloyd last week: "We've been through it before, we've been through a lot of floods. It's part of living here . . . when they come, they come." And so do the snakes, the debris and billions of dollars damage.
As usual, the response of local government, police and Queensland State Emergency Service staff to the crisis has been outstanding. Driving into floodwaters at night until the vehicle is almost submerged then boating to rescue terrified children clinging to the branches of trees in a crocodile-infested river is not for the faint-hearted. Authorities have done an excellent job notifying local government officials, police and residents in plenty of time about flooded rivers and the need to evacuate.
The Republican congressman who is taking over responsibility for congressional oversight called President Obama’s administration “one of the most corrupt administrations” on Sunday and predicted that the investigations he is planning over the next two years could result in about $200 billion in savings for U.S. taxpayers.
Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), the incoming chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, was bullish in laying out his agenda for the new Congress under GOP control of the House.
Issa, who as chairman will have subpoena power, said he would seek to ferret out waste across the federal bureaucracy. While he used fiery rhetoric in describing the Obama administration in a series of television interviews Sunday, he said he would focus on wasteful spending over political persecutions.
But 21 Christians were killed in the New Year's Day car bomb attack on a Coptic church in Alexandria, Egypt, and the president has sent poorly conceived condolences on the "reported deaths and dozens of injured from both the Christian and Muslim communities." Gateway Pundit and Israel Matsav report. Also at Memeorandum. You can't strike a bipartisan tone when you refuse to even consider the fact of Islamist extremism. It's only been one day and the administration's already blown its calls for bipartisanship. See also Cold Fury: "They Can't Handle the Truth."
All but eight of the injured and all of the fatalities in Alexandria were Christians, according to Egypt's Ministry of Health. No one immediately claimed responsibility for the attack, which was being described as a suicide bombing. The explosion, which appeared designed to inflict maximum civilian casualties, bore the hallmark of Al Qaeda militants.
Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak accused unnamed foreign elements of being behind the attack.
"This act of terrorism shook the country's conscience, shocked our feelings and hurt the hearts of Muslim and Coptic Egyptians," he said in an emergency address to the nation. "The blood of their martyrs in the land of Alexandria mixed to tell us all that all Egypt is the target and that blind terrorism does not differentiate between a Copt and a Muslim."
The attack in the ancient Mediterranean coastal city was the latest in a wave of violence against once-resilient Christian communities in the Muslim world, some of which date back to antiquity.
Christmas Eve assaults by Muslim extremists killed dozens of Christians in the Nigerian cities of Jos and Maiduguri. And Iraq's Christians have endured a relentless campaign of attacks and intimidation by the local branch of Al Qaeda.
An Oct. 31 siege on a Baghdad church that killed at least 58 parishioners and staff members sparked a new Christian exodus from the Iraqi capital and the northern city of Mosul. About 1,000 families sought refuge in Iraq's semiautonomous Kurdish enclave afterward, according to the United Nations. Further threats of violence by Islamic militants caused many Christians in Iraq to tone down Christmas celebrations, and attacks Thursday against 10 Christian targets left an elderly couple dead.
Officials across the Middle East, including the ultraconservative Muslim governments of Iran and Saudi Arabia, condemned Saturday's attack, which was widely covered in television news broadcasts. In an annual New Year's speech at the Vatican, Pope Benedict XVI urged the faithful to stave off despair over such violence, but also demanded that governments do more to protect religious minorities.
"In front of the current threatening tensions, in front of especially the discrimination tyranny and religious intolerance, that today hit in particular the Christians, once again I deliver the pressing invite to not cave in to the depression and resignation," Benedict said, adding that officials' "words are not enough" in confronting religious intolerance.
"There must be a concrete and constant effort from leaders of nations," he said.
Things you learn by hanging out in the progressive fever swamps of radical feminism. Confused lefty dudes are into attacking "rape culture" and don't like being dismissed as "white knights":
Whatever real problems "White Knight Syndrome" might create pale in comparison to the damage it serves as a tool for silencing male voices who speak out against rape culture, sexism, misogyny, and male privilege. Most male feminists aren't speaking out to "rescue" women or curry sexual favor. Most of us speak out because we recognize that men have a stake in this, too. It would be easier for men to retreat to our privilege and let this be someone else's problems but I think its important that we step up and try to be a part of the solution. Misogyny should offend men. Rape culture should horrify men. We have a responsibility to bring our voices into the discussion. Not because women need us, but because it is the right thing to do. "White Knight" accusations are always about protecting male privilege, but this isn't something men are obligated to do. There is NO necessity that we defend male privilege or fall silent in the face of violence and hatred against women. I believe male privilege is unsupportable. Aside from issues of fairness, I would still fight sexism for purely self-interested reasons. Other men treating women poorly damages ALL men and men suffer from the damage a misogynistic culture does to gender relations and our own identities. That its wrong should be enough, but I firmly believe it does serve my interests to combat male privilege.
This dude's, er, groping for something, anything, to latch on to. Wouldn't want to jeopardize those progressive creds with the likes of Sady Doyle. (Though it's likely that women like that just hate men, period, and no amount of male combat against male privilege is really gonna matter. These women are neo-Stalinist.)
Last Tuesday's Investor's Business Daily ran a sensational editorial on the City of Fresno, in California's Central Valley, "Fresno, Zimbabwe." The piece argues that environmental policies are transforming Fresno, long the heart of the world's agricultural breadbasket, into another "Zimbabwe or 1930s Ukraine." That piece has been picked up by Ed Morrissey at Hot, in two consecutive essays: "California’s Central Valley: Zimbabwe West?", and "The Valley That Jobs Forgot." And Ed argues, at the latter essay, that "the decision by a federal judge to cut off water supplies to an area that literally fed the world turned the Central Valley from an agricultural export powerhouse to a center of starvation within two years."
Well, not exactly. I graduated from Fresno State in 1992. During my years there the region was devastated by high unemployment, especially following the 1990 recession. I also taught at Fresno State in 2000, my first job out of graduate school. I recall seeing a report on ABC World News Tonight from downtown Fresno, on New Year's Day 2000 (or the day before), describing the local economy like a throwback to the Great Depression. Indeed, the fact of double-digit unemployment and poverty are a way of life there, and have been so for decades:
Fresno's unemployment rate is 2.5 times greater than any other California city its size. But then again, high unemployment is nothing new to the Central Valley. Like summer days over the century mark, we have grown accustomed to double-digit unemployment. In the year 2004 alone, more than 12 percent of our fellow Fresnans were out of work. The impact on our quality of life and morale is virtually immeasurable. What is measurable, however, is unemployment's affect on crime.
The Central Valley water crisis is bad, and no doubt federal policy has exacerbated one of the worst anti-business climates in the country. But context requires qualification of sweeping arguments on the impact of environmental regulations. For example, following the links from Ed's second entry takes us to Verum Serum, "35 Worst Places to Find a Job in the U.S." And one of the links there goes to Victor Davis Hanson's, "Two Californias." Hanson is a former professor of classics at Fresno State who continues to run a family farm in Selma. At the link he speaks of the Central Valley's "once-thriving" agricultural economy. But the discussion there also notes the larger crisis of unemployment and the absence of the rule of law illustrated by the unmitigated disaster of illegal immigration. And I'd add further that government and public hospitals are the largest employers in the City of Fresno, followed by public education, with AT&T and Zacky Farms trailing the pack as the only high volume free-market enterprises. The employment picture points to the low levels of entrepreneurial business development in Fresno and the larger community --- and this is not new. That context is important to keep in mind, notwithstanding the devastating impact of the left's mindless environmental policies.
An interesting discussion at the new American Interest.
From Adam Garfinkle, "Terms of Contention," which is an introduction to the debates over democracy and plutocracy in American, old and new:
The Founders, their classical educations guiding them, did not put democracy on a pedestal as most Americans do today. That place was reserved for liberty and republican government, each in its way an expression of fear of excessive concentrations of power (with Samuel I, chapter 8 serving as a proof text for most of them). Liberty meant freedom from the impositions of a cloying state, a definition dating at the least from the clash of Roundheads and Cavaliers in the English Civil War. Republican government à la Montesquieu meant protection against the kind of monarchy that sought to suborn the judiciary, the law being, in addition to the social power of the nobility, a check on concentrated royal authority. Democracy, as the term was understood, embodied a hearty capacity for abuse—for mob rule and the triumph of passion over reason to serve the ambition of the demagogue. Though to the sharp side of this point of view, Alexander Hamilton said it best on June 18, 1787 at the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia: “Your ‘people’, sir, is nothing but a great beast.”
And a confused Karoli's head explodes at Crooks and Liars, which makes this doubly good:
“… it’s time for Tots for Tots …
“I got to tell you folks, we’re having a big problem this year.
“The economy really sucks.
“Now, I hate to point fingers at anybody but the present administration probably had a lot to do with that.
“And the way I see it they’re not going to quit doing it until they bring this country to its knees. So I think we should all rise up, and we should stop this administration from what they’re doing because they’re destroying this country.
“They’re driving us into bankruptcy so that they can impose socialism on us, and that’s exactly what they’re doing and I’m sick and damned tired of it and I know you are too.
“But I know that the Marine Corps is going to be here forever — this administration won’t. Semper Fi. God bless you all. Hoorah.”
ST. GEORGE, Utah — Some disapproving classmates called members of the new club “Satanists.” Another asked one of the girls involved, “Do you have a disease?”
But at three local high schools here this fall, dozens of gay students and their supporters finally convened the first Gay-Straight Alliances in the history of this conservative, largely Mormon city. It was a turning point here and for the state, where administrators, teachers and even the Legislature have tried for years to block support groups for gay youths, calling them everything from inappropriate to immoral.
The new alliances in St. George were part of a drastic rise this fall in the number of clubs statewide, reflecting new activism by gay and lesbian students, an organizing drive by a gay rights group and the intervention of the American Civil Liberties Union, which has threatened to sue districts that put up arbitrary hurdles. Last January, only 9 high schools in Utah had active Gay-Straight Alliances; by last month, the number had reached 32.
The alliances must still work around a 2007 state law that was expressly intended to stifle them by requiring parental permission to join and barring any discussions of sexuality or contraception, even to prevent diseases.
Gayle Ruzicka, president of the Utah Eagle Forum, a conservative family group, promoted the law. Its authors expected, she said, that requiring parental permission would deter some children from joining the alliances and that restricting topics for discussion would mean that “there’s not a lot of purpose in being there, and the clubs end up being pretty small.”
“I just don’t think these clubs are appropriate in schools,” Ms. Ruzicka said. “You can talk about providing support, but you’re also creating a gay recruiting tool.”
But members of the new clubs said they were undaunted by the restrictions, which they said showed a misunderstanding of what the alliances meant for students who had often lived with fear and shame — at home and at school.
I almost forgot to post my annual New Year's Day report. Last year's is here. Not too much to add except that I'm actually going through the process of mortgage modification, and I don't know the outcome yet. There's a chance my family might have to move out of this house and start over. But at this point I'm fine with whatever happens. If you follow the link above that'll take you to my 2009 New Year's Day report, where I discussed my family's financial situation at that time. I had a lot of anxiety back then. Now not so much. Let it ride, I guess.
In other news: I've started writing a book. I'll update as I make more progress, but it'll be a semi-autobiographical analysis of ideological change in American politics, with special attention to trends in resurgent anarcho- and neo-communism on the progressive left. And blogging will continue, as always. I wrote 3,384 entries in 2010. I don't know if I'll keep up that pace, but there'll be lots of hot commentary and analysis in the months ahead.
I was reading over at Washington Rebel this afternoon, which featured this lovely picture of Shania Twain. And then wouldn't you know it, the hot country star got married today. At Us Magazine, "Shania Twain Is Married!". And photos at TMZ. (And consider this my first Rule 5 entry for 2011!)
In July 2009 I published "Can Palin Win the 2012 GOP Nomination?" That was 18 months ago. It's amazing how time flies, and with the New Year upon us it might be time to rephrase the question: Will 2011 be the year of Sarah Palin?
That's a pretty good bet, I'd say. For all intents and purposes, the race for the 2012 major party nominations begins today. Top-tier candidate announcements should be forthcoming shortly. Hillary Clinton announced her candidacy for the 2008 Democratic nomination on January 20, 2007. Iowa will hold its presidential caucuses on January 16, 2012 (although the final shape of next year's nomination calendar is still up in the air). By this point the buzz is not so much when candidates will formally announce, but how: Facebook or Twitter? YouTube is so four years ago.
Anyway, Nate Silver has an update to his previous analysis, "Sarah Palin’s Nomination Chances: A Reassessment" (via Memeorandum). Silver focuses on voter enthusiasm, the impact of the 2010 midterms, the competition in the GOP field (and the prospects that some top-tier candidates might wait until 2016), likely media cheerleading for Palin, her advantages as a woman, ideological purity of the GOP primary electorate, likely attempts by the GOP establishment to torpedo Palin's campaign, the historical propensity for the out party to nominate ideological extremists, and Palin's advantages with new media technologies.
My take is that Silver is a bit too infatuated with the role of new technology and blogs, etc., to determine Palin's nomination chances. He spends little time on the factors that I focused on in June 2009. Perhaps most important is fundraising. So far Palin's most formidable competition will likely come from Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee. Newt Gingrich is very likely to announce as well, although I doubt he'll have a serious chance to win the nomination. There's also buzz over Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour and Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, the former who's considered a powerful fundraiser but whose recent gaffe on Jim Crow segregation could hurt him with the establishment media. Others like Mike Pence, Mitchell Daniels, and John Bolton seem too far off the radar, although again fundraising may be a key indicator or competitiveness. According to an analysis out yesterday, "Romney has raised the most money at $7.4 million, according to Federal Election Commission records. Palin is second at $5.4 million and Pawlenty is third at $3.3 million. The others all raised less than $2 million." But USA Today ran an analysis this week that suggests Barbour could be surprisingly competitive: "GOP fundraising avoids campaign limits through PACs ahead of 2012."
Beyond money is poll standings, especially in the early primary and caucus states. Nationally, Sarah Palin trailed both Huckabee and Romney in post 2010 midterm election polls, but not by much. And looking at some of the early states, Palin polls well on favorability in Iowa, although she came in fourth in an August 2010 Iowa straw poll (and thus could face tough sledding in the Hawkeye State). She came in third at 18 percent in 2010 election night exit polls in Iowa (Huckabee and Romney tied at 21 percent each). And that buzz is confirmed by Los Angeles Times reporter Mark Barabak, who recently spent time on the ground in Iowa. In New Hampshire, Romney leads at 39 percent, with Palin at 18 percent and Huckabee at 11 percent.
Nate Silver does add some interesting speculation on the effect of Sarah Palin's reputation as the GOP's top tea party representative. And it matters very little whether Palin's endorsed tea party candidates won last November. What matters is how powerful the tea party ends up being in the early primaries. And that in turn depends on political and economic trends this year. A poor economy boosts the prospects for the GOP in 2012 overall, and it could have an exponential impact at the grassroots. Palin could be the key beneficiary of continued Republican economic angst, and that's especially true if gasoline prices continue the upward price trend we saw at the end of 2010. Drill Baby Drill! could once again become a powerful rally cry for Palin's partisans, and it would give her a penetrating wedge against the Obama administration and a leg up on her opponents in the GOP field.
Thus, I'm pretty bullish on Palin's chance to win the 2012 GOP nomination. In that sense I'm the opposite of Charles Krauthammer, usually one of my favorite analysts. I think he dismissed her chances to quickly during his appearance on yesterday's "Inside Washington" broadcast.
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