Deficits and Deceit: Barack Obama's Stimulus

Andrew Sullivan, responding to Jim Manzi, goes off on the GOP in his latest hissy fit, "If The Right Were Intellectually Honest ...":

The GOP has passed what amounts to a spending and tax-cutting and borrowing stimulus package every year since George W. Bush came to office. They have added tens of trillions to future liabilities and they turned a surplus into a trillion dollar deficit - all in a time of growth. They then pick the one moment when demand is collapsing in an alarming spiral to argue that fiscal conservatism is non-negotiable. I mean: seriously.

The bad faith and refusal to be accountable for their own conduct for the last eight years is simply inescapable. There is no reason for the GOP to have done what they have done for the last eight years and to say what they are saying now except pure, cynical partisanship, and a desire to wound and damage the new presidency. The rest is transparent cant.

Sullivan is literally the last person in American politics who should be lecturing others on intellectual honesty. As Fausta notes today, "I stopped reading Sully a while ago when I got overwhelmed by his rhetoric. Simple as that ... His writing has become more bizarre with time, particularly when it comes to his shameful and embarrasing attacks on Sarah Palin’s children."

As for the Democrats and the stimulus, not only is Sullivan hypcritical, he's disastrously wrong, as the Wall Street Journal indicates:

The bill will mark the largest single-year increase in domestic federal spending since World War II; it will send the budget deficit to heights not seen in 60 years; and it will establish a new and much higher spending baseline for years to come. Combine this new spending, and the borrowing it will require, with the trillions of dollars still needed for the banking system, and we are about to test the outer limits of our national balance sheet.

The editors are actually hammering the "three amigos" of GOP bipartisanship, Senators Olympia Snowe, Susan Collins, and Arlen Specter.

But the larger message here is Democratic hypocrisy and fundamental dishonesty. The last few weeks have seen this country's most sustained political fearmonering campaign in history. Where FDR said we have nothing to fear but fear itself, Barack Obama deliberately sows fears to hoodwink the public, stifle dissent, and bludgeon the opposition. It's amazing, but in less than a month, the most severe warnings from last year against Democratic-socialist authoritarianism are coming true. I know many folks on the right were willing to give the new president the benefit of the doubt, myself included. The crisis is real, folks readily acknowledged, and calls for post-partisan transformation are endlessly attractive, like a leggy brunette in a mini-skirt on a Friday night. But any inkling of bipartisanship long ago went out the window with the appointment of Rahm "The Knife" Emanuel as White House Chief of Staff (and his erswhile colleagues in the Democratic majority).

The news this week shows that Judd Gregg's withdrawal as treasury secretary-designee follows his being duped into joining the administration as a cover for bipartisan comity on economic policy, and the realization that the White House was in fact pushing a lie on seeking cooperation across the aisle (see William Kristol on Rahm's Census Burear power grab, for example). Indeed, amid renewed calls to repeal the Bush tax cuts, it won't be long until we see the Democrats foisting off new rounds of government expansion, what James Pethokoukis calls "Son of Stimulus," in the months and years ahead of Democratic-socialist government.

I'm sure Andrew Sullivan's down with that.

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UPDATE: I just found Dan McLaughlin essay, "Barack Obama’s Gift To Conservatives," which provides a nice affirmation of Pethokoukis' point on the growth of Democratic-socialism:

Obama and the Democrats have now committed themselves irrevocably to massive growth in government spending, and the odds are that they are not done there, as we are likely to see the ghosts of economic liberalism past and of Eurosocialism present come knocking: more marginal tax hikes, a government takeover of health care, protectionism, massive new regulations, measures to tip the labor-management balance towards unions, restrictions on energy production, you name it. No serious adult can believe that any of this will help the economy; Obama, by always talking about “saving” rather than creating jobs, seems to imply that he, too, recognizes that he can’t promise any improvements. Indeed, liberal economic policy has never been about enabling growth so much as assuming it will happen and fighting over how to divide the spoils. Republicans and conservatives can feel secure in their opposition to these economic policies because we know they don’t work.

So there you have it: Obama and the Democrats, by ramming the ’stimulus’ bill through on a party-line basis and bulldozing Republican opposition, have taken ownership of old-time Big Government liberalism; they have surrendered to Republicans the very issues that divided the GOP and attracted moderate swing voters to the Democratic banner; they have energized and galvanized their opponents; they have discarded the pretense of bipartisanship; and they have, in the end, lashed themselves to the mast of policies that are proven not to work. The only thing the stimulus bill will stimulate is conservatism.

Democrats Ram Through Stimulus in House Vote

GOP Minority Leader John Boehner gave a great speech today on the floor of the House of Representatives: "Eleven-hundred pages and not one member of this body has read it, not one" (see 4:45 minutes at the video). Boehner then slammed the bill down on the floor of the chamber! CNN replayed this clip a half-dozen times while reporting on the vote this morning:

The New York Times has the story:

The House approved a $787 billion economic stimulus package Friday afternoon, with Democrats successfully promoting it as a boost for middle-class Americans and Republicans countering in vain that it will only stimulate wasteful government spending.

The vote was 246 to 183, reflecting the Democrats’ considerable majority in the House and the Republicans’ deep dissatisfaction with the measure, whose estimated price tag has fluctuated daily and was finally placed at $787 billion on Friday. Not a single Republican voted in favor of the bill ....

"After all the debate, this legislation can be summed up in one word: Jobs," House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California said. "The American people need action and they need action now."

But Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio, the House minority leader, lamented that a bill that was supposed to be about “jobs, jobs, jobs” had turned into one that was about “spending, spending, spending.”

“We owe it to the people to get this bill right,” Mr. Boehner said.

As CNN reports, "the written version of the legislation wasn't available for lawmakers to view until around 11 p.m. Thursday." Indeed, as Nina Easton points out, the Democrats don't want debate and deliberation, they want speed:

There is a breadth and breathlessness to these under-takings, a frenzy of policymaking that will shape the contours of America's economic future. Top Obama advisors who talked (often as they walked) with Fortune in early February put a premium on speed - speed to catch the right moment to turn around a deepening recession, speed to take advantage of this moment of crisis to put in place a Democratic vision of government's role, speed to pass major legislation while the President is riding high in the polls.

Still Crying Wolf? Democrats Reviving Fairness Doctrine

Last November Patrick Ruffini wrote a provocative post entitled, "Crying Wolf on the Fairness Doctrine." Ruffini warned that conservatives were missing the big picture and wasting time and effort focusing on the left's interest in restoring regulation of political speech on the airwaves:

Sorry to burst anyone's bubble, but liberals are unlikely to upset the apple cart with alternative media ... The reimposition of the Fairness Doctrine went nowhere when Rush was on the rise in 1993, and it will go nowhere next year or the year, especially with conservative talk radio no longer the center of the universe.

So, why does it bother me that some people focus on the issue?

First off, even with the proliferation of media, there is only so much bandwidth in the media ecosystem for conservative opposition messages. Do you really want to waste it on a nothing-burger like the Fairness Doctrine? There are enough legitimate threats - endless bailouts, runaway deficit spending, nationalized health care, card check - that I don't think we can afford to throw away our limited political capital on a non-issue.

Well, considering the Democratic-left is on the verge of passing its $787 billion economic stimulus package (the House voted on straight party lines to approve the measure, which now goes to the Senate for a final vote), it's worth remember that so far this year talk radio - and Rush Limbaugh in particular - has already been extremely effective in leading conservative oppostion to the Obama administration's shift to state socialism. We're already seeing radical leftists attacking the GOP as "Talibanized Republicans," and that kind of language is certainly a precursor to legislative efforts to defeat the right's "insurgency" against Democratic fiscal profligacy and moral bankruptcy. Indeed, as CNN reports, plans to shut down right-wing criticism of the Democratic regime are building steam:

More and more Democrats in Congress are calling for action that Republicans warn could muzzle right-wing talk radio.

Representative Maurice Hinchey, a Democrat from New York is the latest to say he wants to bring back the "Fairness Doctrine," a federal regulation scrapped in 1987 that would require broadcasters to present opposing views on public issues.

"I think the Fairness Doctrine should be reinstated," Hinchey told CNNRadio. Hinchey says he could make it part of a bill he plans to introduce later this year overhauling radio and t-v ownership laws.

Listen: Hinchey says he wants to make talk-radio more fair.

Democratic Senators Debbie Stabenow of Michigan and Tom Harkin of Iowa added their voices recently to those calling for a return of the regulation.

I know personally that leftists are mental incompetents who are eternal impotent from competing in the marketplace of ideas. Instead, they resort to fearmongering, intimidation, and threats of legal action to silence Americans of good moral standing from lifting the veil of Democratic totalitarianism. "Gird your loins, people."

The Myth of Democratic-Stimulus Popularity

One of the most common left-wing memes over the last couple of weeks holds that Republicans are "shooting themselves in the foot" in opposing the "a popular initiative backed by a popular congress and a Democratic congressional leadership that, while not particular popular, is still more popular than they are" (via Memeorandum).

I'm not exactly sure what goes on in the minds of radical leftists. No doubt the multi-sensorial elation of the Democrats' endorphinic triumph in November has neutralized the brain's regular neural processes of reasoning for some of these folks. Or, more simply, hubristic totalitarianism by doctrine systematically ignores evidence that repudiates the hegemonic party line of the hard-left Democratic forces.

For example, Rasmussen reported Wednesday that "When it comes to the nation’s economic issues, 67% of U.S. voters have more confidence in their own judgment than they do in the average member of Congress." Well, so much for the popularity of the "Democratic congressional leadership." Indeed, as Rasmussen continues, "The new Congress fares worse on this question that the previous Congress."

And how much more popular are the Democrats than their Republican opponents? Not at all, actually, as Michael Barone points out, "Pollster Scott Rasmussen reports that Democrats are currently ahead of Republicans by only 40 percent to 39 percent. Given that this generic ballot question over the years has tended to understate Republicans' performances in actual elections, one gathers that if the 2010 election for House seats were held today, Republicans would win or come close to winning a majority of seats—which is to say, they would gain about 40 seats."

On the Democratic economic program, polls have found consistent reservations with the economic stimulus package. In fact, support has been dropping like a rock as the bill's true characterization as an interest group pork-barrel spending boondoggle has taken hold in the popular consciousness.

CBS News last week reported a bare majority supporting the proposal, and the trend line was going down: "Slightly more than half the country approves of President Obama's $800 billion-plus stimulus package, a new CBS News poll finds. But support for the bill has fallen 12 points since January, and nearly half of those surveyed do not believe it will shorten the recession."

What's interesting (and certainly problematic for the Democrats, who have mounted their recovery program under a veil of stealth), is that the more people learn about the plan, the less they like it, as Pew notes: "Those who have heard a lot about the plan express the most skepticism, with 41% saying it is a bad idea compared with 28% of those who have heard only a little. This stands in contrast to the balance of opinion a month ago, when people who had heard a lot about the plan were more likely to back it than those who had heard only a little."

Leftists will cite generic poll findings, like Gallup's, that indicate a broad public backing for the measure, but these results are completely partisan, and backing for the measure among political independents "is totally flat."

Meanwhile, a campaign of political vilification is heating up on the left in the wake of Senator Judd Gregg's withdrawal as President Obama's treasury secretary-designee. Daily Kos is leading the smearing chorus: "Earlier this week we learned that the Republican Party has embraced the tactics of the Taliban, and today the insurgents have adopted another word associated with terrorists: they are "emboldened." Why? Because Judd Gregg changed his mind about heading the Commerce Department."

Apparently, the euphoria of the "Obama Kool-Aid" is wearing off and the nihilist left is reduced to equating U.S. senators of the Repubican Party with the kind of terrorist barbarians who have killed thousands of Americans over the last decade.

Thus, behold the fundamental nature of corruption and dishonesty that is the bailiwick of today's Democratic-left.

Fair Test and the George Soros Agenda

Mary Grabar, at CNS News, offers an insightful examination of how the radical left infiltrates and undermines America's educational institutions:

If one were to judge by the number of times the National Center for Fair and Open Testing, more commonly known as Fair Test, has been quoted in reference to test-optional college admissions policies, one might conclude that this organization is the nation’s preeminent authority on the issue. Seeing a quotation from one of the group’s staff in publications ranging from USA Today to the Chronicle of Higher Education is nearly as predictable as the nostrum about death and taxes.

College admissions professionals also pay homage to Fair Test. The National Association for College Admission Counseling (NACAC) encouraged its members to consider Fair Test suggestions like “‘examin[ing] whether first-year grade point average is too narrow a criteria for evaluating the utility of standardized admission tests,” when its commission on standardized testing issued its report on the matter last fall.

The issue of college admissions has significant academic and economic importance. One presumes citations on such matters would be reserved for learned individuals and organizations with considered and scholarly perspectives bolstered by data and rigorous analysis. But a closer inspection of Fair Test’s staff credentials and finances raises significant questions about the organization’s bona fides and legitimacy.

When asked about funding sources for Fair Test, the group’s public education director, Robert Schaeffer, acknowledges support from the Ford Foundation, the Joyce Foundation, and the Rockefeller Family Fund.

But curiously absent from Schaeffer’s recitation of financial backers is George Soros, the Hungarian-born billionaire who has bankrolled such notorious projects as MoveOn.org and a plethora of other left-wing causes and politicians. Grant records from Soros’ New York City-based Open Society Institute reveal that Fair Test has received $165,000 from Soros’ Institute since 2004.

Fair Test also lists among its sponsors the Woods Fund of Chicago, which includes among its board membership William Ayers, the domestic terrorist who, as a member of the radical Weather Underground, played a role in the bombing of New York City police headquarters in 1970; the bombing of the U.S. Capitol in 1971; and the 1972 bombing of the Pentagon.

The grant records and other proceedings of the Woods Fund have remained elusive since the disclosure in 2008 of Ayers’ dealings with President Barack Obama during their time together on the fund’s board. To this day, the extent of support for Fair Test from Ayers or the Woods Fund remains unknown.

As for Schaeffer himself, his role with Fair Test is not entirely clear. Schaeffer is often referred to as Fair Test’s “public education director,” and he is the group’s most frequent spokesperson. But tax records, corporate documents and other materials paint a more muddled picture. As recently as September 2008, the left-leaning Ploughshares Fund listed Schaeffer as president of Public Policy Communications, a Sanibel, Florida-based public relations firm.

Schaeffer’s firm describes itself as a provider of “strategic communications for progressive causes, candidates, and socially-responsible businesses” yet lists no expertise in matters related to higher education or college admissions policy. Schaeffer’s clients of late include International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, Families Against Incinerator Risk and the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research.

To get a feeling for the agenda that Soros, Ayers, and Fair Test are promoting, be sure to check out Andrew McCarthy's piece, "Why Won’t Obama Talk About Columbia?"

Boycotting Juan Williams

I'm seeing a pattern here, from the local to the national level, with the increasing intolerance of any speech that's critical of minorities and leftists.

Last night I reported on the backlash against Lloyd Carter, the Fresno activist and state deputy attorney general who suggested that illegal immigrants "turn to lives of crime." As I noted earlier, a great many of them do.

Now today we have a backlash against NPR senior analyst Juan Williams, who is also a contributor to Fox News, for his comments comparing First Lady Michelle Obama to 1960s black nationalist Stokely Charmichael.

This letter to the omsbudsman is particular telling of the left's response to legitimate political commentary and criticism:

I am concerned about the objectivity Juan Williams brings to his news analysis," wrote Alison Fowler. "He has made statements on Fox News regarding Michelle Obama that appear to paint her as an angry Black Nationalist without any basis in fact. Despite the fact that these statements were not made on NPR, they undermine his credibility as an impartial news analyst on your network."

As we've seen when any conservative group expresses an opinion that goes against the prevailing left-wing orthodoxy, outraged leftists demand a boycott:

NPR needs to stop using Juan Williams. When Bill O Reilly has to defend Michelle Obama from Williams' comments he's gone way over the edge. I encourage NPR listeners to boycott NPR until they take action to disassociate themselves from Williams. Don't renew your membership until he's gone.

Some of the comments at NPR are fair to Williams, but it's clear that far-left wing opinion wants to stifle any criticism of the left, its programs, and its entitlement mentality.

Can the "fairness doctrine" be far behind?

She Might Need a Lot of Lovin' But She Don't Need You...

Until I'm back online tonight, please enjoy Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, "Listen to Her Heart":

The End of the Private Sector?

There are some reports that government jobs have become the most attractive employment opportunities in the current economic downturn. Indeed, it's gotten to the point that the Washington, D.C., public sector - Congress and the executive branch - has become the primary agent of job creation in the United States, either directly or indirectly:

Big government is walking away as the knock-out winner over the private sector in the latest financial crisis. Washington spinmeisters have placed the blame for the crisis on too much capitalism and too little regulation, with no blame left over for Washington's own bad regulatory, monetary and tax policies.

The solution offered by big government is even bigger government. If unchecked, the Washington "fix" for the financial crisis would create its biggest power expansion since the New Deal.

My thoughts were drawn to this question of government employment and economic survival after reading this post at Incertus:

I'm actually starting to get offended by the rhetoric about how we need private-sector, not public-sector, jobs from whatever stimulus plan we hatch.

First of all, jobs are jobs and we need them, so let's get them all "stimulated" and into action. But secondly, can I just say that the only people I know who are secure in their jobs are people with government jobs? My friends, family, and students working for private companies or for themselves are getting hosed. Those of us working for the county, state, and country are relatively secure.

So why would private sector jobs be, in these uncertain times, preferable to public sector ones?

The sheer ignorance in this essay is astounding. No one dismisses the deep economic dislocation facing the country. But this idea that we don't need "private sector jobs" and that "friends, family, and students" are getting "hosed" by private employers is simply astounding.

I'm reminded of the recent essay by Stephen Moore at the Wall Street Journal, "'Atlas Shrugged': From Fiction to Fact in 52 Years," where he suggests the current economic crisis is demonstrating the profound wisdom and insight of novelist Ayn Rand.

Note this passage Moore cites in particular:

One memorable moment in "Atlas" occurs near the very end, when the economy has been rendered comatose by all the great economic minds in Washington. Finally, and out of desperation, the politicians come to the heroic businessman John Galt (who has resisted their assault on capitalism) and beg him to help them get the economy back on track. The discussion sounds much like what would happen today:

Galt: "You want me to be Economic Dictator?"

Mr. Thompson: "Yes!"

"And you'll obey any order I give?"

"Implicitly!"

"Then start by abolishing all income taxes."

"Oh no!" screamed Mr. Thompson, leaping to his feet. "We couldn't do that . . . How would we pay government employees?"

"Fire your government employees."

"Oh, no!"

Abolishing the income tax. Now that really would be a genuine economic stimulus. But Mr. Obama and the Democrats in Washington want to do the opposite: to raise the income tax "for purposes of fairness" as Barack Obama puts it.

""Oh, no!" We can't get rid of those government employees! Otherwise they might get "hosed" by the endlessly greedy capitalist roaders! AAAHHH!!!!

This economy's going to come back in the next year or two, but it won't because of Barack Obama and the Democrats created more "public sector jobs." At some point the left's socialist-regulatory state will kill the economy altogether and Rand's vision of economic calamity and social pandemonium won't be fiction.

But don't tell that to the radical leftists attacking Rand's philosophies. Nope, the more government the better - that's the ticket to prosperity!

See also, Tigerhawk, "Is it Time to Re-Read Atlas Shrugged?"

A 12-Year-Old Pro-Lifer Speaks

Via Robert Stacy McCain, "A 12-year-old pro-lifer speaks":

Is this young girl too young to discuss controversial political issues? Dr. Melissa Clouthier thinks so.

I just love this young one's erudition. Good for her!

Abortion Industry: "Too Many" Black Babies

Here's one of the sickest example of abortion extremism I've ever seen. Planned Parenthood of Ohio agreed to accept financial contributions on the condition that the money be used to fund abortions of black babies (link):

Planned Parenthood of Central Ohio confirmed to Cybercast News Service that the telephone conversation with a presumed donor occurred in mid-summer 2007, adding that it was not the policy of Planned Parenthood to accept donations specifically to underwrite abortions among minority women.

James O' Keefe, a first-year law student and an advisor for the The Advocate, made the telephone call posing as a potential donor to Planned Parenthood of Ohio.

The tape begins with a portion of the call in which O'Keefe confirms the location of the Planned Parenthood facility in Columbus, Ohio. According to Lila Rose, the editor-in-chief of The Advocate and a sophomore at UCLA, the tape then cuts to the relevant portion of the call in which O'Keefe offers a donation:

Planned Parenthood:"Planned Parenthood Administration, this is Lisa."
O'Keefe:"Hi. I am interested in making a donation today."
Planned Parenthood:"Let me put you through to Tim in our development office."
O'Keefe:"Is there anyone I can speak to now?"
Planned Parenthood:"Me."
O'Keefe: "Who am I speaking with now?"
Planned Parenthood: "My name is Lisa Hutton."
O'Keefe: "Lisa, what is your position?"
Planned Parenthood: "Administrative assistant."
O'Keefe: "When I underwrite an abortion, does that apply to minorities too?"
Planned Parenthood: "If you specifically want to underwrite it for a minority person, you can target it that way. You can specify that that's how you want it spent."
O'Keefe: "Okay, yeah, because there's definitely way too may black people in Ohio. So, I'm just trying to do my part."
Planned Parenthood: "Hmm. Okay, whatever."
O'Keefe: "Blacks especially need abortions too. So, that's what I'm trying to do."
Planned Parenthood: "Well, for whatever reason, we'll accept the money."
O'Keefe:"Great, Thank You."
Planned Parenthood:"Mmmm, hmmm."

Via Hot Air.

Lloyd Carter, Fresno Activist, Sparks Farmworker Controversy

Well, I'm glad I'm not personally involved in this classic case study of politically-correct totalitarianism.

It turns out that Lloyd Carter, a Fresno-area activist, has resigned from his positions on a couple of Central Valley environmental-conservation organizations amid a backlash to comments he made regarding illegal immigrants. The Fresno Bee has the story:

A deputy attorney general and environmental activist whose comments about farmworkers sparked a protest rally Monday has resigned from the board of the California Water Impact Network.

Mike Jackson, who serves on the same board, said Lloyd Carter submitted his resignation during a conference call among board members Monday morning.

"His statement is not us, and he was speaking for us," Jackson said. "We thought we had to take some steps."

Carter's comments were made to a KMPH (Channel 26) reporter before a debate on water policy at California State University, Fresno, on Wednesday.

Carter said farmworkers who would lose jobs if west-side Valley farmers don't receive water from the California Delta this year are "not even American citizens for starters. Do you think we should employ illegal aliens?"

He also said the children of farmworkers are among the least-educated people in the southwest corner of the Valley. "They turn to lives of crime. They go on welfare. They get into drug trafficking and they join gangs."

Carter said Monday afternoon, "I've apologized. I don't know what else people want from me. People who know me know I'm not a racist."

Carter issued a written apology on his Web site, www.lloydgcarter.com.

An apology also was broadcast on Channel 26.

"My comments were directed at the exploitation of farmworkers in the southwest corner of the Valley, which is the poorest place in America," Carter's apology reads in part.

"I now realize I made a terrible mistake in the way I expressed myself and I humbly apologize to all who were offended," he wrote.

The California Water Impact Network has issued apologies for Carter's comments, Jackson said. "We're very, very sorry and are busy apologizing -- as is Lloyd -- to everything that moves."

Jackson said he doesn't know why Carter made the comments.

"There is nothing in Lloyd Carter's career, background or experience that explains what he was trying to say. We don't believe he has any of those feelings," Jackson said.

Carter is a deputy attorney general in the criminal division of the California Attorney General's Office and is a former Fresno Bee reporter.

He serves on the boards of California Save Our Streams Council and Revive The San Joaquin, and he is a director of the Underground Gardens Conservancy, a preservation group for the Forestiere Underground Gardens in Fresno.

About 250 farmworkers, farmers, politicians and community activists attended the rally in front of Fresno City Hall. Some called for Carter's resignation.

There's more at the link.

Readers can read Lloyd's apology, posted at his blog, here.

I'm looking over the offending comments at the Fresno Bee piece again, and for the most part, Lloyd's crime is that his statements were raw, sweeping stereotypes posed off-the-cuff, rather than in a more appropriate context, like a scholarly panel debating the issues or in an article backed by evidence.

Certainly, it's unexceptional to suggest that children of farmworkers "turn to lives of crime." Quite a few do, as Heather MacDonald has shown in her research, "The Immigrant Gang Plague." Indeed, in another essay, MacDonald notes that:

Arizona and California lawmakers want to free taxpayers from the nearly $1 billion a year burden of detaining illegal criminals—and the even costlier burden of detaining those illegals’ children. In Fresno, now 45 percent Hispanic, 20 percent of the county jail inmates are illegal immigrants, as are about one-quarter of emergency-room patients. No wonder Fresno’s mayor called in November 2005 for securing the border.

And here's Victor Davis Hanson, a Fresno farmer himself who knows a thing or two about these issues:

For many professors, politicians, and columnists, the gangs, increased crime, and crowded jails that often result from massive illegal immigration and open borders are not daily concerns, but rather stereotypes hysterically evoked by paranoid and unenlightened others in places like Bakersfield and Laredo.

So, what is the truth on illegal immigration?

Simple. Millions of fair-minded white, African-, Mexican- and Asian-Americans fear that we are not assimilating millions of aliens from south of the border as fast as they are crossing illegally from Mexico.

In the frontline American southwest, entire apartheid communities and enclaves within cities have sprung up whose distinct language, culture, and routines are beginning to resemble more the tense divides in the Balkans or Middle East than the traditional melting pot of multiracial America.

Concern over this inevitable slowdown in integration and assimilation is neither racist nor nativist. It grows out of real worry that when millions of impoverished arrive in mass without legality, education, and the ability to speak English, costly social problems follow that will not be offset by the transitory economic benefits cheap wages may provide.

I'll update when I have more information.

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Photo Credit: "About 250 people attended a rally Monday in front of Fresno City Hall. Some called for the resignation of Lloyd Carter, a deputy state attorney general and environmental activist whose comments about farmworkers sparked the protest," Fresno Bee.

Gay Marriage Conservative Tokenism

The Colorado Independent posted a muckraking essay today smearing Focus on the Family for its purported $727,000 in contributions to the Yes on 8 campaign in California: "Focus on the Family Vastly Outpaced Mormon Spending on Proposition 8."

Commenting on the piece (with its scandalous aspersions to alleged Mormon extremists), I saw a new term of repudiation at Pam Spaulding's: "the fundievangelical movement." Spaulding also attacks Focus on the Family as an "evil, Bible-beating, anti-gay organization."

All that for exercising First Amendment rights through the political process? Of course, Spaulding applauded the Stalinist intimidation tactics of the No on H8 activists who are mapping the names and ZIP codes of financial backers of the California initiative, so she's consistent in her totalitarianism.

But what about the "young turks" at the League of Ordinary Gentlemen? You wouldn't think a bunch of rising intellectuals would stoop to Pam Spaulding's level of rank demonization, right?

Well, think again:

The true driving power behind the anti-gay marriage movement resides in a community with many names. For the sake of simplicity I’ll return to the tried and true Religious Right (and the Religious Right’s red headed stepchildren, the Mormons).

Couching their anti-gay agenda in Christian dogma, the Religious Right has been successful in essentially swimming up stream against the march towards equality for homosexuals. While homosexuality is enjoying more social acceptance now than during any other period in American history, the Religious Right is also enjoying successes in actively inhibiting homosexual rights, enacting constitutional gay marriage bans in a number of states.

This would seem counter-intuitive at first, after all, if gays are moving up in the world, how is it that they are suffering setbacks on things like their right to marry?

This extraordinary piece continues with this eye-opening proposal:

What makes a marriage sacred? That answer is different for many people. People of faith are likely to reply that the sanctity of their marriage is divined from the authority of their God. For those who are without faith, they are more apt to say that the sanctity of the marriage resides in the marriage itself, and the common union between the two partners involved. Further, of the faithful, the devout churchgoers may say that their unity is blessed by their God through their church, while those who are of faith but skeptical of organized religion may decide that the church does not bestow that happy blessing, but God gives it to them anyway.

The point that I’m getting at is that in a country where everyone is free to choose what they believe, the sanctity of marriage is something that is not universal, but is instead unique to the situation. I have a coworker that feels that God blesses both his marriage and mine. I personally believe that God has nothing to do with it, and the sanctity of my marriage comes from the fact that my wife and I are stubbornly attached to each other.

The solution? Simple. Abolish all marriage.

Abolish all marriage? Okay, let's just overturn thousands of years of social custom for the sake of the self-proclaimed "right" of a tiny oppositional minority of the population to be married

But I've dissected the left's gay marriage totalitarianism every which way since last November. What interests me here is that the proprietors of Ordinary Gentlemen are ostensibly conservatives. Yep, these folks are supposedly among the "young turks" Robert Stacy McCain identifies in his essay, Young Turks and Gay Marriage." Or, as Helen Rittelmeyer puts it:

I would add ... that support for same-sex marriage has become a mark, not only of defeatism, but of self-conscious tokenism among young conservatives. Being publicly pro-SSM is the quickest way for a young journalist to signal that he's one of the right-wingers it's okay to like. Haven't they heard that it's better to be feared than loved? Or, to put it less glibly, the real respectability of a solid argument is preferable to the worthless respectability one gets by being on the Harmless Right.

It's an interesting demographic, this young, harmless conservative tokenism, except I don't think these folks are all that harmless. Their effluence just works to feed progressive bull to the media's Obamatons. Besides, as cowardly as these folks are, their musings chum the waters for more dangerous folks like RAWMUSCLEGLUTES.

The bulk of the guys at Ordinary Gentlemen are supposedly of Burkean persuasions and libertarian leanings (Kyle Moore, the author of the abolish marriage proposal above, is liberal). But a regular reading of the posts shows little deviation from the godless licentiousness seen on the nihilist left - indeed, these guys are pretty much atheists through and through. For all the long-winded "intellectual" dialog, the page offers mostly unexceptional commentary, the type that's routinely available on any number of the more tasteless blogs found across the netroots fever swamps. The Ordinary Gents are all into bashing neoconservatives and excoriating pro-lifers. The blog's mission is to encourage "internal" debate, but frankly that sound a bit incestuous, and with the public's Obamessianism already starting to fade, this league's honeymoon likely winding down as well.

Suleman Octuplets Could Cost Taxpayers Millions

Via the Los Angeles Times:

Nadya Suleman has 14 children, including newborn octuplets. She has no job, no income and owes $50,000 in student loans.

Still, the 33-year-old Whittier woman said she's confident that she can afford to raise her huge family, insisting she can do it without welfare. In an interview Tuesday with NBC, she said she could use student loans to make ends meet until she finishes graduate school and gets a job.

But Suleman faces what are likely to be millions of dollars in medical bills alone, and it's increasingly likely that taxpayers will foot many of those bills.

Her family is eligible for large sums of public assistance money. Even before she gave birth to the octuplets Jan. 26, Suleman was receiving $490 in monthly food stamps, and three of her children were receiving federal supplemental security income because they are disabled.

Lowell Kepke, a spokesman for the San Francisco office of the Social Security Administration, said that a single parent with no income qualifies for up to $793 a month for each child with a physical or mental condition that results in "marked or severe functional limitations." That money is used for support and maintenance of the family, and Suleman would not be required to specifically account for how it is spent.

If Suleman's disabled children received the maximum payment, she would get nearly $2,900 a month in state and federal assistance, including the food stamps.

I will never discount the miracle of life that is God's gift of the octuplets. But I'm having a really hard time seeing how the sense of responsibility of the mother and the fertility specialists just disappeared. The most important decision when thinking about bringing a child into the world is how the family will pay the costs, from prenatal care to delivery and hospital expenses, and then, of course, for the rest of a safe, secure, and healthy life. I don't believe Nadya Suleman is completely in her right mind when she suggests she'll soon be fully be able to care for these children without any outside/public support whatsoever (as she claims at the piece).

I think this is more than a deeply troubling issue at the individual psychological level. There's a social breakdown here along the way, in terms of expectations, medical guidance and advisement, and of a social welfare system that enables such extreme childbearing decisions altogether.

I pray these children have a good life. The first photos of the octuplets are here.

Jeremy Lusk, 1984-2009

While reading the newspaper this afternoon, I came across the Los Angeles Times obituary for Jeremy Lusk, 24, who died yesterday from injuries sustained at a freestyle motocross competition on Saturday:

Jeremy Lusk, star of a daredevil sport known as freestyle motocross and a popular action sports hero, died early Tuesday from head injuries suffered during a crash Saturday at a competition in San Jose, Costa Rica. He was 24.

Lusk, a Temecula resident, had been in a medically induced coma, with swelling of the brain, at Calderon Guardia Hospital in San Jose. A spokesman at the hospital said he suffered severe brain damage and a possible spinal cord injury.

Nicknamed "Pitbull" because of his tenacity on a motorcycle, Lusk was injured after failing to fully rotate a back-flip variation while soaring over a 100-foot jump.

He slammed headfirst into the dirt on the landing ramp's down-slope. It was reminiscent of a similar crash he endured while attempting the same trick during the 2007 X Games at the Home Depot Center in Carson, but Lusk walked away from that incident.

The trick involves extending the body away from the motorcycle and grabbing the seat as the motorcycle is upside down, then pulling back aboard as the motorcycle is righted before landing. Lusk clearly had trouble getting back on the seat, and some witnesses said swirling winds within San Jose's Ricardo Saprissa Stadium may have been a factor.

Despite the danger associated with freestyle motocross, Lusk is believed to be the first pro rider to have died from injuries suffered in an FMX contest, though several have incurred serious injuries.

Lusk, who was born in San Diego in 1984 and had been riding motorcycles since he was 3, turned pro at 19. He was coming off his most successful year.

The rest of the obituary is here. Video courtesy of Bitten and Bound.

My thoughts and prayers go out to the Lusk family.

Progressive Redistribution Stimulus

Matthew Yglesias, commenting on Brink Lindsey's new policy paper, "Paul Krugman's Nostalgianomics: Economic Policies, Social Norms, and Income Inequality," reveals the underlying redistributionist goals of Democratic fiscal and social policy:

... the generic “progressive” idea is that we should have a more progressive tax code that spends more money on egalitarian social welfare programs. That’s not a return to the 1950s. It’s an effort to ensure that the gains of the past 30 years worth of policy shifts are spread more equitably ... In principle, the pie could be redistributed (through tax-and-transfer or tax-and-service) such that everyone winds up with more pie than they had before ... rather than giving huge additional pie slices to the richest people.

While Yglesias' analysis focuses on the income gaps resulting from information-driven technological change, it's interesting how this idea of "more money on egalitarian social welfare programs" is essentially the foundation for the Obama administration's $800-plus billion stimulus plan.

As Michael Hiltzik notes at today's Los Angeles Times, " the federal government moved forward Tuesday on the most ambitious economic recovery plan since the Great Depression." Whereas Hiltzik's point of departure is Franklin Roosevelt (who was regulatory and stimulatory) the left's is Lyndon Johnson (who was paternalistic and redistributionist). A quick perusal of the House Appropriations Committee's press release, "Summary: American Recovery and Reinvestment," clearly indicates that economic stimulus and market rebuilding are side notes underlying the big government rationale at the heart of the program. The legislation is loaded with social spending on child development, health care appropriations, Indian affairs, education (including Head Start), not to mention energy and the environment and a range of other expenditures of varying degrees of logical relation to the immediate goal of "budgetary stimulus."

All of these things are ostensibly good and needed initiatives. But for Democrats to continually use the economic crisis and catastrophic fearmongering to justify movement toward the party's larger state-socialist redistributionist agenda is fundamentally dishonest and it violates the trust of the American people.

We know what the Democrats want from government. It's be nice if they'd have a little more integrity in selling their economic program for what it really is.

Britain Capitulates to Muslim Extremism

Geert Wilders, the Dutch filmmaker and parliamentarian, has been banned from entering the United Kingdom by British authorities, who cited his presence a serious threat to society. Wilders was scheduled to show his film, Fitna, to the House of Lords.

Lord Nazir Ahmed, the first Muslim life peer in Britain's upper chamber, threatened to bring a mob of 10,000 Islamists to storm the Parliament.

Melanie Phillips puts things into perspective:

So let’s get this straight. The British government allows people to march through British streets screaming support for Hamas, it allows Hizb ut Tahrir to recruit on campus for the jihad against Britain and the west, it takes no action against a Muslim peer who threatens mass intimidation of Parliament, but it bans from the country a member of parliament of a European democracy who wishes to address the British Parliament on the threat to life and liberty in the west from religious fascism.

It is he, not them, who is considered a ‘serious threat to one of the fundamental interests of society’. Why? Because the result of this stand for life and liberty against those who would destroy them might be an attack by violent thugs. The response is not to face down such a threat of violence but to capitulate to it instead.

It was the same reasoning that led the police on those pro-Hamas marches to confiscate the Israeli flag, on the grounds that it would provoke violence, while those screaming support for genocide and incitement against the Jews were allowed to do so. The reasoning was that the Israeli flag might provoke thuggery while the genocidal incitement would not. So those actually promoting aggression were allowed to do so while those who threatened no-one at all were repressed. And now a Dutch politician who doesn’t threaten anyone is banned for telling unpalatable truths about those who do; while those who threaten life and liberty find that the more they do so, the more the British government will do exactly what they want, in the interests of ‘community harmony’.

Wilders is a controversial politician, to be sure. But this is another fateful and defining issue for Britain’s governing class as it continues to sleepwalk into cultural suicide. If British MPs do not raise hell about this banning order, if they go along with this spinelessness, if they fail to stand up for the principle that the British Parliament of all places must be free to hear what a fellow democratically elected politician has to say about one of the most difficult and urgent issues of our time, if they fail to hold the line against the threat of violence but capitulate to it instead, they will be signalling that Britain is no longer the cradle of freedom and democracy but its graveyard.

Israeli Vote a Setback for Obama and Anti-Israel Left

Check out the Washington Post's report, "In Israeli Vote Results, A Setback for Obama":

President Obama's ambition to move quickly on Israeli-Palestinian peace suffered a significant setback yesterday with the rightward shift apparent in nearly complete Israeli election results, analysts said.

While the centrist Kadima party appeared to eke out a victory, the right-wing Likud party more than doubled its seats and an ultra-nationalist party made big gains, increasing the prospect that a government uninterested in peace talks will emerge from the post-election efforts to form a governing coalition. Even if Tzipi Livni, the head of Kadima who has vowed to negotiate peace with the Palestinians, manages to cobble together a coalition after weeks of negotiations, many experts predict she will be hamstrung by her coalition partners ....

Administration officials said yesterday they would not comment pending official returns, but many key players have long and difficult memories of dealing with the Binyamin Netanyahu, the Likud leader, when he was prime minister during the Clinton administration. It is no secret that U.S. officials would prefer to deal with Livni, who as foreign minister spearheaded unsuccessful talks with the Palestinians in the waning days of the Bush administration.

The prospect of a Likud-dominated government has sent Siun at Firedoglake into an anti-Israel fit, complete with wild generalizations and insinuations of American atrocities in Iraq:

While the final results are uncertain, they are all too clear – no matter which candidate wins in the end, the leadership will be one of the hawks. Livni, who not so long ago was trumpeted as the new “progressive” option, has since done everything she could to prove herself as bloodthirsty as her brethren. Netanyahu’s thuggish but oh so popular posturing set the bar the others decimated Gaza to meet. Neither direction offers hope of genuine and just peace ....

As we’ve watched with horror the Iraeli attack on Gaza and the resulting devastation of lives and homes, we may have forgotten how closely that devastation mirrors the results of our war on and occupation of Iraq. Gaza, already debilitated by the Israeli blockade, faced three intensive weeks of brutality while we have maintained our destruction of Iraqis and their society, already debilitated by our sanctions, over years. Yet the results are horribly similar.

It'll be very interesting to see U.S.-Israeli relations evolve with Netanyahu in power (if it comes to that), pressing the U.S. from the right, while the hardline pro-terror factions in the U.S. hammer the Obama administration from the extreme left.

Senate Approves Economic Stimulus

You've got a trio of GOP senators who voted with the Democrats in today's Senate approval of the economic stimulus package in Washington. The New York Times reports:

The Senate approved its bill most along party lines, by a vote of 61 to 37, with three Republicans joining 56 Democrats and two independents in favor. (There is one vacancy in the Senate, from Minnesota, and Senator Judd Gregg of New Hampshire, a Republican nominated to become Mr. Obama’s Commerce Secretary, did not vote.)
The opposition of most Republicans underscored insurmountable disagreements, over both economic and political philosophy, in addressing the recession.

Supporters of the stimulus measure said that only a towering effort by the government to create jobs and spur economic growth would be able to stop the downward spiral in the economy, spur a recovery and avoid a prolonged deflationary period.

Republicans Susan Collins and Olympia J. Snowe of Maine, and Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, voted with the administration.

Look for a conservative backlash against these three led by folks like Rush Limbaugh and Michelle Malkin (and more).

Personally, I can't imagine a Republican of any integrity or renown voting for this utterly unprincipled spending boondoggle. There's no sound economic basis for passing legislation that throws in every favored interest-group spending item under the sun. George Will noted last week that the Democrats included everything in the bill but the kitchen sink, and then they threw the sink in there too. More troubling, President Obama's catastrophic fearmongering represents a total abdication of principled leadership. He mounted an ad hoc "bumbling pulpit" to frighten Americans into supporting a program that majorities have already rejected as economically unsound (the public backs tax cuts over spending).

This is a preview of things to come, of course. We've seen three weeks of incompetence, impropriety, and ideological extremism. There's little here that's reassuring for traditionalists who want targeted spending and tax cuts to grow the economy. Nor is there anything here for people of upstanding values - regular people trying to hold fast in a time of uncertainty - that reflects their honesty, decency, or hard work.

This is despicable bailout socialism of the worse kind.

Obama's Census Power Grab

Here's Michael Barone on the controversy over Barack Obama's centralization of the Census in the Oval Office:

So now it's been announced that the White House will oversee the Census. Of course, the president has ultimate authority over cabinet officers (that's the unitary presidency theory that Democrats hated up to but not beyond January 20), and I am not prepared to charge that Emanuel or anyone else in the White House is determined to diabolically cook the Census books in search of gains for the Democratic Party or the Black or Hispanic caucuses. And we have the integrity of Census statisticians to rely on; they favor sampling on grounds that commend themselves to academic statisticians, but also have shown, in the 2000 Census, that they will adhere to those standards in the face of political pressures to the contrary. Nonetheless, as someone who got great joy when my parents in 1951 (when I was 7) bought a set of encyclopedias with the 1950 Census figures (I had only had access to the much outdated 1940 Census figures), I'm going to keep an eye on this one.

Barone lays out the unconstitional case against Obama's power grab, but be sure to check out John Fund's piece today at the Wall Street Journal, "Why Obama Wants Control of the Census":

President Obama said in his inaugural address that he planned to "restore science to its rightful place" in government. That's a worthy goal. But statisticians at the Commerce Department didn't think it would mean having the director of next year's Census report directly to the White House rather than to the Commerce secretary, as is customary. "There's only one reason to have that high level of White House involvement," a career professional at the Census Bureau tells me. "And it's called politics, not science."

The decision was made last week after California Rep. Barbara Lee, chair of the Congressional Black Caucus, and Hispanic groups complained to the White House that Judd Gregg, the Republican senator from New Hampshire slated to head Commerce, couldn't be trusted to conduct a complete Census. The National Association of Latino Officials said it had "serious questions about his willingness to ensure that the 2010 Census produces the most accurate possible count."

Anything that threatens the integrity of the Census has profound implications. Not only is it the basis for congressional redistricting, it provides the raw data by which government spending is allocated on everything from roads to schools. The Bureau of Labor Statistics also uses the Census to prepare the economic data that so much of business relies upon. "If the original numbers aren't as hard as possible, the uses they're put to get fuzzier and fuzzier," says Bruce Chapman, who was director of the Census in the 1980s.

These kind of power plays are exactly what critics of Barack Obama expected: A new politics of identity, cloaked in the ethereal political messianism of the promise of hope and change. But this is back to the future of affirmative action redistricting and big government spending set-asides.

Maybe Barone needs to take a closer look at that unconstitutionality argument? Maybe we all do?

Geithner Plan to Top $1.5 Trillion

Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner is said to have prevailed over internal rivals during the administrations debate and planning for the next stage of the bailout. According to the report from Stephen Labaton and Edmund Andrews, Geithner won out "against some of the president’s top political hands."

This is going to be one costly success. At this morning's Washington Post reports, the Geithner plan may top $1.5 trillion:

The gravity of the financial crisis confronting the Obama administration will come into stark focus today when officials unveil a three-pronged rescue program that may commit up to $1.5 trillion in public and private funds, and possibly more, lawmakers and other officials said.

In announcing the plan, Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner will not ask Congress for more funds than the roughly $350 billion that remain in the Treasury Department's original rescue package for the financial system, though congressional sources said such a request could come later if the new programs are unsuccessful. The rest of the money would come from other government agencies, such as the Federal Reserve, as well as private-sector contributions.

A senior administration official warned last night that the ultimate cost to taxpayers has not been determined. Several of the programs have not been finalized, and most are designed to ultimately return money to taxpayers.

Geithner plans to announce a public-private partnership that would seek to finance the purchasing of toxic bank assets that are at the heart of the credit crisis, officials and congressional sources said. These sources briefed by Treasury officials said the program may initially raise $250 billion to $500 billion in public and private funds to offer low-cost financing to encourage investors to buy the toxic assets. An administration official said the proposal is still subject to a public review and may not take final shape for several weeks.

A second initiative will broaden the scope of a Federal Reserve program aimed at unclogging the markets for auto, student and other consumer loans. That initiative may expand to as much as $1 trillion, using $100 billion from the Treasury's rescue funds, and include aid for commercial real estate markets.

That's some big money. No wonder President Obama's reduced to pleading "catastrophe" with every breath he takes.

See also, Powerline:

Have you noticed, too, that as Obama tries ever more desperately to sell his porkapalooza, his claims for it expand? Originally he said it would save or create 3 million jobs. Then for a while it was 3-4 million. Tonight Obama's consistent claim was that the porkfest will create 4 million jobs.

I noticed, but hey, you've got to bump up the need to justify the price ...

(Un)Trusting President Obama

Here's President Obama's opening remarks from tonight's press conference:

We find ourselves in a rare moment where the citizens of our country and all countries are watching and waiting for us to lead. It is a responsibility that this generation did not ask for, but one that we must accept for the sake of our future and our children’s. The strongest democracies flourish from frequent and lively debate, but they endure when people of every background and belief find a way to set aside smaller differences in service of a greater purpose. That is the test facing the United States of America in this winter of our hardship, and it is our duty as leaders and citizens to stay true to that purpose in the weeks and months ahead. After a day of speaking with and listening to the fundamentally decent men and women who call this nation home, I have full faith and confidence that we can. And with that, I’ll take your questions.

Dan Riehl has some fair and balanced thoughts on the meeting:

Obama's a talented speaker ... He's also incredibly disingenuous as to the causes for our current problems. The Bush tax cuts did not cause them and even Obama fans have enough sense to know that.

I simply don't believe this president. He lied during the primaries and the general, and he's going to play doom and gloom until he gets what he wants now.

Check Memeorandum for more commentary. I'll have more tomorrow ...

On Snark and TBogg

The other day, in response to my essay, "How New Deal Policies Prolonged the Depression," TBogg of Firedoglake left this in the comments:

Be careful what you wish for Donald. I would hate to see the definition of a "socialist" become: " a pro-victory associate professor who lost his job because the state didn't get enough stimulus money".

And I'm not being snarky.

Best of luck to you.

TBogg says he's "not being snarky."

Okay, then what is he being? He's certainly not being caring or compassionate. That's not his intent at all, since his entire blogging schtick is snark.

TBogg, for example, in "F-Me Pumps," smeared Alaska Governor following last October's vice-presidential debate - where she was wearing red high-heels - as an Alaskan hillbilly, the political personification of Amy Winehouse's no-nightlife sluts. TBogg's also had a longrunning hostility to Townhall's young conservative commentator, Ben Shapiro. Ridiculed as "Virgin Ben," TBogg has attacked Shapiro for his sexual abstinence, and when Shapiro got married in Israel last summer, TBogg wrote a post entitled, "Mazel Tov! Now why don’t we do it in the road…", saying "The Virgin Ben, had gone Full Metal Conjugal back in July with his new bride, the now Mrs. Probably Not A Virgin Ben ...

And now TBogg claims that his comment at my post wasn't "snarky"? Well, perhaps a little childish excoriation wasn't up to the task needed to take me down more than a few notches, that is, to destroy me for speaking truth to Democratic power.

I'm halfway through reading David Denby's, Snark, a book on the increasing corrosion of public discusion in American life. Now, I'm no fan of Denby. In a later section of the book, in a chapter devoted to Maureen Dowd, he slams the New York Times columnist for the inadequacies of her snarky essays in attacking President George W. Bush, who Denby calls a tyrant (and then pleads that he's not comparing President Bush to "Hitler").

That said, in Snark, Denby is judicious in his analysis, and the book's worth a look for those still sorting out the venom of a life of political blogging. Denby, by the way, is not attacking satire or spoof, irreverence or irony. He's especially not taking on hate speech or Internet trolls. Denby sees snark (which is the use of malicious sarcasm) as a "pinkeye" infecting the national conversation.

In his historical review of snark, Denby says some of those who professionally attack others intend their words to be strong enough to "make their victims disappear - go away, give up, even kill themselves."

This, then, perfectlly captures TBogg's comment above.

I'm one neoconservative blogger who "just won't die," and when I'm actually strengthened by the abuse and invective from folks like TBogg, they'll abandon snark to just sow fear - in this case job loss for a professor like me employed by the state community college system.

It's not just, "How dare you ridicule the Democratic socialist agenda? Don't you know that you'll lose your job?" It's "I hope and pray you lose your job you wingnut freak, and that you die in the wet gutter of the unemployment lines. We've had it with neocons like you who've raked this country over the coals with war and economic catastrophe." TBogg's beyond just flipping conservatives the bird of dismissal. His intent here is to feign serious concern - "Best of luck to you" - in disguise of the dark spells of death and destruction.

This is what's at the heart of the left. Both sides do snark, of course, as Denby indicates to full extent in is book.

But people like TBogg have truly abandoned any modicum of divine grace and reason for the witch's spell of contumely and ridicule. This is the faux humor of secular demonology. It's not for fun and laughs. It's to denigrate and destroy those whose values and ideas stand in the way of the left's progressive nihilism that's seeking a chokehold on the vitality of this nation.

Partisan Opinions on Israel's Elections

Here's a follow-up to my post this morning, "Israel, Terrorism, and the Well-Intentioned Left."

Caroline Glick argues that Israel's national elections tomorrow are the country's "most fateful" ever:

In late 2006, citing the Iranian nuclear menace, Israel Beiteinu leader Avigdor Lieberman joined the Olmert government where he received the tailor-made title of strategic affairs minister. At the time Lieberman joined the cabinet, the public outcry against the government for its failure to lead Israel to victory in the war with Iran's Lebanese proxy Hizbullah had reached a fever pitch. The smell of new elections was in the air as members of Knesset from all parties came under enormous public pressure to vote no confidence in the government.

By joining the government when he did, Lieberman single-handedly kept the Olmert government in power. Explaining his move, Lieberman claimed that the danger emanating from Iran's nuclear program was so great that Israel could not afford new elections.

But what did he accomplish by saving the government by taking that job? The short answer is nothing. Not only did his presence in the government make no impact on Israel's effectiveness in dealing with Iran, it prolonged the lifespan of a government that had no interest in forming a strategy for contending with Iran by two years.
In light of this fact, perhaps more than any other Israeli politician, Lieberman is to blame for the fact that Israel finds itself today with no allies in its hour of greatest peril. Had he allowed the people to elect more competent leaders in the fall of 2006, we might have been able to take advantage of the waning years of the Bush administration to convince the US to work with us against Iran ....

In 2006, Likud leader Binyamin Netanyahu took it upon himself to engage the American people in a discussion of the danger Iran poses not only to Israel but to the world as a whole. In late 2006, he began meeting with key US governors and state politicians to convince them to divest their state employees' pension funds from companies that do business with Iran. This initiative and complementary efforts by the Washington-based Center for Security Policy convinced dozens of state legislatures to pass laws divesting their pension funds from companies that do business with Iran.

Netanyahu also strongly backed the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs' initiative to indict Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as an international war criminal for inciting genocide. Both the divestment campaign and the campaign against Ahmadinejad have been Israel's most successful public diplomacy efforts in contending with Iran. More than anything done by the government, these initiatives made Americans aware of the Iranian nuclear threat and so forced the issue onto the agendas of all the presidential candidates.

Instead of supporting Netanyahu's efforts, Livni, Barak and Lieberman have disparaged them or ignored them.

Because he is the only leader who has done anything significant to fight Iran's nuclear program, Netanyahu is the only national leader who has the international credibility to be believed when he says - as he did this week - that Israel will not allow Iran to acquire nuclear weapons. Likud under Netanyahu is the only party that has consistently drawn the connection between Iran, its Palestinian, Lebanese, Iraqi and Afghan terror proxies, its Syrian client state and its nuclear weapons program, and made fighting this axis the guiding principle of its national security strategy.

Read the whole thing (here) for Glick's criticisms of Tzipi Livni and Ehud Barak.

Now, compare Glick to Glenn Greenwald:

Israel is holding its national elections tomorrow. Not only is it virtually certain that the right-wing militarist Benjamin Netanyahu of the Likud Party will become the new Prime Minister, but it is highly likely that the ultra-right, anti-Arab nationalist and West Bank settler Avigdor Lieberman of the racist Yisrael Beitenu (Israel Our Home) Party will perform scandalously well. Polls show Lieberman’s party winning between 15 to 20 of the 120 seats in the Knesset, perhaps even surpassing Israel’s Labour Party for third place and even an outside change for second place. Lieberman’s party will form a vital component of Netanyahu’s ruling coalition and will secure a key Cabinet post for Lieberman himself ....

In February, 2000, Austria held a national election in which the far-right, anti-immigrant party of Joerg Haider stunned the world by attracting 26% of the vote and becoming a part of the ruling parliamentary coalition headed by the Austrian People's Party (though Haider himself had no position in the government). This is how the United States reacted to those results:

The United States is temporarily recalling its ambassador from Vienna following the swearing in of a new coalition government that includes the far-right Freedom Party. . . .

Speaking at a news conference in Washington, Mrs Albright said: "We have decided to limit our contacts with the new government and we will see whether further actions are necessary to advance our support for democratic values."

The U.S. wasn’t the only country to punish Austria for this outcome:

Israel has recalled its ambassador and has announced that Joerg Haider, the party's figurehead, will not be allowed into the country.

"Israel cannot remain silent in the face of the rise of extremist right-wing parties, in particular in those countries which played a role in the events which brought about the eradication of a third of the Jewish people in the Holocaust," a foreign ministry statement said.

The Haider/Lieberman comparison isn’t perfect. Haider had made a handful of stray reprehensible comments which were anti-Semitic or even sympathetic to former Nazi Party members, but the platform on which he actually ran had nothing to do with that. It was the standard nativist, anti-immigrant cant sweeping much of the European Right at the time. Arguably, though, Lieberman’s Arab-hating bile is even worse. Whereas Haider, an Austrian citizen, was demonizing foreign immigrants seeking to enter the country, Lieberman himself is an immigrant to Israel and is demonizing citizens who have been Israelis far longer than he has.

The U.S. already pays a very substantial price for its decades-long, blind and one-sided support for Israeli actions. The New York Times yesterday published an Op-Ed from Alaa Al Aswany -- an obviously pro-Obama, pro-American Egyptian describing the pervasive anger in Egypt that has already arisen towards Obama as a result of his deafening silence on the Israeli attack on Gaza ....

If, as it appears, the face Israel is now choosing for itself is that of Benjamin Netanyahu and Avigdor Lieberman, then the cost to the United States of ongoing, one-sided support for Israel is going to skyrocket, and the need for serious change in U.S. policy towards Israel will be even more acute.

Now, readers can behold the contrast between a neoconservative commentator - Glick - and a far-left progressive/civil libertarian commentator - Greenwald - and judge for themselves.

Glick opposes Lieberman on political and policy grounds, and sees him as weakening Israeli national security. She supports Netanyahu because he's made the most successful "public diplomacy efforts in contending with Iran."

In contrast, Greenwald attacks Lieberman as a "far-right extremist," portraying his positions as analogous to Austria's neo-Nazi Freedom Party. To top it off, Greenwald used the methodology of guilt-by-association to impugn the credibility of Benjamin Netanyahu, who may well form a governing coaltion with Lieberman.

This hysterical smear is then used as a basis for the United States to repudiate the Israeli government.

Now, recall this morning's post, where Gary Novak asked, "At what point do those who participate in the normalization of evil cease to be useful idiots and become evil themselves?"

Consider Greenwald's post a test-case for Novak's query.