Full Metal Saturday Challenge!

I got in on the ground floor of "Robert Stacy McCain's Full Metal Blogging."

It's a good thing, too, since "The Other McCain's" traffic-building, link-ragin' sensation is attracting quite a following. In fact, Moe Lane's looking to escalate the genre, throwing down the gauntlet with his post, "You Want Rule #5, RS McCain?," which includes the video from Rafael Defense Systems' promotional Bollywood dance sequence for the Aero India 2009 air-show in Bangalore.

That's good stuff, no doubt, but if folks are escalating to fire-cracker hot videos, I'm laying down some jams with Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta, a.k.a, Lady Gaga! I like the Lady's influences, but she's a bit too hot, in fact, although I'm still hankering for more bikini shots of Katy Perry!

Some of our blogging partners are keeping things on the up and up, of course. Pundette's got a thorough link roundup in, "Saturday Link-Fest 3/21." That entry links to British blogger, Marianne, who's asks new friends to stop by and peek over her "virtual picket fence" once in a while.

Little Miss Attila gets into the action as well, with inside-intel on Robert Stacy McCain's California conservative conferencing action! She links to Suzanna Logan, who's been hyper-scaling the stats on Sitemeter, garnering some Instalanche action!

Dan Collins is kicking up a storm in the hot side-gig at Protein Wisdom's Pub, so check it out.

But see also Jason at The Western Experience, who's more concerned with "nation-blanketing in Afghanistan" than the more down-home diversions of babe-blogging.

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P.S.: Lady Gaga's about as far as I'm going to go on the hotness scale. As much as I like Blake Lively, there's something a bit forward in Rolling Stone's cover story this week, especially for parents imploring "Keep it in your britches, son."

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P.P.S.: If American Power readers would like their blogs included in some of my link-explosion roundups, just drop me an e-mail and I'd be glad to spread some link love.

The Courts and the Culture Wars

I'm reading Robert Bork's, A Time to Speak: Selected Writings and Arguments, as noted previously. This afternoon I read Bork's essay, "Olympians on the March: The Courts and the Cuture Wars." Once again, I can't share enough how much these essays are resonating with me.

In "Olympians on the March," Bork examines the shift from a legal constitutionalism in the courts to a political advocacy masquerading as jurisprudence. Most of the change came in the 20th century, and the Warren Court was the turning point to a socialization of the law. According to Bork, "As a consequence of the Warren Court's preference for equal results rather than equal justice, it politicized every branch of the law, statutes as well as the Constitution. Ironically, the Court's favored constitutional implement was the clause of the Fourteenth Amendment promising 'equal protection of the laws.'"

The "Olympians" are the educational and social elite. Here's Bork's key passage on this progressive elite:

Judges belong to the class that John O'Sullivan first identified as "Olympians." The political philosopher Kenneth Minogue described the philosophy of this class:

Olympianism is the project of an intellectual
elite that believes that it enjoys superior enlightenment
and that its business is to spread
this benefit to those living on the lower slopes
of human achievement .... Olympianism
burrowed like a parasite into the most powerful
institution of the emerging knowledge
economy - the universities.

From there the infection spread to other culture-shaping institutions, most notably the Supreme Court which was accused, justly in my opinion, with reasoning backwards from desired results to spurious rationales.

Further, check out this passage on the Court's radical cultural rights:

The Supreme Court is enacting a program of radical personal autonomy, indeed moral chaos, piece by piece, creating new and hitherto unsuspected constitutional rights: rights to abortion, homosexual sodomy (and, coming soon, homosexual marriage), freedom from religion in the public square, racial and sexual preferences. None of these is justified by the actual Bill of Rights.

I could easily multiply examples. But the underlying philosophy of the Olympians--if it deserves so dignified a name as "philosophy"--is wonderfully summed up in the famous "mystery passage" that Justice Anthony Kennedy first articulated in an opinion reaffirming the made-up constitutional right to abortion. "These matters," Justice Kennedy wrote for the Court,

involving the most intimate and personal
choices a person may make in a lifetime
[abortion, etc.], choices central to personal
dignity and autonomy, are central to the
liberty protected by the Fourteenth Amendment.
At the heart of liberty is the right to define
one's own concept of existence, of meaning, of the
universe, and of the mystery of human life. Beliefs
about these matters could not define the attributes
of personhood were they formed under compulsion
of the State. [emphasis added]

Although this passage instantly attracted some measure of the ridicule it deserved, Justice Kennedy chose to repeat it in Lawrence v. Texas (2003), which pretends to discover a constitutional right to homosexual sodomy. What other practices, we may wonder, are now "at the heart of liberty"? Kennedy's aria about "the right to define one's own concept of existence, of meaning," etc., is not simply laughable intellectually; it also tells us something grim about our future, the Court, and a people that supinely accepts such judicial diktats.

While searching for some of Bork's essays online this afternoon, I came across a Reason magazine book review of Bork's "Slouching Towards Gomorrah: Modern Liberalism and American Decline. Reading the piece provides some insight as to why libertarians are wont to form alliances with radical leftists, as we're seeing in the "liberaltarian" rage that's been going around online. If Bork's ideas are seen as "extreme" by some (especially as he apparently calls for censorship in Slouching Towards Gomorrah), there's actually not much a cultural conservative can quibble with, at least, if one's concerned about the very breakdown in radical licentiousness that leftist are determined to spread.

Churchill Supporters Slur 9/11 Victims as "Little Eichmanns"

I imagine I shouldn't be surprised, but supporters of Ward Churchill, the discredited former professor at the University of Colorado, have defiled the historical memory of the victims of the 9/11 attacks. El Marco has a new photo-journalism report, "Americans Are Not “Little Eichmanns”."

Read the full report here.

El Marco has uploaded a number of brief 9/11 obituaries from the New York Times. I vaguely remember reading a couple of them at the time.

If you have the stomach, check out the blog of the Revolutionary Anti-Imperialist Movement Denver, and see in particular, Ben Whitmer, "Why I Support Ward Churchill":

I defend Ward Churchill because he was the first to write the obvious about the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks on September‭ ‬11,‭ ‬2001.‭ ‬That the technocrats on the upper levels of the World Trade Center weren’t targeted because they provided some symbolically metaphysical representation of American power‭; ‬they were targeted because they made their living on the bodies of Arab children.‭ ‬

Yeah. Right.

There's more, unfortunately ...

Governor Palin Rejects Stimulus-Funded Gov't Expansion

Via All American Blogger, Alaska Governor Sarah Palin has rejected half of the federal stimulus money available to the state. In refusing all the money on the table, Palin said the funds "are contingent on the state increasing the size of government, chipping in more dollars or passing new laws that Alaskans might not want."

All American Blogger has the link to Governor Palin's press release. See also, Conservatives for Sarah Palin, "Palin Looks Forward to Public Discussion on Stimulus Funds."

Disrespecting the Presidential Office

I think I've gained some street cred (blog cred?) with Dan Riehl on the question of the dignity and stature of the office of the presidency. I noted this morning that Barack Obama's gaffe last night wasn't the least of his infidelities, but also that his media appearances were lowering the bar on the dignity of Oval Office. As I noted, "the President's 'Special Olympics' faux pas is really a bit much, not just for its complete cluelessness, and the very indignity of a comedy appearance amid national crisis ..."

Apparently, a number of right-bloggers haven't appreciated the seriousness in Obama's relaxation of presidential etiquette and morality. As Dan notes:

I've seen similar commentary to this elsewhere on the Right regarding Obama's Special Olympic's flap. Unfortunately, it pretty much convinces me that a lot of blog commentary on the Right today is relatively useless. And there are two reasons for that in this particular case ....

To start with, it isn't about the humor ... frankly, I don't see much wrong with that, as I'm not easily offended. But what was it Bush tried to do most when taking office post-Clinton? Do you even remember?

He tried to bring a little dignity back to the office, that's what. Because he respected the office. Guess what? Obama doesn't. Just as he doesn't really respect a lot of things that once warranted some respect in this Republic. It just amazes me to see so many allegedly informed Right-siders scream about how the Left wants to undermine American institutions, yet faced with a perfect example of it they can't even understand it's going on.

Well, after blogging about Barack Obama and the Democrats continuously for almost a year, I feel readily able to testify to the utter obliteration of values, rectitude, and order in this administration. I remember very clearly, in 2001, when President George W. Bush took office, the New York Times ran a comparative analysis of the Clinton and Bush White Houses. Bill Clinton was very informal. He worked hard, sure, but his style was loose and unorganized. George W. Bush, by contrast, was at work by 7:00am. He stressed a code of punctuality for all meetings, and he ALWAYS dressed in a suit and tie (and formal dress was required of visitors to the Oval Office). G.W. Bush ran an even tigther ship than his own father's: "Many officials in the Bush White House said they were struck by how there seemed to be far less back-stabbing than there had been even in Mr. Bush's father's White House."

But it's not just about attire and punctuality. It's attitude. It's almost as if President Obama is actually inviting charges that he's disrespecting the office. On his first day, he made it a point to be photographed by Time without a coat and tie. And remember that "larger point" ... the new president wasn't just going casual; he was sending the message that his predecessor was a stuffed shirt and he was going to do it differently.

It seems to me that there's a majesty to the office that goes beyond the individual occupant in power. Barack Obama campaigned for a year as a coolster, someone who was down with the younger generations. President Obama makes it known that he likes the Rolling Stones, and one of his biggest priorities in office is to install a basketball court in the White House (and now he's picking tournament brackets for the NCAA Championship). Sure, he's entitled, but when he makes it a point to go on Jay Leno's show amid a both a national crisis and an executive scandal, and is quick to ridicule - however inadvertently - those of limited physical abilities, it seems as though slapping down some late-night jive is more important than slapping down his own administration's tax-cheats and policy imbeciles.

All of this was on display last year: From the "presidential seal" disaster, to the Berlin speech last summer at Adoph Hitler's favorite monument (the Siegessäule Victory Column), to his waffling reply to Pastor Rick Warren at Saddleback (suggesting that on the right to life would "reduce the number of abortions in America"), there's been little reasurring about this man, his candidacy, and whether this administration will take culture, values, and tradition seriously.

So I want to thank Dan Riehl for laying it out there as he has. The underlying messages beneath Obama's gaffes are enormously telling in how this presidency will govern the nation in a period not only of disruption, but outright social decay.

Sarah Palin on the Special Olympics

Michelle Malkin's got a new post up, "Why Can’t Obama Tell a Good Joke?" (via Memeorandum). But don't miss this video, "Governor Palin's Address to the 2009 Special Olympics in Boise, Idaho":

It's great to see Governor Palin in the news again. She's a good woman, a great mom, and she'll make a great president.

For stark contrast, see, "Obama Apologizes for Calling His Bad Bowling 'Like the Special Olympics'."

Hat Tip: Terry Frank.

The Left's Love Affair with Tyranny and Terror

Here's a brief roundup on Jamie Glazov's new book, United in Hate: The Left's Romance with Tyranny and Terror:

Ronald Radosh has this:

After 9/11, the social-democratic political philosopher, Michael Walzer, asked the readers of Dissent magazine a tough question: “Can there be a decent Left?” His essay was in reality an appeal for its creation, since Walzer was smart enough to realize that so many who spoke in the name of the Left that horrific year were anything but. But now, so many years later, little has changed. If anyone has any doubts about this, there is no better place to start than Jamie Glazov’s important new book, United in Hate.

Kathy Shaidle has published a great piece on the book last week at Pajamas Media, "Exposing the Left’s Romance with Tyranny and Terror." And World Net Daily discusses the critical acclaim for United in Hate:

Critical acclaim is mounting for the newly released "United in Hate: The Left's Romance with Tyranny and Terror," by Jamie Glazov, with President Reagan's national security adviser, Robert C. McFarlane, calling it a "must-read."

In his book, which assuredly will make so-called "progressives" see red, Glazov describes the unholy alliance between jihadists and people like Michael Moore, Sean Penn, Ted Turner and Noam Chomsky.

He uses the Leftists' own words to reveal their agenda of death, and now a flood of praise is pouring in.

McFarlane said it is "the redefining work for 21st Century readers of an eternal message."

Also blogging:

* ACT! For America, "United in Hate."

* Phyllis Chesler, " “The Battle for Liberty, The Struggle Against Despotism.” An Interview with Author Jamie Glazov."

* Israpundit, "Shining the Light on Leftist and Islamic Hate."

* Saberpoint, "United In Hate: Why the Left Loves and Glorifies Tyranny."

Ann Althouse: "Ezra Klein Owes Me a Correction..."

From Ann Althouse, "'Ann Althouse Sure Has a Lot of Anti-Semitic Commenters'":

Ezra Klein tweets — without a link to any particular comment.

Well, Ezra, I do not delete comments based on viewpoint. I believe in the marketplace of ideas, and to the extent that there are some anti-Semitic comments here, there are many more comments that strike back. Is it not better to have scurrilous ideas out in the sunlight where they can die?

ADDED: In fact, Ezra Klein owes me a correction. He has published a lie about my blog. Alternatively, let him list the commenters he's writing about — I can search their old comments and see if there is anything that deserves to be called anti-Semitic — and we will see if his list constitutes "a lot." I think he cannot do it, so he really ought to put up a correction immediately.

Ann is usually pretty restrained regarding flame wars, but I LOVE IT when she call these folks out. Let's see if Ann gets her correction.

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UPDATE: Ezra Klein issues an explanation/partial apology ... Althouse is not particularly thrilled ...

More at Memeorandum.

Glenn Reynolds at Hofstra Law School

Professor Glenn Reynolds is at Hofstra Law School this week. He participated in a panel discussion yesterday on energy and the environment, but he was a little taken aback upon arrival: "It was a little weird ... to get here and see my face staring out from posters, Big Brother-like, all over the place." Read more at Instapundit.

Obama's Message to the Iranian People

Charles Lemos, at MyDD, argues that Presient Barack Obama's "Message to the Iranian People" marks the beginning of an "Obama Doctrine":

While it is still too early to fully articulate the totality of an Obama Doctrine, it is clearly not the Bush Doctrine of American exceptionalism and unilateralism. The Obama Administration is committed to diplomatic avenues that addresses the full range of issues that separate the United States and its adversaries based on engagement that is honest and grounded in mutual respect and to pursuing constructive ties that provide greater opportunities for partnership and commerce.

But check out Abe Greenwald at Commentary, who calls bull on claims of transformational "hopenchange" diplomacy:

Barack Obama released a video message intended for Iranians and their leaders, wishing them a happy Nowruz (Iranian New Year) and stressing all the usual Obamisms about hope, diplomacy, togetherness, and mutual respect. Obama supporters can swoon and Obama detractors can stew, but trying to establish a connection across intense cultural lines is nothing that Obama brought to the presidency. It is perfectly in keeping with George W. Bush’s unstinting effort to appeal to the world’s Muslims at every opportunity ....

There are two main differences between Bush’s Muslim outreach and Obama’s ambidirectional variety. First, as a man in whose life faith plays a central role, Bush could simply appeal to Muslims as members of an Abrahamic religion. He didn’t gild the lily, as Obama does, by condescending to one “great culture” after another, and citing the universal peace dreams of tyrants. Second, Bush never thought embracing the world’s peaceful Muslims was a substitute for threatening, or using, force against the world’s less peaceful Muslims. He knew that saying nice things was less important than doing necessary things. When it comes to Iran, there’s no indication that Obama sees a difference between the two.

See also, Ed Morrissey, "Video: Good Morning, Iran!", as well as Memeorandum.

Obamateur Hour at the White House

This week's AIG fiasco has already provided Republicans with a fabulous opening for hammering Barack Obama's incompetence and Democratic Party corruption. But the President's "Special Olympics" faux pas is really a bit much, not just for its complete cluelessness, and the very indignity of a comedy appearance amid national crisis, but for what all of this tells us about President Obama's entire governing philosophy.

Via Powerline, Mark Steyn has coined the best phrase to capture the Obama's recent ineptitude, modified slightly: "Obamateur Hour at the White House."

Steyn's also got a nickname for the President: "Barack Oprompta." For more on that, check Michelle Malkin, "Obama’s “Special Olympics” Joke: The Teleprompter Made Him Do It!".

Lots more at Memeorandum. See also, Dan Collins, "Sardonic, Without the Chops."

Irresistible Michelle Malkin

If there is any single indicator of Michelle Malkin's enduring significance on the political right, it's the truly clinical love/hate relationship with Malkin on the malevolent left.

Look at this picture: That's Michelle Malkin graciously providing a photo-op at CPAC to Adam P. DuPont, a.k.a, "tas" from Comments From Left Field.

Now, if you click over to the original post (opens a new window), and then point and click your mouse on the picture, you'll see the prompt labeled, "Evil and I."

That's right, evil ... so, you tell me: If Ms. Malkin's so "evil," why is Mr. DuPont so exceptionally eager to be photographed with her?

Recall that Mr. DuPont has allegedly "made a specialty out of attacking 'wingnuts' - those he identifies as 'right wingers' ... from behind his internet handle, careful not to reveal his own name." But he was willing to compromise his anonymity to meet Michelle Malkin? Interesting, to say the least, especially since she's considered so "evil." Michelle Malkin's got some kind of "dark attraction" thingy going, you think?

But check out TBogg for another case in point. It turns out that the "demonic ridicule machine" actually put in a request to "friend" Ms. Malkin on Twitter.

I have been denied by that little rage imp, Michelle Malkin. I clicked on the 'follow button' and got this for my troubles:

You have been blocked from following this account at the request of the user.

It's like she was just waiting for me ... which is kind of stupid because I can still go to her twitter page and read what the twit wrote; I just don't get updates.

I say good for Michelle Malkin! Damn right she was waiting ... these nihilist collectivists are freaks!

Let's face it, these guys are stalking her. They're looking to get bragging rights for photo-opportunities, or "Twitter-follower" privileges, so they can expand their snarky repertoire, and boost their own blogging creds by bandwagoning on Michelle Malkin's unparalleled success as a citizen journalist. And it's not just that: These folks are totally quivering in their boots in humbled awe of Michelle Malkin, of her confidence, courtesy, and courage. And I've no doubt they'd take her down if they had means and opportunity. It's a threatening thing, in that sense.

But remember: We're not even two months into the Obama administration, and we're seeing things looking up on the right, and leaders like Michelle Malkin are leading the charge.

Blake Lively Soft Porn

Okay, my wife gets Rolling Stone (as a magazine subscription promotion of some kind), and after she brought the mail in tonight with the latest issue, she said "I think this a little risqué."

She's referring to Rolling Stone's cover story, "The Nasty Thrill of “Gossip Girl”." Click here and you'll see what she means.

Blake Lively is hot, no doubt. However, my son watches Gossip Girl and, frankly, I don't think he understands the symbolism of Ms. Lively and her co-star "slurping a cone."

I'm not going to begrudge Rolling Stone for selling magazines. Some of my masculine readers have appreciated some of the breast-blogging around here, so I'm not one to criticize. I will note that publisher Jann Wenner, a top hard-left cultural standard-bearer, is sending out conflicting messages for young people. You've got the sexy cover on the one hand, and then you've got the magazine's special section, "The RS100: Agents of Change," and trailing the pack at No. 100 is Taylor Swift. The country star is 19 years-old. Her claim to fame as an "agent of change"?

At 19, the biggest star in country and teen pop has managed to keep her head on straight — no drinking, no smoking, no limousine peekaboo — without seeming like a prude. Swift has given country music a new audience: teen girls who identify with her wholesome persona as much as her music.

So, what's it going to be?

You've got "Blake Lively and Leighton Meester melting cones from coast-to-coast," and then you've got Ms. Swift who carries herself with grace and maturity, "without seeming like a prude."

I'm sure Robert Bork's getting a kick out of the incongruity.

Richard Holbrooke and AIG

I've never cared much for Richard Holbrooke. He's a pompous ass who has rightly and repeatedly been denied the secretary of state's post.

But there two bits of news worth mentioning on Holbrooke: (1) He was on the board at AIG in March 2008, "when those bonsuses were decided"; and (2) he's been identified as one of a number of special recipients of Countrywide Financial mortgages, the same loan product that Senator Christopher Dodd received.

Obama's poll numbers are falling, and as the administration looks increasingly corrupt and incompetent, the ground is being steadily prepared for a decisive repudiation of the Democrats by 2012.

See also, "Inside AIG-FP, Feeling the Public's Wrath" (via Memeorandum), and also, "Dodd's Deep Doo-Doo."

Hat Tip: Moe Lane.

Matthew Yglesias on "Atlas Shrugged"

A couple of weeks back, Matthew Yglesias attacked GOP Representative John Campbell for literally "taking cues" from Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged, and then concluded:

I haven’t actually read the book but my understanding is that in Atlas Shrugged they’re actually building a high-speed rail link from Las Vegas to Disneyland.

Now, in response to Caroline Baum's argument that Barack Obama needs corporations like AIG more than they need him, Yglesias says this:

Atlas Shrugged is a stupid book, Ayn Rand is a stupid woman, and John Galt’s ideas are stupid. That said, none of them are nearly this stupid. Rand’s novel isn’t about a world in which executives who build companies based on a lot of incorrect decisions, then pay themselves millions of dollars while bankrupting their firms ...

Atlas Shrugged is a beefy novel, over a thousand pages long. Yglesias must have a lot of leisure time to enjoy works of profound literary and philosophical importance; either that, or he's one helluva power reader!

It's bad enough to repudiate rational self-interest as the guiding ethic of a moral political economy, but attacking Ayn Rand's objectivism, and those endorsing it, without having read the book is beneath contempt.

No doubt the thought police over at American Nihilist and Lawyers, Guns and Money will be on top of the case, calling out Yglesias for his abject dishonesty and total stupidy.

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UPDATE: Instalanche!

Aging Charles Manson: Reflections

Today's Los Angeles Times has published a new photograph of Charles Manson. It turns out that officials at Corcoran State Prison have released Manson's picture, which is an updated inmate photo used at the facility.

The full Story is here, including this passage:

This August marks the 40th anniversary of the Manson killings, which stunned the nation and effectively marked the end of the counter-culture, "flower power" era of the 1960s.

Manson and other members of his so-called family were convicted of killing actress Sharon Tate and six other people during a bloody rampage in the Los Angeles area during two August nights in 1969. Prosecutors said that Manson and his followers were trying to incite a race war that he believed was prophesied in the Beatles' song "Helter Skelter."

As a kid, my only knowledge of the murders came from skimming my parents' copy of Vincent Bugliosi's, Helter Skelter: The True Story of the Manson Murders. But when I became a skatepunk around 1980 or so, I was always going to gigs up in Hollywood. Black Flag, the seminal L.A. punk rock outfit was the rage, and Raymond Pettibone, the brother of Black Flag guitarist Greg Ginn, published a series of anti-establishment concert flyers that often featured images of the Manson family. I have a copy of the one above, which used to trip me out, with its captions, "Charlie, you better be good. It wasn't easy getting in here you know," and "creepy crawl the Whisky," for the Whisky a Go Go on Sunset Boulvard.

The flyer for Black Flag's Baces Hall gig on October 24 (1980?) is here. This concert is famous for the "riot" that broke out there (see Punk 365). I use "scare" quotes because no one was actuallly rioting inside the concert. I don't know what happened outside, but the LAPD came into the hall with full battle gear and mowed down the punks with truncheons. My buddies and I booked it out the side door, and the cops had sealed off the street with barricades. I was driving and as I started to get away a couple of skinheads screamed for help and we opened the door to let them in. The car was rolling as this happened, so it all seemed pretty surreal at the time.

Anyways, I was about 19 or 20 at the time. We were up in Hollywood a couple of times a week for concerts. The Starwood on Santa Monica Boulevard had punk night every Tuesday and Wednesday night. Rodney Bingenheimer was the DJ. Click here for the concert flyer announcing shows for Black Flag with Middle Class, Social Distortion, and the Adolescents.

Click here for a compilation of Pettibone's Black Flag concert flyers.

In any case, readers now know more about me, and the things I did when I was a punk-rocking skateboarder! I came of age in the 1970s, and the era of stadium concert-rock was giving way to the new punk grooves from New York, London, and Los Angeles (about tens years after Ann Althouse's flower days, although check out Robert Stacy McCain for some ramblin' on the more common doings of "my generation"). When I see kids wearing all the punk paraphernalia nowadays it just reminds me of all the good times I had back in the day. I have a large bank-slalom competition photo of me on the wall in my office, and kids sometimes come to office hours and say, "Cool, who's that?" Then they trip out when I say, "Oh, that's me, about thirty years ago."

One of these days I'll upload and blog the skateboarding photos that I have on file. But that's for another day.

President Obama Visits Orange County

Nice Deb provides the video from Barack Obama's town hall meeting yesterday at the Orange County Fairgrounds, not far from my home. Let's just say he still fires up the base:

In Washington, of course, the outrage continues over the AIG scandal. Michelle Malkin's got the hot coverage, for example, "First, They Came for AIG bonuses":

The House is set to vote today on the retroactive, confiscatory 90 percent tax on bailout-funded bonuses. Lawmakers say the tax will apply to Fannie/Freddie bonuses. But who knows what the hell will end up in this Chicken Little measure ...

More at Memeorandum.

Winning in Afghanistan

Senators John McCain and Joseph Lieberman counter the creeping defeatism on Afghanistan, at today's Washington Post, "Our Must-Win War: The 'Minimalist' Path Is Wrong for Afghanistan":

As the administration finalizes its policy review, we are troubled by calls in some quarters for the president to adopt a "minimalist" approach toward Afghanistan. Supporters of this course caution that the American people are tired of war and that an ambitious, long-term commitment to Afghanistan may be politically unfeasible. They warn that Afghanistan has always been a "graveyard of empires" and has never been governable. Instead, they suggest, we can protect our vital national interests in Afghanistan even while lowering our objectives and accepting more "realistic" goals there - for instance, by scaling back our long-term commitment to helping the Afghan people build a better future in favor of a short-term focus on fighting terrorists.

The political allure of such a reductionist approach is obvious. But it is also dangerously and fundamentally wrong, and the president should unambiguously reject it. Let there be no doubt: The war in Afghanistan can be won. Success - a stable, secure, self-governing Afghanistan that is not a terrorist sanctuary - can be achieved. Just as in Iraq, there is no shortcut to success, no clever "middle way" that allows us to achieve more by doing less. A minimalist approach in Afghanistan is a recipe not for winning smarter but for losing slowly at tremendous cost in American lives, treasure and security.

The entire essay is available, here.

Rule 5 Rescue: Katy Perry

Well, it's time for American Power's midweek Rule 5 Rescue. The series, if you recall, is inspired by Robert Stacy McCain's landmark post, "How to Get a Million Hits on Your Blog in Less Than a Year."

Katy Perry is this week's featured hottie for a couple of reasons: (1) My son likes her music, and we often watch VH1 videos together on the weekend. Katy Perry's actually bouncy, wholesome, and fun, much more so than the attractive but a bit raunchy Lady Gaga; and (2) John Hawkins had posted links to Katy Perry - IN A BIKINI - the other day at Conservative Grapevine, which pretty much clinched the deal.

And that reminds me of something while we're on the topic of blogging hotties.

Some folks might be thinking babe-blogging is "un-conservative." When Dana at Common Sense Political Thought put up a respectable post on Helen Mirren - IN A BIKINI - one of his commenters threw cold water on the essay at the thread: "Oh dear. I hope this won’t become a regular happening. Your quality writing is more than enough! While Mirren is mighty and marvelous, no more please." And this wasn't satirical ribbing.

But think about it? What better way to build a blog community and have a little fun? Only an uptight feminist would decry babe-blogging for the "objectification" and "exploitation" of women. But forget about that: Remember what Little Miss Attila says, "There is a marked tendency for heterosexual men to be interested in women." Plus, conservative woman are masters at the genre, for example, in Monique Stewart's post on health care affordability topped off with a HOT PHOTO OF A BURSTING PAMELA ANDERSON!

Really, I think most folks on the right would rather read bloggers who regularly link to the nightly bedtime totties at Theo Spark's than wind up like Ross Douthat, who while in college, rebuffed the dorm-room sexual importunings of a Reese Witherspoon-lookalike who was "drunkenly masticating" his "neck and cheeks."

As the old Schlitz beer advertisment used to say,''You only go around once in life, so you have to grab for all the gusto you can get!"

Besides, if you're jonesing for content in a down cycle of interesting news content, you can always say, "When in doubt . . . blog about Britney. Or Scarlett Johansson. Or Natalie Portman. Or Anne Hathaway. Or Lindsay Lohan."

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Previously: "Rule 5 Rescue: Paulina Porizkova."

The Idea of Barack Obama

Noemie Emory's got a new piece at the Weekly Standard on Obamessianism, "Showered with Praise: The Media's Love Affair With the Idea of Barack Obama":

The idea of Obama has taken on a life of its own that exists quite apart from the actual man, and that has always been bigger, and much more alluring, than he. It is not what he does, but what he is and implies that has been so compelling, and one thing he is is not-white. Or he is half-white--a black man, who was brought up and raised by his mother's white family--which makes him still better: as a genetic mixture of Kenya and Kansas, he emerged as the literal symbol of national union, the two racial strains merged as one ....

For the past six years, if not more, the implication of everything written in the Times, Time, Newsweek, Vanity Fair, and the New Yorker was that if only they had one of their own in the White House, he could really ace this whole president business, which only seemed hard because Bush was so clueless, so Texan, so lacking in intellect (at least as defined by their editors' standards). But Obama's first weeks have not been promising. The Daily Telegraph (U.K.) writes that Obama is "overwhelmed" by his office, and "surprise[d] at the sheer volume of business that crosses his desk." This has not gone unnoticed. "In ways both large and small, what's left of the American establishment is taking his measure and, with surprising swiftness, they are finding him lacking," as Howard Fineman reports. What if he turns out to be no more able than Bush was to figure out how to calm down the markets, how to close Gitmo without causing more problems, what to do about Russia and Pakistan, and how to keep Iran from getting a nuclear weapon without risk of starting a war? How sophisticated will Klein feel if the Dow hits 5000? Where will Warner and pen pals go with their fantasies? The shower they wanted to take with Obama may be a cold dousing quite soon.

See also, William Jacobson, "The Official Guide To Obama Kitsch" (via Memeorandum).

Hard Truths About the Culture War

I'm reading Robert Bork's, A Time to Speak: Selected Writings and Arguments, which is a collection of Bork's life work dating back 50 years.

This afternoon I read Bork's 1995 essay, "Hard Truths About the Culture War," which despite its age, is the best essay on the rot and decay of American culture I've ever read.

Modern liberalism is most particularly a disease of our cultural elites, the people who control the institutions that manufacture or disseminate ideas, attitudes, and symbols-universities, some churches, Hollywood, the national press (print and electronic), much of the congressional Democratic party and some of the congressional Republicans as well, large sections of the judiciary, foundation staffs, and almost all the "public interest" organizations that exercise a profound if largely unseen effect on public policy. So pervasive is the influence of those who occupy the commanding heights of our culture that it is not entirely accurate to call the United States a majoritarian democracy. The elites of modern liberalism do not win all the battles, but despite their relatively small numbers, they win more than their share and move the culture always in one direction ....

What we are seeing in modern liberalism is the ultimate triumph of the New Left of the 1960s - the New Left that collapsed as a unified political movement and splintered into a multitude of intense, single-issue groups. We now have, to name but a few, radical feminists, black extremists, animal rights groups, radical environmentalists, activist homosexual groups, multiculturalists, People for the American Way, Planned Parenthood, the American Civil Liberties Union, and many more. In a real sense, however, the New Left did not collapse. Each of its splinters pursues a leftist agenda, but there is no publicly announced overarching philosophy that enables people to see easily that the separate groups and causes add up to a general radical left philosophy. The groups support one another and come together easily on many issues. In that sense, the splintering of the New Left made it less visible and therefore more powerful, its goals more attainable, than ever before.

In their final stages, radical egalitarianism becomes tyranny and radical individualism descends into hedonism. These translate as bread and circuses. Government grows larger and more intrusive in order to direct the distribution of goods and services in an ever more equal fashion, while people are diverted, led to believe that their freedoms are increasing, by a great variety of entertainments featuring violence and sex ...

Read the whole thing, at the link.

The groups mentioned by Bork as "splintering into a multitude of intense, single-issue groups" are almost the complete roster of organizations composing the Obama administration's hard left-wing coalition called "Unity '09."

Bork was not optimistic in 1995, at the time of the essay's publication, of stanching the left's destruction of American culture. Yet the early backlash to the administration in tea parties and public opinion is certainly an encouraging sign for those hoping to reverse the bleak future promised by the radical left's culture warriors who have have seen the culmination of power in this administration.

Ayn Rand Interview

Via Pamela Geller, check out this 1959 Ayn Rand interview with Mike Wallace:

Also, the today's Wall Street Journal features responses to Yaron Brooks' essay last week, "Is Rand Relevant?":

Mr. Brook correctly identifies why Ayn Rand is relevant. Her philosophy provides the previously missing moral foundations of capitalism by showing that it is the only economic system compatible with individual rights and that production is a moral activity.

If need is the fundamental moral criterion, one has no right to life, liberty, or anything else. Capitalism protects rights by outlawing the initiation of force and fraud, while the primacy of need sanctions both. The primacy of need holds that one has no right to what one has produced if others "need" it. In "Atlas Shrugged," we see the logical result of the initiation of force against the productive: the elimination of production and the collapse of civilization.

Rand once said that she wrote "Atlas" as a prophetic novel in the hope that, by doing so, its prophesy would not come true. Unless her ideas prevail, "Atlas" will be prophetic.

Don Richmond
Naples, Fla.

With a Love So Rare and True...

I was a big fan of rockabilly music back during my skate-punk days, so Moe Lane's given me an opening to start posting some classic oldies rock. Please enjoy Buddy Holly, "Peggy Sue":

By the way, Tony at PA Pundits International is a great fan of rock-blogging, so I let me thank him for his readership and mention the great commentary readers will find over at his group-blog.

More later ...

Chad Lindsey, Everyday Hero

While all of us bloggers are caught up in reading other blogs, slumming for hits, and reading the latest headlines on Memeorandum or Hot Air, we sometimes miss the pleasures of just sitting back with a big-city newspaper.

I picked up hardcopies of the New York Times and Wall Street Journal this morning. I'm taking them to my classes in a few minutes, to have some examples for my students' writing assignments. But thumbing through the Times right now reminded me what's so great about old-fashioned newspaper reading.

It turns out that Chad Lindsey, a New York actor now currently working in the Off Broadway play, "Kasper Hauser," was waiting for the subway the other morning when another gentlemen rushed too quickly up to the edge of the subway platform, and fell down onto the tracks. The guy hit his head and was knocked unconscious, bleeding profusely. Check the story at the Times for the details, "Leap to Track. Rescue Man. Clamber Up. Catch a Train":

On Monday, as he waited for the train, about 2:30 p.m., he was thinking ahead to the reading he was heading to. “I’m kind of zoned out, and I saw this guy come too quickly to the edge,” he said. “He stopped and kind of reeled around. I felt bad, because I couldn’t get close enough to grab his coat. He fell, and immediately hit his head on the rail and passed out.”

Mr. Lindsey said he sensed a train was approaching, because the platform was crowded. “I dropped my bag and jumped down there. I tried to wake him up,” he said. “He probably had a massive concussion at that point. I jumped down there and he just wouldn’t wake up, and he was bleeding all over the place.”

He looked back up at the people on the platform. “I yelled, ‘Contact the station agent and call the police!’ which I think is hilarious because I don’t think I ever said ‘station agent’ before in my life. What am I, on ‘24’?”

The man wouldn’t wake up, he said. “He was hunched over on his front. I grabbed him from behind, like under the armpits, and kind of got him over to the platform. It wasn’t very elegant. I just hoisted him up so his belly was on the platform. It’s kind of higher than you think it is.”

He stole a glance toward the dark subway tunnel that was becoming ominously less dark, with the glow on the tracks, familiar to all New Yorkers, signaling an approaching train.

“I couldn’t see the train coming, but I could see the light on the tracks, and I was like, ‘I’ve got to get out of this hole.’ ”

He remembered the subway hero of 2007, Wesley Autrey, who jumped on top of a man who was having a seizure on the tracks and held him down in the shallow trench between the rails as the subway passed over them. “I was like, ‘I am not doing that. We’ve got to get out of here.’ ”

People on the platform joined the effort. “Someone pulled him out, and I just jumped up out of there,” he said. With time to spare: “The train didn’t come for another 10 or 15 seconds or something.”

The man lay bleeding on the platform, and the police arrived. Mr. Lindsey soon got on another train. A large group of riders who had been on the platform entered the subway car with him, smiling and clapping him on the back and saying thank you.

Read the whole thing.

Lindsey's friends called the Times to identify him as the hero after the story first ran on the City Room blog.

This is just a great portrait of one guy doing what any of us would and should do to help another citizen and fellow man, irrespective of partisanship, ideology, race, religion or any other quality that tends to divide us so much nowadays as Americans.

Obama's White House Council on Women and Girls

Here's Marybeth Hicks on the Obama adminstration's announcement of a White House Council on Women and Girls:

Actually, I'm the mother of three girls, and I happen to think Mr. Obama's new council won't win the battle of the sexes. That's because the best thing anyone can do for American women and girls is to encourage men and boys to “man up.”

A council on men and boys would promote stable marriage as the best avenue to improve the lives and living conditions of America's women and families. A council on men and boys would address the crisis in American manhood that results in the scourge of infidelity, divorce, lack of commitment and fatherhood with multiple partners.

A council on men and boys would seek to eliminate the objectification of women in the media. It would battle our hypersexual culture by fighting against the “hook-up” mentality that defines the way in which young men view young women. And most importantly, it would stamp out the violence against women that emanates from men's widespread exposure and growing addiction to pornography.

Such a council would work to train a new generation of boys to become real men, who honor and uphold women as equals in the workplace, the community and the home - not because the government regulates such an attitude, but because it's right.

A council on men and boys also would address the underlying problems that create “women's issues” such as child care, inadequate pay and domestic violence. These aren't “women's issues,” but issues related to the systemic collapse of the American family.

Believe me, I'm not man-bashing. Rather, I think the feminist agenda is a false promise. A council on women and girls that seeks to infuse feminism across the government propels us further from real solutions. Our government just isn't man enough to fix what's wrong.

While I think Ms. Hicks overstates "objectifying" women, her point about "manning up" is profoundly important as it relates to the more specific cultural breakdown of the American black family. As for Obama's policy initiatives, readers might consider that the feminist agenda is at the vanguard of secular collectivist program on the ideological left. All the left-wing talk about Barack Obama's "centrism" and "pragmatism" is belied by his real policy actions in office. But check out Dr. Helen, "Men Are a Women's 'Issue':

At first, I thought this was a positive piece on men, but no, just a hit piece on how men are pigs and should support women. If Ms. Hicks wonders why men have no interest in a "stable marriage," or commitment, she need only look as far as her own dripping disdain for men and her lack of insight into a culture that holds men responsible, portrays women as victims, and then sets up a "council" to correct a problem that women spend over 30 years in the making. A council on women is about expanding their opportunities. A council on men is about controlling them.

Core Cultural Values

Jason at The Western Experience discusses the nihilistic program of gay rights extremism in his essay, "The Culture War is Real: Pick a Side."

Jason lays out the stakes clearly, suggesting:

This isn’t a conservative or liberal debate. This is about traditional America vs. a counter cultural post modernist America. It is both necessary and required that Americans stand to defend the institution of marriage in order save our society.

Well, Jason's singing to the choir over here!

I do think it's indeed about conservatism, actually. But what really struck me is Jason's link to this letter, at Brussels Journal, from November 2007, by Bruce Bawer at Little Green Footballs:

Hi Charles,

Your concerns about Vlaams Belang/Blok and the Sverigedemokraterna are totally justified.

In May, Paul Belien wrote as follows in the Washington Times: "Europe is in the middle of a three-way culture war between the defenders of traditional Judeo-Christian morality, the proponents of secular hedonism and the forces of Islamic Jihadism."

”Secular hedonism” is plainly his term for secular liberalism. Plainly he identifies with what he calls ”traditional Judeo-Christian morality.” And the structure of his sentence suggests that for him both ”secular hedonism” and ”Islamic Jihadism” are equal enemies.

And what about those of us who foolishly think this is a war for INDIVIDUAL LIBERTY? Are we just supposed to sit back and shut up and take orders from a bunch of little Euro-fascists?

As we say in Norway, stå på! (Stick to your guns!)

All best,
Bruce

So, my comments here are not so much a defense of traditional culture (Lord knows I've had a go of it lately), but instead are directed to disabusing folks of the possibility that the kind of atheistic libertarianism endlessly promoted at Little Green Footballs even remotely resembles a positive ideological paradigm shift for the coming era of post-Bush American politics.

I don't know of Paul Beliën. I can say that the Bruce Bawer's quote of Beliën above doesn't sound particularly fascist to me, especially since genuine fascist ideology is at best neutral toward religion, or more doctrinally atheist or "post-Christian." Interwar fascism as it emerged in Italy, and in Germany's racist National Socialism, subsumed religion under the ideology of the state; fascism was flexible or pragmatic (opportunistic) in terms of building social coalitions geared to power. While Beliën may have developed a "fascist enigma" for his controversial positions in Belgian politics, the entire passage above says more about Bruce Bawer's apparent secular libertarian extremism than it does about anything relating to "Euro-fascism."

In an earlier post, I noted how Charles Johnson has been attacking "Creationism" and "Intelligent Design" like his life depended on it. LGF's new secular-totalitarian agenda is frankly turning off a good many conservatives looking to preserve traditionalism as a key foundation of a revingorated right.

Now, I'm also throwing this out there in light of the friendly exchange I've been having with Dan Riehl, whose latest essay response is here. Dan notes that on principle he would tend to place himself somewhere between the folks at The American Conservative and my "seemingly over aggressive" neoconservatism - especially as its evinced in my Godwater-esque foreign policy. Perhaps Dan might want to respond one more time, to my argument here, although he's been kindly indulgent of my digressions thus far, and I mean no importuning. I do hope that Dan might at least take a look around, reading Jason's post at The Western Experience, and then think about how he might position himself between the orientation found there and the excoriations of "Judeo-Christian" ethics evinced in Bruce Bawer's comments at Little Green Footballs.

(And note that Bawer's comments were orignally sent via e-mail to Charles Johnson, which he subsequently published in his thread by permission. At the least, we can see this as an endorsement of Bawer's views, and the notion that Johnson might see those supportive of Judeo-Christian values as "fascist" is not at odds with his program of demonizing neoconservatives who privilege Western culture over the creeping Islamization of Europe.)

But let me be clear: I'm not instigating a flame war with Charles Johnson or anyone else. I'm interested in fleshing out what we stand for on the right. This discussion is primarily of academic interest, and its' important so far as Dan Riehl previously noted how he had little use for ideological labels. In response, I noted that:

I'm neoconservative, but the label's not as important to me as is a pro-life, pro-family, and pro-victory ideological paradigm that takes moral traditionalism seriously and doesn't skimp on standing up for what's right, both home and abroad.

I'll conclude here, then, by just adding that there's an internal logic to the neoconservative perspective that aderes to a moral consistency on questions of life, liberty, and culture. An extreme libertarianism, espoused in brief by Bruce Bawer's comments above, and endorsed by Charles Johnson at his blog, would use the very Judeo-Christian legacies of rights and liberties to in fact weaken the social conservatism that is tied to a politics of faith and reason in God. Knowing that the same kind of groups that push gay culture licentiousness at home are now a key component of the leftist coaltion that is enabling the merchants of Islamic death abroad, it might pay for some of those who are hoping to stick with a principled small-government orientation to spread their sights a bit to perhaps recognize that the sustainability of small government culture and freedom at home depends on security from external enemies. There's no doubt paleolibertarians are in bed with secular progressives intent to tear down America's alleged "imperialist" power grab. We should be equally aware that the extreme secular libertarianism found at Little Green Footballs is not far behind.

If this is conservatism, it's not the kind paradigm that's going to preserve what's best of this nation, contrary to what its adherent may otherwise believe.

Photo Credit: The Brussels Journal, "Is This What it is All About?"

Natasha Richardson

It was just this last weekend: I watched The Parent Trap with my boys on Disney Channel. It wasn't the first time, but I couldn't help noticing Natasha Richardson's genuine beauty - and I mean beauty in the fullness of the person, the way someone carries themselves, how they radiate charm, confidence, caring, and humility.

It's thus sad news to hear that Ms. Richardson's under medical care for a possible life-ending head injury. I first learned yesterday, but Fox News reports that Ms. Richardson may have suffered "talk and die" syndrome, which is an injury whereby a person appears fine at first, communicating normally, but then loses consciousness after blood accumulates between the skull and brain. People Magazine reports that "Natasha Richardson's Family Gathers for Vigil."

My thoughts and prayers go out to friends and family of Natasha Richardson.

Video Credit: Natasha Richard interviewed by Charlie Rose in 1998 (link).