Escaping Concentrated Poverty

William Julius Wilson, a sociologist at Harvard University, and one of the nation's premier experts on black poverty, has a new lead article at Political Science Quartery, "The Political and Economic Forces Shaping Concentrated Poverty." Here's a snippet from the introduction:

If television cameras had focused on the urban poor in New Orleans, or in any inner-city ghetto, before Katrina, I believe that the initial reaction to descriptions of poverty and poverty concentration would have been unsympathetic. Public opinion polls in the United States routinely reflect the notion that people are poor and jobless because of their own shortcomings or inadequacies. In other words, few people would have reflected on how the larger forces in society adversely affect the inner-city poor: segregation, discrimination, a lack of economic opportunity, failing public schools. However, because Katrina was clearly a natural disaster that was beyond the control of the inner-city poor, Americans were much more sympathetic. In a sense, Katrina turned out to be something of a cruel natural experiment, wherein better-off Americans could readily see the effects of racial isolation and chronic economic subordination.

Despite the lack of national public awareness of the problems of the urban poor prior to Katrina, social scientists have rightly devoted considerable attention to concentrated poverty, because it magnifies the problems associated with poverty in general: joblessness, crime, delinquency, drug trafficking, broken families, and dysfunctional schools. Neighborhoods of highly concentrated poverty are seen as dangerous, and therefore they become isolated, socially and economically, as people go out of their way to avoid them.

In this article, I provide a framework for understanding the emergence and persistence of concentrated urban poverty. I pay particular attention to poor inner-city black neighborhoods, which have the highest levels of concentrated poverty.

The article is brief for a research manuscript, so readers ought not feel overwhelmed. There's little academic jargon, and no big overarching theory.

Unfortunately, while Wilson's analysis of the structural causes of concentrated poverty are reasonably hypothesized, his recommendations for public policy are not much different than those offered by the Democratic Party under Great Society liberalism in the 1960s. Wilson's right that tight labor market's provide opportunity and upward mobility for the "truly disadvantaged." Yet, a shift away from conservative growth policies to statist public assistance approaches (a key part of Wilson's plan) will only further entrench the underclass Wilson so much wants to help. We need robust economic growth and avenues for people to get up and out of the inner cities. Urban renewal's a fine goal (something that seems central to Wilson's agenda), but alleviating poverty is entirely possible in the absence of restoration of robust inner cities. Combining these goals seems to naturally assume that living in the nation's urban cores is the exclusive residence pattern for the traditional poor and minorities. But I can't imagine improved futures for society's worst off if urban spatial assignment in a big-government regime of traditional welfare state provision is offered as a "new" paradigm for a problem that's as old as industrialization.

On the Denial of Evil...

Be sure to read the full essay at Critical Narrative, "Cultural Arrogance and the Denial of Evil," which offers a penetrating contrast between the moral clarity of George W. Bush and the multicultural relativism of Barack Obama:

Obama is touted as a post-modern, post-racial (whatever that means) president. An intelligent, multicultural citizen of the world ... Yet, he demonstrates precious little knowledge of even the most basic ideas of culture. He does not seem to accept that he is American in his essence and that his core values and beliefs are not those of the rest of the world.

At the core of this highly-extolled belief is a denial of other cultures' intricacies and even their existences. In an effort to make ourselves closer to other cultures, we have taken the short-cut. Instead of attempting to understand the other, the multiculturalist learns enough to make analogies with America and then foolishly proclaims "Oh, they're just like us," and then assigns them our value system. Thus our understanding is preceded by our demand for the other culture's conformity to our conceptions.

From this mind-set we get lines from Obama such as "Indeed, you will be celebrating your New Year in much the same way that we Americans mark our holidays -- by gathering with friends and family, exchanging gifts and stories, and looking to the future with a renewed sense of hope." Such superficial similarities are touted and thought of as being some sort of inroad to deep understanding. Golly gee! Why this sounds just like our Christmas or a birthday! Wholly missing is any attempt to understand the cultural significance of such foreign holidays, the values it espouses, and the stamp that it makes the minds of the people. Rather ironic is multiculturalism's demand that such shallow comparisons be used to make ourselves understood to others. We make them judge us in the same superficial manner in which we judge them.

Yet even the concept of evil is uncomfortable for mainstream America. It's something from movies, presented as enticing, darkly intelligent and melodramatic (like Hannibal Lecter and Jigsaw from the endless string of "Saw" films). But it is also safely isolated from reality-- a Hollywood trick designed to titillate our sense of macabre, not unlike the make-up effects of zombie flicks or slasher films. To suggest now that evil is real is not unlike suggesting that the "Force is with us."

Bush was roundly criticized for his "Axis of Evil" concept, and intellectuals (and those who pretend to be) often bashed him for his "wild west" good versus evil mentality. Apparently we're too smart and sophisticated for such antiquated concepts.

When mentioning Hitler and the Nazis, most people can agree that they were indeed evil, but when asked why most just mumble things about the holocaust and WWII. Many roll their eyes as if the question itself is ridiculous. Of course Nazis are evil... It's as if asking if the sky was blue. Nazis have become transformed in our eyes, warped into demons and monsters... and of course monsters are evil. And when we do this, when we cut ourselves off from the truth of the matter-- the truth that Nazis were living, breathing, passionate, rational and intelligent human beings-- then we learn nothing from the horrifically expensive lessons of WWII. The simple truth of the matter, something that never sat very well in the minds of the WWII generations, is that living, passionate, rational, and intelligent human beings are capable of great evil and the greatest of atrocities. It is essential to approach the Nazis first and foremost as human beings. When we dehumanize the Nazis, dismiss them as cartoonish villains and bogeymen, we cannot begin to understand the way in which this evil came about and how it has repeated itself since.

Such approaches don't sit well with our fashionable humanist attitudes of today, the open celebrations of the human spirit (though we so seem to know so little of it), the hallowing of our great compassion and our so vehemently believed in natural compulsion for good. This belief persists despite the great atrocities of the recent past (the holocaust, the genocides of the Khmer Rouge, the Japanese' wholesale murders of Nanking and much of China and Southeast Asia, the devastation in Rwanda, the mass killing in Uganda, the multiple genocides perpetrated by Red China, the millions [possibly tens of millions] killed by Stalin, the Turkish attempt to eradicate the Armenians, etc.) that demonstrate man's capibility for great destruction. Armed only with optimism that seems born purely of self-love and humanistic faith, we mostly ignore all this evil. If we do acknowledge it, we shunt it off as the work of dehumanized monsters such as the Nazis, offer excuses (a friend of mine actually compared the building of the Hoover Dam with Kim Il-sung's brutal North Korean "modernizations"-- "people die when building infrastructure") and deny evidence. But mostly we don't allow it to sink in, we refuse to internalize this ugly affront to our beautiful conception of human nature.

Hat Tip: And So it Goes in Shreveport.

The Ashley Biden Cocaine Scandal

Is the Obama White House Dazed and Confused?

We've got a couple of stories in the news this morning that will further clarify the battle lines in the culture wars. On the one hand, The Politico's story this morning reports that the marijuana issue is "suddenly smoking hot." The article, by Professor Jeremy Mayer, suggests that criminalization is archaic:

Smoking pot doesn’t cause schizophrenia, but marijuana as an issue sure gives our political system the symptoms. We have just elected our third president in a row who at least tried marijuana in early adulthood, yet it remains illegal.

Beyond imprisonment, one of my policy students, who was honest As we discovered again this week, President Obama, like his two predecessors, supports imprisoning people for making the same choices he made.

Beyond imprisonment, one of my policy students, who was honest on a security clearance about her one time use of pot, could lose her job for doing what Clinton, Bush and Obama did.

On television, leading comedian Jon Stewart and America’s sweetheart, Sandra Bullock, swap pot smoking stories with lighthearted abandon, laughing along with their audience, who, like most Americans, end up voting for politicians who support draconian punishments for pot users and dealers.

Year after year, major Hollywood films like Pineapple Express show potsmoking in a positive light, yet legalization remains unmentionable to both our political parties. And America’s most popular Olympian, Michael Phelps, like the majority of people his age, has tried pot, but loses millions in sponsorship when it is revealed that he has done what most of his fans have done.

Several states have legalized medical marijuana, and a few are contemplating decriminalization, and yet, other states are about to prevent those whose urine tests positive for marijuana from receiving desperately needed benefits to which they would otherwise be legally entitled.

At least eight states, including Kansas, Oklahoma, and West Virginia, are actively considering making drug tests mandatory for food stamps, welfare, or unemployment. In a classic demonstration of how America has always had one drug law for the rich and one for the poor, no one has suggested drug testing recipients of billions in bailout cash. We could probably save a lot of money by testing Wall Street financiers for pot (or cocaine, for that matter).

Perhaps these accumulated paradoxes have finally become large enough for the nation to begin reconsidering its position on pot. For an issue that has been in stasis for decades, marijuana is suddenly hot, one might even say, smoking.

The second story is the report that Ashley Biden, daughter of Vice President Joseph Biden, has allegedly been videotaped snorting cocaine at a party in Wilmington, Delaware. The New York Post offers a scandalous lede:

A "friend" of Vice President Joseph Biden's daughter, Ashley, is attempting to hawk a videotape that he claims shows her snorting cocaine at a house party this month in Delaware.

Radar Online has more:

The tape has been viewed by a RadarOnline.com freelance reporter who confirms the woman looks identical to Ashley Biden.

Tom Dunlap, an attorney for Dunlap, Grubb and Weaver in Washington D.C. is representing the seller of the tape in brokering a deal and several news organizations have seen the footage.

In addition to RadarOnline.com, representatives for the New York Post, a large British newspaper and the National Enquirer have all viewed the tape.

News clips show that Ashley Biden was once arrested for marijuana possession while she was a college student in New Orleans in 1999. The charges were later dismissed.

In 2002, The Los Angeles Times reported that Ashley, then 21, was arrested on a misdemeanor charge of obstructing a police officer outside a Chicago bar.

Ashley Biden is now a social worker for a public child-welfare agency in Delaware. In that position, she must see dysfunctional families whose lives are torn apart by poverty, joblessness, domestic violence, welfare dependency, and alcohol and drug abuse.

None of the stories online have posted the video, and some are completely dismissing the rumors. But let's assume that the allegations are true, and that Ashley Biden is a pot-smoking cokehead. This is a woman who has been arrested for both marijuana possession and for some kind of scuffling with police officers at a Chicago bar. Ms. Biden's pattern of prior events alone suggests something of a freewheeling spirit, and in my opinion the allegations of her cocaine use are realistically plausible.

So first of all, where's all the outrage on the left?

Andrew Sullivan, after the Michael Phelps drug scandal came to light, asked "does anyone think that smoking pot would give him an unfair advantage in the pool? Please. When on earth are we going to grow up as a culture?" But recall that Sullivan led the attack on Sarah Palin's family as well, and he wrote recently that "I regret nothing about my blogging about Sarah Palin last year and would do it again ..." I'd bet most families would be nearly as upset with their child's marijuana and cocaine abuse as they would with unmarried pregnancies. Does Sullivan have anything to say about the vice-presidential drug scandal? If Bristol Palin cocaine tapes were being shopped around, the bareback blogger would be going ape-crazy over the story. Who needs to grow up?

And how about the mainstream media? Obama's marijuana smoking is a big story at The Politico, and decriminalization is the rage, so where's the coverage of Ashley Biden and the Biden family's apparenet social problems? Can you say double standard?

I grew up in the hothouse high school days of the Dazed and Confused 1970s. I am a parent of young children and I oppose the decriminalization of marijuana because I think the drug is a life-waster. I take seriously the clinical the medical science that finds marijuana use to be a gateway to the abuse of illicit hard drugs and alcohol dependence, and even if some research shows a reduced likelihood of progression from marijuana to hard drugs in recent decades, there is simply no reasonable circumstance that society should see the collapse of the NORMATIVE and legal prohibitions on the use of these substances.

That is to say, we should expect to see just as much media attention and concomitant public concern had Ashley Biden been videotaped allegedly smoking a big fat reefer rather than doing lines. Both marijuana smoking and cocaine use are embedded in the deeper social pathology of self-destructiness and the collapse of moral values. Let's see the big liberal blogs and the mainstream press stand up for some values here, if not journalistic consistency.

**********

UPDATE: The Times of London is going with the story, "US Vice-President Joe Biden's daughter Ashley filmed snorting lines of cocaine."

Young Conservatives at Mark Levin Book Signing

Via Glenn Reynolds, who links to Philip Eveland, check out these young conservative ladies, saying hello to Sean Hannity at a Mark Levin book signing, in Tysons Corner, Virginia, for Liberty and Tyranny: A Conservative Manifesto:

Watch more videos at the link.

What'd I say about conservatives and the youth vote?

There's definitely some excitement in the air on the political right! Folks need a great deal of enthusiasm to wait in line five hours at a signing event for a conservative author and talk radio host.

Obama's Budget Failure

Check out Matthew Continetti's new essay at the Weekly Standard, "A Big, Fat Failure: Obama's Budget Makes a Bad Situation Worse":

Well, it's about time. The Beltway is waking up to the realities of President Obama's budget plan, which taxes, spends, and borrows as far as the eye can see. The president's vast new commitments in the areas of health care, energy, and education have already spooked small-government Republicans and the foreign investors who help finance America's public debt. Now even some Democrats are beginning to realize that the president's fiscal policies are unsustainable in the long--and maybe medium--run. What took them so long?

The realities of the modern global economy require government to play a substantial role in ensuring the national and economic security of the people. Americans aren't going to dismantle the welfare state. Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid are--like the Pentagon--here to stay. The task, then, is to ensure that those programs are sensibly structured and financed, and compatible with robust economic growth. And on this score, Obama's budget is a big, fat failure.

It's true, as he so often reminds us, that Obama inherited a public debt that had doubled to 40 percent of GDP from 20 percent, and an economy in the midst of a deep recession. But Obama proposes to take a bad situation and make it much worse.

It was pretty much inevitable that government would pick up the pieces of the financial crisis and its aftermath. A stimulus bill and some form of bank bailout were going to be facts of life. And tax revenues are plunging thanks to the recession. So the federal government's balance sheet was always going to deteriorate in 2009. The problem is that Obama's policies would move us from deterioration to disaster. The national debt Obama gripes about? His budget will double it to 80 percent of GDP in 2019. Whatever that is, it's not "a new era of responsibility."

The debt burden, moreover, is likely to increase as tax hikes weigh down the economy. Obama's budget brings rates up to Clinton-era levels. But those rates probably will be raised even more to service a growing debt and pay for new spending. And don't forget the added levies that will hit us if Obama has his way. There could be taxes on employer-provided health benefits, the indirect tax of a carbon cap-and-trade scheme, an increase of the payroll-tax cap, and maybe a national Value Added Tax.

There's more at the link.

See also, John Steele Gordon, "The Economic Contradictions of Obama-ism":

In its proposed budget for fiscal year 2010, the Obama administration has also said it would inaugurate a “cap-and-trade” program to reduce the emission of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. This program would require all companies to buy at auction the right to emit the gas, which all fossil fuels—oil, gasoline, coal, natural gas, etc.—do, in varying amounts. The total amount of emissions allowed would be strictly limited.

While billed as a program to reduce greenhouse gases, cap-and-trade is, inescapably, a tax on virtually all economic activity, as fossil fuels are an input in nearly all economic outputs. Even a lawyer, after all, has to use electricity to have the lights on in his office and power his computer. And electricity is mostly generated by fossil fuels, especially coal, the biggest emitter of carbon dioxide.

Cartoon Credit: Michael Ramirez.

O'Reilly Hammers Leftists for Alexa Branchini Protests

The Huffington Post has published a "Progress Report" from the Soros-backed far-left blog, Think Progress: "Stop The O'Reilly Harassment Machine" (via Memeorandum).

Actually, the harrassment runs in the other direction (see the Palm Beach Daily News, "Bill O'Reilly speaks at Branchini foundation benefit for rape victims, despite protest"); and O'Reilly's on-the-street interviews - alleged as violating the rights of Think Progress blogger Amanda Terkel - are the kind of journalistic shoe-leather reports that today's media sorely lacks. But the real reason these folks are mad is because O'Reilly rightly exposed them for the leftist totalitarians they are, as this segment from "The Factor" indicates:

According to Gateway Pundit:

This segment on the O'Reilly Factor was exceptional. O'Reilly managed to eviscerate nearly a dozen "evil" Far Left entities in one segment.

Bill O'Reilly ripped apart "evil" Far Left players: NBC, John Podesta, Think Progress, Jeff Zucker, Center for American Progress, General Electric, and Amanda Terkel.

No wonder they hate him.

Bill O'Reilly condemned the "evil" Far Left loons for attacking rape victim Alexa Branchini at a fundraiser this past week in Florida. Elements at NBC News encouraged the loons to protest the Alexa Foundation, an organization that supports rape victims. After the event O'Reilly producer Jesse Watters confronted an over-matched and dishonest Amanda Terkel from Think Progress who led the charge against the Alexa Foundation.

Far Left blogress Amanda Terkel whined in her latest post at Think Progress that she was harassed by Bill O'Reilly producer Jesse Watters.

How pathetic.

Exactly.

And check out Think Progress' homepage, where loads of articles are decrying the "harrassment." Being called to account for their own intolerance is obviously too much for these idiots.

Obama's Neoconservative Pragmatism

Daniel Larison, in his post attacking Barack Obama's commitment to American success in Afghanistan, demonstrates it's not so much the administration's policy that bothers him, but the policy legitimacy the administration's military and civilian reinforcements give to the "evil" neocons:

If it was a fantasy in Iraq “to use military and civilian power to promote democracy, nurture civil society and rebuild failed states,” it remains a fantasy today. It makes no difference what label one gives to it, and it is certainly not a fantasy that only neoconservatives embrace. If Americans have not learned by now that such efforts are folly, and more important that they would not be worth it even if they turned out to be successful, it may indeed say something about our national character. What I fear is that Obama, who has always been an interventionist with great confidence in this fantasy of what American power can achieve, believes that the “energetic and ambitious response” is what the American public desires and will support for years to come ....

Because Obama is setting far too ambitious goals for Afghanistan with too few resources, while largely neglecting (or exacerbating) more significant problems inside Pakistan that are gradually making our position in Afghanistan untenable, he runs the risk of jeopardizing public support for the much more limited and achievable security goals that are in our interest and the interest of Afghanistan’s neighbors. In the end, he will have the support of the fantasists who led us into Iraq and liberal internationalists who are still invested in the idea of nation-building, and he will have to face the growing numbers of people who have grown weary of a Long War that has ceased to make any sense (if it ever made sense in the first place).

Let me start with this last part first: The "Long War" is the war on terror, and to question if it ever made sense "in the first place" is precisely why "paleoconservatives" are rightly marginalized as unpatriotic. When the U.S. was attacked in September 2001, the "paleos" were quick to blame the U.S. for its expansive foreign engagement as triggering a generously deserved "blowback." Virtually no one else in American politics felt the same way, except for a few hare-brained academic radicals, the same folks who would later agitate for a "million Mogadishus" on American forces. When the Iraq war came, Patrick Buchanan made unhinged anti-Jewish attacks on the Bush administration's neoconservatives, asking "whose war" is this? Of course, "losertarians" like Justin Raimondo have made common cause the leading factions of the neo-Stalinist left, and here we have Daniel Larison excoriating the Iraq deployment as "folly," as if U.S. forces under General David Petraeus had not engineered the greatest military/strategic turnaround since World War II. And this is after even some of the most hardline "paleos" have conceded to reality in acknowledging the magnitude of the American victory.

What's actually funny is that Larison - for all his verbosity - doesn't actually say anything of value to the policy debate. I mean, who can honestly say that Americans have "no real national interest" in a safe, secure, and sustainable Afghanistan? Indeed, what would even be an actual interest then? Even an "offshore balancing" approach to U.S. stragegy assumes the potential for the U.S. to be pulled into events on the periphery - precisely because the the U.S. in primus inter pares in world affairs, and there is an extant demand for American leadership in providing public goods in world commerce and international security. But Larison has no answer. Any engagement beyond America's shores would qualify as "frittering away our resources to no apparent purpose," and umpteen citations to "genuine" conservatives like Andrew Bacevich or arch-appeasers like Matthew Yglesias doesn't alter the fundamental truth that there is evil abroad, and that there is a job to be won in combating it. Who you gonna call?

If folks are going to criticize Obama on Afghanistan, it should be for not doing enough. As Michael Yon noted this week, "the increase of 21,000 U.S. troops is likely just a bucket of water on the growing bonfire." Michael Yon is hardly a "neocon," although the very "fantasists" that Larison excoriates have suggested that despite Obama's caution, "the president is pragmatic in the best sense of the word."

The opposite of "pragmatic" is impractical or irrationally ideological, and so it's worth considering who's really in a "fantasy" world here, the president or Mr. Larison?

Celebrate Human Achievement Hour

Via Glenn Reynolds, check out this cool video from the Competitive Enterprise Institute:

The Competitive Enterprise Institute plans to recognize “Human Achievement Hour” between 8:30pm and 9:30pm on March 28, 2009 to coincide with Earth Hour, a period of time during which governments, individuals, and corporations have agreed to dim or shut off lights in an effort to draw attention to climate change. Anyone not foregoing the use of electricity in that hour is, by default, celebrating the achievements of human beings.

Meanwhile, "Do New Bulbs Save Energy if They Don’t Work?" Check the commentary on that at Memeorandum, and get a good laugh at Freddie deBoer's leftist orthodoxy while you're at it. Lights out, eh Freddie?

Paul Krugman Wants More, or Else!

Paul Krugman's in the news this weekend.

The ubiquitous Nobel-winning economics professor and New York Times columnist has in recent weeks been hammering the Obama administration for its timidity. In his recent essay in Rolling Stone, Krugman praised the scale of the administration's market intervention, but suggested that "the current economic disaster demands even more aggressive action than Obama has taken so far."

Well, Krugman's calls for even more collectivization are getting some attention in the left-wing press. Newsweek's new cover story features Krugman in an essay entitled, "Obama’s Nobel Headache." The article, by Evan Thomas, portrays Krugman as "nervous, shy, sweet and fiercely sure of himself." But Krugman's getting a cordial cold shoulder from President Obama, which is an interesting situation, considering the following passage:

Krugman has a bit of a reputation for settling scores. "He doesn't suffer fools. He doesn't like hauteur in any shape or form. He doesn't like to be f––ked with," says his friend and colleague Princeton history professor Sean Wilentz.

If he doesn't get his way with a bolder direction from Obama, don't be surprised to see even more strident hit pieces against the Democrats' economic program. That's the theme Mike Allen takes up in his piece at The Politico, "Krugman: The Left's New Anti-Obama"(via Memeorandum):

What is striking about this development is that Obama’s most thoughtful critic is taking on the president from the left at a time when, as Jonathan Alter notes, so many others are reflexively arguing that the administration is trying too much too soon.

See also my essay, "Democrats to Milk Economic Crisis for Trillions," where I note, "This is why progressive leftists love Paul Krugman. The guy's a Princeton economist and Nobel laureate. More importantly, the man's an "establishment" statist who can use his "credentials" to discredit those who rightly repudiate his socialist program."

Oakland Remembers Slain Police Officers

This is the front-page photo from today's Los Angeles Times, which accompanies a report on the city's services for the four Oakland police officers who were killed last week in a shoot out with Lovelle Mixon, a local hoodlum.

The flag-draped caskets of the four slain Oakland police officers at their funeral.

Unfortunately, there were more pernicious commemorations this week as well, when demonstrators marched in support of cop-killer Mixon, chanting "police oppression," or some other such baloney.

Melanie Morgan has been posting on this, and she's got an essay up at World Net Daily as well, "You Say You Want a 'Revolootion'?":

Today the city of Oakland, the Bay Area and the entire country say goodbye to four police officers who were murdered by a parolee, no-good street thug. Thousands are expected to attend the funeral of officers killed Saturday: Sgts. Mark Dunakin, 40, of Tracy; Erv Romans, 43, of Danville; and Daniel Sakai, 35, of Castro Valley. Officer John Hege, 41, of Concord, also was shot Saturday and declared brain-dead Sunday. He was taken off life support late Monday.

Lovelle Mixon, the cops' killer and a suspected child rapist, is now a popular icon in the sick and twisted minds of those who support Mixon's murderous actions and hate the cops. The other night on TV, a reporter held pictures of Mixon's victims and some maniacs stepped forward and spit on the photographs. It was sickening, but what do you expect from street punks who take no personal responsibility and worship the likes of Che Guevara, a mass murderer, the Black Panthers, and now Mixon, the pervert and cop killer.

Mixon's apologists are proud of themselves and are not only spitting on pictures of the officers who died in the line of duty, but they're marching in the open, videotaping themselves and trying to intimidate folks who don't believe in their radical lunacy.

More at the link.

Also blogging this story, thank goodness:

* Dan Collins, "A Primer on Crapweasels, Punks and Parasites."

* Nice Deb, "Oakland Leftist Moonbat Drones March In Support of Cop Killer."

* Saber Point, "Unbelievable: Blacks Hold Memorial Service for Oakland Cop Killer."

* Kathy Shaidle, "Stay classy! Protesters mourn death of cop-killing child rapist."

* Stilettos in the Sand ..., "Lovelle Mixon - Piece of Sh!t."

* Van Helsing, "Moonbats March in Adoration of Cop Killer."

Full Metal Saturday: Britney Spears

It's time again for the weekend's full metal roundup of great "Rule 5" blogging, and related blog-ruffianism. This week's hottie is inspired by Stogie at Saber Point, who suggested that if you're going to sell out, go all the way with some Britney Spears action. (And not to forget, Monique Stuart's doing some Britney blogging in her post, "“Filter-Free News”= Obama’s Propaganda Machine.") Stogie's also got a post up on Michele Bachmann, who qualifies for Rule 5 hotness in my book, and Snooper's too. But see PA Pundits International for a more general appreciation of Ms. Bachmann and women in politics.

Those new to the genre ought to check out Smitty's entry this morning, "'The Full Monty Joint Review' Avalanche." Check out as well my friend Pundette's entry, "Saturday Link-fest 3/28.

Also worth a look is The Sundries Shack, with "This Takes The Notion of “Having Some Skin in the Game” to a New Level." And don't miss TrogloPundit's roundup on the "World's Most Beautiful Politicians" (which includes a picture of South Dakota's hot Blue Dog Dem, Stephani Herseth).

For your addtional blog-reading pleasure, check out Glenn Reynolds, Midnight Blue Says, Monique Stewart (a bona fide Rule 5 upstart), No Sheeples, Right Wing News, and The Western Experience.

As always, send me an e-mail with your "Rule 5" entries if you'd like to be included in upcoming full metal roundups.

**********

UPDATE: Monique Stuart's Britney post, in parentheses above, added after some gentle e-mail prodding! It's a good thing too - we don't want to turn into the idiots at the Los Angeles Times, as seen here!

Also, Skye e-mails, "Way cool!"

**********

UPDATE II: I meant to update a few minutes ago, but I couldn't stop laughing! R.S. McCain puts out the call for his regular Sunday Rule 5 roundup, and he goes for inclusiveness:

* Ladybloggers can be eligible by posting beefcake;

* Gaybloggers cannot be eligible by posting beefcake, but can qualify by posting Marilyn Monroe or other camp diva photos ...

Check out the entire post, and get busy babe-blogging! Those needing inspiration might want to visit Theo Spark's page, where you'll always find good stuff, albeit NSFW more often than not, so be careful not to go afoul of "The Hustler's" guidelines cited at the roundup.

**********

UPDATE III: Dave at Point of a Gun forwards his post on Carrie Underwood, "Just A Dream": "Carrie Underwood's tribute to the troops and those who got left behind."

I've been searching for an angel in white...

One of my favorites from The Eagles, "One of These Nights": 

Time Magazine's "Great Recession"

The cover story at this week's Time asks, "Is This Crisis Good for America?" The story rips the Reagan years as the precursor to today's discolation:

The '80s spirit endured through the '90s and the 2000s, all the way until the fall of 2008, like an awesome winning streak in Vegas that went on and on and on. American-style capitalism triumphed, and thanks to FedEx and the Web, delayed gratification itself came to seem quaint and unnecessary. So what if every year since the turn of the century the U.S. economy grew more slowly than the global economy? Stuff at Wal-Mart and Costco and money itself stayed supercheap! Even 9/11, which supposedly "changed everything," and the resulting Iraqi debacle came to seem like mere bumps in the road. Even if deep down everyone knew that the spiral of overleveraging and overspending and the prices of stocks and houses were unsustainable, no one wanted to be a buzz kill.

In the Road Runner cartoons, after each fall, the coyote is broken and battered but never dies. America isn't going to expire either. But unlike him, we will be chastened and begin behaving more wisely. For years, enthusiasts for unfettered capitalism have insisted that the withering away of enterprises and entire industries is a healthy and necessary part of a vibrant, self-correcting economic system; now, more than at any time since Joseph Schumpeter popularized the idea of creative destruction in 1942, we must endure the shocking and awesome pain of that metamorphosis. After decades of talking the talk, now we're all obliged to walk the walk.

We cannot just hunker down, cross our fingers, hysterically pinch our pennies, wait for the crises to pass, blame the bankers and then go back to business as usual. All that conventional wisdom about 2008 being a "change" year? We had no idea. Recently Rush Limbaugh appeared on Sean Hannity's Fox News show, panicking not so much about the economy but about how the political winds are blowing as a result. If we finally manage to achieve something like universal health care, Limbaugh warned, it would mean "the end of America as we know it." He's right, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. This is the end of the world as we've known it. But it isn't the end of the world.

I'm in no mood to desconstruct this rubbish, although I can hope that Time goes the way of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. It's not like there won't be more Pravda-style mouthpieces available.

"Why can't we just figure out a way to get rid of this pig..."

From the comments at Daily Beast, with reference to Rush Limbaugh:

I didn't listen to this clip, but I already know I didn't miss anything. Why can't we just figure out a way to get rid of this pig and everybody who listens to him and make the world a better place?

Hat Tip: The People's Blog.

Modern-Day Hoovervilles

The New York Times has an article and slideshow on the new shanty towns:

Tina Garland, an out-of-work truck driver, in the kitchen area of the tent she shares with her husband in Sacramento. Homeless enclaves have grown in places such as Nashville, Olympia, Wash., and St. Petersburg, Fla., but the situation in Sacramento has received extra attention following a visit from Oprah Winfrey.

Be sure to read the whole thing, here.

Many of the shanty-dwellers are in Fresno, where I lived from 1989 to 1992. Unemployment is there is generally twice the national average. That's why I don't think the notion of "Hoovervilles" is media propaganda. You get the "Grapes of Wrath" feeling living up there for a while, even during boom times.

McCain Was Right on Fiscal Fundmentals!

Via Memeorandum, "On Spending and the Deficit, McCain Was Right":

Barack Obama used to get very upset about federal budget deficits. Denouncing an "orgy of spending and enormous deficits," he turned to John McCain during their presidential debates last fall and said, "We have had, over the last eight years, the biggest increases in deficit spending and national debt in our history … Now we have a half-trillion deficit annually…and Sen. McCain voted for four out of five of those George Bush budgets."

That was then. Now, President Obama is asking lawmakers to vote for a budget with a deficit three times the size of the one that so disturbed candidate Obama just a few months ago. And Obama foresees, for years to come, deficits that dwarf those he felt so passionately about way, way back in 2008.

Everywhere you go on Capitol Hill, you hear echoes of the last campaign's spending debate. So on Thursday morning, as the budget fight raged, I asked McCain about the president's seemingly forgotten concern about deficits. McCain doesn't like to rehash the campaign - "The one thing Americans don't like is a sore loser," he told me - but when I read him Obama's quote from the debate, he said, "Well, there are a number of statements that were made by then-candidate Obama which have not translated into his policies."

That's an understatement. The deficit issue could be one of the most, if not the most, consequential of Obama's unkept campaign promises. Just how consequential was made clear last week in a little-noticed conference call featuring Budget Director Peter Orszag. Orszag was trying to explain to reporters how the Obama administration calculated its rather rosy forecasts for economic growth. Near the end of the call, he was asked whether deficits along the lines of those predicted by the Congressional Budget Office are sustainable."

There's more at the link.

Cartoon Hat Tip: Political Pistachio.

Michele Bachmann, Saving America

I'm looking at Memeorandum, and again not one conservative blogger is listed next to all the leftist attacks on Representative Michele Bachmann. I should note that my friends at Legal Insurrection and Snooper Report have posts up on this, although I'm still looking around the conservative blogosphere for additional essays. Glenn Beck gets it, of course. Below is the video from his show this afternoon, where he excoriates Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, saying "the international reserve currency is the dollar!" Beck also has spoke with Representative Bachmann this morning, in "Glenn talks with Congresswoman Bachmann."

Meanwhile, Fox News reports that the Minnesota congresswoman may be positioning herself for higher office:

Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann has shown an uncanny knack for infuriating critics with sometimes off-the-wall behavior and comments, all the while advancing her own political career.

Minnesota politicos say the Republican congresswoman, having fended off perhaps her toughest challenge last year, could hold on to her seat indefinitely -- thanks in part to the conservative makeup of her district.

But Bachmann, a lightning rod of the left, also may be poised to run for governor or senator, according to the political chatter. Either way, the longer Bachmann stays in office, the more she seems to rile her opponents nationwide with a style some call genuine, but others call clueless.

"For what pisses off the Democrats, it really energizes that conservative base she has," said Lawrence Jacobs, a political professor at the University of Minnesota. "This is not a strategic politician. This is a movement conservative. She's a true believer."

Bachmann, 52, is a born-again Christian -- she has said God called her to go to law school and to run for Congress -- who cut her political teeth in the Minnesota Legislature pushing for an amendment to ban same-sex marriage. She won election to the U.S. Congress in 2006, going against the wave of Republicans forced out of office that year. Since then, she's concentrated more on tax and spending issues. She was in the spotlight this week as she questioned Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke during a hearing about federal intervention in the financial system.

Bachmann told FOXNews.com her ultimate goal in Congress is to overhaul and simplify the tax code, while fighting the efforts of the Obama administration to expand government and increase the tax burden. She said President Obama has gone on a spending "blitzkrieg," and she argued that the recent flap over AIG bonuses is just another sign that Washington needs an exit strategy for its financial intervention.

As for her re-election last year, she said it was just proof of her appeal.

"The fact that people knew that I am who I say I am and I'll vote the way that I vote and do so unapologetically, that's one thing people appreciate," she said. "You know, we're the state that voted in Jesse Ventura."

"The nation needs all the conservative fighters we can get in D.C.," she added.

There's more at the link, but the conclusion to the article, a quote from political scientist Lawrence Jacobs, is worth citing: "The larger party infrastructure is about winning elections, and Michele Bachmann is about saving America ... Michele Bachmann is a microcosm of the tension between the Republican Party that wants to win elections and conservatives who want to fight and win policy battles. That is the core of it."

**********

UPDATE: Allahpundit posts on Glenn Beck, so at least somebody's getting close!

**********

UPDATE II: Newsbusters defends Bachmann, in "Matthews Calls Bachmann the 'Mata Hari of Minnesota'; Rolling Stone's Taibbi Says 'Guy Huffing Glue' More Sensible" (with video).

Leftists Launch "Currency Trutherism" Against Bachmann

Are conservatives interested in standing up for Michele Bachmann? I sent out my post yesterday to a number of top bloggers but heard nothing. Maybe I'm wrong about this. Maybe she's indeed the extremist that the leftists keep portraying her to be. Can it really be that top right-wing bloggers are willing to let Bachmann hold down the fort on her own? Not me. I don't buy the meme that she's dog-whistling to the black-copter crowds. Bachmann's speaking more clearly about things that are half of the top conservative opinion makers in the Washington press corps (Brooks, Frum, etc.).

The leftosphere smells blood in the wake of Bachmann's denunciation of Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner's comments suggesting an "openness" to the displacement of the U.S. dollar as the world's reserve currency. Eric Kleefeld's got a post up right now, "Bachmann Blasts Obama's 'Economic Marxism,' Calls For 'Orderly Revolution' To Save Freedom." Here's the key quote from the audio:

At this point the American people - it's like Thomas Jefferson said, a revolution every now and then is a good thing. We are at the point, Sean, of revolution. And by that, what I mean, an orderly revolution - where the people of this country wake up get up and make a decision that this is not going to happen on their watch. It won't be our children and grandchildren that are in debt. It is we who are in debt, we who will be bankrupting this country, inside of ten years, if we don't get a grip. And we can't let the Democrats achieve their ends any longer.

Just so folks are clear, notice how Bachmann clarifies her point: "And by that, what I mean, an orderly revolution ..."

No matter. Matthew Yglesias is on the hunt, "Bachmann and Beck Double-Down on Currency Conspiracy Theory." And Steve Benen diagnoses Ms. Bachmann as insane:

Bachmann simply isn't well. Were she not an elected member of the U.S. Congress, she'd probably be shouting conspiracy theories and holding cardboard signs on some sidewalk somewhere. But what I find especially interesting is that her paranoid delusions are so detached from obvious truths. If Bachmann wanted to complain that a 39.6% top rate was the epitome of Marxism, she'd be just another conservative. But she's convinced herself that the Obama administration will "move us to an international currency," due entirely to her breathtaking stupidity.

Gird your loins, conservatives!

Bachmann's proposed resolution to protect the dollar as the country's sovereign unit of exchange is perfectly justified in light of monetary history and the outlandish comments from Secretary Geithner. Advanced economies are not inoculated from supranational pressures toward monetary homogenization or unification, as the case of the European Union indicates. Once Ms. Bachmann refers to "One World Currency," the only logical reference point is to a national currency unit that would replace current dollar hegemony worldwide. There is no alternative for circulation within borders for everday tendered transactions. More abstract currency units, for example, the IMF's "SDRs", do not circulate as legal tender within nations - they are accounting units for central bank transactions. For something to displace an indigenous legal tender as a means of domestic exchange, an international reserve currency would be introduced into local markets for stability and confidence. This is not unusual, as the dollar now routinely serves as the local unit of exchange in transitioning economies. If anything is outlandish in all of this, it's the idea that Americans should take seriously the notion that China has the economic power to replace U.S. as the world's leading economic power. This is the administration's stupidity, not Representative Bachmann's. She's simply putting in place legislative protections against this administration's transnationalists, those who are willing to consider the replacement of the dollar of the world's reserve currency. See the discussion, for example, at the Wall Street Journal, "The Chinese Yuan: The Next World Currency?"

There's nothing stupid about Michele Bachmann's concern for American sovereignty or her distrust of the Democratic financial manderins in Washington. What is not so smart is how conservatives, at least as demonstrated by the lack of response to the left's "currency trutherism" against Ms. Bachmann, aren't taking these atacks seriously. (But thank goodness for William Jacobson's exceptional essay, "Yet Another Cheap Attack On Michele Bachmann.)

**********

UPDATE: See also Snooper Report, "I Want To Bear Michele Bachmann's Babies!"

The Kooky League of Ordinary Marxists

While it's by no means jaw-dropping for those familiar with the babbling "liberaltarianism" at Ordinary Gentlemen, Freddie's attack on free markets and international interdependence is worth citing for a sense of current orthodox thinking on the left.

Freddie cites Thomas Geoghegan cover story at Harpers, "Infinite Debt: How Unlimited Interest Rates Destroyed the Economy." Geoghegan's piece, ostensibly about the "deregulation of usury," is actually a long boilerplate screed against bank lending and capital markets, and includes this juicy quote of Marxian dialectics, "What is history, really, but a turf war between manufactuing, labor, and the banks. In the United States, we shrank manufacturing. We got rid of labor. Now it's just the banks." Anyway, read the whole thing, here.

Freddie, too lazy to find a link to the Geoghegan's piece, offers his own summary, plus a video link to Geoghegan's interview at Democracy Now!, naturally. But Freddie's extension of Geoghegan's discussion to globalization is what really caught my attention:

There’s a lot of consequences to our understanding of this situation. The first is, I think, another nail in the coffin in the notion that you can ever have a truly free market when you have a currency. When you have a currency, you’ll have lending, and when you have lending, you’ll have interest, and human nature being what it is, lenders will wring out as much interest as they can when they can, offsetting the balance of our economy ... So we need a strong regulatory apparatus to limit the size of interest rates and the degree to which banks are leveraged, in order to prevent the kind of situation we have now ....

Secondly, the pro-globalization furor that has gripped our consciousness in recent decades bears a lot of blame ... The idea that globalization is good for the United States, the world and its people is an attitude that people insist on with incredible zeal, and this insistence comes from conservatives and liberals, Democrats and Republicans. But the consequences of globalization for the United States have meant a hollowed out economy, where we produce very little of actual value, and where a huge amount of our growth comes from the accumulation of imaginary money.

Folks can debate this notion of "imaginary money" (isn't all money imaginary, really, since we place our faith in pieces of security-encoded paper, with pictures of our presidents on them, and are comforted in the notion of the "full faith and credit" of the United States government?). It's this meme of the "hollowed out economy" I want to debunk right here. The claim that the U.S. doesn't produce things is a Big Lie of the protectionist left. In thinking about this, I recall a piece some time back in the Wall Street Journal, "Still Built on the Homefront," which includes some correctives statistics:

Rumors of the death of U.S. manufacturing have been greatly exaggerated. Even as high-profile manufacturers like American auto makers stumble, a remarkable amount of stuff is still made in the U.S., from construction equipment in North Dakota to high-end ranges in Mississippi, artificial knees in Indiana and pipe organs in Ohio.

While manufacturing represents a relatively small part of the U.S. economy - about 17 percent of GDP compared with China's 41 percent - and the number of plants has dwindled, the U.S. is still by far the world's largest manufacturer by raw value of the goods produced, $1.79 trillion worth last year, nearly twice its nearest rival, Japan. China produces more of the things most consumers think of as coming out of factories - cellphones, toys, and coffee makers - but the U.S. continues making goods that tend to be more complex, difficult to transport, and time-sensitive.

This is obviously not to say the U.S. is problem free, or that there's absolutely no room for regulation in an industrial society. I'm just more fascinated at leftist ecstasy at the notion that they've finaly got their "crisis of capitalism." For more on this, see Cathy Young's piece at the Weekly Standard, "Reveling in the Financial Crisis: Naomi Klein, Rising Star of the Kooky Left."

That's classic, the "kooky left."

Let's just say Freddie at Ordinary Gentlemen is a card-carrying member.

Obama's Commitment to Afghanistan

I watched this morning's White House press conference on Afghanistan. President Obama declared that success in Afghanistan represents "an international security challenge of the highest order." The full text of the address is here.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

This is the most encouraging speech I've heard from this president. The U.S. will reinforce the deployment with increased troop contingents and the administration will redouble civilian nation-building efforts and regional diplomacy. But the most important point here is the tone: Obama sounds tough. He speaks of the virtues of hard military power, for example, when he says, "There is an uncompromising core of the Taliban. They must be met with force, and they must be defeated." Although the tough talk was leavened with the language of reconciliation and multilateralism, the president's sense of commitment and urgency is a little surprising for one who was the most antiwar candidate among top-tier Democrats in last year's presidential campaign.

It's thus no surprise that there's already pushback from the antiwar left. Arch-appeaser Matthew Yglesias exclaims, " I’ve been worried for months now that Obama’s plan might get the administration caught up in the vicious logic of escalation ..." Also responding is Andrew Sullivan, who returns to form:

I haven't had time to absorb the president's decision to double-down on Afghanistan this morning. I am, however, skeptical for two reasons. The first is that pacifying that entire region - the region that defeated the British and the Soviets - is a gargantuan task whose costs do not seem to me outweighed by the obvious security benefits. As long as we can prevent terrorist bases forming that could target the US mainland, I do not see a reason for this kind of human and institutional enmeshment. My fear is that it multiplies our enemies, drags us further into the Pakistan nightmare, and will never Westernize a place like Afghanistan without decades-long imperial engagement. Secondly, I do not believe that Iraq is as stable as some optimists do, and fear that we will not be able to get out as cleanly as the president currently envisages. To be trapped more deeply in both places in a year's time seems Bush-like folly to me.

Sullivan has even stronger words in response to David Brooks' neocon encomium to the renewed project in Afghanistan.

Greyhawk has a roundup of the media's coverage of Obama's Afghanistan plan, accompanied by the appropriate skepticism:

I always wondered how Iraq would have progressed with balanced media coverage and fewer outright declarations of failure from the halls of congress. The next few months in Afghanistan could provide the closest thing to an answer we're ever going to get.

Yuanization of the American Economy?

There's a big outcry on the left in response to Representative Michele Bachmann's congressional resolution that would prohibit the replacement of the dollar by a foreign currency as the unit of exchange in the United States. Greg Sargent and Matthew Yglesias, respectively, have riduculed Ms. Bachmann as a "colorful" personality and have attacked her resolution as more "madness." The Hotsheet has jumped on the bandwagon, indicating that Ms. Bachmann's demand for the truth from the Obama administration reflects confusion "about calls by China for a so-called 'international reserve currency'." In other words, leftists are attacking Representative Bachmann's alleged policy buffoonery.

I tried unsuccessfully to contact Ms. Bachmann's Washington office, although I did reach a staff member from the Minnesota district offices. I was told my inquiries would be forwarded to the national office. However, Greg Sargent spoke with Debbee Keller, Bachmann's spokesperson, and she said that the resolution only applied to the introduction of a foreign currency unit inside the United States. The proposal has no implications for limiting the introduction of a new international reserve currency to replace the dollar as the premiere unit of global finance.

There's something of a rush to judgment on the left, however. It's well-established in developmental economics for "full dollarization" to be established in domestic economies suffering from economic crises and the lack of international confidence in local currencies. With dollarization, the dollar replaces local currencies as both the unit of tender in routine exchange transactions, as well as the official currency in world balance of payments accounting. So when Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner suggested that he'd be "quite open" to abandoning the U.S. dollar as the international system's reserve currency, the logical implication is that another national currency would take its place, with all the attendant privileges. Although the American economy remains the world's largest, the crises of the U.S. financial system have placed tremendous pressure on the confidence of the dollar in global trade and finance. Some are predicting that it's only a matter of time before China's economy replaces the U.S. as the world's leading market, and thus, "It’s clear to see that the Chinese yuan will be the world’s reserve currency in the future."

Considering the great uncertainties facing the U.S. economy, as well as the propensity for Secretary Geithner to create economic controversy with his economic free-thinking, there is nothing inherently unreasonable for Representative Bachmann to demand direct answers from the Obama administration; that is, it is entirely appropriate to demand that top U.S. officials clarify the appropriate legal foundations for the transition away from the dominance of the dollar in both domestic and world financial transactions.

It is not unusual for advanced industrial economies to replace their domestic currencies. France and Germany, long thought as classic examples on nations jealously protective of state sovereignty, are now the leading cases of world-class economies that have abandoned their national currencies (wth the Euro). More recently, Canada has been open to the dollarization of its economy. Should the Chinese economy come to dominate international trade and finance in the decades ahead - as so many now predict - there is nothing inherently illogical about considering, and protecting against, the possible "yuanization" of the American domestic market.

Perhaps Matthew Yglesias and some of his allies on the left might have reasoned through the full implications of this before dismissing Representative Bachmann's proposal as a "dog whistle to the “end times” folks."