Scott Eric Kaufman — An English Professor Who Doesn't Know Sh*t About English

One of the most interesting things about Scott Eric Kaufman is that he doesn't seem to know anything about the things in which he writes. Oh sure, the prick's good at laying down the demonic snark while surfing the conservative 'sphere for tidbits of attack material, but when it actually comes to writing quality content ... well, the guy's pure fail. I was already thinking about this when I noticed SEK's stuffy mini-"review" of Leo DiCaprio's Inception — the most noteworthy thing of which is that SEK and his wife actually walked out on the film. I'm planning to see the movie this weekend, so I wasn't going to offer my comments on whether it merited that kind of antipathy, although I was tempted to just post a snarky piece hammering Scott Erik Kaufman for his hopelessly effete left-wing university-ish elitism.

But now I'm glad I held off. It turns out SEK's initial review didn't go over so well with some like-minded effete types, and he's written an update, "Bit more on Inception." And while I might be persuaded that one of SEK's critics is on the money when he implies that Scott's an unsympathetic childless asshole, I'm content to simply indicate SEK's non-typo completely FUBAR ignorance of the word "flak."

As you can see at the first sentence of the post: "I’ve taken a lot of interesting flack for my non-review of Inception ..."

Actually, SEK means to say, "flak." It's a word that leftists apparently have a hard time using, which is easy to explain, given the left's ideological hostility to the military. In context, you might say I'm "giving him a lot of flak" for his stupidity — and boomerang smears, since he likes to attack opponents as "functionally illiterate." It's too good, really, for nearly every time SEK's trolled my site for some jollies, he's ended up making himself look lame with massive errors at the original post. And like clockwork he always comes back with some lame excuse for why an English professor shouldn't actually be required to write proper English, but in the case of "flack" I imagine he'll just have to take his lumps. And since Ann Althouse is a frequent target of SEK's idiotic trolling, I'll let her take him to the woodshed.

See, "Flak" (where Ann hammers Josh Marshall, another Ph.D. know-it-all, who misused "flack" in 2007):

From me, you're going to first catch flak for writing "catch flack."

“Flak” is WW II airman’s slang for shells being fired at you in the air, so to catch a lot of flak is to feel in danger of being shot down. However, most civilians these days have never heard of “flak,” so they use “flack” instead, which originally meant “salesman” or “huckster.” You need to worry about this only if you’re among old-time veterans.

When you're showing off your expertise about fighting a war, you ought to get your war imagery right. A flack is a press agent. Hacks -- "writer[s] hired to produce routine or commercial writing" -- know more about flacks and not so much about flak, but they need to try not to let it show.

Gotta love it. A law professor schooling a history Ph.D.

But even better is schooling an alleged professor of English on English language usage. Can you say epic fail? And the references to teaching "English" are quite loose, since SEK's apparently teaching courses on "Manga" and the literary origins of films like The Last Airbender. My kids could probably lecture on that stuff, although they aren't stuffy Ph.D.s who write half-baked movie reviews on films on which they've walked out on.

Well, at least SEK's no longer claiming to have a "Doctorate of Philosophy of English."

RELATED: "Scott Eric Kaufman, Self-Hating Skankwad, Does It Again!"

Eyes Without a Face

Billy Idol plays the Hollywood Palladium on August 14th. I'm not going, LOL!

I saw Idol in concert twice at The Roxy in Hollywood, circa 1981. In any case, Triple Play Thursday played Idol this morning, so enjoy "Eyes Without a Face":

I'm all out of hope
One more bad break
could bring a fall
When I'm far from home
Don't call me on the phone
To tell me your alone
It's easy to deceive
It's easy to tease
But hard to get release
Les yeux sans visage eyes without a face
Les yeux sans visage eyes without a face
Les yeux sans visage eyes without a face
Got no human grace your eyes without a face.
I spend so much time
Believing all the lies
To keep the dream alive
Now it makes me sad
It makes me mad at truth
For lovin' what was you.
Les yeux sans visage eyes without a face
Les yeux sans visage eyes without a face
Les yeux sans visage eyes without a face
Got no human grace your eyes without a face ...

Erin Andrews Vanity Fair Photo Shoot

Some midweek hotness with Erin Andrews.

PREVIOUSLY: "Erin Andrews in the News."

BONUS: Looking forward to some FMRA at The Other McCain this weekend. Bob Belvedere wasn't waiting, however: "A Little Hump Day Rule 5: Margaret Nolan." And at Washington Rebel: "Irreverent?"

True/Slant Shuts Down — Charles Johnson, E.D. Kain Looking for New Digital Media Bones to Suck Dry

A belated follow-up to last year's entry, "Sleaze-Blogger E.D. Kain Interviews Despicable Libel-Blogger Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs."

Both of these bozos were sucking the guts out of the digital media beta site True/Slant, cross-posting material from their own digs for an extra couple of bucks in slimeball blogging.

Background at Neil Ungerleider, "Last post on True/Slant."

This is probably no big deal for most readers, although it's interesting to me that the Internet publishing gods weren't smiling down on these two libel-blogging bloviators. Maybe they'll actually hafta get jobs, you know, like most people of good moral standing. That said, Barret Brown is on True/Slant and I've found him to be a fairly decent guy after going a few rounds in the flamewars (and Barret's at Vanity Fair, so he has something of a viable inside thing going already). And I hope Kashmir Hill's social networking blog lands quickly on its feet at another location, and I'm confident it will (she's good).

Added: Dan Riehl links, "Conor Friedersdorf: Angel Of Death In Web Publishing." I forgot about that idiot Conor Friedersdorf, but he's right up there with E.D. Kain and Charles Johnson.

Insurgent Stinger MANPADS in Afghanistan

The keys news, in last week's WikiLeaks "bombshell" exposé, that Taliban insurgents armed with shoulder-fired heat-seeking missiles have raised that stakes in Afghanistan, wasn't actually surprising. What's interesting to me is the supply origins of the missiles, for example, whether these were in fact the "Stinger" missiles the U.S. introduced against the Soviet Army in the late-1970s? Don't know for sure, although the Times of London reported last fall that Iran was shipping SA-14 Gremlins to the Taliban to help defeat allied forces in the region. Despite this, MSM press outlets are going wild with stories on the threat. See CNN for example, "Shoulder-fired missiles a threat to US troops in Afghanistan." The piece indicates that the threat could be from old Stingers supplied to the mujaheddin: "Perhaps the best known and most effective MANPADs are American-made Stingers, which the United States supplied to Afghan militia to fight the Soviets."

In any case, check the front-pager at today's Los Angeles Times (FWIW), "Reference to missile-downed helicopter in leaked Afghanistan reports highlights a threat."

Reporting from Kabul, Afghanistan, and Washington — Wherever there are Western troops in Afghanistan, the clatter-thump of helicopter rotors serves as the soundtrack. Choppers are the workhorses of this war, with hundreds of them moving soldiers and supplies daily across a rugged landscape.

Because of the NATO force's heavy reliance on them, one of the most eye-catching revelations in a trove of classified documents posted on the Internet this week was that insurgents apparently used a portable heat-seeking surface-to-air missile to shoot down a twin-rotor CH-47 Chinook in Helmand province in May 2007, killing seven Western service members.

If the Taliban and other insurgent groups possessed large numbers of these weapons, it could dramatically alter the dynamics of a war effort that already is struggling. Shoulder-launched missiles downed scores of Soviet helicopters in the 1980s, helping ragtag Afghan rebels prevail against a vastly superior force.

Most experts believe that the antiaircraft threat currently posed by the insurgents is relatively limited, and that they don't have significant stocks of surface-to-air missiles, at least for now.

The shooting down of choppers remains a relative rarity in the Afghan conflict, and heavy machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades are almost always found to have been used.

"After nine years, if they had a lot of them, we would have seen them by now," said a U.S. official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak about the subject on the record. Sporadic reports of attacks with surface-to-air missiles have often turned out to involve other weapons, the official said.

But portable surface-to-air missiles can be procured from many illicit sources in the region. Afghanistan's neighbors include Iran, Pakistan and China. NATO said this month that an intercepted memo from Taliban supreme leader Mullah Mohammed Omar suggested that the insurgents were redoubling efforts to obtain a variety of sophisticated armaments.

"It's wartime, and our warriors are searching for new weapons," said Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid, reached by telephone.

So that pretty much answers the question. Insurgent forces are simply shopping the global arms bazaar, and no doubt rogue regimes from Damascus to Tehran and beyond are all too willing to pump up the supply as the arc of terror stretches to South Asia. I guess the irony is lost on America's antiwar foes, but all of this demonstrates that American interest in AfPAK are as large as ever. (And the media's going to hype the threat, despite expert analysis to the contrary: "Stop Panicking About the Stingers.")

RELATED NON-SURPRISE: At USA Today, "More Dems oppose new war funding."

BONUS LEFT-WING FAIL: At NYT (FWIW), "U.S. Military Scrutinizes Leaks for Risks to Afghans."

Rangel to Stand Trial on Ethics Charges

At LAT (FWIW), "House charges Rep. Charles Rangel with ethics violations":

Rep. Charles Rangel of New York was charged Thursday with 13 counts of violating House ethics rules, placing the Democrat's storied, 40-year political career in jeopardy.

A House ethics panel outlined the alleged violations in a meeting that set the stage for a full-blown proceeding that could take place as early as September.

The charges stem from Rangel's alleged use of rent-controlled apartments for campaign purposes, his alleged solicitation of corporate donors for a public-policy center at a New York City college using office letterhead, the alleged failure to disclose $600,000 in income on financial-disclosure statements and the alleged failure to disclose income and pay taxes on a Caribbean rental property.

Until the moment the committee convened Thursday afternoon, talk was filtering through congressional corridors that Rangel's attorneys had struck a deal to avoid the hearing.

But Rep. Michael McCaul of Texas, the ranking Republican on the subcommittee that will try Rangel, suggested the time for a settlement had passed, saying Rangel, a Democrat from Harlem, had been given an "opportunity to negotiate a settlement in the investigation phase."

"The American people need to hear the truth," McCaul said.

A settlement could still occur, and reports indicate that the principles of a deal were in place. But it would require the approval of at least one Republican on the Ethics Committee, which may be difficult to secure in the highly charged partisan atmosphere on Capitol Hill.

Rangel did not appear at the hearing.

Also at The Hill and CNN.

Plus, from Outside the Beltway, "Charles Rangel Hit With 13 Charges Of Ethics Violations." (Via Memeorandum.)

Cartoon Credit: No Sheeples Here!

Obama on 'The View'

At ABC News, "Obama Ticks Off Highs and Lows of Presidency on 'The View': Appearing on The View, Obama Makes Family a Theme."

Not going over too well, actually, at least among those outside the presidential cult:

What's So Strange About Socialism?

From Stanley Kurtz. He describes the phenomenon of "boring from within":

What is so strange about the idea that President Obama might be a socialist? True, it would be a big deal if the president of the United States considered himself an opponent of the capitalist system, especially when he’s consistently dismissed and denied the socialism charge. On the other hand, the idea that a committed socialist might play a prominent part in everyday American politics is not particularly surprising.

Have a look at today’s piece on umemployment by regular Washington Post columnist, Harold Meyerson. Meyerson is a prominent public figure, and a Vice-Chair of the Democratic Socialists of America. Can you spot the socialism in his column? Meyerson criticizes big business, attacks across-the-board tax cuts, and advocates government-directed infrastructure investment as a solution to unemployment. Meyerson also supports initiatives along these lines by the Obama administration and congressional Democrats.

Now some might say, what’s so socialist about all that? Meyerson hasn’t advocated a total government takeover of the economy. He’s even spoken out in favor of initiatives by conventional Democrats.

Yet we could just as easily look at things in reverse. Meyerson’s support for these Democratic initiatives could be taken as a sign that some socialists agree with conservatives. That is, sophisticated socialists and conservatives alike believe that America can be pushed into socialism by degrees. In fact, this is exactly how Meyerson’s group, the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), understands its task. Actual existing American socialists (of the sophisticated "non-sectarian" variety typified by the DSA) don’t go around demanding full nationalization of the economy at a blow. On the contrary, they offer support to those Democratic Party initiatives most likely to bring about a socialist transformation in the long term. That is, the DSA thinks of itself as working within the Democratic Party, as a force to steer the party onto an incrementally socialist path.

As I’ll show in my forthcoming book, Radical-in-Chief: Barack Obama and the Untold Story of American Socialism, this vision of socialism has long shaped President Obama. (I announced the book yesterday. You can see the cover and a description of the book’s argument here.) The point is that the notion that Barack Obama is a socialist is too often dismissed as a lurid and impossibly extreme scenario, as if being a socialist had to mean throwing Molotov cocktails and demanding instant revolution. On the contrary, Harold Meyerson’s regular columns in The Washington Post show us that, even if their long-term goals are radical, it’s entirely possible for sophisticated socialists to participate in the everyday back-and-forth of American politics. This is the way to think about Obama.

See also, Pundit & Pundette, "Stanley Kurtz is back, with a book: Radical-in-Chief."

14 Weeks

At Nice Deb, "Republican Governors Association Releases Great New Ad":

Americans Cut Back on Visits to Doctor

At WSJ:

Insured Americans are using fewer medical services, raising questions about whether patients are consuming less health care as they pick up a greater share of the costs.

The drop in usage is showing up as health-care companies report financial results. Insurers, lab-testing companies, hospitals and doctor-billing concerns say that patient visits, drug prescriptions and procedures were down in the second quarter from year-ago levels.

"People just aren't using health-care like they have," said Wayne DeVeydt, WellPoint Inc.'s chief financial officer, in an interview Wednesday. "Utilization is lower than we expected, and it's unusual."

Others say that consumers are beginning to forgo elective procedures like knee replacements. "We have a very weak economy and it's just a different environment for the elective parts of health care," said Paul Ginsburg, a health economist who runs the Center for Studying Health System Change and has been analyzing health-company earnings. But "this could go beyond the recession. Being a less aggressive consumer of health care is here to stay."

Continued weak demand could eventually put downward pressure on spiralling health-care costs, a long-sought goal of policy makers. It could also force insurers to lower premiums.

The new trend comes amid a broader drop in health-care use as more Americans lose their jobs and their health insurance. Such cutbacks have happened before in recessions, but the drop seems to be more pronounced this time, industry analysts say.

More Americans also are buying high-deductible health plans that force them to bear more of the upfront costs for health services. Some 18 million Americans bought high-deductible plans this year, compared with 13 million last year, according to Paul Mango, a director at consulting firm McKinsey & Co.

And this passage in particular needs to be fleshed out:

All this raises the question of whether, after a year of national attention on out-of-control health costs before the federal health overhaul passed in March, the trend portends a lasting change in the way Americans use the medical system.

For example, if market incentives are allowed to work, a more rationalize regime of health provision would develop absent heavy-handed government control. RTWT in any case.

WikiLeaks Collaborated With Mainstream Media on Afghan Leaks After Previous Scoops Failed to Win Enough Attention

I mentioned Julian Assange's TED interview previously. It's about 20 minutes long, so grab a cup of coffee if you're up for it (the last few minutes are the most intriguing, so if pressed for time, scroll ahead toward the end). By now it's no longer a mystery the kind of agenda Mr. Assange is working. Interesting is that he sees himself as a "journalist," although clearly not of the old school "objective" kind (if there ever was one). The boys and girls on JournoList would no doubt welcome the likes of Assange into their ranks.

Also, at Wall Street Journal, "WikiLeaks Rolled Dice to Raise Its Profile":

WikiLeaks, frustrated at the lack of splash of recent leaks on its whistle-blowing website, has rolled the dice to try to raise its profile by teaming up with news organizations in its latest dump of classified documents.

The site's secretive founder Julian Assange surfaced in London on Monday to give a rare news conference as part of that new strategy. The white-haired Australian computer hacker schooled a packed room of reporters on how to navigate the 76,000 documents just released, arguing they contained evidence of war crimes and could work as "deterrents" to further abuses.

WikiLeaks was launched in 2007 by self-described Chinese dissidents and Internet hackers as a warehouse of leaked documents. Through its bare-bones site Wikileaks.org, it has landed big scoops, including its most infamous disclosure—video footage of American soldiers shooting down a group of people in Iraq in 2007. Representatives for the site have repeatedly declined to say how they obtain their material and their activities have prompted investigations by federal authorities

People familiar with the matter say Mr. Assange is frustrated that some of the site's other disclosures, such as a database of military procurements in Iraq and Afghanistan, didn't garner more attention. Some senior members of the group also want to combat the perception that the site is veering into the realm of opinion, one of the people said. The site took flak from some commentators for editing the 2007 Iraq video and for dubbing the video "Collateral Murder."

Mr. Assange launched a new plan this summer in a Brussels cafe. He offered a U.K. newspaper, the Guardian, advance access to documents the site planned to release about the war in Afghanistan, according to the Guardian's account. They came up with a password for accessing the trove based on the logo on the cafe's napkins.

Monday, the Guardian, along with the New York Times and German weekly Der Spiegel, published a flood of stories based on mostly raw field reports, citing WikiLeaks as the source. They say they weren't told how the site obtained them but tried to verify them independently.

A spokesman for WikiLeaks said the group didn't pay for the leaked documents.

Mr. Assange told reporters on Monday that he limited his outreach to these three organizations out of expediency and that more collaborations with traditional media are on the horizon. "We had hoped to partner with a network to do a more significant investigation, but limited time and resources eclipsed that," he said. "We do hope to do that next time."

RTWT.

Readers know my position. Assange and his media cohorts are way past any "good government" or "transparency" motives. These actions put lives at risk, no matter what your thoughts are on the continuing rationale for our fight against the Taliban.

RELATED: At Sister Toldjah, "The Definitive Smack Down of WikiLeaker Julian Assange" (via Memeorandum).

BONUS EXTRA: Boston Globe, "Pentagon Studies Possible Risks to Afghans From Leaked Documents."

24 Hours of Le Mans

From Kurt Muehmel:

Jennifer Keeton Expelled From Graduate School for Christian Beliefs on Homosexuality

At Astute Blogggers, "JENNIFER KEETON TOSSED OUT OF GRAD SCHOOL BECAUSE SHE'S A CHRISTIAN.

Also, at Fox News, "Lawsuit Claims College Ordered Student to Alter Religious Views on Homosexuality, Or Be Dismissed."

Reason.TV — Protest in Bell

Via Instapundit:

Reading The Post-American Presidency

I'm getting into this book: The Post-American Presidency: The Obama Administration's War on America. More blogging later...

So Inviting — So Enticing to Play the Part ... I Could Play the Wild Mutation as a Rock & Roll Star...

Listened to Album Sides Wednesday during this morning's drive time.

Side B of Ziggy Stardust went live at about 7:15am, just as I pulled into the college driveway. I listened to the first four tracks before heading over to my classroom. It's been a long time. I'd forgotten how much I used to love "Star":

Tony went to fight in Belfast
Rudi stayed at home to starve
I could make it all worthwhile as a rock & roll star
Bevan tried to change the nation
Sonny wants to turn the world, well he can tell you that he tried

I could make a transformation as a rock & roll star
So inviting - so enticing to play the part
I could play the wild mutation as a rock & roll star
Get it all yeah!
Oh yeah

I could do with the money
I'm so wiped out with things as they are
I'd send my photograph to my honey - and I'd c'mon like a regular superstar

I could fall asleep at night as a rock & roll star
I could fall in love all right as a rock & roll star

I could make a transformation as a rock & roll star
So inviting - so enticing to play the part
I could play the wild mutation as a rock & roll star ...

Statement by Governor Jan Brewer on SB 1070

From Governor Brewer's homepage:

“This fight is far from over. In fact, it is just the beginning, and at the end of what is certain to be a long legal struggle, Arizona will prevail in its right to protect our citizens. I am deeply grateful for the overwhelmingly support we have received from across our nation in our efforts to defend against the failures of the federal government.

“I have consulted with my legal counsel about our next steps. We will take a close look at every single element Judge Bolton removed from the law, and we will soon file an expedited appeal at the United States Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit.

“For anyone willing to see it -- the crisis is as clear as is the federal government’s failure to address it.

“The judge herself noted that the stash houses where smugglers hide immigrants from Mexico before bringing them into the country's interior have become a fixture on the news in Arizona and that, ‘You can barely go a day without a location being found in Phoenix where there are numerous people being harbored.’”

“When I signed the bill on April 23rd, I said, SB 1070 – represents another tool for our state to use as we work to address a crisis we did not create and the federal government has actively refused to fix. The law protects all of us, every Arizona citizen and everyone here in our state lawfully. And, it does so while ensuring that the constitutional rights of ALL in Arizona are undiminished – holding fast to the diversity that has made Arizona so great.

“I will battle all the way to the Supreme Court, if necessary, for the right to protect the citizens of Arizona. Meanwhile, I also know we still have work to do in confronting the fear-mongers, those dealing in hate and lies and economic boycotts that seek to do Arizona harm.

“We have already made some progress in waking up Washington. But the question still remains: will Washington do its job, and put an end to the daily operations of smugglers in our nation, or will the delays and sidesteps continue? I believe that the defenders of the rule of law will ultimately succeed with us in our demand for action.”

The main story's at NYT (FWIW), "Judge Blocks Key Parts of Immigration Law in Arizona" (via Memeorandum).

Professor William Jacobson comments: "The decision has to be viewed as a near complete victory for opponents of the law, as it restricts the state from routine and compulsory checks of immigration status as a matter of legislative mandate."

I'll have updates ...

PHOTO CREDIT: "South O.C. Patriots Rally for Arizona!"

David Horowitz Runs Pro-Israel Ad on Olbermann Show; Kos Kids Freak Out

Interesting post, from Robert Stacy McCain:

Beautiful People

At The Hill, "50 Most Beautiful People Slideshow 2010."

Also here: "50 Most Beautiful People 2010 HTML Top 10" (via Memeorandum).

And from Lynn Sweet, "Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. comeback? Number 9 on 'The Hill' beautiful people list." I thought that was a surprise as well. (And a hot Kirsten Gillibrand beats out the hip Scott Brown at Number 3, so maybe the methods are weighted a bit for "diversity".)

Our Divisive President

From Democrats Patrick Caddell and Doug Schoen, at WSJ:

During the election campaign, Barack Obama sought to appeal to the best instincts of the electorate, to a post-partisan sentiment that he said would reinvigorate our democracy. He ran on a platform of reconciliation—of getting beyond "old labels" of right and left, red and blue states, and forging compromises based on shared values.

President Obama's Inaugural was a hopeful day, with an estimated 1.8 million people on the National Mall celebrating the election of America's first African-American president. The level of enthusiasm, the anticipation and the promise of something better could not have been more palpable.

And yet, it has not been realized. Not at all.

Rather than being a unifier, Mr. Obama has divided America on the basis of race, class and partisanship. Moreover, his cynical approach to governance has encouraged his allies to pursue a similar strategy of racially divisive politics on his behalf.

We have seen the divisive approach under Republican presidents as well—particularly the administrations of Richard Nixon and George W. Bush. It was wrong then, and it is wrong now. By dividing America, Mr. Obama has brought our government to the brink of a crisis of legitimacy, compromising our ability to address our most important policy issues.

We say this with a heavy heart. Both of us share the president's stated vision of what America can and should be. The struggle for equal rights has animated both of our lives. Both of us were forged politically during the crucible of the civil rights movement. Having worked in the South during the civil rights movement, and on behalf of the ground-breaking elections of African-American mayors such as David Dinkins, Harold Washington and Emanuel Cleaver, we were deeply moved by Mr. Obama's election.

More at the link.

I'm still not going with the hypothesis of an intraparty challenge to Obama, especially from an antiwar candidate. Hillary Clinton, for example, is far from the Howard Dean type. She could pose a threat to Obama running as a "unifier" in opposition to this administration. Either way, if the Dems gear up for a primary feud challenging an incumbent president, my sense is that the GOP will reap most of the benefits. That's good for me, although the Republicans need to get their own house in order as well. It's amazing to think that 2012 could be MORE of a crucial election than 2008, but the country got suckered into electing "The One," and now we're paying for it with an ever-deepening national crisis.

See also Jennifer Rubin and Andy McCarthy. (Via Memeorandum.)

Cartoon Credit: Bosch Fawstin.

Olivia Bell

From Facebook and Flickr (by permission):

More here.

Elton John Slams Musicans' Boycott of Arizona!

At Cold Fury,"I am having to completely rethink my prior opinion of Elton John":

Which wasn’t necessarily negative, by the way. I was never a huge fan, I admit — didn’t really dislike him either, just never cared much one way or another — but damned if he ain’t proving to be very much worthy of respect ...

More at the link.

Public Prefers Obama's Policies, But Not by 'Large Majorities'

If you check the new poll out from National Journal, Americans by a 46 percent plurality support the continuation of Barack Obama's economic policies. Yet, despite the misinformation at Daily Kos, the public is deeply divided over the extension of the Bush tax cuts of 2001 and 2003:

Regarding the tax cuts, 30 percent of Americans believe all of Bush's 2001 and 2003 cuts should stay in place. That compared to 31 percent who believed that all of them should be repealed. Twenty-seven percent take the route Obama campaigned on: Tax cuts for the wealthy should be repealed, while the others should stay in place.

That sentiment was consistent across income lines. Among those making more than $75,000, 26 percent said only the tax cuts for the wealthy should be repealed. For those making $30,000 to $74,999, 31 percent concurred. And among those making less than $30,000, 28 percent said the tax cuts for the wealthy should be overturned.

Independents hewed closest to the overall sample. Twenty-seven percent said all the tax cuts should be kept in place. Thirty-two percent said they all should be repealed. Twenty-seven percent said the tax cuts for the wealthy should be repealed, but the middle class cuts should be kept in place.

This debate has intensified recently as the legislative calendar winds down and an agreement on how to proceed on the issue, particularly in the Senate, has remained elusive.

Unfortunately for Joan McCarter, one can't combine all the subgroupings into "large majorities" supposedly opposed to extending the cuts. This table might help her out:

Democrats and independents remain wary of a return to more market-oriented approaches to economic recovery. But time is running out. The 46 percent plurality is not a huge bulwark against anti-incumbent sentiment on the economy this year (Congress is down to 11 percent approval rating, and the majority party always bears the brunt of such throw-the-bums-out sentiment). And the 2012 primaries will commence a little more than 15 months from now. Basically, it's on.

November Starts Now — Obama's 3:00 AM Fail

The new ad from the RNC:

Barack Obama's presidency has been a disaster. He is either unwilling to or incapable of doing his job. The economy is in shambles, the government is failing, and Americans are losing hope. Barack Obama was not ready to be President. He's not the solution. You are.

You have the opportunity to turn our economy, our government, and our country around by electing Republicans and restoring your voice in Washington. But to win this fall, we must start today. It's up to you to save your country. Are you ready? Because November starts now.

As much as I like it, I'm not sending these folks any money. It's going to take a lot more of Michael Steele sucking up to the base before that happens (or, memories of Dede Scozzafava are still quite strong):

Obama Could Be 'Primaried' by Antiwar Democrat in 2012

At PuffHo, "Rendell: Obama Could Face Primary Challenge Over Afghanistan (VIDEO)" (via Memeorandum).

Lyndon Baines Johnson was not "The One" Democratic Party presidential candidate in the 1960s. John F. Kennedy was ("Camelot" and all that...). Nowadays we have "The Lightworker" Obama-Wan Kenobi in office, and I can't image any credible intra-party challenge to his (re)nomination in 2012. And Afghanistan is no Vietnam, in terms of lives lost and treasure expended, so I don't know if the analogy's going to work all that well going forward in any case. Interesting too that arch-paleocon Pat Buchanan's the one posing the question, more so as there's a left-(quasi)right alliance for cut-and-run from the deployment. That said, Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell makes the possibility sound realistic, depending on how the ground situation looks in 2011. Fun the play armchair presidential strategist, in any case:

PAT BUCHANAN: [Anti-Vietnam sentiment] drew an anti-war candidate, Eugene McCarthy, first into the New Hampshire primary, and after he did fairly well with 42%, it drew Robert Kennedy in against their own president, tore the Democratic Party apart, and led, of course, to a Republican era. If the president is still hanging in to Afghanistan in 2011, 2012, do you see an anti-war candidate coming out of the Democratic Party?

ED RENDELL: It's possible, Pat. It really depends on how far it deteriorates [emphasis mine]. But on the other hand, if troop withdrawal begins in 2011, if there's some signs that we're trying to get out of there, and I heard, I think you were talking about, if there are only 3,000 American troops, we still have a presence. But if we start to begin to reduce our presence, I think that's probably enough to keep an anti-war candidate out of the race."

Also Blogging: Dan Riehl.

Al Franken's Keynote Speech at Netroots Nation

Here's more key evidence of how deeply top Democratic officials are tied to the neo-communist anti-Semitic hate-blog Daily Kos (and the rest of the progressive blogosphere, CAP, Media Mutters, etc.). Take your time and really listen to chief election thief Al Franken. This is today's progressive movement, looking to crush "evil" corporations and "restore" free speech. It's kinda chilling listening to Al Franken, but also funny in a macabre kinda way. If you check Google you can see all the left-wing blogs posting this video: "Sen. Franken to the Netroots: Only You Can Stop the Corporate Takeover of Free Speech." But notice that it's Fox News that broadcast Franken's speech, in its entirety! So the "evil" right-wing corporate media made it possible for the deranged leftist hacks to spread this message of censorship all across the web. Al Franken's probably not the brightest bulb, in any case. I can see a comedien like him emerging in a similar fashion historically in post-Wiemar Germany. A jolly sort, more than ready to exterminate political enemies in order to "make the world a better place." Unreal. (More background here: "Al Franken: Without Net Neutrality Fox News Will Load Faster Than Daily Kos"):

Michelle Rhee and Teacher Accountability

At Betsy's Page:

Kudos to Michelle Rhee who just used the power granted her by the new contract negotiated with the Washington Teachers Union to fire 241 low-performing teachers and put 737 other teachers and school staff on notice that they had been rated "minimally effective." If I were a teacher who can't find a job in a state like mine, North Carolina, which has slowed down hiring teachers, I'd send an application to Washington, D.C. It sounds like they're going to have some openings for dedicated teachers.

Betsy teaches AP American History and has a phenomenal record of success. Yet I'm sometimes leery of straight performance evaluations, at least to the extent that much of student success is completely out of the hands of teachers themselves. That said, I like Rhee and I know she's fighting an entrenched bureaucracy that hasn't put kids' interests ahead of unions. Still, readers may remember Joel Parkes' essay from a while back (previously posted here). It bears recalling. Gotta include this side of the debate in discussions of teacher accountability, "Something Wrong in Our Schools? Let's Blame Teachers":

Much has been written lately about merit pay for teachers, an idea with which I agree in principle. But merit pay would be unfair to teachers for many reasons.

I teach upper-elementary grades at a school that is at the absolute bottom of the Academic Performance Index, ranking one out of 10 in both statewide and "similar schools" APIs. The majority of my school's students are classified as "English language learners"; almost all are Latino. Virtually every student at my school lives in poverty and gets a free breakfast and lunch from the school.

Next year I'll teach fourth grade, and this is what my past experience at this school leads me to expect:

At least two-thirds of my students will have been socially promoted through every grade and, by definition, won't have the skills necessary for the work that the state and district standards requires them to do. Some of them, probably five or 10, won't even know the alphabet, through no fault of mine, but they won't be held accountable. I will be.

Out of frustration over not being able to do the work, a number of my students will chronically disrupt my class, so my learning environment will be adversely affected daily. There is no meaningful consequence for chronic disruptive behavior at my school, so none of those students will be held accountable in any meaningful way. I will be.

Other students will be so discouraged at not being able to do the work that they will make no effort. They will seldom complete homework assignments and will produce virtually no work in class. Our senior assistant vice principal has stated that "we don't retain [hold back] students for not trying," so the students who do no work won't be held accountable. I will be.

I'll give you two historical examples of accountability and leave you with a question.

First, when the Roman legions marched, they built roads and bridges, some of which survive to this day. When the legions had to cross a river, the engineers were called on to design and build a bridge. After the bridge was built, the engineers stood under the bridge while the army crossed. That's accountability, but at least they had what was necessary to build the bridge.

On the other hand, when the Khmer Rouge seized Cambodia, they took the teachers and other educated people to the rice paddies and said, "You're so smart and educated. Make the rice grow faster or we will kill you." So there were a lot of dead teachers in Cambodia. Accountability? The Khmer Rouge certainly thought so.

Consider, please: As a teacher, I have no control over a school system that does not require students to meet standards in order to move on to the next grade. But I am to be held accountable.

As a teacher, I have no control over the system's lack of disciplinary support and inability to make certain students produce work. But I am to be held accountable.

As a teacher, I have no control over uneducated parents, overcrowded and noisy homes or the other very real consequences of poverty. But I am held accountable.

With regard to merit pay, my question is this: Am I being told to build a bridge and given the tools I need for the job, or am I just being taken to the country and told to make the rice grow faster? I know what answer I would give.

With No Direction Home...

Bob Dylan, "Like a Rolling Stone." Heard it last week on "Triple Play Thursday," and again yesterday. Enjoy:

Once upon a time you dressed so fine
You threw the bums a dime in your prime, didn't you ?
People'd call, say, "Beware doll, you're bound to fall"
You thought they were all kiddin' you
You used to laugh about
Everybody that was hangin' out
Now you don't talk so loud
Now you don't seem so proud
About having to be scrounging for your next meal.

How does it feel
How does it feel
To be without a home
Like a complete unknown
Like a rolling stone ? ...

Jewel Sings Karaoke Under Cover

Via TigerHawk, "It'll make you grin":

Undercover Karaoke with Jewel from Jewel

NewsBusted — Confidence of Congress at 11% ...

James Surowiecki on JournoList

I'm not sure I'd be willing confer "hero" status on Ezra Klein, but I'd certainly say James Surowiecki was acting heroically when bucking the left's jihad-abetting memes at the list-serve. From The Daily Caller, " Heroes of Journolist: Dan Froomkin, James Surowiecki, Jeffrey Toobin, Michael Tomasky — and founder Ezra Klein" (via Memeorandum):

When Nidal Hasan murdered 13 people at Ft. Hood, Texas, shouting “Allahu Akbar!” before opening fire, members of Journolist debated whether the media should report on Hasan’s apparent ties to Islamic extremism.

Luke Mitchell, then of Harper’s magazine, said doing so “points the way to things that are actually alarmingly dangerous, such as the idea that there is a large conspiracy of Islamists at work in the United States, that we need to ‘do something’ about this conspiracy.”

Surowiecki replied to Mitchell and others that the truth was worth pursuing.

“I find it bizarre that anyone would argue that an accurate description of what happened is somehow pointless,” Surowiecki said. “That is, that it’s not useful to offer up an accurate picture of Hasan’s actions because nothing obvious follows from it. We want, as much as possible, to have a clear picture of what’s actually going on in the world. Describing Hasan as a violent Islamist terrorist is much closer to the truth than describing him as a disturbed individual.”

RELATED: A great piece from Mickey Kaus, "'Journolist' Was Not a Progressive Idea."

Photo Credit: Wikipedia, "James Surowiecki."

Frank Rich Whines for Nobama

At New York Review, " ‘Why Has He Fallen Short?’":

Of course Barack Obama was too hot not to cool down. He was the one so many were waiting for—not only the first African-American president but also the nation’s long-awaited liberator after eight years of Bush-Cheney, the golden-tongued evangelist who could at long last revive and sell the old liberal faith, the first American president in memory to speak to voters as if they might be thinking adults, the first national politician in years to electrify the young. He was even, of all implausible oddities, a contemporary politician- author who actually wrote his own books.

The Obama of Hope and Change was too tough an act for Obama, a mere chief executive, to follow. Only Hollywood might have the power to create a superhero who could fulfill the messianic dreams kindled by his presence and rhetoric, maintain the riveting drama of his unlikely ascent, and sustain the national mood of deliverance that greeted his victory. As soon as Inauguration Day turned to night, the real Obama was destined to depreciate like the shiny new luxury car that starts to lose its book value the moment it’s driven off the lot.

But still: How did we get to the nadir so fast? The BP oil spill, for weeks a constant fixture on the country’s television and computer screens, became a presidential quagmire even before Afghanistan could fulfill its manifest destiny to play that role. The 24/7 gushing crude was ready-made to serve as the Beltway’s bipartisan metaphorical indicator for a presidency that was verging on disaster to some of Obama’s natural supporters, let alone his many enemies. “I don’t see how the president’s position and popularity can survive the oil spill,” wrote Peggy Noonan in The Wall Street Journal on Memorial Day weekend without apparent fear of contradiction.

Pressed by critics to push back against BP with visible anger and kick-ass authority, Obama chose to devote the first Oval Office address of his presidency to the crisis in the gulf—on June 15, nearly sixty days after the Deep- water Horizon rig had exploded. His tardy prescriptions were panned even by the liberal Matthews-Olbermann-Maddow bloc at MSNBC. To many progressives, Obama’s too-cool handling of the disaster was a confirmation of a fatal character flaw—a professorial passivity that induced him to prematurely surrender the sacred “public option” in the health care debate and to keep too many of his predecessor’s constitutional abridgements in place at home and at Gitmo. When, a day after his prime-time address, he jawboned BP into setting up a $20 billion escrow fund for the spill’s victims, the Obama-hating tag team of Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News and its Tea Party auxiliaries attacked him for not being passive enough. To them, the President’s aggressive show of action was merely further confirmation that a rank incompetent and closet socialist (or is it National Socialist?) had illegitimately seized the White House to subvert America and the free-enterprise system.

That's a pretty good sample, eh?

"The Obama-hating tag-team"?

RTWT. Interestingly, Rich places most of the blame on Obama-Wan Kenobi's own team of incompetent, unaccomplished advisors. And that sounds about right:

The administration is still young, and so is the President. If he has any immutable ideological tenet, it’s that he is “a big believer in persistence.” He doesn’t like to lose. Health care had not been an Obama priority in the campaign, but he embraced it during the transition. Though Joe Biden, Rahm Emanuel, and David Axelrod were all skeptical of pursuing it as a Year One goal, he wouldn’t be deterred.

CARTOON CREDIT: No Sheeples Here!

WikiLeaks and U.S.-Pakistani Relations

I'm mostly just fascinated by the left's struggles with honesty regarding the goals of WikiLeaks. Julian Assange spouted that he wasn't about bringing the war to an end. Of course, that was during the same press conference in which he alleged war crimes. So, it bears monitoring how all of this plays out. From a partisan perspective, it's kinda funny, but a precipitous Afghan withdrawal would be reminiscent to the troubles of the Johnson administration. It's Obama's war, and if the radical left has its way, he'll lose it. MSNBC's on the case, that's for sure. And interesting, I don't disagree so much with the analysis here, and British correspondent Declan Walsh is correct to indicate that the pressure's on Pakistan now to fix its ISI corruption and terror-abetting (although we already knew that). Mostly I hope that we don't cut-and-run while we're still needed, and we are. Pakistan is ground zero of global jihad, and leaving Afghanistan now before we're comfortable that country's stable will only make AfPak that much more attractive to the globe's killers. More on this throughout the day...

Julian Assange Press Conference, London, July 26, 2010

At Washington Post, "Wikileaks' release of classified field reports on Afghan war reveals not much." Plus, raw video from Monday's press conference:

The 10 Most Controversial Playboy Covers of All Time

A pretty interesting piece, at BroBible:

Boston Globe columnist Ellen Goodman obviously took offense.

Have times changed? Maybe we should ask Ms. Olga? She attends college where women are judged by brains over bods. As a college professor, I must say: I'm impressed!

RELATED: "Hottest Student Bodies: The 50 Best Colleges Ranked By Looks: 1-10."

The AfPak Non-Pentagon Papers

As I reported earlier, the WikiLeaks document dump hasn't generated spectacular revelations. Certainly, from an intelligence and government secrecy standpoint, it's a really big deal. By now, though, most analysts have actually kinda yawned at the whole thing. But for leftists, WikiLeaks is pure gold. Recall that Julian Assange denied that his goal was to bring an end to the war. That's pure bull. I've paid too much attention to this creep since the bogus Apache Reuters video ploy a few months back. These people are out to damage the U.S. big time, and all the hardline leftist organizations go into overdrive when a new doc-dump/video exposé goes live. Case in point is the hyperventilating coverage at Democracy Now!, "The New Pentagon Papers: WikiLeaks Releases 90,000+ Secret Military Documents Painting Devastating Picture of Afghanistan War." Amy Goodman's a commie, and communists have two big attacks on the West: "Wars of imperial aggression" and "hegemonic racism" (Israel demonization falls somewhere in between both of those, as the Jewish state is the racist outpost of American-led neo-colonialism in the Middle East). And of course, MSNBC's more of a "commie" network than CNN, and these folks are creaming over WikiLeaks, for example, Cenk Uygur at this clip featuring Matt Lewis of Politics Daily:

On an interesting related note, the Wall Street Journal sees a silver lining in the release of the documents, and the editors debunk the "Pentagon Papers" analogy at the same time. See, "The AfPak Papers":

We've long believed the U.S. government classifies too many documents as secret, and now we know for sure. How else to explain why Sunday's release of some 92,000 previously confidential documents reveals so little that we didn't already know about the war in Afghanistan? This document dump will only matter if it becomes an excuse for more of America's political class to turn against a war they once supported ....

Far from being the Pentagon Papers redux, the larger truth is how closely the ground-eye view in these documents reinforces what U.S. officials were long saying: that the war wasn't going well, the Taliban were making gains, and a new and invigorated strategy was needed to combat them. Both the Bush and Obama Administrations made the same diagnosis in recent years, neither one kept it secret, and this year Mr. Obama followed through with an increase in troops levels and a renewed counterinsurgency.

The most politically explosive documents concern the conflicting loyalties of Pakistan's Directorate of Inter-Services Intelligence, or ISI. Nearly 200 reports allege that the Pakistani military intelligence arm is in cahoots with the Taliban, despite claiming to side with America. This is undoubtedly true but also no surprise.

The ISI helped the U.S. arm and organize the mujahideen against the Soviets, and it kept doing so to fill the Afghan power vacuum after America abandoned the region in the early 1990s. The reports released this week allege—often citing a single source or uncertain information—that the ISI helped train Afghan suicide bombers, plotted to poison beer slated for GIs, and schemed to assassinate President Hamid Karzai. It isn't clear how many of these plots were ever attempted, but there's no doubt that many Pakistanis doubt U.S. staying power, fear Indian influence in Afghanistan, and want to use the Taliban to shape events on their Western border.

Then again, we also know that Pakistan has shifted its behavior in a more pro-American direction in the last 14 months as the Taliban began to threaten Pakistan's own stability. Responding to a surge of terrorism against Pakistani targets, the Pakistani army has pushed Islamist insurgents from the Swat Valley and even South Waziristan. It has taken heavy casualties in the process. Islamabad now actively aids U.S. drone strikes against Taliban and al Qaeda leaders in the mountains along its Afghan border.

Pakistan can and should do more to pursue the terrorist enclaves along the border, as well as in Quetta and Karachi. The question is what's the best way to persuade their leaders to act. U.S.-Pakistan cooperation has been one of the Obama Administration's foreign policy successes, and it would be a tragedy if the leak of selective documents, often out of context, would now poison that cooperation.

That's the most sober thing I've read on foreign policy in weeks (be sure to RTWT). WSJ points out that the documents indicate that Iran is cooperating with al Qaeda and related Sunni extremist groups, another fact that puts the lie to the promise of diplomatic engagement with Tehran.

RELATED: "Why WikiLeaks' ‘War Logs’ Are No Pentagon Papers." (At Memeorandum.)

HBO's 'Homeless: The Motel Kids of Orange County'

Getting ready to watch this documentary with my family, at 9:00pm PST, Homeless: The Motel Kids of Orange County:

The director/producer is Alexandra Pelosi, who is the daughter of U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.