Henry Louis Gates

That famous national conversation on race was recently advance by the arrest of Henry Louis Gates, Black, Harvard Professor and expert on all things Black. He teaches two courses at Harvard, African and African American Studies 10 (for undergraduates) and a graduate seminar African and African American Studies 301.

He called the policeman who was checking out to see if he was a burglar a racist.

Contributing to the conversation was Cambridge Police Sergeant James Crowley who – in trying to determine if Gates was who he said he was, arrested Gates for disorderly conduct.

And the third contributor was Barack Obama who identified himself as a friend of Gates and called the Cambridge Police Department “stupid.”

Let’s review what happened.

(1) Mr. Gates returned from a trip and had trouble getting into his home.
(2) Failing to enter through the front door, despite repeated tries, he enter via the back door.
(3) A person near the Gates home notices the actions and – believing that someone may be attempting a break-in calls the police.
(4) Sergeant Crowley responds.
(5) Words were exchanged between Mr. Gates and Crowley.
(6) Mr. Gates is arrested on the charge of disorderly conduct.
(7) Mr. Gates is released and charges have been withdrawn.

It should be noted that the early headlines were all about the prominent Harvard Professor being hustled by the racist cop. The cop decided that he was not going to be the designated patsy and fought back. The focus is changing, Mr. Gates is in at his home in Martha's Vinyard - recuperating - and Mr. Obama is trying to walk his comments back. The Cambridge police union is asking for apologies from Mr. Gates and Mr. Obama.

The incident brings to mind an experience I had. I was asleep late at night when I responded to a loud knock at my front door. Going downstairs I found a police officer who asked if I were the resident and asked for some identification. I was shocked and surprised and asked what the problem was. We had recently moved into our home and a light in the back yard had begun flickering intermittently. A neighbor called the police thinking that we were trying to signal that we were in distress. The incident made me thankful that we had neighbors that were concerned enough to call the police if they thought that there was a problem.

Henry Louis Gates had a different view of police. This may be because he is a Professional Black. Mr. Gates doesn’t teach economics or physics or chemistry … he teaches BLACK. For Mr. Gates, the police are THE MAN. The agents of oppression. The police will always be Bull Connor in Mr. Gates mind. And when Sergeant Crowley rang his front door bell, Sgt. Crowley was not there to protect his property, he was there to oppress the black man, and Mr. Gates was not going to put up with it. He was a Harvard professor, a millionaire with a house in Cambridge and one Martha’s Vineyard. No white cracker was going to hassle Henry Louis Gates, PhD.

For the record, the Mayor of Cambridge has apologized to Mr. Gates, the Governnor of Massachusetts, Deval Patrick, has expressed his outrage and the President of the United States called what the Cambridge did police stupid.

The race card is now overdrawn.

An esteemed professor in our most famous university, living in a city with a black mayor, in a state with a black governor, in a country with a black president, cannot, without embarrassment, play this card anymore

The Officer Didn’t Stereotype Henry Louis Gates — Henry Louis Gates Stereotyped the Officer

The Lagoon Nebula in Gas, Dust, and Stars

Having often stood in wonder at the beauty of God's creation here on the blue planet we call Earth, the heavens show both beauty and power. Who can comprehend the sheer power of the sun, magnified billions of times throughout the universe. All the energy produced by man in his total history is but a an unseen flicker to the power produced in one second in God's creation.

“The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handiwork ..."

Telling the elderly they have a duty to die

Bringing the "best practices" of European medicine to the United States.

Of the 130,000 Dutchmen who died in 1990, some 11,800 were killed or helped to die by their doctors, according to a 1991 report by the attorney general of the High Council of the Netherlands. (The 1991 report is the only complete report on euthanasia practices by the Dutch government.)

Some of these deaths are the classic cases cited by right-to-die advocates: A terminally ill patient, in agony, demanding to “die with dignity.” But many are not. An estimated 5,981 people–an average of 16 per day–were killed by their doctors without their consent, according to the Dutch government report.

And these numbers do not measure several other groups that are put to death involuntarily: disabled infants, terminally ill children and mental patients. [...]

Many old people now fear Dutch hospitals. More than 10% of senior citizens who responded to a recent survey, which did not mention euthanasia, volunteered that they feared being killed by their doctors without their consent. One senior-citizen group printed up wallet cards that tell doctors that the cardholder opposes euthanasia. [...]

As the cost of socialized medicine in the Netherlands grew, doctors were lectured about the importance of keeping expenses down. In many hospitals, signs were posted indicating how much old-age treatments cost taxpayers. The result was a growing “social pressure” from doctors and others, says Arno Heltzel, a spokesman for the Catholic Union of the Elderly, the largest Dutch senior-citizen group, which favors voluntary euthanasia. “Old people have to excuse themselves for living. When they say that all of their friends are dead, people say, ‘Maybe it is time for you to go too,’ rather than, ‘You need to find new friends.’ “

It's the modern Liberal version of putting the sick and elderly on ice floes and pushing them out to sea.

There are any number of ways that ObamaCare can justify this. Obama himself does a very good job of explaining why old people should die HERE. What's interesting is the support he has among the elderly. It's as if the German Jews kept voting for Hitler as they were being shipped off to "summer camp."

Divorce Agreement: Let's Agree to Differ and Split Up

Via Vanderleun at American Digest ...

Dear American liberals, leftists, social progressives, socialists, Marxists and Obama supporters, et al:

We have stuck together since the late 1950's, but the whole of this latest election process has made me realize that I want a divorce. I know we tolerated each other for many years for the sake of future generations, but sadly, this relationship has run its course. Our two ideological sides of America cannot and will not ever agree on what is right so let's just end it on friendly terms. We can smile and chalk it up to irreconcilable differences and go our own way.

Here is a model separation agreement:

Our two groups can equitably divide up the country by landmass each taking a portion. That will be the difficult part, but I am sure our two sides can come to a friendly agreement. After that, it should be relatively easy! Our respective representatives can effortlessly divide other assets since both sides have such distinct and disparate tastes.

We don't like redistributive taxes so you can keep them. You are welcome to the liberal judges and the ACLU. Since you hate guns and war, we'll take our firearms, the cops, the NRA and the military. You can keep Oprah, Michael Moore and Rosie O'Donnell (You are, however, responsible for finding a bio-diesel vehicle big enough to move all three of them).

We'll keep the capitalism, greedy corporations, pharmaceutical companies, Wal-Mart and Wall Street. You can have your beloved homeless, homeboys, hippies and illegal aliens. We'll keep the hot Alaskan hockey moms, greedy CEO's and rednecks. We'll keep the Bibles and give you NBC and Hollywood.

Read the rest.

Obama to Jane Sturm: Hey, take a pill (You're too old)

Russ Carnahan's (D-MO) healthcare forum on Monday

These are "Tea Party" folks. Following the advice they have received on the Internet, they are finding their voices in public forums like this. I would guess that Congressmen are not used to being laughed at and challenged by members of the audience in these forums. Right now they are trying to determine if these are few malcontents or if it's more than that.

The point is that it does not take a majority to make a movement. The majority in any society is always going to be busy with other things. But they may well be sympathetic ... the sea in which the activists swim.

There are a few predictions that I would make:
(1) Congressmen will try to get their supporters out to these meetings to drown out the dissenters; to clap and cheer at the right time.
(2) There may well be fewer "town hall" type meetings as government officials try to figure out how to cope.
(3) There will be more "tea party" types getting going to these meetings with video equipment as the word spreads.
(4) There will be attempts by the Left to reclaim their role as leaders in "street theater" leading to verbal and perhaps physical clashes.



I will say that it's refreshing to learn that the Right can do activism. Success will feed on itself.

Here's one reaction from a congressman that's being repeated all over the country: calling the cops. Perriello’s office calls police to halt health care rally

More than sixty concerned United States citizens and residents of Virginia’s 5th Congressional District gathered in the parking lot immediately outside Democrat Congressman Tom Perriello’s Charlottesville office today. Organized by Bill Hay and the Jefferson Area Tea Party, the rally’s purpose was to allow attendees a forum in which to express their concerns over the prospect of nationalized/socialized medicine directly to Congressman Perriello (who chose not to attend), or in close proximity to his office.
...
Approximately forty minutes into the event, Charlottesville police were called to the parking lot area. Unconfirmed reports from the scene tie at least one of the complaining phone calls directly to Congressman Tom Perriello’s office staff. While the attending police officers (professionally and politely) compelled the gathered crowd to disperse, rally attendees grumbled at the prospect of their own congressman’s office terminating their first amendment, free speech protest. A protest that was peaceful and non-invasive in contrast to prior leftist assaults on the office of former 5th District Congressman, Virgil Goode.

WELCOME INSTAPUNDIT READERS: Here's my Palin prediction.

... and a comment on Walter Cronkite.

Thanks for the links.

Beltway Bandits: National Journal creates private 'pay-to-play' web site for Hill. The cost for access to Congress a mere $295,0000.

Since news doesn't sell well and opinions are more numerous that crooked politicians, what's a publisher to do?

Providing a private, limited-access only platform for lawmakers and lobbyists ... National Journal is creating a private web site for Members of Congress and their staff. Taxpayers are not invited. Lobbyists and others seeking to influence Congress will be able to buy their way onto the site via advocacy advertising

It brings new meaning to the term "media whores."

Erin Andrews Peephole Video

Nothing follows.

UPDATE ...
What's apparent is that videos of naked women are popular.

Click HERE for those who get a thrill out of porn.

"Pension Spiking": California Fire Chief Retires at 51 with $240,000 annual pension.

Via the Wall Street Journal ...

Can we understand why the state of California and its cities are in deep financial trouble?

Pete Nowicki just turned 51 and was eligible to retire. So he did. His pension was full pay (nice), plus he sold his unused vacation and holidays, raising his pension from a very healthy $186,000 to $240,000 - per year.

Pete Nowicki had been making $186,000 shortly before he retired in January as chief for a fire department shared by the municipalities of Orinda and Moraga in Northern California. Three days before Mr. Nowicki announced he was hanging up his hat, department trustees agreed to increase his salary largely by enabling him to sell unused vacation days and holidays. That helped boost his annual pension to $241,000.

..The boost was legal, and Mr. Nowicki said he is receiving a permissible pension. "People point to me as a poster child for pension spiking, but I did not negotiate these rules," he said.

Is this an isolated case?

Mr. Nowicki's situation isn't unique. Contracts that permit a jump in salary just before retirement -- boosting the pension payout -- have been around for years. But as tough times are putting more scrutiny on public pensions, Mr. Nowicki's case has sparked particular anger from colleagues and local residents. Some recently demanded an explanation from the department trustees and others have lobbied the Orinda council to divert funds away from the fire department.

"These guys may have priced themselves out of job," said Steve Cohn, a financial analyst in Orinda.

The practice is getting more attention amid growing concerns about the sustainability of guaranteed pension payouts for public employees after brutal market losses last year in public pension funds.

In California, which has taken to issuing IOUs to hoard cash, a private interest group has launched a campaign to publicize the names of government retirees with pensions of $100,000 or more to promote its view that steep pensions threaten to bankrupt states and municipalities. Mr. Nowicki's payout was brought to light in the spring in a Contra Costa Times column.

While it happens nationwide, pension spiking has been especially prevalent in California, which some attribute to favorable terms negotiated by powerful unions.

The cost of all this?

Mr. Nowicki recently turned 51 years old. If he lives another 25 years, his pension payments will cost the fire district an estimated additional $1 million or more over what he would have received had he retired at a salary of $186,000, not including cost of living adjustments, a fire board representative said.

To add insult to injury ...

In addition to drawing his pension, Mr. Nowicki currently is working for the fire department as a consultant at an annual salary of $176,400 while the department searches for his replacement.

If this is business as usual, the state is in bigger trouble than we realize.

DRUDGE headline: "This isn't about me."

EVERYTHING is about HIM.

There was a book written about a leader - a sort of Big Brother - who was on TV all the time.

Getting there in baby steps.

After some hesitation and a time shift, three major broadcast networks have agreed to carry Barack Obama's latest primetime news conference.
...
The conference will mark the president's fourth primetime press event since he took office six months ago.

The Horsehead Nebula

I like horses.

Does reality always win?

The answer may be yes, but sometimes not in time for the people involved. But that's no reason for despair.

Freedom implies the ability to make mistakes; it may even imply the necessity of them. Well might the perfect being exclaim: “not till now have I understood the tale of your people and their fall. … For if this is indeed, as the Eldar say, the gift of the One to Men, it is bitter to receive.” Bitter indeed; for freedom is humanity’s curse and greatest gift, the ground of both fall and redemption. It is our common fate and our staircase to the stars.

Cronkite's former chef to tell all

Walter Cronkite has his enemies, and it turns out one of them cooked for him.

Terri Schwab, Cronkite's former chef and manager of his Martha's Vineyard home for 10 years is shopping a tome that charges Cronkite suffered from dementia and was hated by his three children. Schwab said the newsman had a nasty temper and was never around for his three kids ...

That's a book I'll buy.

Questions about the reported abduction of Pfc. Bowe Bergdahl

Michelle Malikin has a roundup.

Dude, Where’s My Budget?

From Rightpundits.com

... The federal budget is due for release right now, but it’s being delayed because it bears bad news, and no, we don’t need bad news now that the administration is pushing for that “free healthcare” that will cost trillion$, the cap-and-tax that will bring the economy to a grinding halt, and possibly a second “stimulus” bill.

The AP speculates ...

The White House is being forced to acknowledge the wide gap between its once-upbeat predictions about the economy and today's bleak landscape.

The administration's annual midsummer budget update is sure to show higher deficits and unemployment and slower growth than projected in President Barack Obama's budget in February and update in May, and that could complicate his efforts to get his signature health care and global-warming proposals through Congress.

The release of the update - usually scheduled for mid-July - has been put off until the middle of next month, giving rise to speculation the White House is delaying the bad news at least until Congress leaves town on its August 7 summer recess.

Ya think?

How's that transparency working out for you?

No, you can’t see the numbers; the King is a Fink

From the Anchoress:

So, the White House is not going to give us taxpayers a timely update on the nation’s money and employment situation.
They’re just gonna “hold that information back” until Congress goes into recess.
They’re just gonna keep everyone in the dark until they muscle through his unpopular Healthcare legislation – that 1,000-page, unread, undebated document – that will push our deficit into unbearable territory, give the government unprecedented control over our lives and will quickly render healthcare in America unrecognizable, for must of us, although the politicians will do alright.
Obamacare will also federally fund abortions in direct contrast to what the president seemed to tell the pope, mere weeks ago.
I am waiting to hear the outrage in the press, over the heavy-handed, brazen and rather arrogant moves of a president who sounded downright thuggish last week when he went before the microphone and said this monstrosity was going to pass, and it was going to pass quickly and “I mean it.”

[Don't hold your breath]

President Obama’s daily finger-wags and bully-pulpits are not in the mode ala President Bush, who said, “I have all this political capital, and I’m going to spend it,” which the press found unpardonably arrogant. It’s not even Obama saying, “I won,” which made the media giggle. This withholding of public information/ramming through of legislation is a whole ‘nother kind of arrogance.

Is an election fair if the results are tabulated before the voting begins?

"In Honduras, according to breaking Catalan newspaper reports (translations available, USA Today mention), authorities have seized 45 computers containing certified election results for a constitutional election that never happened. The election had been scheduled for June 28, but on that day the president, Manuel Zelaya, was ousted. The 'certified' and detailed electronic records of the non-existent election show Zelaya's side having won overwhelmingly."

I wonder how much press coverage this will get in the MSM?

What would Jesus carry?

CNN dimb bulbs...

In Iran it's illegal to execute a girl if she's a virgin, so you rape her first.

Mark Steyn at NRO ...

In an Iranian prison, marriage is till death do us part:

He said he had been a highly regarded member of the force, and had so "impressed my superiors" that, at 18, "I was given the 'honor' to temporarily marry young girls before they were sentenced to death."

In the Islamic Republic it is illegal to execute a young woman, regardless of her crime, if she is a virgin, he explained. Therefore a "wedding" ceremony is conducted the night before the execution: The young girl is forced to have sexual intercourse with a prison guard - essentially raped by her "husband."

"I regret that, even though the marriages were legal," he said.

Why the regret, if the marriages were "legal?"

"Because," he went on, "I could tell that the girls were more afraid of their 'wedding' night than of the execution that awaited them in the morning. And they would always fight back, so we would have to put sleeping pills in their food. By morning the girls would have an empty expression; it seemed like they were ready or wanted to die.

"It is illegal to execute a young woman ...if she is a virgin": Must be convenient to have a legal code that obliges all your pathologies.

In 2002, even D.C. Democrats wanted to get Osama bin Laden and his lieutenants more than they wanted to get Dick Cheney.

How times have changed.

Debra J. Saunders at Townhall: The Gang That Couldn't Shoot -- Period

Such are the sensibilities in Washington that, collateral damage notwithstanding, it is politically safer to bomb terrorists than to shoot them.

While Democrats demanding an investigation might have set out to mess with Cheney, the only clear casualty to date is one of their own: Panetta.

He rushed to disclose the nonoperational covert operation to Intelligence Committee members, and unnamed sources rewarded his candor by leaking the story. He shut down a program that, if never implemented, makes complete sense in time of war. Add it all together and Panetta got rolled.

The message to agency staff may be unintended, but it is clear: If there's anyone left at CIA headquarters who wants to defeat al-Qaida, that person would be well advised to hire a lawyer first. Or maybe a shrink.

The faux outrage is backfiring on the numskulls who are making a big deal out of this. Average Americans have to be scratching their heads. "You mean we don't have any people at the CIA that can actually, you know, go out and shoot the bad guys?" And "The Democrats in Congress are upset that we tried to begin a training program to get OBL and his henchmen after he killed 3000 Americans?" Are they upset that we did not have the resources, that we did not develop the resources or that they were not told that we did not have the resources and we never did develop the resources?

What?

The problem for the Democrats is that Walter Cronkite is dead and his acolytes no longer have the information channels to themselves. People are no longer glued to the boob tube nodding their heads in glazed acceptance of the newsreaders' spin of events. It's more difficult these days to persuade people that victory is defeat and that black is white. They really don't get the Biden explanation that the government has to spend more to keep from going bankrupt.

Walter Cronkite is dead, and that's a big deal.

I will never forget Chappaquiddick

Scott Johnson at Powerline ...

Ted Kennedy has styled himself an opponent of wealth and privilege, but his career is a tribute to their power when wielded by a man of the left. The lesson of Chappaquiddick thus remains timely forty years on.

I thought I would take a moment to bother you all, ladies included, to remind everyone that this is the 40th anniversary of the infamous Chappaquiddick incident in which an inebriated Senator Ted Kennedy marked a reunion of his brother Bobby's "Boiler Room" girls by driving one to her death off the Dyke Road bridge.

This manslaughter might have been forgiven if Kennedy hadn't decided to evade responsibility for the accident and cover it up by failing to report it, trying to co-opt one of his aides to cop to being the driver, and then leaving them to try and fix it for him for over seven hours.

Worse, Mary Jo Kopechne, whose drowned body was found in a position trying to eke out the last molecules of air within the submerged car, was left to drown by the self-involved Senator, who chose not to seek immediate help.

After proceedings by a Kennedy-friendly judicial system in Massachusetts, Kennedy was found guilty of leaving the scene of an accident and had his driver's license suspended. But perhaps the crowning event was Kennedy's appalling nationally-televised apologia, which I remember viewing on TV, and which still reigns as probably the worst and most self-indulgent political pitch ever.

The Kennedy family has received its reward for all it has done. I'm not sure that the American people were wicked enough to have deserved them.

JOE BIDEN'S TERRIBLE TRUTHS

James Lileks in the NY Post ...

The "gaffes," as we call unscripted thoughts, come delightfully often with Biden. The latest: Speaking before the AARP, Biden aarped up a peculiar formulation to explain the need to borrow 3.2 bejillion dollars in order to transform the American health care system, preferably by next week. He said people ask him "What are you talking about, you're telling me we have to go spend money to keep from going bankrupt? The answer is yes, 'I'm telling you.'"

In Vietnam-era terms: we have to burn the hospital in order to save it. Even if that means losing the burn unit.

In one sense, Biden's logic isn't new; anyone who said we had to partition Iraq to save it is perfectly capable of believing we have to dig a deep hole now to keep from falling into a deeper hole later. But how does this fit with Biden's other summer misstatements? Let's take a quick review.

Read the rest.

The Gelded Age

Per Mark Steyn.

Having taken care of the grueling task of destroying the American economy, Congress turns it eyes on birth control for wild horses and burros for a mere $700 million dollars. In the Obama budget, a rounding error.

On Friday, the House voted on the Restore Our American Mustangs Act — or ROAM. Like all acronymically cute legislation, its name bears little relation to what it actually does: It’s not about “restoring” mustangs....

Under this legislation, no horses or burros could be, ah, terminated, and they would have to be released from their holding pens after six months. To facilitate the release of the tame “wild horse” population, the act adds to their present 33-million acre habitat (that’s bigger than New York State) another 20 million acres — or approximately the size of Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Vermont combined. The Congressional Budget Office estimates the total tab at around $700 million — ie, chump change. If you look for it in the line-item budget, it comes down at the bottom under “rounding error.” It’s a mere ten-and-a-half grand per mustang. If you’re wondering why it costs more to keep a horse on 52 million acres of wilderness than it does to stable him at an upscale horse farm in New England, that’s because, in order to prevent the mustang population doubling again by 2013 and requiring the annexation of another 50 million acres (ie, an area the size of Ireland, Denmark, Belgium, and the Netherlands combined), the bill mandates “enhanced” contraception for horses and burros.

Someday our granchildren will look at this and view this the same way we view the Wright flyer.

This picture is already 40 years old!

Some weirdoes at Volokh again.

I have been gently chastised by Glenn Reynolds for an occasional negative comment regarding the Volokh Conspiracy. It’s not the “conspirators” themselves who are the problem so much as the audience they attract. Glenn wisely, perhaps, does not allow comments. The people who have posting privileges are – mostly – law professors, so their posts are sane. The same cannot be said for the comments that follow. Why this concerns me I’ll get into a little later.

David Bernstein posted an essay entitled HRW's Whitson Defends Fundraising in Totalitarian Countries

The subject was Human Rights Watch soliciting funds from the Saudis. But the comments swerved into a discussion of evangelical Christians with this comment by someone calling himself “Seattle Law Student” who said

I might well be a republican were it not for the Messianic Christianity of their base*. I lived in Germany, they are good people, it took one charismatic douchebag to turn them into raving lunatics. I look at the republican base and see that waiting to happen.

Right now there is an odd confluence between far right wing Christians who want to see the temple rebuilt to hasten the end times and Israel. That is not a stable pairing.

* that and the party's absurd stance on personal liberties and other social issues.

He got some pushback.
That was followed by this comment:

I was characterizing why I'm not a Repbulican,[sic] based on my perceptions of Movement/Fundamentalist/Evangelical Christianity, not Christianity itself. Christianity in its many forms is a beautiful religion held dear by many millions of good people.

If I offended you, I apologize.

That said, to outsiders elements of Movement/Fundamentalist/Evangelical Christianity are genuinely scary. As is true of fundamentalists of any stripe, be they Christian, Jewish, Muslim, environmentalist, libertarian or whatever. When absolute certainty erodes doubt there is no room for rational discussion. I'm uncomfortable with people with whom I cannot hold such a discussion.

Which then led a commenter calling himself “Jukeboxgrad” to raise the level of discourse:

The Left Behind series has sold 65 million copies. A major theme of these books is that non-Christians are doomed, and this doom is portrayed in gory detail. The associated video game "rewards children for how effectively they role play the killing of those who resist becoming a born again Christian."

Jukeboxgrad lets his paranoia out for a stroll:

The video game embodies the former. And it's a short leap from the latter to the former. Once I believe that someone deserves to die, it becomes fairly easy to convince myself that I might as well kill him. Exhibit A: Scott Roeder.

And lots of people who aren't willing to pull the trigger are content to provide various forms of support to the person who is.

Infidels like me are an offense to and a potential target of all violent fundamentalists, and not just the ones that live in a cave on the other side of the world.

And compares these books to Mein Kampf

If we suddenly discovered that millions of copies of Mein Kampf (or some book expressing a similar philosophy) were flying off the shelf, we would probably not gloss over that by saying readers just found it "diverting." We would rightly be concerned. Because as a general rule, works of popular culture (books, movies, music) succeed when they find an audience which feels an affinity to the perspective expressed in that work.

Why do I consider this disturbing?

Because it’s a law blog.

People who are attracted to this blog are lawyers or lawyers in training. This is disturbing because it exposes a level of ignorance, hatred or virulence that is dangerous in the legal community. As a student of history, it bothers me that many of the leaders of the French Revolution were lawyers. These were the leaders who created the Great Terror in which thousand died because they were the wrong religion or the wrong birth. And they were superbly logical - and thorough. We expect a certain fustiness of our lawyers. Like a friendly dog, it’s unsettling when we find out they are rabid.

HEALTH RATIONS AND YOU

Doing your part for ObamaCare.

It's The Best!

Demographic Dead Ends

Mark Steyn makes the obvious point about the effects of birth rates that do not replace people who are dying. Japan is exhibit “A.”

Japan's population peaked in 2004 at about 127.8 million and is projected to fall to 89.9 million by 2055. The ratio of working-age to elderly Japanese fell from 8 to 1 in 1975 to 3.3 to 1 in 2005 and may shrivel to 1.3 to 1 in 2055. "In 2055, people will come to work when they have time off from long-term care," said Kiyoaki Fujiwara, director of economic policy at the Japan Business Federation.

Such a decline is cataclysmic for an indebted country that values infrastructure and personal service. (Who is going to maintain the trains, pay for social benefits, slice sushi at the Tsukiji fish market?) The obvious answers—encourage immigration and a higher birthrate—have proved difficult, even impossible, for this conservative society.

Steyn asks what the younger people in these countries will do.

The transformation of developed societies - either into old folks' homes (like Japan) or semi-Islamized dystopias (like Amsterdam, Brussels, etc) - will lead, in fact, to emigration. A young German or Japanese circa 2040 will have no reason whatsoever to stay in his native land and have most of his income confiscated in a vain attempt to prop up an unsustainable geriatric welfare system. So many will leave. Where will they go?

That's a very good question.

But the population of the earth is expanding and - I suspect – will continue to expand. Since the Japanese are not reproducing themselves, and neither are most of the Europeans, Russians, or Canadians, the answer is that the population will shift ever more heavily toward Africans or Asians. China has instituted a policy to limit births. In other parts of the world this is not so. India has not, Latin America has not, and neither have the Muslim countries.

In 100 years, the future may well belong to Latin America, Asia and Africa. Given their political past and present, that is not a reassuring thought.

Peggy Noonan: Sarah Palin Jealous

From the American Thinker

You're Peggy Noonan and you're jealous. You are a card-carrying member of the intellectual conservative elite, a PBS-anointed expert on family values who worked for both Ronald Reagan and Dan Rather, a talented speechwriter and wordsmith. And you are fuming: Sarah Palin refuses to be yesterday's news. You just can't get her out of your mind.

And, what's worse, everyone continues to talk about her. You've tried everything, using your mainstream media platforms, your Wall Street Journal columns, and powerful friends -- so many of them -- to savage her, to give her a rhetorical beating so fierce that it would bring a smile to the face of Vince McMahon -- if you knew who he is, and if you had ever watched a WWE wrestling match, which he heads. "She is a complete elite confection. She might as well have been a bonbon," you wrote, your $300 manicured fingers shaking on the keyboard.
...
You're Peggy Noonan and you're jealous. Your "beyond the mundane" co-founders -- "buds" as the Sarah Palin types so crassly put it-for your new venture are the essence of your kind of middle America: they include "60 Minutes" reporter Lesley Stahl; actresses Candice Bergen (actress, Democratic and Planned Parenthood spokesperson), Whoopi Goldberg (dropped by advertisers after a nasty Bush joke at a Democratic fundraiser and then hired by The View, a Barbara Walters talk show on ABC ), and Marlo Thomas (a major Democratic donor who is married to Bush-hater Phil Donahue), your type of conservatives, which puts them a bit to the right of Hugo Chavez. But after a year the audience is less than 20 percent of what you defined as success, your investors are worried, and the same women who pack Sarah Palin rallies are ignoring your venture, which features such pieces as "Michelle Obama's Scintillating Style" and "French Fashion Designers Churn Out Stylish Burqhas."What is wrong with this country? Isn't anyone a real conservative anymore? Don't they listen to you? Can't they read without moving their lips?You're Peggy Noonan and you're jealous. And, worst of all, Sarah Palin is not.

Read the whole thing.

Why I don’t mourn Walter Cronkite

Walter Cronkite is dead and I extend my sympathy to this relatives and friends who grieve. As for me, I cannot find it in myself to mourn his passing. I watched his version of the news constantly, recalling his famous closing line “and that’s the way it is.” The problem is, as I learned later, that’s not the way it was.

Walter Cronkite was labeled – I don’t know by whom, probably the marketing department at CBS News - as “the most trusted man in America.” He, and many others, used that trust to create an aura around the news business that it has taken literally decades to reveal as a false front. At a time when information was one-way and media outlets were severely limited in number, the version of reality that was reflected by Walter Cronkite shaped public opinion so massively that opposing opinions stood no chance. That is why it was Walter Cronkite who ended America’s quest for victory in Viet Nam.

When Lyndon Johnson said that "If I've lost Cronkite, I've lost Middle America." He recognized a political truth. Consider this.

In mid-February, in the immediate aftermath of the Tet Offensive, both Gallup and Harris noted a surge in American support for the war. Both pollsters said 61% of Americans favored a stronger military response against the North Vietnamese Army. 70% of Americans favored increased bombing of North Vietnamese targets, which was up from 63% in the previous December.

Then came Cronkite's February 27 commentary.

To say that we are closer to victory today is to believe, in the face of the evidence, the optimists who have been wrong in the past. To suggest we are on the edge of defeat is to yield to unreasonable pessimism. To say that we are mired in stalemate seems the only realistic, yet unsatisfactory conclusion.

In early March, just a few days later, 49% of Americans said it was a mistake to have entered the Vietnam conflict. Only 35% believed the war would end within two years. 69% now approved of a phased withdrawal of American troops from Vietnam.*

The political power Cronkite wielded was acknowledged not just by Lyndon Johnson - who effectively ceded control of America's war policy to a news commentator - but is acknowledged by his cohorts in the news business:

It is impossible to imagine CBS News, journalism or indeed America without Walter Cronkite," CBS News president Sean McManus said in a statement. "More than just the best and most trusted anchor in history, he guided America through our crises, tragedies and also our victories and greatest moments."

Repeat that in your mind: "He guided America." An employee of CBS news "guided America." This is not a brief for Lyndon Johnson or the literal crooks and clowns who inhabit the house and senate, but the power that Cronkite wielded over America is troubling to me.

From the same article we are reminded that Cronkite had a team. And who was on that team? Eric Severeid, Daniel Schorr, Dan Rather, Roger Mudd, Mike Wallace. See anyone there who you would recognize as a Conservative voice? Neither do I. Today Daniel Schorr delivers diatribes against the Right from his sinecure at NPR and Dan Rather maintains that it was those damn Right Wingers who smeared him by exposing his phony Bush papers story.

Cronkite, it was said, “did not editorialize often.” Well, let’s put it this way, he did not come out and say “this is my opinion.” But his way of editorializing is the same craft that the media used in his time and ever since: selective use of facts, the omission of this story, the emphasis on that story, all used to weave a version of reality that people believed about the world around them beyond the reach of their five senses.

Walter Cronkite gained immense power and, in my opinion used that power badly to advance his personal wealth and his personal ideology. There’s a lot of money to be made if you are the “most trusted man in America.” And you can convince a lot of people that “that’s the way it is” if they believe you.

The healthiest thing for American democracy has been the internet, having broken the death-grip that the mainstream media have had on American perspectives of reality. Had Walter Cronkite lived with the internet, his title and his sign off line would have been laughed at.

Rest in peace.

UPDATE: Roger Kimball has a few thoughts ...

His success was not a matter of substance. It was a matter of tone. As that piece in the LA Times acknowledged, “The news that Cronkite reported was barely distinct from the news his colleague-competitors reported.” Indeed. He didn’t research or write the news. He read it. He emitted the same platitudes every other news reader mouthed. He did so, however, with a sort of cardigan authenticity that used car salesmen would climb naked over broken bottles to emulate. When JFK was assassinated, Cronkite wept, almost. He swooned when Neil Armstrong walked upon the moon. He was righteously indignant over the war in Vietnam Watergate and the war in Iraq. How he loathed President Bush, how he admired President Carter, the “smartest” president he ever met. He was a partisan news reader whose reputation for impartiality survived only because he espoused the same ideology as those in the media who determine who is awarded points for impartiality. Liberals like Cronkite suppose they are objective because they are secure in the belief that their opinions represent a neutral state of nature. It is (they believe) only those who dissent from those opinions who bring politics into the equation.

Franken, Sotomayor and Perry Mason

From TheHill

... before wrapping up his question time, Franken returned to "Perry Mason," posing to Sotomayor the only question that has stumped her so far during the Judiciary Committee hearings.

Franken asked Sotomayor the name of the one case where Mason’s client was actually guilty.

But Sotomayor, for all her knowledge of real-life cases, couldn’t come up with the answer, prompting mock surprise and disappointment from the senator.

“Didn’t the White House prepare you?” ...

Sotomayor assured the panel that “I watched it all of the time” but could not remember.

Why does the Government need to hire someone to create humor in the workplace when we already have Joe Biden?

Jon Sanders remarks on Team Obama's ad for a workplace comic ...

The glaring redundancy of the position became obvious. Who counsels spending more to avoid bankruptcy ? Joe Biden. Who says that if milk prices went up 57 percent, there'd be a lot of dead cows ? Joe Biden. Who said that if the Obama administration did everything right, there was a 30 percent chance they'd be wrong ? You know it.
The man is a master, reducing stress at every workplace across America (save one) with each new addle pated utterance. Not since "The Far Side" of Gary Larson have people been treated to the daily enjoyment of a perfect blend of the hilarious and the weird. Who needs workshops?

"You lowlife fascists." Jackie Mason on the critics of Sarah Palin

Via Theo Spark.

Iowahawk channels that wise Latina woman

This is exactly the kind of wise, precedent-faithful Latina legal approach that I believe will be welcome by others on the Supreme Court bench, all of whom bring their own unique genetic legal wisdom and instinctual empathy. Justices Roberts and Souter for example, with their aloof, sexless, constipated, emotionally-stunted WASPy intellects and natural affinity for preppy white collar criminals. Justice Stevens has this as well, along with a keen grasp for the legal issues facing Americans with senile dementia. As an Irishman, Justice Kennedy enjoys a natural "gift of the gab" and poetically tragic alcoholism. Like you, I imagine that Justice Breyer can be kind of pushy and whiny, but we should also remember that as a Jew he is probably very skilled at cases that involve complicated numbers and math. To the casual observer, it probably seems absurd to have greasy Italian "goodfellas" like Justices Alito and Scalia working inside the legal system, but if we give them a chance they may eventually break the code of Omerta and finally turn state's evidence against their Cosa Nostra bosses. Yes, many have criticized Justice Thomas for being a self-hating "Oreo" and "Uncle Tom," but I like to think that deep inside him still lurks the the DNA of an angry Cadillac-driving streetwise Superfly, ready to show "The Man" that his pimp hand is strong.

McCaskill's Office Locks Doors, Pulls Blinds, Calls Cops & Forces Obamacare Protesters Off Public Property

Gateway Pundit (with video and lots of pictures).

H/T Instapundit.

Newsflash: CIA can't kill al-Qaeda

Johan Goldberg: Anger Over CIA Flap Is Misplaced

Call me crazy, but I just assumed that the CIA was out there trying to kill as many senior members of al-Qaeda as it could. Congress, in the spirit of broad patriotic bipartisan righteousness, authorized the use of force on al-Qaeda after it killed 3,000 Americans on Sept. 11, 2001. Now we find out that the CIA lacked the competence or will to hunt down and kill men desperately in need of killing.

"It was like being in Mississippi in 1945."

National Black Chamber of Commerce CEO Harry C. Alford talked with Breitbart.tv editors Scott Baker and Liz Stephans during Thursday afternoon's live edition of "The B-Cast."

Black Chamber of Commerce CEO Rips Sen. Boxer for ‘Condescending’ Racial Remarks



A black swan event.

Where’s the ACLU?

I recently wrote an essay (I want to say column, but I don’t want to be confused with literary pornographers like Paul Krugman) about Casually Slurring Christians which generated a debate about whether the ACLU was a defender or an attacker of Christianity in America.

What is not in dispute is that the ACLU is litigious. They will threaten to sue at the drop of a crucifix or the threat to utter a prayer at a public function.

So where is the ACLU when it comes to some questionable – some would say illegal – acts of the Obama administration? Which is a greater threat to American civil liberties: a cross on a hill or a government official ordering the chairman and board of directors of a private company to resign? What is the bigger threat to civil liberty: valedictorian of Foothill High, Brittany McComb, sharing her faith voluntarily at her graduation ceremony or a President over-ruling the law regarding the distribution of assets when a company goes bankrupt – to the benefit of said President's political contributors – as in the case of Chrysler?

The argument may be made that the company in question is a debtor of the government. Whether governments should lend money to private companies is an issue for another day because collaboration between big business and big government has an unsavory history.

Shareholders – and even creditors – of companies have been known to demand changes in management. But that is the private sector negotiating among itself. The government stands in a much different position to corporations than do private creditors and shareholders. The latter can’t send the IRS, the SEC, the FBI, and all the other agencies of coercion to threaten you with jail if you don’t agree.

I am amazed and baffled that there have been no outcries from the self-described “civil libertarians” in the legal community about the actions of the Obama administration. Team Obama’s annexation of some huge chunks of the private sector has gone virtually unremarked from a legal perspective. Except for a few scattered lawsuits regarding the Chrysler and GM takeovers - suits that were quickly quashed by pressure from the White House – the legal eagles have been largely silent regarding the clear threats to civil liberties. The same lawyers that demanded that foreign terrorists captured in foreign countries during a war should be treated like domestic criminals including Miranda warnings – are silent when the government in-effect nationalizes private property.

I was going to say strangely silent, but I never really expected that the Left, the law professors and legal Libertarians really were being honest about wishing to preserve civil liberties. By their silence they appear to be perfectly fine with a Liberal Fascism. They couch their disagreement – if any exist – on policy rather than legal grounds. It strikes me as a cowardly ducking of the issues. Of course there does not appear to be a support group in the legal professoriate for anyone who wants to defy a popular demagogue, thus demonstrating the level of courage for which the academy is famous.

What's disappointing is that Conservatives don't seem to have the legal infrastructure to do for the Right what the ACLU does for the Left.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg's Senior Moment

When you get to be a certain age, you let go of your inhibitions (trust me on this) and say what’s on your mind. When you are a Supreme Court Justice with lifetime tenure and you are within a few years of retiring, you can let your inner racist-eugenicist out.

Jonah Goldberg is polite when he questions what Ginsburg meant in her interview with the NY Times.

Here's what Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said in Sunday's New York Times Magazine: "Frankly I had thought that at the time (Roe v. Wade) was decided," Ginsburg told her interviewer, Emily Bazelon, "there was concern about population growth and particularly growth in populations that we don't want to have too many of." ...

Ginsburg's certainly right that abortion has deep roots in the historic effort to "weed out" undesired groups. For instance, Margaret Sanger, the revered feminist and founder of Planned Parenthood, was a racist eugenicist of the first order. Even more perplexing: She's become a champion of "reproductive freedom" even though she proposed a "Code to Stop Overproduction of Children," under which "no woman shall have a legal right to bear a child without a permit." (Poor blacks would have had a particularly hard time getting such licenses from Sanger.)

If Ginsburg does see eugenic culling as a compelling state interest, she'd be in fine company on the court. Oliver Wendell Holmes was a passionate believer in such things. In 1915, Holmes wrote in the Illinois Law Review that the "starting point for an ideal for the law" should be the "coordinated human effort ... to build a race."

The assumption is made by Goldberg and others that these advocates of government control - or “encouragement” - of “family planning” were race based. But this is an assumption that may have penumbras and emanations (to quote one famous Supreme Court decision). Can’t we assume also that the eugenics movement may also have as an objective the selective breeding of people who no longer believe in God? The people who were in the forefront of the that movement also believed that religious belief was irrational and even dangerous to the kind of rational, ordered society they envisioned.

Even people who in other contexts make fine distinctions, have trouble seeing the difference between - say - Ayatollahs and Christians.

I can well see Ruth Bader Ginsburg – a leading light of the ACLU – deciding that too many fundamentalist Christians were breeding. Not good for a “enlightened secular” society, eh Ruth?

Of course, John Holdren, Obama's science czar shares Ginsburg's views on culling the human race, so why should we be shocked? Their views are become mainstream Democrat beliefs - again.

Ann Coulter on the Senate Supreme Court hearings

Sen. Patrick Leahy lied about Estrada's nomination, blaming it on Republicans: "He was not given a hearing when the Republicans were in charge. He was given a hearing when the Democrats were in charge."

The Republicans were "in charge" for precisely 14 days between Estrada's nomination on May 9, 2001, and May 24, 2001, when Sen. Jim Jeffords switched parties, giving Democrats control of the Senate. The Democrats then refused to hold a hearing on Estrada's nomination for approximately 480 days, shortly before the 2002 election.

Even after Republicans won back a narrow majority in 2003, Estrada was blocked "by an extraordinary filibuster mounted by Senate Democrats" -- as The New York Times put it.

Memos from the Democratic staff of the Judiciary Committee were later unearthed, revealing that they considered Estrada "especially dangerous" -- as stated in a memo by a Sen. Dick Durbin staffer -- because "he is Latino and the White House seems to be grooming him for a Supreme Court appointment."

Sandy Berger wasn't available to steal back the memos, so Durbin ordered Capitol Police to seize the documents from Senate computer servers and lock them in a police vault.

How can you tell when Leahy is lying? His lips are moving.

When it's a choice between a mad scientist and a Christian, it's the Christian who is fed to the lions

Have you heard the latest controversy over an Obama appointment? No, not the guy who thinks that people should be sterilized by putting things in the drinking water, but the Christian.

Foiling the Next 9/11 and Not Even Knowing It

How long can we stay lucky?

The United States may have narrowly missed a repeat of the 9/11 attacks in June — and, apparently, even the FBI doesn’t realize it.

On June 4, a 24-year-old Muslim man named Raed Abdhul-Rahman Alsaif was arrested for trying to bring a seven-inch knife on board a U.S. Airways flight at Tampa International Airport, destined for Phoenix. The blade was seen by a screener and Alsaif was caught before he could get onto the airliner. Of course, he says he is innocent, as some forgetful friend gave him the luggage bag and failed to mention that a knife was embedded inside the material, which the criminal complaint states was “artfully” concealed in such a way as to allow for it to be retrieved once the flight took off.

In which Sotomayor addresses the constitutionality of nunchucks

Nearly all my professors are Democrats. Isn't that a problem?

The professors don't seem to think so. A journalism student at the University of Oregon wrote an article for the student paper. The result shocked him.

In my column, published in the campus newspaper The Oregon Daily Emerald June 1, I suggested that such a disparity hurt UO. I argued that the lifeblood of higher education was subjecting students to diverse viewpoints and the university needed to work on attracting more conservative professors.
...
A professor who confronted me declared that he was "personally offended" by my column. He railed that his political viewpoints never affected his teaching and suggested that if I wanted a faculty with Republicans I should have attended a university in the South. "If you like conservatism you can certainly attend the University of Texas and you can walk past the statue of Jefferson Davis everyday on your way to class," he wrote in an e-mail.

I was shocked by such a comment, which seemed an attempt to link Republicans with racist orthodoxy. When I wrote back expressing my offense, he neither apologized nor clarified his remarks.

Instead, he reiterated them on the record. Was such a brazen expression of partisanship representative of the faculty as a whole? I decided to speak with him in person in the hope of finding common ground.

He was eager to chat, and after five minutes our dialogue bloomed into a lively discussion. As we hammered away at the issue, one of his colleagues with whom he shared an office grew visibly agitated. Then, while I was in mid-sentence, she exploded.

"You think you're so [expletive] cute with your little column," she told me. "I read your piece and all you want is attention. You're just like Bill O'Reilly. You just want to get up on your [expletive] soapbox and have people look at you."

I think it's a problem, but that's just me.

Casually Slurring Christians

When was the last time you have heard – or seen in print – a casual racial or ethnic slur? Don Imus was fired for one. And don’t try any stupid Polish jokes or money hungry Jewish comments. But it seems that the casual Christian slur is still tossed out without a second thought.

I mention this because I was reading Dennis Gartman’s newsletter yesterday and ran across a comment that offended me.

First let me say that I think a great deal of Dennis Gartman. He and I are totally in tune economically and politically, so I was struck by a comparison he made that hit me as so unlikely that I felt I had to tell him what I thought.

To set the stage, Dennis wrote a section on Iranian politics on the assumption that the political turmoil there is not over and that it would be useful to know who the players were to keep score.


Here’s my e-mail:

Dear Dennis,

I read the Gartman Letter in my office … and as a fellow resident of Tidewater Virginia I appreciate both your market and your political commentary. So it pains me to make my first message to you in the form of a disagreement.

Your Tuesday July 14th letter contained the following passage, referring to the “names” in Iran: “He is supported on the archly religious side by Ayatollah Taghi Mesbah Yazdi, who is the Iranian correlative to the fundamentalist Christian sects, here in the US.”

Despite the fact that I consider myself a fundamentalist Christian, I don’t handle snakes. I can’t remember the last time our congregation stoned an adulteress to death and we have not hung any homosexuals this year – or last year – if I remember correctly. We allow out womenfolk to go out without male supervision and don’t insist that they keep their hair covered lest we are overcome with lust.

Regarding the intersection of church and state, we’re not so much interested in imposing a theocracy as we are in making sure that no mention of Jesus escapes our lips in a public setting just in case the ACLU is listening. Our religious police mainly keep the church lawn mowed and the trash picked up in the parking lot. And I cannot imagine the leaders of the Baptists getting together with the Methodists to pre-screen the approved candidates for the next presidential election.

Other than that, Dennis, the correlation between us Christian fundamentalists and the Iranian Ayatollahs is so close that they are amazingly hard to tell apart. I use as clues the facial hair, the turban and the accent.

Regards,

As I get older, and as I learn from people and groups whose prickliness gets results, I have decided that turning the other cheek is a good Biblical admonition, but perhaps returning the slap is simply one more sin for which I have to ask forgiveness.

Casting "dispersions"

Port St. Lucie apologizes to Treasure Coast Tea Party

After a week of complaints about a sign at Freedomfest on July 4, city
officials apologized to the Treasure Coast Tea Party.

“It was not our intent to interfere or cast dispersions on the tea party,” said City Manager Don Cooper, who took responsibility for what he called a “bone-head decision.”

Rush Limbaugh often makes fun of Port St. Lucie. Now that he lives in Florida, he's using it instead of Rio Linda as an object of derision.

I wonder what he will do with this?

Breaking News

A man carrying a gun ate lunch in a restaurant that serves alcohol. Nobody was harmed in the course of the meal.

Incredible.

Are Obamas' Czars Above the Law?

Roger's Rules:

Back in April, when I first explained “Why Steven Rattner is Above the Law“, I pointed out that if you or I were (per impossible) to try this pay-to-play gambit with a state pension fund, we’d have the law on us before you can say “Andrew Cuomo.” If you are Steven Rattner, Obama Czar, however, you get The New York Times to sniff that “There is no indication in the complaint that Mr. Rattner faces criminal or civil charges in connection with the inquiry.”...

The deeper question concerns what George Will identified as “the tincture of lawlessness” that hovers about the Obama administration. Will was thinking primarily of the way Chrysler’s supposedly secured bondholders were treated, but in fact that maculation affects many aspects of the Obama administration. I suspect that key officials in the administration — beginning, I fear, with the President himself — do not really understand what the rule of law is all about. The nomination of Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court is one evidence of that deficit. Senator Al Franken, reverting to his earlier career as a comedian, publicly stated that in his view Sotomayor was “the most experienced Supreme Court nominee in 100 years.” (Ha, ha: what a card!) Obama’s reliance on powerful lieutenants who proceed with little or no public vetting or oversight — a.k.a., “czars” like Steven Rattner — is another dramatic example of the administration’s impatience with the rule of law. According to one report, Obama has named at least 18 such czars — people who wield enormous power but who are appointed without Senatorial scrutiny and who proceed more or less without accountability, except to the President.

Buying Honduras

A rich Leftist, draft dodging asshole by the name of Allen Andersson bought the election for Zelaya. After getting a this would-be dictator elected, a man who he characterizes as a

lazy, ineffective and clownish jerk

He leaves the Hondurans to clean up his messes and decides to live in New Hampshire. If there is any justice in the world, he will find himself living in Honduras, subject to the whims of fat-cat liberals who are bored and find it amusing to destroy little countries.

An F-22A Raptor--USA's cutting-edge fighter--pops flares over Kadena Air Base

It Looks Like Sarah Palin is Following My Advice

While all the "nattering nabobs of negativity" (to quote a former VP) were busy writing Sarah Palin's obituary while dancing on her grave, I predicted that she would come out and begin a conversation with the American people. Specifically, here is what I said in my essay What Palin Could, And Should, Do

Here's my suggestion for the key topic she should be focused on: ENERGY.

Outside of glaciers and polar bears, it's what Alaska is known for. It's also the area of Palin's greatest expertise. It also happens to be topic number one for most Americans. Every time they fill their gas tank, every time they pay their electric bills, every time they discuss "cap and trade," every time they see windmills on the horizon and know - in their hearts - that these ugly machines are not going to be the solution, they will think about Sarah Palin.

She will talk persuasively about the Democrats' refusal to tap the billions of barrels of oil in Alaska's wildlife refuge, about denying Americans access to clean coal in Utah, about the refusal of congress to explore for oil and gas off our coasts even as foreign companies are doing exactly that, about congress' refusal to allow the expansion of clean and proven nuclear power plants, the government's wrongheaded policies that make us rely more and more on foreign sources of energy even as they claim to be doing exactly the opposite.

She will be doing something that she does best: connecting with the American people in terms that they can understand. And she will be pointing out that the problem is a bipartisan one. She will have the opportunity to take on pandering and corruption on both sides of the aisle, just as she did in Alaska.

In Palin and the politics of abundance I said:

Sarah Palin can become the spokesman for abundance while the left preaches the politics if scarcity. The Left’s solution to the issue of energy is to try to cope with scarcity. Every “solution” they propose is build on the assumption that energy is going to be less available and more expensive. Even their technological fixes - wind and solar power – are no one’s idea of the source of abundant energy.
...
To this Leftist dystopia, Palin can bring the politics of abundance. The development of our own natural resources including oil, natural gas and coal. The re-vitalization of the nuclear power industry. Research can be funded to develop new power sources, but ones that are at least as efficient as current sources without requiring taxpayer subsidies to compete.

If given a choice between a vision of scarcity and a vision of plenty, a people will choose the path of plenty every time.

Sarah, are you listening?

Somehow, I suspect that she has it figured out already.

So imagine my surprise - NOT - when Palin emerges from her Alaska cocoon with an Op-Ed in the Washington Post The 'Cap And Tax' Dead End

Here's just a taste:

American prosperity has always been driven by the steady supply of abundant, affordable energy. Particularly in Alaska, we understand the inherent link between energy and prosperity, energy and opportunity, and energy and security. Consequently, many of us in this huge, energy-rich state recognize that the president's cap-and-trade energy tax would adversely affect every aspect of the U.S. economy.

There is no denying that as the world becomes more industrialized, we need to reform our energy policy and become less dependent on foreign energy sources. But the answer doesn't lie in making energy scarcer and more expensive! Those who understand the issue know we can meet our energy needs and environmental challenges without destroying America's economy. ...

We must move in a new direction. We are ripe for economic growth and energy independence if we responsibly tap the resources that God created right underfoot on American soil. Just as important, we have more desire and ability to protect the environment than any foreign nation from which we purchase energy today.

In Alaska, we are progressing on the largest private-sector energy project in history. Our 3,000-mile natural gas pipeline will transport hundreds of trillions of cubic feet of our clean natural gas to hungry markets across America. We can safely drill for U.S. oil offshore and in a tiny, 2,000-acre corner of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge if ever given the go-ahead by Washington bureaucrats. ...

We have an important choice to make. Do we want to control our energy supply and its environmental impact? Or, do we want to outsource it to China, Russia and Saudi Arabia? Make no mistake: President Obama's plan will result in the latter.

For so many reasons, we can't afford to kill responsible domestic energy production or clobber every American consumer with higher prices.

Can America produce more of its own energy through strategic investments that protect the environment, revive our economy and secure our nation?

Yes, we can. Just not with Barack Obama's energy cap-and-tax plan.

There you have it: the politics of energy, the appeal to abundance rather than living with scarcity, the discussion of the issues that any American can understand.

I don't know why all those people who are being paid the big bucks for their opinions could not figure this out. Why they could be so far wrong and still keep their jobs as "pundits." But maybe I had the advantage of not living inside the Beltway and not taking part in "salons" and exchanging ideas with the other members of the JournoList. Sitting here at my desk in Tidewater Virginia helps to keep the mind clear.

As Elvis would say as he took a bow: "Thank you, thank you very much."

Those Obama Tax Cuts

The Barack Obama fiscal plan has cut taxes by over 30% for the second quarter of 2009.
H/T to Bizzyblog.

According to the US Treasury, receipts have fallen 30.9% from the same quarter in 2008.

The Obama tax plan seems to be working fine.



Now some may say that this is because individuals have lost their jobs and can’t pay taxes. And others may say that companies are not making any money so they can’t afford to pay taxes.

But these are obviously “wingnuts” who can’t face the fact that Barack Obama is the COOLEST PRESIDENT EVER!!!!!

The Obama plan to deal with Al Qaeda - don't hurt them.

Perhaps in sympathy to the Muslim faith, Team Obama has terminated a CIA program to eliminate Al Qaeda. Via the Wall Street Journal we learn that...

A secret Central Intelligence Agency initiative terminated by Director Leon Panetta was an attempt to carry out a 2001 presidential authorization to capture or kill al Qaeda operatives, according to former intelligence officials familiar with the matter.

The CIA does not get a lot of respect on this site. It has become a largely political organization that appeared during the Bush years to harbor high level executives who did their best to undermine Bush policies.

Perhaps this was along the lines of the CIA's Keystone Cops attempts on Castro: exploding cigars or poisoned wet suits. Whatever.

What's interesting is that this should become a major controversy since little was actually done to implement such a plan. This is too convenient as a way of covering up Pelosi's accusation that the CIA lie about briefing her on water boarding. I question the timing

One last point. The CIA or the military should have plans and teams in place to do exactly what this program implies: kill or capture enemy leaders without sending in whole armies. Why use a battle ax when a surgeon's scalpel is called for? If there is a scandal, it's America's inability to do something like this.

Erupting Volcano Anak Krakatau

A non-imaginary source of climate change.



Another is sunspots

Jimmy Carter on steroids?

Barack Obama has been compared by his admirers to FDR, Lincoln … or Jesus Christ.

As time goes by, more sober assessments compare him to Jimmy Carter in terms of effectiveness or George Bush in terms of his policies regarding domestic surveillance.

But the comparisons are not really close. In terms of domestic policy – which is Obama’s primary focus – the comparison to Jimmy Carter is flawed. It’s flawed because the US economy has changed in the intervening 30 years and Carter was not nearly as ambitious..

Mark Steyn made the point in a monologue on the radio the other day.

This is worse than the seventies. In the seventies people had to worry about inflation and losing their job. Now you have much higher home ownership so you have people who are worries about their homes being worth a lot less. You have more people invested in the stock market directly or indirectly so that your 401Ks are now cut in half. So there is no limit to the damage that a president with determined statist policies can inflict on you.

The point about 401Ks and the stock market is especially important. Thirty years ago, a large portion of the so called “working class” was covered by pension plans. Today, most people – unless they work for the government – don’t have pensions, they save for their retirement with 401Ks, 403Bs, and other plans that depend on a rising market to provide the worker his or her retirement income.

This is like Jimmy Carter on steroids. He can clobber your home, he can clobber you savings and your pensions, he can clobber your job, and he can basically end the dollar as a world currency. He can clobber your health care, he can get you on every front.

So what makes so many people still like him? He’s cool!

Steyn again:

So he would have to be the coolest dude on the planet to make it worth voting for him just for his sheer cool instead of what he’s saying.

The lesson here is, listen to him on the radio, don’t watch him on TV. Or read him in the cold grey light of print. Do you actually like what he says in the cold grey light of print? Do you like the policies; cause if you don’t no matter how cool he is it’s not going to make up for your collapsed home price and unemployment and a shattered retirement savings plan.

Forget about a Jiminy Cricket foreign policy or a health care system that feeds the elderly pain killers as a substitute for treatment because it’s more efficient (read cheaper). Obama’s primary impact on the American people may well be to leave the elderly impoverished. The result could include people working well into their 70s. It could also result in a shift in domestic arrangements as the elderly and their children move in together – recreating the multi-generational extended family in one home, a throwback to earlier times.

You're not going to grandma's house cause grandma and grandpa are living with you.

The end of Obamania

From the LA Times. Putting the best possible spin on a failed foreign trip, declares that it was not a total disaster.

Obama avoided the rookie mistake that John F. Kennedy committed at his first summit meeting in 1961, when the new president left the Russians thinking he was young, untested and uncertain.

I got a chuckle out of that. Does Doyle McManus really believe that?


For some reason, a disaster for the US may not be something that Obama necessarily worries about. It is, after all, all about HIM. The country is an entirely different, and much less important, matter.

And for the REAL knee slapper, here's McManus' last paragraph:

All of which left Obama sounding, at the end of the week, as if he looked forward to getting back to solvable problems -- such as the economy and healthcare.

Oh yeah, the easy stuff.

Is Obama Jimmy Carter on steroids?

Yeah! Pictures ...Erupting Volcano Anak Krakatau

CNN's Don Lemon Gets His "Unprecedented Obama Welcome" Shot Down

It appears to be the The end of Obamania

And in the real world Sarah Palin has moved herself from the periphery to the center of power in the Republican party. The Party just doesn't seem to know it yet.

Ride The High Horse

Via Just One Minute:

News: A mostly white pool club in a Philadelphia suburb kicks out 65 black day-campers, fearing that they will "change the complexion" of the club. Or, maybe there was a legitimate safety issue. The Valley Club story has been picked up by the NY Times, the LA Times, the WaPo, USA Today, the AP, CNN, ABC News, and many more. Left unreported in all major news outlets - club chairman John Duesler is an Obama supporter and determined progressive.

Not News: Thirty to fifty black teenagers, allegedly chanting "It's a black world", assault six whites; one victim is hospitalized for five days with head injuries. Akron police can't figure out whether this is a hate crime, explaining that the victims never mentioned the "it's a black world" angle. This story has been picked up by the Akron Beacon Journal (1, 2) and some local television stations (NBC (with the wrong date), ABC).

Thanks but I'll wait ....

Economic Reporting: Then and Now

H/T Gerard Vandeleun...

Sarah Palin has moved herself from the periphery to the center of power in the Republican party. The Party just doesn't seem to know it yet.

2010 is a make or break election for the Republicans. And the person in that year that can make and break Republican candidates is now Sarah Palin. She's not only a star, she's the only star the Republicans have or are likely to have. Love her or hate her, the Republicans must have her, and she must be available for active campaigning across the country

The rest of the Republican hopefuls are sparklers while Palin is the whole damn fireworks display.

Romney? I would not mind him, but he's a Ken doll.
Huckabee? I would not mind him, but he's a little ... strange.
Any Republican Senator? I would not mind them, but come-on. Haven't we seen this movie before?
Sanford? I would not mind him, but he just self-destructed.
Pawlenty? I would not mind him. Who is he?
Gingrich? I would not mind him. But hasn't he spent the last decade creating a think-tank that no one cares about?

The point that Vanderleun is making is that she is unique, she's a star, she is totally in tune with the average American citizen. The rest ... get the "I would not mind them" treatment .. a monochrome lack of color or vibrancy that is the minimum required to wrest the government from the hands of those who will do anything to hold on to power so they can re-shape America into the image that America-haters-as-it-exists-now view in their mind's eye.

John Holdren, Obama's Science Czar, says: Forced abortions and mass sterilization needed to save the planet

We should be concerned about the people who are going to be running the country during the next 3 1/2 years. This is about one of the Czars.

Book he authored in 1977 advocates for extreme totalitarian measures to control the population

Forced abortions. Mass sterilization. A "Planetary Regime" with the power of life and death over American citizens.

The tyrannical fantasies of a madman? Or merely the opinions of the person now in control of science policy in the United States? Or both?

These ideas (among many other equally horrifying recommendations) were put forth by John Holdren, whom Barack Obama has recently appointed Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, Assistant to the President for Science and Technology, and Co-Chair of the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology -- informally known as the United States' Science Czar. In a book Holdren co-authored in 1977, the man now firmly in control of science policy in this country wrote that:

• Women could be forced to abort their pregnancies, whether they wanted to or not;
• The population at large could be sterilized by infertility drugs intentionally put into the nation's drinking water or in food;
• Single mothers and teen mothers should have their babies seized from them against their will and given away to other couples to raise;
• People who "contribute to social deterioration" (i.e. undesirables) "can be required by law to exercise reproductive responsibility" -- in other words, be compelled to have abortions or be sterilized.
• A transnational "Planetary Regime" should assume control of the global economy and also dictate the most intimate details of Americans' lives -- using an armed international police force.

Come on, this has to be an Internet hoax, right?

Click on the link for images from the book itself. We have a person in high government office to whom the "banality of evil" applies.

Sample passages:



Mass sterilization of humans though drugs in the water supply is OK as long as it doesn't harm livestock



A "Planetary Regime" should control the global economy and dictate by force the number of children allowed to be born


This is getting beyond strange and borders on frightening. The President of the US spent 20 years in a church run by a racist bigot who wished God to damn America - Jeremiah Wright; he pals around with violent Leftists who were responsible to bombing people and facilities - Bill Ayers, and appoints a would-be eugenics Fascist to be his science czar. Who else does he know, admire and want to help him run the country?

I don't expect laws passed in this country to limit the number of children, nor forced sterilization, or to have drugs placed on the water supply to make people sterile. But I am concerned about the direction of the government when people like this occupy high positions. It tells you the direction, if not the exact destination of government policy.

Watergate ‘hero’ threatens historian

Don Surber:

“Watergate figure John Dean, who once spent eight years embroiled in a libel suit against a publishing house, is now threatening to sue a college history professor for posting audio tapes online that suggest the Nixon confidant-turned-government witness is covering up the details of his role in the most infamous political scandal in American history.”

History and God will judge John Dean.

”This is our world” and ”This is a black world”

From Flopping Aces:

Akron police say they aren’t ready to call it a hate crime or a gang initiation. But to Marty Marshall, his wife and two kids, it seems pretty clear.

It came after a family night of celebrating America and freedom with a fireworks show at Firestone Stadium. Marshall, his family and two friends were gathered outside a friend’s home in South Akron.

Out of nowhere, the six were attacked by dozens of teenage boys, who shouted ”This is our world” and ”This is a black world” as they confronted Marshall and his family.

The Marshalls, who are white, say the crowd of teens who attacked them and two friends June 27 on Girard Street numbered close to 50. The teens were all black.

”This was almost like being a terrorist act,” Marshall said. ”And we allow this to go on in our neighborhoods?”

They said it started when one teen, without any words or warning, blindsided and assaulted Marshall’s friend as he stood outside with the others. When Marshall, 39, jumped in, he found himself being attacked by the growing group of teens. His daughter, Rachel, 15, who weighs about 90 pounds, tried to come to his rescue. The teens pushed her to the ground. His wife, Yvonne, pushed their son, Donald, 14, into bushes to keep him protected.

Should this be news or not?

Should it get any attention beyond Akron?

Is there a larger lesson here?

If the races were reversed should this be news or not?

Why or why not?

Spawn of the Spendulus

Michelle Malkin:

Porkulus One was a massive payoff to special interests and political constituencies (and dead people!) disguised as a job generator. A General Accounting Office analysis this week revealed that stimulus dollars allocated to states and localities are not being spent on what they’re supposed to be spent on. States are making up their own criteria for spending. The most economically distressed parts of the country are getting shortchanged. School and transportation bureaucrats are using the money to preserve their own jobs instead of “stimulating” others. And assessments of the stimulative effect of the package are a joke....

The friends and patrons of Obama may be making out like bandits. But for everyone else, the Democrats’ ideological bankruptcy comes at a nauseatingly steep price.

Obama and Independents: Cracks beneath the surface

His base is crumbling fast because despite his pretensions, he did a lousy job with his spending package. He believed that the economy would rebound by itself and he could spend a few trillion on pet Liberal projects. It's not working out that way.

Pres. Obama poll numbers are continuing to slip, particularly among independents, as state polls are beginning to show:

A Quinnipiac University poll of voters in economically troubled Ohio, released Tuesday, showed Obama’s approval rating slipping 8 points, to below 50 percent, from a poll two months earlier, with a plurality of 48 percent of independent voters disapproving of his job performance. A Public Policy Polling [PPP] survey in Virginia found Obama’s approval and disapproval numbers effectively tied, with independents disapproving of the president’s job performance, 52 percent to 38 percent

I live in Virginia. The state is a swing state. A drop by independents from 52 to 38% is huge.

Intrepid CNN Newsman Anderson Cooper Stumped by Cool Whip

From the Weekly standard:

While filling in for Regis on "Live w/ Regis and Kelly" this week, Cooper illustrated that between partying with Michael Jackson at Studio 54 and ridiculing the protesters of the Tea Party movement, his charmed life just hasn't allowed for the mastery of such items.

As you'll see in this clip, it takes four attempts and the patient tutelage of Kelly Ripa, but Cooper finally gets the bottom of the toughest story of his career—the mechanics of Reddi Whip dispensation. As Dan Rather would say, "Courage:"

Now imagine the reaction if Sarah Palin did this.

Political opposition is not a hate crime ... yet.

Brought to you by the party of Liberalism. Freedom acquires a new meaning in Newspeak.

...legislation quietly making its way through Congress would give the White House power to categorize political opponents as hate groups and even send Americans to detention centers on abandoned military bases.

Rep. Alcee Hastings - the impeached Florida judge Nancy Pelosi tried to install as chairman of the House Intelligence Committee until her own party members rebelled - introduced an amendment to the defense authorization bill that gives Attorney General Eric Holder sole discretion to label groups that oppose government policy on guns, abortion, immigration, states' rights, or a host of other issues.

Joe Biden update: No 'private meetings,' just meetings closed to the press

LA Times blog:

We've especially noted Biden's innumerable "private meetings" that are closed to the press because, well, they're private.

And we've wondered aloud how this Democratic VP's private meetings with unnamed people on unnamed subjects differs from the private meetings with unnamed people that his evil predecessor had that got so many Democratic senators and representatives worried about nefarious secrets.

It's only a plot against humanity if Republicans do it.

Leftist Critics: Sacha Baron Cohen’s Only a ‘Genius’ Only When He Ridicules ‘Those’ People

From Big Hollywood:

Oh, big city critics loved them some “Borat,” which spent 95% if its screen time manipulating, editing and boiling down average, working class, not-bothering-anyone Americans (and Romanian peasants) into the worst possible caricature imaginable. How they laughed and found genius and insight into the machinated savaging of everyday folks just minding their own business. But listen to some of them squeal and squawk now that the satire is turned on someone other than us. Here’s a sampling:

San Francisco Chronicle:

Imagine if a white comedian went into the Deep South, disguised in a very convincing blackface and started acting like Stepin Fetchit.

Hollywood Reporter:
Consequently, the character’s gayness reads false. Baron Cohen needs to spend more time in certain gay bars if he wants to learn how to do “flamboyant” and “fabulous.” It’s a ghost of the real thing.

The New Yorker:

You can’t honestly defend your principled lampooning of homophobia when nine out of every ten images that you project onscreen comply with the most threadbare cartoons of gay behavior.

New York Post:

Not to get all PC on you, but the straight, outrageously dressed Baron Cohen camps it up in what has legitimately been criticized as swishy gay equivalent of blackface.

So here’s the lesson: Preying on unsuspecting everyday people, misleading them, manipulating them, pushing them until you get the reaction you desire and then editing them into something even worse, is a-okay. But… An obvious, over-the-top satire of gay men crosses the line.

Palin, the Media and the Gestapo

Can we all agree that the Gestapo/SS has a - what can we call it – bad reputation? As the enforcers for the National Socialist Workers Party (NAZI) they handled the detail work of taking care of the Third Reich’s enemies.

How did they acquire such a bad reputation?

Before you dismiss this as a stupid question, can we agree that during World War 2 atrocities were committed by all sides? Innocent civilians were killed by all sides; that’s the nature of war, especially war with dumb bombs and unguided weapons. Both the Axis and the Allies killed their enemies ruthlessly, both openly and surreptitiously.

The reason that the Gestapo/SS is viewed as such a heinous villain is twofold. First, the Axis lost the war. If they had won, a much different history would have been written because “history is written by the winners.” Second, the atrocities that were committed by the Gestapo/SS were vicious and grotesque. Cruelty was a feature, not a bug, in their system. They were not just killing their enemies; they were setting an example to all would-be enemies. The message was: cross us and you will not only be dead, you will be tortured to death. Hurt one of us and a hundred of you will die. Threaten the Reich, and not just you but your entire family will be killed.

The “treatment” that Sarah Palin has received at the hands of the Liberal media brought the reputation issue to mind. The defamation of Palin and her family is so over-the-top, so absolutely gutter ugly, so repulsive that a point has been reached that has only two outcomes. Either Palin or her enemies will go down in history with a horrible stain on their reputations.

On the one hand you have an attractive woman, a Christian, a good governor with an attractive family who is the very image of middle America. On the other side you have – as an example – a "bareback" homosexual like Andrew Sullivan disputing the MATERNITY of Palin’s youngest child – and David Letterman whose idea of good fun is to joke about raping one of Palin’s daughters. Let’s not even go to the Camp of the Feminists who are outraged that Palin did not abort her Down ’s syndrome baby.

Keep in mind that the worst atrocities committed by the Gestapo/SS were as the Axis was losing the war. I only note this to observe that the MSM is in a death spiral the end of which is hard to discern.

If Palin Were President

David Harsanyi at Townhall:

Really, where would we be if a bumpkin like Palin were president? With her brainpower, we probably would be stuck with a Cabinet full of tax cheats, retreads and moralizing social engineers.

If Palin were president, chances are we'd have a gaffe-generating motormouth for a vice president. That's the kind of decision-making one expects from Miss Congeniality.

The job of building generational debt is not for the unsophisticated. Enriching political donors with taxpayer dollars takes intellectual prowess, not the skills of a moose-hunting point guard.

Palin is so clueless she probably would have rushed through some colossal stimulus plan that ended up stimulating nothing.

If Palin were president, no one doubts this nation would have continued the Bush-era policy of indefinite detention of enemy combatants and the CIA's program of transferring prisoners to other countries without legal rights. Be thankful you have a president who makes you think this nation doesn't.

If Palin were commander in chief -- and, again, can anyone imagine anything so preposterous? -- the United States still would be fighting endless and expensive wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

It's true that Palin's first veto as Alaska governor was of a bill that would have blocked state employee benefits and health insurance for same-sex couples, but does anyone doubt her true intentions?

If she were president, brave American soldiers still would be living under the dark specter of "don't ask, don't tell." Palin even might have instructed her Justice Department to file a brief in defense of the Defense of Marriage Act. Such is the depth of her depravity.

Does anyone believe that Palin possesses the competence to nationalize entire industries without the consent of the people? A housewife from Wasilla isn't equipped with political brawn to shake down banks and bondholders.

Palin never would be able to convince Americans that a trillion-dollar government-run health care plan would save taxpayers money or have the rhetorical ability to convince even a single person that a European-style cap-and-trade scheme has any benefit at all.

Palin is such a goofball that she probably believes oil will continue to be a vital American energy source.

And how is anyone as simplistic as Palin going to help change the habits of all these fatsos in America? We need a mommy ... but, you know, not a real mommy.

Biden defends fed stimulus - and draws fractions of thousands.

Biden was in Cincinnati to promote the Obama Administration's stimulus package by appearing at a project that uses federal stimulus money.

Than Biden sure draws a crowd.

About 200 people gathered behind the former American Can company building to hear Biden speak.

Unlike that Sarah what's-her-name that no one talks about any more, right?

More spelling errors plague Obama releases

Via TheHill

Misspellings continued to plague the Obama administration on Thursday, after two more releases containing errors were sent to reporters in the last 24 hours.

After misspelling the president's name as "Barak Obama" yesterday on an official document sent to reporters, the General Services Administration messed up another message when announcing it had awarded an $18 million contract to redesign the website keeping track of spent stimulus dollars.

"Recvoery.gov Version 2.0 $18 Million Contract Awarded," the release's subject line read. ("Recovery" was spelled correctly in the body of the email.)

Ever notice how Obama emphasizes his "smartness" and the "smartness" of his programs?

Smartest administration EVER!!!!

Wanna hear how dumb Sarah Palin is? She's so dumb that her spell checker can't spell.

HA HA HA HA HA.

Quick, call Dave Letterman.

Oh, she's not part of this administration?

Never mind ....

Old and Inouye

Who knew that the TARP funds were a piggy bank designed to enrich government officials? Who could have guessed?

If he were a GOP, TPM would be all over it, no? Sen. Inouye acts on behalf of a constituent, who turns out to be in large part himself (a troubled bank in which his ownership share makes up "the bulk of his personal wealth"). ...

The Pillars of Eagle Castle

The glory and beauty of God's creation is beyond our imagination.

Red Herring in The Atlantic's Revenue Stream

The problem with Bradley's salons, like the problems with WaPo's similar, now-cancelled events, is that they create two big conflicts: 1) The need to avoid pissing off the corporations who fund (and then some***) the salons in the hope of getting access to influential journalists and administration bigshots; and, even more corrupting, 2) the need to suck up to the administration bigshots to get them to show up at the salons where they can be accessed by corporations who are paying for them. ...

The media behind your back. It's where the media elite gather with Democrats in office to create the narrative. Note the names well, especially including the gynaecologically inclined Andrew Sullivan who has an obsession about Sarah Palin's uterus.

...the catered gatherings also sound rather cozy, like some secret-handshake gathering of an entrenched elite. Are the top-level officials, strategists and foreign leaders there for serious questioning or risk-free spin sessions? And what exactly is the journalistic benefit if the visitors are protected by a shield of anonymity?


The guests "have either been frank with us or provided a reasonable facsimile of frankness," says Atlantic writer Jeffrey Goldberg. "Would I like for them to be able to go on the record? Of course. But I do think you lose something because then it becomes just another press conference."

Among those in regular attendance are David Brooks and Maureen Dowd of the New York Times, Gene Robinson and Ruth Marcus of The Washington Post, NBC's David Gregory, ABC's George Stephanopoulos, PBS's Gwen Ifill, the New Yorker's Jane Mayer, Vanity Fair's Todd Purdum, former Time managing editor Walter Isaacson and staffers from Bradley's Atlantic and National Journal, including Ron Brownstein, Andrew Sullivan and Jonathan Rauch.

People not part of these secret meetings are wont to say that there is a sort of a group think, not a gathering, not a conspiracy. Now it turns out that the conspiracy theorists were right after all.

Conspiracies don't have to be hatched in basement seedy dank cellars; they can be hatched ...

As white-jacketed waiters poured red and white wine and served a three-course salmon and risotto dinner

Nice.

Who killed Caifornia's economy?

Click on the link for the video.

"people who live in castles complaining about how people who lived in London keep moving to the suburbs."

Fans Flock to Mourn California, 1849-2009

Iowahawk:

LOS ANGELES - Millions of fans from around the globe gathered along Sunset Boulevard to pay final respects to California today, as a slow moving funeral procession transported the eccentric superstar state's remains to its final resting place in a Winchell's Donuts dumpster in Van Nuys. The self-proclaimed 'King of Pop Culture' died last week at 160, in what coroners ruled an accidental case of financial autoerotic asphyxiation. The death sent shock waves across the world and sparked an outpouring of grief by rabid fans.
...

Despite the last minute financial maneuvers analysts say the state died penniless, owing creditors as much as $100 billion. Amid the swirling recriminations between California camp factions, fans chose to mark its passing quietly. Longtime California fan club president Iowa said that despite being the constant butt of the Golden State's insults and jokes, it will remember the late superstar fondly.

"Let's not remember California as a bloated, rotting freakshow corpse hanging above a filthy public pension toilet," it said. "Let's remember the good times. Like my 6-day bender at the '91 Rose Bowl."

Ann Coulter: Forgetting Sarah Palin

She begins:

Sarah Palin has deeply disappointed her enemies. People who hate her guts feel she's really let them down by resigning.

She's like the ex-girlfriend they're SO over, never want to see again, have already forgotten about -- really, it's O-ver -- but they just can't stop talking about her.

Liberal: Ha, ha ... Sarah who? She's over, she's toast, a future Trivial Pursuit answer, nothing more.

Normal person: Whatever. How about the North Korean missiles?

Liberal: Can you believe she just resigned the governorship like that? What a quitter!

Normal person: Speaking of quitting, how's work?

Liberal: Did you hear she might get a TV show? There's no way Sarah Palin's getting a TV show! No way! I can't believe stupid Sarah Palin could get her own stupid TV show now. Well, I'm sure not gonna watch it -- that's for sure!

Normal person: Have you seen all the Michael Jackson coverage on TV?

Liberal: How does she think she can run for

Read the rest.

By the way, this also applies to people like Rich Lowry at NRO.

Do you need to take a hooker out to dinner before getting her into bed?

From Word Around the Net (Hat tip to Gerard Vanderleun) we learn that:

Barack Obama's White House is spending more than $80,000 a week to staff its old and new media offices. Add the price of speechwriters and the White House communications tab reaches nearly $100,000 a week, or nearly $5 million a year-and that is for salaries alone.

The Obama team seems to think that's money well spent. But is it?

The thing is, working to get the press to be positive in its coverage and obedient in its actions is like Brad Pitt hiring a specialist to get him girls. Its like paying a redneck to like NASCAR and hunting.
...
Is this money well spent? That's questionable, given the sums at stake and the target. Chris "thrill up my leg" Matthews doesn't need any encouraging to be a worshipful subject. CNN doesn't need a million dollar effort to help shape the narrative in a positive light for the Obama administration. They're doing it for free and they'd keep doing it for free.

The press has a rather large investment in President Obama's success, not to mention their personal dignity at stake. If you praise someone so completely and overwhelmingly as much as they have this president, for as long as they have, after a while you can't back down just because of momentum and public appearance. Even if that weren't true, the legacy media has always been very reluctant to be critical of any minority, and beyond that, he's a Democrat. The legacy media almost monolithically despises Republicans and are members of the Democratic Party, so they will tend to support and like their guys and not want the other guys to gain power.

The White House press office simply makes it easier for the worshipful press to put out its Obama spin with a minimum of effort. Dinner with a hooker may even be a pleasure because you're sure how the evening's going to turn out.

What is it with the feminists who just freely make shit up about Palin

The Reclusive Leftist analyzes the feminist response to Sarah Palin. Feminists and the mystery of Sarah Palin

Besides, I know for a fact that the feminists spreading the lies about Palin knew they were spreading lies. Not to tell tales out of school, but: they knew. They were supplied with the correct information, and they chose to lie anyway. Why?

Was it just about electing Obama? Were feminists simply willing to commit any slander necessary to elect the Chosen One? That’s a likely explanation, but here again: we’re talking about feminists. Feminists doing this — slandering a woman, and doing so in unmistakably sexist terms. After all, caricaturing Palin as a purity queen (Bible Spice, Sexy Puritan) is just the flip side of caricaturing her as a porn queen. As I’ve said before, it’s like the NAACP sponsoring a lynching. The mind boggles.

Even more mind-boggling are the attacks that don’t even bother with false claims about policy or beliefs, but just go straight for free-floating misogynistic rage. Ridiculing her hair, clothes, makeup, voice, body, womb. “Sarah Palin is a cunt” — good one! Calling her a bimbo — good one! Calling her a fucking whore — good one! Fantasizing about her being gang-raped — good one! And all this from feminists. Forget the NAACP sponsoring a lynching; this is like the NAACP ripping off their masks to reveal that they’ve been replaced by white supremacist pod people.

...it has not escaped my attention that many of the things Palin is accused of, falsely, are actually true of Obama. This is a guy who, as a U.S. senator from Illinois, didn’t even know which Senate committees he was on or which states bordered his own. (And don’t even get me started on Joe “The Talking Donkey” Biden, who thinks FDR was president during the stock market crash and that people watched TV in those days.) I’m not saying Obama’s a moron, but he’s sure as hell no genius. People say Sarah Palin rambles; excuse me, but have you actually heard Obama speak extemporaneously? As for being a diva, surely we all remember the Possomus sign and the special embroidered pillow on the Obama campaign plane. The fact is, Obama is an intellectually mediocre narcissist with a thin resume who’s lost without a teleprompter and whose entire campaign had all the substance and gravity of a Pepsi commercial. Yet people say Sarah Palin is a fluffy bunny diva.

...One other observation, and then I’ll quit: it is striking to me how much of the political discourse in 2008 revolved around people who don’t exist. The main players last year, if you recall, were Obama, the genius messiah whose perfection and purity would save the planet; Hillary, the evil racist lesbian who killed Vince Foster with her bare hands before plotting the Iraqi invasion and then attempting to have Obama assassinated; and Sarah Palin, a crazed dominionist who hates polar bears and personally arranges for Christian girls to be raped by their fathers just so she can charge them for their rape kits.

Written by a die-hard Democrat, a woman and a feminist. But a comment on her blog made me think of the talking dick-heads on the Right such as Rich Lowry:

It’s mob hysteria, a pile-on. Making your bones. Twisty isn’t doing anything very much differently from what those freakazoids bloggers are doing. It’s the style. Everyone trying to outdo each other with the clever neologisms and horrifics. When you do that kind of ‘bonding’, throwing down, you have to have a target. And you have to have an ideal that you are trying to meet. And it’s defined by a kind of gay male cutting cruel humour. Sorry to say, I once thought what went on at Twisty’s to be smart. It’s not. It’s just pathological, and actually sexist even before they hit on Palin.

For now, the Libs have created an image and the Lowry NRO types, even Krauthammer, believe it's better to go along. If she survives and thrives, they will rush to her side, telling her that they were there for her all along. If she fails, its "I told you so." Why would anyone except the next-in-line allow themselves to be part of this school of piranhas?

NRO: Palin " the stereotype of the red-state simpleton."

Anthony Dick decides to double down on Rich Lowry's put down of Sarah Palin.

Someone calling herself "lady lawyer" seems to have a problem with anyone disagreeing with the NRO crew. It's time that the media elites - of both sides - learned what criticism is like.

I Still Hate You, Sarah Palin

I Still Hate You, Sarah Palin
The Republicans bring a knife to a gunfight, and lose again.

David Kahane proves once again why Republicans are the stupid party.

One of the most terrifying moments of my political life came last summer at the Republican convention in St. Paul. No, I don’t mean seeing John McCain careering around the Xcel Energy Center like Eyegore in Young Frankenstein, his face frozen in a Lon Chaney Sr. rictus grin as he reached across the aisle to his erstwhile friends in the media and got his hand bitten off. Rather, I’m referring to the aftermath of Sarah Palin’s outrageous acceptance speech, which whipped up the Rotary Club delegates into a frenzy of white-boy fury that not even heckling by a brave Code Pink embed could deter. Truly a fascist classic and one that sent shivers down our collectivist spines.

Even worse was the glaze of horror on the phizzes of the assembled heroes of the Mainstream Media. Andrea Mitchell — yes, the very same Andrea Mitchell, NBC News, Washington, whose employer saw no conflict of interest at all when she married then Fed pooh-bah Alan Greenspan — stood there gaping like a frog while the rest of the assembled Finemans and Matthewses and Olbermanns scurried around like roaches when the light gets turned on: What the hell just hit us? For one horrible moment, it looked as if the carefully crafted plans of David Axelrod, Rahm Emanuel, George Soros, and the Second Chief Directorate, first department, of the old KGB were about to gang agley.

Not only were we offended at the sheer effrontery of McCain’s pick: How dare the Republicans proffer this déclassée piece of Wasilla trailer trash whose only claim to fame was that she didn’t exercise her right to choose? Where were her degrees from Smith or Barnard, her internships at PETA, the Brookings Institution, or the Young Pioneers? We were also outraged that the Stupid Party had just nominated a completely unqualified candidate nobody had ever heard of, a first-term governor of Alaska whose previous experience consisted of a small-town mayoralty. As opposed to our guy, Barry Soetoro of Mombasa, Djakarta, and Honolulu, a first-term senator nobody had ever heard of, whose previous experience had been as a state senator (D., Daley Machine) in Illinois. After eight long, illegitimate, lawless years of &*^%BUSH$#@! tyranny, how dare you contest this election?

And so the word went out, from that time and place: Eviscerate Sarah Palin like one of her field-dressed moose. Turn her life upside down. Attack her politics, her background, her educational history. Attack her family. Make fun of her husband, her children. Unleash the noted gynecologist Andrew Sullivan to prove that Palin’s fifth child was really her grandchild. Hit her with everything we have: Maureen Dowd of the New York Times, taking a beer-run break from her quixotic search for Mr. Right to drip venom on Sister Sarah; post-funny comic David Letterman, to joke about her and her daughters on national television; Katie Couric, the anchor nobody watches, to give this Alaskan interloper a taste of life in the big leagues; former New York Times hack Todd “Mr. Dee Dee Myers” Purdum, to act as an instrument of Graydon Carter’s wrath at Vanity Fair. Heck, we even burned her church down. Even after the teleological triumph of The One, the assault had to continue, each blow delivered with our Lefty SneerTM (viz.: Donny Deutsch yesterday on Morning Joe), until Sarah was finished.

Read the rest. I think the article is great except for the assumption that Sarah's finished.

Rich Lowry - and most of the rest of the NRO crew - don't get it.

Dear Rich,

Please don’t take this the wrong way, but I’m starting to think that Christopher Buckley endorsing Barack Obama for President may not have been an isolated case of poor judgment. Your piece, Sarah Palin Up and Out, tells us quite a bit more about you than it does about Palin.

At the risk of being sued for copyright infringement, I’ll quote the beginning of your screed:

In all the speculation about why Sarah Palin quit the Alaska governorship, no one — right or left, supportive or critical, rational or conspiratorial — has credited her stated reason that she had to do it for the sake of Alaska.

It’s just too absurd. Palin mentioned Alaska or Alaskans 34 times in a 17-minute statement that must be a new record in the history of protesting too much. Palin says she hates politics as usual, and true to her word, on July 3 she staged a spectacle in politics as unusual. But she still proved adept at the traditional political art of extreme disingenuousness.

You then go on to state:

She didn’t want to put Alaska through the hell of a lame-duck governor who would “hit the road, draw the paycheck, and ‘milk it.’” Never mind that if she feared becoming a lame duck, she could run for re-election — especially if “serving [Alaska’s] people is the greatest honor I could imagine.”

Well, my friend, and you are my friend, you may have reached the pinnacle of your ambitions by being editor of a magazine that has to beg for gifts from its readers, but Sarah Palin has bigger goals. The reception she received from the Republican base showed that she was the biggest draw in the party. If she wanted to see whether she stood a chance of being the leader of the party, and perhaps its Presidential nominee, she needed to make a move. No matter how much she loved Alaska. You can’t run for President from there. Distance won’t let you; not if you are also the governor.

Let’s look at a few other facts. For example, how well you function in your job if I hit you with a lawsuit daily. Could it be distracting? Could it be distracting to National Review? Could it start to cost you money? Would you decide that, after a while, you had to do something else because I won’t stop because my lawsuits are not costing me anything and I hate you with a burning passion?

And let’s say that the only time you get media attention is when some comic makes jokes about your daughter – do you have a daughter? – getting knocked up by a ballplayer. If you don’t have a daughter, substitute wife, or mother. And by the way, you look like a dickless nerd. Come on, Rich, it’s only a joke so suck it up and ignore it.

So you decide that if you can’t change the rules of the game, you change the game. That’s what Palin did. And creeps like you decide that you don’t like it. So you opine that she should have stayed the governor, played by the rules her enemies made, and remain the piñata of all the Left Wing nuts who need a hate object. Meanwhile the editors of National Review will decide who the next Republican candidate is, giving us a choice between … oh, Romney, Huckabee or the governor of Minnesota, old “what’s his name.” People who are so dull that the Democrats don’t need to destroy; they self-destruct.

And I’m getting really tired of this statement that gets repeated in every critique of Palin:

For that she needs substance, not the hackneyed sound bites she clings to for dear life. For that she needs a positive program, not just the hatred of conservatism’s favorite enemies.

Every talking dick-head on the Right is giving her advice to hit the books, study up, become a scholar, learn how to regurgitate other people’s thoughts. After the last election, you still cling to the belief that this thing called “substance” matters. What universe did you in habit during the 2008 run for the Presidency? What color is the sky there?

In my essay on The Palin Standard, I opined:

The subject of Republican candidates for 2012 was part of the discussion on July 1. When the discussion turned to Sarah Palin everyone agreed that Palin should be busy studying foreign policy issues to prepare herself if she decided to run. One of the panelists recommended that she send for policy experts to visit her in Alaska to provide a tutorial.

And everyone nodded.

This is the conventional wisdom and it’s wrong. Why should Palin be held to a different standard than the people who won the election in 2008?

Quick ... when did Obama get quizzed on foreign policy?

Obama’s foreign policy consisted of pulling out of Iraq before we were successful and closing Guantanamo before he knew what could be done with the terrorists there. Oh yes, the other leg of his foreign policy was to hold talks with Ahmadinejad of Iran without pre-conditions.

Can anyone remember Obama getting a “test” on foreign policy during the campaign? Can anyone remember anything about the Obama campaign other than “hope and change,” “yes we can,” and “we are the ones we have been waiting for.”

Why is Sarah Palin going to judged on a different standard that the recent winner in the Presidential sweepstakes? Is there a different test that Republican women must pass? Why is there a demand that Sarah Palin be required to prepare a doctoral dissertation and be subject to an oral exam as if she were attending graduate school while the winner of the last election not only does not have her experience, he was not even asked about his knowledge.

Mind you, I am not in favor of electing ill-equipped demagogues to any office, let alone the presidency. But that's just what happened in 2008. The idea that you can't do what Barack Obama so obviously did makes Krauthammer's comments silly and makes me question the motives behind his dismissal of Palin.

In his defense, he may have meant to say that Republicans - unlike Democrats - can't run an empty suit and win. But Ronald Reagan proved that you can win an election on big ideas without taking a test in which you are asked to name the second assistant vice chairman of Bulgaria.

Mind you, Rich, that I confidently predict that she will display her expertise and will have a positive agenda. I wrote about that. What Palin Could, And Should, Do and Palin and the politics of abundance

So Rich, take your snark about Palin and shove it. We had a great intellectual leader in Bill Buckley, but he died. And the people he left behind, sons and heirs, are beginning to get those “strange new respect” awards that are so popular among the chattering classes.

Steyn on health care reform and preventive screening.

One of President Obama's arguments for "reforming" health care is that "preventive" care - more tests, more screening - will help control costs. Really? A propos cancer, Professor H Gilbert Welch of Dartmouth Medical School notes:

For starters, the majority of folks who are screened receive no benefit. That's because, despite scary statistics, most people will not get cancer. Let's look at breast cancer as an example.

According to government statistics, the absolute risk of a 60-year-old woman dying from breast cancer in the next 10 years is 9 in 1,000. If regular mammograms reduce this risk by one-third-a widely cited but by no means universally accepted claim-her odds fall to 6 in 1,000. Therefore, for every 1,000 women screened, three of them avoid death from breast cancer, six die regardless, and the rest? They can't possibly benefit because they weren't going to die from the disease in the first place.

Apply that across the system: How can testing 997 out of a thousand people for no good reason save money? As David Harsanyi writes:

A government policy that prods people into incessantly visiting medical offices for checkups, screenings, and tests will only raise costs even further. According to studies, preventive medicine thwarts little, though it does mean early diagnoses for relatively harmless ailments—and treatments for them.

One of the points I make in the current NR is that, if health care "systems" are so critical to your health, why is there an entirely negligible difference in outcomes?

Life expectancy in the European Union 78.7 years; life expectancy in the United States 78.06 years; life expectancy in Albania 77.6 years; life expectancy in Libya, 76.88 years; life expectancy in Bosnia & Herzegovina, 78.17 years. Once you get on top of childhood mortality and basic hygiene, everything else is peripheral – margin-of-error territory. Maybe we could get another six months by adopting EU-style socialized health care. Or we could get another six weeks by reducing the Lower 48 to rubble in an orgy of bloodletting, which seems to have done wonders for Bosnian longevity... Even within the United States, even within the Medicare system, there are regions that offer twice as much “health care” per patient – twice as many check-ups, pills, tests, operations – for no discernible variation in outcome.

Indeed, the fate of the late Michael Jackson may yet prove an instructive lesson in the perils of too much medical attention. But that's his choice - under our present system. You want to get tested for something you're statistically unlikely to get? That's up to you. But it's harder to discern the state's interest. A system of universal "preventive" care will create a hugely expensive, inflexible regime geared not to the illnesses you actually get but to the bureaucratic processing of waiting rooms clogged with perfectly healthy people getting annual tests for diseases they'll never get - and none of it will impact on our health, only on our tax returns.

What a great idea...

What a GREAT IDEA!!!

Washington, DC-- June 11, 2009

Congress today announced, that the office of President of the United States of America will be outsourced to India, as of September 1, 2009.

The move is being made in order to save the President's $500,000 yearly salary, and also a record $750 billion in deficit expenditures and related overhead that his office has incurred during the last 3 months.

It is anticipated that $7 trillion can be saved to the end of the President's term. "We believe this is a wise financial move. The cost savings are huge," stated Congressman Thomas Reynolds (R-WA). "We cannot remain competitive on the world stage with the current level of cash outlay," Reynolds noted.

Obama was informed by email this morning of his termination. Preparations for the job move have been underway for some time.

Gurvinder Singh, a tele-technician for IndusTeleservices, Mumbai , India , will assume the office of President as of September 1, 2009. Mr. Singh was born in the United States while his Indian parents were vacationing at Niagara Falls, NY. Thus making him eligible for the position. He will receive a salary of $320 (USD) a
month, but no health coverage or other benefits.

It is believed that Mr. Singh will be able to handle his job responsibilities without a support staff. Due to the time difference between the US and India , he will be working primarily at night. "Working nights will allow me to keep my day job at the Dell Computer call center," stated Mr. Singh in an exclusive interview.

"I am excited about this position. I always hoped I would be President." A
Congressional spokesperson noted that while Mr. Singh may not be fully aware of all the issues involved in the office of President, this should not be a problem as Obama had never been familiar with the issues either.

Mr. Singh will rely upon a script tree that will enable him to respond effectively to most topics of concern. Using these canned responses, he can address common concerns without having to understand the underlying issue at all. "We know these scripting
tools work," stated the spokesperson. "Obama has used them successfully for years, with the result that some people actually thought he knew what he was talking about."

Obama will receive health coverage, expenses, and salary until his final day of employment. Following a two-week waiting period, he will be eligible for $140 a week unemployment for 26 weeks. Unfortunately he will not be eligible for Medicaid, as his unemployment benefits will exceed the allowed limit.

Obama has been provided with the outplacement services of Manpower, Inc. to help him write a resume and prepare for his upcoming job transition. According to Manpower, Obama may have difficulties in securing a new position due to a lack of any successful work experience during his lifetime.

A greeter position at WalMart was suggested due to Obama's extensive experience at shaking hands, as well as his 'special' smile.

A GREAT LOSS......

Message a friend sent me...

While the focus today, tomorrow and for the next God-knows-how-many-days will be the death of a pop culture icon (Michael Jackson) and while many will mourn, wail and quite literally make fools of themselves over it and while as many will speak endlessly about it, allow me, if only for a moment, to remind us that others have also died this month; others whose lives were cut short; others who leave behind loved ones and whose families will dearly miss them; families who'll suffer with much more dignity and honor than we'll be exposed to on the tube in the coming days.

Yes... it's true... we've suffered a great loss... but forgive me while I tell you that I'm not talking about the "king of pop music".


These American military members died in Iraq this month:

Sergeant Justin J. Duffy
Specialist Christopher M. Kurth
Specialist Charles D. Parrish
Lance Corporal Robert D. Ulmer
Staff Sergeant Edmond L. Lo
Sergeant Joshua W. Soto
Captain Kafele H. Sims
Specialist Chancellor A. Keesling

And these members of our U.S. Armed Forces died in Afghanistan this month:

Sergeant Jones, Ricky D.
Specialist Munguia Rivas, Rodrigo A.
Command Master Chief Petty Officer Garber, Jeff rey J.
1st Sergeant Blair, John D.
Sergeant Smith, Paul G.
Staff Sergeant Melton, Joshua
Sergeant 1st Class Dupont, Kevin A.
Specialist O'Neill, Jonathan C.
Chief Warrant Officer Richardson Jr., Ricky L.
Specialist Silva, Eduardo S.
Lance Corporal Whittle, Joshua R.
Major Barnes, Rocco M. Major Jenrette, Kevin M.
Staff Sergeant Beale, John C.
Specialist Jordan, Jeff rey W.
Specialist Griemel, Jarrett P.
Specialist Hernandez I, Roberto A.
Sergeant Obakrairur, Jasper K.
Staff Sergeant Hall, Jeff rey A.
Private 1st Class Ogden, Matthew D.
Private 1st Class Wilson, Matthew W.

Let's remember and honor this day those whose deaths are truly impacting.

God rest them and God comfort their loved ones they've left behind.

And remember the shortness of our days.

The Dark River to Antares

The Libertarian Conservative Divide

Eric Scheie at Classical Values runs an excellent blog. He comments on the fact that he has been labeled a "conservative" despite the fact that he has disagrees vigorously with social conservatism and considers himself a "libertarian."

I remarked that

What I find most off-putting when I read a lot of Libertarians is their disdain of Christianity or traditional morality. They seem to find a need to put lots of distance between themselves and the 70+% of the American people that go to church and believe in God. Libertarians want cafeteria style morality: small government, low spending, low taxing, free to flout convention but no social constraints even of an informal nature like social ostracism.

Libertarians also don’t want to be viewed as associated with the knuckle-dragging Neanderthals that disapprove of gay marriage, pre-or-outside of marriage sex. I mean, what’s the problem with Governor Sanford and his series of affairs? Who are we to judge? Right? Bring back Elliott Spitzer and let’s re-think the outworn opposition to polygamy.

The one thing that history and experience has taught thoughtful people – as opposed to ideologues – is that in the absence of social constraints, we will have legal constraints. And absent either social or legal constraints, we have social disintegration with its attendant pathologies. For references see the out-of-wedlock birth rate in the “African American” community. Thanks, Libertarians.

That prompted this reply from Sean Kissell

Moneyrunner:
"Libertarians want cafeteria style morality: small government, low spending, low taxing, free to flout convention but no social constraints even of an informal nature like social ostracism."

Uh, you're mixing up libertarian and libertine, hardly an uncommon error but no less bad for that. Who are these libertarian thinkers who argue against social convention and community mores, even if not enforced by law? I don't think I've ever encountered one, and I make something of a hobby of counting ways my fellow libertarians drive me bonkers. The arguments you tend to encounter are actually that laws (against drug use, for example) aren't necessary precisely because social convention and self-interest are strong enough to keep most people in line. I'm not saying I buy those arguments in every case, but they're not against using ostracism to enforce rules.

To which I remarked:

Sean Kinsell,

Yes, of course it’s easy to conflate Libertarians and Libertines, because in many cases they appear to be one and the same. Some of their single issue dedication to being able to use hallucinogenic drugs is an example of some of that orientation. I’m sure you have noticed.

I am on the fence on that issue as all Conservatives should be because Conservatives are – by definition – cautious about changing the rules for fear of unintended consequences. Who would have guessed that the “War on poverty” would appear to have as its primary result, not a reduction in poverty, but an increase in unwed mothers and a subset of young men (and women) whose lives are truncated by drugs, violence and functional illiteracy?

But it’s not what I had in mind. Our host is an excellent example of Libertarian thought, agreed? Yet he explicitly disavows the definition he quotes of “family values.” What is the part that he disagrees with? The nuclear family? Christianity? Displaying the Ten Commandments? Opposition to abortion? Pornography? I could go on. So our host does not share “traditional values.” Which is fine as far as it goes. But in his support of publicly available pornography, his issues with the nuclear family, Christianity, and all the other issues that he and I may disagree on, he never once says that he would support my right to pray during a commencement ceremony, to exhibit a crèche in the public square, in sum, to do any of the things that people in 1950 thought was perfectly right and proper even though we were not ruled by a theocracy.

If I am going to take Libertarians seriously, not just as enablers of libertinism, I expect a respect for the rights that have been taken from people who are more properly considered conservatives. People who believed in the First Amendment. The people who wrote: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof” knew that they were preventing a “Church of America” similar to the “Church of England.” Little did they suspect that “prohibiting the free exercise thereof” meant that you could keep your prayers in church, thank you, but keep them out of our faces in schools, playgrounds and public places … we’re Libertarians.

In fact, what I find is the “good Libertarians” totally silent on the issues that matter to Conservatives – especially Conservative Christians – even though we are talking about freedoms that Libertarians say they espouse. Meanwhile raging atheist Libertarians use forums to call Christians theocrats no better than Jihadists only looking for excuse to put non-Christians into concentration camps. In fact, I am reminded that Moslems are frequently accused of not speaking out against violent Jihad.

Ironic, isn’t it?

Can Libertarians and Conservatives co-exist in harmony? It seems to me that the best person bridging this divide today is the self professed libertarian Glenn Reynolds, who runs “Instapundit.’ I find no snark about Conservatism there. Thanks, Glenn.

Micheal Jackson's Brain

I wonder what traffic this will generate.

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Open thread ... feel free to comment

“Only dead fish go with the flow.”

John Gizzi at Human Events:

“Only dead fish go with the flow.”

That quote from Sarah Palin’s stunning July 3 statement said it all about the soon-to-be-former Governor of Alaska and 2008 Republican vice presidential nominee. In leaving the Juneau statehouse and pursuing her next steps in politics or the private sector, Palin is doing so on her terms regardless of what the pesky national press and the political “experts” think.

Read the rest.

Doing the job the GOP girliemen won't do

"JohnHuang2" at FreeRepublic has a few thoughts on Sarah Palin.

Shattering the chattering class ceiling

Nothing better demonstrates the fact that Gov. Sarah Palin's on a roll than harrumphing experts declaring that she's finished. (They also once explained why movie actor Ronald Reagan didn't have a chance.) The poor dears have worked themselves into a frenzy because Palin's not taking lovey-dovey advice from her enemies, which is to stay on defense, remain a pinata, fight with both hands tied behind her back, run up another half a million in legal bills over phony ethics charges, announce that she plans to be a lame-duck guv until 2011, etc. She's soooooo out of touch with Maureen Dowd! And that other harpy, Katie Couric.

The gun-toting, moose-hunting-'n-dressing hocky mom governor with smoking-hot looks and stadium-sized crowds and charisma can't seem to connect with the editors of the Wall Street Journal. Even worse, she's alienated elitist snobs by making a "career-ending" move they hadn't thought of.

Besides, you can't just simply resign from your official duties mid-term to seek higher office by running on charisma and rock-star status . . . who does she think she is, Obama???

If resigning the Alaska governorship to fire-up and re-build the conservative movement into a 50-state constituency by laying into Obama and campaigning heavily for GOP candidates up and down the rungs of government is such a career-ender, why are libbies running in circles, shouting and yelling in panic?

Liberals claim Palin's decision to unshackle herself is 'puzzling,' 'bewildering,' 'confounding,' dumbfounding' 'befuddling,' 'mystifying,' 'perplexing,' 'mind-boggling,' etc., then they immediately proceed to explain what her motives were. Two seconds later, they're back to being 'bewildered,' 'puzzled,' 'befuddled,' 'confounded' -- in other words, their normal state of mind.

Always striving to be consistent, liberals mocked Alaska as some underpopulated hicksville dump, so liberals now denounce Palin for 'abandoning' the all-important state of Alaska.

The New York Times, in its typically unbiased/evenhanded way, sniffed that Palin appeared to be "often rambling" in her announcement speech -- also known as speaking extemporaneously without a Teleprompter. Demonstrating the rich diversity of newsroom opinion, U.S. News & World Report attacked Palin for making a . . . "rambling announcement." The media smart set are so captivated by the Teleprompter Jesus's ping-pong shtick that they apparently forgot what it actually sounds like to speak unscripted.

Liberals are so insanely afraid of Palin, that just 24 hours after her announcement they were dancing in the streets like their heroes the crazed Palestinians on 9/11 simply because, as the AP put it, "the controversial hocky mom was no where to be found." The girliemen at Politico.com joined in the celebration with the headline: "The lady vanishes!"

But! Later in the day, libbies were back to panicking when Palin posted on her Facebook account that she's "now looking ahead and how we can advance this country together with our values of less government intervention, greater energy independence, stronger national security, and much-needed fiscal restraint."

Palin's biggest offense is that she knocked the experts for a loop last week. But if there's a core reason Palin is giving up quality Moose-hunting time, it's to do the job the GOP girliemen won't do -- taking it to Obama. Free from the stultifying lame-duckery in Alaska, she'll be driving libbies even crazier by campaigning for real conservative candidates across the 57 states and helping Republicans sweep the 2010 midterms. With that party-rebranding game-changer under her belt, Sarah Barracuda will be calling the shots for 2012 and making the fussy little McCain staffers who went crying to Vanity Fair eat their words.

Wish I had said that. Oh wait, I did.

The Trifid Nebula in Stars and Dust

News from Honduras

This site, created by Hunter Smith, is a first hand - non MSM - account of the political situation in Honduras.

Click on the link and then read and see his reports.

…. consistent with our journalistic values ....

The Washington Post has decided that selling access to lobbyists for up to $250,000 is not that great an idea in view of the controversy it has caused. They think that the problem is in the details: the number of “sponsors” perhaps.

Post Executive Editor Marcus Brauchli:

Said Brauchli: "I think there is a legitimate debate right now about whether we should be doing this at all. We thought there was a way to do so consistent with our journalistic values, but in light of this experience, it is clear that this was a mistake."

Marcus, trust us my friend, selling access to the newsroom and to Obama government officials IS consistent with your journalistic standards.

Dowdy

Maureen Dowd is the aging ingénue of the NY Times who has been abandoned by more men than the Titanic. She is the well known reject of Michael Douglas and any number of other “celebrities.” The difference between Maureen and the anonymous groupies who brag about being bagged by the Beatles or Mick Jagger is her column. From her upcoming column on Sarah Palin we can conclude that it is highly likely that she is being shagged by David Letterman.

The face this hag displays is unlovely, hiding an even uglier spirit inside.

From Drudge:

NY TIMES Op-Ed Queen Maureen Dowd runs out of adjectives and insults while ripping away at Alaska Governor Sarah Palin in an upcoming Sunday column.

Palin is "one nutty puppy", in the mind of Dowd, newsroom sources tell the DRUDGE REPORT, with "erratic and egoistic behavior".

Dowd spits her holiday barbecue in 800 words, designed for fireworks.

"Exquisite battiness... solipsistic meltdown so strange... incoherent, breathless and prickly... Sarah's country-music melodramas... girlish burbling."

Developing...

Presstitutes

This is Independence Day and time for a little chauvinism

There was a conference in France where a number of international engineers were taking part, including French and American.. During a break, one of the French engineers came back into the room saying 'Have you heard the latest dumb stunt Bush has done? He has sent an aircraft carrier to Indonesia to help the tsunami victims. What does he intended to do, bomb them?'

A Boeing engineer stood up and replied quietly: 'Our carriers have three hospitals on board that can treat several hundred people; they are nuclear powered and can supply emergency electrical power to shore facilities; they have three cafeterias with the capacity to feed 3,000 people three meals a day, they can produce several thousand gallons of fresh water from sea water each day, and they carry half a dozen helicopters for use in transporting victims and injured to and from their flight deck. We have eleven such ships; how many does France have?'
__________________

A U.S. Navy Admiral was attending a naval conference that included Admirals from the U.S. , English, Canadian, Australian and French Navies. At a cocktail reception, he found himself standing with a large group of Officers that included personnel from most of those countries. Everyone was chatting away in English as they sipped their drinks but a French admiral suddenly complained that, whereas Europeans learn many languages, Americans learn only English.' He then asked, 'Why is it that we always
have to speak English in these conferences rather than speaking French?' Without hesitating, the American Admiral replied 'Maybe it's because the Brits, Canadians, Aussies and Americans arranged it so you wouldn't have to speak German.'
________________

Robert Whiting, an elderly gentleman of 83, arrived in Paris by plane. At French Customs, he took a few minutes to locate his passport in his carry on. 'You have been to France before, monsieur?' The customs officer asked sarcastically. Mr. Whiting admitted that he had been to France previously..

"Then you should know enough to have your passport ready. " The American said, ''The last time I was here, I didn't have to show it." "Impossible. Americans always have to show your passports on arrival in France !"

The American senior gave the Frenchman a long hard look. Then he quietly explained, ''Well, when I came ashore at Omaha Beach on D-Day in 1944 to help liberate this country, I couldn't find a single Frenchmen to show a passport to."

Palin and the politics of abundance

It tells you how big Sarah Palin is on the national scene when you consider this: no one is paying any more attention to Michael Jackson’s death.

Sarah Palin is being written off by all of the Left and parts of the Right. They may be right, but I doubt it. After all the hatred and vitriol that she and her children have been subjected to, I believe that it’s payback time. And there would be no bigger payback than the Presidency.

So I have begun to advise Sarah Palin.

It’s all right that she doesn’t know me, has never heard of me and probably never will, but that will not stop me (or millions of others) from offering her advice. I have already begun by telling her that she should come out as the ENERGY candidate.

Outside of glaciers and polar bears, it's what Alaska is known for. It's also the area of Palin's greatest expertise. It also happens to be topic number one for most Americans. Every time they fill their gas tank, every time they pay their electric bills, every time they discuss "cap and trade," every time they see windmills on the horizon and know - in their hearts - that these ugly machines are not going to be the solution, they will think about Sarah Palin.

Sarah Palin can become the spokesman for abundance while the left preaches the politics if scarcity. The Left’s solution to the issue of energy is to try to cope with scarcity. Every “solution” they propose is build on the assumption that energy is going to be less available and more expensive. Even their technological fixes - wind and solar power – are no one’s idea of the source of abundant energy.

The Left has brought a child-like faith to the religion of man-made global warming and demand that Americans wear hair shirts as penance for our sins as we developed a society that relies on the ready accessibility of abundant energy. Rather than finding new, economical and reliable sources of energy, they have demonized the use of energy and are working to force Americans to use less. By making energy more and more expensive via regulations that reduce the availability of natural resources, by taxes on the use of energy, buy hectoring and nagging when nothing else works.

Michelle Obama’s White House garden is the concept that the Left has of an American future. A sort of a genteel Unabomber vision of a proper America with the people growing 21st Century Victory Gardens. America as a rural Kenya outside of Nairobi; peaceful, happy rural and poor. Exceptions will be made for the leadership.

To this Leftist dystopia, Palin can bring the politics of abundance. The development of our own natural resources including oil, natural gas and coal. The re-vitalization of the nuclear power industry. Research can be funded to develop new power sources, but ones that are at least as efficient as current sources without requiring taxpayer subsidies to compete.

If given a choice between a vision of scarcity and a vision of plenty, a people will choose the path of plenty every time.

Sarah, are you listening?

Somehow, I suspect that she has it figured out already.

What Palin Could, And Should, Do

With he surprise announcement by Sarah Palin of her resignation, the commentariat is alive with people who are giving her advice (from the Right) or denigrating her (from the Left).

One of the best things I have read is by "Daily Pundit" Bill Quick.

1. Start putting her national team together now. Recruit from the best and the brightest of real conservatism.

2. Ignore her enemies, both in the MSM and the Dem party, and in the liberal wing of the GOP. Define herself on her own terms. No more chat-fests with the likes of Katy Couric.

3. Set out to remake the GOP in her image. This means identifying strong conservative candidates for both the House and the Senate, then supporting them with fundraisers, public appearances, the expertise of her team, and clout with the party itself in both the primaries and the general election.

4. In the process, she should define herself by attacking Obama’s policies without ceasing, and offering real conservative solutions. This doesn’t mean “conservative lite,” or “new conservative” or whatever other euphemisms are currently being pushed for a “conservatism” that is actually liberalism in disguise. She should also make clear that she can work with that wing of the party, but doesn’t support, and will not try to advance, the dogmas of the “moderate conservative” hacks.

5. If she does this right, she can turn the election of 2010 into a referendum on the failed policies and agendas of Obama and the Democrats. If successful - that is, if she helps to greatly reduce or eliminate the Democrat majorities in Congress - she will have set herself up as the savior of the GOP, as the only politician to defeat Obama, and will thus foreclose challenges from other GOP figures.

6. Spend the next year after that building a huge war chest, honing her campaign and her own talents, and then take it directly to Obama himself from late 2011 on.

Here's my suggestion for the key topic she should be focused on: ENERGY.

Outside of glaciers and polar bears, it's what Alaska is known for. It's also the area of Palin's greatest expertise. It also happens to be topic number one for most Americans. Every time they fill their gas tank, every time they pay their electric bills, every time they discuss "cap and trade," every time they see windmills on the horizon and know - in their hearts - that these ugly machines are not going to be the solution, they will think about Sarah Palin.

She will talk persuasively about the Democrats' refusal to tap the billions of barrels of oil in Alaska's wildlife refuge, about denying Americans access to clean coal in Utah, about the refusal of congress to explore for oil and gas off our coasts even as foreign companies are doing exactly that, about congress' refusal to allow the expansion of clean and proven nuclear power plants, the government's wrongheaded policies that make us rely more and more on foreign sources of energy even as they claim to be doing exactly the opposite.

She will be doing something that she does best: connecting with the American people in terms that they can understand. And she will be pointing out that the problem is a bipartisan one. She will have the opportunity to take on pandering and corruption on both sides of the aisle, just as she did in Alaska.

If she does that, she will be able to re-create the coalition that Ronald Reagan had, and we'll see the blue collar crowd who went Democrat in the last election come back to the Republican side.

Sarah Palin Resigning.

I hope we find out why soon. Her announcement is promising ... and shows that she is anything but conventional.

Who is Katharine Weymouth and why is she selling access to the Washington Post and the Obama Administration?

Well, for one thing, she's the granddaughter of Katharine Graham. The Grahams own a controlling stake in the Washington Post, and although it is a publicly traded company, the Post, like the NY Times, it is firmly under the control of a single family and leadership is handed down in the same "democratic" meritocratic way that it's done in North Korea.

It's the MSM way.

Weymouth joined the newspaper in 1996 as assistant counsel. After two years she and transferred to Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive as associate counsel. Two years after that, she returned to the newspaper and was the advertising department's liaison between The Post and WPNI. She was named director of advertising sales in April 2004.

In her new post, Weymouth will report to [Donald] Graham, who was careful to say she didn't get her post because of her relation to the family.

That Graham, what a great kidder!

"Katharine is ready for this," Graham said in a statement. "She is Kay Graham's granddaughter, but that is not why she's getting this job. She's had a rare combination of big jobs at both the newspaper and the digital company. In all those jobs, she has shown herself to be smart, decisive, modest and a great manager of people."

And she has some really creative ideas on raising money!

It's purely an accident that she's a member of the family. No one, not one single person was found in all the world who was better suited for this job than her.

And if you're wondering who arranged for the marketing department to sell access, note please that ...

Weymouth has been vice president of advertising for The Washington Post since January 2005.

Smart, decisive, modest ... not!

How Vanity Fair's Palin Profile Helps Her

This is the point that Charles Krauthammer and Jonah Goldberg (Peace be unto them) and all the conventional Beltway bloviators miss. We are in revolutionary times, thanks to The Won. Old ideas about what it takes to win elections should have been re-examined, but they have not been.


John Batchelor gets it:

Is this [the circular firing squad] normal after a losing presidential campaign? No. Nor is this a normal year for the Republicans. Kristol and Schmidt and their cronies all know that the Republican brand that they depend upon for a job and for money, lots of money, has been wrecked to the point of no return. They are veterans of a lost cause with one wild adventure to try before history moves on—and the adventurer’s name is Sarah Palin.

What is going on right now in the Republican Party are the early scenes of the 2012 campaign for the presidency with Sarah Palin as the once and future hero. Like Joan of Arc, Catherine the Great, Elizabeth Regina and, skipping four centuries of quarrelsome princes, Margaret Thatcher, the Republican Party has already decided that the governor of Alaska will rescue the GOP from its ruination.

If you scoff at Palin for president, you are likely insufficiently cynical to work on a national campaign. Eight months after the election, the governor is as natural and gifted a presidential candidate as anyone since Huey Long. The farther she stays away from Washington and the longer she pushes away those sharpies clamoring for her to raise PAC money, to prepare gray-bearded policy positions, network at the barbecues in Iowa and New Hampshire and South Carolina (well, maybe not South Carolina right now), the more box-office irresistible she will be to the Republican primary voters. What most recommends the Palin boom is that she is now, forty months to the election, as celebrated by the GOP right wing as she is reviled by the Democratic left wing.

Rather than a blow to a career, the Purdum piece in Vanity Fair is a spectacular tribute to a force of nature that became an “ineradicable” caricature before she became a household name. Tina Fey’s talent is a walking advertisement for presidential debates to come. Purdum employs his talent for disregard in order to collect a posse of anonymous tattle-tales, back-stabbers and snitches—many of them unsurprisingly males—to weave a political biography that is compelling in its improbability and breathtaking in its portrait of a young, deceitful, driven, unapologetic, spontaneous, and cunning scalawag. Purdum’s notion of a sober put-down is to quote the wooden fossil of a cigar store Indian, Governor Walter S. Hickel, who complains that after he helped Palin get elected governor, “She never called me after that.” The stories about Palin and her rambunctious daughters, her riveting special needs child, her cheerful parents, her innate affection for the strangeness of Alaska, and her magical romance with her rock-star attractive husband Todd are all a setup to learning that in the governor’s office she is Elmer Gantry in a skirt, as clannish, vengeful, petty, tireless, ill-read, pouty and manipulative as anyone Hollywood could dream up and play Mildred Pierce. The darkest revelations about Palin are that she didn’t like preparing for the tedious TV interviews; she treated the dull Biden debate as irrelevant; and she wanted to make her own concession speech on election night. In sum, the governor does not like losers, does not like to lose, and was liberated the moment she shed the burden of bootless John McCain.

This is an insight that I had not considered, but from the vantage point of July 3, 2009 seems to be true: the mid-rem elections are of little consequence. In fact, if Republicans do well, it could hurt Palin.

What Kristol and Schmidt know is that the only Republican candidate worth cutting each other up about is Sarah Palin. The governor certainly does not need either of them other than as stable hands for Joan of Arc’s replacement horses or as Joan Crawford’s makeup artists. In fact, the governor does not need much more than a ballot line from the aimless, tongue-tied, villain-rich GOP. She certainly does not need the GOP to do well in the congressional mid-terms in 2010; she does not need the party to improve its flabby polling on health care or trust; she does not even need the Republican Party to raise a voice to explain her positions on the burning controversies on Capitol Hill. Palin does not need to prove anything at all about wise government, because she appeals directly to the anti-authoritarian crowd that has been with us since Shay’s Rebellion in 1787. It is an accident of history, and of John McCain’s whimsy, that Sarah Palin caught Potomac Fever in September ‘08, and it will carry her either to the White House or to that place even rarer, where the Kingfisher dwells, called what-could’ve-been.

The deeper that Team Obama drives us into the swamp of socialism/fascism, the better Sarah Palin will do.

The Wa$hington Po$t

Of course getting access in return for favorable coverage - see Saddam Hussein and CNN - is par for the course. It's also true for the US media.

Why do we think that NBC-ABC-CBS have been given such wonderful access while FOX is slagged by The Won in his staged interviews and staged town hall meetings-?

It's just the first time anyone put a specific price tag on their corruption. Like a hooker who advertises her price on her skirt, no need to guess at the price of the Washington Post's virtue.

Ann Coulter: So Much for Wise Latinas

With the Supreme Court's decision in Ricci v. DeStefano this week, we can now report that Sonia Sotomayor is even crazier than Ruth Bader Ginsburg. ...

This week, the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 for the white and Hispanic firefighters, overturning Sotomayor's endorsement of racial quotas.

But all nine justices rejected Sotomayor's holding that different test results alone give the government a green light to engage in race discrimination. Even Justice Ginsburg's opinion for the dissent clearly stated that "an employer could not cast aside a selection method based on a statistical disparity alone."

Coulter's dissection of Ginsberg is a classic:

Liberals desperately want race quotas -- as long as quotas never come to their offices.

But they can't say that, so instead they talk in circles for 10 hours straight, until everyone else is exhausted, and then, when no one is paying attention, they announce: So we're all agreed -- we will have racial quotas.

Based on her lifetime of experience working as a firefighter, Ginsburg said: "Relying heavily on written tests to select fire officers is a questionable practice, to say the least." Liberals prefer a more objective test, such as race.

Isn't excelling on written tests how Ruth Bader Ginsburg got where she is? It's curious how people whose entire careers are based on doing well on tests find them so irrelevant to other people's jobs.

Unleashing the canard of all race-obsessed liberals, Ginsburg observed that courts have found that a fire officer's job "involves complex behaviors, good interpersonal skills, the ability to make decisions under tremendous pressure, and a host of other abilities -- none of which is easily measured by a written, multiple choice test."

So does a lawyer's job. And yet attorneys with absolutely no "interpersonal skills" get cushy jobs and extravagant salaries on the basis of their commendable performance on all manner of written tests, from multiple choice LSATs and bar exams to written law school exams.

I note that Ginsburg has not shown any particular interest in rectifying the "disparate impact" of legal exams: She never hired a single black law clerk out of the dozens she employed in more than a decade as an appeals court judge. (Her hiring practices on the Supreme Court are a state secret, but I can state with supreme certainty that her clerks do not reflect the racial mix of Washington, D.C.)

But liberals think other people's jobs are a joke, so the testing must also be a joke. That is -- other than their preferred test: "Is the applicant black, female or otherwise handicapped?"

There is no test that can prove all things about an employee and so there is no test that can't be derided by the race-mongers. Which is exactly the point. Get rid of all tests -- except for lawyers who graduated at the top of their law school classes at Columbia, like Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Then liberals are free to impose racial quotas on other people's jobs without limit.

As crazy as this is, even Ginsburg and the other dissenters made a big point of pretending there was some flaw in this particular test. None adopted Sotomayor's position that unequal test results alone prove discrimination.

This suggests that a wise Jewess, due to the richness of her life experiences, might come to a better judgment than a Latina judge would.

That's GOOOOD!

"SMART" Growth meets small town America

Letters from a small town ...

This whole cap and trade thing reminds me of a discussion I took part in as part of our city’s Master Plan Rewrite Committee.

As part of the Master Plan Rewrite we filled out an SGRAT survey (Smart Growth Readiness Assessment Tool, a product of Michigan State University). It allows you to evaluate your city by SMART growth standards. The intent of SMART growth is to stress the reuse of property and so inhibit urban sprawl. If I am not boring you yet, here are the ten tenets of SMART growth.



1. Create a range of housing opportunities and choices—( I told them that affordable housing is impossible to achieve and maintain, but foreclosures are natures way of creating affordable housing, needless to say that didn’t go over well. The city tax base can’t afford foreclosures for one thing. )

2. Create walkable neighborhoods

3. Encourage community and stakeholder collaboration

4. Foster distinctive, attractive places with a strong sense of place--- (I hate trite phrases like “a strong sense of place”. Its like “branding”. )

5. Make development decisions predictable, fair, and cost effective (Not if cap and trade and LEED certification becomes the standard)

6. Mix land uses

7. Preserve open space, farmland, natural beauty and critical environmental areas

8. Strengthen and direct development toward existing communities

9. Provide a variety of transportation choices

10. Take advantage of compact building design



Some of these things are admirable, but I told the committee that I am suspicious of anything that calls itself SMART because only the brave or the foolish would be against something that is called SMART since the opposite would necessarily be STUPID. SMART growth is all about social engineering and I do not agree with taking away people’s freedom by more regulations.



Another thing they were going to do was give “incentives” for businesses to build LEED certified buildings (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, LEED is the environmentally correct standard for building—read “expensive” but is supposed to save you money in the long run). I said that putting these kind of “incentives” on LEED buildings would be a disincentive to non LEED buildings and in the Michigan economy any disincentive to any business is not what we need to stimulate our economy. I had one other person who agreed and that led to a discussion where this was dropped, but if I hadn’t said that it very well would have carried the day because it sounds so darn good. I picture the Obama administration and the Pelosi law writers with few dissenting votes in the pool of ideas and I believe that is how a lot of this stuff gets written. There is no one to say, hey wait a minute, if you do that, you will cause this consequence and that won’t be good.



They also were floating the trial balloon of making all trees subject to city control. The trees between the sidewalk and the street are city responsibility, but there is an idea afoot that all trees should be regulated by the city. You would need their permission to trim or cut down trees on your own property. I asked if this were the case, and a limb fell on my house who was responsible. The answer was that is was my responsibility. It is amazing to me that these kinds of things are even thought of let alone already the law in some communities.



It is like the windmill thing. We are all about burying our power lines because we are told people buying high priced condos don’t want their view obstructed by those ugly power lines and in Europe they are all buried. We are really a backward nation. Lost is the idea that it will cost a gazillion dollars to bury those lines and with what the Board of Light and Power has to pay to keep up with environmental quality standards they really can’t afford to give this little perk to out of town condo buyers. But while wanting to bury these ugly power lines, we also want to build windmills. So my question is why you want to clear the view of power lines and then fill that same view with wind mills. The other question I have asked people is how many windmills would it take to power Chicago, the windy city, and where would you put them. The usual answer is I don’t know, but that doesn’t dissuade them from the belief in wind mills or that coal is evil.

What makes the provisions of a constitution something to respect and uphold?

Francis Porretto asks a some very important questions: what makes the Constitution "legitimate" and is it self enforcing?

A constitution is a unique document. It's a popular contract, either explicitly or implicitly given force by the acquiescence of the mass of the people, that sets down the terms under which the actions of a government will be deemed legitimate. If it contains provisions for amendment -- which the overwhelming majority of constitutions do -- those provisions will undoubtedly specify the exact process by which an amendment might excise a part of, or become a part of, the document.

If we leave aside the specific terms of such a document, and all the justifications, whether from Hobbes, Locke, or Pee-Wee Herman, that might be offered for it, we're left with a single stanchion to which to cling: accepted processes.
...
Today, we have a president and a gaggle of federal legislators -- never mind the state and local equivalents -- who disbelieve in constitutional constraints, and who dismiss all considerations of legitimizing process. There's been no uprising yet, partly because so many of us are in shock at the brazenness of the Obama Administration's all-out attack on freedom, the free market, and America's position as the world's guarantor of acceptable international behavior. But one thing leads to another; little violations of agreed-upon processes pave the way for larger and larger ones. When 2012 is upon us, will we have enough spine to resist the Administration's arrogation of the power to rule a candidate unacceptable because of his convictions? Will we be capable of denying ACORN the privilege of counting the votes? Should 2016 find Obama still in office, will we rise up to oppose his quest for a third term?

Unclear. Massively unclear, all of it -- and it will remain dubious and worse for so long as Americans refuse to acknowledge the supremacy of processes over arbitrary claims of power, in particular of constitutional processes and constraints over all bids for and uses of power. On what other basis can anyone strive against the social-fascists now in power? Their Ace-of-trumps argument is "I won," remember? If we can't recur to process requirements to defeat that, what can we do?

Don't delude yourself that any argument about rights or similar abstractions would carry the day. Americans aren't generally interested in such things, except as they might be used to justify some subvention in their favor. Besides, our opponents have their own definitions for "rights:" A right to health care. A right to a job -- or an income. A right to abortion on demand. A right to force their way into some voluntary assembly minded to exclude them. A right not to be frightened or offended. A right to stick their hands into our pockets to fund whatever vague fantasies they might concoct about their "rights." The Bill of Rights is just wastepaper in the hands of the imaginative statist; consider what the courts have done to the Ninth and Tenth Amendments, and see if you can disagree.

And pray.

Birds of a Feather…

Via Eternity Road

The Palin Standard

I like the Fox News Special Report. It’s now hosted by Brett Baer who has done an excellent job replacing the retiring Brit Hume. The last 20 minutes or so are a panel discussion with three panelists. Sometimes there are substitutions, but usually they are Charles Krauthammer, Fred Barnes and Mara Liasson. This panel is unique in the media in the respect that it consists of two conservatives and one liberal.

The subject of Republican candidates for 2012 was part of the discussion on July 1. When the discussion turned to Sarah Palin everyone agreed that Palin should be busy studying foreign policy issues to prepare herself if she decided to run. One of the panelists recommended that she send for policy experts to visit her in Alaska to provide a tutorial.

And everyone nodded.

This is the conventional wisdom and it’s wrong. Why should Palin be held to a different standard than the people who won the election in 2008?

Quick ... when did Obama get quizzed on foreign policy?

Obama’s foreign policy consisted of pulling out of Iraq before we were successful and closing Guantanamo before he knew what could be done with the terrorists there. Oh yes, the other leg of his foreign policy was to hold talks with Ahmadinejad of Iran without pre-conditions.

Can anyone remember Obama getting a “test” on foreign policy during the campaign? Can anyone remember anything about the Obama campaign other than “hope and change,” “yes we can,” and “we are the ones we have been waiting for.”

Why is Sarah Palin going to judged on a different standard that the recent winner in the Presidential sweepstakes? Is there a different test that Republican women must pass? Why is there a demand that Sarah Palin be required to prepare a doctoral dissertation and be subject to an oral exam as if she were attending graduate school while the winner of the last election not only does not have her experience, he was not even asked about his knowledge.

It is easy and obvious to point out that there is a double standard in the MSM. But to see it exhibited – rather mindlessly – by a person for whom I have as much respect as Charles Krauthammer and someone who is as reflexively conservative as Fred Barnes is infuriating. It’s like a reflexive tick. It’s as if they view her as the SNL’s Tina Fey claiming to see Russia from her house.

What is the matter with the people inside the Beltway when it comes to Sarah Palin? Is it because she’s a woman? Is it because she too good looking? Is she too middle class? Is it her accent? Is it her religion? Is it because she’s from Alaska? Is it because she did not attend an Ivy League University? Is it because she appeals to people in "flyover country?" Why do the people who sell access to Obama administration officials and the editors of the Washington Post for $25,000 and up hate her so?

What is it?

UPDATE: Here's the video of the discussion.


Watch the video. Krauthammer said that "You cannot sustain a campaign of platitudes and cliches over a year and a half if you're running for the Presidency." Was Charles Krauthammer, for whom I have the utmost respect, living in an alternative universe during the last presidential campaign? "Hope and change" is the very definition of a platitude while "we are the ones we have been waiting for" does not aspire to even that level.

Mind you, I am not in favor of electing ill-equipped demagogues to any office, let alone the presidency. But that's just what happened in 2008. The idea that you can't do what Barack Obama so obviously did makes Krauthammer's comments silly and makes me question the motives behind his dismissal of Palin. He appears to favor Romney who is a very rich man.

In his defense, he may have meant to say that Republicans - unlike Democrats - can't run an empty suit and win. But Ronald Reagan proved that you can win an election on big ideas without taking a test in which you are asked to name the second assistant vice chairman of Bulgaria.

UPDATE2 : The comments are so good that I wanted to bring them into the body of the essay.

thisishabitforming said...
Palin is going to have to do a lot of studying to live up to the foreign plolicy standard set by Obama in his first six months:

First travel around the world and blame America for .....fill in the blank

Bow to the Saudi King and be sure to diss your European allies every chance you get.

Promise to close Gitmo and send four maybe terrorists to Burmuda but don't tell the British

Iran: support the Mullah's and stolen elections

Honduras: support who guy who would violate his own constitution and is supported by Castro and Chavez,

Israel: show Netanyahu the bottom of your shoe and tell him that he can't build houses for his expanding population and promise to divide up Jerusalem

Gaza: give Hamas millions of dollars.

Secretary of State: give the job to Hillary Clinton to bury her at State and then appoint special envoys to be the real Secretary's of State


Yup, that's a lot of brilliance to live up to. Getting this good is going to be a full time job, maybe she should resign as governor.

I'm not sure what the problem is either, but besides this high brow reaction, bottom line she connects with people and draws the crowds and I am not sure if there is an explanation for charisma.

And
Francis W. Porretto (of whose blog I am a very big admirer) said...
There's what would be "fair," and there's what would give Governor Palin a decent chance of being elected president.

Because of the multiple calummny campaigns mounted against her, Governor Palin will have to prove, beyond anyone's ability to conceal or deny, that she's the equal of anyone else contending for the Oval Office -- and she has to do it without sacrificing her grace or her dignity. That will take not merely intense preparation on all manner of national issues, foreign relations issues prominent among them, but also a severe course in the indelicate arts of political posturing and sloganeering.

Governor Palin will have to learn how to cope with accusations and imputations from the mainstream media types who so obviously hate her. She'll have to learn how to deal with a hostile question from a hostile interviewer. She'll have to learn how to deflect inquiries about irrelevancies -- and how to direct attention away from indecent rumor campaigns and onto the motives and backgrounds of those who've orchestrated them.

She has to learn how to do all this...and then she'll have to do it, all of it, without besmirching her own gorgeous image.

Then there's this: She'll have to figure out how to break the GOP Establishment's barriers against her, and then do it, while doing all the above and maintaining her stainless reputation for integrity and decency. It wasn't easy in Alaska; it will be one hell of a lot tougher with the national party, whose kingmakers believe themselves to be God's chosen, above all critique.

Governor Palin is conservatives' dream candidate in many ways. Unfortunately, to become more than a dream, she'll have to study and work five times as hard as anyone else in the Republican Party. I hope she's up for it; another round of the McCain / Romney / Huckabee / Giuliani / Keystone Kops festival would nudge me perilously close to suicide.

Hmmm, what about hiring Chuck Norris as Governor Palin's chief "adviser?"

Black Reporters on the Beat of Michelle Obama

Howard Kurtz wonders (in the Washington Post which is selling access to friendly politicians, lobbyists and editors for up to $250,000) whether assigning black female reporters to cover Michelle Obama is either racist or sexist or might lead to favorable coverage.

Does Race Play a Role in Coverage? ...

Perhaps this gives them a richer cultural understanding of Obama as a trailblazer. Indeed, most write with enthusiasm, in some cases even admiration, about the first lady as a long-awaited role model for black women.

"Without a doubt, I identify with her as a brown-skinned African American woman," Samuels says. "Now we have Michelle and see her as a mother, a lawyer, a wife, and she's doing it fabulously." Samuels got to interview Obama during the campaign and "we had a girlfriend-to-girlfriend moment. We did connect."

Oh yeah, these babes are going to cover "Michelle My Belle" objectively.

Ya think?

At Glenn Reynolds Instapundit a reader writes:

“Imagine the reporting on Sarah Palin if she were covered by only pro-life, church-going, mothers who live in small towns. I guess that’s why she didn’t have many ‘girlfriend to girlfriend’ moments with the press.”

LIBERALS, CONSERVATIVES AND THE BILL OF RIGHTS.

Washington Post sells access, $25,000+

We knew this was coming ....

For $25,000 to $250,000, The Washington Post has offered lobbyists and association executives off-the-record, non-confrontational access to "those powerful few" — Obama administration officials, members of Congress, and — at first — even the paper’s own reporters and editors.


The astonishing offer was detailed in a flier circulated Wednesday to a health care lobbyist, who provided it to a reporter because the lobbyist said he felt it was a conflict for the paper to charge for access to, as the flier says, its “health care reporting and editorial staff."

With the newsroom in an uproar after POLITICO reported the solicitation, Executive Editor Marcus W. Brauchli said in a staff-wide e-mail that the newsroom would not participate in the first of the planned events — a dinner scheduled July 21 at the home of Publisher and Chief Executive Officer Katharine Weymouth.

The offer — which essentially turns a news organization into a facilitator for private lobbyist-official encounters — was a new sign of the lengths to which news organizations will go to find revenue at a time when most newspapers are struggling for survival.

For $25,000 to $250,000, The Washington Post has offered lobbyists and association executives off-the-record, non-confrontational access to "those powerful few" — Obama administration officials, members of Congress, and — at first — even the paper’s own reporters and editors.


The astonishing offer was detailed in a flier circulated Wednesday to a health care lobbyist, who provided it to a reporter because the lobbyist said he felt it was a conflict for the paper to charge for access to, as the flier says, its “health care reporting and editorial staff."

With the newsroom in an uproar after POLITICO reported the solicitation, Executive Editor Marcus W. Brauchli said in a staff-wide e-mail that the newsroom would not participate in the first of the planned events — a dinner scheduled July 21 at the home of Publisher and Chief Executive Officer Katharine Weymouth.

The offer — which essentially turns a news organization into a facilitator for private lobbyist-official encounters — was a new sign of the lengths to which news organizations will go to find revenue at a time when most newspapers are struggling for survival.

And it's a turn of the times that a lobbyist is scolding The Washington Post for its ethical practices.

"Underwriting Opportunity: An evening with the right people can alter the debate," says the one-page flier. "Underwrite and participate in this intimate and exclusive Washington Post Salon, an off-the-record dinner and discussion at the home of CEO and Publisher Katharine Weymouth. ... Bring your organization’s CEO or executive director literally to the table. Interact with key Obama administration and congressional leaders."

It's the speed at which the newspapers are prostituting themselves that's a little surprising. I'm surprised that the NY Times didn't think of it first. Or perhaps they did but the memo didn't get distributed to the press.

I'll forward this to Maurice Jones at the Virginian Pilot to see if he also sees a business opportunity. How's his house as a venue?

Obama To Hold Job Performance Review With Every American Worker.

Obama To Hold Job Performance Review With Every American Worker

Anger on the Right for McCain Staffers

At Redstate we find a high level of anger at Republican operatives who are sources for anti-Palin articles like the one that appeared in Vanity Fair.

Moe Lane: A friendly suggestion to former McCain campaign staffers. You are not a beautiful and unique snowflake.

Since everybody else is piling on, let me add my own comment to the fray. If you were one of the people who participated in that Vanity Fair hit piece, and we find out your name, you will be a net drag on any national campaign for the rest of your professional career. Not because you helped the Left go after Governor Palin, but because you are an untrustworthy sneak who is dedicated to propping up the elitist system in DC, not fixing it.

In the comments:

My advice to the McCain staffers?

Find yourselves a job as far away from politics as you possibly can. Hope that we don’t hunt you down there… and that we can find some forgiveness for you as you hand us our order out the drive through window.

Drive by commentary

Remember the old saying “the pen is mightier than the sword?” It's true and for that reason the pen is much more dangerous than the sword. Marx and Engels never killed anyone, but their readers killed literally hundreds of millions.

In view of this truth, does it strike anyone as strange that those who propose the regulation and removal of relatively innocuous weapons – like guns – should be so adamant that a far more dangerous weapon, the written word should be left unregulated?

What brought this to mind was Thomas Freedman. Freedman is a pompous buffoon who waxes eloquent in columns distributed by the NY Times and in books. He married an heiress whose father subsequently lost a multi billion dollar fortune. But we know that billions never go away completely; they leave traces during their existence, including a home reported to occupy over 11,400 square feet of space in a Washington suburb, Bethesda, MD. The address: 7117 Bradley Blvd, Bethesda, MD (Other views at the link.)



Per Wikipedia, Friedman has a bachelor of arts degree in Mediterranean studies and an Master’s degree in Middle Eastern Studies. So this scion of wealth and privilege, living in luxury that would make Croesus green with envy, and with access to the printing press he pontificates on subjects of his choosing, most of which have precious little to do with the Mediterranean or the Middle East. And no one calls him on it.

The problem with Friedman, as is the problem with Marx and Engels, is that people pay attention to him because he has the ability to sound sane while despoiling the public intelligence.

Friedman's wealth and his NY Times column gives him access to movers and shakers worldwide, which gives credence to his opinions - at least to the credulous. "Reporting" from Davos and other places where the glitterati gather gives a sheen to his writing that the same thoughts expressed from a basement apartment in the Bronx lacks. In reality, Friedman is a poorly educated ass who is a reliable opinion weather vane pointing in the direction of the prevailing wind, justifying the current Liberal zeitgeist. When the war in Iraq was popular he was for it. When it lost popularity he was against it. When free enterprise is ascendant he’s a proponent. When Green is ascendant, he’s a cheerleader. He sells the intellectual fashion du jour for $75,000 per speech. And he does it all without knowing a blessed thing about the subject.

His latest essay in support of the “cap and trade” fiasco that escaped from the House tell us will we need to know about what Friedman – BA Mediterranean Studies and MA Middle Eastern Studies – knows about the economy, science or energy:

More important, my gut tells me that if the U.S. government puts a price on carbon, even a weak one, it will usher in a new mind-set among consumers, investors, farmers, innovators and entrepreneurs that in time will make a big difference

That says it all. Pass a bill, any bill that makes the use of energy more expensive, and people will change their minds … for the better.

This kind of thinking … and writing … is much more dangerous and destructive than random violence in Watts or drive-by shootings in Chicago. None of that can bring down a whole society. Ideas like Friedman have.

Guns by themselves cannot destroy a culture; men with pens can. Someone needs to demand that Friedman have his license to publish revoked.

Of course, the suggestion is an argument against interest. I am glad to live in a country that allows me to write and publish my opinions, even if I don’t get the readership of Friedman. But I can readily understand that when a dictator (usually referred to as the “voice of the people”) takes over, the first thing he does, even before he confiscates the guns. is to take over the radio and TV stations and close the newspapers.

It works everywhere it’s tried.

Three Galaxies in Draco