Category Archives: The Nation

Duck! The culture war just started back up

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Just as it looks like maybe we can have a relatively high-minded campaign with two presidential nominees who both can appeal to us independents, the Kulturkampf flares back up.

This delighted The Wall Street Journal this morning, which as the official spokespaper of conservatism went out of its way to affirm Democratic fears of the "Republican attack machine" when it gleefully greeted the California Supreme Court decision in favor of same-sex "marriage:"

Gay Marriage Returns
    Just when the news was filling with stories about a Republican Party gasping for air, along comes the California Supreme Court’s 4-3 decision yesterday legislating gay marriage. The GOP certainly hasn’t done anything to deserve such luck.
    Recall how in November 2003 the Massachusetts Supreme Court, also by a 4-3 vote, issued a similar gay marriage pronouncement. It dogged Democrat John Kerry all the way to Election Day. The issue got so hot that the liberal fever swamps came to believe that Karl Rove had invented this greatest of all "wedge" issues.
    Nope. Judges invent wedge issues. Always have. As with California’s Supreme Court, many of the berobed judiciary take it as their solemn duty to do the people’s thinking for them on the modern world’s most difficult and divisive social issues. So it was with Roe v. Wade, when the U.S. Supreme Court declared 50 state legislatures irrelevant. The aftermath has been more than 30 years of the abortion wars….

Correction_gay_marria_wartOh, and in case you think the WSJ‘s characterization of the left as wont to impose judicial fiat in spite of
what the people of our republic may want is a bit overboard, check out this quote from the mayor of San Francisco, Gavin Newsom (that’s him at right):

"As California goes, so goes the rest of the nation. It’s inevitable. This door’s wide open now. It’s going to happen, whether you like it or not."

So there. Pow, zing. I just want to go on record right now as saying that in the culture wars, I’m a conscientious objector. I just don’t want to have this fight.

I tell you how this always feels to me — like the two sides in these culture battles are allied with each other against the rest of us. How else do you explain both sides — from the voice of the political right to the gay rights folks — being so happy about this development? When both the Karl Roves and the Gavin Newsoms are thrilled, it’s time for the rest of us to duck, because here it all comes again.

Why do we let THESE people run our country?

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How can any Democrat or Republican look in the mirror after the shenanigans in the House Thursday? An excerpt from the WSJ‘s story today:

WASHINGTON — The House rejected $163 billion in funding for wars in Iraq and Afghanistan — the first time the House has voted against funding for the Iraq war — as Republicans held back support as a protest against domestic-spending items Democrats added to the legislation.
    Some antiwar Democrats applauded as 132 Republicans voted "present" and the funding failed on a 149-to-141 vote….
    The House passed two other measures during the war debate, one placing restrictions on the Iraq war, including a timeline for troop withdrawal, and another expanding funding for veterans’ education benefits by collecting a new surtax from wealthy taxpayers.
    Democratic leaders planned the votes separately to allow their antiwar members to vote against funding operations in Iraq, while still passing a bill. But Republicans didn’t vote for the war funding and then accused Democrats of loading up the legislation with spending items "on the backs" of troops….

I propose that when the Grownup Party takes over, we should ride them all out of town on a rail. Or is that a less-than-Grownup, emotional response on my part? Maybe, but somehow making them stand in a corner seems grossly inadequate.

Did Joe Wilson do a brave and smart thing? Critic says he did

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A Democrat who wants to oppose U.S. Rep. Joe Wilson in the fall put out this release yesterday:

Beaufort, SC – Today, Democratic Congressional Candidate Rob Miller released the following statement concerning incumbent Joe Wilson’s vote yesterday against legislation that could lower gas prices as much as 24 cents a gallon. Wilson was one of only 25 members of Congress to vote against H.R. 6022, the Strategic Petroleum Reserve Fill Suspension and Consumer Protection Act. Majorities in both parties voted in favor of this legislation to provide Americans some quick relief from record high gas prices.

     "Joe Wilson owes people back home an explanation on why he sided with big oil and voted against providing families much needed relief at the gas pump. People are struggling simply to pay for the gas that gets them to and from work these days. Joe Wilson seems to be too busy cozying up to oil executives to even notice," Miller said. 
     "This is just another reason I’m running for Congress to bring change to Washington and give the voters of the Second District the representation they deserve."

                ###

I have yet to see a statement from Joe himself on the subject, but Rob Miller is a recent captain in the United States Marine Corps, and they’re not trained to lie, so I’m going to take him at his word on this.

Now if Joe were running on the Grownup Party (a.k.a. UnParty, a.k.a. Energy Party) ticket, he’d be bragging about doing this. But since he’s a mere Republican, he’s not boasting.

But from this account, it sure sounds like he did the right thing.

Go into Burma with guns blazing

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Alternative headline for this post, for those of you who thought that one a bit too lurid:

I’m down with R2P

I refer here to the alleged United Nations principle of "responsibility to protect," which Trudy Rubin wrote about in her column on today’s op-ed page. I say alleged because it’s one of those things the U.N. talks about, but doesn’t do. To help you catch up, here’s an excerpt from the column:

What do you do when the world is lined up to help more than a million desperate people hit by a cyclone, and Myanmar’s hard-line junta blocks that help?
    That is the unprecedented situation confronting the United Nations, Western aid agencies and humanitarian organizations. No one has ever seen anything like it….
    So should, or can, U.N. member states force the junta to accept the world’s outstretched hand?
    Ironically, U.N. members adopted a concept back in fall 2005 that would seem to answer that question. At the urging of Secretary-General Kofi Annan, the General Assembly endorsed the following principle: The international community has a “responsibility to protect” civilians when their governments can’t or won’t stop genocide or crimes against humanity — even if this means violating a country’s national sovereignty.
    This concept, known variously as “humanitarian intervention” or by the abbreviation “R2P,” has gone nowhere. It has not proved useful in dealing with the quasi-genocide in Darfur. Authoritarian regimes view R2P as a potential cover for Western military efforts at regime change.
But if it ever had any relevance, the concept ought to apply to the horrific situation in Myanmar…

Trudy says that this situation would not involve regime change, but hey — wouldn’t that be a wonderful byproduct?

Unfortunately, instead of using our military proactively to shove thugs and tyrants out of the way so we can help our people, we’re still arguing over whether we should have gone into Iraq. In other words, instead of expanding our capacity to project force — the way China’s doing like gangbusters — we’re arguing about whether to make use of the military we have.

Not only can we not get off the DIME as the world’s one (for the moment) superpower, we can’t even decide to use the "M."

So the dying continues in Darfur. And Myanmar, a.k.a. Burma.

Let’s talk military buildup

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There are certain things that worry me, and nobody seems to be talking about them. In fact, our public conversations tend to go off in directions entirely opposed to where the discussion should be going. For instance:

  • Children’s brains are essentially formed, in terms of their ability to learn for the rest of their lives, by age 3. What do we do about that? I don’t know, but it’s weird that we can’t even make up our minds to fund 4K for all the kids who could benefit from it.
  • Also on education — we need to bring about serious reforms in public education, from consolidating districts to merit pay to empowering principals. But thanks to our governor and his ilk, we talk about whether we want to support public schools at all.
  • China is growing and modernizing its military at a pace that matches its economic growth. It won’t be all that long before it achieves parity with our own. But instead of talking about matching that R&D, we can’t make up our minds to commit the resources necessary to fight a low-intensity conflict against relatively weak enemies with low-tech weapons.

Anyway, there was an op-ed piece in the WSJ today about the latter worry:

China has a vast internal market newly unified by modern transport and communications; a rapidly flowering technology; an irritable but highly capable workforce that as long as its standard of living improves is unlikely to push the country into paralyzing unrest; and a wider world, now freely accessible, that will buy anything it can make. China is threatened neither by Japan, Russia, India, nor the Western powers, as it was not that long ago. It has an immense talent for the utilization of capital, and in the free market is as agile as a cat.

Unlike the U.S., which governs itself almost unconsciously, reactively and primarily for the short term, China has plotted a long course, in which with great deliberation it joins economic growth to military power. Thirty years ago, in what may be called the "gift of the Meiji," Deng Xiaoping transformed the Japanese slogan fukoku kyohei (rich country, strong arms) into China’s 16-Character Policy: "Combine the military and the civil; combine peace and war; give priority to military products; let the civil support the military."

Anyway, discuss amongst yourselves. And if you can, try to get the people running for president to talk about it. We need them to…

Lindsey pandering for McCain

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Grahammccain_2

Someone pointed this out to me yesterday, but I was having so much trouble getting ANYTHING to post I gave up on the blog for the day. Now that things seem to working again…

We know that Lindsey Graham’s best buddy in the Senate is John McCain. And predictably (but sadly), Lindsey is walking point for his party’s presumptive presidential nominee on his worst idea ever — the summer-long gas tax holiday:

Gas tax holiday to be introduced by Graham
By Doug Abrahms
GANNETT NEWS SERVICE
WASHINGTON — U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham said he will propose suspending the federal tax of 18.4 cents a gallon for the summer in a measure on the Senate floor as early as next week.
    "On a very short-term basis, I think Sen. (John) McCain’s got a really good idea — relieve that tax," said Graham, R-S.C.
    The idea also has been widely touted by Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton. Democratic candidate Barack Obama has dismissed it as a political gimmick that will not solve the real problems of soaring demand and dwindling supply.
    Although presidential candidates have been talking about the gas tax holiday for weeks, there has been no vote yet.

Long-term, short-term, it’s a horrible idea, that goes precisely in the wrong direction.

CORRECTION TO PREVIOUS: Earlier at this point in the post, I said Jim DeMint was with Graham and McCain on this. Wesley called from DeMint’s office Wednesday to say that’s not true. So I’m sorry about that. It just goes to show, I guess, that you can’t believe everything you read. More about that later.

Remember, of course, that Hillary Clinton’s on their side on this. The only presidential candidate talking like a grownup on this issue is the youngest of them all, Barack Obama.

Obama answers Hillary’s shot with a PBR

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Obama1

Barack Obama, not to be outdone on the regular-guy front by Hillary’s boilermakers, strode decisively into a Raleigh bar tonight and ordered a Pabst Blue Ribbon.

As a result, he won the North Carolina primary. That is, you can’t prove that’s not why he won. If only he’d mastered the intricacies of Yuengling while there was still time in PA…

He also demonstrated that he could hold his brew by resisting a pitch from a perky saleswoman who wanted to sell him new kitchen countertops for the White House. Really.

Unfortunately, while the candidate was catching up on his drinking, his rival went and stole the Indiana primary — apparently. Obama, apparently feeling mellow, conceded that contest to her before it was even over.

So the madness continues.

Tomorrow, his campaign plans to work on his bowling. Once he cracks 100, they’ll teach him to bowl and drink beer at the same time, and then he’ll be unstoppable…

Obama2

Free Thomas Ravenel

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Ravenel2

Did I get your attention? I expect I did. Well, calm down. I’m not here to praise Thomas Ravenel, or defend him.

But I am here to raise the question: Why do we want to pay to feed, clothe and house him for the next 10 months?

This brings me to the larger question — one of the biggest facing the state of South Carolina, in fact: Why do we want to imprison nonviolent offenders? Sure, we may do it cheaper than any other state in the union, but even then it’s a huge waste of resources that could be better spent. And our cheapskate, insecure way of running prisons is going to bite us in the long run (actually, it already does, in terms of recidivism rates).

This is a recurring theme. Today, we raised the question on the local level — Columbia is finally having to own up to the fact that its penchant for locking people up for more offenses than the county does actually costs money.

Of course, T-Rav is neither state nor local, but we pay federal taxes, too. And it’s hard to imagine a better example of someone who could have paid another way. If you have a multi-millionaire partying on cocaine, why not give him a multi-million-dollar fine? As the sage Billy Ray Valentine said, "You know, it occurs to me that the best way you hurt rich people is by turning them into poor people." In other words, why isn’t he paying us, instead of the other way around?

That would make a lot more sense than sending him off to commune with Kevin Geddings in Georgia.

Stupid sells

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Sex sells; we know this. At least, it did back in MY day. (Back then, dagnabbit, there were hot, naked women in whipped cream everywhere we looked, and we liked it!) There are certain biological imperatives that dictate this. Some of us will see this as arising from God’s plan, others will see it as evidence of the power of evolutionary forces, and some of us will see it as both. There is no doubt that this beautiful, natural thing has been exploited in the service of a lot of tawdry, even perverse products and causes (Herb Alpert and Noxzema Medicated Comfort Shave not included), but the fact is pretty much undeniable.

Here’s what gets me, though — "stupid," "plastic" and "pointless" seem to be deemed just as useful in selling as sex. And this does get on my nerves.

For instance, every day I have this irritating window that pops up on my laptop (I haven’t figured out how to stop it from doing this; nor have I spent time trying) to promote the "Real Message Center," and every day it gives me a less-than-flattering picture of current popular culture. Here were the headlines today:

PHOTO GALLERY
Today’s rising stars honored at Young Hollywood Awards.

CELEBS
Where in the world will Brangelina have baby number two? 

REALITY TV
Pressure builds as American Idol gets down to the final five.

And I find myself wondering, every time I see such an insipid come-on: Who wants to know these things? What’s your target audience? And I fear the answer is that said audience is vast, and it really, really interested in this stuff. For the purposes of writing this post, I clicked on all three above, and I have three questions:

  1. Who are Brittany Robinson and Thomas Dekker?
  2. How do you look yourself in the mirror after writing a headline that contains "Brangelina?"
  3. Why do people know the names of contestants on "American Idol?" Isn’t the point that they’re supposed to be ordinary people? Isn’t there something contradictory here? Where is Arthur Godfrey when you need him?

OK, so that was more than three questions, but you get my point.

Sometimes these come-ons simply appeal to sex, offering photo galleries of certain hot, hot starlets (which is lost on me since I’ve never heard of most of them). By contrast, those items seem relatively healthy. And I did find ONE pretty cool picture on one that I DID click on. I even ended up saving the image — it was Jennifer Lopez depicted in the style of Boris Vallejo. And if I can find it, I’ll share it.

We all waste time in one way or another. Look at me — I blog. But if I’m not blogging, or rating movies on Netflix, I at least feel the call of that shelf-and-a-half of good books I’ve received as gifts and that I really MUST get to. Don’t we get enough of celebrities who are famous for being famous by osmosis at the grocery checkout line? Who would go in pursuit of more of it?

And again, I’m afraid the answer is, "Lots of people."

Tom Friedman’s back, and he’s going to bat for the Energy Party!

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Tom Friedman is finally back after a four-month, book-writing sabbatical. The NYT said he’d be back in April, and he just barely made it! (Now I can stop fielding those phone calls from readers wanting to know what happened to him. Here’s a recording of one of those. )

And he’s coming out swinging… and best of all, he’s coming out swinging on behalf of the Energy Party (whether he knows it or not). His first column is headlined, "Dumb as We Wanna Be," and you’ll see it on our op-ed page tomorrow. An excerpt:

    It is great to see that we finally have some national unity on energy policy. Unfortunately, the unifying idea is so ridiculous, so unworthy of the people aspiring to lead our nation, it takes your breath away. Hillary Clinton has decided to line up with John McCain in pushing to suspend the federal excise tax on gasoline, 18.4 cents a gallon, for this summer’s travel season. This is not an energy policy. This is money laundering: we borrow money from China and ship it to Saudi Arabia and take a little cut for ourselves as it goes through our gas tanks. What a way to build our country.
    When the summer is over, we will have increased our debt to China, increased our transfer of wealth to Saudi Arabia and increased our contribution to global warming for our kids to inherit…

Go get ’em, Tom! That’s a very fine leadoff hit. Coming up to bat next, on the same op-ed page, will be Robert Samuelson, and he’ll bring Friedman around to score. His piece, succinctly headlined "Start Drilling," is the rhetorical equivalent of a hard line drive down the opposite-field line:

    What to do about oil? First it went from $60 to $80 a barrel, then from $80 to $100 and now to $120. Perhaps we can persuade OPEC to raise production, as some senators suggest; but this seems unlikely. The truth is that we’re almost powerless to influence today’s prices. We are because we didn’t take sensible actions 10 or 20 years ago. If we persist, we will be even worse off in a decade or two. The first thing to do: Start drilling.
    It may surprise Americans to discover that the United States is the third-largest oil producer, behind Saudi Arabia and Russia. We could be producing more, but Congress has put large areas of potential supply off-limits. These include the Atlantic and Pacific coasts and parts of Alaska and the Gulf of Mexico. By government estimates, these areas may contain 25 billion to 30 billion barrels of oil (against about 30 billion barrels of proven U.S. reserves today) and 80 trillion cubic feet or more of natural gas (compared with about 200 tcf of proven reserves)….

Not start drilling as a substitute for conservation or the search for new fuels (as the ideologues of the right would have it, and the ideologues of the left deplore), but in addition to. Like I said, this is straight out of the Energy Party playbook (yeah, I know this started as a baseball metaphor, not football, but bear with me).

To reduce dependence on tyrannical foreign sources, to help out Mother Nature, to keep our economy healthy, to stoke innovation, to win the War on Terror, and make us healthier, wealthier and wiser, we should adopt the entire Energy Party platform. We should, among other things I’m forgetting at the moment:

  • Increase CAFE standards further — much further.
  • Raise the tax on gasoline, NOT reduce it, so that we’ll suppress demand, which will reduce upward pressure on prices, and we’ll be paying the higher amounts to ourselves rather than America-haters in Russia, Iran, Venezuela and yes, Saudi Arabia.
  • Use the proceeds for a Manhattan Project or Apollo Project (or whatever
    else kind of project we choose, as long as we understand that it’s the
    moral equivalent of war) to develop new technologies — hydrogen, solar, wind, geothermal, what have you — and shifting the mass of the resources to the most promising ones as they emerge.
  • Reduce highway speed limits to 55 mph, to conserve fuel and save lives (OK, Samuel? I mentioned it.) And oh, yeah — enforce the speed limits. The fines will pay for the additional cops.
  • Drill in ANWR, off the coasts, and anywhere else we can do so in reasonable safety. (Yes, we can.)
  • Increase the availability of mass transit (and if you can swing it, I’d appreciate some light rail; I love the stuff).
  • Fine, jail or ostracize anyone who drives an SUV without a compelling reason to do so. Possible propaganda poster: ""Hummers are Osama’s Panzer Corps."

And so forth and so on.

My point is, no more fooling around. It’s way past time to get serious about this stuff, and stop playing little pandering games. Let’s show a little hustle out there. And no dumb mistakes running the bases out there, fellas…

P.S. — The name of the book Mr. Friedman’s been writing, which will come out in August, is Hot, Flat and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution — and How It Can Renew America. So yeah, he’s got an economic stake in these concepts. Well, more power to him. There’s money to be made in doing the smart thing, and to the extent he can persuade us to move in that direction, he deserves to get his taste.Just to help him out, here’s video of him talking about these ideas. Here’s a link to his recent magazine piece on the subject.

Hillary joins McCain in pandering on gas tax; Obama stands up to them both

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This has been a busy day and I’m just getting around to some basic things now. But I couldn’t let the day pass without noting how right Obama is about this:

Obama says rivals Clinton, McCain pandering on gas tax
By MIKE GLOVER and BETH FOUHY
Associated Press Writers
WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. — Democrat Barack Obama dismissed his rivals’ calls for national gas tax holiday as a political ploy that won’t help struggling consumers. Hillary Rodham Clinton said his stance shows he’s out of touch with the economic realities faced by ordinary citizens.
    Clinton and certain Republican presidential nominee John McCain are calling for a holiday on collecting the federal gas tax "to get them through an election," Obama said at a campaign rally before more than 2,000 cheering backers a week before crucial primaries in Indiana and North Carolina. "The easiest thing in the world for a politician to do is tell you exactly what you want to hear."
    Clinton, who toured the Miller Veneers wood manufacturing company in Indianapolis, said "there are a lot of people in Indiana who would really benefit from a gas tax holiday.
    "That might not mean much to my opponent, but I think it means a lot to people who are struggling here, people who commute a long way to work, farmers and truckers," Clinton said. She has called for a windfall tax on oil companies to pay for a gas tax holiday.
    "Senator Obama won’t provide relief, while Senator McCain won’t pay for it," Clinton said. "I’m the only candidate who will provide immediate relief at the pump, with a plan."
    With his comments, Obama continued a running dispute over whether ending collection of the gas tax is the quickest and best way to help consumers. Leading in delegates and the popular vote, Obama in recent days has focused on McCain, but he broadened that criticism Tuesday to include Democrat Clinton.
    "Now the two Washington candidates in the race have decided to do something different," said Obama. "John McCain started it, he made the proposal, and then Hillary Clinton said ‘me too.’"
    The plan would suspend collecting the 18.4 cent federal gas tax 24.4 cent diesel tax for the summer.
    He said drying up gas tax collections would batter highway construction, costing North Carolina up to 7,000 jobs, while saving consumers little.
    "We’re arguing over a gimmick that would save you half a tank of gas over the course of the entire summer so that everyone in Washington can pat themselves on the back and say they did something," said Obama.
    "Well, let me tell you, this isn’t an idea designed to get you through the summer, it’s designed to get them through an election," said Obama. He said his call for middle-class tax cuts would be far more beneficial than suspending gas tax collections.
    Obama took a different view on the issue when he was an Illinois legislator, voting at least three times in favor of temporarily lifting the state’s 5 percent sales tax on gasoline.
    The tax holiday was finally approved during a special session in June of 2000, when Illinois motorists were furious that gas prices had just topped $2 a gallon in Chicago.
    During one debate, he joked that he wanted signs on gas pumps in his district to say, "Senator Obama reduced your gasoline prices."
    But the impact of the tax holiday was never clear. A government study could not determine how much of the savings was passed on to motorists. Many lawmakers said their constituents didn’t seem to have benefited. They also worried the tax break was pushing the state budget out of balance.
    When legislation was introduced to eliminate the tax permanently, Obama voted "no." The effort failed, and the sales tax was allowed to take effect again.
    Responding to Obama’s criticism, McCain campaign spokesman Tucker Bounds said the Illinois senator "does not understand the effect of gas prices on the economy. Senator Obama voted for a gas tax reduction before he opposed it."
    Bounds was deliberately echoing one of Democrat John Kerry’s most troublesome missteps of the 2004 presidential campaign. Kerry said of funding for the war in Iraq and Afghanistan, "I actually did vote for the $87 billion before I voted against it."
    Obama and Clinton both opened their campaign day in North Carolina. Clinton toured a research facility and collected the prized endorsement of Gov. Mike Easley.
    "It’s time for somebody to be in the White House who understands the challenges we face in this country," said Easley, in announcing his backing of Clinton. She then promptly headed for a string of events in Indiana.
    "The governor and I have something in common – we think results matter," said Clinton.
    Easley is popular with white, working-class voters that have formed the base for Clinton’s success in recent primaries.
    Clinton also collected an endorsement from Democratic Rep. Ike Skelton of Missouri, who praised "her support in rural America, her commitment to national security and her dedication to our men and women in uniform."
    Skelton, a conservative Democrat who chairs the House Armed Services Committee, was among a half-dozen Democratic House members called to meet with Clinton after she won the Pennsylvania primary last week.
    While Obama is favored in North Carolina, the race in Indiana is very tight, and Obama was heading there Wednesday.
    Obama collected endorsements of his own during the day: In Kentucky, Rep. Ben Chandler, son of former Gov. A.B. "Happy" Chandler, gave Obama his backing ahead of that state’s May 20 primary, and in Iowa, Democratic National Committee member Richard Machacek – a supporter of former Sen. John Edwards before he dropped out of the presidential race – switched his support to Obama.
    Interest in the two primaries next week has been high. Officials in Indiana said nearly 90,000 people have cast early ballots, far outpacing absentee turnout in 2004.
    At stake Tuesday are 115 delegates in North Carolina, and 72 in Indiana.
Beth Fouhy reported from Indianapolis. Associated Press writers Christopher Wills in Springfield, Ill., and Sam Hananel in Washington contributed to this report.

Obama’s the only one acting like a responsible grownup here. He’s also the only one speaking up for Energy Party values.

What McCain and Clinton are both doing on this is appalling. They’re treating us like two-year-olds, and proposing to act in direct opposition to the nation’s interests.

Rev. Wright still fails to clarify

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Just in case anyone was still confused, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright emerged over the last day or so to explain (I think) what I’ve already said about his sermons: He meant what he said the first time.

It seems he was being "descriptive," not "divisive."

Asked whether he thought some of the things he said might be less than "patriotic," he changed the subject — he mentioned his service in the Marine Corps in his youth, and mentioned that Dick Cheney never served. To which I say, "Huh?" To elaborate, thank you for your service, Reverend — I stand in awe of anyone who has been a Marine. But did you mean "God Damn America" or not? Were you being ironic, or stating a wish that was not your own, or was that "descriptive?" And how does that message square with Semper Fidelis?

I should mention that he also explained that if you take exception to his message, you’re a racist. Just so you know.

He also made the same argument that has been made in his behalf by others, that his remarks have been taken out of context — mere "soundbites." I’m still waiting to hear the context that makes "God Damn America" mean something else. Sadly, I’ve not heard it yet.

Poor Obama. With friends like this one…

Payday lenders reduced to quoting McGovern

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This release came in today from the Community Financial Services Association (Tommy Moore’s employers), which among other things cited the organization’s Quote of the Month:

“Why do we think we are helping adult consumers by taking away their options? We don’t take away cars because we don’t like some people speeding. We allow state lotteries despite knowing some people are betting their grocery money. Everyone is exposed to economic risks of some kind. But we don’t operate mindlessly in trying to smooth out every theoretical wrinkle in life.”

George McGovern
Former South Dakota Senator
1972 Democratic Presidential Candidate
Wall Street Journal

… which of course reminds me of something I didn’t like about McGovern, and which I had forgotten until I read that piece in the WSJ recently. Actually, it’s a problem I had with the Left of those days — they were way anti-government. We have a letter on tomorrow’s edit page from one of those people who considers motorcycle helmet laws to be the first step to totalitarianism (I am not making this up). Such folks would have been at home in the Left in 1972.

And such people are not considered to be liberals any more — in fact, some of the most fiercely anti-government types now actually claim to be "conservatives" — which of course is one of the many reasons why I insist that the "liberal" and "conservative" labels haven’t made sense for some time.

That aside, I find myself wondering — whom is this quotation intended to persuade? Certainly not the GOP majority over at the State House. Maybe Tommy and the gang thought sending this out to the "liberal" media might have a salutary (from CFSA’s point of view) effect.

If so, it didn’t work in my case. But maybe I’m not typical.

SNL parodies of media and Obama

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Charles Krauthammers’ column on our Sunday op-ed page makes reference to the Saturday Night Live skits mocking the media’s fawning over Barack Obama. An excerpt:

    Real change has never been easy. . . . The status quo in Washington will fight. They will fight harder than ever to divide us and distract us with ads and attacks from now until November.
                — Barack Obama,
                    Pennsylvania primary
                    night speech

With that, Obama identified the new public enemy: the "distractions" foisted upon a pliable electorate by the malevolent forces of the status quo, i.e., those who might wish to see someone else become president next January. "It’s easy to get caught up in the distractions and the silliness and the tit for tat that consumes our politics" and "trivializes the profound issues" that face our country, he warned sternly. These must be resisted.
    Why? Because Obama understands that the real threat to his candidacy is less Hillary Clinton and John McCain than his own character and cultural attitudes. He came out of nowhere with his autobiography already written, then saw it embellished daily by the hagiographic coverage and kid-gloves questioning of a supine press. (Which is why those "Saturday Night Live" parodies were so devastatingly effective.)…

That prompted me to search for and find the skits, which I had not seen. They are funny. Not Akroyd-Belushi funny or anything, but amusing by the standards of latter-day casts. The funnier (and longer) one is the second one, at the bottom of this post.

Of course, the mockery isn’t one-sided. There’s also a funny send-up of Hillary Clinton being petulant about how Obama is treated and received. If you think that’s over-the-top, here’s a link to a real-life video in which, ironically enough, Hillary invokes the SNL skits, but only after whining in a particularly passive-aggressive manner about always having to answer the first question — acting a lot like her mimic in the skit. And I don’t think she’s kidding…

In Hillary’s defense, it DOES work…

39 Replies

When it comes to my preference for Barack Obama in the contest for the Democratic nomination, I refuse to take a back seat to those worthies on the editorial board of The New York Times. However, I must protest that their urgent yearning for Hope and Change caused them to ignore rather obvious realities earlier this week:

    The Pennsylvania campaign, which produced yet another inconclusive result on Tuesday, was even meaner, more vacuous, more desperate, and more filled with pandering than the mean, vacuous, desperate, pander-filled contests that preceded it.
    Voters are getting tired of it; it is demeaning the political process; and it does not work. It is past time for Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton to acknowledge that the negativity, for which she is mostly responsible, does nothing but harm to her, her opponent, her party and the 2008 election.

When you say "Voters are getting tired of it," you mean you are getting tired of it, as am I. (Sure, you can say Obama still leads nationally poll, but "national" doesn’t count until November, and even then it’s state by state.) And yes, it’s demeaning, but this is politics, ya know.

And you’ve gotta hand it to the lady: It does work. It certainly did on Tuesday, anyway.

We’d KILL a guy for passing intel to Israel?

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Kadish

Somehow I just caught up with this news, and I’ve got to ask, We’re talking about killing a guy for passing intel to the Israelis?

That’s what the NYT reported this morning:

On Wednesday, one day after Mr. Kadish, 84, was charged with slipping secret military documents to the Israeli government during the 1980s, they were trying to square the gruff, kindly man they knew as so honorable as never to cheat at cards with a criminal suspect who could face the death penalty if convicted.

You’re kidding, right?

I mean, look at the sweet old guy (above): So this is James Bond all of a sudden? Or perhaps I should say, Kim Philby (whom we didn’t kill, by the way, even though he was working for the real bad guys)?

For one thing, what secrets do we think we could possibly have that the Mossad didn’t know already?

Second, we’re talking the Israelis here, people! Don’t we tell them stuff anyway? And don’t they tell us stuff? I mean, am I expected to believe that George W. Bush and the boys figured out the whole North Korea-Syria nuke thing all by their lonesome?

Sure, there are certain lines one doesn’t cross (unless invited to) even with your best friends, but come on — this would be like whacking a guy for passing info to the Brits (speaking of Mr. Philby).

And when’s the last time we did that? Major André? Speaking of which — and I hope this isn’t going to get me into a lot of trouble — I recently crossed paths with Major André. Really.

You know that column I had Sunday about my conversation with the Pennsylvania waitress? ImmediatelyAndre
after that conversation, I walked up the street and ran into the historical marker at right (which tells you which diner, if you’re really, really good at central PA geography).

In fact, I took the picture on my phone — and then promptly forgot about it, until I happened to read about Mr. Kadish, and got to thinking about executing spies, and the Israelis, and the British, which led to Major André, which led to "Hey, I think I shot a picture of that."

And now that I think further about it, it occurs to me that the compact device I used to capture that image would probably have been described as a "spy camera" back in the early ’80s, which is when Mr. Kadish was allegedly letting an Israeli "diplomat" take pictures in his basement of stuff he brought home from work. Makes ya think, huh?

Danger is my middle name.

Yeah, the press likes Obama, too. So?

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Here we go: Our pals on The Wall Street Journal editorial board — the same crowd that’s trying to make Mark Sanford a veep contender, when he isn’t, just by using its bully pulpit to say its so, over and over — are now telling us that the media like Obama (or at least, one of them is).

So what — we knew that, right? Just as we know the press likes John McCain, too. The two have a lot in common. The press likes them both because we get overexposed to politicos, and these two stand out above the herd. And beside, they’re nicer to us than certain other people are.

But Dorothy Rabinowitz of the Journal’s editorial board is preparing for the fall campaign by casting the press as being in partisan thrall to Obama:

    The uproar is the latest confirmation of the special place Mr. Obama
holds in the hearts of a good part of the media, a status ensured by
their shared political sympathies and his star power. That status has
in turn given rise to a tendency to provide generous explanations, and
put the best possible gloss on missteps and utterances seriously
embarrassing to Mr. Obama.

Just to set the record straight on some assumption Ms. Rabinowitz leaps to with regard to Obama’s fan club:

You see, one can like a guy and still see him clearly, even though Ms. Rabinowitz doesn’t think so. I just thought somebody should point it out.

He DID wag his finger — he actually DID!

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Campaign_2008_bill_cl_wart

You folks who watch TV probably already knew this, but Bill Clinton actually did wag his finger at us in an attempt at morally-superior, above-the-fray admonishment. Here’s the video.

My mistake was in thinking the Times’ "finger-wagging" reference was to theClinton_2008_wart
radio interview, which means I read it too fast the first time. This was in response to the radio interview. Or in response to the response — whatever.

Yeah, you can miss stuff, not watching TV. But it’s usually not anything worth seeing… it’s mostly just tit-for-tat, tat-for-tit, nonsense feeding upon itself.

You know, if Bill keeps this up, I’m going to have to give him his own category here on the blog…

Is Bill Clinton wagging his finger at us AGAIN?

1 Reply

Bill_clinton_wart

Speaking of The New York Times this morning, did you see how it described Bill Clinton’s reaction at being reminded of his attempt to ghetto-ize Obama back here in S.C.?

More Finger Wagging From a Miffed Bill Clinton
By KATE PHILLIPS
Published: April 23, 2008
WASHINGTON — Wagging his finger once again, former President Bill Clinton chided a reporter on Tuesday for what he deemed a misinterpretation of his remarks during a radio interview in which he said the Obama campaign “played the race card on me.”
    Mr. Clinton confronted the issue of race again on Monday when he was asked by an interviewer for WHYY radio in Philadelphia about his remarks earlier this year on the results of the South Carolina Democratic primary. At the time, he likened the victory of Senator Barack Obama to that of the Rev. Jesse Jackson in 1998; Mr. Clinton’s comparison was denounced widely by black officials who believed he was marginalizing Mr. Obama’s victory with a racially tinged allusion to Mr. Jackson’s failed presidential bids…

What I’d like to know is, was he literally wagging his finger — you know, the way he did before? And if you don’t remember, the video is below.

Unfortunately, I have no video on the latest incident, so I’ll just have to assume the wagging was figurative this time. But we do have some nice, clear audio. Be sure to turn up your volume at the end so you can hear him say, "I don’t think I can take any s..t from anybody on that, do you?" (Some listeners hear it as "don’t think I should take any s..t," but I think it’s "can"…)

Now, having listened to that, do you feel chastened? Do you feel guilty for having thought less of our former president, even for a moment? Are you gonna stop giving him s–t now? Are you listening, you Obama supporters? Shame on anyone who would dare question Bill Clinton, as he makes clear in this other video…

I’m not the only one tired of the Hillary-Obama battle

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Hillarywave

Some of y’all jumped to disagree when I said yesterday I dreaded the inevitable Clinton win in PA — which, to add insult to injury, ended up being by exactly the margin everyone said she had to have to continue, not one percentage point more or less — but I’m not the only one.

As The New York Times said today,

For better or worse — and many Democrats fear it is for worse — the race goes on.

Of course, the Democrats have a different reason from mine for wanting the punishment to stop. For them, it hurts their electoral goal of beating John McCain. Me, I’m just sick of watching and listening — which unfortunately I can’t stop doing, not entirely. Trench warfare is an ugly thing, and can get monotonous. Isn’t this the time of year when should be turning our attention to more pleasant things?

Among my correspondents (that’s y’all, not counting you lurkers out there) there seems to be a correlation between those who want this mess to continue, and those who don’t intend to vote for either Clinton or Obama. Correct me if I’m wrong on that.

But if you want the bruising to go on because you lean Republican, what’s Hillary’s excuse?

Seriously, what does she think she’s accomplishing? Does she really still think she’ll win? I’ve seen nothing lately — including the PA result — to indicate that that’s likely. Or has she decided that if her party’s not going to pick her, she’s gonna make it pay? That makes as much sense as anything at this point.

There’s an irony here that’s just striking me. Hillary Clinton is demonstrating that she has just the sort of Churchillian "never surrender" attitude that will be necessary for us to have a good outcome in Iraq. And yet she, who voted for the invasion to start with, and has resisted expressing regret for that, has been forced to compete with Obama and other Democrats to see who could be the most convincing about wanting to get out.

As stubborn and determined as John McCain is about Iraq — no substitute for victory, and all that — if Hillary Clinton were to adopt his attitude toward our involvement there, no one could ever doubt her sticktoitiveness…