2012: Year of the "RAAAAACIST!"

Over at Is This Blog On, the owner gets called a Klansman for suggesting that Michelle Obama isn't as toned and healthy as everyone says she is.

No, really.

Here, his response, wherein you can read my comment.

Is it just me, or is this the only rhetorical hill they have left to die on?

California Tries to Make Amazon to Collect Sales Taxes...

...Amazon says "No thanks."

It's like Sacramento has a Death Wish or something.

Walter Russel Mead on Al Gore

Read the Whole Thing, but here's the Knife Point:

The green movement’s core tactic is not to “hide the decline” or otherwise to cook the books of science. Its core tactic to cloak a comically absurd, impossibly complex and obviously impractical political program in the authority of science. Let anyone attack the cretinous and rickety construct of policies, trade-offs, offsets and bribes by which the greens plan to govern the world economy in the twenty first century, and they attack you as an anti-science bigot.
To argue with these people about science is to miss the core point. Even if the science is exactly as Mr. Gore claims, his policies are still useless. His advocacy is still a distraction. The movement he heads is still a ship of fools.

And that's where environmentalism fundamentally errs. They cannot trust that humans, left to their own devices, will solve a problem. They insist on slapping some make-up on the Hegelian God-State, that it might fix it for us.

I Hate HOA's...

...and this is why. In fairness to them, they're not denying the guy the right to fly the flag, just to have a flagpole, because they have rules about that sort of thing.

And that's the problem.

Who's goddamn business is it if a man puts a flagpole in his yard? How does that affect the property values of the nighborhood? It doesn't. It's just another example of how HOA's, and their architectural review boards, have turned into petty bourgeois soviets.

Neighbors have the right to insist that a man keep his his house in good order. They don't have the right to tell him how he may decorate it. To insist otherwise is to claim the right to enforce your own aesthetic -- and a boring, uptight, nerdy one at that -- on others.

The suburbs are never going to be perfect. There's always going to be that one family that paints a faux-Tudor bright canary yellow and replaces his front yard with a basketball court. The idea that I should do any more than shake my head at this, so long as he mows his lawn, is deeply offensive to me. I don't have the time to get that involved in the lives of others, and I deeply distrust anyone who does.

So all you prickly little turds who so busily furrow your brow anytime someone adds a privacy fence, who insist on saying "we have rules" to govern every aspect on home maintenance: Fuck. You. I pray earnestly for the Lord to deliver upon you a plague of silverfish and septic tank bursts unto the fourth generation.

Europe Points the Way

Netherlands abandoning multiculturalism

At some point, two peoples occupying the same land either blend, or fight. Looks like the Dutch just figured out which one was happening.

Carville's Razor

"Forget red and blue states in the next election. The real divide might be between fossil fuels states and the states still trying to break wind for their energy and economy."

That there's funny, I don't care how broke you are. Oh, and read the whole thing.

The New York Times on Freedom and Equality, 1860 edition

This post at Protein Wisdom, about the bipolar interpretations of the Constitution (Shorter Fareed Zakaria: If a document ever changes, then any change is a good one), brings up the old canard, that "The Constitution said blacks were three-fifths of a person." In the comments, dicentra points out this:

Three out of five SLAVES were counted for apportionment.
Free blacks in the north were counted normally.
Important distinction

This led me to Google "free blacks in the south" to see what popped up. I found a few historyish web sites that made various claims (free black property owners in some northern cities could vote, free blacks in the South lived in fear, but a few became plantation owners) without showing their evidence. But then I stumbled upon this February 17, 1860 editorial in The New York Times (interesting to note just how old the New York Times is). As an expression of a thoroughly middleground viewpoint between slaveholders and abolitionists, it fascinates.

Here, the beginning:

New York Republicans...

...are apparently even more impotent than the Maryland variety, which put the kibosh on gay marriage this past winter.

Equality Über Alles, New York

Yeah, that should stop the demographic slide.

49 States Permit Concealed Carry! Except They Don't.

Everybody's all excited that Wisconsin passed its Concealed Carry Law, with the accompanying statistic that it joins 48 other states, leaving only poor Illinois the ugly girl at the party. As Frank Fleming puts it:

Not surprising that Illinois is the last total hold out on conceal carry. When you have whole cities run by criminals, last thing you want is honest citizens being armed.

Unfortunately, like most statistics, this one is hogwash. How do I know this? Because I live in The People's Republic of Greater Baltimoria Maryland, where concealed carry is marginally more legal than medicinal marijuana.

Here's the skinny:

The "may issue" is more often "no way". The categories for "may issue" are: making deposits; receiving money or cash flow; professional activities like doctors or pharmacies; correctional officers; former police officer; private detective and personal protection. For personal protection there must be documented evidence of recent threats, robberies, and/or assaults, supported by official police reports or notarized statements from witnesses. This state also requires permits for body armor.

For all practical purposes, that means no concealed carry. Let's not get all worked up in our triumphalism, shall we?

Frank Fleming Asks the Hard Afghanistan Questions

I’m confused on what the Democrat narrative on Afghanistan is now. The war in Iraq distracted from fleeing Afghanistan?

For more, see here.

E.J. Dionne Brims with Sound and Fury on Voter ID Issue, Signifies Nothing

I promised a Fisking, and yeah, a Fisking I shall deliver:

An attack on the right to vote is underway across the country through laws designed to make it more difficult to cast a ballot. If this were happening in an emerging democracy, we’d condemn it as election-rigging. But it’s happening here, so there’s barely a whimper.

Right. Because when the corrupt regimes of "emerging democracies" steal elections, they do it by requiring people to identify themselves as residents and legal voters. Boss Tweed and Saddam Hussein loved that ruse.

Although I certainly consider the Left's whining on this subject to be "barely a whimper."

The laws are being passed in the name of preventing “voter fraud.” But study after study has shown that fraud by voters is not a major problem — and is less of a problem than how hard many states make it for people to vote in the first place. Some of the new laws, notably those limiting the number of days for early voting, have little plausible connection to battling fraud.

EJ Dionne Warms Up The Wasserman-Schultz Narrative

Clearly this is becoming a thing. I may have to fisk Dionne again.

Althouse: "he himself propagates racism in the form of an assumption that black people have trouble performing the simplest task."

Welcome to the party, pal!

I Always Liked Lamar Alexander...

Niche tax breaks targeted; Senate kills ethanol credit

Alexander was instrumental in bringing this subsidy down. Quoth he:

“At a time when we are borrowing 40 cents out of every dollar that we spend, it is a good time to take a hard look at unwarranted tax breaks, and one appropriate use of those funds is to reduce the deficit,” Alexander said Thursday.
“I am looking at energy tax breaks. I am opposed to permanent subsidies for energy as a general matter. I am in favor of jumpstarting new technologies such as electric cars, helping the next few nuclear plants get off the ground, but I am opposed to, for example, a permanent ethanol subsidy and a permanent subsidy for windmills,” Alexander added.

If it needs a subsidy, then it doesn't work.

How's that "Reset Button" Working Out, Obama?

The Czechs are now withdrawing from our missile-defense compact. Appeasing Russia tends to make Eastern Europe nervous. Who knew?

Knife point:

“I’m not surprised by the decision,” said Jan Vidim, a lawmaker in the lower house of the Czech Parliament. “The United States has been and will be our crucial strategic partner but the current administration doesn’t take the Czech Republic seriously.”

The man who promised to heal our international relations is now losing us allies that the Dum Cowboy gained for us.

Ladd Ehlinger, Jr. Remains Awesome

His attack ad:



Before you call racism, note all the honky criminals, such as Capone and Manson, whose pictures float in an out whilst the gangbangers bang their gong.

Before you call sexism, the content is no different from what routinely played on MTV, back when MTV played videos. Most of that content is defended on the grounds that it is at least partially tongue-in-cheek. As Chuck D put it "When a man says 'nigga buggin'' he's saying a lot of things beside 'nigga buggin''." As the whole point of this ad is to take that content and hold it up to ridicule, the defense should apply even more. So who're the real sexists? The people who mock gangsters and the way gangsters treat women, or the people who celebrate them?

And before you punt and call this ad "Willie Horton on steroids" be ready to have the facts at hand. It's not 1988 anymore; the Internet exists.

How Not to Be Crazy

Frank Fleming schools the net loons. Plus this dig:

If you want a role model, try to be more like Andrew Sullivan. When it was revealed in 2008 that Bristol Palin was pregnant and thus couldn’t physically have given birth to Trig Palin, even the most hardcore conspiracy theory nuts gave up on that one, but not Sullivan. He stuck with it despite it being “the government is concealing the fact that 2 + 2 = 5!” crazy. And yet he’s still treated by many as a serious pundit because he has the discipline to make it so it’s not blatantly obvious to a casual reader that he’s Kleenex-boxes-for-shoes, the-squirrels-are-spying-on-me, kung-fu-fighting-invisible-ninjas crazy.

Sarah Palin: Inching Closer to the White House, One Media Attack at a Time

It's getting so bad, even Ashton Kutcher has had enough.

Now some of this is due to the fact that Kutcher is a celebrity and has, at best, an ambiguous relationship with the media: he needs them and despises them at the same time. But we all have our tipping points. How long before the relentless determination to unmask this woman makes her candidacy an inevitability?

Here's What I Don't Understand About NOW...

Look, nobody likes throwing an ally overboard. I get that. But when even his fellow congressional Democrats are calling for his resignation, why does the local NOW chapter keep supporting him?

“But he happens to be one of the best politicians out there, so we’re in a bad position. We’re trying to give him the benefit of the doubt.”

Is it really so hard to find another person in the NY Democratic Party (or the NY Republican Party) who'll be a reliable abortion vote?

Debbie Wasserman-Schultz Didn't Mean What She Said, And She Totally Meant It

She walks back the Jim Crow label, and then proceeds to repeat the substance:

I don't regret calling attention to the efforts in a number of states with Republican dominated legislatures, including Florida, to restrict access to the ballot box for all kinds of voters, but particularly young voters, African Americans and Hispanic Americans.

Because young voters, African Americans, and Hispanic Americans don't have/can't possibly be expected to verify their identity. Except of course, when they drive, drink, open checking accounts, start jobs, or do anything else.

But Republicans are still racists. Because, shut up.

Debbie Wasserman-Schultz is a RAAAAACIST

She's going to have fun being the bete noire of the rightosphere. She's got the silly name, and she put her foot in her mouth so far during WeinerGate that she swallowed her own knee Game On.

Is This Blog On has the skinny:

About 25 percent of African-American voters don’t have a valid photo I.D. I mean – and – and the reason it’s similar to a poll tax is because you’ve got the expense. You’ve got the effort.The – there’s difficulties for s- many people in getting photo I.D. So, you’re literally just throwing a barrier in the way of someone who’s trying to exercise their right to vote.

Now it would seem that W-S is speaking on behalf of African-Americans, which would seem to preclude all accusations of racism. But such childish remonstrances will not deflect from the obviousness of Debbie's White Privilege. I will prove it five ways, one for each of the A's in "RAAAAACIST":

The Hypocrisy Defense.

Ace, his Ewok-mouth still dripping with the gore of Anthony Weiner's reputation, launches into the inevitable Hypocrisy Defense of MSM scandal-bias:

For one thing, look, idiots: Every politician in this country, including your precious Democrats, runs on a platform of helping families. Show me the politician who doesn't. Since something like 65% of the country is part of a current family (I just made that up, shut up) it would be insane not to make promises to such a huge swathe of voters.

And if you claim otherwise, show me the Democratic politicians running expressly on an anti-family platform. Okay, that's too much; how about show me one who's running on a family-neutral platform?

And that's just the beginning. Read the whole thing.

Weiner didn't resign because Democrats don't go down for things like this. Republicans do. And it's not just because of the MSM's twisted logic. It's because Republican voters really do care about their elected representatives personal morality, and Democratic voters basically don't. So sins that would have brought down Eisenhower or Reagan leave Clinton or Gore virtually untouched. Now if Anthony Weiner had said the N-word...

Obama: I Fixed the Economy, But It's Not My Fault.

Daily Caller:

“Recovering from that [Bush-era] body-blow will be uneven… there are going to be times where we are making progress, but people are still skittish and nervous and the markets get skittish and nervous, and so they pull back because they’re still thinking about the trauma of this two-and-a-half years ago,” he said.
Then he suggested the drama-seeking media has a negative role too.
“Economic data that in better times would pass without comment, now suddenly people wonder well are we going to go back to this terrible crisis and all that affects consumer confidence; it affects business confidence; it affects the federal markets,” he said.
However, the White House’s task is to rise above the daily drama, Obama said, as he returned to the standard themes of his stump speech.

The economy is all your fault, America. If you people would just stop losing your jobs, the economy would be fine. I mean, did you look in your other pants?

“And so our task is to not panic, not to overreact, to make sure that we’ve got a path forward as how we make our economies competitive, making sure that we are with dealing with the structural issues and basic fundamentals that will allow us to grow and create a good, sound business environment so America for example, the need for us to get a handle on our debt and our deficit is going to be important. Making sure that our investments in education and clean energy and infrastructure and how we are going to do that.”

That's right, we're not going to do something panicky and ill-thought, like spend a trillion dollars. We're going to do something forward-thinking and robust, which will help us get our debt under control, like spend another trillion dollars.

GOP Applies the O'Rourke Circumcision Precept

"You can take 10% off the Top of Anything."

It would be nice if they were going to slice everything quickly. It would also be nice if they were ready to slice whole departments from the executive branch. But I'll take half a loaf.

If you don't get the reference, you need to read Parliament of Whores. Or any O'Rourke for that matter.

Krauthammer and Will Earn the Animus of Other McCain's Commenters

They are snobs, elitists, slide-rule minds in a Twitter world. And why?

They don't much care for Sarah Palin.

I'm not going to be impressed with Palin until her defenders can do something other than wave the bloody shirt like they were defending Acre from Saladin. If she is in fact, good enough, smart enough to be President, how's about forwarding some evidence to underscore that assertion?

Or you know, just keep doing this.
Worked like gangbusters for Christine O'Donnell.

Anthony Weiner: The Stupid Continues UPDATED

Another woman comes forward with Weiner pics.

That line about being hacked pranked joshed with sure is workin' out for ya.

UPDATE: And another... 

AND ANOTHER: Game Over. 

Palin's Hokey-Pokey

I've never quite bought the premise that Sarah Palin is best suited to "that space between celebrity and conservative rabble-rouser." Her fame comes entirely from being a politician martyred by the Right's bete noire, the MSM. At some point, she's going to have to put her whole self into the Presidential Race, or her whole self out. If she chooses the latter, the spotlight's glare will finally turn away from her.

Mad Anthony Wiener

Had Enough Therapy proffers an insightful evaluation of the unfortunately surnamed congressman:

As it happened, Weiner felt neither regret nor remorse. He actually tried to justify his appalling behavior on the grounds that he felt so strongly about the topic that he simply could not control his emotions.

Thereby, Weiner was falling back on an excuse that has been enshrined by the therapy culture.

That culture tells you that you should not repress your emotions. Thus it encourages and values the full and open expression of emotion, come what may.

Do not fear offending people; do not fear being overly dramatic. If you feel very strongly about something, let fly, let ‘er rip, give ‘em hell.

On that fateful afternoon on the House floor Mad Anthony did just that.
As the slightly dated vernacular would have it, he let it all hang out.

The nickname of "Mad Anthony" is likewise too good to pass up.

European Disunion, Commonsense Political Thought

New Blogrollery:

Insty linked the Blog of the Hour:

One of the fundamental problems with politicians is their ability to conceive ideas above their station, to take on vague challenges and ill-considered objectives that, humans being what they are and the world being what it is, are simply impossible to achieve. Modern political discourse is filled with such ideas: the abolition of poverty, the ending of racism, complete egalitarianism in race, colour, and creed. The only thing these goals have in common is that they are all equally unattainable, from a purely realistic standpoint. To achieve them you'd have to do nothing less than completely subvert human nature; and not even the Soviet Union could do that.

Indeed. His nom de plume, Gallowglass, refers to the warriors of ancient Ireland, who threw out the Vikings at Clontarf in 1014. I salute both.

Commonsense Political Thought did me the courtesy of linking my fisking of Lynne Mucken after excorciating it himself. I like to return such favors.

Quiet Progress in Afghanistan

A tonic to the general cries of doom and gloom in the graveyard of empires: (H/T: Chequerboard)

The United Nations Security Council, who has issued almost 40 quarterly reports on the situation in Afghanistan since 2001, most recently reported in March that "the number of districts under insurgent control has decreased.… As a result of the increased tempo of security operations in northern and western provinces, an increasing number of anti-Government elements are seeking to join local reintegration programs.… In Kabul, the increasingly effective Afghan national security forces continue to limit insurgent attacks."

If current trends continue, the Invincibility of Insurgency will take another, hopefully final, blow.