David Brooks Snaps Out of It; Says the First Worthwhile Thing In Years

He issues a series of mea culpas, for which most of the wingnut-osphere will return nothing but snarky contempt. Which is fine, as he's deserved it, but that's not what I'm interested in.

This is:

This wasn’t a speech to get something done. This was the sort of speech that sounded better when Ted Kennedy was delivering it. The result is that we will get neither short-term stimulus nor long-term debt reduction anytime soon, and I’m a sap for thinking it was possible.

I have long been of the opinion that Democrats are going to regret putting Obama in the Presidency when he had exactly the right credentials to be the rightful heir to Ted Kennedy's mantle. He could have had as many terms as he wanted as the liberal "conscience of the Senate." Instead, he's flailing around because real life keeps not following the shooting scripts for The American President or Dave, where one honest, heartfelt liberal speech changes everything.

But he has no alternative to than to run as a fighting liberal, because he ran as a transformative President. Initially the transformation was to come from Obama himself, from his gloriously first-class temperament, his telegenically orotund orations, his finely creased pants. But somehow the Obama magic failed to set everything to right. Somehow political waves ignored his regal presence. So when the Mask slips, he reverts to type. Maybe he'll win re-election, maybe he won't. But it'll be the best shot Ted Kennedy could give.

Religion is Bad. When Republicans Do It.

Via Other McCain, Ian Stanley of the Telegraph lays down the persistent media double-standard:

Harry Reid, leader of the Senate Democrats, is a Mormon. Many readers probably won’t know that because the mainstream media oddly doesn’t talk about it. It’s okay to call Mitt Romney a polytheist with twelve wives, but Reid is untouchable because he’s a Democrat. And yet it’s reasonable to theorise that the leader of the Senate wears the magic underwear associated with Mormonism. Is his belief that Jesus walked on American soil, anti-science? Geographers and historians would probably object.
Democratic presidential candidates regularly visit black churches, Nancy Pelosi has invoked her Catholicism so many times you might think she was a nun, and Barack Obama was married by a pastor who actively hates America. Yet Krugman suggests that only the GOP uses and abuses religion every election. More sickening is the innuendo that there is a uniquely violent subtext to conservative faith, as if every Right-winger wants to shoot an abortionist. There is no comparison between fundamentalist Islam and Dominionism: one kills and the other doesn’t. The conflation of the two is ugly and deceitful.

It gets awfully damn tiresome to have to point these things out. And I don't mind Stacy McCain's "Welcome to the Party, Pal" response. But so long as there are people who refuse to admit that this is going on, it needs to be underscored. We need to say, as McCain does, that:

It would be great if we could have a reasoned, well-tempered discussion with the Left, but the typical Lefty cannot or will not engage in a connected series of statements intended to establish a proposition. Conservatives have inadvertently arrived at Abuse, instead of the Argument Clinic.

Although, in all honesty, the Argument Clinic kind of sucks, too.

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:

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?

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...

I am Cinna the Poet! Cinna the Poet!

As it turns out, yelling "Koch Brothers! Koch Brothers" can get death threats sent to anyone named Koch.

I look forward to the learned gentleman who posted this to express his displeasure. I'm making myself quite comfortable in the meantime.

Bill Maher Gets Something Right.

It was bound to happen.

“What it comes down to is there is one religion in the world that kills you when you disagree with them and they say, ‘Look, we are a religion of peace and if you disagree, we’ll fucking cut your head off,’ and nobody calls them on it. There are very few people that will call them on it. You know, it’s like if dad is a violent drunk and beats his kids,” Maher said. “You don’t blame the kid because he set dad off. You blame Dad because he’s a violent drunk.”

He even quotes Bush approvingly:

“Bush used to talk about the soft bigotry of low expectations,” he said. “That’s what this is. When you say, ‘Well this is what the Muslims are going to do, you burn a Quran, they’re going to fucking kill the people – that’s bigotry.”

I do, George. I do.

It's the Hypocrisy, Stupid.

Listen up, proggies.

Death threats are bad. Everyone knows this, and everyone is supposed to say so.

Civility is good. Everyone knows this, and everyone is supposed to speak up for the civil against the uncivil.

You aren't supposed to excuse the uncivil when they happen to sit on your side of the aisle. You're supposed to keep them under control, or at the very least, not encourage or defend them.

So when unsubtle threats and extortion demands get sent to those who dissent from the Proggie sense of entitlement vision, everyone is supposed to call those people what they are: vain, ridiculous petty tyrants with the manners of Vandals and the morals of pimps.

You're supposed to call it out, in the interests of a better, more civil society for all of us, not just the people who agree with you.

And if you can't or won't do that, then don't be surprised when your caterwauling about how awful and scary the people who disagree with you are falls on deaf ears and rolled eyes.

Ball's in your court.

Liquor Board Inspector Works for a Club

Investigative Voice has been on this story from the beginning:

Pigtown residents who gathered to hear plans for a new 5,000-square-foot bar on the 700 block of Washington Boulevard at a community meeting last week said they were a bit confused when the three prospective owners were joined by a liquor board inspector who said he would be working as security consultant to the project.

 And now, Chanel 11 has found it worthy of their time:

A Baltimore liquor inspector has been reassigned amid allegations that he violated the firewall that's supposed to separate the inspectors from the businesses they regulate.

Now, I-V mentioned Fitzgerald's re-assignment, too, but at the end, giving the impression that it was the normal process of investigations, and not the lede of the story. I-V also managed to interview the co-owner of the prospective club, Tiffany Felder, who brought Fitzgerald in as a security consultant. Channel 11 makes do with a "businessman" named Paul Ely who's clearly hostile to the proposed club.

So basically, Stephen Janis scoops the Baltimore Media again, and gives us an actual damn story. Compare the two, and see which one gives you more actual information.

The Essayist #22: Politics and the Oedipus Effect

The Greeks believed in destiny. Unlike Old Testament prophets, Greek oracles weren't interested in changing behavior. If the gods let you know that something was going to happen, then that thing was going to happen. That thing was not going to change, no matter what you did. The message was not "Check yourself," but "Brace yourself."

Oedipus proves this perfectly. His parents, and then he, were told that Oedipus would murder his father and marry his mother. Everything that Laius, Jocasta, and Oedipus did to prevent this guarunteed that it would happen. By abandoning baby Oedipus on a hillside, Laius and Jocasta guaruntee that Oedipus grows up not knowing who his real parents are. By getting away from the people he thinks are his parents, Oedipus puts himself into his true parents' path. As Camille Paglia put it in Sexual Personae: "Oedipus, fleeing from his mother, runs right into her arms."

Those Gosh-Darn Republicans Complain Too Much

So says David Halperin, in Time:

His opponents haven't put forth specifics of their own, nor offered genuine compromise, while the media have allowed the right's activists and gabbers to run wild with criticism without furnishing legitimate alternative solutions.

Right. Because back when the Democrats were running against Bush in 2002, 2004, and 2006, they were stuffed with legitimate alternative solutions. And the media certainly didn't let Democratic activists and gabbers run wild without holding their feet to the fire.

Hey, David. This garden slug I just stepped on called for you. He wants his self-awareness back.

Observations From Fox and MSNBC Last Night:

1. Rachel Maddow always sounds as though she's telling a joke and has forgotten the punch line.
2. For some reason, Sean Hannity is less irritating on television than on radio.
3. Listening to Chris Matthews speak is like watching a dog dance on its hind legs. You're kind of impressed that he does it at all, and when he falls flat on his face, you're not suprised.
4. Cynthia Tucker has an almost Brezhnevian talent for making propaganda like "right-wing noise machine" sound like an insurance seminar. At least Michelle Malkin manages to put some punch into "thug-in-chief."
5. After half an hour of Hannity, you begin to remember the positive charms of Bill O'Reilly. Matthews, on the other hand, does not make one wish Maddow was back, nor look forward to Olbermann.
6. Stewart and Colbert only think that they're mocking this script rather than joining in it.