Here be Racists...

Over at the Patheos blog, Theodore Dalrymple explains why the Left returned to their "Teabaggers = RACIST!" meme as soon as the leak in the Gulf got plugged. He chalks it up to the Theory of the Missing Motive:

Unable to see a rational and noble motive at the center of the Tea Party movement, liberals supply a darker and more convenient motive instead. Just as ancient cartographers wrote "there be dragons here" beyond the bounds of the world they knew, so liberals write "there be racism here" because the mind of the Tea Partier is undiscovered country in their map of the world. The Tea Party cannot be rationally and nobly motivated, the liberal believes, because the Tea Partiers are not rational and noble.

In other words, the problem is not that liberals dislike the principles promoted at Tea Party rallies. Most do not understand those principles. The problem is that liberals dislike the kind of people who go to Tea Party rallies.

I wrote similarly a few years ago, summing up the source of the fevered antipathy to President Bush:

There are many among our political and media elite, and among those on the coasts who are in their zone of influence, who simply cannot believe that a born-again Christian from Texas can ever be right about anything, ever. Decades (centuries?) of internalized bigotry of urbanites against provincials, of secular humanists against unsophisticated believers, does not vanish overnight, not even in the face of an act of war, not when the same group has drank deep of the waters of Wilsonian collective security and refuses to believe that their enemy is their enemy because he wants to be so.  

In short, George W. Bush has been despised since long before the Iraq War, because he is the living embodiment of Those People, and the habit of the American media and political establishment has for some time been to mock Those People as cruel, stupid, and dangerous

From 2005 to now, despite a slew of victories, the Progressives have not changed. 



 

Garafalo = PWNED

Change the context, and she's suddenly talking about something very different. Except she isn't.

I guess the foot's on the other hand now, isn't it, Kramer?

The Essayist #21: With The Rich And Mighty, or Is Roman Polanski as Smart as Michael Vick?

[The following was originally posted at my livejournal last October. It is the Definition of "Overtaken by Events". Polanski has skated away scot free again, and while Vick has once more, albiet briefly, become a "person of interest". Nevertheless, in the light of Whoopi Goldberg once more rising to the defense of her fellow entertainers, it needs to be said again.]
An alien or archaelogist from the future, seeking to re-create what early-21stcentury humans meant by “controversy” could do worse that to make the Polanski case his study. All the elements abound: famous men, young girls, taboo sex and quaint drugs, rumours of judicial malfeasance, the drama of exile, competition for the status of victim, etc. If I cared, I would be enthralled.

But I do not care, and indeed plan to explain my not-caring in some detail. This being the case, one may fairly ask why I bother to put fingers to keyboard to pontificate on the subject. And I will fairly answer that my lack of caring is a feature, not a bug. It grants that most precious of journalistic bona fides, objectivity. So before I make comparison between Michael Vick and Roman Polanski, bear with me through the following Declaration of Disinterest:

A Moment of Honesty about the Gulf Spill..

Obama Finds Gulf Oil on His Cape

Slipping the phrase "Obama's Katrina" into Google yields about 1.8 million results. Such ought not surprise; if every President runs against his predecessor, the latter's follies serve to flail the former. But in Obama's case, the nature of the problem strikes at the heart of his presidency.

When Hurricane Katrina wrecked New Orleans, we wingnuts were quick to draw distinctions between acts of Nature and acts of Bush. I myself, at this very blog, put it thusly:

I'm not of the species that seems to want to blame the New Orleans Water Park on FEMA. I've yet to see anything from a source I trust that indicates that FEMA did anything different in regards to Katrina than they did with regard to any other natural disaster in living memory, and I'm pretty well convinced that the caterwauling to that end is a cynical manipulation by a bored press and a frustrated opposition upon discovering that the Cindy Sheehan and Hokum and Wailing Circus wasn't going to be the spark that lit the Bonfire of Bush's Vanities.

Conservatives do not believe that government exists to prevent bad things from happening, and they certainly don't expect the federal government to fill roles that belong to state and local governments. So we defended Bush during Katrina, because we were not surprised.

Barack Obama, on the other hand, came to the White House preaching the virtues of government as an agency of righteousness, a means for the general will to achieve its ends. His supporters likewise desire a government that acts, instantaneously, to do Good Things. And with every day that the crude continues flooding into the gulf, that vision becomes the weaker. Lo and behold, the President cannot fly below the surface of the earth and plug the leak with his eye-beams. He cannot, by virtue of his sonorous voice, make BP work any faster to plug the leak than they already are (you do realize that every drop of oil that ends up not in BP's tankers is lost money to them, right?). He's just a president; the waves do not, in fact, obey him.

And while this King-Canute moment is satisfying to conservatives, like Mark Steyn and Charles Krauthammer, it is gall and wormwood to progressives, who find themselves with nothing to do or say than "why can't somebody do something?" They do not appreciate being made to feel this way by a Democratic President with a Democratic Congress. They may not revenge themselves upon him for this, but their anger is palpable, and their hearts may not be his much longer.

The Essayist #20: The Right of Revolution

An oppressed people are authorized, whenever they can, to rise and break their fetters.
-Henry Clay

Every revolution contains within it something of evil.
-Edmund Burke

       With which of these two elegant quotations would the average person agree? The difficulty of the question becomes more apparent the longer it is considered. In the West, where the American and the French Revolutions constitute the birth-cries of the modern age, we feel an obligation to assent to the former. Yet any serious study of the French, Russian, or even the American Revolutions will compel us to give at least credence to the latter. We may shrug it off by retorting that revolutions are not made with rose-water, but this is the more persuasive with the understanding that whatever revolution we live under need not be repeated and will not be undone. In other words, we may ignore the blood of our birth so long as we need not be born again.
       But is revolution permanence? Have we established political structures so rooted in truth as to be past changing? To an extent, democracy is justified on answering, “yes” to this question: when the people rule, they need not revolt. But it is hardly a novelty to point out that majority rule can be tyrannical; James Madison pointed this out repeatedly. And if a majoritarian tyranny comes into existence, a revolution could surely be justified in destroying that democracy. Couldn’t it?
       Or could it?
       This essay will argue that every political system exists not for its own sake, but to protect a certain value that its framers held as essential to justice and order. This may seem obvious, but consider again its implications with regard to our current and beloved political ideal: democracy is not an end in itself, but a means to protect society. If it fails in that end, it may be reformed, altered, or even destroyed. No system of government is absolute; every state has an escape clause.

Music is the Devil's Tool

So Iran has banned Music, and Jay Nordlinger of NRO draws a parallel to Lenin, who apparently never touched the stuff, for fear that it would awaken human feeling, which was anathema to his work. He also makes mention of the oft-quoted fact that the Nazis were great lovers of art and music. How do this circle be squared?

For me, it bespeaks a difference between a totalitarianism of asceticism, and a totalitarianism of passion. Communism would be the paramount example of ascetic totalitarianism; one characterized by purification of the human spirit. The true Communist suffered for his ideology, was nailed to it like a cross, and was supposed to bear his ills with a martyr's patience. This may be one of the reasons why we tolerate Communists more than other shades of tyrant: Trotsky, Lenin, and Che were perfectly willing to share the misery they imposed on others.

Hitler, on the other hand, had no truck with self-denial. His Nietzsche-derived creed demanded just the opposite, that the desires of the self were holy, and to feast upon the weak was glorious and right. Hence, the Nazis devoured all that was good in every land they conquered, and took the pleasure of this enjoyment as proof of its truth.

Iran strikes me as being more in the ascetic vein, as Khomeni's condemnation of America as the Great Satan is of a kind with the denunciations of Babylon in the Book of Revelation. With all that in mind, the only question becomes "What took them so long?"

In Fairness to Rand Paul...

...there is a downside to public accommodation laws. They often create a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" situation.

How did a civil rights principle meant to aid African Americans and others who suffered grievous discrimination for generations come to protect the “right” of Neo-Nazis to parade their Nazi wardrobes in a privately owned restaurant against the wishes of management? The short answer is that legislation and its interpretation doesn’t develop from a coherent set of moral principles, but instead based on who is able to persuade the legislatures and the courts to adopt the principles they prefer. The principle involved in Alpine Village case appears to be hostility to the rights of private property owners, not “civil rights.”

Read the whole thing.

UPDATE: Apparently the Libertarians have decided that Rand Paul is insufficiently pure.

The Ultimate Libertarian.

I Generally Haven't Used the Term "ObamaCare"...

...to describe the Health Insurance Care Bill. For one, it relies on form of nomenclature leagues away from being as witty as it's supporters believe it, while being fully as tiresome as its opponents lament. For another, Obama didn't write the damn thing; Pelosi, Reid, and their infinite crew of Democratic Congressmen did. Since they're the ones up for election this November, I think the hate should be properly focused.

Now that Jon Stewart et al, are calling it "offensive," however? I won't call it anything else.

Politics: The Art of the Perverse.

About Time, Really....

The Notion, which was my first blog, died, and has been a music blog since December, does not exist anymore. The Music blog has been renamed Genre Confusion, and all the old Notion posts that were about the same stuff that I write about here have been imported and labelled. So let it be written, so let it be done.

Now they must eat the fruit of their own way, and with their own devices be glutted. -Proverbs 1:31

Leviathan Cannot Feed Itself.

At Hot Air:

That explains why socialism is miserable.  It turns feral because it always makes promises it cannot keep, and the primary skill of a successful politician is the ability to avoid responsibility.  As of this writing, it remains the official position of the Democrat Party that not a single one of its members bears any responsibility for the subprime mortgage crisis.  Dodd, Frank, and Obama swam in millions of dollars of campaign donations and graft.  They blocked audits of Fannie Mae, and gave speeches assuring the country that it was completely solvent.  They greeted any suggestion of reform or oversight with furious accusations of greed and racism.  None of them have been punished.  In fact, they all enjoy more power than ever today, although Dodd’s time is running out.

To look at Greece is to look at the future. I think one good shock to the system will finally convince a majority of voters that the game cannot go on, that the stark choice is ahead of us.  The structure for a revolt is already in the works.

Read the whole thing.

The Essayist #19: Rand Paul is not a Bigot, Just a Dumb Libertarian

In the wake of Rand Paul putting his foot in it, Ace does yeoman's work explaining in exact detail why the 1964 Civil Rights Act is not unconstitutional.

The Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments were specifically enacted with the purpose of eradicating slavery and duly -- constitutionally -- empowered Congress to pass legislation in furtherance of this purpose. To say such laws are "unconstitutional" is simply in error -- previous to the lawful and constitutional passage of those amendments, such laws would have indeed have been unconstitutional and an unlawful overreach of granted Congressional power.
After their lawful passage, however, Congress did have that authority.

And the reason that Congress decided that it need that authority was because certain states were violating the rights of their citizens, of failing to do the thing governments are created to do. The Constitution thus comes  more fully in line with the principles espoused in the Declaration of Independence.

Peasants in feudal society weren't technically slaves, but they were peons, persons with sharply-curtailed rights and certain obligations (including deference) to their social betters/masters. I think a fair reading of "slavery" includes the idea of "peonage," too. Unless there is some critical constitutional point here to be vindicated, I do not see any defensible purpose in arguing these amendments outlawed slavery but gave full constitutional blessing to regime of enforced peonage.

Precisely. Slavery and peonage are offenses against liberty, that can only be maintained by the use of force. As Governments exist to secure liberties, our government should be willing and able to act against one person's attempt to destroy the liberty of another. Hence, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, a necessary and constitutional redress against 400 years of slavery and peonage.

Would it have been better if it was not necessary? Assuredley. Are there things about the way the Civil Rights Act as been used that I consider wrong, and offenses to liberty? Without doubt. But the law, as intended, has no legal or ethical flaw.

This is a Picture of Mohammed:

Be Offended!

Unclean! Unclean!

I'm trying to figure out why I should care that an Arab-American is now Miss USA. Apparently there are some people on the Right worked up about this.

But having examined the issue, the only thing I can think of saying is "Meow..." Which may not be the remark of a gentleman.

The Baltimore PD Apparently Watched The Wire...

So the WaPo Suggests:

But under Police Commissioner Frederick H. Bealefeld III, officers in one of the nation's most violent cities are no longer being told to beef up arrest statistics. The number of arrests has declined the past two years. Yet homicides and shootings are down, too - to totals not seen since the late 1980s. 

In other words, they're "shifting priorities" to violence intead of drug abuse.

"I'm not trying to win the drug war," Bealefeld said. "I'm out to win the war on violence and deal effectively with violence."

Which is why the California ballot initiative to legalize pot this November is so important.  If it wins, it's going to be a lot harder for local PD's to say that they have a priority in punishing drugs instead of disorder. A corner will finally have been turned.

Chavez = Fail

JammieWearingFool has the goods.

Great comment as well: "If he were the leader of an eskimo band, they'd have to buy ice."

Theorem: Chris Christie is the Greatest Politician in the History of the Universe.

Proof: (Hat Tip: Ace)

Gov Christie calls S-L columnist thin-skinned for inquiring about his 'confrontational tone'

Those Vicious Racist Quebecois...

“if you want to integrate into Quebec society, here are our values. We want to see your face.”

No doubt they're all tea-baggers.

Kagan and the Elephant

If I may address the elephant in the living room, the only reason people think that Elena Kagan is a lesbian is because she looks like a common stereotype of one. That doesn't mean she is one, and frankly, I'm not interested. We shouldn't pry into her love life, unless we have reason to believe her love life has affected her job performance.

Frankly, I'm wondering if we aren't just being treated to a smokescreen for Kagan's minimal credential for the job.

Achieve Racial Harmony: Ban the Honkies!

Un-expletive-believable.

An Ann Arbor elementary school principal used a letter home to parents tonight to defend a field trip for black students as part of his school’s efforts to close the achievement gap between white and black students.

Dicken Elementary School Principal Mike Madison wrote the letter to parents following several days of controversy at the school after a field trip last week in which black students got to hear a rocket scientist.

I know there's an obvious reason that keeping white students away makes it more likely that black students will be inspired to achieve, but I'm apparently too stuffed with white privilege to see it.

Law and War are Not the Same

Bush understood this idea, and so, by some appearances, does Obama. But he has not been permitted to admit his understanding by his base. In the New York Post, Robert Turner of the Center for National Security Law lets the cat out of the bag:

Uncle Sugar Wants you to Spend your Money on Crap

Actually, that isn't true. The Government, like any good Mafia Don, just wants to put his hands in your pocket as often as he possibly can. It's just easier for him to do this by taxing saving and investment rather than consumption.

Christian preacher arrested for saying homosexuality is a sin

Police officers are alleging that he made the remark in a voice loud enough to be overheard by others and have charged him with using abusive or insulting language, contrary to the Public Order Act.

Just remember, this is NOT persecution. Persecution does not happen hetero male honky christians, who represent the power structure in society. Thou shalt not question the power structure in society.

Roman Polanski the real victim, says Roman Polanski

In other news, Roman Polanski is a lying sack of crap with delusions of persecution.

It meets the same standards of journalistic evidence.

Movement is Standing Still, Standing Still is Retreating.

Machiavelli observed that states begin to die when they cease to grow. Over at Ace of Spaces, Monty applies this rule generally, as evolutionary biology does:

Every organism must evolve to keep pace with other organisms in their ecosystem to maintain their evolutionary fitness. In other words, you have to run very fast just to maintain you evolutionary position. Losing your evolutionary "fitness" means losing out to (or becoming lunch for) fitter organisms.

This is known as the Red Queen in ev-bio, the Thing that is to be Feared, the Thing that Keeps You Running. Our problem now is that we fend off the Red Queen not with our own efforts, but with the future labor:

In an honest society, debt is sometimes a prudent thing: debt allows for investment that builds even greater wealth. This kind of debt is an investment that society makes in the producers. (This is a contest of skill more than chance; so gambling is the wrong term.) Sometimes the investment fails, but more often it pays off splendidly. The system ends up with far more energy than it began with, and that's the name of the game. The Red Queen is defeated (if only for awhile).
But the debt our government is accruing is not that kind of debt. This is a drunkards' debt, the debt incurred by a spendthrift and wastrel.

Read the whole thing.

The Stuff We Use.

Earth Day inevitably inspires a re-assessment of our economic life; this remains the only thing about Earth Day that I respect. A few months ago, I was musing about phosphorous, food, and the remains of this cycle, suggesting that we might have to re-use what our bodies produce. And in the wake of Earth Day, Reason Magazine suggests that not just phosphorous, but a host of substances might become too costly due to current use:

“Is it realistic to predict that knowledge accumulation is so powerful as to outweigh the physical limits of physical capital services and the limited substitution possibilities for natural resources?” In other words, can increasing scientific knowledge and technological innovation overcome any limitations to economic growth posed by the depletion of non-renewable resources?
The debate over peak oil is heavily politicized, so let's set it aside and test the idea of imminent resource peaks and their consequences for economic growth on three other non-renewable resources: lithium, neodymium, and phosphorus.

 The solutions are:

• Reduce the use of Neodymium by putting AC-Induction motors in our Priuses instead.
• Re-use materials to make zinc-air or metal-air batteries instead of lithium.
• Recycle the phosphorous in our waste with NoMix toilets and improve the efficiency of fertilizer.

The key element to remember is the one truly re-usable resource: the human mind.

The Essayist # 18: Islamic Idol

I have never understood the Muslim sensitivity with regard to Mohammed. Islam finds the notion of the Incarnation ridiculous ("Far be it from His glory to have a son," saith the Quran), yet for all intents and purposes treats its human prophet as though he were divine, hence unfit for graven image. The logic behind proscriptions against idolatry dwells in confusing an image of God for His reality; a sculpture of a calf, however golden, cannot be the King of the Universe. Muslims have long accused Christianity of dancing with polytheism in regards to the Trinity, of divinizing Jesus of Nazareth; how they fail to see the degree to which they do the same escapes me.

E.J. Dionne Merits Another Fisking...

...insert your own joke here.

Things That are Not a Right.

The commonplace from the left with regard to health care is that it is, or should be, a "right" (usually with the accompanying boilerplate "In a country as rich as ours..."). The more sophisticated, such as President Obama, talk in terms of a designation between "negative" rights (free speech, religion, assembly, et al.) and "positive" rights (everything Franklin Roosevelt meant when he discussed "freedom from want"). To embrace the latter is understood as the evolved understanding.

Over at Hot Air, Ed Morrisey encounters a group of super-articulate teens claiming just that. He explains why so-called "positive rights" aren't rights. (Hat tip: Insty)

As human beings, we want to see people succeed to the point where they can feed, clothe, and care for themselves independently, as that establishes true personal freedom.  However, none of us have the right to confiscate the services of a doctor or nurse without their consent, and without their ability to set a price for their time and expertise.  We don’t have the right to walk into a grocery story to demand apples when we’re hungry, either, although we should have access to the market without bias when we can properly compensate its owner for the goods.

I can speak freely on my own, without anyone opening my mouth or putting words in it. All my right to free speech requires is that someone else not silence me. The same is true for any other so-called "negative" rights. Health care, on the other hand, requires someone else's labor to provide. To claim it as a "right" is thus to claim the labor of another. It is a difference in degree from the medieval corvee, under which a lord could take the labor of the peasants on his land without compensating them.

During the Carolingian period, the kings of France began to grant income from royal estates to lords they desired to keep well-disposed toward the crown. Unlike feudal grants of land, which were passed down from generations, and upon which the lord took up residence and possession, these gifts, or benefices, were usually in monetary form only, keeping the actual land and economic activity performed thereupon under royal control. They could be revoked at royal whim, and so encouraged obedience to royal wishes.

Freedom of speech is a right. Free Health care is a benefice. And it's only a matter of time before that benefice is denied to those deemed politically unworthy.

Confess your Whiteness!

Protein Wisdom links the usual insanity, white people are racists by virtue of being white, and any denial of this is taken as evidence of your racism. The obvious parallel is to the Inquisition, where denial of heresy was often taken as sufficient grounds to convict of heresy. A point I've made before (and been banned from web sites for saying). But commenter dicentra links a different point:

As a Canadian of Japanese ancestry, I have spent my entire adult life trying to allay the burden white people carry about their whiteness or my lack thereof. “No. I would prefer if you didn’t promote me to comply with your stupid, misguided and racist employment equity program.” Or of late: “No. I don’t find Sumo suits racist, but I find your pandering to my sensitivities very offensive.”
I have had people apologize to me for mentioning “sushi” or “Ninja” in everyday conversation. You don’t get more ridiculous than that.
So, you know what? I give up. Go ahead and knock yourselves out with guilt all you white people. In order to correct historic wrongs, all white people must hand over everything they own to me, the self-proclaimed representative of all non-white people. I will then redistribute as I see fit to all my fellow repressed non-white people. Now, maybe all you white PC, guilt-mongers will shut up and quit feeling remorse over your imagined superiority.

It's almost as though certain lefties, unable to deal with the notion that whites are not the redeemers of the world, have decided that they are the villains of the world, the "greatest murder, greatest kidnapper," in the phrase of Malcolm X. It occurs to me that this is just as racist as believing that God had ordained us to rule the world.

Earth to Honkies: WHITE PEOPLE ARE NOT SPECIAL.

Libertarians and Teh Racism

David Boaz of Cato wrote an article for Reason.com that started some pretty fierce discussions on liberties and oppressions past. A key excerpt:

Unclear on the Concept

My Pet Jawa does the best thing that can be done with aggrieved lefties. He points and laughs. (Hat tip: Ace).

When Has Counting Ever Hurt Anything?

The first thing to ask about conservatives underreporting on the census is "is this really happening?" The only noise I've seen in the wingnutosphere has been to cease the reporting of race, which, as the link notes, counterproductive to conservative goals.

Folks, there's nothing wrong with doing a head count. There's nothing wrong with the government trying to figure out how many people it has, especially as the Congress and Electoral College is determine on population. There have been censuses since 1790; this isn't a progressive evil.

I can't imagine a conservative having a problem with this. Hence, my first question.

Let's Count the Sexisms, Shall We?

Susannah Breslin sounds off on the supposed digital gender divide, and in a single paragraph managed to raise a host of dubious assertions:

But what of lady bloggers? Blogging goes against their nature, Wente asserts. “Not many women are interested enough in spitting out an opinion on current events every 20 minutes.” Blogging is little more than a glorified pissing contest, she says, and women don’t do well at competitive pissing. In fact, the fairer sex is better at listening than shouting, more invested in “relationships” than fighting. Ergo, women suck at blogging.

I guess I'll just indulge my male need to piss on things, mark my territory, and such, and state quite bluntly that this barely qualifies as a mass (such thin gruel it is) of unsupported prejudice. Women aren't interested in "spitting" (note the verb) out an opinion every 20 minutes? Has she met any? Maybe around other women, the fairer sex is reticent to speak up, but ask a man, any man, whether his experience is that women can't "spit" an opinion with regularity.

Then there's the linkage of blogging with pissing, which froths with sour grapes on several levels, sweetened with the widely-shared (among women) belief that the ladies are better at listening than shouting. It's a trifecta of non-thought.

I realize that I have laid myself well open to the charge of misogyny even by saying these things, but I am continually amazed at people who write about the sexes without recognizing the basic fact that there are two of them, and each has an opinion on the other. No man of education ever assumes that his view of his own gender is shared by women. I wonder why I so rarely find women who are aware of it, or who respect it.

Oh, THAT Liberal Media...

Channel One is lame. It's on during homeroom and I usually pay no attention. But today's broadcast featured their "coverage" of the outrage against Democratic Congressmen, and a more biased account could hardly have been offered. All the victims were Democrats, all the perps, Tea Partiers. No mention of the bullet in Cantor's office, no mention of the voicemail Jean Schmidt (R-OH) received. And obviously, no mention of this.

Why can't Lefties be honest?

Good ol' Belmont...

Giving us good cheer in these happy times:

Fear is probably the last thing that needs selling. It’s already creeping like a vast shadow. The real problem now is not whether there’s something to worry about, but how to get out from under. The terrible skeins are all coming together: the accumulated fecklessness, the foreign policy misjudgements, the deception and the unkeepable promises are gathering like a terrible storm. An entire era has come to the end of a joy-ride. The bill has come due; and everyone is doing a courtesy reach-around for his empty wallet hoping that someone else can pay for what they can’t.

Enjoy the weekend.

Why We're Screwed.

China's going to blow:

Unlike Western democracies, whose central banks can pump a lot of money into the financial system but can’t force banks to lend or consumers and corporations to spend, China can achieve both at lightning speed.
The government controls the banks, so it can make them lend, and it can force state-owned enterprises (one-third of the economy) to borrow and to spend. Also, because the rule of law and human and property rights are still underdeveloped, China can spend infrastructure project money very fast – if a school is in the way of a road the government wants to build, it becomes a casualty for the greater good.
Government is horrible at allocating large amounts of capital, especially at the speed it is done in China. Political decisions (driven by the goal of full employment) are often uneconomical, and corruption and cronyism result in projects that destroy value.
To maintain high employment, China has poured money into infrastructure and real estate projects. This explains why, in 2009, new floor space doubled and residential real estate prices surged 25 percent. This also explains why the Chinese keep building new skyscrapers even though existing ones are still vacant.
The enormous stimulus has exacerbated problems that already existed, threatening to turn China into a less shiny but more drastic version of debt-riddled Dubai, United Arab Emirates.

The Problem With ObamaCare

Over at Protein Wisdom, dicentra issues a pretty solid denunciation of what Pelosi's bill is and what it will accomplish:

"I Hope You Die," is not a threat.

This morning, the radio played what it described as "death threats" left  on the voicemails of various Democrat Congressman who voted for ObamaCare, especially Bart Stupak, who got played like a cheap fiddle by the President and Speaker.

Not one of them actually constituted a death threat. The worst of them was "I hope you die!", a hot-headed and uncivil thing to hear, to be sure. You could call it a "death wish" if you want, and you could call it a narrow distinction. But the reason language exists is so that distinctions can be made. And wishing that someone would drop dead, however morally lacking, is leagues away from promising to kill them, even unseriously.

What I don't understand is the media and Left clutching their fans and smelling salts as though this did not happen during the Bush Years. Politics is a sport played by the passionate. People lose their minds and shout hyperbole. Why can't we have a media that either decides it's all horrific rudeness and a threat to the republic, or it's all bold speaking-truth-to-power? Pick a standard and apply it equally.

What's the problem with that?

UPDATE: See this, this is a threat:

Cantor said "a bullet was shot through the window" of his campaign office. The incident happened Monday, Fox News has learned, the latest in a rash of apparent threats and acts of intimidation against members of Congress. Most of the threats so far have been reported by Democrats, but Cantor -- the No. 2 Republican in the House -- is one of about 10 lawmakers who has asked for increased security protection, Fox News has learned.

Matthews: Refusing to buy Health Insurance is like Refusing to Serve Blacks

Bwah?

Oh, it's all "interstate commerce." If you can make people sell products to black people, then you can make people buy health insurance.

That is so exactly what James Madison had in mind about "interstate commerce."

Waste in Baltimore City Government.

In other news, Generalissimo Francisco Franco is still dead.

Why do I get the feeling that Parks & Rec has been laden with the city's sins?

Especially given that the city government is getting a pay raise? 

On We Blindly Stumble...

The Health care bill is a sham. It won't work. It can't work. When has the government ever reduced costs on anything? I can't imagine being one of the people who believes otherwise. They're like battered wives; oh, this time he really means it. No, he doesn't. He means to take whatever you have and that you should feel grateful for having him take it. None of your backtalk, woman. Now get the slop on the table.

In America, the scope and size of government is the issue. It's always been the issue. What else could a free people argue about, but how far their freedom goes? And now, thanks to the desire of progressives to insure equal outcomes from unequal incomes, we will watch freedom go very far away.

The Essayist #17: The Oppressor is Named.

Back when I was in college, I thought long and hard about the inherent oddities of my position: there I was, the military brat, the second of my surname to go to a university, and I was studying to become...what, exactly? A Foreign Service Agent? A perma-student? What was my productive work? Where did I belong? With my leftyish friends, embracing Derrida and Foucault, or with the kids in the College Republicans who tended to hold me at arm's length, and at any case never got drunk on Monday nights playing Diplomacy while extensively quoting Monty Python?

Twelve years, 7-8 jobs, and a long time earning my living as a teacher later, and I know what I am; precisely the term Lenin used when he arrived at Finland Station: a man of letters. An intellectual. But this discovery has not lessened the tension of my life one bit.  I am, as I was then, a rebel against my class.

But can such a class actually exist? Have not the intelligensia existed since the rise of the Sumerian scribes? Yes, and yes. And I'm not the first to say so. The Volokh Conspiracy here quotes the critical-theory journal Telos on the rise of New Class theory:

Service is Our Priority. Customers, Not So Much.

The Daily Caller, like any good wadi o'wingnuts, never misses an opportunity to compare the current congressional clusterf--- of a bill with what government health care looks like. Digging into the Daily Mail yields no information on the supposed 21 billion pounds sterling spent on "failed schemes to tackle inequality" but does yield that 487 million was spent on consultants.

But At Least They'll Have the Spotted Owl.

Nothing in this world is secure. There is no such thing as an endless supply of anything. Environmentalists know this, but routinely forget it when it comes to shackling economics to serve their ends. Behold the results (Hat tip: Insty):

"You keep using that Word. I do not think that word means what you think it means."

Now it's possible that Tom Hanks intended something other than to say our war against Japan was motivated entirely by racism and terror (at about the 3:35 mark), but frankly the segment is so fluffy that one can read anything into it (via Big Hollywood):

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Much Ado About Schools

Investigative Voice covers the kabuki about closing one school or another in Baltimore, in which two grown men argue about a term that has no business belonging in an argument about schools. Education is a process, and it will inevitably be a process with unequal outcomes. To treat it as a right is to use it as a political football, when it ought to transcend politics.

This *IS* Cable News

I don't know how I missed this -- but I did. It's the greatest thing ever:


Breaking News: Some Bullshit Happening Somewhere

No Gang of 14, Says Current Majority

...as the cycle of hypocrisy spins (Hat Tip: Insty)

I await E.J. Dionne's learned commentary on how we "need those guys to watch those other guys," or something.

Golly Goshers! A Person of Color!

At a Tea Party Rally!



You may say it's one lone black man, but that's still one more than MSNBC has hosting its news lineup, if you care about that sort of thing.

And Your Farts Smell Bad, Too...

The Clean Car Myth, exploded.

It Explains the Whole Anakin = Chosen One Thing.

(Hat tip: Ace)

Politics is Retarded.

Somewhere in Massachusetts a committee of like-minded citizens gathered yesterday to deal with one of the most grave issues affecting the state:

The word "retarded." (Hat tip: Jules Crittenden)

"Never saw a rich man go to jail..."

...you've never been to Baltimore, then. They guy who conspired to fix tax liens and ground rents got 18-months in the pokey and an $800,000 fine.

Now, if he'd been a connected man...

Hait & Chile, Wealth & Poverty

Economic opportunity & social justice. Funny how the latter ends up a pyramid of human skulls. (Hat Tip: Insty)

Granted, Haiti's had a dearth of any kind of justice. But even if the Haitian government was competent, it might not have made any difference:

Chile also has some of the world's strictest building codes. That makes sense for a country that straddles two massive tectonic plates. But having codes is one thing, enforcing them is another. The quality and consistency of enforcement is typically correlated to the wealth of nations. The poorer the country, the likelier people are to scrimp on rebar, or use poor quality concrete, or lie about compliance. In the Sichuan earthquake of 2008, thousands of children were buried under schools also built according to code.

The state can enforce. It cannot create, nor lift one single person from drudgery and exploitation. That requires wealth.

Olbermann = Pwn3d.

At some point I'm going to tire of Captain Integrity as much as everyone else has, but again, since he's responsible for the Essayist coming back from the dead, I am duty bound to report this story to the bitter end.

Apparently the Congressional Black Caucus is unsatisfied with Olbergruppenfuhrer's claim of diversity.

"Big Tent Libertarianism"

Enjoy libertarians accusing each other of heresy. The above phrase appears, seemingly without irony.

Bruce Bartlett: The Money Needs to Come From Somewhere

Bruce Bartlett, formerly of the Reagan administration and recent heretic on Supply Side Economics, makes a couple of serious points:

1. We've probably hit the bottom of the supply-side barrel, lowering taxes is probably not the wisest thing given our current public debt.
2. If the political will to truly reduce spending does not exist, then taxes must be raised to cover them. He suggests a VAT to pay for them.

I rather agree with the first point, and while I see the argument behind the second, I do not agree. Polticial will is not set in stone. In January of 2009 no one could possibly have seen the popularity of a bi-partisan anti-government movement, the election of a Republican to Ted Kennedy's seat. Just because no re-structuring of our public commitments has succeeded doesnt mean it is impossible.

Moreover, to raise taxes to meet public commitments is, in all bluntness, to reward bad behavior. For a century progressives have expanded the role of the state into as many aspects of private life as they could muster the votes for. At this writing, they show no sign of ever stopping that. To pay for a debt that should never have been incurred in the first place without making some effort at preventing this again is only marginally more responsible than endless deficit spending.

So, the dislocations of shutting down the government's massive role in our economy, or the slow starvation of that economy and any pretense of liberty for the sake of feeding the Progressive Leviathan. Place your bets.

Baltimore is Dying.

Last night I was the door man for Investigative Voice's 1-year anniversary party, which featured a six-person panel discussion on the state of the city. Former Mayor Sheila Dixon was on Hand, as well as a scattering of the rest of the commentariat, from police-commissioner-turned-radio-host Ed Norris to the local head of the NAACP. And they said:

Stuff

And the audience asked them keen questions, loaded with

Blah

And after a while it sounded like the same Hot Potato game, like we were looking for someone to blame and drive out of town, loaded with our sins, be it the Police Department, City Hall, or the Media. One gentleman did offer up that the communities really ought to police ourselves, and received applause, but no one picked up the train of thought.

This city is something of a sinking ship, and everyone who can is heading for the lifeboats, and the crew is too busy arguing about who was steering to think of plugging the hole.

Update: One of customers writes of the affair far more thoughtfully than I.

Barack Milhouse Diocletian Steps into the Path of History's Train

Price controls? Really?

Up until this point, he could deflect criticism of the health care plan on the grounds that it wasn't his plan. When he went to talk to the Republicans, he could say that things got into the bill that were contrary to his desires. Now he's gone and put the millstone right around his neck.

I'm so glad we elected the smart guy.

(Hat tip: Insty) 

Update: Reason.com steals my joke. Which is to say, the joke is kind of obvious, and I got my dashed-off tripe in before they could finish their researched article.

Phosphorus and the Poop Problem

In the history of civilization, cities have never been as densely populated as they are now. The reason is twofold: 1) industrialized agriculture spares human labor from needing to be on the farm, and 2) modern sewers cause the rivers of human waste that would otherwise kill everyone in cholera epidemics and the like to be kept away. Food goes into the city, poop comes out of the city, everyone wins.

Except there's a coming resource shortage that may monkey-wrench the whole cycle: Phosphorous. It's what we use to make fertilizer; it's the element that allows farmland to be used again and again. It's the stuff that runs off and causes problems in the Chesapeake. We get it largely from phosphate rock, and our use of it is incredibly innefficient:

Worldwide, according to Cordell and White, five times more phosphorus is being mined than is being consumed. Stated another way, 15 million tons of phosphorus is mined yearly to grow food, but 80 percent never reaches the dinner table: It is lost to inefficiency and waste.

Farmers use too much fertilizer and it runs off the land, polluting streams, lakes and oceans. Industrial agriculture does not plow crop residues back into the soil after the harvest. In some countries, consumers throw away a third of their food, even when much of it is still edible.

The article blames the usual culprits, meat-eating and industry, so I can already see the angle that the enviro-Left is going to take with this. If the Right had guts, they would use this as the wedge against our repulsive, quasi-Soviet agricultural subsidy system, which drives our phosphate-heavy agribusiness practices. I'm not holding my breath.

The solution: poop. Lots and lots of poop. The whole system of waste management may indeed be a waste, and the time may come, and soon, for the ultimate in personal recycling.

Andrea Tantaros on the Next Wingnut Wave

Winning elections is nice. Reforming the government is also nice. But Tantaros makes the larger point that the next pushback is cultural. Not the usual sad Custer's-Last-Stand that conservatives have called a culture war; whining about gay people and rap music is not changing the culture. If we're going to make a mark on the culture, we have to do so by actually competing in the cultural marketplace. That means our books, movies, and everything else we produce needs to not suck more than it needs to be conservative. Let the spoonful of sugar weigh more than the medicine, is my point.

The Iraq War was Won, and There Was Much Rejoicing...

yay. (Hat tip: Insty) Knife point:

Our friends died to secure this day. And here on this road in Diyala, I saw proof that the blood spilled in this backward country had value. It made the cause noble and just. This may not mean much to someone who stands in opposition to our fight, but it is the legacy of our fallen. The honor of their sacrifice. They gave their lives for others like me to come home. They died trying to preserve freedom for this woman. They confronted those who wished to dominate a people in the name of violence and religion, who wished to destroy our culture and way of life.  Even if most Americans may not understand who or what we fight, these men not only believed, many reenlisted to continue the fight until the war was won. I came home in search of that woman’s spirit in the hearts of my fellow Americans.  I came home expecting to find the sacrifice of these brave patriots revered at every turn by those who overwhelmingly sent us to war from Washington.

I’m still looking.

That's the funny thing about democracy, so noble and just in the achievement and so small and vicious in the practice. For the moment, all I can say to David Bellavia is that one day, when the fight over the war is over, and no more "gotchas" can be gotten, the real achievement of he and his comrades will be known, and the shock and awe of it will stand as solemn as the gardens of Arlington.

The Olbermann Soup

Considering it led to this blog's Lazarus-like return from oblivion, it would be remiss of me not to make mention of Daily Caller's We Watch, Because We're Paid To feature. Knife point:

Later, he replayed an old, long clip of himself as a guest on “The David Letterman Show.” Then he recycled a line about Glenn Beck — “He has the long-term memory of a Roomba” — that he had used in identical form last Friday. No one can accuse Keith Olbermann of not being a good liberal: The man loves to recycle.

The line would be better if the word "recycle" were not used twice, but rather saved to the end, but dashed off mockery is no more than this faux-Murrow deserves.

Le Scandal Sestak! Quelle Horreur!

The most scandalous thing about the Sestak Scandal is how scandalous it's not. Breathes there a soul so innocent that knows not the utter normality of such quid-pro-quoing? Deals, compromises, offers, this has been the stuff of politics since Sumer. Despite the promises of whatever Candidate of Change we elect every 16 years, it will remain the stuff of politics. That's why wingnuts like myself prefer that politics has as little stuff as possible.

More interesting than the substance of L'Affair Sestak is the fact of it. A Democratic candidate for Senate is publicly accusing a Democratic President of buying him off, before a primary election? Either Sestak hasn't thought this through, or Obama's in a lot more trouble than he's aware.

If Only the SDS had been Idealists!

For Mark Rudd to admit that the SDS really did evil things (Hat Tip: Insty) is not news, except insofar as it shows a glimmer of honesty in a poltical radical. What rather rises above the usual is the way the Chronicle of Higher Education attempts a demarcation between actions and motives:

The confession, a depressing postscript to the 1960s, solves a four-decade-long mystery. It offers a grim testament to just how mean things got at Columbia, and a sobering reminder that not all student radicals were starry-eyed idealists. In more than a couple of cases, they were power-hungry extremists jostling for control of the student-protest movement.

The naivete staggers: as though idealism never caused extremism and power-struggle. One is one to make of someone who believes that passion and a desire to change the world would stand in the way of cutting a few ethical corners for the greater good? Do they really mean to suggest that Mark Rudd was a cynic in 1968?

 

Starry-eyed Idealist. Murderous Bastard. Goatee Afficionado.

I don't know where people get the idea that utopian idealism and brutal calculation are mutually exclusive.  Even the New Testament advises being innocent as lambs and wise as serpents. Pol Pot did not kill millions for the hell of it. Sure, he enjoyed the exercise of power,  but fundamentally he, and Mao, and Lenin, and Stalin, and Napoleon and you-know-who believed in what they were doing. Believed that it would make the world so much better that the present savageries would be forgotten in the future symphonies of happiness and peace. 

If anything, idealism needs leavening with grim experience and that touch of cynicism that comes with the awareness of how truly broken the world is. Otherwise, one comes to believe that anything that will strengthen your power to act for righteousness' sake is a duty to undertake. And like Lady Macbeth, you will glibly pretend that the blood will not mark you.

Update and Bleg

If I intend to make a go of this, the old format needed to go, and a new format to match The Notion. And the promise of 90% more spittle needed a less sedate color.

And yes, I know the video below doesn't fit. I am a tech dweeb and unsure how to make it fit. Suggestions are of course welcome.

Update: Fixed. Blogger Help really is worth a damn.

Lick 'Em Tommorrow.

General David Petraeus quoting Ulysses S. Grant in the WaPo's On Leadership Video Series:



That's one of my favorite lines from the Civil War. It's vintage Grant, pure unperturbability in the face of chaos. Nor was it bravado: he turned his army right around the next morning and handed the rebels their ass, shoving them out of West Tennessee for the remainder of the war and establishing a safe base of operations against Vicksburg and the rest of the Western Theater. The last thing the Confederates were expecting to see on the morning of April 7, after knocking the Yankees around like tenpins the previous day, was to see those same Yankees pushing after them, full of fight. Not even Lee's masterful display at Chancellorsville the following year beats Shiloh for snatching victory from the jaws of defeat.

And that is a lesson about war that seems to need re-learning with every passing generation: it's not over until it's over. Afghanistan wasn't over in '03; Iraq wasn't over in '07. They're never over until one side stops fighting.

For The Sake of Clarity and CYA, Here's What I said About Obama then...

These, from my LiveJournal, on the Day After The Election, and the Day After the Inauguration.

So, um...yeah...

I guess this is my other undead blog now. And again, no explanation. I was ranting about Olbermann and it just felt...right.

I'll post some other stuff here later. For the moment, permitt me the intellectual honesty of saying that President Obama did one thing that I do like: he put money down to help build two new nuclear reactors (Hat tip: Insty).

Sure, I'd like it if  he did something about the regulatory mess that delays nuclear plant construction, but the guy is a Democrat. He's going to get garbage from the enviro-left as it is. So two thumbs up for him anyway.

The Essayist #16: Today's Special Comment -- Keith Olbermann is a Racist Swine.

I know, I know, fish in a barrel, cheap shot, giving him attention he doesn't deserve, yadda yadda. Don't care. For reasons passing understanding, while flipping through the channels last night, I left it on MSNBC long enough to catch Olbergruppenfuhrer's Special Comment, all about how anyone and everyone who has any affinity for the Tea Party movement is merely a Klansman in drag.

That means you, honky.

Finality

I write this with no clear purpose in mind, nor any place to arrive, as it has been a long hard few months.

Money depresses me. I have been, for most of my adult life, bad at managing it, bad at living within my means, bad at disciplining myself to fix either of these.

My career, such as it is, depresses me. I don't seem to have one. I have a part-time job that pays badly, which I took to supplement my income as a substitute teacher, and if it seems as though that is a regressive step in my career as an educator, that's because it is. Despite a year of subbing, five years experience teaching, professional certificate, and a visit to a job-fair, I am no closer to having a job in the local public school system than I did when I left my cozy but un-lucrative private school job last June.

If this all sounds un-familiar, that's because I've rarely talked about it. I do not enjoy talking about myself, because the things I do on a daily basis are deeply unsatisfying to me. I am as mum when my wife asks me how my day was as when my parents used to ask the same question in middle school. I simply can't talk about it, because it reminds me of how much I hate it (you'll note I don't mention what my part-time job involves).

And if I hate my life, isn't that my problem? Yes, it is. My problem, and my fault. I am an educated man in a free society. There is not a soul on earth who is responsible for my lot in life other than myself. If I am to fix my life, than I first must fix myself, and become the man who can get the things I want.

That means making serious decisions and sticking to them. That means cutting away the loose ends of things that do not matter. Which brings me to the subject of addressing my six readers, and telling them that it's time to kill another blog.

Okay, so I did have a purpose in mind, I guess. But when I wrote those words, I was still deciding.

As I've mentioned before, this blog has never been what I've wanted it to be. Again, this redounds to me, who either badly concieved it (a weekly blog? please) or badly executed it (might as well have kept The Notion going, for all the good the switch did me). But the fact is, I'm never going to be able to join the blogger big boys. My heart is just not in it, so why continue the charade? I haven't continued it for three months, and what, two months before that? I believe my sub-concious is trying to tell me something.

I write this after spending a couple of days re-joining the blogosphere, as it were, catching up on all the amusement that the back and forth can offer. I've called out a jihadist and threw a stone at the notion that men are traditionaly "afraid of commitment". And it was fun. But I don't really have time for the full conversation. And if that's the case, why pretend that it really means that much?

Plus, Blogger is annoying me. this is the second time I've had to reset my password through Google. Sure, it's probably an automatic 'bot employed against we lazy posters, but it's still irritating. I'm not about to support another layer of code between me and my dashboard. So stick it, Google, you commie rag-picker!

And that is that. I'll leave the beast up here, for none to enjoy. If ever I pick the digital pen up again, it will be with a narrower purpose, and perhaps with some more credential behind me. And it will probably be on typepad.

Thanks for reading. I'm going to fix a few things right now.

Oh, Piss off, I was busy...

...getting married, among other things. And taking on new projects, and every other lame excuse I could mention. I have once more been considering kicking this puppy to the curb and moving on down the road.

Instead, I'm gonna try to revive my original intent for this blog, which was to be a weekly column of considered work, rather than dashed-off tripe in the mold of other, better folks. We shall see how that happens.

Cheers.

Go Tell the Spartans

In response to posts such as this, I think it good to mention my take on 300. My short review is as follows: It's a graphic novel turned into a film, and as such, thoroughly enjoyable.

My longer review: action scenes great, alternating between the chaos of battle and the tactics which impose order on that chaos. Dialogue windy but not horrible (a shame that movie Spartans can't be, uh, laconic). Historically, the film's incomplete to off. The most accurate portrayal, aside from the intro on Spartan boyhood, was of the uniforms of the warriors, from the red cloaks to the shields with the L on them (L for, uh, Laconia). Only problem is, that the bronze breastplates seem to be missing.

Larger than that is the fact that the real heroism of Thermopylae is missing. Leonidas didn't march against the Persians alone, but with a combined Greek army, including Athenians, Corinthians, Thebans, the lot. It was outflanked, and Leonidas volunteered his boys to hold the pass so that the rest could live to fight another day. It was a sacrifice to save the military strength of Greece, not a showing-off to rally the people. Spartans did not throw their lives away so that philsophers would admire them.

The bit about the Persian envoys getting tossed down the well and Leonidas telling Xerxes to "come and take" the Spartan arms appears to be legit, though. And like I said it's a comic book, with all the intensity from plot-frugality that suggests.

So check it out. There isn't much else worth seeing.

And Spank Me! And Me!

This post over at Protein Wisdom makes me ponder something I have long been pondering ("I 'fink so, Brain, but..."): the fact that victimization is the path to power in the modern age.

It isn't just that certain segments of society claim to be oppressed. Everyone does, be they of the Right or the Left, poor or middle class (and Ayn Rand even made a fair argument that the rich and powerful can be oppressed). Every rabble rouse begins with the pretense that the other side is a group of tyrannical psychotics devoted to the implementation of their hideously ill-informed social model, regardless of the real-life damage it does to those that they never see, and that the People! Must! Rise! More, that they are willing to silence ("marginalize") anyone who has the courage to stand against their madness.

Remember 1994, the year of the "Angry White Male"? Lefty chatterboxes had a pile of fun going after that one. How on earth could a white male feel oppressed in America? Ridiculous. Laughable. Yet the idea worked. The fact that some didn't think the AWM's had the right to feel oppressed changed not the fact that many of them did, and were willing to vote for those that said they would represent the AWM's feelings and redress their percieved wrongs.

Thus, the perception of oppression: making people believe that you are wronged, is a path to a place at the table, regardless of whether you bring anything to that table other than the hunger to be fed. Naked power, without expectation of restraint or result, belongs to him who sells his wretchedness with a scapegoat.

Sounds like more proof that we live in the Age of Revolution.

With Republicans Like This...

Living in the People's State of Baltimorea (which some call Maryland), generally one appreciates Republicans where one can find them, especially as I live in one of the Republican counties of that state. So you can imagine my dismay to discover that my Congressman, Wayne Gilchrest (R-1st Dystrict) voted for the Non-Binding Declarlation of Political Expediency.

Money Quote:

We need a sense of urgency to end our presence there and stop the violence
that has left over 3,100 American soldiers dead, and many more thousands
wounded. If sending more troops was the answer, I would be the first to support
that effort. But the Iraqi people have suffered enough and the military
families who have loved ones in harm’s way have sacrificed enough.

Meaning what? That we should retreat and say the hell with it? Or do something else, unnamed and so far, unpondered, but not surge?

In a war, someone wins and someone loses. Is Wayne saying we've already lost, or is he suggesting that we might have lost, pending the outcome of the surge that's happening regardless of this resolution.

This is sickening. For a man to cross the aisle like this, to vote for something that changes nothing, accomplishes nothing but a theoretically crowd-pleasing "truth to power" moment, against a war that he has thus far consistently supported, is either an act of gamesmanship or a massive act of Vietnam Syndrome flash-backing by a decorated Marine Platoon Seargent.

You can bet that there's a letter getting shot off. Will post when I compose it.

The Plan and the Problems.

Pat Dollard says the plan is multifacted, learns from mistakes, and is aggressive. A few points:

1. U.S. troops are to be gradually pulled back from all Iraqi cities and
towns and sent to seal the borders with Iran and Syria. The real insurgency is
not indigenous to Iraq, but being pumped in through Iran and Syria.

4. Generals and leaders from Saddam’s Baath party, many out of work for three years, will be encouraged to rejoin the military enticed with high-pay and bonuses designed to serve as retrograde pay for their time off. The Baath party generals will be key to victory in Al Anbar Province, as I will lay out later today or tomorrow.

9. Immediate, highly visible Infrastructure improvement first focused on the peaceful and cooperative areas of Mosul, Amara and Karbala. The idea is to make other areas around jealous of the rapidly modernizing cities, in order to incent them to tow the line of cooperation with the new Iraqi Government.

All of which begs the question of why no one thought of such before. I think that a counterinsurgency campaign is an exercise in trial-and-error; first one must accept that the insurgency exists, and second, that one can't merely blow it away either with bullets or ballots. Hopefully, this plan will yield verifiable results in a relatively quick time frame. As Lincoln in '64, we are fighting the clock as well as the enemy.

Judging by this, early signs are not promising. However, note the following:

It also appeared to fit a pattern emerging among the suspected Sunni
militants: trying to hit U.S. forces harder outside the capital rather than
confront them on the streets during a massive American-led security
operation.

Almost sounds as though the countryside was where they were coming from, don't it?

Since It's So Obvious that Iraq = Vietnam...

Let's look at the results of pulling out of that war. Lawrence Haas does, and look what he discovers:

In 1975, a Democratic Congress cut off funds for the U.S. effort in Vietnam. The public, disillusioned over Vietnam and Watergate, elected Jimmy Carter, who promised honesty and applauded the end of “our irrational fear of Communism.”

As America turned inward in the late 1970s, enemies sensed our vulnerability and dangers mounted. The fear of communism was not so irrational after all. In Ethiopia, Angola, Rhodesia and elsewhere, the Soviet Union or Cuba worked to stoke Third World revolution. The Soviets more openly laid bare their expansionist agenda in late 1979 by invading Afghanistan.

Meanwhile, the Islamic Revolution in Iran of 1979 toppled a staunch U.S. ally. The student seizure of the U.S. embassy in Tehran, leading to a 444-day hostage crisis, painted a picture of American impotence.

All of which resulted in the election of Ronald Reagan and a new belligerent American foreign policy, which further institutionalized the belief that Republicans are the hawk party and Democrats the dove party. Note as well the connection between the post-Vietnam era and the rise of current enemies.

The fact that this is penned by Gore's former communications director gives me hope that someone on the other side of the aisle appreciates that the post-Iraq situation will need to be handled by something other than blaming Bush for all our troubles. As I've recently been bothering the Commisar at Politburo Diktat, a conservative who's changed his mind about Iraq, I've been waiting six years for the Democrats and the Left to come up with alternative strategies to defeat the jihadis. So far, zilch. If that changes, I'll be the first to applaud it, and the courage of any Democrats to push against their extremists in doing so.

Blog Stuff

Updated a few links, and in adding Pajamas, found Camille Paglia's return to Salon. I'm nowhere near as interested in her as I was in my college days, and more or less made my departure from her obvious back in 2003 with a post at the Notion that I can't link because I can't get the archives to display (grrrrr....). Also, I'd like it if she wrote about pop culture without working over things I'm tired of hearing about (Anna Nicole Smith, Madonna), and was able to discuss the Iraq war without sounding like a Kossite (and that she would finish the second volume of Sexual Personae already), but she backs me up that Romney will be a formidable candidate and that Obama is not ready for prime time. So maybe I'll pay some more attention.

For What it's Worth...

Here's what USA Today says about civvy casualties in Iraq.

Like I've said, this is the sort of thing that's been promised before. And I think it's a bit early to talk about a monthly trend when the month isn't over. And even if it's true, we've seen things dip and peak with tedious regularity. But, there it is.

I have a problem...

This post made me actually laugh at the prospect of the Dixie Chicks being assaulted. I think I need to vent on this issue.

Al-Sadr, Where is he? I don't know, I don't know...

Not Iraq! (cheers)

I think I can pierce the mystery:

1. Sadr is one of the bulwarks of PM Maliki of Iraq.
2. Maliki has been under pressure from Bush to man up and start dealing with all the militias.
3. Sadr leaves the country before the American and Iraqi army start to bring the pain.
4. The reason we didn't wack Sadr back in 2004 was because he had the protection of the Shi'ite religious establishment, whom we did not want to offend.

Conclusion: a deal was reached with the al-Sistani, the Iraqi Ayatollah, that we would be permitted to go after Sadr's army provided that Sadr himself was not harmed. Sadr conveniently blows town and lets his lieutenants take the fall. I wouldn't be at all surprised if he returns post-surge and remains a noisy, albeit non-paramilitary force in Iraq for decades to come.

Empires Rise and Fall, Cultures Diffuse, Religions are Born and Die...

...but Chicago is still a bucket of sleaze, wrapped in a box of corruption, floating in a sewer of apathy. Gatewaypundit has the skinny.

And the comments suggest that Obama might be one of their peeps.

More Obamalamadingdong

Is the country ready to accept a black president? Probably.

Is the country ready to accept a woman president? Don't see why not.

Is the country ready to accept a Mormon president? It'll take a touch of salesmanship, but yes.

But the country is not ready to accept a smoking President. Hence, MoDo and the whole crowd now feel fully justified in sending him down the river.

One Man's Inconvenient Truth...

...is another man's rebellious editorial. Further evidence to my theory that we're all revolutionaries, or think we are, nowadays.

I remember a few years ago, thinking, surely activity on the Sun would make as big an effect on global temperatures as anything we do? Had no science to back it up, though. Not sure if I have it now, either. All I know is I do not trust the people who tell me that there is no debate.

Obama vs. the Great Australian Chickenhawk

I leave the appropriateness of John Howard's remarks to another man to decipher. But it seems to me that Obama's retort is a little un-just.

Australia's population is estimated at about 20-21 million people, far less than one-tenth of the United States. Moreover, Australia's military only numbers about 51,000 full-time troops and 19,400 reservists. With this force, Howard must keep commitments in Iraq, Afghanistan, East Timor, The Solomon Islands, and Malaysia, plus, you know, defend the sixth-largest country in the world.

By comparison, the U.S. Armed Forces (all five branches) has 2,685,713 members. Our troops in Iraq thus constitutes approximately 5.2% of our total military strength. Australia's? 2.7%. Factor in the budget support (US$522 Billion vs. A$22 Billion), each military recieves, and I think it's fair to say that the Aussies are pulling their weight. At any rate, the 20,000 more that Obama suggests would be, at this juncture, an unmanageable strain.

I'm going to assume that Golden Boy just didn't know this.

Further Essayist Useless 2008 Presidential Predictions

Or, Hail the Wounded Elephants

Pollster.com:

Collectively, these results support an intriguing possibility: Both Republican frontrunners may end up with problems with conservative, religious and/or committed Republicans, leaving a huge opening for a third candidate in the early primaries.

Duh. Meaning Romney, who's been working at this for a while, will have the advantage down the stretch. Also that true-blue cons like Tancredo and Huckabee will grow stronger as the race progresses.

George I, William I, George II, Hillary I?*

Michael Barone's take on the burgeoning dynasticism of our politics offers an interesting explanation: that the politicizing of First Ladies leads increasingly to the politicizing of families, and thus, the current War of the Roses.

Not that this is the first time Powerful Families have taken the top job: Before the Bushes and the Clintons were the Adamses, the Harrisons, and the Kennedys. But both Adamses were one-term presidents (and from different parties, at that), as were both Harrisons, and the Kennedy dynasty is at best still-born. The fact that George W. became president but eight years after his father left the post, that another brother waits in the wings for his chance, that Hilary may be poised to repeat W's feat, that is a horse of rather a different color.

All of which is depended on Hillary actually winning. If she doesn't, then the spell of dynastic power will be broken. I think the revulsion to Royal Presidencies may rear its head even if Hillary should win; monarchs are something Americans enjoy other countries to have.


*I am fully aware that George I should really be George II, and George II, George III, because of George Washington. Also, Bill Clinton would really be William IV (after William Henry Harrison, William McKinley, and William Howard Taft. For that matter, we've had four Johns, six Jameses, two Andrews, and two Franklins. I am a geek.

The Essayist's Useless '08 Presidential Predictions.

Following another Instapundit link like the truffle-drunk pig I am, I happen upon this holding-of-breath over the Romney bid, which typically devolves into a WTF over the Obamalamadingdong bid. For the latter, I write this in the comments section:

Obama is running on his SuperStar! power, nothing more. As soon as he's asked a question of any weight, he'll reveal himself for the mountain of inexperience he is, and sad-eyed true believers will cherish the Lost Hope like Bobby '68ers, for decades.

For the former, I'll say that I've thought him the man to beat for at least a year, ever since I saw him on C-Span2 Late one night, talking to a Republican gathering in Iowa. In 2006. And what's more, he was an interesting and intelligent speaker. I said then, "He's way ahead of everybody in the field."

The New Tipping Point

Let's say that this article in the New York Sun is overstating it's case. We've been promised "turnaround" in Iraq a couple of times before, only to see more bombings. But note the criteria of promised victory: enemy demoralization. We have been told it is impossible to demoralize our enemy, that they are driven by an inscrutable fury. Is such an assumption truly supportable? If not, how may we convince our political class of it?

Thanks for the Day Off, Martin...

Martin Luther King Day sucks.

When I was in elementary school, every year we watched the same video about him. How he couldn't play with a white friend when he was little. About how he became a preacher. About how he stood up to the man non-violently, got arrested time and time again, and won a victory paramount to Ghandi's. And about how he was killed by a stupid little three-named cracker just because. By the time I was in fifth grade, I had it memorized.

I found out when I was in college was a player he was, and was actively nauseated. But if we can forgive Jefferson, we can forgive King and arguaby lesser offense. Nevertheless, I am weary of the noise about him, and especially about his "day".

The Examiner yesterday had an editorial about how MLK day should be a "day on," instead of a "day off." I didn't read it. I've heard that tune as many times as I heard "killing the man who said 'Love your enemies'" in elementary school. It's the same old routine every year: We mention the guy in passing and proceed to talk about his "legacy" and whether there's been "enough" "progress" since he died, and what "he would have done" had he not. I've yet to hear anything truly meaningful arouse from these. They've become ritual, an act of contrition: Bless us Martin, for we have thought insufficiently about what it means to be Black in America.

Jeff Goldstein tries to dismiss race, and raises a hydra of nonsense. What it "means" is whatever we decide it means, except we haven't decided. Unless we have.

I'm a pasty white honky with a nasal tinge to my voice. I haven't the foggiest notion of what it means to be Black in America, and I don't care either. As long as it means that you can vote and own property and sue and raise your voice like everybody else, I'm uninterested. I don't feel and particular obligation to help them, any more than I would help any other person. Whatever's "wrong" with the "black community" (euphemisms are fun!), I'm going to leave for that community to sort out for itself.

To my mind, Black Americans are in a position roughly analogous to Irish Americans, who were the original unwanted immigrant group, who also grabbed for political power as a way out of their troubles, and who also grew economically more slowly than did other groups that "came up" around their time. That's sad, but it also means that they too will have their day in the sun, to the extent that they haven't already. And it will happen from their own labor and their own freedoms, regardless of what MLK would have said or done, and regardless of what the Man thinks about it.

And if such be true, then I thank the man for his labors, and the day off.

Hip Pappy Nuh Yr

2007. This bizarre, un-nicknamed ("aughts"? Please.), decade of interesting times is running to a close. It will be 2010 before we know it.

I'm celebrating the new year by hooking up my computer at my new house to my new DSL via wireless and waving bye-bye to dial-up, hopefully forever. I plan on cleaning up this site a little, re-focusing, re-commenting, etc. but I'm still working to jobs and won't have a lot of time to post. With a bit of luck, elbow grease, and good old-fashioned frenzy, by the mid-point of the year all this will have settled down some.




Saddam strung up like a horse-thief. Huzzah. No need for the blog devoted to his trial then. Snipped lively. On we go.

"We can walk away from this enemy, but they will not walk away from us,"

That's General Abizaid talking at Harvard. The fact that I still feel the need to make that argument is suggestive either of my paranoia or my accurate sense of the coming betrayal. I dearly hope it's not the latter.