Tax Cuts For The Rich! Run!

Downpage in the mostly pedestrian account of the wrangling about continuing the current tax rates ending the Bush Tax Cuts, we have a quotation from the DNC's new fight ad:

“Boehner has a different plan,” the ad states. “Tax cuts for businesses and those that shift jobs and profits overseas. Saving multinational corporations 10 billion.”

Because, you know, if tax rates go up for business that can send jobs overseas, they totally won't do that.

Morons.

What. The. Fuck.

The Ayatollah, Sharia and Sex:



I was perfectly content to believe that Khomeini was simply a Pharisee, a legalist, a Raging Medieval Intolerant. I did not need to know that he raped a 5-year-old girl in order to dislike him. To know that he did, and that he justified it under the flimsiest of pretexts (as though rubbing your penis between someone's thighs is not a sex act), does not augment my dislike, but rather morphs it to a horrified nausea.

Please tell me that isn't the Q'uran that's being quoted. Tell me it's the Haditha. Whatever difference that might make.

Conservative Priorities

Over at The Other McCain, Smitty has a solid post, Dodging Federalism, in which he points out that fiscal conservativism must come before social conservatism:

Social conservatives, and I am one, need to grasp that worrying about private behavior at the Federal level (e.g. variations of marriage) sets the precedent for much evil, like abortions and the Department of Education...

Traditions are organic; politics are plastic. The one can support the other, but cannot substitute for it.

Obama's Iraq Speech: I'll Take Half a Loaf

President Obama:

This afternoon, I spoke to former President George W. Bush. It’s well known that he and I disagreed about the war from its outset. Yet no one could doubt President Bush’s support for our troops, or his love of country and commitment to our security. As I have said, there were patriots who supported this war, and patriots who opposed it. And all of us are united in appreciation for our servicemen and women, and our hope for Iraq’s future.

A good few wingnuts are annoyed that Obama went no further, to admit that Bush was right in 2007 and the Surge worked. Jennifer Rubin, and Jonah Goldberg both make this point, and Stephen Green wrestles it down and holds its nose into the mess it made. Myself, I don't care too too much. Yeah, it would be nice, but politicians don't get paid to admit error.

This is a President who has blamed his predecessor at every turn, who stood in sharp opposition to his predecessor on Iraq from its beginning. Here, without condescension or agression, he speaks of Mr. Bush and Iraq in at least the semblance of a spirit of charity.

That sounds like healing, friends.

Will Saletan: "Glenn Beck is Not a Racist"

At least, not anymore:

The resemblance doesn't mean that Beck wants to take us back to the days of segregation. It means the opposite. Crying "socialism" is what conservatives do before they yield to change. It's a stage in the process of defeat. But the process doesn't end with defeat. It ends with absorption. It ends with the political descendants of George Wallace embracing the legacy of Martin Luther King. Beck today is just catching up to where King was 50 years ago. That's because King was in the front of the civil rights bus, and Beck is in the back. And it's a really slow bus.

It's always a good idea when reading the Left to assume projection, or as Breitbart put it, that they accuse others of doing what they do. So when Saletan says "you know, these wingnuts really don't hate on black people," he's the one making the real concession. He's conceding that there's another principle operant in his opponents than bigotry, that opposition to racism is an idea that the Right has fully, finally embraced. And he's admitting that them crazy crackers do this all the time.  And if this is true, then what animates the right must be something else.

It's official: the race card is maxed out. The cudgel lacks only a ceremonial bronzing.

Remember Iraq?

We Won.

It's a strange war that ends this way; but as Clausewitz said, war is the continuation of politics by other means.  We're moving from war to a very tense political environment.  That's more or less what we should expect.  What comes next?  Either compromise arises that allows tensions to ramp down, so that the political takes over from the war; or it goes the other way, and war blooms anew from the failure of politics.

Triumphalism would be wrong at this point. The fact is, nothing about this war went according to plan, and if we end up slumping towards defeat in Afghanistan and shrugging our way to a (hopefully) Cold War with Iran, then it might yet prove a Phyrric victory.

But all you folk who said that the war was unwinnable, that staying the course was infinitely stupid, that al-Qaeda was destined to triumph, that civil war was inescapable, that the whole thing was doomed, lock, stock and barrel; YOU WERE WRONG.

I'd just thought I'd point that out.

Mosque or "Cultural Center"?

Salomatic.com, which bills itself as "the Worlds Most Comprehensive Guide to Mosques and Islamic Schools," refers to the Cordoba House as a mosque. There's even a picture of Friday prayers going on right now.

I feel soooo welcome.

Super-Heroes and Machismo are Bad, Says Female Psychologist

Prepare the estrogen bath, boys:

ScienceDaily (Aug. 15, 2010) — Watching superheroes beat up villains may not be the best image for boys to see if society wants to promote kinder, less stereotypical male behaviors, according to psychologists who spoke Sunday at the 118th Annual Convention of the American Psychological Association.

And how if society would like to keep a bit of stereotypical male behavior around? I mean, just in a glass case, for when terrorists attack and such? Not anyplace where it might get on the new drapes, God forbid.

The Ground Zero Mosque Solution

I have my doubts about whether the builders of Cordoba House -- aka the Ground Zero Mosque -- are really interested in bringing about dialogue between Islam and the West. But if they wanted to prove it too me, there's a simple thing they could do.

Rebuild the Church of St. Nicholas that was destroyed on 9/11. First. And just as tall.

If they can do it in Bagdad, they can do it in New York.

Update: Bill Whittle works himself into a fine lather. I don't disagree.

Michelle, Mademoiselle, La Daphine

I don't care about the First Lady of the United States. It's not a real position; it's a dull euphemism for the President's wife, dating from a time when such politesse obscured the purely romantic role that women played in politics. We have to say something about the woman who sleeps with our Head of State, so we call her that.

So when Michelle Obama emits some gaffe, like never being proud of her country, I ignore it, because I refuse to pay any credence to her importance, ceremonial or otherwise. I don't care about her.

But even I find it hard to disagree that eight -- eight -- vacations betrays a certain apres moi le deluge mentality. Or, as Victor Davis Hanson puts it, suggests

that her prior angst arose not because millions were not able to share the lifestyles of the elite but that she herself had not yet quite partaken in the sort of life she felt she deserved — which she is now apparently enjoying to the fullest. The fact that her Costa del Sol trip coincides with hard times back in the states, comes on the heels of the Kerry yacht and the Clinton wedding, and clashes with her husband’s anti-wealthy rhetoric (e.g., “at some point you’ve made enough money”) makes it all the more weird, both for her adminstration’s equality-of-result politics and for the larger liberal narrative of talking truth to power.

It's one thing to be wealthy and powerful in a time when others struggle. It's another to be so after explicitly casting your lot with the struggling and against the grandees. It may be less tone-deafness than hypocrisy, but
I cannot help but wonder why one's forgiveness of such ostentatious displays is the more forgivable if one mouths the right platitudes.

Unequal Outcomes can never be tolerated!

Every Community has a Right to demand of all its agents an account of their
conduct.
-Declaration of the Rights of Man

We must be vigilant, friends. Racism lurks in every corner, growing wherever it may hide, yea, even in the very ovaries of our young.

Behold: Puberty Is Racist!

Language Mongrelized.

It occurs to me that I have been blogging about the grim subject of race more than any other subject, since The Essayist was re-booted. Indeed, it was the very subject that prompted its re-boot. So today, I lingered at The Root far more than I normally would at so leftyish a web site, and was treated to their Would a Black Person Get Away With This? feature.

The continuing irony of race relations in America is the degree to which people of different races don't hear each other making the same arguments. There isn't a white person in America who doesn't think that there are things you can get away with when you're black that you can't when you're white, and so it's nothing short of amusing to note blacks feeling the reverse is true.

Behold, blunt evidence of what we honkies speak of: President Obama Calls African-Americans a "Mongrel People".

The president's remarks were directed at the roots of all Americans. The definition of mongrel as an adjective is defined as "of mixed breed, nature, or origin," according to dictionary.com.

I have no difficulty believing that. I'm fine with the word "mongrel" and have no objection to the way the President used it. But imagine, just for a second, these same words, with this exact same intent, coming out of the mouth of Sarah Palin, and then imagine someone on the left saying "that's fine".

You can't do it, can you?

Out of Office AutoReply

See Genre Confusion.

The Full Sherrod

The story of Shirley Sherrod begins when she was 17 years old, when a white man murdered her father and got away with it. I'm going to repeat that. When Shirley Sherrod was 17 years old, a white man murdered her father and got away with it, because the elder Sherrod was black, and if you were a white man in Georgia in 1965, you could kill a black man and get away with it.

So yeah, she doesn't particularly like white people, and the speech which led to her resignation was mostly a description of how she came to move beyond that. When the edited snipped first appeared on Big Government I could tell immediately that she'd been cut off in the middle of a thought. I wondered if that thought was going to lead someplace into the light. The Anchoress, ever the voice of reason, thought so, too. And, well...

Why yes, I will be using it every time...

And yes, Andrew Breitbart would have done well to wait for the full footage before he released what he had. And yes, Barack Obama would have done well to demonstrate the stiffness of spine that the good Lord gave a flatworm and await events before demanding her head (unless of course, he really did leave the decision to Vilsack, which doesn't reflect very much better on him). Last night, Left and Right were as one in saying that the raw deal was Sherrod's.

And then she started opening her mouth.

Given American history, I am the sort of fellow who considers it perfectly understandable for African-Americans of a certain age to distrust and dislike white people. Shirely Sherrod most certainly possesses that age and experience. But to forgive her resentment does not oblige me to call it something else. For a woman of her education to publicly call out Andrew Breitbart as nothing more than the ghost of Jefferson Davis not only gives the lie to her supposed conversion, but bespeaks a shocking ignorance of the rhetorical situation, an ignorance that strikes at the heart of what Breitbart was getting at.

African-American activists like to pretend that the souls of white folk are theirs for the reading, that they know our deepest motivations better than we do ourselves. They've made mountains of racism out of molehills of speech for a long few decades. That they should feel the need to do this, after the horrible experiences of African-Americans, should surprise no one. But the expectation that I or Andrew Breitbart or Rush Limbaugh or anyone else should be bound to it, that raises an eyebrow.

It may take another hundred years before African-Americans have fully achieved what their ancestors labored so cruelly, suffered so miserably, to attain. Halley's Comet may return before the ancestral memories of fear, mistrust, and righteous anger become just memories. Charity and forgiveness alone may accelerate this process.

In the meantime, expect many people of many colors to vomit up the words that others attempt to put in their mouths.

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.

Who will Reform the Reformers?

The American Interest:

“What are you kids doing down there,” ask the voters, who’ve noticed some banging and crashing in the basement.  “Are you kids writing a Carbon Tax?”

The greens check quickly with the focus groups and pollsters before shouting back up, “No, Mommy, of course not.  We aren’t playing Carbon Tax.  We’re playing Cap and Trade.”

Read the whole thing.

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..