Archive Listing
October 22, 2009 - October 15, 2009

Thursday, November 13, 2008

INAUGURATION DAY PLUS ONE. Every U.S. president has two presidencies: the one he planned on and the one he actually gets. The second usually differs radically from the first because it is driven by events rather than plans. It may well be that President Obama is in for the rudest of shocks, a four-year term in office so dominated by foreign policy crises that they will eat up the time and energy required for massive domestic change initiatives.

There are a couple of points worth noting here. American presidents almost never accomplish the laundry lists of initiatives they describe in campaigns and state of the union speeches. Like corporate CEOs, they are most successful when they focus sharply on a short list of top priorities and give them the close managerial attention needed to obtain a result something like the original intent. Typically, the best time for big domestic initiatives is the first term, when momentum can be generated during the honeymoon period every president has, to one degree or another, with congress. By the second term, presidents and congress are, also typically, weary enough with one another that the president begins to look abroad for foreign policy opportunities -- peace deals, trade treaties, and other legacy items that don't require as much interaction with Capitol Hill.

There are obviously exceptions to this pattern, but the relative stability of the Cold War era and its immediate aftermath allowed two-term presidents the luxury of putting much of the world on hold while they spent their early years in office trying to fulfill their biggest domestic campaign promises. Reagan never even met with Soviet leaders during his first term, for example, and Clinton saved the Kosovo intervention, his Irish peace initiative ands his Israeli-Palestinian negotiations for the years after he had made some progress on "it's the economy, stupid." Even George W. Bush managed to get the ball rolling on his top domestic priorities before 9/11 swept the table clean of his original agenda: His tax cuts, the "No Child Left Behind" education bill, and the new drug entitlement for seniors squeaked through in his first term.

Interestingly, the exceptions tend to prove the rule. Jimmy Carter focused disproportionately on foreign affairs -- brokering the Israel-Egypt peace treaty and destabilizing friendly dictators in Nicaragua and Iran -- with the result that Iran and unaddressed woes in the domestic economy blew up in his face and cost him a second term. George Bush the Elder spent a disproportionate amount of his one term in office turning back Saddam's invasion of Kuwait, which made him seem too remote from the lives of average Americans and caused them to vote him out in favor of Clinton.

It's clearly the hope of the Obama administration that they'll be able to repeat the Reagan-Clinton formula. A principal stated reason for Obama's determination to withdraw from Iraq, for example, is to end the distraction it represents from addressing domestic priorities. He wants to reallocate the money, time, and attention that Iraq has consumed over the past five years to improving the lives of poor and middle class Americans. His avowed intention to trade unilateral action overseas for talks and multilateral negotiations also, in this context, represents a belief that the world can still be put on hold -- stalled, if you will -- for enough time to accomplish key reforms at home.

But there's a good chance that the universal dislike of George W. Bush has caused even the smartest of the experts to miss a big, and ironic, hallmark of his presidency. The unpredictable and much despised cowboy has, to a very significant extent, done what should be impossible in the chaotic post-Cold War, post-9/11 political environment -- he has put the world on hold in such a way that it resembles the time when flare-ups could routinely be prevented from ballooning into disasters by the grim controlling caution of American and Soviet leaders determined to avoid fatal confrontations with each other.

This relative quiet in the global political environment is not like the stasis of the Cold-War. It just looks like it in an oddly reassuring way. North Korea goes rogue and then pulls back at the last minute. Iran blusters and threatens but keeps returning eventually to the circular but comforting delay of more talks with the Europeans. Hizbollah, Hamas, and other deadly firebugs in the middle east keep playing with matches but put them aside just before they light a wildfire that can't be contained. Russia flexes its muscles and makes reckless moves in eastern Europe but then ever so slowly subsides into bellicose calm. Pakistan looks ready to implode into civil war but somehow elects a fragile government to replace Musharraf, and the world's most unstable nuclear power keeps limping along. That's how the world has worked throughout most of our lives, and it's how it will keep on working, right? There is time to deal with problems in a fairly orderly way. If he's steady behind the wheel, President Obama will be able to steer us safely through it all and find the time to do the necessary things at home before events appropriate his agenda. Right?

Maybe. But probably not. When Bush leaves office, it will be like the marshal turning in his badge and riding out of Dodge City. It's the worldwide fear of how the United States will react that has kept the global pot simmering just below a boil. Even if they suspect that Bush won't call in airstrikes or a battalion of marines in response to a truly provocative act, they don't know it for sure. And so they hesitate, they think and think again, and then they wait. What are they waiting for? For Bush to be gone. As he will be in January 2009.

George W. Bush has been a one-man Cold War, the kind of stabilizing influence created by the perception of a danger that transcends local, personal rivalries and grudges. That's the irony of our current situation. And it's a truly colossal irony. Americans are tired of being not liked around the world. Obama promises to change that. He proclaims his intention to conclude the American Cold War against the world. He will no longer act hastily and unpredictably. He will put away the big stick. He will be reasonable. And we are buoyed and reaffirmed in our support for him by the fact that the world cheers when we elect him to the presidency.

Why are they cheering? Because things will slowly get better in international affairs as the civilized norms of traditional diplomacy are gradually restored to their proper place? Or because there will be a sudden sizeable window of time in which a young, naive, and inexperienced president of the United States will be trying to do too many things at once -- learn the job, staff his administration, resolve an economic crisis, and pursue an extraordinarily ambitious domestic legislative agenda -- leaving the door open for bold moves around the globe he can't possibly respond to effectively?

There are already numerous signs that it's the latter. The world is about done with waiting. They're getting ready to rumble. Maliki is preparing to push back hard against the Obama administration in Iraq. The rattle of sabers in Iran is growing ominously louder. The other players in the middle east -- Syria, Israel, the Palestinians -- are already nearly at the boiling point  The always unsubtle Russians have been signaling their intentions for months and getting bolder by the day. Movements under the surface of the uneasy relationship between Taiwan and China are threatening to erupt into sudden crisis. Add to this mix the worldwide economic uncertainty, the economic desperation caused by plunging oil prices in oil-exporting autocracies like Venezuela and Russia, and the growing instability of regimes in North Korea and Cuba, where the age and ill health of long-time dictators could cause collapse or civil war at any moment, and you have a recipe for multiple massive international crises within months or even days of Obama's inauguration.

Has anyone given much thought to Joe Biden's odd candor about the "testing" of Barack Obama? What he didn't say was that the consequences of such testing might be so serious and long-lasting that they could entirely co-opt the Obama presidency. He might find himself putting out fires around the world full-time from day one.

I hope I'm wrong. But I might not be. The Obama honeymoon that begins in January could quickly turn into a nightmare for everyone. If he can talk his way out of it all as he seems to believe, good for him. But there's reason to doubt that's the way world works right now, if it ever did.

Pray for him. Or if you can't do that, pray for us.

STILL JUST PUNKS. This post has no real import. It's just funny. And sad. Actually, mostly sad. The way things can be in this explosive new media environment. It's a vignette, really. About Daily Pundit, alias Bill Quick, the blogger who coined the term "blogosphere" and helped usher in our grand new age. I've had some communications with him in the past, and he seemed a decent guy, but I'd lost track of him until one of the commenters here at InstaPunk checked in yesterday with this:


In response to queries, he elaborated, as follows:

That being said, the whole exchange was instructive for me.

I was curious, because as I mentioned, I've had contact with Bill Quick, and so I followed the link in the comment and found that the "belittling" included traffic data for his blog, Ace of Spades, and other famous righty blogs compared to the much lower traffic figures for Instapunk. His scornful conclusion was that we don't matter because we're a ratings loser. Kind of like "Knight Rider," I guess. I thought that was funny, so I posted a jocular comment of my own based on our previous acquaintance:


Late this afternoon, I decided to visit his blog and see if he'd read or responded to my joust. But I couldn't get there. I don't mean I couldn't make a comment or access existing comments. I couldn't get to DailyPundit.com at all. Instead, I got a series of "403" error messages telling me I was "not authorized to access this site." I tried various other ways of getting there, including cutting and pasting the link from the comment that had first piqued my interest. I even ventured over to instaPundit and clicked from his blogroll. Nothing doing. So I consulted with my webmaster, who was able to access the site, and he sent me Bill Quick's response to my comment:
Just to make things clear, no one from here started a "blog war," and the only commenter who referenced this site at DailyPundit did so on his on own hook, without any prompting from us. He was also -- you can look it up for yourselves -- both polite and conciliatory about the possibility of having given offense where he meant none.

But what's more interesting is the part where Bill Quick says, "I was only peripherally aware that your blog even existed."

Which doesn't quite square with my own records.  Quick announced six months ago that he was interested in founding a new political party to replace the failed Republican Party. He asked for volunteer contributors. I volunteered by email (under my own name but with reference to Instapunk) and received an almost immediate response, which I quote verbatim:


I did post. I posted this, in fact:


Bill didn't exactly like this post. He commented (yes, personally) that the name of the party was not up for debate. But I wrote a second post anyway:


After that, I ceased getting emails from Bill Quick and the American Conservative Party, and my access dried up. It appears that he continues to toil away at his grand delusion, which is like many creations of the internet a fantasy, but the ACP ste has steering committees, sponsors, organizing committees, and lists galore.

Despite his wrath, I wish him well. But I will mildly rebuke him for assuming that this site is seeking the kind of notoriety and clout that is being so earnestly solicited by organizations like, say, the American Conservative Party. I also resist the charge that we have done, "Oh, that’s right, nothing."

It's an interesting accusation coming from such a devout conservative -- that is, one of those who believe so particularly in the inviolability and autonomy of the individual. Is it really a crime that Instapunk has chosen to embrace the value of the individual voice rather than organize and assemble compulsively to form a thundering (or whispering) herd capable of commanding the attention of media, other competing organizations, and advertising dollars?

Is it nothing that we write sincerely or satirically or dismissively about the great events of the day from decidedly individualistic perspectives? And if it is nothing, why is it nothing? Because it's objectively without value? Or because it's not of measurable value in an increasingly mass culture driven by polls, counting algorithms, sales figures, and audience share?

Well, when the fame bug bites you, your values tend to change. I suspect our biggest sin here is that our values haven't changed. We just go on doing what we do. In one of his responses to the commenter who had the unfortunate run-in with Bill Quick, CountryPunk advised him not to be dispirited because:

Blogs are letters to the editor. When they try to be more than that, they generally wind up being nothing.

But when he wrote that, he didn't know that Bill Quick owned the monopoly on the definition of 'nothing.'

Still. We're content with our "pathetic little shithole." We're pretty proud of the kind of traffic we have. They're people worth trying to influence with good ideas and provocative questions. They think about things. Would you rather be Simon Cowell or a teacher who knows for a fact that he inspired one student to make more of his life than he would have otherwise? Elections and politicians come and go. I think we're writing about more than party politics here. But, then again, what do I know? All I have to go on is "a solid foundation of popular television shows."

As always, we'll trust you to make your own decisions about all that. And if you don't mind, we'll indulge ourselves with a small chuckle that technorati is certain not to overhear.

Tuesday, November 11, 2008

90 YEARS AGO. Like everyone else who remembers that today is Veteran's Day, I thank all those who have carried arms in the service of  our country, with particular emphasis on those who have served so honorably in Iraq and Afghanistan since the events of 9/11. By devoting this post to the day which began this annual commemoration, I am not ignoring those who have paid many different kinds of prices for their service in these conflicts. I am trying to remind my countrymen of a few important lessons from the past that are still relevant to our present and future rules of engagement in foreign theaters of combat.

November 11 became a sacred date in 1918 with the Armistice that concluded hostilities in World War I. Here are excerpts from an account of that day:



For many, nothing would come next. American dead in World War I totaled more than 116,000. Something to remember for those who once supported our current military campaigns but have grown weary and lost patience with such an inexcusably long war -- short wars aren't automatically more efficient or brilliantly administered. Our casualties in WWI occurred in just seven months of active American combat. Those who now wish to jump-start the Afghan campaign by sending in huge numbers of American troops might pause to reflect that big armies can come to grief more catastrophically than small ones, and in the wrong kind of terrain (as Afghanistan has been since the days of Alexander the Great), big armies are actually an invitation to catastrophe.

There are other sobering reminders embedded in our mostly forgotten WWI experience. Our troops in that conflict were told they were fighting a "war to end all wars" and that their victory would "make the world safe for democracy." Victory is what they achieved, witness the facts quoted above: "Germany began to crumble from within... the Kaiser abdicated; slipping across the border into the Netherlands and exile." But there are two equally important components of a successful military campaign. The first is conquest on the battlefield. That was achieved in 1918. The second is careful negotiation of the peace and intelligent administration of its terms. This did not occur in 1918 or after.

It is possible, and even common, for politicians to lose a war at the peace table after it has been won in battle. That is precisely what happened with the Treaty of Versailles which was negotiated after the 1918 armistice. Our troops came home almost immediately, and French and English troops also stood down in short order after installing a weak democracy in Germany that never had a chance of meeting the needs of its war-devastated and divided populace.

Tumultuous events aren't over and settled just because you want them to be or because it's more convenient to pretend they are. Turning your back on complicated situations you don't have the wit or energy to deal with appropriately can get you stabbed in the back. Which is how Hitler -- in just 20 years -- turned Germany's military defeat in WWI into the single greatest threat to western democracies they'd ever experienced. Politicians transformed the sacrifice of all the World War I dead into wasted lives. In particular, the Americans died in vain. Unlike their European counterparts, they weren't fighting to restore an uneasy status quo among rival kingdoms. They were fighting for a vision of world peace, a profound change in a sick and dangerous region of the world. But their leaders didn't have the patience or the vision to carry out their part of the mission. And so the Americans, I repeat, died in vain.

We are on the brink of a very similar situation. The Democrats and their supposedly visionary standard-bearer are poised to take the military success that has been achieved thus far in Iraq and do little more with it than declare victory and "bring the boys back home." And as they openly contemplate such a potentially disastrous course, they look damn self-righteous doing it.

That's why, today, I'd ask everyone to remember future veterans in addition to those from the past and present. If we bungle the next "peace," we will all be doing our part, even if through mere laziness, to ensure a whole new generation of American dead and wounded in wars not yet dreamed of. But just because no gun has yet been fired at the soldiers in those wars doesn't mean we're not already carrying the crosses that will be placed on their graves. We are. We are the people. We are the government of the United States. We are responsible for what is done in our name. And right now we are blind to the future our votes are helping to create.

Something to think about. On Veterans Day. On Armistice Day. The day the peace that wasn't was signed.

PSONG 23. For an extremely limited time, it's still possible to make a retire-to-Florida-in-impossible-luxury type fortune because of the current financial uncertainty. That's right. Not in spite of. Because of. If you send your certified checks or postal money orders to ThanksForMakingMeRich (at) Instapunk.com, we will send you the whole how-to package for just $19.95.

$19.95. Did you get that part? $19.95!!!

We're going to bypass the usual infomercial ruse of paying people to tell you how much money they made from our too-good-to-be-true scheme because we're hitting you so early in the business cycle that no one has yet made the fortune we're promising. That's how honest and up-front we're being with you. It's a proven fact that most get-rich-quick schemes worked for somebody sometime, but almost always well before it got packaged for delivery on cable at 3 am in the morning. We have cut out all the delay to give you a true-blue golden opportunity to make more damn money than you ever dreamed about in your wildest fantasies. What do you think of that?

Obviously we can't give you all the details until you give us your $19.95, but we can give you a pretty damn good hint or two. The key is gasoline prices. They've shocked people in recent months. They've changed people's buying habits, the rate of new vehicle sales, and, most importantly, the resale value of vehicles people bought just one year ago.

When you send us your $19.95, you'll learn how to make a fortune from the differential between people's expectations and the reality of current market prices. For example, gasoline prices have already been dropping like a rock but the market doesn't trust that this trend will continue. They think gas could bounce on up to five dollars a gallon next week or next month.

Guess what. It can't. It won't. Gas is headed back to the 32 cents a gallon it was 40 years ago. Why? Because thanks to the coming Great Depression II, nobody will have the money to gas up the family SUV. They'll stop driving to the mall, to soccer practice, to their secret trysts at motels, and even to their cross-country vacations at Disneydom. Think about it. If we Americans use the most gas by far of any nation on earth, when we stop driving frivolously the international oil market will collapse into a black hole.

Which means it's time to buy gas guzzlers. But not just any old gas guzzlers. No. The gas guzzlers we want to buy are the most ridiculously expensive, most depreciated gas guzzlers on earth; i.e., one year old sybaritic splendors on wheels, the kind no fabulously wealthy celebrity will touch today or tomorrow but which they'll lust for like crazy when they finally realize gas prices are in the toilet for the next five years minimum. They can afford any gas prices, but they won't want to risk the bad PR until gas prices don't matter anymore. Which is a day that's coming soon.

Here's our list of top investments that don't require you to go anywhere near the stock market for the foreseeable future.

Monday, November 10, 2008

BREAD AND CIRCUSES. Yes, it's getting hard to contain our national excitement. There's even a move afoot to make a national holiday out of Obama's  birthday election day inauguration day favorite day. Fortunately, though, he's not getting distracted from the work at hand. According to his aides, he'll be ready to assume power.:


The job of preparing appropriate means of celebrating this world-changing event has been delegated to able underlings who, we're told, have some outstanding plans for commemorating the occasion. For example, who won't be looking forward to the race around the Washington Mall?


And the triumphant parade afterward, when the victor will personally receive his prize from the One? Glorious.


Meanwhile, more durable monuments to the relaunching of westen civilization are also already in progress. Christopher Buckley and Maya Angelou are both working on poems, and the first Obama administration public works project has completed dynamiting the face of the slaveholder Jefferson to make way for a new centerpiece on  Mount Rushmore.


And planning for the party after the anointing is going well, too. We hear Emeril is going to build the world's biggest ever arugula salad (w/oil and vinegar dressing served in individual cups) to be accompanied by the world's longest ever phallus loaf of French bread. Kind of an Obammunion for us grateful masses. It's all good. Trust us. We're all going to be soooooo happy.

VEEP STRATEGY. Since President Obama is planning to begin his "rule" by "executive order," the transition team has had to engage in some very high level cerebration to arrive at the most productive possible use for, well, irrelevant officeholders like the Vice President, the Speaker of the House, the Senate Majority Leader, and the former president of the United States and his wife, who is, reportedly, a U.S. Senator representing the State of New York. And especially the Vice President,. Who's been making a lot of noise (surprise!) about how lamprey-like he intends to be about attaching himself to policy meetings and the like.

It's long been clear that the "undisclosed location" business wasn't going to work in the new regime. No location remains undisclosed for long when the person so located immediately discloses it to everyone within earshot, generally accompanied by some weird ethnic or gender insult.

The good news is that an incredibly important mission has been found for these valuable members of the Democratic leadership. They will be commissioned to lead the starship Nostromo (2:45 in) on a four -- or possibly eight -- year mission to protect the earth and the universe at large from the depredations of the most malevolent force in existence, Karl Rove, who is always prepared to strike at the heart of everything good and eat it with some fava beans.

You see what an urgent priority it is? But it's tedious work. Which is why the Nostromo's crew are being accorded the great benefit of being placed in suspended animation during most of their mission. They'll be sleeping like babies unless some sort of Rove attack is detected by the ship's scanners, which will immediately wake them and galvanize them into action.

An Obama spokesman said confidently today, "We're ready. If Rove makes a move, Joe Biden will know what to do. He has many many (many) years of experience, and as soon as we make him conscious, he'll spring into action like a kid who's been knocked down by an Indian 7-11 manager or a clean articulate you-know-what and start kicking ass in defense of the planet and the universe. As soon as we make him conscious."

The spokesman dismissed the relevance of a prior Nostromo mission in which only one member of the crew survived a Rovian assault. "That was just bad luck," he explained. "None of the other crew members understood the importance of wearing sheer panties as a DDD (distraction and diversion device). We progressives keep forgetting how sexually perverted all powerful Republicans are. But we won't be making that mistake again. This time they'll all be equipped with the filmiest possible DDDs. We also won't repeat the mistake of including an android weasel screw-up on the crew, which is why Senator Durbin will remain at his invaluable post in the United States Senate. And neither Senator Reid nor Senator Schumer has yet been NASA-certified as flight ready. We're taking no chances. If need be, we'll launch them in their own ship with the DNC's top science consultant, Dr. Jonathan Smith. Rest assured. This time, the Rove Monster is going down for good."


According to various unnamed sources, former President-elected-but-not-selected Al Gore may also join the crew of the Nostromo on the prestigious new mission, pending negotiations on acceptable panty color, bra cup size, and other minor lingerie issues. (It's already been determined that the Nostromo will be "greened-up" and retrofitted with warp engines powered by windmills.)

"We look forward to the vital role that will be played by this crew and this ship in the new world the Obama administration will bring into being," the spokesman said, "and we can't wait to show them what we've done after we wake them up in 2016."

Friday, November 07, 2008

ACCEPTANCE. One of the (several) controversies conservatives have been snarled up in since the election is the question of how we should regard the president-elect. As I predicted, there's been a lot of "making nice" by conservative pundits and bloggers, who want to note a great historical accomplishment and congratulate the winner while acknowledging their continued reservations about the policies to come. Since this has been beautifully epitomized and satirized by Iowahawk, I won't dwell on it here. There has also been a fair amount of the schizophrenic behavior I heard on Glen Beck's radio show yesterday, when he wound up literally screaming at a caller that if he didn't "accept Obama as our president," he was exactly like the wingnuts at the DailyKos who argued for eight years that Bush stole the presidency and had no legal right to the office. This from a guy who has consistently characterized the 2008 election as "1860, the brink of civil war."

What's going on here? Is there an issue at all? If there is, why? If not, why not? I, for example, am already on record as saying that "I refuse to accept a president who thinks our constitution is fatally flawed and who sees nothing wrong with choosing a black racist as a mentor or a murderous terrorist as a partner in a conspiracy to radicalize school children rather than teach them to read and write. " Does this make me "exactly like the wingnuts at DailyKos?"

I would say no. I don't dispute the legality of Obama's election, and I doubt most of the people who agree with my statement above would either. After he takes the oath of office, Barack Obama will be the President of the United States. I have lost none of my respect for the office, and as the current occupant of that office, he is entitled to the official respect that was always denied George W. Bush by his fanatical opponents. If I were overseas and heard him criticized by a foreigner, I would defend him because I'm an American citizen and that is part of my duty as a citizen, as I understand it.

However. As an American citizen, I also reserve the right to believe that Barack Obama is not my president. The prigs and the screamers on this point seem suddenly to be forgetting that there's more than one kind of contract in force here, and all of them involve complex and sometimes mutual responsibilities. The president has an express contract with the Constitution of the United States; he swears a solemn oath to defend and protect it.. He also has an understood contract with the the United States as a nation, that he will subordinate his own interests to the welfare of the nation as a whole, and will make whatever personal and political sacrifices may be necessary to keep it from harm. Finally, he has an implied contract with each and every citizen individually, that he will repay our respect for the office and his tenure in it by remembering that he works for us, all of us, not simply those who elected him.

Only the first of these contracts is a legal one. Once he takes the oath of office, he becomes President of the United States. The other two contracts are moral contracts, ideals of the grand American tradition. It is these unwritten contracts which determine whether we, as individual citizens of the United States, accept the legal president as "our" president. I do not. Glen Beck can scream all he wants, but he does not speak for me. He is a citizen. He has every right to give Obama a nod on all three contracts. But I'm a citizen too. I do not believe Obama is entering into any of the three contracts in good faith. I don't believe he intends to defend and protect the Constitution of the United States, but to engineer its rewriting from the bench. I do not believe he holds the interests of the United States as a nation above the interests of various constituencies and political factions around the globe. And I do not believe there is any definition under which he would repay my acceptance and respect by being my president as much as he intends to be the president of the aggrieved and vengeful.

It's not an emotional animus as much as an intellectual assessment. I don't believe him. I don't believe in him. Why must I nevertheless accept him in the monolithic terms scared conservatives seem to demand? I said I won't give him the benefit of the doubt. Why should I? In my opinion, he has to prove to me that he can be believed. It's not as if he is above me and can somehow command my private and personal allegiance. I don't work for him. He works for me. I don't think he understands even that much.

So my conclusion is that this particular controversy is not one conservatives should be yelling at each other about. If you don't feel he's your president, that's your business. It doesn't make you seditious, or the second coming of Bush Derangement Syndrome, or a flaming reactionary racist.

Let me elaborate on that last point. I have never doubted that an African-American could be elected president. I still believe it will happen one day, and I abide by my conviction that when it does happen it will be a Republican candidate who does it. I'm also not enough of a hypocrite to pretend great joy and other vaguely self-congratulatory emotions over the fact that a man whose personal history, associations, and political views I regard as disqualifying for the presidency has been elected to the position of Commander-in-Chief. There's no silver lining to this cloud. In my view, there's every likelihood he will be so bad a president that he will delay for a decade or more the election of the first African-American president. (If there's anything worse than a ringer, it's an incompetent ringer. Makes the whole team look bad.)

My last point on this subject concerns my grave disquietude about the meaning of the conservative rush to "make nice." I think everyone who does this betrays a naivete for which there is absolutely no justification. Do they really think that being gracious is going to slow down the juggernaut of a Democrat White House and congress? Fools. We are days, if not hours, away from an all-out declaration of war by Democrats on all things conservative and Republican. Taking time out to shake the right hand of the man who will immediately stab you with the dagger in his left is more than folly. It's contemptible.

Barack Obama is soon to be the nation's president. No argument on that point. He is not my president. No compromise on that one. It's not a distinction invented by the DailyKos. My dad never accepted FDR as his president, either, but it didn't stop him from defending the nation in the U.S. Army Air Corps in World War II. All you snob media patriots, take note.

If you've got a problem with that, tell it to Glen Beck. He'll kiss you on both cheeks. If that's what sends a tingle up your leg.

WHAT GOES AROUND.... Almost everything is right about this. It takes place at the Brandenburg Gate, where Obama wanted to stage his European debut. The sentiments are right ("Mother, should I run for president? Should I trust the government?"). The haircut is right, even if the singer is a bit trans-gender, but trans-gender is analogous to trans-racial, right? The all-important mother figure is there where she belongs, despite the fact that the white male hierarchy is standing in for her (3 minutes in), which is also amazingly, remarkably, symbolically right, right? The evil image of the war-monger McCain is there, too, displayed in all his grotesque jingoist plumage (4 minutes in). And there's finally an answer to the continuing questions about why the wife of the president-elect and her blood-spattered dress were banished from the stage before his peroration to the adoring throngs on victory night (4 1/2 minutes in).

In short, this performance contains everything we need to know in order to appreciate our new rock star president. And, yes, they loved the song, baby.

There's a bonus, too. John McCain's swan song. It starts a little less than two minutes into the video below.

Good to know he always understood he was going to lose to the biggest star on the scene. (And thanks for the explanation about his debate performances: "Your lips move but I can't hear what you're saying.") Too bad about his physical disabilities, though.

We can all relax now. And enjoy the vibe. Peace, brothers.

Bright Spots:

POETIC JUSTICE. The Lord taketh away, and the Lord giveth. He's sending our own Eloise, Rachel Lucas, to London, England, for three years. Wow. They'll never know what hit them. Forget the election. This is an occasion for pure joy. Imagine it. The nation's most plainspoken woman, no doubt sunk deep in gun withdrawal, contending with the British Empire as it continues to slide disgracefully into the sunset they once boasted would never come and now can't wait to embrace. Is she going to have even a moment's patience with the pseudo-intellectual twits, the pompous anti-Americans who forgot how to write shortly after they forgot their own and our history, the hypocrites who still sneer at "wogs" of every ethnic origin while they despise American racism, the enervated malcontents who can't manufacture a toaster that works and yet look down on all American products excepting our music, our movies, our fashion trends, and our laptops and iPhones?

It's going to be a bloody slaughter. Even she doesn't know how bad it it's going to get, how wroth she will become. It's one thing to sit in America and like the occasional Brit accent on TV or in the movies. It's quite another thing to have to live with it day after day and month after month. Until you want to scream. Cockney accents you can't understand. Oxford accents that make you want to shoot the speaker on principle just because his every word is a distinct, separate affirmation of complete and utterly baseless superiority. Sooner or later, Rachel will let them ALL know what she thinks of them, and one of the world's largest islands will subsequently sink shamefacedly into the sea. We can't wait.

When the book comes out, we think it's going to be a blend of these two classics...


...but better than both. The last page might very well involve the offices of a ten-gauge shotgun at teatime.

We're getting ahead of ourselves, though. Our demonic pug Eloise reminds us that Rachel has a huge hurdle to overcome. What will she do while her dogs spend the compulsory six months in quarantine? (Brit bastards.)


Let's hope she wangles something. We know she's a resourceful gal. In the meantime, we recommend that she spend her time reading the complete works of P.G. Wodehouse and Evelyn Waugh. Britain isn't like that anymore, at all, but at least she'll know who she's vindicating when slaughter day finally arrives.

I can't wait to see the look on their faces when they finally realize what kind of an American they're dealing with.

Thursday, November 06, 2008

FOLLOWUP. One of our commenters on the last post provides an excellent example of the mentality that's driving much of the left today. So I thought it would be worth responding to. Not because anything can change his mind, because nothing can. He's living as happily in his own world as the permanently miserable are ever able to. But it might be instructive to take a closer look at what amounts to an unbroken string of cliches, stupid assumptions, and the kind of arrogant wrongheadedness which can only be achieved by the shallowest of minds. Here's his comment in full:


Now for some closer attention to his content. The nom de guerre he chooses is interesting. It's derisive, of course, which suggests at the outset that his own leftism is of the internationalist, blame America for everything variety. His opening shot confirms it:


Yes, he's a member of the young, superior left. Anyone who opposes  his own rigidly held notions is by definition a "ridiculous cracker asshole." He is stooping even to communicate with us, which is why he couches his question in terms of irrelevant hilarity. I'll get to his question in a bit, because it's one whose answer is not well understood even by many conservatives. But first, we'll uncover what he's telling us about himself in his next blasts.


It turns out that Captain America's reason for rejecting the idea that Obama might be a marxist is that he's a devout marxist himself. The view of America as a wholly corporate enterprise in which the elected government essentially takes orders from big business is, of course, the contemporary packaging of anti-capitalism. What's the alternative to capitalism? The state-run command economies of marxist inspired nations like Cuba, North Korea, and the old Soviet Union, all of which pushed their peoples into poverty and often into famine, mass imprisonment, and slavery. But we're the "ridiculous cracker assholes" for not accepting unquestioningly that theirs was the better way.

The designation of the U.S. as "the great American Imperial Project" is tired old leftism at its worst, a retread of sixties campus radical rhetoric that couldn't be more ridiculous itself in the context of a Soviet Union that colonized and enslaved eastern Europe for close to half a century. His own next conclusion is comically self-defeating. If we're really an empire, why on earth would we care about a "bad rep" in our colonies? Obviously it wouldn't matter what kind of "PR" we were getting, any more than it mattered to the Soviets that their "PR" was bad in Czechoslovakia after they sent the tanks in to reassert totalitarian control.


In case we missed his earlier revelation that he's a pompous twenty-something ideologue, he gives us more crude sexual imagery as a way of reasserting his superiority over us. And then he lets us know the real reason he's upset about our calling Obama a marxist. Captain America wishes Obama were a marxist. He's profoundly disappointed that he can't bring himself to believe it.


Ah yes. The leftist love of doom and gloom, which is supposed to inspire and attract us as followers somehow. Do they ever stop to wonder why this particular part of their anti-capitalist message doesn't bring us all cheering and applauding to our feet? No. They're so infatuated with their own cynical nihilism that it never occurs to them why all civilizations eventually fall. They fall precisely because the people at some point come to believe that their best days are behind them and lose the courage required to overcome ordeals their forebears dealt with successfully before. Captain America and his ilk are the spearpoint of that sentiment in the world of today. They are so self-obsessed their vision confines them to (hopefully on their part) self-fulfilling prophecy.

The argument that we are doomed because of finite space and finite resources is wholly specious. You can argue that it's true at some conceptual level, but it's fatuous at any contemporary pragmatic level. Individual resources may be finite, but the population of potential resources is so numerous as to be effectively infinite. The only real writing on the wall is the childish scribbling of those who don't understand the power of technology or appreciate the power of human ingenuity. The impossibility of continued expansion and growth through many future human lifetimes is a rhetorical trick. It depends absolutely on assuming that we can know what science will not be able to accomplish in harnessing the energy potential of magnetism, sand, and solar winds. We can't.

The doom of the leftists is essentially a romantic ideal, as old and irrational as the endless divine promises of doom in the ancient religions they scorn so ferociously. But the story is the same story. Man is evil and must be punished. They can't wait for the punishment part because they want to belong to the brilliant elite in charge of the punishing. If you're a cynical nihilist, that's as close to something like heaven as you'll ever get.


Captain America closes as he began, of course, with crude sexual imagery and another one of his odd, built-in self-rebuttals. Accusing us of being the ones who desire "big, strong, powerful" "leaders" is pure projection. The commenters he's trying to respond to only want a president, a man who loves his country and regards himself as being in their service, not in control of every aspect of their lives.

This commenter is, regardless of his chronological age, a child and therefore consumed with childish things that require no logic or explanation. However, he has asked one question that's worth real consideration. Who knows? He might even like the answer.

Why do some of us "cracker assholes" assert that Obama is a marxist? Because his own autobiographies describe an intellectual education that repeatedly found marxist ideas and marxist-inspired activists a congenial resource. The taproot of all his political philosophy as a young man was the radical anti-Vietnam War movement that arose in the late 1960s. If it wasn't in the beginning, this movement rapidly became expressly marxist, allying itself with the communist North Vietnamese and therefore explicitly opposed the "capitalist, imperialist pig" Amerika. Don't tell me this is isn't so. I was there. I saw the dreary stream of mimeographed diatribes that papered the campuses in those days.

As the movement splintered into more radical and openly revolutionary factions, Mao's little red book became a bible of groups like the Weathermen who thought they were the spearhead of an actual violent, and yes, marxist, overthrow of the United States government. It was during this period that they became formal partners with the violent fringe of the civil rights movement, which spawned the Black Panthers as well as the Nation of Islam. The combination of black nationalist political entities with the marxist/Maoist tactics of the far radical left is what led to the Black Liberation Theology of people like Jeremiah Wright, a lineage you can trace in its vocabulary and politics. (The religious component is a threadbare figleaf; lovers of Christ who hate almost everyone are a contradiction in terms and more importantly an easy route to tax-free status.)

It was the alumni and remaining activists from this heritage that were most appealing to the young Obama as he recounted it in his two books about himself. He read and admired the content of Saul Alinski's manual for how to subvert systems from within. He teamed up with Weathermen Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn to promote a far left radical agenda to Chicago schoolchildren. He served as a teacher for ACORN recruits and what he taught them was the tactics of the Alinski manual on revolution  He formed a twenty-year association with Jeremiah Wright and his church, where the rhetoric of anti-Americanism was culled from the same marxist sources Obama had learned to admire in other aspects of his life and careeer. I'm not even going to link this stuff, because the source materials for it are overwhelming, unassailable, and easily accessible.

Indeed, the only argument that can be made against these influences as central to the current political philosophy of Barack Obama is that he's older now than when he first formed his political orientation. We are being fed a bland assumption, based on absolutely nothing, that the years must have mellowed him and if he now speaks like a moderate, he must in fact be a moderate.

Why must he be? Can anyone point me to the third volume in his autobiographical trilogy that recounts his intellectual repudiation of marxist radicalism in favor of moderation? I don't think you can. This tireless writer hasn't written that book because the transformation everyone wants so much to believe in never occurred. Remember that he never repudiated Wright until political expediency absolutely required it. In sounding like a moderate, he is only following the instructions in Alinski's manual, saying whatever it takes to get inside the power structure you wish to subvert.

I don't doubt that he's a marxist because there's no evidence he's ever been anything but. And there's abundant evidence that there's nothing he professes to believe in public that he won't change, retract, or reverse himself on at a moment's notice.

Which means the only remaining question is just how daring and successful he will be in steering this country very sharply to the left. I concede the jury is still out on that one. Maybe he's as callow and fatally over-ambitious as he seems to many of us. Maybe his courage will fail him. Maybe his political skills aren't up to the task. Maybe the congressional and other leaders in his party will bully him into pursuing a less suicidal course for the party and the nation. And maybe, as Captain America believes (though for all the wrong reasons), the free market will ultimately defeat his intentions.

The American people still get a say, too. If Captain America believes that a solid majority of citizens will ever buy into his favorite arguments, we still have a chance to get our country back. Whatever he thinks he's selling, Americans won't be buying in the kind of numbers that would be required.

THE VERITIES. We know you're all happy and gloaty about now. And I have no intention of spoiling your fun. God knows you've waited for it long enough and will have very little time to enjoy it before your messah sinks hip deep into problems no first-time executive will ever be able to solve... BUT. Since nobody else is likely to tell you this, here's a tip that you might want to keep in mind.

There's an easy way to tell in any leftist political movement whether you're on the inside or the outside of the real power circle. It's an important distinction. Those inside the circle prosper and are elaborately rewarded for their participation. Those outside the circle are expected to shut up, go away, be completely ignored until the next election cycle, and look happy the whole time nonetheless.

Your side lives and conquers by the Big Lie.

For example, black people have been outside the liberal power circle ever since the Democrat Party adopted them to get Lyndon Johnson elected president. More Republicans than Democrats voted for the landmark Civil Rights bill in 1964, but Democrats convinced black people that they were the party of racial equality. Everything Democrats have done since has accomplished nothing but keep black people segregated, educationally deprived, and imprisoned in a destructive welfare-crime-victim mentality that systematically deprives them of real American opportunity while ensuring that racial resentments can never abate.

Close to half a century later, black people still regard equality as a remote and receding ideal. Why? Probably not directly malicious. It's just that others inside the circle had more influence and a greater command on party votes. Democratic allegiance to the National Education Association ensured that black Americans would remain trapped in incompetent public schools because vouchers were out of the question. Urban renewal projects that destroyed black neighborhoods and families looked good but served primarily to enrich urban construction contractors who always have their hooks into city hall and the necessary U.S. congressmen. Affirmative Action programs promised a brilliant future but merely extended ghetto segregation into the nation's best universities, where a brand new tradition of inevitable failure and demonstrated inferiority guaranteed yet another generation of dependency on the left's Big Lie that genuine racial equality was still, always, tantalizingly, just around the corner.

Are you starting to get it yet? No? You can tell that you're outside the power circle if you actually believe the Big Lies your side is telling and expecting you to repeat to anyone who will listen. Because inside the circle, the crafters of the lies know that they are exactly that and exactly why and how they are using them to their own personal benefit.

Do you believe the lie that George Bush went to war in Iraq, on his own hook, without massive Democrat support, based on worldwide intelligence that told the same story from nation to nation and spy agency to spy agency? Then you're outside the circle. All the Democrat power brokers know that this was a gigantically huge lie which they used ruthlessly to destroy the president of the United States and savage his foreign policy.

Do you believe the lie that the current financial crisis was caused by George Bush's tax cuts for the rich? Then you're outside the circle, because the Democrat U.S. Senators and Congressmen are well aware that their pandering on the question of "home ownership for the underprivileged" violated basic economic principles and generated a cancer that devoured the entire U.S. financial system.

Do you believe the lie that raising corporate taxes and imposing "windfall profit taxes" somehow helps average Americans? Then you're outside the circle. The truth is so simple that even left-wing legislators understand that corporate taxes are always paid, in full, every damn penny's worth, by average Americans, who pay the total costs of doing business in the prices they pay for goods and services. When the corporate tax rate goes up, prices go up. You pay them with every loaf of bread, every trash bag, every used car, every prom dress, every condom you buy. But they tell you the lie that they are on your side and are looking out for you when they raise taxes on all the entities and institutions which actually create jobs, meaning that there will inevitably be fewer jobs for average American like you. Why do they tell you such a lie? Because the more helpless and dependent you feel on their power to intervene via government on their behalf, the more likely they are to remain in power.

Do you believe the lie that all the problems in the world can be solved by being nice to foreign countries and leaders who openly despise and hate us? Then you are outside the circle. Everyone in power knows that whatever we did after 9/11 was bound to piss everybody off, friend and enemy alike. Because we're the rich uncle of the world. Meaning you are the rich uncle of the world, endlessly obligated to give and give and give to every poor relation who taps you on the shoulder with a meaning cough. What? You don't feel like a rich uncle? Why the hell not? Is it possible that foreign countries are like your obnoxious next-door neighbor? You know the one. He's entitled to play loud music in the middle of the night, every night, without rebuke, but if your poplar tree overhangs his side of the fence, he's also entitled to lop off the offending branches and kill it dead, without rebuke. Will appealing to his good side help? No? Then why do you believe the lie that Iran is more reasonable than your asshole neighbor?

Do you believe the lie that the biggest problems facing the world are global warming and American overuse of natural resources like oil and natural gas? Then you're hopelessly outside the circle. Nobody in power gives a rat's ass about potential crises that may take a hundred years to affect some modest percentage of the world's people. They care about them only if they can use your fear to increase their power, their own remoteness from consequences, and their authority to reach into your wallet for more taxes. They also know that if we use a higher percentage of the world's resources than anybody else, that's a net plus. We get the highest percentage return from it, meaning the greatest productivity, the most wealth creation, which drives the entire global economy. Or didn't you know that?

Do you believe the lie that the government really cares about your health, your healthcare, and your lifespan? Then you don't understand the circle of power at all. Have they outlawed tobacco and cigarette smoking? No. Because then they'd lose the incredibly onerous and regressive taxes they impose on cigarettes. They care about your healthcare only if it enables them to make more businesses -- insurance, hospitals, medical practices, pharmaceutical giants -- dependent on them for profit, permission, existence. That's what it means to be "liberal." Inside the circle, that is.

Your side is dedicated to only one constituency: power. If you don't understand that, you're outside the circle. Any good they do you is the sheerest accident, an unintended consequence of a strategy whose prime purpose is to maintain your pitiful dependence on their breathtakingly humongous lies.

Enjoy the next four years. Obama's inside the circle now. Where the hell are you? And more importantly, what the hell are you? You're the meat that baits the trap.
 

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