I have to say that I didn't find Mamet's essay nearly as
surprising as other people seem to have. His 1992 play
Oleanna showed a keen ear for the tyranny of PC, and the
astonishing fact that much of its New York audience sympathized
with the female character -- contemporary reviews recount loud
arguments on the way out of the theater -- shows just how precisely
Mamet perceived the zeitgeist of that hyper-sensitive era. He
calibrated his drama to elicit liberal outrage with the absolute
minimum provocation. (In the post-Clinton era, the play, which
Mamet made into a movie, plays as a hilarious comic
period-piece, a sort of highbrow That 70s Show for the
early '90s.) You can't observe a milieu that keenly without
noticing the flaws in its worldview.
Barack Obama has sent the Christian Broadcasting Network's Brody
File a statement distancing himself from his pastor Jeremiah
Wright. Obama asserts, "I categorically denounce any statement that
disparages our great country or serves to divide us from our
allies. I also believe that words that degrade individuals have no
place in our public dialogue, whether it's on the campaign stump or
in the pulpit. In sum, I reject outright the statements by Rev.
Wright that are at issue."
Indeed, Obama says "[a]ll of the statements that have been the
subject of controversy are ones that I vehemently condemn." Obama
claims he never heard Wright make such statements while he was in
attendance at Trinity United Church of Christ and also defends his
decision to continue attending the church. That Obama was not aware
of Wright's statements until he began his presidential campaign is
a bit hard to believe, and any evidence that Obama was in fact
present for controversial sermons or speeches could be damaging.
It's also hard to believe that this statement would be enough to
end the controversy if it was a Republican attending, say, John
Hagee's church. But we'll see how persuasive people find it coming
from Obama.
Barack Obama's relationship with his longtime minister Jeremiah
Wright continues to draw scrutiny. But beyond the obvious
problems caused by being closely associated with somebody who
has a record of giving inflammatory sermons, there is the fact that
all the publicity surrounding Wright will make it more difficult
for Obama to pursue his goal of reaching out to religious voters in
the general election. In my profile
of him last year, I noted that in his book The
Audacity of Hope:
Obama also perceptively argues against liberals' attempts to
secularize society, realizing that appealing to faith is actually
an effective way to advance progressive ideas. "Scrub language of
all religious content, and we forfeit the imagery and terminology
through which millions of Americans understand both their personal
morality and social justice."
But now, when he tries to talk about faith, it will only draw more
attention to his radioactive pastor, which is something Obama will
want to avoid at all costs.
The Mamet
"conversion" read to me as much more libertarian than
conservative (see its final graph), but there nevertheless has been
some pushback from that supposed hotbed of
"Libertarian Dem" thought, DailyKos. (As Will Wilkinson wrote,
Show Me the Libertarianism.) Be sure to scroll down to the end
of the post so you can vote in a poll on why Mamet so betrayed all
the is good and pure in the world.
The author, although rushed in his thinking/writing by an
upcoming audition, seems to believe Mamet joined the dark side so
he could play golf with Dennis Miller and visit Dick Cheney's
ranch. Sound plausible? Um, not really. My guess is a guy who
creates believable alternate realities purely through a genius for
dialogue and cadence; who wrote/directed some of the best twisting,
turning heist movies bar none; who explores in all of his work the
complex, not always pretty intrigues of the human condition...such
an artist was bound to not be forever satisfied by a movement that
is so lockstep, predictable and, ultimately, justifies itself
mostly by preening about how angelic its devotees are and how
diabolic its enemies.
Now when do I get to play golf with
Dennis Miller?
A lot of people have chalked up Eliot Spitzer's behavior to an
arrogant, above the law mentality, and have speculated that he must
have believed that he would never get caught. But what if the
opposite is true and on some subconscious level, he wanted to get
caught? After all, his visits to hookers spiked up toward the end
and he became increasingly sloppy. The obvious follow up question
is, why would he want to get caught? The best explanation I could
come up with is that perhaps, deep down, he knew that he wasn't up
to the task of being governor, and that he would never live up to
the expectations that had been heaped upon him. Given the size of
his ego, he may actually prefer to be seen as a tragic figure whose
great promise gave way to personal weakness than as a total flop.
The most telling line in his resignation speech was, "I look at my time as governor with
a sense of what might have been..."
The wonderful New York Sun (for which our founder R. Emmett
Tyrrell is a contributing editor) adds today yet another in
its long-running, intermittent series of editorials about why it is
such a disaster that our dollar is falling in value. Read it.
Now.
The always insightful Tyler Cowen
questions what it means when a popular source of information
(Wikipedia) is unverified and likely inaccurate. Noting that
professional journalists can be prone to the same sloppy reporting,
he asks:
What does journalistic
fact-checking consist of in the first place? Sometimes the
fact-checker calls up an interview source and asks him or her
direct questions. Otherwise the fact-checker sees if the stated
claim can be found in some published book, magazine, or perhaps in
a refereed academic journal. Fact-checking can't be any more
reliable than these underlying sources.
One thing omitted from the entire piece, however, is the
reliability of the writer as well. For example, no one will
fact-check Robert Novak's sources, primarily because he's... Robert
Novak. And blogs have done an excellent job of debunking some of
the pomp of mainstream outlets.
My point is that Internet resources aren't entirely seen as
unreliable. It's the anonymity (and free registration) that makes
Wikipedia such a crapshoot. Those that buy their own domains,
establish an online identity, have a reputation to protect, and
suddenly, we're back in the world of straining for journalistic
credibility. This doesn't apply to all bloggers, but heck, it
doesn't apply to all journalists either -- gossip journalism hasn't
lost its audience despite a glaring disregard for
fact-checking.
Simply put, as State Attorney General, Spitzer
reduced the competition for the prostitution ring he personally
used, while leaving that p-ring untouched. Stop and think about
that. The heart of this issue isn't about sex, it's not about
the Mann Act, it's not about 'structuring', and it's not even just
about making use of a criminal enterprise. It's about the most
profound type of corruption that an AG can succumb to: helping out
the criminal enterprise that he personally is doing business with
by going after its competition.
From the Chicago Sun-Times news (not comics) pages. The
Board of Alderman seek ban on tiny plastic baggies:
Lt. Kevin Navarro, commanding officer of the Chicago Police
Department's Narcotics and Gang Unit, said the ordinance will be an
"important tool" to go after grocery stores, health food stores and
other businesses. The bags are used by the thousand to sell small
quantities of drugs at $10 or $20 a bag.
Not sure why the cops are going after grocery and health food
stores, instead of drug dealers. But that's just me.
DRUG DEALER: What? Can't get no baggies? Damn, guess we'll have
to go outa bizness."
Thanks for the laugh, Wlady. Per your advice, I just watched the Domino magazine clip with Silda Spitzer in the state house in Albany prattling on how much better life is since she’s stopped worrying and gone green.
I don’t know how Noah the cook kept the smirk off his face while the lovely Silda burbled on about how much better the food tastes now that it’s carbon neutral. This is another example of why satirists just can’t make an honest buck nowadays. It’s just too difficult to get sillier than reality. It’s also clear that the bar exam is too easy if this woman passed it.
Well, we already knew Eliot didn’t marry Silda for her mind.
I criticized Geraldine Ferraro's comments
about Barack Obama and race because a.) she's supporting a
candidate who benefits from being the wife of a former president
and b.) she's Geraldine Ferraro, who by her own admission would not have been on the
1984 Democratic ticket if she were not a woman. Given this context,
it seems rather silly for her to whine about how Obama benefits
from his race in the 2008 presidential campaign.
But that doesn't mean her comments are racist or even untrue.
Obama has assembled a coalition that includes an overwhelming
majority of black voters -- 90 percent in Mississippi, if you've
forgotten -- and the kind of white liberals who voted for Gary Hart
and Bill Bradley. Neither Hart nor Bradley won the nomination. And
Jesse Jackson did well in 1988 by receiving overwhelming black
support (and increasing his level of white support from 1984), but
also did not win the nomination. Obama may win the nomination
because he has put these two groups together, edging out Hillary
Clinton's coalition. But he has been able to do so in large part
because he is black. So to that extent, at least, his race has been
an advantage in the Democratic nomination contest.
Pat Buchanan's actually quite a gentleman -- the first time I'd
seen him in person, he was opening a limo door for ACLU President
Nadine Strossen. So when I saw this clip, I just chuckled at Keli
Goff's suddenly delicate sensibilities:
"That's inappropriate," she says. Well, at least he had the
courtesy of hearing you out.
The Spitzer scandal has completely undermined my confidence as a
voter. You pull the lever for your feisty clean-up-the-government
candidate with years and years of experience putting the bad guys
in jail, and it turns out he's into high-risk, high-priced hookups.
Or, if we go back to the Rudy Giuliani era, he has a meltdown and
calls a press conference to announce he's divorcing his wife so he
can marry his mistress.
No more electing prosecutors to high office, people. Too high
strung.
Such a comparison is risable. As disgraceful as Giuliani's
behavior was toward his second wife, it didn't violate laws that he
enforced as prosecutor and took an oath to protect as a public
executive, as Spitzer's foray into the dark underworld of illegal
prostitution quite possibly did. Whatever your view is on whether
prostitution should be legal (I happen to think yes), the current
law is the law.
But more importantly,while Spitzer vowed to clean up the state
and failed, Giuliani actually succeeded in cleaning up New
York City over the course of his two terms as mayor. If anything,
Spitzer's failure to make the transition from prosecutor to chief
executive only makes Giuliani's accomplishments as mayor all the
more impressive.
You know any post that begins with "I'm a 52-year-old
man with sexual issues" is going to be entertaining, but even that opening
salvo does little to prepare you for Philip Weiss' defense of Eliot Spitzer by
way of attacking the “widely-upheld pretense that bourgeois American
marriage resolves sexual life for all men.” It’s a revolution, Weiss cries!
“Gays had their liberation, women had theirs, what about straight married
guys?”
Well, yes, why not? In fact, this very evening I plan to put
the proposition to my wife in the plainest possible terms: “Look, we gave you
the right to vote. Now you’re going to sign this permission slip saying I can
have sex with whatever neighbor or acquaintance is interested in servicing a
slightly chubby man’s sexual desires. You’ll do it because we both believe in
equality.” Honestly, I’m not that optimistic and the
sure-let-my-wife-screw-other-guys! revolution is no doubt a bit further
off... More:
In Europe his needs would
have a place. Not a place of honor, but a place. In the U.S. we make marriage a
sexual stronghold in the midst of a hypersexualized culture, then stoke the men
with Viagra like hormone-fed cattle, stroke them with internet porn, politicize
married sex as a kind of covenant of citizenship.
Spitzer likely appreciates the support now, but one gets
the impression he wouldn’t have been lenient with the supposed prostitution
ringleaders he took down if they had only argued they felt like stroked
hormone-fed cattle being forced into a puritan covenant. Me? I'm partial to Tabin's argument. I say legalize it, but let's not celebrate it.
Still, Weiss clearly feels passionately enough about
Spitzer’s case to issue rare praise for Alan Dershowitz (“Execrable on
Palestinian human rights, he was eloquent on Spitzer's”), whom he normally
finds himself at loggerheads with over the vast Israel Lobby complex, as well
as Spitzer’s call girl (“beautiful chick, amazing rack”). And if someone such
as…Oh, I don’t know, say, Silda Wall Spitzer happens to believe maybe an
“amazing rack” doesn’t supersede wedding vows or create an air of nobility, Weiss isn’t having it:
I know what [Spitzer] was thinking; I get it. And all the
patronizing talk about men's stupidity bothers me. God made me this way. Any
smart wife knows there's an upside.
Yes, quit being so stupid honey, and
pass me the checkbook. I've been um, difficult with my special paid
lady friend again, and she needs some more cash to accept it's...safe.
Lord! “I'm not complaining about marriage,” Weiss insists in his
original post, “it's the best thing in my life.”Just potentially not better than a legal, if a bit too
pricey, prostitute.
J.P., don't laugh. The Spitzers were big on energy savings, as
the kindly Mrs. Spitzer narrates in the recent video tour
linked to in this excerpt about her preference for dim bulbs:
In a video of a tour she gave to Domino magazine about her efforts to "green" the
governor's mansion in Albany, Spitzer seems friendly and chipper,
talking about the possibility of a "carbon-neutral future." She
talks about having installed compact fluorescent bulbs in all the
lamps, and leads a videographer on a tour of the kitchen and the
greenhouse, where the staff grows organic food to serve during
meals.
The AP
reports that the Vatican has decided to modernize its list of
sins -- and will even include some bits about the
environment.
Father Antonio Pelayo, a Spanish priest and
Vatican expert noted that it is time for both sinners and
confessors to get over their obsession with sex and think about
other ways humans hurt each other in the world in which they
live.
"There are many other sins that are perhaps much
more grave that don't have anything to do with sex - that have to
do with life, that have to do with the environment, that have to do
with justice," he told AP Television.
Meanwhile, in the Spitzer household: "Honey, I may have had an
affair with the prostitute, but at least I saved energy by keeping
the lights off."
He may have denounced and rejected Louis Farrakhan, but Barack
Obama is really going to have to create some more daylight between
himself and his pastor, Jeremiah Wright, or it's going to be a
major problem for him.
At first, criticism of Wright centered on his praising the
"greatness" of Farrakhan, but now more attention is being given to
Wright's own sermons, which reveal virulent
anti-Americanism.
For instance:
An ABC News review of dozens of Rev. Wright's
sermons, offered for sale by the church, found repeated
denunciations of the U.S. based on what he described as his reading
of the Gospels and the treatment of black Americans.
"The government gives them the drugs, builds bigger
prisons, passes a three-strike law and then wants us to sing 'God
Bless America.' No, no, no, God damn America, that's in the Bible
for killing innocent people," he said in a 2003 sermon. "God damn
America for treating our citizens as less than human. God damn
America for as long as she acts like she is God and she is
supreme."
There is also video of a racially-tinged rant against Hillary
Clinton.
It was easy enough for Obama to distance himself from
Farrakhan's comments, because he never solicited or formally
accepted Farrakhan's endorsement. But with Wright, Obama has a
tougher task. The pastor married Obama and baptized his two
daughters, and provided Obama with the title of his book,
The Audacity of Hope, which more or less
launched his presidential bid. Wright also
serves on Obama's African American Religious Leadership
Committee.
The hate-filled rhetoric that Wright spews is completely at odds
with Obama's own promise to bring people together, and his
comparison of Wright to "an old uncle who says things I don't
always agree with" is not going to cut it. Now that the media are
looking into Wright, I'm sure even worse statements will emerge.
It's a fair bet that anybody who is fond of Farrakhan has said some
pretty rotten stuff in his day.
The Clinton campaign just held a conference call to accuse
Barack Obama of downplaying Pennsylvania even though winning there
would be critical to Democrats' chances of taking back the White
House in November.
Clinton strategist Mark Penn delivered the cringe-worthy line
that, "The path to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave goes through
Pennsylvania."
Penn accused the Obama campaign of "turning their backs on
Pennsylvania" and if Obama loses in the state it "raises serious
questions about whether he can win in the general election."
He also emphasized that it is the last state remaining with over
15 electoral votes, which struck me as an irrelevant fact.
Gov. Ed Rendell was also on the call, and he said Obama was
"downplaying the importance of Pennsylvania."
Also, when asked about Clinton's high unfavorable ratings, he
predicted that they would go down 10 to 15 points over the course
of a general election as more people get to know her, and he
claimed that Republican women he knew were now flocking to
Hillary.
Posted by W. James Antle, III on 3.13.08 @ 12:37PM
Eliot Spitzer is probably the only person in history to have
quoted lyrics from a James Taylor song to establish himself as an
intimidating tough guy. Was this a one-off or a pattern?
"Look pal, I'm going to shower the people you love with love.
Show them the way that I feel."
"I was talking about historic candidacies and what
I started off by saying (was that) if you go back to 1984 and look
at my historic candidacy, which I had just talked about all these
things, in 1984 if my name was Gerard Ferraro instead of Geraldine
Ferraro, I would have never been chosen as a vice presidential
candidate," Ferraro said on ABC's "Good Morning America.""It had
nothing to do with my qualification."
In this
highly readable column in the Boston Globe (courtesy of the
always excellent Real Clear Politics), political analyst Todd Domke
settles on a Veep scorecard in this order: Pawlenty, Crist, Rice,
Huckabee, Powell, Hutchison, Cox.... Seeing as how Rice has
pronounced herself "moderately pro-choice," and that Powell,
Huckabee, and Crist are likely not to be chosen because of
conservative opposition, and that Hutchison seems determined not to
be chosen, that leaves Pawlenty and Cox as the two highest rated
(among 20 total listed -- do read the whole excellent column!). As
a Cox fan, I particularly appreciated this: Scandal-free
The best candidates have already been vetted and
have a reputation for integrity.
Example: Chris Cox, chairman of the Securities and
Exchange Commission, former California congressman.
I was in the neighborhood, so I decided to stop by Eliot
Spitzer's tony yellow brick apartment building on Fifth Ave.,
across from Central Park and adjacent to the Metropolitan Museum of
Art. About a dozen photographers were huddled outside on a windy
day in Manhattan, and a little after three Spitzer's wife Silda
walked out of the building and was whisked away by a black SUV. She
was prettier in person than on television, which made her husband's
hooker habit slightly more perplexing to me. Spitzer himself has
been holed up inside his luxury apartment since returning from his
morning press conference, a journalist who has been staking out the
place for the past few days told me. Apparently people have been
visiting and bringing him food. Meanwhile, tourists passing by the
building have been taking photos of themselves outside his
residence as if it were just another sightseeing stop. Such is life
for the former "Sheriff of Wall Street" and one-time rising star in
the Democratic Party. A "steamroller" no more.
Hunter, I even remember Alan Keyes's somewhat more successful
radio show "America's Wake-Up Call." He always opened with "Wake
u-u-u-u-u-u-up America! It's later than you think!"
Over at the American Thinker,
Thomas Lifson does his usual thorough job, this time explaining
why Boeing's arguments about the Air Force Tanker award to Northrup
Grumman and EADS are utter nonsense. In other words, the Air Force
almost certainly made the right call.Â
Now that Eliot is unemployed, and assuming he isn't jugged, he's
available to act as Enforcer in a Clinton II administration should,
God forbid, there be one.
But unfinished business in New York could cut off that avenue. I
was a little concerned by ES's reference to "rising whenever you
fall" in his resignation speech. Incredibly, he may not think he's
done. The Republicans in the New York Assembly should quickly get
through a bill to have a stake driven through his evil heart. It
may be the only way.
Posted by W. James Antle, III on 3.12.08 @ 11:48AM
Ross Douthat is making sense. The politics of immigration are
complicated by two factors: hyperventilating restrictionists who
wildly exaggerate the salience of the issue and the ease with which
supporters of the McCain-Kennedy approach can offer meaningless
rhetorical concessions to immigration-hawk voters during campaigns.
But that doesn't mean that the immigration issue is irrelevant or
that the "comprehensive" reform position is popular just because
John McCain gets more votes than, say, Tom Tancredo. Tancredo isn't
a McCain-quality politician and McCain didn't run on McCain-Kennedy
in the primaries.
There's a disturbing video making the rounds of a Marine tossing
a puppy off a cliff. There is quite a bit of speculation as to
whether the puppy's yelps were edited in later, whether it was
already dead when he tossed it or whether it may have just been a
toy. (YouTube has pulled the video.) Either way, the Marine Corps
itself has called the video "shocking and
deplorable," and I'm not going to disagree until some further
evidence that this is not what it seems comes out. In my personal
experience embedded with the U.S. military in Iraq, however, what I
saw was an almost constant regard for the welfare of stray dogs and
cats, which are treated by Iraqis in basically the same manner we
treat cockroaches here. So, for whatever hay certain groups attempt
to make out of this video and what it says about American soldiers,
I think a group like Baghdad
Pups is much more representative.Â
I am not in the habit of referring people to the Village Voice,
but if you read just one essay today, indeed just one essay this
week, read
this near-masterpiece of writing and REALLY NEAR masterpiece of
reason by playwright David Mamet. It is wonderful, wonderful stuff.
It's a shame that we can't make every "brain-dead liberal" in the
whole country read this and recite its lessons!
As a recovering English major, it is actually refreshing to come
across such a brilliant satire as what Harvard
professor Orlando Patterson offers in the Times:
In my reading, the ad, in the
insidious language of symbolism, says that Mr. Obama is himself the
danger, the outsider within.
The trouble is, Patterson isn't being satirical. That 3 a.m. ad? It
was reminiscent of The Birth of Nations,
another historical document that would have been funny if it hadn't
been so earnest.
Let me introduce to you Professor Orlando Patterson, insomniac
internet user:
I was left with an uneasy feeling
that something was not quite right -something that went
beyond my disappointment that she had decided to go
negative.
At 3 a.m., Professor Patterson is stirred by the feeling of dread
that goes beyond his usual disdain for negative campaign tactics.
Repeated watching of the ad on
YouTube increased my unease.
Indeed, Patterson arrives at the same conclusion as the rest of us
who've all suffered from too much YouTube.
I realized that I had only too
often in my study of America's racial history seen images much like
these, and the sentiments to which they allude.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch:
To be sure, it states that
something is "happening in the world" - although it never says what
this is...
It could be anything! It could be Washington Irving, or a bomb, or
the final season of The Wire!
But every ad-maker, like every
social linguist, knows that words are often the least important
aspect of a message and are easily muted by powerful
images.
So goodbye Orlando Patterson, PhD. Ahoy Detective 'Lando, Image
Investigator!
The danger implicit in the phone
ad - as I see it - is that the person answering the phone might be
a black man, someone who could not be trusted to protect us from
this threat.
Obviously, when the phone rings at 3 a.m., we're most worried about
...black men lurking in the bushes
around white society...
Which is why people felt compelled to vote for Hillary because,
once they saw her in her grey business suit at 3 a.m., they knew...
...our loved ones are in grave
danger and only Mrs. Clinton can save them.
In other words: Orlando Patterson has endorsed the only person
capable of saving us at 3 a.m.: Jack Bauer.
In The New Republic, Michael Crowley
attempts to describe McCain and Obama as
remarkably similar. Opening line:
Though they differ in many ways,
John McCain and Barack Obama have one thing in common: Each sees
the other as a posturing phony.
Go ahead and read it and come back (quickly, please, I don't want
to lose you). Crowley goes on to describe ways in which McCain has
questioned the authenticity of Obama's "reformist" credentials
(through "sarcasm" and "contempt"), while Obama has done the same
to McCain (through "cracks" and "snickers"). But I don't quite get
the parallel.
The piece only dishes on McCain's temper and Obama's
partisanship. So when Crowley describes both as being equally
unwilling to meet in the middle ("Still, for all their talk of
bipartisanship, neither man had demonstrated much of it"), I'm left
scratching my head.
All of Crowley's sources admit that Obama really was "carrying
water" for Harry Reid. Nowhere does Crowley show that McCain was
doing the same for the Republicans -- in fact he does quite the
opposite by referencing McCain's "sense of honor" that was offended
by Obama's failure to live up to his word on crossing the aisle.
Meanwhile, conservatives remember well enough McCain's willingness
to cross them the aisle.
The biggest problem with this approach is the weight placed on
McCain's temper. We've already seen this story. We haven't seen the
story (and badly needed Crowley to write) about Obama sheepishly
bowing to party pressure and playing the Senate freshman. In this
sense, it's pretty clear who's playing phony.
Jack Kemp now weighs in, as I expected he would, on the need
for a stronger dollar. And he specifically answers those
who say we can't afford to strengthen the dollar now because it
will raise interest rates (which would, they say, be bad during a
slowing economy):Â "Don't you have to have
higher interest rates to strengthen the dollar?" Absolutely not! As
David Malpass, chief global economist at Bear Stearns, points out,
"The two aren't tightly connected. Because Kemp has become
such a close advisor to McCain, this gives me hope that McCain
might do something like what I
advised a few weeks ago.
Daylight Savings Time came early this year, ostensibly to save
on energy costs. (DST is also supposed to somehow cheer people up,
but all it's does in my house is irritate my poor wife, who now has
to leave for work in the dark three days a week to teach
early-morning band.) Now liberal environmental wonk Kate Shepherd
notes a study showing that DST actually increases
energy costs. Thanks a bunch, Congress.
Oldy-but-goody: John J. Miller's utterly persuasive
anti-DST rant from 2005.
He says he'd take it. I have a feeling that McCain and his
inner circle are too bitter about Team Romney's attacks during the
primaries to consider a McCain-Romney ticket. It would be hard to
overstate how much some DC McCainiacs dislike Romney. But I could
be wrong.
Two sock puppets have a realization after using an iPhone to
Google about capitalism (natch!): "Let us see ourselves as workers,
if only to remember who controls the means of production!"
It's worth the laugh, and then you realize that people actually
believe that the worst thing about capitalist society is that dads
everywhere have to "work all the time." Yes, that stinks, but the
Marxist vision didn't exactly solve that problem. Unless you think
an ideal day is being forced to march and sing on the factory
grounds:
So Geraldine Ferraro has unburdened herself of this thought:
"If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position. And if
he was a woman (of any color) he would not be in this position. He
happens to be very lucky to be who he is."
This is very rich, as Barbara Bush might say, of a Clinton supporter. After
all, doesn't Hillary Clinton benefit from who she is? Not many
people are lucky enough to have been married to a president of the
United States before seeking the office themselves.
The New York Times
succinctly summarizesHigh School
Confidential, the latest reality series to build a basic
cable buzz:
Filmed over four years in Overland Park, Kan.,
the documentary series tracks 12 girls through two pregnancies,
bouts of serious depression, numerous experiments with sex, drugs
and alcohol, and, finally, one brain tumor.
I have to admit I wasn't all that interested until the writer
got to "brain tumor," although personally I'm rooting for a
neoplasm that will turn one of these
pheromone-addled, oblivious to their own blessings mall
dwellers into a John-Travolta-in-Phenomenon-esque genius. Kids impersonating
Clueless characters sans irony
is old hat nowadays. Someone wandering through one of these series
with a dectectable IQ, on the other hand, would be ground-breaking
television at this point, like an uncomfortably close to real-life
remake of Idiocracy. (I write that as if any trip to a
Manhattan supermarket or movie theater isn't already too close to
an Idiocracy remake for comfort
already!)
But, in general, yeah, I'm a fan of both reality and reality
television. (And always against brain tumors!) I'm part of the
problem!
My friends and former colleagues at the Competitive Enterprise
Institute are at it again. They've released a new ad showing
what might happen to poor countries if rich nations move to
restrict
energy use, and they've brought back this oldy-but-goody that
cast Ivan Osorio as Eliot Spitzer in The
Governor.
Today in the Wall Street Journal,
David Malpass makes the case for a stronger dollar. I will go
farther than he did: If George W. Bush does not take immediate
steps (including public pressure on Fed Chair Ben Bernanke to take
immediate steps) to strengthen the dollar, along the lines of what
Malpass advocates and what Larry Kudlow advocated last week, Bush
will go down as one of the worst presidents in American history.
Because if he doesn't strengthen the dollar, the economy will
utterly tank (which, of course, it is close to doing anyway, mostly
BECAUSE of five years of a weak-dollar policy), and then none of
the other good that Bush has done will matter. If the economy
tanks, the mission in Iraq will be unsustainable as well -- and
only a success in Iraq can overcome this president's other
disasters, such as the pathetically misguided bumbling in Iraq for
the three years before the surge; the Katrina screw-up AND the
screw-up of the long-term relief effort as well; the out-of-control
spending binge; and other assorted incompetencies.
On the other hand, if Bush strengthens the dollar, and thus
rescues the good economy that the 2003 tax cuts (far more than the
ones in 2001) played such a big role in creating, then he can still
not only keep the ball rolling in Iraq as well but can help the
election of the candidate, John McCain, who can see Bush's vision
for a transformed Middle East through to at least a somewhat
satisfactory conclusion. Bush's reputation long-term will
absolutely depend on what happens AFTER he leaves office -- and if
he leaves an economic shambles and a Democratic president, none of
what he has done will be concluded in a way that bolsters Bush's
legacy.
Plus, if he doesn't act now to strengthen the dollar, it will
show a degree either of stupidity or of ignorance, or both, that is
truly breathtaking. I want to believe better of this president. But
really, how much evidence of spiraling gold prices, spiraling
gasoline prices, spiraling food prices, and tanking dollar value
will it take before he realized that all of those items are
connected?
The blog UCC Truths is reporting this morning that the speech
Illinois Senator Barack Obama delivered in his June 23, 2007
appearance before the United Church of Christ's General Synod has
been excerpted for distribution as Obama campaign literature. The
UCC, it was recently announced, is now under investigation by the
IRS for Obama's appearance. Obama has steadfastly denied that he
made a campaign speech at the Synod, in spite of direct quotes that
show him making campaign promises on, among other things, health
care. The literature, which UCC Truths has reproduced in living
color, was used in the South Carolina primary, a primary Obama won.
An edited version of the speech, "Answering the Call," is printed
on the literature.
One has to wonder if there are people inside the Obama campaign
and the UCC who are deliberately trying to irritate the IRS.
Lost amid the Eliot Spitzer scandal is a
front-page story from the Washington
Times that may be just as devastating to Democrats.
According to House Democrat leadership aides, House Speaker
Nancy Pelosi has asked advisers to examine FEC and
other records to determine if Judiciary Committee Chairman
John Conyers may have steered money from an
influential Michigan family to other Democrats. The Stryker family
of Kalamazoo, Mich., made its fortune from the company that bears
its name, though members of the family are not involved in the
day-to-day operations. The Stryker Corp. has had issues with
federal authorities, including a possible investigation by the
Department of Justice into possible violations of the Foreign
Corrupt Practices Act.
Subsidiaries of Stryker cut a deal with a U.S. Attorney in New
Jersey that caught the attention of Conyers, as well as several New
Jersey House members, who it turned out have received thousands of
dollars in political donations from physicians and organizations
with ties to Stryker. Now Conyers has opened an investigation into
the matter, which includes demanding testimony of former Attorney
General John Ashcroft at a Judiciary Committee
subcommittee hearing.
The Stryker family has, according to FEC records, pushed more
than $17 million toward Democrat candidates and causes over the
years. "The concern is that if Conyers is involved directly with
this investigation, and he was steering money from the Stryker
family to colleagues for their campaigns and they are sitting on
the same committee that is undertaking the investigation, you have
more than an appearance of conflict of interest, you have a
conflict of interest," says a leadership aide for Pelosi. "In our
current environment, we can't afford to have too many more of these
situations."
The aide pointed to the fact that both Reps. Frank
Pallone Jr. and Bill Pascrell Jr., who
requested that Conyers look into the Stryker Corp. deal with U.S.
Attorney Christopher Christie, had extensive
financial ties to the medical equipment industry and lobby.
Combined, the two Jersey boys have raised tens of thousands from
the industry. "Both men have put us in an awkward situation, and
Conyers' decision to pursue this matter further has put us in
deeper," says the aide. "Speaker Pelosi is concerned and has us
monitoring the situation."
Gov. Spitzer's apparent violation of the Mann Act (read it for
yourself) reminds me of this terrible old story that I used to
tell. I haven't told it in years, but....
One day an adventurer named Joe found a cove in Africa where
some beautiful, sleek, shiny porpoises lived. Most impressively,
the porpoises talked. It took some doing, but the porpoises
convinced Joe, quite truthfully, that they could live forever as
long as they could continue to feast on a diet of a particular kind
of baby sea birds and as long as the porpoises remained in that
one, rather large cove. The problem was that environmental changes
meant that fewer and fewer of the birds were nesting in that
particular cove anymore. One thing led to another, and Joe finally
volunteered to go catch some of the baby birds and bring them back
to the cove.
[A long story intervenes about how much trouble Joe had to go
to, to catch the baby sea birds. But eventually he does...]
So Joe finally gets back to the only landward entrance to the
cove (no boat could get there because of dangerous shoals at its
entrance), only to find the way blocked by two enormous, predatory
cats. Yes, two Kings of the Jungle. The big cats were sleeping. Joe
watched and watched and watched and even threw rocks at the big
cats, but they continued to sleep. And he could see, past the land
bridge, the sleek mammalian sea creatures, looking emaciated,
starving, barely able even to swim, waiting for him, waiting,
waiting.
So, finally, convinced that the big cats must be under a spell
because their sleep was so heavy, Joe mustered up his courage and,
holding his cages of baby birds over his head, he gingerly stepped
over the big cats. AND THEY STILL SLEPT! Joe thought he was home
free. But, just as he started to break into a big grin, several
constables stepped out from behind a rock and arrested him.
Why?
......
Keep scrolling
.....
Keep scrolling.....
For transporting young gulls across staid lions for immortal
porpoises.
It's easy to understand why drug legalization is a hard sell:
The most visible drug users are drug abusers, where as moderate
drug use is under the radar (because moderate drug users don't get
in trouble with the law). It's true that prohibition causes more
problems than it solves, but that isn't intuitively obvious. Drug
addicts often oppose legalization because they generalize from
their own experiences and assume that if drugs were readily
available everyone would have the same problems they do, even
though there's ample evidence that the vast majority of people who
try drugs -- even the "scary" ones, like heroin and meth -- don't
become addicted.
Prostitution seems like it should be an easier sell. After all,
almost every adult has sex, and only a tiny minority become
sex-addicts. The experience in Nevada, the Netherlands, and other
jurisdictions where prostitution is legal demonstrates pretty
resoundingly that prostitution is a much, much safer business
within the law than without. So why is legalization such a
political non-starter in most jurisdictions? Part of it is the
understandable impulse to marginalize sleaze, of course, but I
can't help but wonder whether there's something about politicians
themselves that makes them think exactly like drug addicts -- that
buying sex is just too tempting to be legal.
Perhaps there's something about the personality that attracts
one to politics that also makes one more likely to indulge in
prostitution with the recklessness of a gambling- or drug-addict.
Are politicians -- like celebrities -- disproportionately prone to
the sort of self-destructive narcissism that would lead a guy like
Eliot Spitzer to spend thousands of dollars and risk career-ending
scandal to cheat on his wife? It certainly seems like it.
There's been a Franklin Foer sighting. The sort of engaging writing we might
have been seeing more of if not for his disgraceful performance in
the Scott Thomas Beauchamp affair.
I just went through the archives, and dug up this press release from 2004 in which then-NY Attorney
General Eliot Spitzer announced the indictment of 18 people
associated with a prostitution ring. The key quote which is getting
a lot of attention today, is:
"This was a sophisticated and lucrative operation with a
multi-tiered management structure," Spitzer said. "It was, however,
nothing more than a prostitution ring, and now its owners and
operators will be held accountable."
The United Church of Christ says the IRS has granted the church
a three-week extension to respond to the IRS's inquiry into events
revolving around Obama's June 2007 appearance. The statement from
the UCC said:
Even as the IRS continues its investigation, the Rev.
John H. Thomas said the UCC will not shirk from its longstanding
tradition of advocating for justice as a fundamental tenet of UCC
faith and witness.
"When the church speaks out on issues of justice and peace it is
continuing a prophetic witness rooted in the Bible and at the heart
of the traditions in American church history that have shaped the
United Church of Christ," Thomas said.
"Labeling this as partisan or political represents a profound
misunderstanding of the moral responsibility of the church and its
members to be involved in the great and pressing public issues of
the day."
This is UCC-speak for "we intend to use collection dollars from
conservatives in our pews to pursue our liberal politics, whether
they like it or not. So buzz off."
Eliot Spitzer made a name for himself fighting corruption,
sometimes questionably. He is now likely to be undone
by personal corruption. One can only feel sorry for his family.
Watching all this Spitzer mess unfold this is a timely reminder
as we go about this president-picking business. One of the things I
loved the most about Ronald Reagan was his humility. A movie star
for four decades, he wasn't in politics to prove he was smarter
than the other guy. This is always one of life's hurdles, and lest
Spitzer take too much of the rap, one doesn't have to be a governor
to fall into this pit. Anyone can have the problem. These UCC
stories I've been writing about -- the real problem here is not
simply the liberal politics, which is a considerable problem in
itself.
What is also in play here is a Spitzer-like hubris. As William
F. Buckley once wrote, this is also about "the emphatic
indisposition by those whose views prevail in critical quarters to
accept any challenge to their intellectual hegemony, to recognize
dissent from their conformity as serious." This was Spitzer's
problem, it is the UCC's problem, it in fact can be a problem that
afflicts anyone with lots of power or brains or money or social
status. How they handle it will, like clock work, reflect back on
them and -- always -- sooner or later come back to haunt.
I feel nothing but sympathy for Spitzer's kids and his wife. But
this guy was, as documented repeatedly by all sorts of people from
both sides of the aisle, incredibly emotionally immature. Unable to
handle his smarts or his temper, with real power in hand he abused
it -- and has been caught. The Greeks wrote volumes on this kind of
thing. This is why we are conservatives -- the perfectibility of
man is a myth. A liberal myth. Ask Governor Perfect.
I just read it, or at least the parts that pertain to
Spitzer (aka Client -9). As Quin already noted, the
complaint doesn't name Spitzer, but makes clear that he had an
ongoing relationship with the prostitution ring, because of various
references to him having money on deposit in the account.
A few other notworthy details for those who may not want to read
through the whole complaint:
--The details suggest that Spitzer was taking measures to avoid
being caught. It notes that "Client-9 would not do traditional wire
transferring" of payment, but instead sent the money without a
return address.
--At one point, the complaint cites a wire tap in which Spitzer
said after his money arrived, he had a $2,600 on balance. He
offered to give the prostitute "Kristen" an additional $3,600,
which would leave him with a balance of $1,000 once payment was
deducted for services rendered. That would suggest he paid $5,200
for said services. In addition, he aggreed to pay for train tickets
to transport "Kristen" from New York to Washington, DC, as well as
"cab fare from the hotel and back, mini bar or room service, travel
time, and hotel."
--What did he get for all his money. In the complaint, the
defendant who arranges the meeting for Spitzer, describes "Kristen"
as "an American, petite, very pretty brunette, 5 feet 5 inches, and
105 pounds." At the end of the evening, "Kristen" reported back
that her appointment with Spitzer went well, and she was quoted as
saying, "I don't think he's difficutlt."
One thing that struck me when reading through the complaint is
how much time Spitzer spent during work hours making calls to his
pimp, dealing with his bank to try to withdraw the necessary funds,
and mailing out envelopes of dough.
I don't see how any governor can possibly stay in office if
convicted of a federal felony. And if he violated the Mann Act,
that is indeed a federal felony. To quote the relevant portion of
the act: a felony, and upon conviction thereof
shall be punished by a fine not exceeding five thousand dollars, or
by imprisonment of not more than five years, or by both such fine
and imprisonment, in the discretion of the court. Now, I
guess it could be that if Spitzer is REALLY tenacious, he could
somehow try to plead down to a misdemeanor, and somehow try to hang
on. But how the New York legislature would let him get away with
it, without impeaching and removing him from office, is beyond
me.
UPDATE: First, the current complaint does NOT charge Spitzer or
any of the "johns," but instead charges only the prostitutes and/or
the, uh, pimps. That does not, of course, mean that the next legal
shoe to drop can't be indictments of the johns themselves -- but as
of now, there is not an officially alleged Mann Act violation by
Spitzer. The second thing, though, is that Client 9 (allegedly
Spitzer) clearly, unambiguously had an ongoing relationship with
this "agency." The complaint makes clear that the conversations
back and forth explicitly mention past and future services as well.
So this wasn't some momentary lapse. Forget the moral
judgments: Legally, these actions are against state and/or federal
laws, laws that Spitzer himself used to aggressively prosecute.
Repeated violations of these laws make it even more obvious that
this isn't some one-time problem -- and that as a repeat offender,
as it were, this governor absolutely ought to resign.
The arrogance and supidity of public officials never ceases to
amaze me, but in Eliot Spitzer's case, it is even more mindblowing
than usual. Putting aside the fact that having sex with prostitutes
when you're a married man with three kids is disgusting behavior,
from a practical perspective, any ambitous politicians should know
that in this media age, they'll get caught and destroyed as a
result of doing it. But for Spitzer especially, who actually
prosecuted prostitution rings and served as the state's Attorney
General, there was absolutely no doubt as to the consequences of
his actions, or the tools available to prosecutors that could
expose him. So what happened here? Was it simple arroagance on his
part? Did all his years as a successful lawyer make him think that
he was smart enough to get away with it? Were the
$5,500 an hour hookers at Emperors Club just so alluring that
his mind turned to mush and he simply forgot the fact that he was
destroying his family and a political career that had taken decades
to build? Were the risks he was taking part of the allure? Did he
have some sort of latent self-destructive tendency? The political
ramifications of this story are momentous. In the poetic justice
department, it is simply delicious that a man who made his name by
sanctimonously destroying the reputations of his enemies by
attacking their ethics, would go down in disgrace over a salacious
scandal. But above all, the psychological element simply fascinates
me.
The New York governor, who wagged his finger at Wall St. and
promised to restore ethics in Albany, has been linked to
prostituton ring, the New York Timesreports, with little abiguity:
ALBANY - Gov. Eliot Spitzer has informed his most senior
administration officials that he had been involved in a
prostitution ring, an administration official said this
morning.
UPDATE II: In an announcement, Spitzer
says, "I must now dedicate some
time to regain the trust of my family," but avoids officially
saying that he resigned. But given that he has been
indicted, I'd doubt he'd be able to hang on.
CORRECTION: FoxNews reported that he had
been indicted, but the complaint does not mention him--or his alias
Client #9-- as a defendent.
It's not quite a replay of the Paul-Peden race in Texas, but
once again there are dueling polls in a Republican primary race
featuring an outspokenly antiwar incumbent. In North Carolina's
Third District, challenger Joe McLaughlin has released a poll that shows a statistical tie
with Congressman Walter Jones. Conducted by Public Opinion
Research, it has Jones at 43 percent and McLaughlin at 41
percent.
The Jones campaign has fired back with a poll by National
Research, Inc., showing Jones beating McLaughlin 54 percent to 16
percent in the head-to-head ballot. Jones leads 56 percent to 20
percent when "leaners" are included. Jones, a strong social
conservative, is at 57 percent among "strong Republicans" and 58
percent among voters who describe themselves as part of the
religious right.
Grover Norquist has campaigned for McLaughlin on the
grounds that Jones voted for legislation violating the Taxpayer
Protection Pledge. Newt Gingrich is reportedly coming to the
district to campaign for Jones. I covered the race in a column late last year.
The Wall Street Journal has a Page One story today by reporter Suzanne Sataline headlined "Obama Pastor's Sermons May Violate Tax Laws -- His Chicago Church Lauds Candidate; Nonprofits' Problem."
This is indeed a problem, particularly when it comes to both Obama's personal church and his larger United Church of Christ denomination, as I have been reporting periodically at TAS. The UCC is also my own denomination, and, along with others, I have been a critic of the national church's insistence on turning the church into a playground for liberals using the official church structure. The WSJ article this morning points out, correctly in my view, that this problem runs rampant at Obama's Trinity UCC. A WSJ review of 13 sermons found 9 of the 13 "appearing to promote Obama's candidacy." The paper quotes Donald Tobin, an associate dean at Ohio State University law school who formerly worked on nonprofit issues in the Department of Justice, as saying: "There does appear to be a pattern of attempting to tip the scales in a way for Barack Obama. And churches shouldn't be doing that."
This "pattern of attempting to tip the scales" for Obama is also rampant within the national UCC. The church, as mentioned in four articles lastJune, September, and last week here at TAS, has been blatantly employing church resources in ways that give Obama favorable publicity. This in turn has launched a new investigation into the church by the IRS. Indeed, my last story, calling for Obama to pick up the tab for what UCC president John Thomas called a potential seven-figure legal bill, was greeted with a howl of outrage by the UCC's blogger in chief, the ever-interesting Rev. Chuck Currie. At unitedchurchofchrist.blogspot.com you will find Currie taking me to task with the title "Jeffery [sic] Lord Just Doesn't Bother With Facts." Currie had his stole in a knot because at the last minute on Monday (4:10 pm) he posted the news that in spite of the two urgent e-mails Thomas had sent to members pleading for money, a Washington law firm, WilmerHale, would now represent the UCC at "no charge" and the plea for money, which had raised only a paltry $59,000-plus at that point, was to be put on hold -- although Thomas left the door open that funds would still be needed. Currie conveniently left out the fact that, wonder of wonders, the lead lawyer in the case for the UCC, former Clinton Solicitor General Seth Waxman, is -- you guessed it -- an Obama supporter.
I contacted Currie through his blog, said that yes, indeed, with column already submitted I had not checked (at 4;10 pm) to learn the sudden news of Waxman's hiring, but had posted about that as soon as I did hear. As a church member I tried to see how far we got in a dialogue in what the UCC calls its tradition of "extravagant welcome."
I also mentioned the contradictory message of the church's leadership protesting that its free speech rights were being trampled while Currie himself was busy keeping a UCC-related site called UCC Truths off the church's official Blog Roll, a site that aside from being, as I said, "deeply vanilla" in its criticisms, does in fact keep members informed about the news the UCC hierarchy thinks is not fit to print. Criticism of Obama's appearance is one of these items, and Currie, also an Obama staffer, was effectively using the church-funded blog to keep the UCC Truth's stories by UCC'ers critical of Obama and the UCC off the page. In the mischievous spirit of the late William F. Buckley and our own RET, I compared the creator of UCC Truths, one James Hutchins, to a figurative Solzhenitsyn and his banishment to the Gulag. This drew a sharp reply from the Reverend Currie that I had compared both Currie and his friend and colleague The Great Leader Reverend Thomas to the "murderous thugs" who had run the Soviet Union.
I replied that I was pleased to hear at least someone in the higher realms of the UCC finally admit -- albeit over a decade and a half after its demise -- that the Soviet Union was in fact run by "murderous thugs," a big no-no back in the days when the UCC was telling its members that if the U.S. just left Vietnam and Cambodia there would be peace. No word yet from Chuck about the genocide and "re-education camps'" that resulted from the UCC's vision, or whether the church is mulling an apology.
After this exchange, silence. I kept thinking of that great WFB response when asked why my then (and yes, still now) hero Bobby Kennedy refused to debate on Firing Line. "Why does baloney reject the grinder?" Buckley replied with that mischievous grin. Even as other UCC'ers posted notes asking me questions, I was not allowed to reply. A question on whether I was being censored went unanswered. A question on Constitutional law went unanswered. Chuck was kind enough to say earlier, in reference to UCC Truths and presumably myself, that "There is a difference between extravagant welcome and letting thieves into your house to steal." Having been baptized into this church, with parents and grandparents as members and active members, and being a local officer myself, I found this description revealing. What we are stealing, I suspect, is just the good name of the now very-much soiled by the left UCC. Stealing it back.
Thanks to Senator Obama, this story has legs. Stay tuned.
UPDATE: This from the
UCC's Rev. Chuck Currie, August 14, 2005:
"Justice
Sunday II -- like the first Justice Sunday -- was a gross misappropriation of
the Christian faith for a partisan political agenda."
And right before
he told us all those sentiments, he said this, the kicker as to what Currie
really believes about stepping over the line -- if you are conservative
Christians. "It was a highly partisan moment that should warrant an IRS
investigation into the church's political activities."
Well, they passed Oberweis over for the Senate nomination and
went out of state to recruit Alan Keyes instead, so nothing should
surprise us about the Illinois GOP.
Jim,
It's not that the Illinois bench is so weak; it's that Hastert and
his minions specifically orchestrated the nomination of Oberweis,
when there was a more attractive (but less wealthy) contestant on
hand. John
Fund has the report. The blame for this loss should all
fall on Hastert's head. The damage that man has caused to his party
is almost incalculable.
Colleague Matt Welch of Reason gives me
a reason (finally) to watch Bill Moyers's show. He sheds light on McCain's
faith in government as the tool for greatness, and has a
fascinating historical take on when conservatives became
Republicans first:
I think it was in the Richard Nixon presidency. Up
until that moment, conservatives had been the biggest critics of
the imperial presidency. They were the biggest critics of the way
executive power was abuse by John F. Kennedy, by Lyndon Johnson, by
FDR before them ... But when Richard Nixon was abusing that power
and he was attacked by the press, who conservatives have always
hated, and Democrats, who the conservatives have always hated, they
rallied around him.
...one of the only philosophies
that [McCain] elucidates in his book, his five books that he's
written, is to restore executive power at the expense of Congress,
especially when it comes to foreign policy and the making of war.
It is basically the only interest that he shows in political
philosophy in his books.
I'm not certain if I agree, re: the movement's concern about
imperialism. Conservatives were certainly interested in fighting
the Soviet Union where necessary, and Johnson's escalation of
Vietnam was seen as a scary mutation of what was originally an
outsourced. fight. They didn't come to Nixon's defense
because they were discarding their own philosophy, but instead
because Nixon was being attacked for his lifelong anti-Communist
stances, including the discovery of Alger Hiss. The fight was about
what to do about Communism, and at its head stood a flawed man that
conservatives had to nonetheless support.
New York University professor and Cuban expatriate Enrique Del
Risco
explains to the New York Times why life
in a police state is not such a great tradeoff for the supposed
wonderful schools and clinics of Fidel:
"At the root of that is a great belittling of
Cubans," he said. "It's like we are some sort of little animals who
only need a veterinarian and someone to teach us tricks and we'll
be fine."
Posted by W. James Antle, III on 3.10.08 @ 12:00PM
George W. Bush carried that district and Denny Hastert won
reelection after the Ryan era. Maybe the Illinois GOP bench is
uniquely weak, leaving it with only Oberweis-quality candidates
(and Oberweis only lost narrowly). But it's still not a great
sign.
A lot of members of the media have bought into the Clinton spin
that the delegate count doesn't matter at this point, because
everything will be decided by superdelegates. But the fact that
Obama has a solid lead among pledged delegates means that at the
end of the primary process, while Obama will still need to convince
superdelegates to support him, he will not require as many superdelegates as Clinton will. So far,
superdelegates have been divided in their loyalties, and there's no
reason to assume that this trend will change, or that they will
decide to vote in one bloc at the convention. Some might be swayed
by Obama's arguments for why he should be the nominee, while others
might be swayed by Clinton's. But division among superdelegates
would mean a win for Obama.
Although all delegate math is extremely rough right now, I will
use some numbers at
Real Clear Politics to help illustrate my point. Right now,
Obama leads Clinton by 120 delegates overall. What this means is
that for Clinton to catch Obama, she would have to win over about
two-thirds of the remaining 340 superdelegates.
Of course, a lot could happen between now and the convention.
Perhaps Clinton could win a lot more of the remaining states and
eat into Obama's delegate lead, or raise so many doubts about his
candidacy that the superdelegates gravitate toward her en masse,
and that even the superdelegates who now favor Obama will start
flocking her way.
But the point is that the Clinton camp has been making the
argument that even if Obama brings his delegate lead into the
convention, it won't matter, because she can convince
superdelegates to get behind her. Such an argument, while
plausible, doesn't take into account the fact that she'll have a
lot more people to convince than Obama will.
Over at National Review Online, David Freddoso shows himself to
be one of the few people able to
cut through Boeing's nonsense about how the new Air Force
tanker deal is somehow a threat to American jobs or sovereignty.
Short version: The Air Force made the right decision to give the
contract to Northrup Grumman and EADS, to build the tanker in
Mobile, AL (full disclosure: I lived in Mobile for eight years; but
that takes nothing away from the facts of the case that
overwhelmingly favor Northrup-G). And John McCain deserves credit
for forcing the contract to be re-bid. Oh.... and the politicians
yelling about this need to stifle themselves. (That last comment is
mine, not Freddoso's.) Their demagoguery, if successful, would come
at the expense of American taxpayers and would weaken American
military efforts.
Over on the Spectator main page, Glen
Whitman explains why the World Health Organization study that the
Democrats are using to push the country toward socialized medicine
is
badly flawed. Also, today in NRO, Patrick Basham looks at
public attitudes toward government meddling in health care and
finds
room for optimism. [Third door on the
right -- ed.]
Given that with modern technology you could read the small print
on a soup can resting on Mars, why is it that the surveillance
views of felons entering stores or banks with guns or using stolen
cards at ATM machines turn out to be so fuzzily unrecognizable?
Yes, it's a bad sign that a Democrat won in a district that gave
George W. Bush 55% of the vote in 2004. But before we get too
carried away, keep in mind that the Republican Party is weaker in
Illinois than it's been in decades thanks to the Ryan-era horror-show. Jim
Oberweis was by all accounts a terrible candidate. I'm guessing the
GOP is doing somewhat better at candidate-recruitment elsewhere
(though I haven't done a systematic survey).
The loss of Dennis Hastert's seat is a fitting testament to the
devastation the former speaker wrought on the Republican Party. He
was a terrible speaker (if somebody wants to add the link to my
column called Hastert La Vista from a couple of years ago, feel
free), taking up the cause of big spending with a passion, begging
Bush not to veto any spending bills, and putting up with all sorts
of unethical behavior. Now, to top it all off, his retirement
(better name for it: QUITTING mid-term) gives up a seat to the
Dems. This reflects badly on Hastert on two levels. First, it shows
how badly he seeded his own district, where he obviously left a bad
taste in voters' mouths if not even this GOP-leaning district would
go for a Republican to replace him. Second, it makes it even worse
that he quite mid-term. I have serious philosophical problems with
people like Hastert and Lott and Louisiana's Richard Baker who quit
mid-term (UNLESS they are enmeshed in a scandal or unless they have
serious family needs that come up, or unless they get a promotion
such as a Cabinet appointment). By running for a seat, they
effectively promise their constituents that they will serve out
their terms. By not living up to that commitment, they force their
constituents to pay for another election, and force them to lose
valuable seniority mid-term. It is a quitter's way, a greedy way
(if they quit in order to grab a lobbying job), a self-centered way
(Hastert couldn't be speaker so he took his ball and went home), or
possibly a coward's way. It stinks. And Hastert, for whom I
originally had high hopes and high respect, will not be remembered
kindly as he slinks away.
I love Ben Stein, but I sure hope John McCain doesn't take his
advice on taxes. Though if there is
a Republican presidential candidate so inclined, McCain is probably
the guy.
Stein writes that economic conservatives are wrong to believe
"that tax cuts pay for themselves by generating so much economic
growth that they replace the sums lost by tax cutting." Some
misguided economic conservatives have indeed argued that, but that
is not what supply-side economics actually teaches. In both theory
and practice, supply-side holds that reductions in marginal tax
rates, by increasing the after-tax rate of return on productive
economic activity, enhances incentives for work and investment.
This leads to more income being earned, increasing output and
enlarging the tax base. This will to some extent, over time, offset
the revenue losses created by the lower tax rates. And in very
limited circumstances, when marginal tax rates are high enough to
be in the prohibitive range, these tax cuts may "pay for
themselves." But only under those very limited circumstances. Tax
credits and other neat stimulus package gimmicks don't enhance
incentives in this way and are definite revenue losers.
All that being said, Stein's New York Times column does
illustrate the mess big government conservatism has made for
Republicans. With marginal tax rates well below where they stood in
the Reagan era, you don't get much Laffer Curve effect from further
tax cuts. Middle-class tax cuts will probably be significant
revenue losers. If the GOP is wedded to big government on the
spending side, it cannot win the battle on taxes.
The Democrats pick up a House seat as political
neophyte Bill Foster beats Jim Oberweis to succeed the former
speaker in Congress. This is just a reminder that even though the
Democratic presidential contenders make the Keystone Cops look
professional, a lot of the fundamentals in this election cycle cut
against the Republicans. Foster will have to run for a full
two-year term in the fall.
The report that the Clinton campaign reassured Canadian
officials over NAFTA bashing, which mentionedhere
on Thursday, turns out to be false, a result of some confusion and
bad reporting.
David Frum sorts it out. Yes, Hillary may be lying on trade,
but only Obama has an adviser who's politically inept enough to say
so.
(One could be forgiven for wondering why Austan Goolsbee hasn't
been fired over this episode; it was certainly more damaging than
the "monster" comment that got Samantha Power canned. But I suspect
that the "monster" episode was just a convenient excuse to shove
Power out before her foreign
policy views drew more scrutiny.)
