I came across this David Brooks editorial on Facebook, where Hammer posted it, closing with "what an ass-wipe". And while Mr. Brooks has disappointed me in the past now and then, I must depart company with my Facebook pal Hammer and applaud Mr. Brooks on this one.
Brooks has painted an unflattering portrait of the Tea Partiers, one they have earned in spades. They are becoming what Don Rumsfeld used to call the insurgents in Baghdad--"Dead-enders", folks who have no desire to negotiate, no ability to recognize incremental (and sizable) attainment of long sought after goals. The Tea Party is increasingly coming to mirror ideological libertarianism, interesting stuff to talk about in a dorm room but utterly incapable of serving as an actual approach to governing in anything but an autocracy.
As inconvenient as it is for Hammer and others, we live in a Democracy in which a sizable MAJORITY of the American public disagrees with the ideology of the Tea Party. Not a plurality, a MAJORITY. Not that there aren't wonderfully inspiring elements in that ideology, elements which have already shaped the debate in positive ways bound to put a spring in the step of any conservative. Far too many people disagree with far too much of what the Tea Party represents for its approach to be adopted in toto. Like "useful" libertarianism, Tea Party ideas will alloy with "country club" Republican ideas to form governing approaches that appeal to the "muddled middle", those who thought Mr. Obama gave a good speech but who now wonder whether there was any there, there. This alloyed Republican Party will be stronger and more successful at the ballot box than any singular Country Club or Tea Party approach would produce.
My advice to the Tea Party Dead-enders? Win first, then get cocky about your ideology. And by win, I mean win a big policy debate. And win it within the system, the system of public debate and legislative compromise. Join with the dreaded "Country Clubbers" to dramatically reduce the scope and whim of government. Show the American people what a new and idea-brimming Republican Party is all about. Take back the Senate. Defeat Barack Obama. Once we've reached this point, well then if the Tea Party wants to conduct a Stalinist purge of the David Brooks/Bryan McGrath wing of the party, so be it. I'll accept my fate.
UPDATE--here's a good interview with David Brooks from The Daily Caller in which he 'splains himself. Pretty straightforward stuff, from where I sit.
Where is the bought and paid for media with regard to the biggest story of the Obama Presidency--that the policies and practices of the Bush Administration--which he relentlessly criticized while on the stump--remain the policies and practices of the Obama Administration? Here's the story of a Somali miscreant captured in the Gulf of Aden and---wait-----held on a Navy ship for two months. Was he spirited to the loving arms of the Eric Holder justice system? Eh, no. Did we let him lawyer up with folks who haven't yet earned their spurs into the Holder Justice Department? Eh, no. We held him without warrant, we interrogated him without counsel, we treated him like the vermin he is and now--he'll be turned over to the Holder Justice Department, for trial.
When will the media hold this man accountable? When will Barack Obama have to answer for his over the top and irresponsible campaign rhetoric? When will he apologize to George Bush for the things he said about the way the Bush Administration pursued the war on terror?
Let's hope the following is but one of hundreds of similar instances in the state of Wisconsin and around the country. Let's also hope that the BPFM starts to report on these little victories. Don't hold your breath, though.
In the past, Kaukauna's agreement with the teachers union required the school district to purchase health insurance coverage from something called WEA Trust -- a company created by the Wisconsin teachers union. "It was in the collective bargaining agreement that we could only negotiate with them," says Arnoldussen. "Well, you know what happens when you can only negotiate with one vendor." This year, WEA Trust told Kaukauna that it would face a significant increase in premiums.
Now, the collective bargaining agreement is gone, and the school district is free to shop around for coverage. And all of a sudden, WEA Trust has changed its position. "With these changes, the schools could go out for bids, and lo and behold, WEA Trust said, 'We can match the lowest bid,'" says Republican state Rep. Jim Steineke, who represents the area and supports the Walker changes. At least for the moment, Kaukauna is staying with WEA Trust, but saving substantial amounts of money.
Well folks, the little blog project celebrated its 3rd anniversary last week. Thanks to everyone who makes it a part of their daily scan and to those who stumble across it during Google searches. Special thanks to Mudge, Goldwater's Ghost, Sally and Robert Thorn for their blog posts, and to Hammer for his commentary.
The Unanimous Declaration
of the Thirteen United States of America
When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bonds which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security. --Such has been the patient sufferance of these colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former systems of government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.
He has refused his assent to laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
He has forbidden his governors to pass laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.
He has refused to pass other laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of representation in the legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.
He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.
He has dissolved representative houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.
He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the legislative powers, incapable of annihilation, have returned to the people at large for their exercise; the state remaining in the meantime exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.
He has endeavored to prevent the population of these states; for that purpose obstructing the laws for naturalization of foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migration hither, and raising the conditions of new appropriations of lands.
He has obstructed the administration of justice, by refusing his assent to laws for establishing judiciary powers.
He has made judges dependent on his will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
He has erected a multitude of new offices, and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance.
He has kept among us, in times of peace, standing armies without the consent of our legislature.
He has affected to render the military independent of and superior to civil power.
He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his assent to their acts of pretended legislation:
For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
For protecting them, by mock trial, from punishment for any murders which they should commit on the inhabitants of these states:
For cutting off our trade with all parts of the world:
For imposing taxes on us without our consent:
For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of trial by jury:
For transporting us beyond seas to be tried for pretended offenses:
For abolishing the free system of English laws in a neighboring province, establishing therein an arbitrary government, and enlarging its boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule in these colonies:
For taking away our charters, abolishing our most valuable laws, and altering fundamentally the forms of our governments:
For suspending our own legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.
He has abdicated government here, by declaring us out of his protection and waging war against us.
He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burned our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.
He is at this time transporting large armies of foreign mercenaries to complete the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of cruelty and perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the head of a civilized nation.
He has constrained our fellow citizens taken captive on the high seas to bear arms against their country, to become the executioners of their friends and brethren, or to fall themselves by their hands.
He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian savages, whose known rule of warfare, is undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.
In every stage of these oppressions we have petitioned for redress in the most humble terms: our repeated petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.
Nor have we been wanting in attention to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, enemies in war, in peace friends.
We, therefore, the representatives of the United States of America, in General Congress, assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the name, and by the authority of the good people of these colonies, solemnly publish and declare, that these united colonies are, and of right ought to be free and independent states; that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the state of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as free and independent states, they have full power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and to do all other acts and things which independent states may of right do. And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor.
New Hampshire: Josiah Bartlett, William Whipple, Matthew Thornton
Massachusetts: John Hancock, Samual Adams, John Adams, Robert Treat Paine, Elbridge Gerry
Rhode Island: Stephen Hopkins, William Ellery
Connecticut: Roger Sherman, Samuel Huntington, William Williams, Oliver Wolcott
New York: William Floyd, Philip Livingston, Francis Lewis, Lewis Morris
New Jersey: Richard Stockton, John Witherspoon, Francis Hopkinson, John Hart, Abraham Clark
Pennsylvania: Robert Morris, Benjamin Rush, Benjamin Franklin, John Morton, George Clymer, James Smith, George Taylor, James Wilson, George Ross
Delaware: Caesar Rodney, George Read, Thomas McKean
Maryland: Samuel Chase, William Paca, Thomas Stone, Charles Carroll of Carrollton
Virginia: George Wythe, Richard Henry Lee, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Harrison, Thomas Nelson, Jr., Francis Lightfoot Lee, Carter Braxton
North Carolina: William Hooper, Joseph Hewes, John Penn
South Carolina: Edward Rutledge, Thomas Heyward, Jr., Thomas Lynch, Jr., Arthur Middleton
Georgia: Button Gwinnett, Lyman Hall, George Walton
A special July 4th Holiday Weekend BFFFFA for all to observe! Feeling down about the debt ceiling talks? Wondering how much your taxes will go up? Forget how old your kids are lately? Bitch about it folks--right here, right now!
This is going to be an interesting summer. Clearly, we are headed toward some kind of epic budget impasse, driven by the need to raise the debt ceiling (something acknowledged by most in both parties) and the Republican desire to use that need as a lever to gain spending cuts.
Democratic reaction was predictable. Here is Madame (Former) Speaker Pelosi: “It is unfair to ask seniors to get less in benefits and wait longer to get onto Medicare — all while Republicans back tax breaks for big oil and corporations that ship American jobs overseas,” Pelosi said. Yawn.
We have come to a lamentable place in the evolution of this country when a political party cannot bring itself to cut benefits for people who aren't even receiving them yet, or to delay benefits for people who do not qualify for them.
Every time I hear Pelosi talk about "tax breaks for big oil", I want to see statistics on the profit margins for companies operating in and near her district--you know, San Fran, Silicon Valley.....where margins DWARF those earned by the oil companies.
In the first act of the Democratic primary season for 2016, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo signed into law a gay-marriage equality bill actually passed by both chambers of the state legislature (not imposed by the courts). Bully for New York for moving this through the political sphere rather than the judicial. Clearly, this is not a dead issue nationally, though.
Meanwhile, our Evolver-in-Chief continues to meander on the issue.
My thoughts? I've provided them many times here on the CW. Government has no place in marriage, gay or straight. Marriage should be a socio-religious issue with no legal emoluments flowing from one's marital status.
I've got a post up at Information Dissemination in which I lay out some thoughts on the War Powers Act. The back and forth in the commentary is worth reading.
Word is that the Republicans have flown the coop on Joe Biden's debt confab, and that they are now "demanding" to meet with the President on the subject. While highlighting the President's distance from the process is helpful, the Republicans are playing this wrong. Don't "demand" anything. Wait them out. Make the President "demand" a meeting with you. Remember--he's got more to lose than you do.
Everything seems to revolve around Republicans' stand on taxes--that is, no tax increase will make it through the House, so don't even consider one. Here are two tax increases I'm willing to support:
1. The "Super-rich" tax. This would be 3% surcharge on all income--or capital gains--realized over the amount of $10M in any one year. Several facets of this tax appeal to me. The first is that it treats capital gains like income, which i believe it ought to be in the regular tax code. Secondly, my Spidey senses tell me that it will disproportionately impact liberals and Democrats, or at least those who are so rich that they have the luxury and time to "care" about issues like social justice, poverty, the environment, and public eduction without ever giving a crap about the consequences of their largess.
2. The creation of a "1% bracket". What does that mean? It means that the very first thing one would do on a tax return is figure out what 1% of one's taxable income is. That figure would then be THE FLOOR. Everyone earning a wage would AT LEAST pay 1% of their income to the continuing operations of a government from which they draw continuing succor and from which they continue to demand an increasing flow of benefits.
VP Biden had this bit of fatuity for our listening pleasure:
“The only way to make sure we begin to live within our means is by coming together behind a balanced approach that finds real savings across the budget — including domestic spending, defense spending, mandatory spending, and loopholes in the tax code,” Biden said in a statement. “We all need to make sacrifices, and that includes the most fortunate among us.”
All of us, Mr. Vice President? All of us? Then stop weeding out "the middle class" from consideration. Stop fencing off the elderly. If there truly is to be shared sacrifice then LET IT BE SHARED. This notion that we can get what we need by simply soaking the rich is loony.
Tonight, the President will go on television to put the final touches on Bob Woodward's next book inform the American public about the direction of his Afghanistan policy. Rumor is that he will "stay true to his word" and begin the drawdown this summer, in a manner that suggests 10,000 troops will return home by year's end (out of over 30,000 "surged" by the President last year).
I am glad that the President will stay true to his word, but I would prefer that he not hunt and peck around the margins. It is time to wrap things up on the Afghanistan COIN front, to recognize that Karzai is not a stable partner, and that our interests there are primarily in killing terrorists and not in creating a stable democracy.
Senator Kent Conrad is--not without reason--known on the Hill as a man who knows his way around budgets. He is an adult on budget issues, and he takes our nation's debt seriously--very seriously. Some on our side of the aisle would be repelled by some remedies Conrad pushes--but in the main, he strikes a fairly good balance between budget cutting and tax increasing.
He's coming out swinging now (not running for re-election, natch), pushing the Vice President and his debt control confab to cut deeper--not $2T but at least $4T. In the course of his activities, he has fairly well articulated support for the strategy most Republicans advocate vis-a-vis the debt ceiling. The President and his people would prefer a clean raise to the debt ceiling--claiming that making a rise contingent upon spending cuts (as desired by Republicans) hazards financial markets and "plays politics" with the fiscal reputation of the United States. Republicans disagree, recognizing that absent the debt ceiling cudgel, there would be little incentive on the Dems side to actually DO anything about debt. Into the discussion steps Kent Conrad in this morning's WaPost: "But Conrad argued that all incentive will be lost once the debt ceiling is raised. “If they reach an agreement and that passes and the debt limit then does not have to be dealt with until after next year’s election, there will be very little appetite here to come back and do what really has to be done to get our financial house in order,” he said."
Now that we all agree on that--let's start to cut some spending, shall we?
I enjoy the site of a beautiful woman as much as the next guy--ok, maybe a little more than the next guy--but news this morning of the crowning of a new "Miss USA" awakens in me a long-festering bit of wonder. Why, in this day of female empowerment, do we still have "beauty pageants"? Are they not simply the human equivalent of the Westminster Dog Show? Some may think that they exist as a vestigial hangover from times of more open male oppression--but c'mon folks--men don't even watch these shows (outside of a sideways glance at the swimsuit "competition").
Miss California won the swimsuit competition and the crown
I guess the answer to my question is easy--freedom. We have the freedom in this country to do largely as we please, and if enough people want to do what you want to do, well then you can get it on television. I suppose the real question I should have asked is why does anyone care about beauty contests?
A friend of Brother Tom has started a blog--The View from Erik Travels' World--and it is off to a great start. Erik is an MD who has traveled the world administering medicine through NGO's to the world's needy and war-torn. If there's a s***hole he hasn't been to, I don't know what it is.
I've never met the guy, but we've exchanged a number of incredibly interesting Facebook chats.
Erik's writing is raw and gritty, but it comes from the point of view of a guy who has earned the right to have a bit of a jaundiced view. He's a Buddhist who recognizes the value of both guns and money. I see in him a "save the world" liberal who now and again realizes that some of the world isn't worth saving, and some of the world doesn't want our saving.
This won't be every reader of the CW's cup of tea, but some of you will see great things in this blog's beginning. I do.
United Food and Commercial Workers union President, Bruce Both, saw Target employees'137-85 rejection of his union as proof that these sweat shop workers (you've seen the horrible conditions in a Target store haven't you?) needed him to continue their fight:
"Target did everything they could to deny these workers a chance at the American dream," he said. "However, the workers’ pursuit of a better life and the ability to house and feed their families is proving more powerful. These workers are not backing down from this fight. They are demanding another election. They are demanding a fair election. They are demanding justice and they are prepared to fight for it."
Uhm, Mr. Both, it's pronounced "the Soviet dream" and if the workers knew they could be protected from you and your pipe-wielding thugs, you wouldn't have even gotten the measly 38% yes vote that you did get.
Look, you and your extortionist dues collectors don't get it, but it appears most of the free Americans who are, in fact, living the American dream fortunately DO get it: unions = destruction of profitable employers and less personal freedom. Turns out most Americans still cherish the ability to make our own decisions and reject the notion that government and/or union "officials," who take our earnings through threat of violence, can make those decisions better than we can--especially when it comes to matters such as our own health care and our own jobs.
So here's some advice for every last one of you unionistas--go to Venezuela--they LOVE your thinking down there. Brother Hugo is raising the minimum wage again--to contend with 25% inflation. Pretty much a foregone conclusion that doing so will jack what is already the highest inflation in the developed world up another 5-10%. And the poor, who keep buying this pile of socialist BS, get poorer, just as everywhere this "experiment" gets reattempted.
An old shipmate--Adam Allegro--is posted to Naples these days. Not content to be just a fine Naval Officer, Adam's got an amazing talent for photography--and he has a blog in which he catalogs both his travels and his many beautiful photos. I urge you to have a look at his site, Catch the Jiffy.
For a little history on the ridiculous, $15B sinkhole that is Yucca Mountain, this ditty from the WaPost will suffice.
It's a terribly superficial treatment of the subject, but it gives one a sense of the scope and glacial pace of this project. For instance--the reporters blithely pass around scurrilous anti-Yucca propaganda like "it is too wet" for long term storage and "subject to earthquakes". The science that went into Yucca's selection was estimable, and the fact that there is contamination in ground water might have something to do with the fact that we exploded mondo-nukes in that desert in the 50's--as opposed to deep storage underground in sealed vaults with sealed casks for the waste.
But that makes no difference. Nevada was happy to take $15B in construction.....just don't put any waste there.
I do like David Brooks, and I like his assessment of his political bent as "Hamiltonian National Greatness", fan that I am of Alexander Hamilton. Now and then, Brooks lets me down with something he writes that serves only to serve to make him seem more reasonable to Democrats (something I am often accused of here). The fact that Hammer thinks the both of us are insufferable Country Club Republicans only makes things more interesting.
Brooks' column this morning is particularly good--it zeroes in on the pathologies of BOTH parties effectively and conveys his sense of disappointment the miniaturization of American politics. My favorite line: "Covering this upcoming election is like covering a competition between two Soviet refrigerator companies, cold-war relics offering products that never change"
Anne-Marie Slaughter is a Princeton Professor, and reliable Democratic foreign policy type. Generally considered a moderate and an adult, she spent some time in the Obama Administration's State Department.
She has taken now to providing occasional commentary at CNN (natch), and in this one, she concludes the following with respect to "L'Affaire de Weiner": "Absent criminal behavior, which is another category entirely, the issue is whether sexual misconduct undermines a politician’s ability to represent his or her constituents and contribute to the common good."
No, Professor Slaughter, sexual misconduct is NOT the issue; at least it is not the ONLY issue. How about lying--repeatedly, cold-bloodedly, in situation after situation, to the public, your constituents, the leadership of your party and perhaps even your President? What about the question of trust? What about the smearing of Breibart and others in the not Bought and Paid For Media?
No--sexual misconduct doesn't alone undermine Weiner's ability to continue to serve. But his utter lack of trustworthiness does.
Sally posted earlier in the week on the Washington Post's efforts to enlist "citizen" journalists to comb through the voluminous emails of then Governor Palin to her staff, family and others. Conveniently forgetting to apply such modern flash mob tactics to anything resembling-oh, journalism (such as actually reading the Obamacare Bill or the Stimulus Bill)--the Post once again confirmed all that is suspected of the Bought and Paid For Media and its determination to make news, rather than report it.
I read this article this morning after a friend posted it on my Facebook page. I like Walter Russell Mead generally, but this piece is so deftly done, so logically framed, that I may come to be more of a loyal reader. In it, Mead takes us through the fateful Lifecycle of Progressivism, from Great White Hope to Great White Father to Great Elephant to Great White Shark to Great White Whale. Creative and literary, yes. But also logical and incredibly well-written. His identification of the process through which good intentions become government programs promoting dependency and corruption is brilliant. One group that didn't come in for the criticism it should in this piece? Unions (he does touch on public sector unions). One can see in the rise of the union movement in the United States elements of all five stages Mead cites--from a force to rectify what were truly horrific and indentured work conditions to what we have now, a bloated, bureaucratic, politically connected patronage program that artificially inflates wage scales, even as the public code of the nation enshrines worker protections that no union organizer in the early stages of the movement would have thought possible.
The question Mead's piece leaves one with is--what is to be done? I'd really love to see a progressive criticism of Mead's piece--the logical gyrations necessary to contest it would be breathtaking to behold. Mead sees a need for reform--but what kinds of reforms? Can we as a people be trusted to vote in ways that may impact our short term benefits, but which are good for the nation in the long run? Are we ready as a nation to concentrate on the truly needy and deserving--who presently comprise just a portion of the entitlement class (look around folks, we're all in it)? I think we're moving in this country toward a great debate, one in which someone who tells the truth will be pitted against someone who protects the status quo. I know which side I'd like to be on.
The breathless search through Palin's emails has yielded little, except to reveal that all the reasons she was tapped for the VP spot in the first place. Practical, tough, willing to work with politicians of all stripe and an eminently capable governor.
I'm not a Palin supporter and wish she would exit the stage (and I wish the press would stop covering her every move as though she's a Kardashian or something). She's done very little to advance herself as a serious person and much (not all) of the criticism she's received has been justified. But just think what may have been if reporters had honestly covered her when she emerged onto the national scene a few years ago. Instead, we were treated to a portrayal of a woman that was power-mad, that had a low I.Q., and that may or may not have been the biological mother of her youngest child.
The irresponsibility of the media truly reached its nadir with Sarah Palin.
25,000 pages of Palin's emails during her tenure as governor of Alaska will be released tomorrow. Because of course these emails require total perusal by this country's news organizations, the Washington Post is seeking citizen journaliststo analyze them. The Post is looking for 100 folks to work in teams to ferret out the most important information contained in the emails.
One can just imagine what they consider the 'most important information.'
Finally announcing what had come to be obvious, New York Representative Anthony Weiner admitted that yes, that was his member on the Twitter feed and that yes, he had sent it. Along with lots of other similar kinds of pics. He announced this at a teary-eyed media circus--a a Mark Sanford a couple of summers ago.
The media were justifiably all over the Sanford story--here was a conservative, married, God-fearing Governor sneaking down to South America without telling his staff. The hypocrisy was manifest. The media is all over this one too (though some conservatives think insufficiently, looking for a double standard), but hypocrisy isn't the issue. As I said in an earlier post--Democrats aren't the "family values" party and they don't wish to be. Scandals like this one are reprehensible in and of themselves--but in the case of a Democrat--there's not much here on the hypocrisy charge.
What strikes me about the difference in the Weiner and the Sanford cases was the motivation. Sanford's wrongs--while many--were clearly the actions of a man in love (he is still with the woman). He said it right there in the news conference. Weiner's actions? What motivated him? Doesn't seem like love to me.
My apologies for posting two photos of this ghastly woman in a weeks' time, but as luck would have it, Ms. Wasserman Schultz has come up with another doozy. It seems, per the DNC Chairwoman, thatRepublicans want to drag us back to pre-Jim Crow days. Why? Because of some of the new voter I.D. laws across the country.
This is not the first time we've heard that voter I.D. laws are somehow the same as voter suppression, but I've never heard anyone adequately explain how requiring a voter to have I.D. is racist. Can anyone help?
As long as she keeps talking, the Debbie Wasserman Schultz Chronicles just may become a weekly feature on this site.
Don't do ANYTHING until you've carefully examined Michelle Obama's new meal guidance. I've helpfully provided a copy here; might want to post it on your fridge.
This apparently will lead to nothing but healthy, balanced meals on Americans' plates. Time to put away the Bugles, people!
Despite Mrs. O's claimin this articlethat 'I can already tell how much this is going to help parents across the country,' I'm pretty certain most of us have a good idea of what we should be serving our kids.
Paul Ryan spoke to the Hamilton Society this week--a group of foreign policy experts. Not generally considered to be Ryan's territory, he delivered up this wonderfully framed speech. It is worth reading--all of it.
I would like to see Ryan get in the race. He's so closely associated with GOP prescriptions for improvement that his forceful advocacy thereof on the Presidential stump would be a natural. But I doubt he will.
I've been silent on Weiner-gate lo this past week, largely because of my views on hypocrisy. When a "family values" politician gets caught with a dead girl or a live boy, well then, that gets my attention. When a Democrat sends a picture of his schwantz to a 20-year old coed--why, birds gotta fly....fish gotta swim. I get excited when Dems--climate change, eco-friendly, public teacher union lovin', tax the rich types--are caught with exceedingly large carbon footprints, driving SUV's, evading taxes and sending their kids to tony private prep schools.
"So we're drifting from outrageous cybercrime to "prank" to "Hey, who doesn't have snaps of his genitalia out there in the world?" To revive another Clintonian line: Everybody does it. "Everyone lies about Twitter-flirting," wrote the blogger Little Miss Attila, "and everyone knows that everyone lies about Twitter-flirting." "Flirting"? Why, yes: I'm assured by correspondents more au courant in "social media" that there's nothing unusual about Tweeting your nether regions to people you've never met in distant time zones. Get with the beat, daddy-o, it's a widely accepted courtship ritual of the 21st century: the flower of American maidenhood wants to see a prospective swain straining his BVDs at what I believe the lads at the TSA call Code Orange alert before they'll agree to meet him for a chocolate malt at the soda fountain. To each her own. In my day it was "A White Sport Coat And A Pink Carnation," as Marty Robbins sang (Billboard Country & Western Number One, 1957). But apparently these days that leaves the ladies cold, and the pink carnation can prompt titters, unless it's artistically positioned across one's crown jewels, and you'd probably need to get in a professional photographer and some double-sided Scotch tape."
The man is unstoppable.
No--I'm more interested in Weiner's choice of vehicles....
Weiner, in his manly S-10 Blazer 4 x 4--for the mean streets of Brooklyn
Yes indeed my friends, another Friday is upon us, and with it, another opportunity for you to let it all hang out. What's on your mind? Thrilled that Mitt Romney's in the race? Wondering when Sarah will throw her motorcycle helmet in the ring? What's going on where you are?
Russellville Middle School in Arkansas, like most middle and high schools, published a yearbook this year. Not remarkable. This particular yearbook, however, listed amongthe usual yearbook fare the 5 Worst Persons of all Time.
Who made the cut, you wonder. Hitler? Check. Osama bin Laden? Another check. Charles Manson? Right-o. The last two? George W. Bush and Dick Cheney.
Parents are rightly outraged. The school district's brilliant solution was to cover the list with black tape. And no one seems to have any idea how it happened.
What would you do if your son or daughter brought home such a yearbook?
This new DNC Chairwoman, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, is awful. And I'm not just talking about her hair.
Being bitterly partisan may go with the job, but she's so over the top it's hard to believe she's advancing her party's cause. Her latest gem is the assertion last week that 'Republicans believe illegal immigration should be a crime...the Republican solution is to pack them all up and ship them back to their own countries.'
Has anyone heard any serious person articulating this position? Tom Tancredo doesn't count. Why is the concept of illegal immigration so difficult for some to grasp?
A group of Berwick, PA 8th graders recently got a treat. They traveled to Baltimore to see the Aquarium. On the way back, they stopped for lunch...at Hooters.
How should we acknowledge this? If you haven't made any proclamations, no need to fret: the Obama administration has taken care of this for us with a number of designations for June.
National Caribbean-American Heritage Month. African-American Music Appreciation Month. Great Outdoors Month. Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Pride Month.
So have a mojito, crank up the Run DMC, go camping and watch Boys Don't Cry. Or watch Wild Things. It's downright American!
1. The Navy was good for keeping me in a manageable range. Retirement has meant wide swings. It will get tougher and tougher to make the swings as I get older, I'm sure.
2. Periods of unemployment are great; the first year of new jobs is terrible.
3. I weigh less today than I did when I started keeping track over six years ago, though I am above my average weight--my average weight is "overweight" by BMI standards (28.6). For me to no longer be overweight by BMI, I need to weigh 159--or 26.6 lbs less than I do today. For those who remember, I weighed 158 on the day I got married (April 1989).
4. 159 lbs is probably out of reach. I'd like to settle in between 170 and 175.
Rush on out to your newsstands and purchase this week's edition of The Weekly Standard--in it, you'll find this little ditty on the dangers of a declining Navy.
A glorious morning here on the Eastern Shore, I hope it is great where you are too. Let's get the Memorial Day Weekend off to a fast start with some old fashioned bitchin' and whinin'. What's on your mind today folks? Unburden yourselves!
PAH'-kee-stahn has ordered the US to reduce U.S. troop presence and is closing three intelligence liaison centers, which is almost certain to hinder U.S. ability to find and eliminate insurgent sanctuaries in Pakistan and Afghanistan. This move is in response to the Administration's decision to, without Pakistan's permission, conduct a military action inside Pakistan's sovereign territory to execute Osama Bin Laden.
While most of this blog's readership, me included, agrees with the Administration's decision to take this action, one can't help but wonder just how deafening the indignation of leftward-leaning citizens and, in particular, our media would be were it not for the fact that the words "Barak Hussein Obama" lack the letter "W"
I once spoke to a Soviet citizen about the state newspaper, Pravda ("Truth"), in the USSR and asked him what it was like to have only news the state allowed to be printed. His response was surprisingly enlightened: "At least we KNOW what we read is not true. You, however, can never really know whether what you read is true or false." His words may never have been more pertinent than during this administration with this generation of journalists. The only thing deafening about the reaction to this news out of Pakistan is the silence accompanying it.
Please join me in congratulating Colonel Dan Karbler, USA on his selection for promotion to Brigadier General. A West Point man, Badger Fan and a good, straightforward thinker. Dan is also a wonderful friend and the guy you call at 0300 when your car is broken down. He and I shared an office for two years on the Joint Staff, and there wasn't a doubt in my mind that he'd someday make General. I'm proud to know him and call him a friend.
After dinner last night, I was sitting with the Kitten, enjoying the view of the Miles River through a big new set of windows. The girls had scurried upstairs and were giggling about something or another. We got into a conversation about some subject long since forgotten, but the bottom line was that it was a damn pleasant scene. For a moment, I thought to myself--"this is why I left the Navy". And then--horror. "Damn", I said out loud--"I gotta go do my radio show."
That's not how it should be--I should be raring to go--but I wasn't. Don't get me wrong--I love DOING the show--I simply don't like that it never seems to fall at a convenient time for me, that it requires preparation time I'd much rather spend doing other things with, and that I spend an inordinate amount of time for the three days preceding the show wondering "should I talk about this?"
Bottom line is that The Conservative Wahoo Live! is no more. I wrote Big Fred a note earlier today, and he agreed that it was time to end it.
Thanks to all who listened and called, especially LTJG G, the Hammer, Tom de Plume, Navy Austin.
What I will miss most about ending the show is the loss of an hour a week with Fred. I'll look to figure out how to steal some in the future.
That post has caused several people whose intellects I admire to question what I wrote. I seek here to deal with each in turn. For those who dislike long posts, stop reading now. This will be a long one.
I must state right up front that I regret the wording in both the post and its intro on Facebook. The very first word--"when" is incorrect and misleading. It should have been "if"--as in "if" a war comes. I realize this is a big difference, and I'll take my lumps for the poor word choice. Fact is, using the word "when" could lead a reader to think that I predicted a war to be more likely to occur than not. I don't believe this. I would put the chance of an Israeli attack on Iran at 15 chances in a 100, certainly relatively low--but I would have put it at 5 chances in a 100 before the speech. So if any of my correspondents took issue with me over this wording (which I doubt), I apologize for misleading you as to my true thoughts on the subject. Let's start with the first comment:
Nevermind the colossal irony in naming a gas station after one of the biggest adversaries of the very industry who supplies this guy with the primary source of his profits; nor that a guy born in Yemen might think this President is an inspiring leader. What really tickles me the most is that this guy is going to make money, almost exclusively, off of liberals who will buy the vile fluid from his station for no more reason than they bought the campaign package--"oh look, it's Obama...it has to be good!" I hope he gets wealthy off of them because, for once, when these folks cast their votes for Obama [at his gas pumps], it will cost me neither a penny of my money nor an ounce of my freedom.
The last time I saw this much cheap gas being pumped at an Obama station, the station had a Presidential seal, microphones and teleprompters and Obama himself was doing the pumping.
One of the great things about working in DC (or its environs) is the random interactions one has with the famous and nearly famous.
Yesterday, I approached the little kiosk in the parking garage into which I provide money for the right to park. Standing there was this fetching little number in a pretty super hero outfit. She was simultaneously manipulating her superpower wrist bands and searching for the right pick up line to use on me...and I thought to myself, "hey honey, why not concentrate on one thing at a time." As I got closer, I saw that it was in fact, Megan Fox as Wonder Woman, one-time personal auto mechanic to Bumblebee of Transformers fame. As I approached, I said, "YOU used to work on my favorite Transformer car!" She looked up with a huge smile and said, "Ahh, that was just a car...sort of...but you, Mudge, YOU are a REAL man." After a bit of small talk (during which I feigned forgetting her name--stud), I took my leave and she begged me not to go!
"Get over it, Sweetheart" I told her. And with that, I walked out of the garage and back into the real world. C'mon CW, anyone can make this stuff up.
One of the great things about working in DC (or its environs) is the random interactions one has with the famous and nearly famous.
Yesterday, I approached the little kiosk in the parking garage into which I provide money for the right to park. Standing there was this fetching little number in a pretty dress. She was simultaneously manipulating her Blackberry and searching for funds to release her own car...and I thought to myself, "hey honey, why not concentrate on one thing at a time." As I got closer, I saw that it was in fact, Dana Perino, one-time Press Secretary to George W. Bush. As I approached, I said, "YOU used to work for my favorite President". She looked up with a huge smile and said, "he was my favorite too!". After a bit of small talk (during which I admitted to forgetting her name--dunce), I took my leave and she thanked me for saying hello!
The Blog: A compendium of thoughts on politics, world affairs, economics, pop culture and social issues, from the center right perspective of me--Bryan McGrath--a University of Virginia graduate who spent a career in the world's greatest Navy keeping my mouth shut about politics and social issues (ok, publicly keeping it shut). Those days are over! Pull up a chair and chime in where you will. Keep it clean, civil, concise and relevant.
The Fish: The fish is a "coat of arms" for the blog, symbolizing three formative influences in the life of the blog founder. The first is his experience at the University of Virginia--symbolized most importantly by the fish itself, or a caricature of a "Wahoo", the fish we have acquired as an informal nickname. Additionally there is the sword, the sword of a Cavalier. It is not wielded in a threatening manner, as this is a civil blog. But it is there, should it be needed. Thirdly, there is the influence of 21 years in the Navy--symbolized by the anchor on the Wahoo's fin (and again, the sword) . Finally, there is the bowler, tuxedo, and monocle, symbols of a refined, intellectual conservatism, or what I seek to encourage here.
The Policy: I take FULL responsibility for what I write. I will not be held responsible for the content of my comments section--as long as it is civil and passes my own inscrutable sniff tests, it will appear. If the comment offends you, that is on you.
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