Why I have Been So Quite Lately

It is difficult to write about the politics of the moment when everyone has gone crazy or insists upon talking to morons.

First up Eliana Johnson. Some weeks back she, I assume, took President Obama to task for calling the Holocaust senseless. Her argument, such as it was, consisted of the claim that say what you'd like about the tenets of National Socialism it wasn't senseless. She then posted a follow up that was equally stupid.  Had the President followed her advice and said something like: while we all deplore the murder of millions we need to keep in mind that the Nazis acted out of deeply held belief; their violence wasn't senseless; rather, it was ideologically driven and, from their point of view, necessary. I would have called for his impeachment. Indeed, if you think back to the invasion of Afghanistan and Iran you will recall that any attempt to contextualize Isamist violence was viewed as tantamount to treason, you will understand that Johnson would, in fact, have called for Obama's execution had he done what she suggested he do.

It is no secret that  Matthew Yglesisas is a dolt. Recently he asked, in the context of the increasing inequality in America, "What do people have less of." Paul Krugman responded that we have less time. This misses the larger point that what "we" have less of is consequential political power. That is why wage stagnation matters. It's not that one cannot go deeply into debt to get law degree and no job as Yglesias suggests it is the fact that the plutocrats domination of out political system is evidence that the assault on the working poor, which is nearly all of us, is evidence that we live in a plutocracy.

And David Brooks is teaching a course at Yale about "humility" the exams for which are:

Assignment 1: Mid-Term paper of 2,500 words. Students will be asked to grapple with the indictment of their generation made by Christian Smith, Alasdair Macintyre and Jean Twenge. Due Date:  February 26. Deliver Hard Copy at end of class.  40% of the final grade.

Assignment 2: Final Paper. 2,500 words. Students will be asked to analyze the strengths and weaknesses of one of the character codes covered in the course. Due April 29. Delivery by email.  40% of the final grade.

 Leaving aside the fact that course make no sense, he is asking students to learn how to write David Brooks level stupid essays. The idiots have taken over the asylum and the morons are considered honest interlocutors.

So basically, I find it hard to say anything because the world has become such a hot mess and I give up.

Conservative Fact Checking

Over to the NRO's Corner Online Eliana Johnson fact checks the Democrats on Planned Parenthood and access to mamograms. According to Johnson five phone calls to some New York state Planned Parenthood offices proves that the claim is nonsense. Two seconds with Google finds specific examples of PP providing free mamograms and pap smears.

It is simply bizarre that a fact so easily checked is twisted into its opposite in a desperate attempt to deny that the water is wet, which is to say that providing funds to an organization dedicated to offering low cost health services to poor and less well off leads to the poor and less well off obtaining necessary medical services at lower costs.

Grammar

If Obama did claim that business people didn't build that, then if follows the mega-maniac Andrew McCarthy just accused five GOP senators of being in bed with the Muslim Brotherhood.

But it is Ms. Abedin’s parents and brother who have drawn the attention of the five House GOP members. They all have connections to the Muslim Brotherhood — the organization itself or prominent members thereof.

Given that the clear anticedent of they has to be the nearest collective noun by the laws of grammar and syntax it must be members which means the GOP is infected with the radical Islamist gene and therefore to Gitmo with them.

Religious Liberty

Recently the Right has been up in arms about threats to religious liberty. From PJ Media comes  the story of a simple man who just wanted to have family members come by for some bible study only to find the iron heel of the state grinding his religious liberty into a fine powder.

The truth, of course, rather different:

Michael Salman’s dispute with Phoenix dates to at least 2007, when, he claims in a video posted online, the city began harassing him and his wife as they tried to build a 2,000-square-foot game room adjacent to their home on their 1.5-acre property near 35th and Northern avenues.
“The only people who came to our home were family and friends,” Salman said in a video posted online before he reported to jail this week. “Our home was not open to the public; it was private.”
Information presented at Salman’s criminal trial directly contradicted his claim, however. For example, a private investigator testified that he was not acquainted with the Salmans when he attended the church and saw 40 or 50 people in attendance during regular services and 20 or 30 additional worshipers for special occasions such as baptisms.
Salman and his wife have not paid taxes on the property since an inspector from the Maricopa County Assessor’s Office approved Salman’s request to have the property classified as a church in 2008.

What awful things are demanded of the tax free church? That it not be up to code. Really much ado about nothing. How do we know that it really is much ado about nothing? Because I originally read about this grave threat to religious liberty here, the gist of which is still available here.

That's right the NRO realized it had been had and consequently scrubbed the story rather than apologize for trying to turn molehills into mountains.

The Right Explained

Jay Nordlinger over to the NRO's Corner waxes egalitarian:

Some of us believe that America should stand foursquare for equality under the law and equality of opportunity. Equality of outcome, of course, is a different thing altogether.

Except, of course, for the whole marriage of men and women whose sexual orientation Nordlinger and Co despise or perhaps envy, women's pay, access to healthcare, education, and related etc which, as we all know, is the proper property of those with money.

Just below the above bit of dishonesty we find another example of how right-wing notions of equal access and equality under the law falls prey to the righ-wings detestation of minorities. Deroy Murdock writes, his pixels shaking with outrage, of

[a]New Mexico appeals court ruled recently that one’s Christian faith is an insufficient reason to decline business that violates one’s religious views.

It seems that some bogus Christians wanted to not only the one who cast the first stone but also thought Christ's rejection of segregation by deeds was a typo refused to photograph a lesbian wedding.

The clincher to his "argument" is to

[s]uppose Bob and Steve, a gay couple, launch a photography service to take pictures at gay weddings. One day, Jack and Jill show up and ask if Bob and Steve will take photos at their straight wedding. Uh-oh! If Bob and Steve say no, then they will be guilty of sexual-orientation discrimination.

Yes that is right Deroy the implication of a state under law with a commitment to the notion that laws are for all would, in fact, make it illegal to violate the law regardless of the idiocy or legitimacy of the motivation to violate the law.`

The right is the way it is because it, or rather its denizens, have no idea what words, phrase, ideas, and intellectual movements, mean or meant.

Appologize, Damn It

Some time ago the Right, like NRO whackdoodle Mona Charon, were lambasting Obama for his "disgraceful abandonment" of Chinese civil rights lawyer Chen Quangchen. Today we learn that he and his wife are on their way to America, land o the free.

It takes real skill to wrong about everything.

Performance Art

I am assuming that this is a parody:

There’s no better way for President Obama and his administration to celebrate Earth Day than to embrace a real, environmentally sound commitment to energy independence instead of relying on foreign countries that lack environmental safeguards. One aspect of the “all-of-the-above” approach I have been discussing for years involves, of course, the necessity to “drill, baby, drill.”

It’s no secret that throughout America, including the very wealthy state of Alaska, we find a storehouse of natural resources that God so benevolently dumped underfoot, just waiting to be tapped. ANWR, for example, is screaming to be used to help bring prosperity and national security to America. Indeed, there is an inherent link between energy and prosperity and energy and security. On this day, as many are focused on preserving the planet, environmentalists need not fear that the land or wildlife would suffer from the wise decision to drill here. As Alaskans know, ANWR is not some luxurious vacation spot teeming with Bambi and friends frolicking through waterfalls and flower-strewn mountainsides, as environmentalist fundraising advertisements depict it. It is a vast, remote, desolate, frozen area available to be used with a tiny drilling footprint to bring the country closer to what is clearly needed: commonsense, money-saving, job-producing energy independence. Believe me, I live in the Last Frontier because I cherish the earth and thrive in the clean air and fresh water amid our plentiful wildlife. I don’t want to mess this up for future generations.

I mean to say the whole thing reads as if one of the more literate NRO interns had one or two too many and decided to make Palin sound like an deranged maniac.

Should it turn out to be an authentic example of one or another of Palin's ghost writers babbling incoherently I apologize to all involved.

Who'da Thunk It?

This post from Mark French over to The Corner, surprisingly, makes perfect sense of the reason Zimmerman ought to be on trial.

Feh, Meh, And Bite Me

The NR has "fired" John Derbyshire. Fine but read the post and remember that Derbyshire has made a career out of being a racist, homophobe, and misogynist asshole with the NR's blessing for low these many years. Rich Lowry claims that

Derb is also maddening, outrageous, cranky, and provocative. 

No he isn't; he is a racist, homophobe, misogynist asshole who has benefited from the Rights embrace of racists, homophobes, and misogynists. This firing changes nothing and the Right and the NR in particular need to atone for using their rights to free speech to behave like neanderthals and thugs.

Every "culture warrior" is engaged in the same despicable speech act as is Derbyshire and their supporters ought either embrace Derbyshire or reject a "cultural war" built on lies, vituperation, and vile rhetoric or get out of the "cultural warrior" game. And that includes the vicious scum bags Santorum and Romney.

UPDATE:
Derbyshire defended by Jeff Goldstein.

Post Racial

John Derbyshire, who has admitted he doesn't think, has an article up proving that he can't. Using "math" and "science" he "proves" that black Americans hate white Americans, kill at the drop of a hat, that most are dumber than the 10% of dumbest white Americans, and, among other horror show nonsense, if reasonable bright and presentable the most favored of all Americans. In the comments, on of his supporters, of whom there are many, takes him to task for not mentioning that black American males are sexually aggressive

What a horrid little man.

UPDATE:
It seems that there are calls for the NRO to fire the "Derb."  This needs to stop; the Right in the USA is racist and sexist.  They need to acknowledge this.  Making a case for not reading the NRO because it is filled with batshit crazy Religio-Fascists and related nutters is the way forward.  They are all of them crazy, liars, and horrid little people.  The "Derb" isn't an outlier.

 UPDATE:

Rich Lowry has a post up distancing himself and the Right from the Derbyshire debacle.  Oddly enough the comments are off. I suspect they are off because, being a race baiter himself, he is fully aware of the extent to which his readers are foaming-at-the-mouth racists.

Remember the bullshit, in the Frankfurtian sense of bullshit, about no one cares about black on black violence is bullshit, evidence that the speaker is absolutely ignorant of the reality of black Americans lives, and yet more bullshit.

UPDATE:
In 2003 Derbyshire said of himself that

I am a homophobe, though a mild and tolerant one, and a racist, though an even more mild and tolerant one, and those things are going to be illegal pretty soon, the way we are going.

For 8 years he has been an important part of the NRO and the Right wing noise machine.  Not only ought they not fire him but they should all come out and admit that they supported and support "mild" homophobia and racism.

What Is Wrong With The World?

Victor David Hanson. He laments the woeful awfulness of those who seek to use the Treyvon Martin murder for their own ends. Yet he writes that

[w]hile it is natural that African-American activists need answers as to why the armed assailant Mr. Zimmerman was not charged in the shooting

they need to demand the same answers for all the black on black crime or they are hypocrites.

In the  answer to the first we all need answers as to why Zimmerman wasn't arrested after shooting an unarmed kid about whom he knew nothing other than the kid was black.

In answer to the second 1) it's a different issue and 2) really?

This is what is wrong with the world, instead of considering the possibility that shooting an unarmed kid about whom all the shooter knew is that he was black is a sign of mental derangement and that not arresting him is a sign of institutional mental derangement, Hanson wants us to think that thinking that situation is wrong and troubling is a sign of hypocrisy unless we condemn all crimes committed by blacks, that bear no relation to the event under consideration, everywhere.

It's a horrid worldview and one predicated on the notion that only blacks care about injustices concerning blacks.

Hatefilled

There have been a flurry of attempts to paint Treyvon Martin as a thug in an attempt to justify his mindless  murder. Here's one example from the fetid pen of Robert VerBruggen of the NRO. Here's another line of attack from the same horrid little man, Martin was winning a fistfight Zimmerman initiated for no good reason therefore he had to shoot the 17 year-old, about whom who knew nothing other than he was black, kid.

It really is beneath contempt.  Purveyors of the first line of attack seeks to dehumanize Martin by painting him as the kind of criminal we can do without. Advocates of the second would have you believe that a cretinous, authoritarian racist who defied police orders and not only followed but confronted a kid who had done nothing wrong but be black was forced to kill the kid because, as it turns out, cretinous, authoritarian racists aren't, in fact, the Batman nor yet even Robin.

Obviously the VerBruggens of the world aren't interested in making sense of the event or working to avoid it recurrence.  Why? Who really knows.  It may be that they are horrid little men and women bent on making the world less salubrious. Or it could be that they see the tactics deployed by the neoliberals for the past 30 odd years have created a world they want to inhabit, i.e., where violence or its threat is endemic, where inequality reigns, and where opportunity is a function of genealogy -- which is another way of saying the rich get richer and the poor starve.

One thing we can know for a fact is that there is no way to square the current reality with the promise of morning in America.


UPDATE:
It seems that Trayvon Martin called 911; one suspects this ends badly for Zimmerman and the brigade of horrors.

via.

Failure to Communicate

Over to the NRO Jason Lee Steorts misses the point about the Rights "culture war." He warns that 

[t]he article by Angela Morabito to which Kathryn links is a good example of how conservatives must not sound if they wish to win the debate over the HHS mandate. It suggests that Sandra Fluke has too much sex, says she speaks for “skanks who don’t want to take responsibility for their choices,” and rebukes her for having “missed the ten commandments.” Maybe the author was trying to be funny, but instead she conveys arrogance, condescension, and a total lack of manners. 

But it’s not just about manners. It’s also about making the right arguments. Nothing in this debate hinges on the particular sexual choices of Sandra Fluke, whatever they may be. (She might have been a married student who wished to use contraception with her husband.) And nothing hinges on whether the Catholic teaching about contraception is sound. The fundamental point is twofold: that the government should not dictate to private institutions what sort of health-care coverage they must provide, and that the government should not force a religious institution to violate its conscience. There are a great many people who hold this position but are disgusted by remarks like Morabito’s. They are people we need on our side

.

The Obama administration would like nothing more than to drag opponents of the HHS mandate into debates over the character of a particular young woman or the moral permissibility of contraception. These are traps. Don’t walk into them.

They vitriol and vile name calling are ancillary to the "culture war"; they are the the "cultural war." A reasoned debate about the state's power to set standards for health insurance and the limits of religious and moral convictions in evading these standards is an argument the Right loses, at least in part because of the hysteria they have been whipping up over Sharia.

The non-existent "culture war" can only be waged in the twilight of lies, distortions and invective; once mannered debate and facts come into play, the Right loses its base of rageholics and fails to persuade the average American, who really doesn't care what its neighbors get up to. Most of the Right now this and that's why they lie, distort, and use vile  invective, like the horrid little men and  women they are.

Did He Watch The Movie?

Over to the NRO's Corner online, Mark Krikorian claims, relying on The World Accoding to Garp, Romney will never, ever make the mistake of implementing a sucessful and popular program like he did with MA's health insurance law because he has been "pre-disastered." After moving into the house, Garp and family suffer from 2 affairs, one dead son, oral sex based castration, one son with one eye, culminating in mom's and Garp's assassinations.Too dumb to live.

Update:
On the plus side, if he right and Romney gets elected: Socialism111!!

Jonah Goldberg Still Dumb and Wrong

Jonah Goldberg writes that

[i]t’s already a cliché among liberals to describe [Perry] as the sort of cartoonish, ignorant cowboy they thought George W. Bush was (though to date, nobody feels the need to apologize to Bush for misinterpreting him).

We watched:



Or this



Or this



And so forth

Conservatives Hate Reality

We hear a lot about the Right making its own reality, ignoring facts, and more generally living in a fantasy world.
Here's a picture:

Was you first thought: security guard wannabe? Mine too.

Here's what some NRO flying monkey wrote:

No, that isn’t Brando. Close though. It’s James Lileks, one of America’s wittiest writers (and it turns out he’s darned witty when he talks, too).

Here's a picture of Brando before, you know, the eating and Larry King kissing:

Leaving aside Brano's hair and the, I don't know, general beauty, they are as alike as chalk and cheese.

Jonah Goldberg Still Wrong

He writes an impassioned screed about how no one is calling out the characterization of the Tea Party and Republicans more generally as terrorists and hostage takers is evidence of liberal bias. TPM, which is a biased liberal media outlet, publishes a long piece making the very point that lots of people, who complained re Giffords, are using wholly "uncivil" discourse.

Oh For Dumb

So

[t]he Interagency Working Group on Food Marketed to Children (Working Group),
comprised of representatives from the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), seeks public comment on a preliminary proposal for voluntary principles to guide industry self-regulatory efforts to improve the nutritional profile of foods marketed to children.

In particular the

primary objective of the Working Group in developing recommendations for
nutrition principles for foods marketed to children has been the promotion of children’s
health through better diet, with particular – but not sole – emphasis on reducing the incidence
of childhood obesity. The proposed recommendations are therefore designed to encourage
children, through advertising and marketing, to choose foods that make a meaningful
contribution to a healthful diet (Principle A) and minimize consumption of foods with
significant amounts of nutrients that could have a negative impact on health or weight –
specifically, sodium, saturated fat, trans fat, and added sugars (Principle B).

Having looked at the

 food marketing data from Nielsen Media Research and data collected by the FTC on marketing expenditures and activities directed to youth, the Working Group has identified ten categories of food products for which the industry spent at least $50 million on marketing to children and adolescents in 2006. The categories most heavily marketed to children and adolescents, ages 2 -17 years are: breakfast cereals; snack foods; candy; dairy products; baked goods; carbonated beverages; fruit juice and non-carbonated beverages; prepared foods and meals; frozen and chilled deserts; and restaurant foods.16

In the interest of clarity the report, in note 17,

recommends the following definitions for these ten food categories,
based on standard industry Product Classification Codes: (1) Breakfast cereals – all cereals, whether intended to be served hot or cold (PCC F122); (2) Snack foods – snack chips (such as potato chips, tortilla chips, and corn chips), pretzels, snack nuts (salted and roasted), popcorn, snack bars (including breakfast and cereal bars), crackers, cookies, processed fruit snacks (such as fruit leather), gelatin, and pudding (PCC F115, F163, F212); (3) Candy – chocolate and other candy bars, other chocolate candy, hard candy, chewy candy (including licorice, gummi candy, and jelly beans), and sour candy (PCC F211, excluding gum and breath mints); (4) Dairy products – milk (including flavored milk drinks), yogurt, yogurt drinks, and cheese (PCC F131, excluding butter, eggs, and cream, F132, F139,
excluding cottage cheese and sour cream, F223); (5) Baked goods – snack cakes, pastries, doughnuts, toaster baked goods (such as frozen waffles, French toast sticks, and toaster pastries), bread, rolls, bagels, breadsticks, buns, croissants, taco shells, and tortillas (PCC F161, F162); (6) Carbonated beverages – all carbonated beverages, both diet and regular (PCC F221, F222); (7) Fruit juice and non-carbonated beverages – fruit juice, juice drinks, fruit-flavored drinks, vegetable juice, tea drinks, energy drinks, sports drinks, cocoa, bottled water, and all other non-carbonated beverages, including ready-to-pour beverages as well as those sold in concentrated or powdered form (PCC F171, excluding all varieties of coffee, F172, F173, F224); (8) Prepared foods and meals – frozen and chilled entrees, frozen pizzas, canned soups and pasta, lunch kits, and non-frozen packaged  7 entrees (such as macaroni and cheese) (PCC F121, F125, F126); (9) Frozen and chilled desserts – ice cream, sherbet, sorbet, popsicles and other frozen novelties, frozen yogurt, and frozen baked
goods (such as frozen pies and cakes) (PCC F133); (10) Restaurant food – menu items offered in a restaurant (including both quick-serve and other types of restaurants) (PCC G330).

This all seems clear enough. We want information to help guide self-regulation so that there are fewer rather than more overweight teens with fewer rather than more related health problems to the extent that telling the truth about foods' nutritional value might make a difference.

For one of the flying monkeys over to the NRO, this translates as

Let’s take a look at what foods the IWG sees as a barrier to children developing a “healthful diet.”
● All cereals
● Pretzels, nuts, popcorn, snack bars, and crackers
● Milk, yogurt, yogurt drinks, and cheese
● Bread, rolls, bagels, breadsticks, and buns
● Fruit and vegetable juices, tea drinks, and bottled water
● Canned soups and pastas
● Sherbet, sorbet, popsicles, and frozen yogurt

It's not just a misreading of the purpose of the study, which is to gather information about marketing standards and practices. It's one thing to hold a silly notion, Government action except in the blowing up of things is wrong, and its totally another thing to make stuff up.

Jonah Goldberg: Still Dumb

There is an old phrase: death before dishonor. It means all manner of things specifically but in general it means that to live because you blotted your copybook you'd be better off dead. Or, more specifically, better, for example, to be killed by the Nazis than to live by collaboration. Recently it has become impossible to ignore the general cupidity and criminality of Rupert Murdoch's media empire. Many who work for his media empire violate laws, suborn politicians, and generally lie like there is no tomorrow. One newspaper chose death before dishonor and Goldberg, who is reliably dumb, casts a puzzled eye at anyone who would rather do something else than work for the devil. Dolt.

Living in a Dream World

All around maniac John Derbyshire reads of two marines being mugged and uses Heinlein's Starship Troopers as evidence that the military today is filled with sissies-boys or overly lawyered-up. Conservatives, it seems, are unable to find re-world examples for their desires and, consequently, rely on fantasies and dreamworlds, which explains their tax, job, military, and other policies.