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.

Lawlessness And Disorder Conservatives

In a recent speech, Joe Biden made the point that as the number of police went down, because of the collapsed economy, crimes went up, and he used this fact, for fact it seems to be, to support the jobs bill, which the Republicans refused to debate and Conservatives excoriated,  because it would have kept many more cops on the beat.  Whether or not the correlations between fewer cops and more crime is evidence of causation is, it seems to me, open to debate. But surely the notion that an increased police presence and its ability, which is to say reduced civil liberties protection via Constitutional originalism, to deal with crimes large and small has been a key bullet in the arsenal of Right's creation of the security/police state. Biden's use of their argument has enraged the Right and, because argument making is hard, they take to burbling nonsense, which is too say Jonah Goldberg is still dumb:

 What I find amazing about this, is that Biden had the numbers [of increased rapes and murders] ready. That means this is no gaffe, but this is a staff-prepared talking point. Unless of course you think Joe Biden just happened to have the crimes stats for Flint at his fingertips for totally unrelated reasons.

 Why yes, it is shocking and laughable that when explaining the content of a jobs bill that has significant funding for police, fire, and other municipal workers, that Biden would make a speech pointing out the benefits society accrues from the police, fire, and other municipal services.

Small wonder the world sucks.

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.

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.

Is Everyone At The NRO Really This Dumb?

Andrew C. McCarthy, responding to beating criminals instead of imprisoning them, argues that the idea

dovetails with a thought experiment I’ve been pushing for a while now, in rebuttal to the claim that waterboarding (as it was administered by the CIA on three top al-Qaeda detainees) is torture. If you gave every inmate serving, say, two years or less in prison the option of being waterboarded or completing his sentence, what would he choose? I’d be stunned if less than 95 percent chose waterboarding.

If I agree to be tortured instead of imprisoned then it isn't torture, is the pith of this argument. It's sort of like arguing that if a president does something then it's not illegal. Or because it's unlikely any American soldiers will be injured in this war therefore it's not a war. It's almost as if no one cares in particular about making sense so long as they can say something.

Matthew Yglesias: Still Dumb

It's one thing to be a Neoliberal hack, busily attacking workers and so forth with gay abandon. It's another to fail entirely to understand the nature of an argument in favor of paying workers. Of course, Yglesias got where he is today by being dumb as a box of rock.

Now it Can be Told!

Longtime maniac Bryan Fisher warns that

Al Qaeda is behind the rebellion in Libya. So this no-fly zone is in fact helping the Muslims who killed 3000 Americans on 9/11. But helping our sworn enemies, especially if they are Muslims, does not seem to be a bother to Obama.

He is a popular figure on the Right, including both the sane and the less so.

To be fair to Fischer, his stance probably has more to do with his hatred of Islam — not just extremists, but the entire religion — than his feelings about Qaddafi. Outrageous positions like this have earned AFA a “hate group” designation from the Southern Poverty Law Center. Nonetheless, leading conservatives, such as potential presidential candidates Tim Pawlenty and Mike Huckabee, regularly appear on AFA’s radio show, which is hosted by Fischer. Three sitting Republican congressman have appeared on the show in the past week alone. And potential presidential candidate Newt Gingrich secretly funneled $350,000 to AFA Action. Will Fischer’s defense of Qaddafi finally be too much for these conservative leaders?

Now it can be told, the answer is no. If they start the process of repudiating their house crazy people, the lose the crazy vote and that is about 27% of their voters.

More Errors of Fact

Jay Nordlinger asks:

Are members of public-employee unions willing to give a little?

His answer is clearly no. Why? Because they have protested against the repeal of  their right to bargain and not beg.  It's called political action.  More or as importantly prior to the last minuet senate rejection of the Doyle contracts

Unions had then agreed to concessions totaling $100 million.

It's a question of workers' right to organize and bargain not greedy greed heads greedily greed heading.

Missing the Point

Matt Yglesias some time ago:

Mitch McConnell is a bad man, but he's very good at his job: http://ygl.as/h6to8F
2 hours ago from TweetDeck

He refers to this article which details McConnell's decision to stop the Senate from governing by threatening Republican senators who wanted to work with the Democratic majority to, you know, govern.  This kind of procedural obstruction to bipartisan action on the various problems confronting the US right now is  a being "very good"  minority leader because Yglesias is under the misapprehension that being an obstructionist is the hallmark of a good legislator in a democratic system.  In other words, he is a dolt.  Unless, of course, like him you make your decision on good and bad based on some set of ideological abstractions that protect you from any concrete realities.

Representing Interests

One of the points Bernie Sanders is making is that far too much of what the Congress does takes from lower and middle class Americans and gives to the wealthiest among us and that the taxes code is skewed in favor of the rich and the Republicans are making things worse for the vast majority of America.  Jonah Goldberg, in his reliable wrong way, insists that one support for the middle class isn't socialism, as he understands it -- which is a round about way of saying he hasn't got a clue of what Sanders' Democratic Socialism is,  and two, following Burke, that legislators owe us their judgment.

In terms of two,  Sanders' correct judgment is that the current system is screwing working and middle class Americans, that is the vast majority of Americans, and legislating in the interests of a wealthy and powerful minority and the American congress needs to stop doing this.  Instead of making a coherent, let alone intelligent, argument about how this position is wrong, hint: it's not, Goldberg makes a series of non-sequitors that serve to illuminate his inability to understand an argument.

After nearly 30 years of neo-Liberals like Goldberg and Yglesisas, and the rest ruining this country you would think that at the very least they would be able to make a coherent argument in favor of the policies that have crippled America.

Explain How This Works

Over to the NRO former McCain flunky and all around dishonest fella Douglas Holz-Eakin looks at the bleak job numbers and thunders:

But mostly this is an alarm bell for the lame-duck Congress. No more games — extend all the tax cuts for two years, patch the AMT, and turn to cutting spending and tax reform.

The thunderousness of his thundering renders, it would seem, making an argument about how further job reductions and less money in circulation and more money in rich folks pockets is going to create jobs unnecessary.

NRO

Mike Potemra is a something or another over to the NRO, who -- in the course of the last couple of days -- manages to be silly about all manner of things.  First, while holding himself out as a lukewarm to not at all supporter of Sarah Palin, he argues that because Obama has clearly "failed," Palin's manifest unsuitability, lack of credentials, and obvious incompetence means that she can beat him. He also "thinks" that if she doesn't run she can be "a beloved, world-historical figure like TR, and leave the presidency to lesser men (or women!)." TR was president twice and ran a third time and, perhaps he missed the memo, is now seen by the Becks of the Conservative world as world class socialist.

Next he argues that McCain's open disdain for Obama and the other military leaders' decision to scrap DADT doesn't mean that he hold civilian leadership of the military in contempt because McCain just holds this set of civilian military leaders in contempt.  Anyone following McCain's eel like position on DADT or, really, anything must know that he holds everybody who isn't John McCain.

In a similar fashion, i.e., with no regard for the facts of the matter, Lamar Alexander argues that America prior to the introduction of Progressivism was peachy and we ought to get back to that pristine world of greatness.  America prior to the development of a increasingly robust state capable of intervening in and regulating markets was a sorry little backward place with unsafe food, a commitment to destroying the environment if their was a buck in it, women without a vote and limited rights to property, open legally enforced discrimination against Black, Jewish, Catholic and other Americans, low wage economically exploitative labor-management relations, and a growing radical left willing to use violence to get what it wanted.  People seem to have forgotten that TR, to pick one example, did what he did, saved the wild places, stopped the wholesale slaughter of birds and other wild life, busted trusts, clean up food and drug production, etc, because he recognized that the system, such as it was, benefited the few at the expense of the many and that that situation was a recipe for disaster.  And he and other reform-minded men and women understood that the only way to reign in the malefactors of great wealth was to use the state's regulatory power.  So if you want to ensure more bonus armies and related whatnottery support your local Conservative.

Why Conservatives Have Problems With Fanatics

Those of us on the left-hand side of the political spectrum think that it might be in bad taste to muck up someone's religious icon or text but on the whole we don't particularly care. Those of them on the right-hand side of the political spectrum get enraged when some one mucks about with the bible or Jesus.  Unfortunately for them, complaining about it makes them look like religious fanatics in an increasingly secular world.  What can they do? What can they do?  Bitch about people taking offense at the "desecration" of Islamic texts and icons because no one takes offense at the desecration of Christian texts and icons, which is -- in case you weren't paying attention -- to complain that no one but them and the rest of the professional Christian victims out there is complaining about etc.

Relatedly, the same NRO hero reads of a maniac from the UK in the EU Parliament calling another parliamentarian a Nazi and, while he tut tuts over the unfortunate language, he understands the sentiment and, in general, he is supportive of the maniac from the UK. 

What is it going to take before the professional victims of the right-hand of the political spectrum give over and begin to act like adults?

An Answer to the Question of Why So Few Women are Conservative

K-lo passes on the well wishes of a real he-man conservative:

Preparing to leave for the three hour drive to my in-laws in Chico while my wife continues packing…and packing…and as I wait in the kitchen, reading NRO, it seems a perfect moment to express my appreciation for the consistently fine work your writers and editors deliver.  Thank you.

Ah, how dull life would be without the foibles of the little women and their comedic packing for the holidays while the man o' the house harrumphs his way through a semi-literate vanity project disguised as a serious intellectual endeavor.

WTF is David Brooks on About?

Is there a point to David Brooks' column today? Does he have a copy editor? Is this the loopiest sentence ever written:

There were many consistencies running through Tolstoy’s life, but there were also two phases: first, the novelist; then, the crusader. And each of these activities called forth its own way of seeing.

It couldn't be that Tolstoy changed his "way of seeing," whatever that might be, and consequently adjusted his activity, could it?

And what are we to make of this conclusion:

But public spirited, he also wanted to heal the world directly. Tolstoy devoted himself to activism and spiritual improvement — and paid the mental price. After all, most historical leaders write pallid memoirs not because they are hiding the truth but because they’ve been engaged in an activity that makes it impossible for them to see it clearly. Activism is admirable, necessary and self-undermining — the more passionate, the more self-blinding.

Tolstoy, it would seem, lobotomized himself when he tried to fix the world through spiritual renewal and George Bush wrote a mendacious book on non-existent "Decision Points" because his desire to rescue his reputation from the gutter led him to lie repeatedly about his own and others' actions. Consequently, working to improve the world as it is is proof of blindness and stupidity.

Hear that boys and girls if you are trying to make things better you have blinded yourself to the reality that the world as it is is the best of all possible worlds particularly if you're David Brooks, a man with no discernible skills, and people pay you ridiculous sums of money to make "arguments" both convoluted and empty of content.

I Realize

That it is adolescent in the extreme to make fun of people's names; in this case, however, it is not so much fun as evidence of some higher level of truth about Republican governance. In other words, a headline from NRO:
"Jerry Lewis Endorses Flake for Appropriations"

I Never Watch Keith Olberman's Talk Show

And I think his sport commenting stick is tedious.  However, unlike the Sanchez and Williams firings, Olberman's indefinite suspension is absurd on its face.

I Refuse

I refuse to  believe that more than ten Americans are dumb enough to trust a single solitary thing Glenn Beck says

This Makes No Sense

A post from the NRO in its entirety 

By Kathryn Jean Lopez      

Barney Frank has been in Congress so long, he can’t even bother posting a bio to his website. His reelection site’s “about” reads:

Barney Frank has been in Congress since 1981. He is the Chairman of the Financial Services Committee. Previously he was a Massachusetts State Representative and an assistant to the Mayor of Boston. He has also taught at several Boston area universities. More information can be obtained from “Politics in America” published by Congressional Quarterly and “The Almanac of American Politics” published by National Journal.

Nice little portrait of entitlement.

What's the entitlement? Asking people to look somewhere else for a more detailed biography.  I am sure the K-Lo would have been all starry eyed had Barney Frank published a full biography and she would never in any way have used that as evidence of his massive self-regard. Nope. Plus, who on god's green earth takes the time to read a congressman's web page and finds the biography the onliest thing to criticize?