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.

The Democrats Made Them Do It

In a marvelously incoherent fashion Geoffrey Kabaservice "argues" that Democrats are responsible for the Republican war on women because the Party with NOW support, he declares but doesn't prove, defeated a moderate Republican congresswomen who was also a strong proponent for women's issues. He goes on to "argue" that the decision to protest the Susan Komen charity's decision to stop giving money to Planned Parenthood is another example of feminists insisting that it's the Democratic Party or nothing.

If you squint, the first example makes something like sense. Feminists organizations should support Feminists in the Republican Party as a means of making these important issues bipartisan. Then again, Kabaservice one example of a real Feminists amongst the Republicans and as a practical matter no one who works for women is welcome in the Republican Party.

The second example is just loopy. The Komen executive was, we now know, filled  with conservative maniacs and was actively working with at least one Republican activist to twists its policies into dopplegangers of the Republicans.

What's odd about all  this is Kabaservice makes clear that from at least Reagan on the Republicans have actively courted pro-life and religious wackadoodles that now are their base. The Democrats didn't have anything to do with this.  One lonely moderate Republican is not a movement. The REpublicans made this mess and they need to own it.

Snow Job

Olympia Snowe will not run for reelection. She made noises about the horrors of partisanship in the current Senate. She is a "moderate" Republican, which means she laments having to vote for bat-shit crazy legislation even as she votes for it. Snowe, I would venture, is known to nearly no one outside of Maine except for news and politics junkies. America Elect is a doomed attempt at electing someone as a third party candidate who holds Democratic Party policy positions. Using his acute skills, Jon Chait, who once wrote about how Trump was a real candidate for President, thinks, if that's the word I want, that Snowe is cleverly positioning herself for a run on the AE ticket.

I really doubt that that small state and unknown senator would quit a life-time sinecure for the opportunity to make an ass of herself. But who knows, maybe all evidence to the contrary Chait knows something.

How Not to Appologize For Mitt Romney

The Wall Street Journal has along article on the odious Bain Management that shows them to be not particularly competent, most of the profit came from a really small number of deals and nearly a quarter of the companies with which Bain invested came a cropper, looking at this date Megan McArdle "argues" the she

[t]hink[s that] you can tell two stories from this data--and without looking at each individual case in depth, it's really hard to tell which story is right..

Without looking, which path does she choose? Hard graft or hand waving and excuse making for the Galtian leaders of capitalism, long may they creatively destruct with a dollop of who can tell.

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.

Jonah Goldberg: Still Dumb

Jonah Goldberg complains that Obama was too quick to tell the world of Osama's death because by so doing he ruined the "actionable" intelligence. He compares the information that the Navy Seals gathered to a stolen NFL playbook and suggests that by admitting to Osama's death Obama alerted our opponents to the fact that we have the playbook. The analogy holds true only if we add that Green Bay stole the Jets' playbook by flying into Rex Ryan's back yard and shooting him in the head in front of family and associates and then dumping the body in the sea.

I mean really, does Goldberg actually think that Osama's associates, on hearing that he had been assassinated, didn't know that whatever information Osama had on any pending or other operations was compromised? I understand, as of course, that Goldberg and the rest of the Conservative punditocracy cannot allow Obama even so much as a smidgen of credit for Osama's murder but still this is the weakest of weak and lamest of lame attempts. It is, in other words, a nearly perfect encapsulation of Jonah Goldberg's continuing argument against nepotism.

Wrong In Both Directions

To repeat myself, the humanist argument, which is the correct one, is that "we" oppose torture on the grounds that it doesn't work and it degrades everyone involved, in different ways obviously. Mistermix, over to Balloon Juice, apparently thinks that being serious means distorting reality.

See also for evidence that the torture led to wrong information, which is always the case -- except in movies and the perverted imaginings of serious people who get most of the information from movies.

You Are, Of Course, Stupid

The reason to criticize Obama is because his policies are wrong. I would, as an example, argue that he has been lukewarm in working to end the surveillance state and should be investing more in infrastructure and so on. I understand, equally as of course, that the various coequal branches of government hinder and obstruct, see Gitmo. One thing not to do, however, is to use one's misapprehensions of Obama's character as the basis for criticizing his policy. Glenn Reynolds:

Meanwhile, on foreign policy -- another Carter weak point -- Obama also looks worse. Carter blew it with Iran, encouraging the Iranian armed forces to stay in their barracks, while Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini's radical Islamists (whom Carter thought of as "reformers") took power, and then approved the ill-conceived hostage rescue mission that ended with ignominious failure in the desert. Obama, by contrast, could only wish for such success.

Obama has done a very fine job of foreign policy, if we view it through the narrow lens of America's traditional foreign policy goals. Indeed, the recent "success"[1] is further evidence of his actual seriousness and leadership ability. Odd, then, that bufflaheads chose this to attack him. I suppose this results, at least in part, from the fact that his other policies accomplish more or less what he expects them to.[2]


[1] It's strikes me as clear that the assassination was illegal. But, so what? If Bush would have done it way back whenever, the loss of one life would have saved god knows how many lives and endless trillions of dollars. The idea that one death of an unpleasant man dedicated to murder in the service of his own ends violates all manner of moral and ethical rules indicts the rules not the action. IMHO.

[2] Obama isn't, in other words, a man of the left.

Torture Doesn't Work

This line of argument, from Josh Marshall over to TPM, is really bizarre:

As a more general matter it's important to recognize that torture could easily have produced the key information. It just seems not to have in this case. You can be doctrinaire in opposing torture without being doctrinaire in assuming that it can't produce any good intelligence, which would be foolish.

We have known for the longest time that torture doesn't work.It's like the ticking time, how would you know if what the torturee said was true?  You torture the guy, run to where he says it is. If it's there okay, if it's not? More torture. New information also proven untrue. More torture. etc.  That's how it worked with the witches. Unless, of course, you think that witches actually existed.

Natural Law

Ronald Dworkin, natural law enthusiast -- not that there's anything wrong with that, has two essays up on the LRB on why the Roberts' Court is such a disaster. His overarching point is that Conservative wing, he includes Kennedy,

continue to revise our historical constitution and two new cases show that the arguments they offer continue to be embarrassingly bad.

I think he's on to something.

Here in Wisconsin: Press Blackout Edition

Today's Wisconsin State Journal has an editorial explaining why they haven't said word one about the Cronon Affair. Phil Brinkman's argument:

First, recipients of open records requests seldom welcome such intrusions. It’s invasive, it risks exposing them and others to embarrassment or worse.

This, obviously, doesn't hold true for Cronon. He tap dances a bit about the special problems in grabbing a professor's emails, because of chilling academic freedom and students' rights to privacy and then asks and answers the key question:

Is the party’s use of the records law in this case “nakedly political,” as Cronon asserts? Most assuredly.

The fact that the Republican Party is seeking to use a legitimate tool that promotes transparency to attack a critic even as their most recent anti-worker bill is under judicial scrutiny for violating the State's laws concerning legislative transparency isn't a story? No wonder newspapers are in trouble.

Brinkman is also clear that

So why not cover the debate itself? Over the years, this newspaper has made hundreds of records requests, many of them unwelcome and unpleasant experiences for the recipient. It would be hypocritical for us to suggest — and a story would suggest it — that some records requests are beyond the pale.

I just don’t believe that.

 This is just remarkably incoherent.  He accepts that the open record request is nakedly political and that the opr can or will have the effect of stiffling debate yet rejects that notion that political parties attacking citizens for engaging in criticism of the political party is a story worth covering. Amazing really.

Also Chris Rickert's (humorous?) suggestion that the UW-Madison fire random people is further evidence that the WSJ hates it's readers.

Here in Wisconsin: Chris Rickert is an Idiot Edition

Rickert is a columnist for the Wisconsin State Journal as near as I can make out he is a Neoliberal. Today he rails against the "elitism" of the UW-Madison, because it is a great school it must be elitist, and he thinks that it becoming a part-private and more expensive school is great because, like all Neoliberals, he hates him some edumacated elites. This is all bad enough, and his recent columns have been increasing pointless and badly written, but in the course of his misdirected hatred of the elites, he writes:

I don’t know if she would be able to afford to do the same today, but I do know she would have been just as successful in life had she been forced to attend a cheaper, less prestigious school.

How, on earth, could he know something like that? The evidence right now suggests that students who attend "elite" institutions are over represented in the halls of government and business. The last thing in the world we need to do is take a great institution of higher learning and give and privatize; rather we need to work to  better distribute society's wealth and stop thinking like profit mongers, who are next but one to war mongers in their responsibility for the mess in which we are currently mired.

Games, Leadership, and Libya

Jonah Goldberg is all upset because he is being criticized for writing

Lastly, what’s most infuriating is that if this ends “well” — say Qaddafi is killed by one of his own men in the next couple days or the rebels manage to assassinate him, or he flees to Venezuela, whatever — you know that Obama will take credit for leading this successful mission and he will be praised for his “leadership” by many of the same people who are now pretending they believe this fiction that NATO has taken over.

I have, I confess, no idea if this is, in fact, the basis for the criticism. I am not going read the whole dealio. Rather, let's consider Goldberg's claims as stand alones.

In terms of the "infuriating," Goldberg creates knowledge, "you know that," and then uses it to criticize a policy he agrees with. Odd, isn't, that the only form of authentic leadership Goldberg accepts is Bushlike ordering about. It's just barely possible, which is to say absolutely true, that tell your allies that you support what they are doing but aren't going to "lead" is leading.

Goldberg then argues

Drum and Sargent say I’m playing a “game” and that I’m simply laying down the groundwork against Obama. It’s fairly typical of the way Drum writes about conservatives from what I can tell. But all I can do is give my word that I’m not playing a game. Or laying any groundwork.  I actually care about the policy at hand, which Drum grudgingly concedes with his tendentious musing about conservatives’ “peculiar worldview.”

If you claim that in the future someone you don't like will engage in exactly the behavior you find most dislikeable, then yes you are playing a game.

He goes on:

Anyway Drum’s post is actually quite non-responsive. Does he deny that, should things go well in Libya, Obama will take credit for his leadership? And if that is the case, doesn’t that suggest that Obama is either lying now about not leading or will be lying in the future when/if he claims credit for his leadership? Also, Will Drum (and Sargent) not give Obama credit for his leadership should Nato, under Canada’s “command,” claim victory? I doubt that! And what about the White House saying today that responsibility for how this ends is “not on our shoulders”? Well if everything comes up roses, will those weasel words go down the memory hole or will they be still be valid? You see my point? Either America’s lack of leadership is true or it is a lie. It can’t be both, can it? I don’t think I’m the one playing a game.

Yes, again, if everything goes exactly the way a man who has been wrong about everything thinks it will, then sure he'll have been right. But of course, if it doesn't then he'll have been wrong. And he'll have been playing a game. The game, much like Gingrich's unreflexive constantly shifting statements against what ever it is Obama does even if it is what Gingrich supports, is to be against Obama.

Me? I continue to oppose the Libyan adventure because it is, I think, more likely than not to not work. Indeed, I suspect it will turn out like 99% of interventions/invasions/war with all manner of bad things that no one, meant none sarcastically, could have foreseen.

I have no idea why Obama chose to bomb Libya, but am increasingly enamored of the hypnotism thesis

Taxes

Recently we had a "debate" about allowing the Bush-era temporary tax decreases to expire. Conservatives and others insisted that you cannot raise taxes, especially on the rich, in a recession because of jobs. Right now as we speak Conservative Gov. Walker here in Wisconsin is planing of taking a chunk of money from the approximately 300k public employees and, as a fillip, destroying their unions.  How is it, I wonder, that taking a big chunk of money from folks who own homes, buy cars, consume groceries, and, in general, see to it that consumer goods get consumed and, one assumes, play an important role in keeping the economy going is okay but raising their taxes isn't.  It's almost like the whole argument is full of baloney and what the Conservatives really want to do is, you know, reward rich people and shove the rest of us into increased poverty.

The Art of the Possible

Paul Krugman on politicians' failure to enact sensible policies because they are politically "unfeasible":

If politics rules out all effective responses, there will be no effective responses.

Megan McArdle looks at the same issue and concludes that

at some level, there's no point in spending a lot of time designing policies which can't be enacted in any conceivable democratic polity.  Especially if advocating those policies make it hard to advocate things that might work--either because the advocacy takes time away from thinking about feasible solutions, or because you alienate the people you are trying to influence.

It makes no sense, she suggests, to think about or advocate for sensible policies when you could be thinking about and advocating for politically feasible policies whether or not they work. Because, one assumes, it's better to something ineffective or wrong then to spend time trying to convince people to do some effective or correct.

Or put another way:

Bart: You make me sick, Homer. You're the one who told me I could do
anything if I just put my mind to it!
Homer: Well, now that you're a little bit older, I can tell you that's
a crock! No matter how good you are at something, there's always
about a million people better than you.

Bart:  Gotcha.  Can't win, don't try.

George Washington, It Seems, Hated Our Freedoms.

So some legislator wanted to teach the liberal fascist Obama and his unconstitutional health insurance reform requiring citizens to buy stuff a lesson by requiring all his fellow citizens to buy a gun for their own good. His assumption was that the measure wouldn't pass or would be found unconstitutional. Highlarrity ensues:

Does he think a gun mandate and the health care mandate are the same thing, I asked? "Yes," he responded.
I then asked him whether he had an opinion on the gun mandate that was signed into law by Washington in 1792. "I wasn't aware of it," he said after a short pause. "Is it still on the books or has it been removed?"
I explained that the Militia Acts were amended many times over the course of this country's history, and this provision was phased out a long time ago.
In the course of the interview, I asked whether this would change his opinion on individual mandates. "No," he said. "I really don't feel like a gun mandate would be constitutional under these circumstances."
What does he mean by the circumstances?
"Well, it was shortly after the Revolutionary War, and it was before the War of 1812," he said, "which may have been something that was on the radar screen -- that they knew there could be another challenge coming from overseas. I'm not a history major, though."

What I find especially humorous about this is that he assumes that Constitutional principles are relative.  Sure it's okay, he appears to argue, to force citizens to buy a gun if war is in the offing but not in time of peace; similarly, one assumes, the various other rights and restrictions disappear or appear only under the right set of circumstances.

ETA: When it comes to morality and Einstein, the Tea Party Patriots insist, relativity is evil or crazy elitist hatred of common sense; however, when it comes to the constitution relativity is just good old fashion patriotism.

When Work is Play

Many, many people ride their bikes from here to there to get to a there that isn't all that much fun, work, school, the grocery, etc.  Or rather many, many people did that. Today we learn that Bike Paths are unconstitutiunal because Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-CA) says shut up that's why.

HUNTER: I don’t think biking should fall under the federal purview of what the Transportation Committee is there for. If a state wants to do it, or local municipality, they can do whatever they want to. But no, because then you have us mandating bike paths, which you don’t want either.
STREETSBLOG: But you’re OK with mandating highways?
HUNTER: Absolutely, yeah. Because that’s in the constitution. I don’t see riding a bike the same as driving a car or flying an airplane.
STREETSBLOG: How is it different?

HUNTER: I think it’s more of a recreational thing. That’s my opinion.

Much like the notion that marriage is reserved for procreation this is nonsense on stilts. But, in keeping with the new Tea Party Patriots constitutional conservativism, I urge all motorist using federal highways and byways for purposes of recreation, vacation, visiting mom and dad or sis, to pull of to the side of the road and wait until they have serious economic matters to attend to.

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.

Who is Speaking Here?

So one or another of the NRO's various flying monkeys quotes the NYTimes:

Fannie and Freddie have increased their repurchase demands on lenders over the past year, but banks are sure to resist large repurchases, setting up more clashes and disruption… Freddie Mac and the Fed should push their claims hard.

And concludes that

What the Times doesn’t seem understand is that every mortgage a bank buys back is more toxic debt on their balance sheets, which means more capital tied up, unable to be lent. And that is really bad for the economy. Banks are already holding on to some $1.5 trillion more reserve cash than in normal times. Getting those dollars into the economy would be the single best way to end the recession (something the Fed has failed to do with its misguided short-term thinking).

From the NYTimes Editorial

Fannie and Freddie have increased their repurchase demands on lenders over the past year, but banks are sure to resist large repurchases, setting up more clashes and disruption.

Bank of America has said it does not believe it is at fault for the loans’ poor performance. Freddie Mac and the Fed should push their claims hard.

The Obama administration needs to ensure that the taxpayers’ interests come first. Until now, the White House has focused far more energy on shoring up the banks — a stance that may have made sense in the thick of the financial crisis but is increasingly suspect now.

In the NRO critique

Banks should buy back any mortgages required according to the normal system and established contractual terms.

So, if the NYT argues that Fannie, Freddie, and the Fed ought vigorously pursue the normal system and force banks to buy back any mortgages required its wrong but should, per the NRO critique, the pursuit of the normal system require banks to buy back any mortgages why that would be okay.

See the problem?

And also, I have no idea if the NRO flying monkey is correct on the economic impact of forced repurchase of badly, if not illegally, done loans and neither, to be frank, does the flying monkey. However, the point of the NYT editorial isn't economic merits but rather moral culpability and political expediency, ayna?

Two Things

Recently Jonah Goldberg made a series of errors relative to an NYTimes online round table about Conservative hatred toward Woodrow Wilson.  He acknowledged one error in an update to the initial post: the historians weren't defending WW but rather trying to explain Conservative hatred of WW.  This was on October 11.  In an online piece dated October 25, Goldberg wrote, concerning Liberal defenses of WW that

[m]ost of the defensive operations are really more of a counter-attack (I addressed the last wave).

In other words, he still gets the point of the round table wrong.  He is, in short, not only reliably wrong but he is the exception that proves the rule of the self-correcting blogosphere.