Obsidian Wings

Simple Answers To Stupid Questions

by hilzoy

I have to respectfully disagree with publius. While Gerson might be battling it out with Richard Cohen and Bill Kristol for the title of Most Fatuous Columnist, for my money the worst op-ed writer is still Charles Krauthammer. Hands down. Today, his theme is Barack Obama's arrogance. He suggests that you need to earn the right even to visit the Brandenburg gate through some sort of world-historical achievement, and delivers himself of such gems as: "After all, in the words of his own slogan, "we are the ones we've been waiting for," which, translating the royal "we," means: "I am the one we've been waiting for.""

You can do wonderful things by changing pronouns: translating Bush's "I'm the decider" into "we're the decider", we can see that that statement just shows Bush's dedication to collaborative decision-making. And before anyone says this is unfair, consider the context of Obama's line: "The challenges we face will not be solved with one meeting in one night. It will not be resolved on even a Super Duper Tuesday. Change will not come if we wait for some other person or if we wait for some other time. We are the ones we've been waiting for." It's about the need to take action for oneself, rather than waiting for saviors to parachute in and do it for us. Changing the pronoun to "I" is exactly as misleading as changing "I'm the decider" to "we're the deciders". It's not just a minor revision; it transforms a statement into its opposite.

But my favorite passage from Krauthammer's column is this:

"Americans are beginning to notice Obama's elevated opinion of himself. There's nothing new about narcissism in politics. Every senator looks in the mirror and sees a president. Nonetheless, has there ever been a presidential nominee with a wider gap between his estimation of himself and the sum total of his lifetime achievements?"

Um: yes.

This has been another edition of Simple Answers to Stupid Questions.

Goodbye From The World's Biggest Polluter

by hilzoy

When I saw the headline of this article from the Independent on Memeorandum, I thought they were paraphrasing, or summing up what they took to be Bush's attitude towards climate change, or something. I didn't think it was a direct quote:

"President George Bush signed off with a defiant farewell over his refusal to accept global climate change targets at his last G8 summit.

As he prepared to fly out from Japan, he told his fellow leaders: "Goodbye from the world's biggest polluter."

President Bush made the private joke in the summit's closing session, senior sources said yesterday. His remarks were taken as a two-fingered salute from the President from Texas who is wedded to the oil industry. He had given some ground at the summit by saying he would "seriously consider" a 50 per cent cut in carbon emissions by 2050."

Six more months. Just six more months.

Slavery!

by hilzoy

Jonah Goldberg strikes again:

"There's a weird irony at work when Sen. Barack Obama, the black presidential candidate who will allegedly scrub the stain of racism from the nation, vows to run afoul of the constitutional amendment that abolished slavery.

For those who don't remember, the 13th Amendment says: "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime ... shall exist within the United States."

I guess in Obama's mind it must be a crime to be born or to go to college.

In his speech on national service Wednesday at the University of Colorado, Obama promised that as president he would "set a goal for all American middle and high school students to perform 50 hours of service a year, and for all college students to perform 100 hours of service a year."

He would see that these goals are met by, among other things, attaching strings to federal education dollars. If you don't make the kids report for duty, he's essentially telling schools and college kids, you'll lose money you can't afford to lose. In short, he'll make service compulsory by merely compelling schools to make it compulsory."

Maybe in the schools Jonah Goldberg attended, they didn't require things like homework, or attendance, or reading, or math. It would explain a lot. (The idea that he wasn't asked to work his way through all those analogies in preparation for the SATs alone would probably explain most of the "arguments" in Liberal Fascism.)

For the rest of us, though, there have always been lots of compulsory things in schools. If this counts as slavery, children have been enslaved since compulsory schooling began.

I can't wait for Jonah Goldberg's sudden discovery that some children are told -- told!! -- to clean their rooms.

UPDATE: Obama's actual plan is here. END UPDATE

Just For Giggles

by hilzoy

From NRO's Campaign Spot (h/t Attackerman):

"So, the recent news out of the Obama camp is that they're planning a huge rally with thousands of people in a stadium, want to create a mandatory youth corps for national service, and are thinking about a big dramatic speech in Berlin.

It's like they're trying to sell copies of Jonah's book or something."

OMG! *hits self on the head.* Why didn't I see the ominous parallels before?

Obviously, giving a big dramatic speech in Berlin is a sure sign of incipient fascism.

And holding a big rally? In a stadium? Any moment now, Obama will be intoning one of my favorite ever lines from a Presidential speech: "But why, some say, the moon?" breaking out the yellow stars.

If he wins the election, then the parallel to Hitler will be complete, and our fates will be sealed.

***

Minor point: about that "mandatory youth corps": in the piece Geraghty links to, he describes Obama's proposal as "very close to echoing John Kerry's Orwellian call for mandatory volunteerism." In NRO-speak, "very close to echoing" just means: he didn't actually say it, but if I squinch my face up very hard, wish upon a star, and clap as loud as I can, I can pretend that he did. What Obama actually said:

"We'll reach this goal in several ways. At the middle and high school level, we'll make federal assistance conditional on school districts developing service programs, and give schools resources to offer new service opportunities. At the community level, we'll develop public-private partnerships so students can serve more outside the classroom.

For college students, I have proposed an annual American Opportunity Tax Credit of $4,000. To receive this credit, we'll require 100 hours of public service. You invest in America, and America invests in you - that's how we're going to make sure that college is affordable for every single American, while preparing our nation to compete in the 21st century."

That's not a "mandatory youth corps" by any stretch of the imagination.

Conservatives And Jesse Helms

by hilzoy

I haven't written anything about Jesse Helms' death, since I don't like speaking ill of the dead. However: every so often, conservatives wonder: why oh why do people think that the Republican party, and/or the conservative movement, is bigoted? I think that the conservative response to Helms' death ought to settle that debate once and for all.

[UPDATE: I'm talking about about the Republican Party as an institution, not its individual members. Of course there are bigots and non-bigots in both parties. Ditto "the conservative movement": I meant to refer to it as an organized force, not to all its members. Sorry not to have said this more clearly. END UPDATE.]

More below the fold. Note that I have largely restricted myself to conservatives' own words (and not random bloggers, but people and magazines with some standing in conservative circles), and to Helms' words and actions.

For my part, I'll just echo Matt:

"Conservatives are taking a line that I might have regarded as an unfair smear just a week ago, and saying that Helms is a brilliant exemplar of the American conservative movement.

And if that's what the Heritage Foundation and National Review and the other key pillars of American conservatism want me to believe, then I'm happy to believe it. But it reflects just absolutely horribly on them and their movement that this is how they want to be seen -- as best exemplified by bigotry, lunatic notions about foreign policy, and tobacco subsidies."

And Ezra:

"Some of my conservative friends often complain about the difficulty of constructing a "usable history" out of the movement's recent past, and I sympathize with their plight. When leading exemplars of your political tradition were trying to preserve segregation less than four decades ago, it's a bit hard to argue that your party, which is now electorally based in the American South, is really rooted in a cautious empiricism and an acute concern for the deadweight losses associated with taxation. That project would really benefit, however, if more of them would step forward and say that Helms marred the history of their movement and left decent people ashamed to call themselves conservative. The attempt to subsume his primary political legacy beneath a lot of pabulum about "limited government and individual liberty" (which did not apparently include the liberty of blacks to work amongst whites or mingle with other races) is embarrassing. But if it goes unchallenged, what are those of us outside the conservative movement to think?"

And Speaking Of Smug ...

by hilzoy

The inimitable Victor Davis Hanson considers the question: why do rich people support Barack Obama:

"After talking to and observing lots of Bay Area affluent and staunch Obama supporters, I think the key to reconciling the apparent paradoxes is done in the following ways.

Many enjoying the good life worry that their own privilege in some sort of way comes at the expense of someone else, or they fret that their present lifestyle in ecological terms is hardly sustainable. That concern does not translate into much concrete action. SUVs (Mercedes rather than Yukons) are no rarer in Palo Alto than in Fresno, while such progressives are just as likely, or more so, to abandon the public schools, to keep their children out of East Palo Alto or away from the Redwood City ho polloi, and sent off to and on their way at elite prep and public schools. To sum up, Obama offers a reassuring sense of self-image: one can still maintain all the current mechanisms one is accustomed to in ensuring privilege, but visible support for Obama offers a sense of atonement and alleviation of guilt at rather modest cost. (We shall see whether a President Obama really ups the top rates, takes off FICA caps, raises capital gains, and so in fact takes a $50-70,000 greater annual cut from top yuppie joint incomes.)

Somehow an Obama sticker, sign on the lawn, or a lapel button has become the equivalent of a crucifix around the neck of a prosperous 16th-century burgher: easy fides of inner good and a valuable totem in reconciling the apparent irreconcilable."

Oh yeah? Well, I think that the reason rich people support Republicans, despite the horrendous long-term consequences of Republican fiscal policy for their own self-interest, is that since so many of them skipped out on military service back when there was a draft, they worry that their comfortable existence comes at the expense of someone else, someone who might have died in some long-forgotten rice paddy. That concern does not translate into actual efforts to do good now, still less into encouraging their children to serve, but they do find some comfort in identifying with a warlike President, and cheering from the depths of their custom-made emu suede armchairs while he tells our enemies to 'bring it on'. Cheering as other people's children are sent to fight and die no doubt adds a certain deliciously martial frisson to their otherwise all too comfortable lives.

Or perhaps it's because they feel a sort of subterranean unease about the degree to which that fourth home in the Tetons places them outside the economic mainstream. Not enough to spur them to action, of course, but it casts a pall over their Kobe beef and Breton lobster. Luckily, they have the Republican Party to turn to: it's easier to reconcile yourself to a glass of Chateau Lafite when you sip it in pseudo-solidarity with Nascar Dads. It's a Marie Antoinette sort of thing.

Or maybe -- who knows? -- they actually believe that John McCain would make a better President. And -- who knows? -- maybe I think Obama would. And maybe -- this is a truly radical thought -- some of us aren't voting entirely on the basis of self-interest.

***

What I really want to know, though, is this: why did Victor Davis Hanson, an alleged former classics professor, not only misspell 'hoi polloi', but call his post "Obama and the hoi aristoi"? "Hoi" is Greek for "the". "Hoi aristoi" are the excellent, the nobles (if memory serves.) So the translated version is: Obama and the the nobles. It's as bad as restaurants that serve dishes "with au jus", and putting it in the middle of such a pretentious piece ("easy fides", indeed) is, in its way, completely fitting.

Oh Noes! My Freedoms!

by hilzoy

Just in case publius' quote from Michael Gerson didn't provide your full quota of amusement for the day, here's Jeffrey Lord, "a former political director in the Reagan White House", in The American Spectator:

"Remember this gem a while back from Barack Obama?

"We can't drive our SUVs and, you know, eat as much as we want and keep our homes on, you know, 72 degrees at all times, whether we're living in the desert or we're living in the tundra, and then just expect every other country is going to say OK, you know, you guys go ahead keep on using 25 percent of the world's energy, even though you only account for 3 percent of the population, and we'll be fine. Don't worry about us. That's not leadership."

The point is not subtle. Obama is laying the ground work here for the potential banning of SUVs as well as pushing regulations that will tell all of us at exactly what temperatures we must heat or cool our homes. Over at the website BanSUVs.com, an outpost of the type of thinking that prevails in Obamaland, the goal, as the name of their site proclaims is just that: banning SUVs because they are "endangering peoples lives" and are "high polluting." The Obama point that we should no longer enjoy the freedom to "keep our homes on, you know, 72 degrees at all times, whether we're living in the desert or we're living in the tundra" has already emerged as a proposal in California. In this Obamaland vision the state would mandate that every heating and cooling system in a private dwelling include a "non-removable" FM receiver that would allow the government to decide the temperature inside your home. "

Wow: this has "emerged as a proposal in California"??! Where? In a college dorm at 2am? Maybe a cocktail party? Definitely a sign of Obama's real intentions!

Lord also cites a commenter from what he calls "the Daily Kos precincts of Obamaland" as support for the claim that Obama wants "Nuremberg-style trials" for oil executives, and says that Obama wants to ban smoking and, "at one now infamous campaign rally", the hijab. All sorts of freedoms are under attack: "your freedom to listen to talk radio, drive an SUV, debate global warming, eat what you please, heat your house the way you please or -- the latest Supreme Court decision notwithstanding -- own a gun if you please." Definitely a reason to vote Republican, since Republicans' respect for our rights and freedoms is absolutely beyond question after the last seven years.

Here's the crashing finale:

"SO LET'S SUM UP what America would look like in an age of Obama.

To start there would be no more driving SUVs. No more Rush. For God's sake absolutely no driving your SUV while listening to Rush. No more eating whatever you want. Definitely no keeping your home as warm or as cool as you prefer. No capital gains cuts because they are unfair. Your guns will be banned. And if you have a different opinion on global warming? All those lofty supporters of rights for terrorists are going to strip every oil executive in America of theirs in a heartbeat, live and in living color.

Is anyone paying attention here? Today the targets are talk radio, oil, SUVs, or guns or debates on global warming and so on. But what about tomorrow and the day after that and the day and years after that? What freedoms will next be targeted with that deadliest trademark of an Obamalander -- moral superiority? What do we have when the sole purpose of the government as run by the chilling principles of Obamaland is to "use the political process" to remove freedoms large and small one by one by one?

Someone needs to speak it plainly.

The word is fascism."

Something about this election is bringing out all the right's fantasies about the left, no matter how implausible or inconsistent with one another. Obama is a scary foreigner and the sneering guy at the country club; a doctrinaire Marxist and an unprincipled flip-flopper; a Muslim with a hatemongering pastor; naive yet corrupt; reckless but wimpy. But even I hadn't expected the charge that he plans to install government-controlled FM receivers in our air conditioners.

***

Special extra bonus: I googled Mr. Lord's oeuvre, and found these gems. From last February:

"The American conservative movement, refreshed from its annual festival of intellectual and political lights known as the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), is experiencing yet another transformational moment of growth. It is important, it is dynamic, and it is most certainly unstoppable."

If this is a 'transformational moment of growth', I'd hate to see what terminal decline looks like.

Also:

""Cross a liberal on duty, and he becomes a man of hurtling irrationality."

So wrote William F. Buckley in Up From Liberalism. Way back in 1959. Dealing with the left of the Eisenhower era, Buckley reached for Webster's to define what he saw as the "liberal mania," defining mania as "...characterized by disorderly speech and thinking, by impulsive movements, and by excessive emotion."

It's a pretty dead-on observation that is even more relevant in 2008 than it was all those decades ago."

This from a man who cites dKos commenters and random websites as evidence of Obama's intentions, and thinks that liberals are going to try to take over your air conditioners and your right to decide what to have for dinner.

I'd say that you can't make this stuff up, except that Jeffrey Lord plainly did.

You Rang? (Ambinder On Hume)

by hilzoy

Publius asks: what on earth does Marc Ambinder mean when he writes: "Let's put aside our Humean selves and ask: is Black right? Regrettably, despite being a philosopher and all, I have absolutely no idea. I do know a few things that he couldn't possibly mean, though.

For starters, Ambinder couldn't be referring to Hume's actual view of the self, since, um, Hume doesn't believe in any such thing:

"There are some philosophers, who imagine we are every moment intimately conscious of what we call our SELF; that we feel its existence and its continuance in existence; and are certain, beyond the evidence of a demonstration, both of its perfect identity and simplicity. (...)

For my part, when I enter most intimately into what I call myself, I always stumble on some particular perception or other, of heat or cold, light or shade, love or hatred, pain or pleasure. I never can catch myself at any time without a perception, and never can observe any thing but the perception. When my perceptions are remov'd for any time, as by sound sleep; so long am I insensible of myself, and may truly be said not to exist. And were all my perceptions remov'd by death, and cou'd I neither think, nor feel, nor see, nor love, nor hate after the dissolution of my body, I shou'd be entirely annihilated, nor do I conceive what is farther requisite to make me a perfect non-entity. If any one, upon serious and unprejudic'd reflection thinks he has a different notion of himself, I must confess I can reason no longer with him. All I can allow him is, that he may be in the right as well as I, and that we are essentially different in this particular. He may, perhaps, perceive something simple and continu'd, which he calls himself; tho' I am certain there is no such principle in me.

But setting aside some metaphysicians of this kind, I may venture to affirm of the rest of mankind, that they are nothing but a bundle or collection of different perceptions, which succeed each other with an inconceivable rapidity, and are in a perpetual flux and movement. Our eyes cannot turn in their sockets without varying our perceptions. Our thought is still more variable than our sight; and all our other senses and faculties contribute to this change; nor is there any single power of the soul, which remains unalterably the same, perhaps for one moment. The mind is a kind of theatre, where several perceptions successively make their appearance; pass, re-pass, glide away, and mingle in an infinite variety of postures and situations. There is properly no simplicity in it at one time, nor identity in different; whatever natural propension we may have to imagine that simplicity and identity. The comparison of the theatre must not mislead us. They are the successive perceptions only, that constitute the mind; nor have we the most distant notion of the place, where these scenes are represented, or of the materials, of which it is compos'd."

When I try to imagine what would be involved in putting aside a complete nonentity, I don't get much farther than Hume did when trying to imagine what sort of SELF the metaphysicians he's arguing with might have in mind. Nor does it help to think: maybe Ambinder had some other aspect of Hume's philosophy in mind, since none of the things that Hume is famous for seem to have the slightest relevance to what he's saying. I mean: is he referring to Hume, the scourge of the doctrine of innate ideas? The one who famously denied the existence of real causal powers in things? The one who skewered the argument from design? The one whose dazzling skeptical arguments woke Kant from his dogmatic slumbers? The one who held that "reason is, and ought only to be, the slave of the passions"? It's hard to see what any of this has to do with Charlie Black.

My best guess, then, is that Ambinder is either misremembering some college survey course or referring to some pronouncement by that eminent thinker, Brit Hume. Or maybe it's one of these other Humes: Basil Cardinal Hume, former Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster; Andrew Hume, Australian convict and leader of final failed attempt to rescue Leichhardt's expedition; Rob Hume, English ornithological writer; or Tobias Hume, English composer, viola player and soldier. Who knows?

All I can say is: whoever Ambinder had in mind, it's not David Hume, the greatest philosopher ever to write in English, and one of the sharpest prose stylists of all time.

Notes From A Postracial Society

by hilzoy

From the Dallas Morning News (h/t):

"While a number of speakers -- such as Railroad Commission chairman Michael Williams and Mike Huckabee -- have praised the advance of Barack Obama and what it means towards a colorblind society, at least one vendor hasn't gotten the message.

At the Republican state convention, a booth hosted by Republicanmarket was selling a pin Saturday that says: If Obama is President will we still call it the White House.

There were other pins that weren't necessarily conveying the positive, inclusive, united front that has been portrayed during the convention. One said, "Press 1 for English. Press 2 for Deportation" and another, "I will hold my nose when I vote for McCain""

Guess What? You Already Did

by hilzoy

Maureen Dowd passes on this gem:

"A Democratic lawmaker who saw the president in the Oval Office recently and urged him to bring the troops home from Iraq quickly recounted that W. got a stony look and replied that 41 had abandoned the Iraqis and thousands got slaughtered. “I will never do that to them,” 43 said."

Guess what, Mr. President? You already did.

Estimated number of people killed when the Shi'a uprising was suppressed: 30,000.

Number of Iraqis killed in our President's war of choice, according to Iraq Body Count, which surely understates the casualties since it counts only those that make it into the papers: 84,393-92,071. We don't have to get into the question, how plausible are the much, much higher estimates? to know that George Bush has easily surpassed his father when it comes to getting Iraqis killed.

If he wanted not to do that to them, he chose a very odd way of going about it.

Capital Gains Idiocy

by hilzoy

Maria Bartiromo, quoted in the NY Post:

"WE'RE in for taxing times if Barack Obama wins the White House, says CNBC's Maria Bartiromo. "He's going to take the capital gains tax at 15 percent right now all the way up to 25 to 28 percent," the "Money Honey" tells Avenue. "Sell anything, like a home or stocks, and make a profit . . . [almost] 30 percent of the profit will go to the government instead of 15." The income tax is also in for a bump. Bartiromo says, "Right now [it] is 35 percent, Obama wants to take that to 39 percent . . . We're talking about people who make over $200,000. That's not rich. So it's actually going to impact more people than you may think.""

Time, bless its heart, chose to quote this claim without question or criticism, as did John McCain's 'McCain Report' blog.

Where to begin? Let's start with the claim that people who make over $200,000 a year are not rich, which is absurd. As ThinkProgress points out:

"– The 2006 census showed that an income of $174,012 put an American household within the top 5 percent of income earners.

– A report by the Citizens for Tax Justice estimates that in 2008, “only 3.2 percent of taxpayers will have adjusted gross income (AGI) greater than $200,000 and only 2.1 percent will have AGI over $250,000.”

– A 2007 Wall Street Journal article placed earners who make $277,000 in the top 1 percent of all income earners."

But why not pile on a bit? According to the Census Bureau, median household income was $48,200 in 2006. And that's for households; median per capita income (pdf) was $25,857. Apparently, even if you make around eight times the median per capita income in this country, you don't count as "rich".

Fascinating.

But why stop there? Ms. Bartiromo says this: "Sell anything, like a home or stocks, and make a profit . . . [almost] 30 percent of the profit will go to the government instead of 15."

Let's start by getting the capital gains tax rates right. It is now 15%, and is scheduled to go to 20% in 2011, as a result of laws passed under Republican leadership. Obama proposes to let it go higher, and if he acts fast, he could manage to get capital gains tax rates to increase a whole year earlier than they would if he did nothing. Of course, he will increase the capital gains rate above the 20% that's already going to kick in. His tax plan (pdf) says he'll "increase" it; last September, he said "between 20 and 28%"; the Tax Policy Center says he'll increase it to 25%.

More importantly, you can exclude capital gains of $250,000, or $500,000 for a couple, on the sale of a first home. If your capital gains are less than that, as they are for most people, you don't have to pay any capital gains tax at all. Even those who make more will have to pay capital gains only on the part that exceeds the amount you can exclude. You'd have to sell your house at a pretty steep profit before the government would get anywhere close to 28% of it at a 28% capital gains rate.

But what about stocks, and all those millions of people who own them? Here's an excellent CBPP paper on the capital gains tax cuts:

"In a January 6th speech to the Economic Club of Chicago, the President stated: “American families all across this country have benefited from the tax cuts on dividends and capital gains. Half of American households — that’s more than 50 million households — now have some investment in the stock market.” (...) What this statistic ignores, however, is that nearly two-fifths of this stock is held in retirement accounts, such as 401(k)s and IRAs. This distinction is crucial, because capital gains and dividend income accruing inside these retirement accounts is not subject to taxation, and thus would not receive a tax benefit from the reduction in the tax rates on capital gains and dividend income."

Keeping the capital gains rate at 15%, rather than letting it go back to 20%, would cost save (oops) the average household with income between $50,000 and $100,000 all of $77 per year. Households with incomes between $100,000 and $200,000 a year would lose all of $228 per year. You might think: well, but that's still a lot of money to a family that's having trouble making ends meet. And if there were some alternative whereby we just never had to raise taxes at all without sacrificing anything, you might be right. In the real world, however, the alternative to increasing taxes is adding to the deficit, which will mean even more of a burden on taxpayers. Once you take that into account, taxpayers making under $200,000 a year are getting a whole lot of deficit reduction, and thus a whole lot of higher income and lower taxes in the long run, for their money.

Very, Very Scary

by hilzoy

Horrifying news from TownHall:

"Obama’s advance troops have already taken over our college campuses, have bound and gagged our conservative professors, have ravished our virgins, have pillaged our stores of wisdom, and have ensconced themselves in the thrones of power in deans’, presidents’ and department heads’ offices."

Holy smokes! I didn't even know Obama had an army! Apparently, I wasn't alone:

"This has been going on under the very noses of the Republicans."

Think of it: under their very noses! I haven't seen any troops around either, which just goes to show how stealthy they must be.

But those battalions of rapists aren't the worst news TownHall has for us. Thomas Sowell clarifies the stakes in this year's election for us. Iran is working on a bomb; if they get it, they will give it to the terrorists, who will "make 9/11 look like child's play" -- though, according to Sowell, they will humiliate us before they kill us.

"What does this have to do with today's presidential candidates? It has everything to do with them.

One of these candidates will determine what we are going to do to stop Iran from going nuclear-- or whether we are going to do anything other than talk, as Western leaders talked in the 1930s.

There is one big difference between now and the 1930s. Although the West's lack of military preparedness and its political irresolution led to three solid years of devastating losses to Nazi Germany and imperial Japan, nevertheless when all the West's industrial and military forces were finally mobilized, the democracies were able to turn the tide and win decisively.

But you cannot lose a nuclear war for three years and then come back. You cannot even sustain the will to resist for three years when you are first broken down morally by threats and then devastated by nuclear bombs.

Our one window of opportunity to prevent this will occur within the term of whoever becomes President of the United States next January.

At a time like this, we do not have the luxury of waiting for our ideal candidate or of indulging our emotions by voting for some third party candidate to show our displeasure-- at the cost of putting someone in the White House who is not up to the job."

At this point, I thought I knew where Sowell was headed. He was going to ask: can we afford to vote for a candidate who doesn't know the difference between Sunni and Shi'a, or how many troops we have in Iraq? Can we afford a candidate who thinks it's a good idea to return to a North Korea policy that even Bush has abandoned, under which North Korea got the nuclear weapons that decades of US Korea policy had been devoted to keeping them from getting? A candidate whose plan to kick Russia out of the G8 and restructure international institutions to marginalize Russia and China would alienate them at the very time when we need their cooperation to keep nuclear weapons out of the hands of rogue states and terrorists? Or should we vote instead for the candidate who has made nonproliferation a priority during his entire time in the Senate, and who would have avoided a war whose only obvious winner is Iran?

Imagine my surprise when I read on:

"Senator John McCain has been criticized in this column many times. But, when all is said and done, Senator McCain has not spent decades aiding and abetting people who hate America.

On the contrary, he has paid a huge price for resisting our enemies, even when they held him prisoner and tortured him. The choice between him and Barack Obama should be a no-brainer."

I'm wondering exactly who those enemies that Barack Obama has helped might be. The people in Chicago he helped register to vote? The South Side residents he helped organize? The students to whom he taught Constitutional Law? The vets he made sure would be screened for TBI and PTSD on returning from Iraq and Afghanistan? Also, I'm not sure why, supposing any of these actions to be bad, they would outweigh McCain's incoherent foreign policy and ignorance of issues he is supposed to be informed about.

It's all very confusing to me, but I guess that's why they pay Thomas Sowell the big bucks.

Tom Maguire's Wonderful World

by hilzoy

Here's part of a New York Times story called "Many Blacks Find Joy in Unexpected Breakthrough":

"In his remarks Tuesday, Mr. Obama did not mention becoming the first American of color with a real chance at being president of the United States, and, of course, most of the Democrats who had voted for him were white. But for that very reason, many African-Americans exulted Wednesday in a political triumph that they believed they would never live to see. Many expressed hope that their children would draw strength from the moment.

"Not that we're so distraught, but our children need to be able to see a black adult as a leader for the country, so they can know we can reach for those same goals," said Wilhelmina Brown, 54, an account representative for U.S. Bank in St. Paul. "We don't need to give up at a certain level.""

This seems like something no one could take exception to. People are happy, and happiness is a good thing, right?

Not for Tom Maguire. He calls this "absurdity", and responds to the passage I just quoted as follows:

"How Japanese kids, Chinese kids, or Jewish kids ever make it out of bed in the morning, and why they bother, is left unexplained."

Read his whole post; it's all like that.

Why? One possibility, I suppose, is that Tom Maguire is one of those people who has a heart the size of a turnipseed, and as a result just enjoys raining on other people's parades. Perhaps if I looked through his archives, I'd find lots of posts like this, about all kinds of people:

Newspaper: Charles DeLuca, 78, of West Roxbury said: "Now that the Red Sox have finally won the World Series, I can die happy!"

Tom Maguire: This guy can't die happy unless his favorite baseball team wins the World Series? Call the waaahmbulance!

Or:

Newspaper: But the armed robbery hasn't spoiled the family Christmas. The people from the Gustavson's church pitched in to buy their children presents, and Santa himself came by to deliver them. "We're so grateful", Mr. Gustavson said. "Thanks to our church, my little girls won't have to go without presents this year, and that means the world to me."

Tom Maguire: Would someone please tell this bozo about property insurance?

Somehow, though, I doubt it. Tom Maguire has never struck me as this sort of grinch-like person. Which leaves me with a second possibility: something about the particular people described in the New York Times article set him off.

I wonder what it could be?

***

For the record: yes, I do mean to imply that the 'something' is race. That seems pretty clear from Tom's post. But I do not mean to imply that Tom Maguire is a racist. (I really don't.) As I have said before, I have no interest in figuring out what counts as racism and what does not. What I am interested in is the question: when does race play a role in people's thinking that it should not play? You need to figure out whether race plays such a role in your own thought if you want to answer the question: does something here need changing? That's the question I'm interested in. It's a further question whether, and when, that fact shows that there is something seriously wrong with you, above and beyond being human and fallible. I'm not interested in that question: I don't particularly want to get into questions of blame, which strike me as less important than changing what needs to be changed.

When the fact that people are black makes you respond to their happiness not with a smile, but with disdain; when you find yourself feigning ignorance of the reasons why blacks might have a harder time than other Americans believing that full equality of opportunity extends to them and their children; when you read into their comments about their children some sort of whiny demand that simply is not there;; when parents' concern that their kids have good role models stops looking completely normal and starts looking like the work of "the race hustlers", then I think that something does need changing.

E Pur Si Muove! Open Thread

by hilzoy

Ben Smith puts the fact that 10% of Americans believe that Obama is a Muslim in context:

"Large minorities of Americans consistently say they hold wildly out-of-the-mainstream views, often specifically discredited beliefs. In some cases, those views should make them pretty profoundly alienated from one party or the other.

For instance:

22 percent believe President Bush knew about the 9/11 attacks in advance.

30 percent believe Saddam had weapons of mass destruction.

23 percent believe they've been in the presence of a ghost.

18 percent believe the sun revolves around the Earth."

That last is pretty scary. I mean, there are certain things I just assume that everyone knows (except for Sherlock Holmes, who had his reasons.) The fact that the earth revolves round the sun is one of them. The idea that nearly one in five Americans does not know this is unnerving. I am not at all consoled by the fact that a few years before this poll was taken (in the 90s), only 74% of Germans and 67% of Britons got it right.

However, here's something even stranger: not only do 23% of Americans claim to have been in the presence of a ghost; five per cent think they have seen a monster in the closet. Unless their definition of "monster" includes, say, cockroaches, or they included small children in their survey sample, that's really strange.

Open Thread.

Full-Blooded Americans

by hilzoy

A few days ago, I read a column by Kathleen Parker. It was offensive and racist, but since I read it at Town Hall and have a bad memory for names, I thought she was just one of those Town Hall lunatics, and didn't bother to write about it. But then, reading Glenn Greenwald this morning, I discovered that she is published in the Washington Post, where her column today begins:

"Well, at least they didn't kiss.

I was bracing myself for the lip lock Wednesday when John Edwards endorsed Barack Obama."

Don't bother to read the rest: it's just one veiled insinuation after another, without any substance at all. Just ask yourself: why does the Washington Post publish this woman? Moreover, why does it syndicate her columns? Googling for the first column - the one I haven't gotten to yet -- I discovered that thanks to the Washington Post Writers' Group, it ran all over the place: in the Baltimore Sun, the Chicago Tribune, all sorts of places. Here's what all those lucky people got to read:

""A full-blooded American."

That's how 24-year-old Josh Fry of West Virginia described his preference for Sen. John McCain over Sen. Barack Obama. His feelings aren't racist, he explained. He would just be more comfortable with "someone who is a full-blooded American as president." Whether Mr. Fry was referring to Mr. McCain's military service or Mr. Obama's Kenyan father isn't clear [ed. note: hahahahahaha], but he may have hit upon something essential in this presidential race.

Full-bloodedness is an old coin that's gaining currency in the new American realm. Meaning: Politics may no longer be so much about race and gender as about heritage, core values and made-in-America. Just as we once had and still have a cultural divide in this country, we now have a patriot divide. (...)

It's about blood equity, heritage and commitment to hard-won American values. And roots. (...)

We love to boast that we are a nation of immigrants - and we are. But there's a different sense of America among those who trace their bloodlines back through generations of sacrifice. (...)

The "guns, God and gays" trope has haunted Democrats, and Republicans have enjoyed dusting it off when needed to rile the locals. It's an easy play.

But so-called ordinary Americans aren't so easily manipulated, and they don't need interpreters. They can spot a poser a mile off, and they have a hound's nose for snootiness. They've got no truck with people who condescend or tolerance for that down-the-nose glance from people who don't know the things they know.

What they know is that their forefathers fought and died for an America that has worked pretty well for more than 200 years. What they sense is that their heritage is being swept under the carpet while multiculturalism becomes the new national narrative. And they fear what else might get lost in the remodeling of America.

Republicans more than Democrats seem to get this, though Sen. Hillary Clinton has figured it out. And, the truth is, Mrs. Clinton's own DNA is cobbled with many of the same values that rural and small-town Americans cling to.

She understands viscerally what Mr. Obama has to study."

Forefathers? Bloodlines? DNA?

Here's a little experiment. I, like Barack Obama, am the child of one parent who was born in America, and one who came here from overseas; like Barack Obama, I was born and raised in this country. Do you think Kathleen Parker would have written this column about me -- about how, despite being born and raised here, I "have to study" American values, how I don't have sufficient "blood equity" in this country, how I don't have the right values 'in my DNA', and so forth -- because my mother is Swedish? I don't.

Here's another experiment: imagine this same column written about a candidate whose father was a Jew who had come here from Eastern Europe and married an American. Imagine that Kathleen Parker wrote that this candidate wasn't a "full-blooded American", that his DNA wasn't "cobbled with" the right values, that because only one of his parents was from this country, and only half his ancestors had fought and died for it, he just didn't have the right "bloodlines" to be President. Does anyone doubt for a moment that that would be antisemitic? I don't.

If I wanted to get into bloodlines, I might note that Barack Obama's grandfather fought in Patton's army, or that he's related to Dick Cheney and Brad Pitt. But I don't. American values are not passed on by blood. They are not found in anyone's DNA. Barack Obama was born and raised here. He doesn't "have to study" American values.

Kathleen Parker, on the other hand, could stand to brush up on them. And so could the Washington Post. They should be ashamed of themselves.

Saving Money By Cheating Vets

by hilzoy

From the Washington Post:

"The physician in charge of the post-traumatic stress disorder program at a medical facility for veterans in Texas told staff members to refrain from diagnosing PTSD because so many veterans were seeking government disability payments for the condition.

"Given that we are having more and more compensation seeking veterans, I'd like to suggest that you refrain from giving a diagnosis of PTSD straight out," Norma Perez wrote in a March 20 e-mail to mental-health specialists and social workers at the Department of Veterans Affairs' Olin E. Teague Veterans' Center in Temple, Tex. Instead, she recommended that they "consider a diagnosis of Adjustment Disorder."

VA staff members "really don't . . . have time to do the extensive testing that should be done to determine PTSD," Perez wrote.

Adjustment disorder is a less severe reaction to stress than PTSD and has a shorter duration, usually no longer than six months, said Anthony T. Ng, a psychiatrist and member of Mental Health America, a nonprofit professional association.

Veterans diagnosed with PTSD can be eligible for disability compensation of up to $2,527 a month, depending on the severity of the condition, said Alison Aikele, a VA spokeswoman. Those found to have adjustment disorder generally are not offered such payments, though veterans can receive medical treatment for either condition. (...)

"Many veterans believe that the government just doesn't want to pay out the disability that comes along with a PTSD diagnosis, and this revelation will not allay their concerns," John Soltz, chairman of VoteVets.org and an Iraq war veteran, said in a statement.

Melanie Sloan, executive director of CREW, said in a statement: "It is outrageous that the VA is calling on its employees to deliberately misdiagnose returning veterans in an effort to cut costs. Those who have risked their lives serving our country deserve far better.""

Yes. They do.

You can see the email here (pdf); the press release from VoteVets and CREW is here; more from VetVoice here.

The idea that any vet returning with PTSD is getting inadequate treatment, and is being deprived of benefits to which s/he is entitled, for budgetary reasons is completely disgraceful. The right response to not having enough money to meet those needs is to ask for more, not to renege on our obligations.

I hate this sort of thing. I hate that these stories come out so often: Fort Bragg a few weeks ago, this today: one story after another about our shortchanging soldiers. Iraq and Afghanistan are no fun at all. The least we can do when people come home is not to make their lives harder for no good reason, especially not when they have been wounded, physically or psychologically. It's just so wrong.

Golf

by hilzoy

I didn't write about this before, because it's so far beyond parody that I just couldn't figure out what to say about it:

"Q: Mr. President, you haven't been golfing in recent years. Is that related to Iraq?

Bush: Yes, it really is. I don't want some mom whose son may have recently died to see the commander-in-chief playing golf. I feel I owe it to the families to be as — to be in solidarity as best as I can with them. And I think playing golf during a war just sends the wrong signal.

Q: Mr. President, was there a particular moment or incident that brought you to that decision, or how did you come to that?

Bush: No, I remember when de Mello, who was at the U.N., got killed in Baghdad as a result of these murderers taking this good man's life. And I was playing golf — I think I was in central Texas — and they pulled me off the golf course and I said, it's just not worth it anymore to do."

I mean, how is it possible to comment on that? I can think of a number of good ways of trying to be in solidarity with the families of those who have died in Iraq and Afghanistan: not going to war at all in the absence of a very good reason to do so; making very sure that you have planned out every contingency, so that the likelihood that any of the troops will die unnecessarily is as small as possible; when it becomes clear that there was no such plan, firing the person responsible and moving as quickly as possible to undo as much of the damage as possible; making sure that weapons dumps full of munitions that could be used against our troops were adequately guarded -- lots of things come to mind.

But giving up golf???

As an utterly offhand expression of a total inability to appreciate what people feel when their husbands and wives, fathers and mothers, sons and daughters have died, I thought, how can you possibly top that? Granted, people were probably tired of Bill Clinton forever feeling our pain, but did we have to overcompensate by electing a man who couldn't feel someone else's pain if that person were impaled by a piece of flying rebar while standing right beside him?

Well, it turns out that you can top that. Apparently, Bush wasn't even telling the truth when he said he had given up golf. As Dan Froomkin notes:

"Not only is it a hollow, trivial sacrifice at best, Bush's story doesn't hold water. While he dates his decision to abjure golf to Aug. 19, 2003 -- the day a truck bomb in Baghdad killed U.N. special representative Sergio Vieira de Mello and more than a dozen others -- the Associated Press reported on Oct. 13, 2003, that he'd spent a "cool, breezy Columbus Day" playing "a round of golf with three long-time buddies.

"Bush played at Andrews Air Force Base with Clay Johnson, Office of Management and Budget deputy director, Richard Hauser, Department of Housing and Urban Development general counsel and another friend, Mike Wood."

On that outing, he was typically full of what passes for good humor at the White House. The AP reported: "'Fine looking crew you got there. Fine looking crew,' Bush joked to reporters. 'That's what we'd hope for presidential coverage. Only the best.'

"He hit a couple of practice balls before flaring his tee-off shot into the right rough.""

Froomkin doesn't give a link for the AP story, and I couldn't find it using Google. I did find it on Lexis/Nexis, however, and it is exactly as described, and dated October 13, 2003, almost two months after Sergio Vieira de Mello was killed.

How do you end up telling a lie like that, I wonder? Did Bush consider giving up golf and then imagine that he had actually done it? Or did he just hear the question and decide that, yes, giving up golf "for the families" sounded like a good thing to pretend to have done? Or what?

Whatever the answer, I cannot wait until George W. Bush retires, and stops inflicting his psychological incapacities on the rest of us. For the sake of the thousands of families who, I would guess, would not have been assuaged even if Bush had given up golf, the millions of Iraqis whose lives he has destroyed, and the families whose loved ones in Iraq and Afghanistan are, as of this writing, still safe, that moment cannot come soon enough.

Um, Jeralyn ...

by hilzoy

Barack Obama:

"One of the saddest episodes in our history was the degree to which returning vets from Vietnam were shunned, demonized and neglected by some because they served in an unpopular war. Too many of those who opposed the war in Vietnam chose to blame not only the leaders who ordered the mission, but the young men who simply answered their country's call. Four decades later, the sting of that injustice is a wound that has never fully healed, and one that should never be repeated."

Jeralyn Merritt:

"In other words, Obama intends to battle the war-hero McCain by throwing us under the bus."

Um: no. Not unless you were one of the people who did, in fact, shun, demonize, and neglect soldiers who served in an unpopular war.

Look: it was shameful that anyone, anywhere took out their opposition to the war on the troops who fought in it. I thought this was common ground among liberals: we looked back, and while we were proud that we opposed the war in Vietnam, we deeply regretted that anyone had ever confused kids who were drafted, and who didn't have the means to go to college or the connections to pull a stint in the National Guard or whatever, with the people who deserved the blame: namely, those who set the policy. And whether that confusion was common or not, if it existed at all, there was too much of it.

I have been very proud that we have, by and large, not repeated that mistake. I would have thought that we could all just agree that it was a mistake, and get on with the task of not repeating it. Apparently, I was wrong.

***

Also: this is not about throwing boomers under the bus. Obama was making a speech about veterans' benefits. He was moving from a general discussion of troops, their service, and how it should be respected, to a more particular criticism of particular ways in which we have not supported veterans: from Walter Reed and Fort Bragg to homeless vets to excessive bureaucracy at the VA, and ending up with John McCain's failure to support Sen. Webb's 21st Century GI Bill of Rights.

If you happen to be talking to a group of veterans in West Virginia, it's probably a pretty decent bet that your audience tilts conservative, both politically and culturally. If you want them to think again about John McCain, you could do a lot worse than to start with a point they are likely to agree on -- like the claim that it was sad if any returning vets were shunned, demonized and neglected by anyone -- and then link it to what John McCain is doing right now:

"Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, seemed to give a thumbs down to bipartisan legislation that would greatly expand educational benefits for members of the military returning from Iraq and Afghanistan under the GI Bill.

McCain indicated he would offer some sort of alternative to the legislation to address concerns that expanding the GI Bill could lead more members of the military to get out of the service. (...)

Officials in charge of Pentagon personnel worry that a more generous and expansive GI Bill would create an incentive for troops to get out of the military and go to college."

Be very clear about what the concern is here: if we provide enough benefits and opportunities to veterans, they will leave the service.

I might find this convincing if I were sure that we had already done what we owed for our veterans. If, for instance, there were no problems at all with the VA, if we provided generous benefits to everyone, including full college with living expenses, health care, flat screen TVs, whatever anyone might think was necessary, and we were now considering giving each veteran an additional $1,000,000 cash grant on leaving the service, then I might be open to the idea that there is such a thing as making leaving too attractive.

But that's not where we are, and that's not what we're talking about. Presently, benefits don't cover anything like a decent college education. Webb is proposing to cover college at the level of four year public universities. This is not about providing some extra-fancy benefit over and above the requirements of justice and gratitude and decency, which we have already fulfilled. This is about meeting our basic obligations.

That being the case, to worry that meeting them -- doing right by veterans -- might affect retention is all wrong. The way to keep people in the armed forces is by making it an attractive place to be, not by pretending we don't owe veterans more than we are now providing.

Obama's point is: doing this to our veterans is neglecting them, shunning them. If you minded the way veterans were treated before, then mind this as well. It's a good point to make. I cannot believe that Jeralyn is objecting to it.

***

I also liked this, from Obama's speech:

"Abraham Lincoln once said, "I like to see a man proud of the place in which he lives. But I also like to see a man live so that his place will be proud of him."

There is no doubt that we are a nation that is deeply proud of where we live. But it is now our generation's task to live in a way that Stanley Dunham lived; to live the way that those heroes at Walter Reed have lived; the way that all those men and women who put on this nation's uniform live each and every day. It is now our task to live so that America will be proud of us. That is true test of patriotism - the test that all of us must meet in the days and years to come."

Amen.

So Long, Ellen Malcolm

by hilzoy

Ellen Malcolm has an idiotic column in today's Washington Post:

"So here we are in the fourth quarter of the nominating process and the game is too close to call. Once again, the opponents and the media are calling for Hillary to quit. The first woman ever to win a presidential primary is supposed to stop competing, to curtsy and exit stage right."

Oh, please.

I honestly do not see how someone like Ellen Malcolm, who founded Emily's List, is still its President, and knows how politics works, could have written that "the game is too close to call" in good faith. It is not too close to call. Barring catastrophe, or a Rapture in which Obama is called to be with his maker while Hillary Clinton is left behind, Obama will win the race. That being the case, there is no need to explain why some people say that Hillary Clinton should drop out by appeal to sexism: to the idea that the person who should curtsy and step aside is the woman, or that women do not get to compete. The recognition that Clinton cannot win is all the motivation they need.

Moving right along:

"Why on earth should one candidate quit before the contest is finished? Democrats need not be so fainthearted. Both of the party's remaining candidates have raised tens of millions of dollars. Both have the respect of Democrats nationwide. Each has a progressive agenda that stands in stark contrast to Sen. John McCain and his adherence to Bush administration policies.

So why are some Democrats so afraid? We simply need to count every vote, let the remaining states have their say and see the process through to its conclusion."

Afraid? Who's afraid? I'm just tired of it all: of the endless shifting of standards, lists of which states count and which do not, endlessly changing values for "the magic number", and so on, all designed to show, somehow, that Clinton actually has a non-negligible chance to win the nomination. I am also tired of the idea that if Clinton dropped out of the race, that would disenfranchise people. It's incredibly common for candidates who have no realistic shot at winning to drop out before the primary season is over. In 2004, for instance, every single candidate for the Democratic nomination other than Kerry was out by March. When Edwards withdrew after failing to win any states on Super Tuesday, 21 states had not yet been heard from. When Bradley withdrew in March of 2000, 18 states had not yet voted. Horrors.

The fact that during the last two races, all the serious male candidates had withdrawn by March also makes it pretty unlikely that only sexism can explain the idea that Hillary Clinton should withdraw in May or June, now that it's clear that she has no realistic shot at winning.

Onwards:

"Hillary Clinton certainly has the right to compete till the end. But I believe Hillary also has a responsibility to play the game to its conclusion. For the women of my generation who learned to find and channel their competitiveness, for the working women who never falter in the face of pressure, for the younger women who still believe women can do anything, Hillary is a champion. She's shown us over and over that winners never quit and that quitters never win. We'll cheer her on until the game is over. And we hope that when the final whistle blows, we will have elected the first female president and the best president our country has ever had."

Speak for yourself, Ellen. For my part, I don't see that Clinton has any such responsibility. She might if there were a non-negligible chance that she would win. But there isn't. And I fail to see what worthwhile lesson it teaches women to pretend that there is, unless you think that what women really need, right now, is instruction in cynicism and mendacity.

I supported Emily's List for sixteen years. (Maybe seventeen: I can't recall whether I signed up in 1991 or 1992.) Over the years, I have sent their candidates thousands of dollars. That ended this campaign season, when it became clear to me that the leaders of Emily's List, and Ellen Malcolm in particular, had lost their intellectual integrity. This column is a perfect illustration of why I reached that conclusion. Luckily, Emily's List isn't so necessary anymore. It's a lot easier to find out about great progressive women candidates nationwide, and to give money to them. And there are a lot of other good political organizations whose presidents don't find it necessary either to lie to me or to invoke sexism, which I take very seriously, in a purely cynical fashion.

That makes it a lot easier to say that I will never support Emily's List again.

(Angry? Yeah. I expected much better.)

National Review: Still Clueless After All These Years

by hilzoy

This is funny. Via Ross Douthat, Michael Franc has a piece in the National Review on who donates to which party. Some of the results he finds are not surprising: Democrats are raising a lot more money than Republicans generally, so I'm not astonished to learn that they are raising more from people who list their occupation as 'CEO'. Franc takes this as evidence that the Democratic Party is becoming " a holding pen for all sorts of economic and educational elites." (Holding pen?) I take it as evidence of the Democrats' greater fundraising success overall, plus some bets on which party is more likely to win in November.

This, however, is more unexpected:

"Who favors the Republicans? The Democratic field, after all, enjoys an overall fundraising edge in excess of $200 million, so any pocket of Republican strength is noteworthy.

In this upside-down campaign season when populist GOP campaigners like John McCain and Mike Huckabee surprised the pundits with their primary victories or, in the case of Ron Paul, their fundraising prowess, it almost makes sense that the party of the country club set has been winning the fundraising race among the common man. That’s right. The white-shirt/red-tie brigade of Republican presidential aspirants holds a nearly three-to-one edge among janitors, custodians, cleaners, sanitation workers, factory workers, truckers, bus drivers, barbers, security guards, and secretaries. While Democrats command the financial loyalty of architects, Republicans successfully woo contributions from the skilled craftsmen who turn their blueprints into reality — specifically, contractors, hardhats, plumbers, stonemasons, electricians, carpenters mechanics, and roofers. This trend extends to the saloons, where the Democrats carry the bartenders and the Republicans the waitresses. The GOP field even secures more financial support from teamsters, steelworkers, bricklayers, and autoworkers."

Really? Republicans are raising more money than Democrats among waitresses, janitors, and secretaries? Not to mention all those Howard Roark-like "skilled craftsmen who turn their blueprints into reality"?

Actually, no. One of Ross Douthat's commenters pointed out the obvious:

"Franc's analysis of 2008 presidential donors is fatally flawed because the FEC only requires the disclosure of personal information for donors who give more than $200. You can see this quite easily by searching the site for any name or city, and you'll find that all are people who gave in excess of $200.

Barack Obama has received at least 80% of his donations (43% of his total funds raised) from small donors who gave less than $200 and who are not listed in the FEC database, or on the HuffPo site that uses the FEC data.

For instance, Franc said that Republicans had more contributions from waitresses. If you search for "waitress", you'll only see 30 donors - that's obviously far too few, and should have tipped Franc off to the incomplete nature of the data ... Not only that, but of the 14 waitresses who gave to Republicans, 13 gave to Ron Paul."

I checked the FEC database, just to be sure. I maxed out for Obama, but two of my contributions were under $50. Guess what? They don't appear. I also pulled up a random page from Hilary Clinton's disclosure forms; none of the contributions under $200 turn up either. Which means, of course, that the majority of donations from everyone -- including those "skilled craftsmen who turn their blueprints into reality -- specifically, contractors, hardhats, plumbers, stonemasons, electricians, carpenters mechanics, and roofers" -- don't appear at all.

There are lots of people out there who want to be journalists. The National Review could surely find someone, somewhere, who bothers to check whether the data he's using actually support his conclusions. It doesn't need to publish someone like Franc, even if he is a Vice President at the Heritage Foundation. It might also consider hiring fact-checkers.

***

Unrelated NRO oddness: here's one for Atrios' Simple Answers to Stupid Questions:

"Have you noticed that a lot of the people who are trying to purge all mention of jihad are the same folk who insist that restaurants must post calorie counts on the menu?"

No.

Beat That, John Thullen!

by hilzoy

Maureen Dowd seems to have written this in earnest (or what passes for earnestness with her):

"Proclaiming that the upcoming elections in Indiana and North Carolina would be “a game changer,” Hillary and her posse pressed hard on their noble twin themes of emasculation and elitism.

Cherry-bombing the word “pansy” into the discourse, Gov. Mike Easley of North Carolina said Hillary made “Rocky Balboa look like a pansy.”

Paul Gipson, president of a steelworkers local in Portage, Ind., hailed her “testicular fortitude,” before ripping into “Gucci-wearing, latte-drinking, self-centered, egotistical people that have damaged our lifestyle.”

James Carville helpfully told Eleanor Clift of Newsweek that if Hillary gave Obama one of her vehicles of testicular fortitude, “they’d both have two.”"

Words fail.

Oh Noes! Girl Preznits!!!

by hilzoy

Via Pam's House Blend, WorldNetDaily brings us How Hillary Will Lead America To Hell. It starts with a question of vital importance to the patriarchy nation:

"The president is like the father of a big family, and who he is and what he is – his spirit – affects everyone, like the sun. It's a radiant energy that directly shines on people. Presidents invisibly shape the character and worldview of the country, with a particularly profound effect upon the young, since they are the most impressionable. (...)

So ask yourself: If Hillary Clinton – widely recognized as a pathologically lying chameleon for whom nothing is sacred but her own aggrandizement – becomes the "father of our country," just what sort of "radiant" effect do you suppose she'll have on America?"

Our national Daddy is a Girl?????? A Chameleon Girl?????????

Just in case your imagination is frozen in terror at the very thought, WorldNetDaily helpfully lays out the implications for you:

"Just reflect, for a moment, on the bizarre and seemingly inexplicable behaviors of young people we see right now – youths Tasering each other for fun on YouTube. Ubiquitous sexual debauchery at younger and younger ages. The mainstreaming of transgenderism. [Ed. note: OH NO NOT THAT!!!] Body piercing and tattooing at an ever-more pathological level – tongues, lips, eyebrows, deep body parts. Pandemic gang activity and drug abuse. Witchcraft. Satanism. Suicide. (...)

That's the insanity we've got now – despite having a basically decent, if very flawed, man in the White House.

But try to imagine Hillary Clinton as president – and Bill as first lady. The toxic cultural/governmental environment would be almost beyond imagination with the elevation of "the queen of darkness" as "father of our country."

You could expect a radical increase in shocking, self-destructive and criminal acting-out by lost souls lashing out blindly in a desperate expression of revenge toward the contemptible society that could dare elect such a person as president. Perhaps a huge upsurge in mass shootings, such as we've seen recently. Or maybe more "bug-chasing" – that's where people actively try to get infected with AIDS. Maybe homegrown suicide bombers committing horrific terrorist acts – not for Allah, but just for kicks, for non-specific revenge against the human race. No one can say what form it will take, but expect more and more weird, destructive behaviors designed for maximum shock.

Of course, nobody would be able to prove any cause and effect. But remember these words: Elevating a person like Hillary Clinton to the presidency of the United States will unleash hell in America in a way very few of us can even comprehend, let alone remedy."

NOOOO!!!!!

Just don't say that WorldNetDaily didn't warn you.

The Lincoln-Douglass Debate: Live On Fox!

by hilzoy

Two weeks ago, publius tried to imagine what the Lincoln-Douglas Debates would have looked like had they been moderated by ABC. I thought it was one of the funnier things I'd ever read. It turns out, however, that in a startling breach with precedent, Fox News has an even funnier take on those debates. Watch the video at Crooks and Liars, or just take a look:

Yep: Fox seems to be under the impression that Frederick Douglass was Lincoln's opponent for the Senate in 1858. Freed slaves were major candidates for federal office before the Civil War: who knew?

Bear in mind that one short year before Frederick Douglass' supposed run for the Illinois Senate, the Supreme Court decided Dred Scott v. Sandford. In the opinion in that case, Chief Justice Taney described one of its central issues as follows:

"The question is simply this: can a negro whose ancestors were imported into this country and sold as slaves become a member of the political community formed and brought into existence by the Constitution of the United States, and as such become entitled to all the rights, and privileges, and immunities, guarantied by that instrument to the citizen, one of which rights is the privilege of suing in a court of the United States in the cases specified in the Constitution?"

Taney's answer? No.

Justice Daniels elaborates:

"The correct conclusions upon the question here considered would seem to be these:

That, in the establishment of the several communities now the States of this Union, and in the formation of the Federal Government, the African was not deemed politically a person. He was regarded and owned in every State in the Union as property merely, and as such was not and could not be a party or an actor, much less a peer in any compact or form of government established by the States or the United States. That if, since the adoption of the State Governments, he has been or could have been elevated to the possession of political rights or powers, this result could have been effected by no authority less potent than that of the sovereignty -- the State -- exerted [p482] to that end, either in the form of legislation or in some other mode of operation. It could certainly never have been accomplished by the will of an individual operating independently of the sovereign power, and even contravening and controlling that power. That, so far as rights and immunities appertaining to citizens have been defined and secured by the Constitution and laws of the United States, the African race is not and never was recognised either by the language or purposes of the former, and it has been expressly excluded by every act of Congress providing for the creation of citizens by naturalization, these laws, as has already been remarked, being restricted to free white aliens exclusively."

Legally, for a political party to run Frederick Douglass for federal office would have been on a par, not with running a citizen of another country, but with running a shovel or a cow: a piece of property whose nature precluded its being a citizen, let alone a Senator. The most Douglass might have aspired to, in 1858, was to be granted such rights in something like the way Caligula made his horse a Consul.

But Fox and Friends think he could have run for Senate. Right.

A Note On Wright

by hilzoy

An addendum to publius' post: yesterday, I was eating dinner, and flipped on CNN. There was Jeremiah Wright, just starting his speech before the NAACP. I watched it, and thought it was very, very funny, but intellectually sort of vapid, in an unexceptionable kind of way. (Repeated theme: "Different does not mean deficient." True enough, but not exactly startling.) There was nothing angry about it, except for a couple of little digs at the media, which were more funny than angry anyways.

I hadn't planned to write about this, since I didn't think it was all that interesting. But this morning I fired up Memeorandum, and what was at the top? Michelle Malkin, with a post on "Jeremiah Wright, racial phrenologist". Wtf, I think, and click over: there I learn that Wright is today's Leonard Jeffries. (Ice people, Sun people; remember that idiocy?) I wonder: Did he make some other speech? Apparently not: the same speech that struck me as blah with humorous bits seems to have sent people on the right round the bend. Ed Morrissey:

"One of the stranger aspects of Jeremiah Wright’s speech came in the supposed neurological explanation of the differences between whites and blacks. Wright claims that the very structure of the brains of Africans differ from that of European-descent brains, which creates differences rooted in physiology and not culture:

"“Africans have a different meter, and Africans have a different tonality,” he said. Europeans have seven tones, Africans have five. White people clap differently than black people. “Africans and African-Americans are right-brained, subject-oriented in their learning style,” he said. “They have a different way of learning.” And so on."

This sounds oddly similar to claims made in The Bell Curve by Charles Murray and Richard Hernstein, a book that created a firestorm of controversy with claims that race made a difference in IQ scores, among other claims."

I don't know what Morrissey is quoting (he doesn't say), but it's a reasonably accurate summary of the relevant part of Wright's speech. Note, though, that it provides precisely no support for Morrissey's claim that Wright was talking about neurological differences. None. Wright did note that Africans and Europeans have different musical scales, and use different rhythms. This is obviously a claim about their musical traditions, not the structure of their brains; it's no more a "neurological" claim than noting that Europeans tend to render perspective differently than African artists.

Likewise, Wright claimed that black and white children tend to have different learning styles. I have no idea whether this is true or not, as a generalization, but suppose, for the sake of argument, that it is: it would not begin to imply any differences in brain structure. By the time kids arrive at school (and Wright was talking about school kids), they have, obviously, absorbed a lot from the people around them. In particular, they have gotten used to learning from the people around them in different ways, to paying attention to different sorts of cues, and to different kinds of activities. These are the sorts of things that go into a "learning style": are you a kid who learns best by silently reading? by talking things through with other people? by trial and error? by putting things in your mouth, taking them apart, turning them over so you can see what you can do with them?

There is no earthly reason to think either (a) that kids from different cultures might not have very different learning styles, or (b) that if they did, this would reflect some sort of neurological difference. None at all. In a culture in which children are taught that they should be seen but not heard, they are probably less likely to learn by talking things through, at least with adults. In a culture in which children are expected to be very quiet and not cause trouble, they are less likely to learn by seeing what they can do with things. This is obvious. And it's what Rev. Wright was talking about.

I suppose that what sent Ed Morrissey off on this tangent was this: “Africans and African-Americans are right-brained, subject-oriented in their learning style,” he said. “They have a different way of learning.” If you just focus on the adjective "right-brained", and leave out what that phrase is supposed to modify ("learning style"), I suppose it can sound neurological. But a right-brained learning style doesn't have to involve any neurological difference; it's just a learning style that tends to draw more on right-brain capacities than on left-brain ones. There's no reason that I can see to assume that the reason someone ends up with a given learning style has to be the structure of that person's brain, as opposed to the ways in which the people around them act. Likewise, I suppose you could call computer programming a left-brain career -- linear, symbolic, logical -- and architecture a right-brained one -- spatial, heavy on seeing things as wholes rather than as collections of parts, etc. But that would be completely different from claiming that what makes someone decide to be a programmer or an architect is the structure of their brain, as opposed to, say, parental pressure, financial reward, getting to know an inspirational person in one or the other profession, etc.

This was a pretty anodyne speech. It had a lot of funny moments, and a few little digs at the media, but nothing that could even remotely be construed as politically controversial.* Or so I thought, before I found out that Michelle Malkin and Captain Ed had decided to construe a relatively minor point about learning styles as a claim about neurological difference, one that (Morrissey) "sounds oddly similar to claims made in The Bell Curve." Other people take it even further: Sister Toldjah thinks he made "remarks about white brains versus black brains", and Rachel Lucas says that his point was "that black people and white people are, in fact, genetically different." (So it's not just neurological; it's a neurological difference explained by genetics!)

It's almost as though they were trying to make him sound strange and scary...