Right Wing Nut House

Here, in the winter of conservative blogger’s discontent, a small ray of sunshine has peeked through the black clouds and brightened what has otherwise been an unrelenting skien of gloom and doom.

I am talking about how president-elect Barack Obama has tacked to the center by reaching out for establishment Democrats and Clintonites to fill in the first blanks of his administration’s personnel sheet and the reaction to that by our blogging friends on the left. And then there’s the sore spot that is Joe Lieberman and the monumental sense of betrayal felt by the Kos Kids that the “traitor” wasn’t boiled in oil and his bones made into a xylophone.

Now, truth be told, the leftosphere has it all over conservative bloggers when it comes to organizing for fundraising, grass roots activism, and internet political action. To give you an idea of the discrepancy between right and left on the internet, I recently sent a congratulatory telegram to the RNC for finally hooking up all 50 state parties via Western Union telegraph. All that is left to do is build a time machine so that the Republican party can make that Great Leap Forward into the 20th century and perhaps start using that new fangled invention by Alexander Graham Bell he calls “the telephone.”

Do you think I’m being facetious? Well, maybe a little. But listen to Pat Ruffini, perhaps one of the most tech savvy guys on the right, as he explains the technological advantages Obama and the Democrats have at the present time:

Obama is not President-elect without the internet. He would not have been the nominee without the internet. And had we had a much closer race in the general election, two, three, four points, maybe, had we not maybe had this economic crisis crop up, the internet and the youth vote would have been the deciding factor in the general election as well. He’s got a network of ten million people on e-mail that are now going to be called upon to pass his agenda. So every member of Congress can expect at a minimum a couple thousand phone calls when one of his bills comes up, because he’s built this huge network that he’s now going to unleash on passing his policy agenda. Beyond that, he went into cell phones numbers, you know, announced his vice presidential pick by cell phone. He’s got a database of six to eight million cell phone numbers. Some think, I would be surprised if Republicans have a database of six to eight thousand cell phone numbers. So that is a huge, those are huge numbers, huge advantages, and it’s going to have to be, I think our number one priority tactically, like David said, we’re going to have a rich, vibrant debate about what our message should be. But I think everybody…and there is going to be plenty of disagreement on that. But I think everybody can agree, in this particular area, in technology, is something we need to get serious about fast.

So when I see the sharp end of the stick for the Democrats - the netroots - wailing and gnashing their teeth that Obama has “betrayed” them with his personnel picks and by not kicking Lieberman out of the party, I can’t help but smile and be heartened that it couldn’t happen to a nicer bunch.

Assistant Editor at The New Republic Jim Kirchick:

“With its congressional majority, the Democratic Party has refused to seriously try to end the war, to stop the bailout and to stop the trampling of civil liberties, just to name a few off the top of my head,” wrote David Sirota on the popular liberal blog OpenLeft, decrying the serial betrayals of Obama and the congressional Democratic majority. The Democratic Party, he wrote, has “faced no real retribution” for its manifold heresies, something that Sirota believes he and his band of angry bloggers must change. “We better understand why this happened,” he fumed.

Allow me to provide an answer. You don’t matter.

That the Netroots - the fabled bloggers who, in 2004, carried Howard Dean from being an unknown governor of a small state to a Democratic presidential front-runner - are not the potent political force that the media portrays was confirmed this past week when Senate Democrats resisted their “demand” that Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman be punished for endorsing John McCain for President (Lieberman was reelected as an independent in 2006 and caucuses with the Democrats). Ever since Nov. 4, when Democrats increased their majority beyond the point that Lieberman’s allegiance was necessary for them to maintain control over the Senate, punishing Lieberman has been the primary goal of liberal bloggers. For weeks, they pounded their keyboards, huffed and puffed on their Internet radio shows and called on their readers to flood the offices of Democratic senators with phone calls and e-mails demanding that Lieberman be stripped of his chairmanship over the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. Yet on Tuesday, Democrats voted an overwhelming 42-to-13 to let Lieberman keep that chairmanship.

“He wasn’t sanctioned,” seethed Markos Moulitsas, founder of the Daily Kos. “And Senate Democrats trying to make that claim are dishonestly trying to cover up the extent of their betrayal of the American people’s vote for change.”

Given the intensity of blogger rage over Lieberman, one can understand how their defeat at the ends of their own party would lend itself to hyperbole, but when did the “American people” appoint Markos Moulitsas their spokesman? And while there are many ways to interpret the outcome of this year’s presidential and congressional elections, that voters across the country wanted Joe Lieberman to be stripped of his committee chairmanship is not one of them.

I can understand the rage of the netnuts over Lieberman and disgruntlement over Obama’s national security choices.They helped out in destroying Hillary Clinton’s candidacy and here’s Obama on the verge of naming her Secretary of State. How bellicose of Obama! Couldn’t he find someone who voted against the war who was qualified?

Joseph Stiglitz is a Nobel Prize-winner in economics and a critic of corporate globalization. He should be Treasury Secretary.

Senator Russ Feingold is a champion of civil liberties. He should be Attorney General.

Robert Greenstein is head of Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. He would make a much better OMB director.

Arlene Holt Baker, executive vice president of the AFL-CIO, would be a tremendous Secretary of Labor.

And if Obama really wanted change, if he really wanted to honor progressives who backed him early on and then did the grunt work against McCain, he’d nominate Dennis Kucinich as Secretary of State.

That sure would indicate a welcome departure from empire as usual.

Well, it would be a departure from sanity at least.

Taking pleasure in another’s discomfort is not very grown up of me, I know. I should be solicitous of the left’s disappointment. I should give them words of tenderness and understanding. I should forswear criticism while encouraging them to keep the faith. I should allude to all the good things they’ve got and not despair.

Nahhhhh…

Every once and a while, even smart people say or write stuff that makes them look stupid.

Why, even I myself have fallen victim to these little intellectual hiccups. You don’t write on a blog everyday for 4 years and not, on occasion, come up with some really, really lights out, eye poppingly, drop dead clueless, monumentally ignorant stuff. Any blogger or writer who tells you differently is either a liar or so full of himself that the power of their egos would probably light up Chicago. It is an occupational hazard and is impossible to avoid. (I can’t think of anything offhand but I’m sure there are some intrepid commenters out there who would help me out.)

Of course, there are some bloggers and writers out there who make a career of writing brainless, fatuous, jaw droppingly doltish stuff. Village idiots like TBogg or the folks at Sadly No have taken bathroom humor, playground taunts, and pre-teen sex jokes to a level unseen by most adults. I would add the pathologically bigoted writings of Debbie Schlussel and just about everything written by Robert Kagan as examples on the right of writers who make a living penning witless missives, dopey treatises, and uninformed balderdash.

But even very smart, very witty people can fall victim to the Stupid Virus. Take the delightful CNBC host and commentator James Pethokoukis, who also writes a money blog for US News and World Report. He really caught a virulent form of the disease with his post entitled “How Tom Daschle might kill conservatism.”

The GOP strategist had been joking about the upcoming presidential election and giving his humorous assessments of the candidates. Then he suddenly cut out the schtick and got scary serious. “Let me tell you something, if Democrats take the White House and pass a big-government healthcare plan, that’s it. Game over. Government will dominate the economy like it does in Europe. Conservatives will spend the rest of their lives trying to turn things around and they will fail.”

And it turns out that the fearsome harbinger of free-market doom is the mild-mannered ex-U.S. senator with the little, red glasses, Tom Daschle. He’ll be the guy shepherding President Barack Obama’s healthcare plan through Congress via his probable role as secretary of health and human services. At the core of Daschle’s thinking on the subject is the creation of a “Federal Health Board that would resemble our current Federal Reserve Board” and ensure “harmonization across public programs of health-care protocols, benefits, and transparency.” (Forget secretary of state, Hillary Clinton should shoot for chairman of Fed Health and run one seventh of the U.S. economy.) And the subject of that “harmonization” would be a $100 billion to $150 billion a year plan that would let individuals (and small businesses) buy insurance from private companies or from a government plan.

Daschle and the Obamacrats certainly have the momentum: a near-landslide presidential election victory, at least 58 Democratic votes in the Senate, and a nasty recession that will make many Americans yearn for economic security. Already the health insurance companies seem set back on their heels. The industry’s trade organization now says it would accept new rules requiring them to cover pre-existing conditions as long as there was a universal mandate for all Americans to have health insurance. On top of all that, Obama clearly wants to make healthcare reform a priority in his first term, as evidenced by the selection of a heavy hitter like Daschle. And even if he wasn’t interested, Congress sure is, with Max Baucus and Ted Kennedy readying a plan in the Senate. A few observations:

1) Passage would be a political gamechanger. Recently, I stumbled across this analysis of how nationalized healthcare in Great Britain affected the political environment there. As Norman Markowitz in Political Affairs, a journal of “Marxist thought,” puts it: “After the Labor Party established the National Health Service after World War II, supposedly conservative workers and low-income people under religious and other influences who tended to support the Conservatives were much more likely to vote for the Labor Party when health care, social welfare, education and pro-working class policies were enacted by labor-supported governments.”

Passing Obamacare would be like performing exactly the opposite function of turning people into investors. Whereas the Investor Class is more conservative than the rest of America, creating the Obamacare Class would pull America to the left. Michael Cannon of the Cato Institute, who first found that wonderful Markowitz quote, puts it succinctly in a recent blog post: “Blocking Obama’s health plan is key to the GOP’s survival.”

I’ll go even further and say that passing Obamacare would turn the US from from being the world’s only superpower into a second class backwater with little more influence than France on the world stage. This may happen anyway thanks to the financial meltdown and the subsequent $2 trillion and rising in bailouts. Let’s face it; trillion dollar deficits and half a trillion dollar defense budgets are an impossibility. They cannot exist in the same universe. You can’t cut entitlements in a deep recession and since there is only around $35 billion in real discretionary spending to be cut, something has got to give somewhere. With Democrats in charge, it will be the defense budget.

But would Obamacare “kill” conservatism? That’s something of a nutty idea considering that it comes from an analysis given in a journal devoted to that wildly successful political philosophy known as Marxism. In a deterministic world where we are all happy little Commie robots, we would “vote our interests” and cast our ballot for the politician who promised us the most goodies. Democrats and liberals have been whining for years that Americans in flyover country have been hypnotized or fooled by Republicans into actually voting against politicians who will give them everything necessary to make their lives easier.

But determinism is dead, killed by the reality that people simply don’t act the way the Marxists say we should act. If they did, I guarantee you the old Soviet Union would still be with us while the United States would have gone the way of the Dodo bird. In the aggregate, people do not make decisions for themselves or their families based on what is best for their “class” or even care much about how their lives might be improved at the margins by voting for big government liberals. It has never been that way in America when voting for president and is only partly true when voting for Congressmen and Senators.

A study done earlier this year and published in the Journal of Leadership Studies revealed some of the real reasons people choose one presidential candidate over the other - and it ain’t because one of them will shower them with gifts from the government:

An article to be published in the new Journal of Leadership Studies (Wiley Periodicals, Inc.) on February 28th discusses results of researching and analyzing data from the seven most recent U.S. presidential elections comparing Democratic and Republican Party candidates who were successful in securing votes. The analysis reveals what tipped the scales with voters and how perceptions of leader intelligence, feelings of pride and hope, as well as feelings of fear and anger, were found to impact the decision process, rather than the issues that candidates present.

Researchers M. David Albritton, Sharon L. Oswald and Joseph S. Anderson used data from the National Election Studies (NES) division of the Center for Political Studies at the University of Michigan to expand upon previous work on voter attitudes, perceptions of leaders, and voter support. They found perceived intelligence, inspirational qualities, and charisma to be key factors in the formation of voter opinion. Instead of the varying positions on issues, voter’s perceptions of these key traits are found to be predictors of whether or not that voter will consider a leader to be of high quality.

How a candidate’s charisma as well as how fear plays into a voter’s evaluation was also examined. Intuitively perhaps, fear played a negative role toward a candidate. Individuals who generated stronger feelings of voter fear were considered “lower quality leaders.” However, fear also helped shape positive behaviors toward a rival candidate. Surprisingly, charisma, traditionally considered an asset, was often viewed negatively when framed in the context of manipulating others toward personal gain.

The vote for president is the most personal political decision most Americans make. Political pros have known for decades, thanks to several landmark social psychology studies, what goes into the decision making process of citizens when they choose a president. First, as with any politician, it is likability that is most translatable into votes. Next comes shared values or comfortability. The third is fear of the alternative. Ideology plays into the comfortability index while positions on the issues and campaign promises are almost always way down the list.

Voting for other federal offices is not quite as personal but for House members especially, it is not national issues as much as it is local concerns that determine competitive races - a dwindling number thanks to finely honed redistricting techniques. More than anything, what will keep Democrats in power will be how the new Congressional district lines will be drawn following the 2010 census.

The Senate is a different story but is still an electoral body dominated by incumbents thanks to their massive advantage in fundraising, name recognition, and their ability to build a sophisticated political ground game over their 6 year term. Here again, likability and shared values mean more than any specific issues.

In the kind of deterministic construct offered by those who believe that Obamacare and other proposed social programs will kill conservatism because people will be so overjoyed that government will offer them “security” that they will vote for big government liberals for the foreseeable future fail to understand that first, we are a different people than the Europeans despite what many on the left who have abandoned the idea of American exceptionalism are telling us; and second, such twaddle reveals a lack of understanding of basic political psychology.

America has been gradually adapting itself to the idea that health care is a right, not a privilege. I would say to my conservative friends that politically - and realistically - we have probably lost this argument. The issue plays to the people’s basic sense of fairness and despite their misgivings about government run boondoggles, would support some kind of national health insurance that guaranteed everyone’s access to at least minimal care.

But I would say to my friends on the left that this doesn’t mean Americans will support the kind of massive intrusion being planned by Kennedy-Baucus or the Obama Administration - especially after conservatives get through informing the public of just what it means to have mandates, “Federal Health Boards” and other cockamamie ideas that limit freedom and choices. There are alternatives - some free market options as well as a mix of government-industry proposals - that would accomplish the goal without having government get on the slippery slope of eventually controlling the entire health care industry.

But even if Kennedy-Baucus were to pass - highly unlikely at this point - would that mean the “death of conservatism?” If Marxism couldn’t be killed off by it’s massive, world wide failures it is extremely difficult to see how conservatism could be executed by the passage of a government program - especially one that would be amenable to alteration once its deficiencies were exposed by its application to the real world. Conservatives may not be able to get rid of national health insurance. But there is no doubt that they will be able to run against its failures by proposing sensible alternatives and reforms.

Conservatism is a philosophy. I have had many arguments with my conservative friends over how to make this philosophy into a real world, governing ideal in a 21st century industrialized democracy. I am unsure if on some level, that “governing ideal” hasn’t run its course and lost its way. Making conservative principles and a conservative approach to issues relevant again will take a careful study of where we went wrong and some fresh ideas of how to translate the principles and values of conservatism into concrete, programmatic proposals that can compete in the great American marketplace of ideas once again.

Jack is back in a two hour Season 7 preview this Sunday on Fox at 8 EST.

On one level, the question asked in the hed is on every 24 fan’s lips: Can the show come back and return to its former high level of excellence? Always technically flawless, there is universal agreement that Season 6 last year failed on numerous levels; the hackneyed and stale plot, stilted and stupid dialogue, not believable supporting characters, and a general feeling of aimlessness that the producers and writers claimed afterwards was the result of them getting to mid season and not knowing where to take the show.

So the question of whether the show has run its course or whether it has one more slam bang, shoot ‘em up, edge of your seat, thrill a minute year left in it is definitely an open one. This is true especially for those of us who saw 24 as if not a “conservative” show then certainly one of the few TV dramas with an unabashedly pro-American viewpoint on the war on terror. Despite all the opposition Jack got from the politicians and the bureaucracy, there was no mistaking who were the good guys and who were the bad guys. And the bad guys were really bad - especially the American collaborators.

Unlike other political shows like West Wing, a self consciously liberal show that had one dimensional characters and an unrealistic view of Washington, 24 has been enjoyed by both liberals and conservatives for mostly different reasons. It has been called “The guilty pleasure of the political class” because of its 14 million viewers, a large segment of the Washington establishment watches the show religiously. Conservaties love the fact that, with a few glaring exceptions, the show has been true to who we are fighting and why. Liberals love it because it portrays moral choices in nuanced ways - not everything is black and white. This is especially true regarding the issue of torture as 24 may be the only TV show in history that stands accused of encouraging our men to abuse prisoners.

I have written that Jack Bauer is something of a goon, programmed for violence and whose methods epitomize the ends-means motif. Even the early years of the show when Jack’s motivations were built on love of country and devotion to duty, the character routinely stepped over the line. Not just in his use of torture but also his refusal to play bureaucratic games. There were times when Jack was as much at war with the national security bureaucracy as he was with terrorists. The lone hero fighting nature (the government) as well as the enemy has been a powerful theme in our myth making since our founding. Daniel Boone, Kit Carson, Davey Crockett, and the legendary lawmen of the frontier such as Wyatt Earp and Bill Hitchcock all to one degree or another have been portrayed as heroes who lived life according to their own set of moral precepts and beholden to no one.

And what of Jack Bauer, a modern American hero whose persona, perhaps more than any other cultural indicator, has reflected the changing attitudes in America toward the war, the Bush Administration, and our role in the world.

It really has been a unique experience watching the show these last 7 years. From the first season, which began in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 to the uncertain and conflicted season 6 that saw a public soured on Iraq, moody and unsatisfied with the direction of the country, there is no show on television, no other comparable yardstick that we can measure how we have changed as a nation. There was a gradual, almost imperceptible change of focus as the fight with international terrorism went from a straight up clash between good and evil to now a muddled panorama where the good guys are fighting their own government as much as they are battling the real foe.

There have been complaints in recent years also of a more PC-outlook on the war. I think this is overblown somewhat but there is no denying that the focus has moved from Islamic terrorists to others who could be Islamists (Chechens) and most especially, their American collaborators that included Jack’s own family last year. This was a culmination of what I termed Jack’s “descent into darkness” as even his slavish devotion to duty took second place to his personal motives for revenge; against the Chinese for kidnapping and torturing him, against the murderers of the only friends he knew, and against a father who betrayed not only the country, but Jack both as a child and now as a grown up.

At the top I said that “redemption” had several levels of meaning. And perhaps the truest significance of the title for Sunday’s two hour preview of Season 7 is found in Jack Bauer’s personal journey.

I have spent a lot of time chronicling the development of the Bauer character over the years (See my contribution to this book Secrets of 24). Jack’s character has developed logically and independently from the changes wrought by our changing society. They reflect what has happened to him and those around him during the course of the show.

The first three seasons of the show, Bauer’s overwhelming devotion to duty and country made him an easy hero to like and admire. When he tortured someone, you were sure there was no other way to save millions of American lives. But as the years went on and he lost his wife, his family, his friends, and finally, losing his one connection to the world of the ordinary (his putative fiance Valerie), something happened to Bauer.

The devotion to duty was there but he began to see the people who were giving him orders to “get the job done” (kill,torture, to break the law) as an even bigger enemy. Now he was killing for revenge, for spite, to settle old scores. He had descended into a hellish nightmare of blood where his morally questionable decisions became not the actions of a hero but the coldly calculating brutality of a thug.

In short, he had become what he had been fighting against all those years. Inured to violence, it seemed at times that his only release would be a violent death - something he was willing to see happen on several occassions. He was, he believed, “irredeemable.” Hence, this upcoming TV movie preview of Season 7 may either give Bauer a new lease on life or, allow him the release he has so often craved these last few seasons.

The plot of the movie is simple. Jack is wanted for his testimony before Congress and, rather than play that game, he escapes to Africa where he hooks up with a former special forces colleague who has become a missionary in the fictional country of Sangala.

Jack is in Sangala working at a school run by Carl Benton (Robert Carlyle) a friend of Jack’s from when he was in Special Forces. This works out well, because when Juma’s henchman Col. Dubaku (Hakeem Kae-Kazim) comes looking for the kids it means Benton has a convenient stash of semi-automatic weapons on hand for Jack to play with. A well-choreographed and exciting firefight ensues, and Jack does his usual bang-up job of taking down the enemy, but in the end Juma’s men get the upper hand.

The Tables Are Turned: When Jack is captured by the bad guys, he ends up being subjected to torture (they want him to give up the whereabouts of the kiddos), and then we happily learn that he has at least one move in common with fellow TV badass Sayid Jarrah. Care to guess what that move might be?

The New President Rocks: Cherry Jones is perfect as new President Allison Taylor, a woman who is simultaneously warm and chilly. You get the sense that she’s a softie on one level and a very cool customer on another. The scenes where she meets with President Daniels (Powers Boothe) to finish up the transition between their two administrations positively crackle with tension and conflict.

Beware the Butterfly Effect: Jon Voight’s Jonas Hodges is going to be a brilliant villain. He has a downright evil gleam in his eye as he rearranges the globe in to his personal satisfaction, despite the fact that his self-interest ravages the health and happiness of millions of others. In addition to the children who are brainwashed and destroyed by Juma, there is one scene where a Sangalan woman essentially volunteers herself into sexual slavery if only State Department official Frank Tramell (Gil Bellows) will help her escape the country. Somehow that one scene illustrates the debasement of an entire nation, and it all leads back to Hodges.

I’m sure you can see the potential for both a huge success and unmitigated disaster as represented by this plot outline. Will Jack go all PC on us? I believe this to be a definite possibility because one of the show’s creators, conservative Joel Surnow, said goodbye to the production last April. It remains to be seen whether Howard Gordon - a great television man but with questionable politics - can keep the show from degenerating into a weepy, politically correct exposition on how bad the world is with America not making things any better.

However, if the show concentrates on “redeeming” Jack Bauer, there are also definite possibilities for an emotional and dramatic success. I still think the only ending possible is the death of Bauer - the only ending that would make sense given what has transpired in his life previously. But if he could face his end with the knowledge that the rivers of blood he has had to navigate these last years was but a prologue to his selfless demise, it may prove to be some of the most captivating drama in the history of the tube. Not relief at his own death but a simple act of giving - without remorse - would put a emotional coda on the series and send all of us fans away satisfied.

Is this too much to ask? Probably yes. But like you, I will be watching every minute and cheering Bauer on as he battles both the enemy and his own personal demons, willing him to win out in the end.

Salagadoola mechicka boola
bibbidi-bobbidi-boo
Put ‘em together and what have you got
bibbidi-bobbidi-boo

Salagadoola mechicka boola
bibbidi-bobbidi-boo
It’ll do magic believe it or not
bibbidi-bobbidi-boo
(Music: Mack David and Al Hoffman; Lyrics: Jerry Livingston

It is either a serious discussion on the influence of the Christian right in the Republican party or a nonsensical debate about whether morals informed by religious beliefs have a place in the public square.According to Kathleen Parker and Kevin Drum, there is actually a question about the latter.

Parker:

As Republicans sort out the reasons for their defeat, they likely will overlook or dismiss the gorilla in the pulpit.

Three little letters, great big problem: G-O-D.

I’m bathing in holy water as I type.

To be more specific, the evangelical, right-wing, oogedy-boogedy branch of the GOP is what ails the erstwhile conservative party and will continue to afflict and marginalize its constituents if reckoning doesn’t soon cometh.

Simply put: Armband religion is killing the Republican Party. And, the truth — as long as we’re setting ourselves free — is that if one were to eavesdrop on private conversations among the party intelligentsia, one would hear precisely that.

What does she mean “oogedy boogedy?” And I note that most commentators on this article missed her allusion to “armband religion.” Now let’s think a moment and ask ourselves, what group in history is famous for wearing armbands? The Boy Scouts? Maybe, but do you seriously believe Parker was alluding to the Boy Scouts in her little self-aggrandizing missive?

Parker was comparing the religious right with those other famous armband wearers, the Brown Shirts of Nazi fame. But she did it in such a cutesy way, we will forgive her, right? Boy, I bet Parker’s little smear elicited a snicker or two from her new found friends on the left - a crowd she seems to be playing to more and more lately.

But it is the use of the pejorative “oogedy boogedy” that has everyone up in arms on the right. Jonah Goldberg wonders what all the fuss is about:

My email box runneth over with nice attaboys and more than a few interesting criticisms regarding my post about Kathleen Parker. Keying off some of the criticisms, here’s one thing I want to know, as I sit here at the Whither Conservatism conference. What aspects of the Christian Right amount to oogedy-boogedyism? I take oogedy-boogedy to be a pejorative reference to absurd superstition and irrational nonsense. So where has the GOP embraced to its detriment oogedy-boogedyism? With the possible exception of some variants of creationism (which is hardly a major issue at the national level in the GOP, as much as some on the left and a few on the right try to make it one), I’m at a loss as to what Kathleen is referring to. Opposition to abortion? Opposition to gay marriage? Euthanasia? Support for prayer in school?

Goldberg makes the excellent observation that there all sorts of legitimate points to be made both in favor and against those positions. Indeed, I have found some secular arguments against gay marriage to be if not compelling, certainly reasonable and based on both the law and common sense. Hence, “oogedy boogedism” actually expresses a nebulous kind of fear of the religious right more than it identifies any specific proposals that smack of “armband religion” as so cleverly construed by Parker.

Kevin Drum disagrees:

There will always be plenty of votes for a culturally conservative party. That’s not the problem. The problem is the venomous, spittle-flecked, hardcore cultural conservatism that’s become the public face of the evangelical wing of the GOP. It’s the wing that doesn’t just support more stringent immigration laws, but that turns the issue into a hate fest against La Raza, losing 3 million Latino votes in the process. It’s the wing that isn’t just a little skittish about gay marriage, but that turns homophobia into a virtual litmus test, losing 6 million young voters in the process. It’s the wing that isn’t just religious, but that treats belief as a precondition to righteousness, losing 2 million secular voters in the process. It’s the wing that isn’t just nostalgic for old traditions, but that fetishizes the heartland as the only real America, losing 7 million urban voters in the process. It’s the wing that goes into a legislative frenzy over Terry Schiavo but six months later can barely rouse itself into more than a yawn over the destruction of New Orleans.

What Drum doesn’t mention is the utter contempt liberals and Democrats had for the truth in defining the Republican positions on some of those issues. A “hatefest against Latinos?” Only if you’re a Democrat and want to smear your opponent by spreading that notion. Taking the Gilchrist or Tom Tancredo attitude and position on immigration as the mainstream conservative or GOP position is as ludicrous as the GOP trying to make Cindy Sheehan the poster girl for the Democrats on national security.

What Drum is either too much a partisan to say or just clueless about is that the Democrats successfully demonized Republicans on just about all of those issues he mentions above. He is alluding to a successful political strategy not the reality of where the movement or the party stands - with the exception of gay marriage. (Is he seriously saying that 7 million young voters abandoned the GOP because of that? Young voters have been trending left since 1992, long before gay marriage was even on the radar.)

Fetishizing the heartland as “the only real America” was a direct response to urban Democrats and liberals who have made trashing us out here in flyover country (a term invented by liberals) a cottage industry for authors, pundits, and idiot bloggers like Drum. Perhaps Drum forgets his liberal colleagues and their pointed smears of heartland voters after the 2004 election when calls for secession and sneering at voters in “Jesusland” was all the rage on the left. Fetishizing urban voters as smarter, more sophisticated, more worthy than those of us in the heartland might explain some of that pushback, wouldn’t you think - especially since a more liberal (not necessarily tolerant) attitude toward social issues is a litmus test in and of itself among urban elites.

Drum’s claims of “lost voters” as a result of the Christian right may be true in the aggregate but his specifics leave a lot to be desired. I too, have pointed out that the Republican party is now identified not as the party of fiscal conservatism (How could it be?) but as the party of anti-abortion and anti-gay marriage. Given the alternatives - an economy in ruins, unpopular wars, a despised president, corruption, and incompetence - it is perhaps understandable that the GOP saw its path to victory in turning out its evangelical base in huge numbers. As it turned out, that too, failed.

Now what? If Parker’s “oogedy boogedy” is an elitist’s exaggeration of what the religious right truly represents but if Goldberg is too dismissive of the public face of this movement - the Dobsons, the Ralph Reeds, even the Sarah Palins whose dogmatic approach to the political permutations of social issues turns off many urban, heartland, and in between voters - where can the GOP go to get its mojo back? (Apologies to Mother Jones and Jennifer Rubin.)

What the GOP needs is a little prestidigitation - some Bibbidi, Bobbidi, Boo to drive away the oogedy boogedies and allow the true nature of conservatism and Republican principles to dominate the national debate.

We aren’t going to do that with John Boehner as minority leader. Nor are we going to do it with the bulk of GOP Congressmen now who will no doubt be meekly acquiescing to Obama’s plans to nationalize health insurance, emasculate our defenses, seize control of our schools, and generally impose a liberal template on what still is a country that if it doesn’t lean center right can now be termed a “center-center” nation. More left leaning than they were 20 years ago, the electorate can hardly be termed “liberal” in any sense of the word. Obama won because people believed he would cut their taxes. When queried, the voters still want a strong defense and want a sane fiscal policy.

Those are conservative issues, my friends. The GOP’s mistake in trying to use social issues as a wedge rather than gathering under their tent the bulk of voters who would cast their ballot for a candidate who espoused Republican principles is what lost them the election.

The people may want some form of national health insurance - but they don’t want to break the bank doing it. They may want out of Iraq - but they don’t want our national defenses shredded. And the disconnect between the laundry list of social programs for the middle class offered by Obama and the taxes that would need to be raised to pay for them hasn’t sunk in yet with voters. When it does - when the trillion dollar deficits start to pile up - the Republicans don’t want to be standing too close to the Democrats lest they be hit with the rotten fruit that will be aimed at the left.

This entire argument among conservatives and Republicans comes down to tactics. We just went through an election that proved pretty conclusively that promoting social issues and making them the centerpiece of Republican orthodoxy is just too problematic - too open to dishonest liberal counterattacks that exaggerate and even lie about how pernicious and evil the Godbotherers truly are - oogedy boogedy in spades. The left successfully demonized the religious right and Republicans stupidly made them the poster children for the party. The millions of secular conservatives and religious moderates who had made up the backbone of the GOP fled in terror from the prospect of inquisitions and and pogroms - fostered by the left - and voted Democratic or stayed at home on election day.

Can the two wings of the party be integrated into a coherent whole? This is what will occupy conservatives and Republicans for the foreseeable future. The Kathleen Parkers of this world wants the religious right muzzled and beaten down. The evangelicals and the rest of the base want litmus tests in order to excommunicate those who disagree with them.

The schism is not as wide as it might appear. There is, after all, more that unites us than divides us. But it will take a towering personality or, God forbid, a shock like 9/11 to make the two sides realize it.

I don’t know whether Dick Cheney or Albert Gonzalez are really in trouble as a result of an indictment handed down by a Willacy County grand jury in Texas. But if I were a ham sandwich, I would definitely take it on the lam:

A South Texas grand jury has indicted Vice President Dick Cheney and former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales on state charges related to the alleged abuse of prisoners in Willacy County’s federal detention centers.

The indictment, which had not yet been signed by the presiding judge, was one of seven released Tuesday in a county that has been a source of bizarre legal and political battles in recent years. Another of the indictments named a state senator on charges of profiting from his position.

Willacy County District Attorney Juan Angel Guerra himself had been under indictment for more than a year and half before a judge dismissed the indictments last month. This flurry of charges came in the twilight of Guerra’s tenure, which ends this year after nearly two decades in office. He lost convincingly in a Democratic primary in March.

Cheney’s indictment on a charge of engaging in an organized criminal activity criticizes the vice president’s investment in the Vanguard Group, which holds interests in the private prison companies running the federal detention centers. It accuses Cheney of a conflict of interest and “at least misdemeanor assaults” on detainees because of his link to the prison companies.

Megan Mitchell, a spokeswoman for Cheney, declined to comment on Tuesday, saying that the vice president had not yet received a copy of the indictment.

The indictment accuses Gonzales of using his position while in office to stop an investigation in 2006 into abuses at one of the privately-run prisons.

Of course, lefties are short stroking their way to ecstasy. Our friends at Firedoglake:

Gonzales and Cheney have been indicted by a grand jury. The indictment is related to prisoner abuse at Wallace County Federal detention centers, which are run by Vanguard Group. Cheney has an investment in Vanguard and is charged with conflict of interest and “misdemeanor assault” on detainees through the company, while Gonzales is charged with using his office to quash an investigation. (h/t Perris)

Get out the popcorn, this could be interesting.

And maybe it will shine a light on the privatization of the prison system in the US, which has led to even greater abuses of prisoners than before.

The “Gun Toting Liberal” takes aim at…himself:

If you bothered to click on the aforementioned AP article, you’d have learned the South Texas jurorists indicted The Vampire the vice president on CRIMINAL charges stemming from making money through some sort of a hedgefund designed to abuse and torture federal prisoners and his pal “Gonzo” for — what else? — OBSTRUCTING federal investigations into The Veep’s [again... "alleged"] high crimes and misdemeanors. Gotta give ‘em both credit, because, again — COUNT of our Lame Duck President Bush to bail his fellow criminals out of any sort of a legal mess this whole fiasco might lead to — in other words, the only CHANCE we might have to see this trio behind bars is via International law and many, MANY of my fellow Americans share my point of view that justice just MIGHT be served the day they are sentenced for and held accountable by, The Hague for their [Pssst -- again -- "alleged"] war crimes. I don’t know about you, but I haven’t seen too many “pardons” going on over there lately; correct me if I’m wrong, which I, of course, frequently AM.

So just who is this brave, intrepid prosecutor who dares to do what the mealy-mouthed, weak-kneed, chicken-sh*t Democrats in Congress have failed to do all these years

Willacy County District Attorney Juan Angel Guerra himself had been under indictment for more than a year and half before a judge dismissed the indictments last month. This flurry of charges came in the twilight of Guerra’s tenure, which ends this year after nearly two decades in office. He lost convincingly in a Democratic primary in March.

[snip]

After Guerra’s office was raided as part of the investigation early last year, he camped outside the courthouse in a borrowed camper with a horse, three goats and a rooster. He threatened to dismiss hundreds of cases because he believed local law enforcement had aided the investigation against him.

On Tuesday, Guerra said the indictments speak for themselves. He said the prison-related charges are a national issue and experts from across the country testified to the grand jury. Asked about the indictments against local players in the justice system who had pursued him, Guerra said, “the grand jury is the one that made those decisions, not me.”

It is not your average prosecutor who would camp out in front of the courthouse with a horse. And if he is an extremely horny fellow, I see the reason for the 3 goats. But it takes a certified, first class, loony tunes, nutcase to subject a rooster to this kind of abuse. Was he using the fowl as an alarm clock? Maybe it was part of some secret religious rite where eventually, he would have bitten the rooster’s head off a la Alice Cooper. More likey, he enjoyed stimulating conversations with the bird about the law and how he would get back at his “enemies.”

There has been no word on the fate of the ham sandwich but I’m betting it’s already disappeared. Evidently, Guerra was contemplating indicting a bologna sandwich as well — for impersonating food — but in the end, the grand jury balked and then broke for lunch. Guerra thought it suspicious that several of the jurors appeared to be eating bagged lunches with both ham and bologna sandwiches but before he could make his move, the evidence disappeared.

This isn’t the first “ham sandwich” indictment in the history of US jurisprudence and it won’t be the last. Perhaps the most famous Deli indictment was the Jim Garrison travesty that saw a perfectly innocent man - who happened to be a homosexual - indicted for the Kennedy assassination.

Clay Shaw got caught up in a Jim Garrison’s desire to be governor of Louisiana while also being the victim of the prosecutor’s pathological hatred of homosexuals. The Oliver Stone film JFK depicting this man as a hero may be the most cockeyed, dishonest, twisted, and disgusting view of history ever put on film. It’s as if Springtime for Hitler was actually made as a serious look a Nazi Germany.

Garrison has been thoroughly, completely, and deservedly discredited by so many reputable historical and journalistic sources that one must studiously and deliberately ignore the facts in order to give him even the benefit of the doubt for making an honest mistake. Garrison based his indictment on a “tip” from an alcoholic private investigator named Jack Martin who confessed to the FBI within a week of the assassination that he concocted the whole story while he was drunk.

In truth, the “story” Garrison tried to sell kept changing as his “investigation” unfolded. What was clear was his sick animus directed against gay men. He had actually made a name for himself “cleaning up” prostitution in the French Quarter a few years earlier. What is rarely mentioned when portraying Garrison as a courageous battler for justice is that almost all of the arrests in that effort were of gay men - many who were not prostitutes but simply cruising.

His first “theory” of the JFK plot was that it was a “homosexual thrill killing.” Only later, when that theory fell apart because one of the main “plotters,” a homosexual named David Ferrie, died of cancer (that Garrison said was actually given to him by the CIA) did he charge “the military industrial complex” with the crime.

Writing in the Saturday Evening Post, James Phelan relates a wacky, surreal conversation he had with Garrison about the plot:

In an effort to get Garrison’s story into focus, I asked him the motive of the Kennedy conspirators. He told me that the murder at Dallas had been a homosexual plot.
“They had the same motive as Loeb and Leopold, when they murdered Bobbie Franks in Chicago back in the twenties,” Garrison said. “It was a homosexual thrill-killing, plus the excitement of getting away with a perfect crime. John Kennedy was everything that Dave Ferrie was not — a successful, handsome, popular, wealthy, virile man. You can just picture the charge Ferrie got out of plotting his death.”

I asked how he had learned that the murder was a homosexual plot.

“Look at the people involved,” Garrison said. “Dave Ferrie, homosexual. Clay Shaw, homosexual. Jack Ruby, homosexual.”

“Ruby was a homosexual?”

“Sure, we dug that out,” Garrison said. “His homosexual nickname was Pinkie. That’s three. Then there was Lee Harvey Oswald.”

But Oswald was married and had two children, I pointed out.

“A switch-hitter who couldn’t satisfy his wife,” Garrison said. “That’s all in the Warren Report.” He named two more “key figures” whom he labeled homosexual.

“That’s six homosexuals in the plot,” Garrison said. “One or maybe two, okay. But all six homosexual? How far can you stretch the arm of coincidence?”

And then there was Garrison’s Section 8 discharge from the army:

In 1952, Jim Garrison was relieved of duty in the National Guard. Doctors at the Brooke Army Hospital in Texas diagnosed him as suffering from a “severe and disabling psychoneurosis” which “interfered with his social and professional adjustment to a marked degree.” The evaluation further said that Garrison “is considered totally incapacitated from the standpoint of military duty and moderately incapacitated in civilian adaptability,” and recommended long-term psychotherapy.

Garrison has been quoted as saying that the information was placed in his file by the government in order to discredit him.

And this is the man that Oliver Stone made a hero of in JFK? Clay Shaw’s life was ruined - being outed as a homosexual at that time was the kiss of death. He died a broken man a few years after his quick (45 minute) acquittal by the jury. Perhaps Garrison’s abuse of power was best summed up by former New Orleans District Attorney during the 1990’s Harry Connick (father of musician/actor Harry Connick, Jr.) who tells investigator Gerald Posner (Case Closed) what he told Oliver Stone when the film maker asked his opinion of the Shaw Trial:

“I said I thought it was one of the grossest, most extreme miscarriages of justice in the annals of American judicial history. And Stone said, ‘Well, we are going to do the movie anyway,’ as if I was suggesting he shouldn’t do it. I said: ‘Well, do whatever you want to do. I have nothing to say about that. You were asking and I was telling you that it was just a miscarriage of justice. An innocent man was plucked out of somebody’s mind and made a defendant in a criminal case.’ “

Both Garrison and Guerra have proven the adage that, if he tries hard enough, a prosecutor can get a ham sandwich indicted. But a ham sandwich doesn’t have a reputation nor does the deli specialty have a family, friends, and loved ones who are affected by the crazies who sometimes end up dispensing justice in our system. Such men — including the Duke rape case prosecutor Mike Nifong — deserve as much disapprobation as can be heaped upon their heads as they are ushered off the stage into an infamous retirement.

It’s not a done deal yet - apparently there are concerns about some of Billy’s more creative billing procedures connected to his globe trotting - but if Obama thinks her confirmation wouldn’t be too bruising an affair, there’s a good chance that Hillary Clinton will take the job of Secretary of State in the new Administratiion:

Hillary Clinton plans to accept the job of secretary of state offered by Barack Obama, who is reaching out to former rivals to build a broad coalition administration, the Guardian has learned.

Obama’s advisers have begun looking into Bill Clinton’s foundation, which distributes millions of dollars to Africa to help with development, to ensure that there is no conflict of interest. But Democrats do not believe that the vetting is likely to be a problem.

Clinton would be well placed to become the country’s dominant voice in foreign affairs, replacing Condoleezza Rice. Since being elected senator for New York, she has specialised in foreign affairs and defence. Although she supported the war in Iraq, she and Obama basically agree on a withdrawal of American troops.

I wrote a few days ago that Obama would be crazy to offer it to her and she would be nuts to take it. And there is still a chance she could turn it down or that Bill Clinton’s finances will turn out to be too problematic to pass muster with the Foreign Relations Committee.

But apparently, the offer is serious and she wants to take the job. Why? What do both principles have to gain?

Obama is in an extremely strong position - perhaps the strongest of any incoming president since Reagan. To say he has a blank check to do what he wants is perhaps an overstatement but ask yourself, who is going to stop him. The press? His own party? His supporters?

It certainly won’t be Republicans stopping him - not with their numbers and their attitude. So Obama doesn’t need anyone to make his administration. He can choose who he pleases and not have to expend the political capitol to get  them confirmed.

For Hillary, her place is secure in the Senate as would be her position as leader - if not in name than certainly as a result of her enormous visibility and influence. From the senate, she could wait to see if Obama falls on his face and mount a challenge in 2012 if the opportunity were to arise.

But she would also be just one of many senators who would take center stage over the next few years as Obama’s initiatives worked their way through Congress. She would be visible but she might consider an option that would not only give her TV face time whenever she wanted it but add to her resume some tangible accomplishments that would cement her status as frontrunner for either 2012 or 2016. Hence, the idea of Hillary for Secretary of State.

Obama will apparently be concentrating on domestic policies for the first several months - perhaps a year of his term. He needs someone who doesn’t need (and wouldn’t accept) much supervision. Setting broad goals in Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Middle East, Hillary would be tasked to achieve those goals - how would be pretty much up to her. She would be the most independent Secretary of State since Kissinger - and easily the most visible.

But this arrangement would almost certainly cause trouble for both principles. Obama may figure that having her in the cabinet will short circuit any plans she has to challenge him in 2012. If the economy really goes south and despite the efforts of the Obamamedia and the Democrats his policies are seen as the cause, it won’t matter where Hillary is, she will make a run. I can’t see her having the patience to wait until 2016 unless Obama is a smashing success. Unless we can believe that she has given up her desire to be president, 2012 looms large in both her and Obama’s plans.

For Obama then, he would get Hillary’s (and Bill’s) prestige and extensive contacts around the world - for maybe two years. That’s how long I give this marriage. Eventually, Obama will tire of the drama, the backbiting, the blame casting, the whispers that build the Clinton’s up at his expense, and either fire her or she will resign on her own. If the climate is right, she would pick up where she left off and make a run. If not, she can always run for the senate (or governor) and use that position as a power base for 2016.

Obama and the country could do worse than Hillary Clinton at State. I think she proved during the campaign that she has a much more realistic outlook on the world than the naive Obama and would probably be one of the only Obama foreign policy advisors who would advocate or support military action against Iran as a last resort. She is a steady friend of Israel, a more practical advocate for an Iraq drawdown, would support a surge of forces in Afghanistan, and generally has a more real politik outlook than the Obama crew. We could have done a lot worse if you consider the gaggle of far left liberals Obama tapped as his advisors during the campaign.

A bold move by Obama - one that I think he is going to come to regret.

My five year old Alienware PC burned through its power supply yesterday. And when I say “burned through” I mean the acrid smell of toasting electronics was quite prevalent in my office. It appears that I didn’t clean the air portals often enough and the machine finally screamed “enough” and gave up the ghost.

Could that have been the reason my machine was slowing to a crawl after a few hours online? (Blogger shakes his head and begins to cry).

The nearest rescue for my machine was 70 miles away. Streator, IL is a lovely town but it is smack dab in the middle of nowhere. We had to go to the Best Buy in Bloomington to get a new power supply. And, just in case, we got my Christmas present early - a new HP laptop that really is handsome and functional.

To make a long story short, we put in the new power supply but it still doesn’t work. It now turns on alright but soon after, you hear 3 distinctive beeps and then the box shuts off. The power supply is fine. The sound system and monitor are getting juice. Something else was affected by the burnout so we have to pack the box up and drive all the way back to the Geek Squad at Best Buy (or find a repair place that is closer) just to see if we can’t get it working again.

I’d say screw it except for the pics, the docs, and some programs that I paid for and now don’t want the hassle of having to remember which ones they were and go back to download them again. It is definitely worth fixing if only for the 1st class sound and video cards that make watching movies and listening to music such a joy. So for the foreseeable future, I am going to have to write using this very nice laptop that will definitely take some getting used to.

Ergonomically, it sucks the big one. My neck and shoulders already ache because I have yet to experiment and find a comfortable working mode. For someone online for 14 hours a day, this is very serious. My desk is built for a desktop and am limited at the moment because we don’t have a router so I can work away from my internet connection.

But that is the least of my worries. So far, no complaints about Vista. And I was able to import all my AOL bookmarks which is making life this morning a lot easier (couldn’t do it before using XP for some reason - or I never figured out how). Now I just have to download Firefox, Skype, and maybe one or two other “can’t do without” programs and I’ll be fixed for a while.

I will try to write something later if I can get more comfortable. Right now, I can stand being in this position for maybe an hour before I have to take a break.

Any suggestions, analysis of my computer problem, or just catcalls from the peanut gallery would be appreciated.

Rick Moran
Proprietor

I have not written at all about Lebanon since the cave in by March 14th forces at Doha last May, giving in to the terrorist’s demands that they be allowed to dominate the cabinet. Not only was I depressed by Hezbullah’s victory, but it just became very difficult to defend politicians who betrayed the fundamental tenet of democracy - majority rules.

The March 14th coalition won the parliamentary election of 2006 fair and square. Hezbullah refused to accept this fact and began a siege of the government building, demanding that they be given veto power over cabinet decisions. Several assassinations of March 14th MP’s reduced their majority while many remaining members hunkered down at the Grand Serail protected by an army of body guards since they didn’t trust the Lebanese Army.

Finally, in May of 2008 Hezbullah used a flimsy excuse involving the government’s attempt to shut down a communications network that was being used to facilitate messages with Syria to launch a war against their own people. Sunni areas of Beirut were targeted and eventually taken over by Hezbullah militiamen while the country threatened to explode into civil war.

Realizing that they couldn’t win against Hezbullah’s arms (that the UN has demanded 3 times they lay down), March 14th gave in to most of the demands at Doha, Qatar.

Since then, violence has sputtered in the north, Hezbullah has been emboldened, a new favorable (to Hezbullah) electoral law, has been enacted, a new president whose sympathies with Syria have been called into question has taken office, and the coalition of democrats known as the March 14th forces have been in retreat.

Now Hezbullah apparently figures its position is powerful enough that they can legitimize their defiance of UN resolutions requiring that they disarm by calling for a referendum on the question.

In an interview with Maj. Thomas Smith, Lebanese expert Walid Phares commented on why Hezbullah would risk a vote on their militia’s - and hence the party’s existence?

DR. WALID PHARES: We have to understand the geopolitics of Lebanon have dramatically changed since last May. Any analysis of Hizballah’s positions and initiatives today must be developed based on the new factor in the equation, which is that Hizballah’s control of Lebanon’s national security. Hence, when Hizballah’s leaders offer to submit their weapons-possession to a referendum it means they have insured a military-protected control mechanism over the political process in the country. They can determine the answer to the referendum, which negates the validity of the referendum.

Yes, it is true that on March 14, 2005, one-and-a-half million Lebanese from all religious and ethnic sectors marched against the Syrian occupation and terrorist militias. But that clear cut popular majority has since been undermined, intimidated, and essentially defeated over the past three years. The assassinations of representatives of the Cedars Revolution such as Parliamentarian Gibran Tueni, the attempt to kill outspoken journalists such as May Chidiac, and the militia invasion of Beirut and the Chouf districts in May are all evidence that Lebanon today lives under terror and needs significant help from the international community so that its people can exercise free popular referendums.

Ironically, I had suggested via Arab satellite TV three years ago, that the Lebanese people be allowed to decide on the weapons of Hizballah, in other words should an armed militia be permitted to exist outside the Lebanese Army. At that time and since then, no one from Hizballah or even the March 14 coalition considered the initiative. Obviously, at the time it wasn’t in Hizballah’s interest to accept a referendum knowing that an overwhelming majority of citizens would vote “no.” But after three years – and particularly since May 2008 – it appears as if they feel confident they can get a majority of Lebanese to agree to their keeping these weapons. Since they have the upper hand in the country militarily, they believe they can pull it off. As for March 14 and the Lebanese government: both have had multiple opportunities to have the UN by their side helping them implement UNSCR 1559. Unfortunately, they hesitated and lost that opportunity. In short, Hizballah’s call today for a referendum means they are close to transforming Lebanon into another Iran or Venezuela.

Does Hezbullah have ironclad control of the electoral process? Can they manipulate the vote to have it come out to their liking regardless of what the people feel?

Phares believes they wouldn’t attempt such a move unless they did. After all, Hezbullah is taking an enormous risk otherwise. As Phares points out, the majority of the people are opposed to their keeping their weapons:

SMITH: So do you believe that accepting the suggestion of Hizballah regarding a weapons referendum should be considered?

DR. PHARES: Yes, but only if there is a smart, strong Lebanese leadership able to turn the initiative in the right direction. Because, after all, there is a real popular-majority in Lebanon, which is opposed to the armed militias, particularly to the pro-Iranian forces. This is a fact that has not changed.

In fact, according to the information I have, the anti-Hizballah majority has grown wider among the masses within the various communities: not the other way around. If the leaders of the Cedars Revolution are politically intelligent they would accept Hizballah’s proposal and take the challenge all the way. If they recollect themselves and think strategically, they can pull a massive victory with democratic means.

SMITH: What if a majority voted “yes” for Hizballah’s weapons? Would that not be another victory for Hizballah?

DR. PHARES: Knowing the real aspirations of the public, I would accept that risk.

First, the advantage would be that Hizballah would have moved the legitimacy of their weapons from the divine level to the citizens’ level. That alone is significant.

Second, if the Lebanese are provided with all international mechanisms to express themselves freely, they will surprise Hizballah as well as their own elected representatives. The question is to enable the Lebanese to express themselves freely.

Even in the absence of the implementation of UNSCR 1559, a mechanism is possible to organize a real referendum. I’d say, it is feasible and has high chances for success. The question again is about the ability of Lebanese politicians to focus and act strategically, and not sink or be maneuvered into the narrowness which has led to so many setbacks to democracy in that unlucky country.

How much international oversight of such a referendum could realistically be expected? Not too much if Hezbullah has anything to say about it. And, of course, they have everything to say about it since any such proposal for international monitoring of the vote would have to come through the cabinet - a body that Hezbullah holds a veto over.

There is also the intimidation factor to consider. Hezbullah has shown that if they don’t get their way, their militia has no qualms about boldly entering Sunni and unfriendly Christian enclaves in order to throw their weight around. How would this affect the vote? It depends on whether Lebanese voters are willing to risk civil war to disarm the terrorists. In the past (as proved by the relieved response of the majority of Lebanese to the Doha Accords), the desire for peace has won out over everything. You can hardly blame them for this attitude. A majority of Lebanese were alive during the horrific violence of the civil war in the 1980’s. Many feel that it is worth anything - including the loss of democracy - to avoid that cataclysm again.

In addition to the intimidation factor, there has been an on-going effort to smear the leader of the March 14th forces, Said Hariri. Son of the slain ex-prime minister, Hariri has been accused by Syria of supporting the Fatah al-islam - the notorious Sunni terrorist group - as a means of attacking Hezbullah. Recently, the Syrians broadcast a “confession” from a Fatah al-Islam member who specifically named Hariri.

In fact, there is nothing new in this allegation. Last March, American journalist Seymour Hersh wrote about this very connection in a New Yorker article. He added that the US government and the Saudis were also in on the conspiracy. (Hersh also made the laughable charge that the US and Saudis were training a large Sunni militia to take on Hezbullah. Imagine Hersh’s surprise when Hezbullah invaded the Sunni section of Lebanon last May and was met with extraordinarily weak and ineffective resistance.)

Hersh’s sources have been debunked several times over, most notably by the scholar Tony Bey whose withering critique of Hersh’s inaccurate and poorly sourced “reporting” should have sent Sy back to covering the police beat. Instead, Hersh is apparently preparing another article for the New Yorker, this one on how misunderstood Syria is.

Can’t wait for that one.

Talk of a Syrian-Lebanese “coordination” on security may also complicate a referendum. It is believed that any such “understanding” would give Syrian President Assad a ready made excuse to march his army back into Lebanon in order to “protect” its sovereignty.

Dr. Phares thinks that given a fair chance, the Lebanese people will reject Hezbullah’s insistence that it should keep its armed militia as a “resistance” to Israel’s threats. They know full well that Israel will not attack Lebanon as long as armed groups like Hezbullah are prevented from attacking them.

And the best way to insure that is to take away Hezbullah’s arms - including their extensive inventory of missiles. Whether Hezbullah is serious about such a referendum or if the people have the courage to go against the terrorists both remain to be seen.

With all this free money floating around and every CEO worth his salt lining up at the government trough ready to bury their faces and feed heartily on the taxpayer’s generosity, I think it’s time we began to look around and see what other companies - past and present - we should also claim to be “Too Big To Fail!”

For instance, a prime candidate for a government bailout would have to be John Jacob Astor’s American Fur Company. Sure it’s been bankrupt for 160 years but I didn’t see any limitation attached to that bailout bill, did you? Hell, if the Medici’s had an American subsidiary we could probably bail out that Renaissance era company too.

The fact is, the American Fur Company failed and it’s your fault. Tell the truth now, when was the last time you bought a beaver hat? Don’t you realize that thousands of fur trappers have been thrown out of work because you selfishly decided to be a slave to fashion rather than thinking of those trappers, trading post managers, export facilitators, dock workers, and ship captains who lost their jobs as a result of the switch from beaver pelts to silk in hat making?

And, of course, you know where that silk is coming from, right? This may have been the first instance of a Chinese attack on our economy. Haberdashers, seduced by cheap imports of silk, ought to be ashamed of themselves. The American Fur Company must be saved else we will lose our competitive edge in the world’s fur trade. Then there are the national security implications which are just too horrible to contemplate.

So we should give some of that $700 billion in bailout money to the descendants of John Jacob Astor and power up the fur trading business again so we can all buy a stinky, misshapen, butt-ugly hat made from the skin of cute little beavers who are trapped in steel jaws that, when sprung, clamp down on their leg, forcing the helpless creatures to either gnaw off their own limb or die a slow death by starvation. But if it will save American jobs, it will be worth it, right?

Similarly, we could save the “Big Three” American automobile manufacturers who have run into a skein of bad luck recently. Of course, that streak of bad luck has lasted 35 years and for all practical (and aesthetic) purposes, the US auto industry has been dead since then. But if we’re going to save The American Fur Company, we might as well try and pump some life into the moribund car manufacturing sector, right?

Actually, this might prove to be a bigger trick than trying to make beaver hats all the rage again. This is because there is a reason that Detroit has lost its positions as the Mecca of car manufacturing; they make sucky cars that no one wants to buy.

The Big Three can complain all they want to about the high cost of union benefits, unfair competition (Translation: It is unfair the Japanese are smarter, more innovative, and more quality conscious than we are.), and “green” regulations that add cost to their products. They are basically calling the American consumer stupid for actually wanting nice looking, trouble free, fully functional, safe, and adequately serviced autos. The gargantuan salaries paid to auto execs have not produced one single model that can outsell the Toyota Corolla.

For all their redesign, retooling, rethinking, and re-inventing the “corporate cultures” in Detroit, they have accomplished nothing in their efforts to compete with Japanese manufacturers. The excuse used to be that their plants were so much newer than ours. That is no longer the case as the average American auto assembly plant is almost just as recently built as the average Japanese plant. It’s not the age of the plant that matters anyway. It’s how the cars are built. And the Japanese have embraced new techniques, new technologies that give them a leg up in the competition.

Then it was the excuse that Japanese workers make much less than American unionized workers. That may have been true at one time but today, it is very close and getting closer all the time. The difference today is almost entirely due to health and pension benefits. But instead of losing market share because of this, the Japanese have been steadily increasing their sales numbers.

Face it. Detroit is in a fix of its own making. Shortsighted managers, unions who still believe that benefit packages should reflect 1970’s realities, a stubborn resistance to higher CAFE standards that would allow them to compete with the fuel efficient Japanese cars, and an inability to figure out how to make a decent profit on smaller cars. The fact that the enormous falloff in sales of SUV’s and other big car, high profit models was entirely predictable, the Big Three got caught with their pants down when gas prices got so high, people were paying a third of their weekly paycheck to fill up.

Despite all - failure at every level including executive, manufacturing, marketing, and labor - we are now supposed to rally around the cry “Too Big to Fail!” and hand these incompetents $25 billion (for now - more later, I promise you).

I say no way.

President-elect Obama wants to nationalize the auto industry:

Top advisers to President-elect Barack Obama are helping to draft an auto industry rescue plan that would bring new government oversight, including the possibility of an auto czar who could ensure the money was being used wisely.

Aides said Obama is also open to an oversight board that would perform the same function as one individual. The proposals come as the estimates of the cost to fix Detroit’s three largest automakers continue to mount.

“Certainly he wouldn’t believe in it being a blank check,” said an Obama adviser, who spoke on condition of anonymity due to not being authorized to speak publicly on the topic. “He wants oversight to be making sure the auto companies have figured out how to become viable, ongoing concerns.”

Let’s be clear here. This would not be a “temporary” solution. Government “ensuring the money is spent wisely” sounds an awful lot like being able to approve or veto business decisions. If that’s the case, why shouldn’t the government be able to fire the boobs who are currently in charge and replace them with people they think could do a better job?

The point isn’t how much money they need or how much government control would be involved. The fact is that these companies are as dead as John Jacob Astor’s American Fur Company and for similar reasons; an inability to adapt to changing market conditions and create a product that enough people want to buy in order to make the companies profitable. There’s a reason no one buys beaver hats anymore. And its the same reason that no one wants an underpowered, ugly, cramped Chevrolet Aveo.

I feel sorry for the thousands of workers who would lose their jobs if these companies went belly up. But the fault does not lie with the American taxpayer who those representing the workers and executives of failed companies want to saddle with their inadequacies.

We aren’t going to start the fur trading industry again by asking taxpayers to fund a rebirth. Neither should we try and restart the American automotive industry by asking taxpayers to save something that’s already dead.

First, they tried it in Russia. Bread lines, sausage lines, blue jean lines, lines for toilet paper, lines to ask what line to get in so that you could get on a waiting list to stand in another line to get a place of your own and be able to leave the 1 room apartment you were sharing at age 30 with your wife, two kids, mommy and daddy, your no good brother in law, your gramma, and crazy uncle Ivan who liked to re-enact the Battle of Stalingrad at the most inopportune times.

The only things you didn’t have to stand in line for were lard and vodka. This is why they couldn’t make socialism work in Russia; fat, drunk people who were told “If you think you’ve got it bad, you should see how awful it is in the west.”

There were no more surprised people in the history of civilization than the Russian proletariat once satellites began beaming shows like Dallas and Falconcrest through the Iron Curtain. At the time, TASS was still showing film of race riots from the 1960’s and calling it “breaking news.” The big drawback, of course, is that the image that replaced greedy capitalists oppressing workers was that of greedy capitalists playing around on their wives with gorgeous women half their age while trying to cheat their family. A good question could be asked whether it was better to be thought of as Babbitt or J.R. Ewing?

They couldn’t make socialism work in Russia - something in the water probably. Neither could socialism find its legs in Poland, Hungary, and a half dozen other European countries that don’t even exist any more. Shared scarcity does not, it turns out, bring people together in a spirit of socialist brotherhood and comity. In fact, it sets people at each other’s throats, as the battle cry “I will get mine before you get yours and failing that, I will prevent you from enjoying what you get” was heard throughout Mittel Europa.

Making its way eastward, they then tried to impose socialism on a civilization that nearly invented, well, civilization. There are no more practical people on the planet than the Chinese, having gotten that way by outlasting every attempt to govern them effectively over a 3,000 year period. True libertarians, them. Unfortunately, the busybodies of the Chinese nanny state wouldn’t leave the peasants alone who after all, were perfectly happy using an ox to plow their fields and plant their rice by hand rather than do the modernization thing. Some village commissars were surprised to return to farms where they had delivered a shiny new tractor only to discover the peasants having turned the mechanical beast into a distillery.

(What is it about socialism that turns people into raging alcoholics?)

A few years ago, the Chicom thugs gave into the inevitable and decided to go with the flow, acknowledging that the underground capitalist economy was far outperforming the official socialist one which, as usual, was causing the government to rethink their “Five Year Plans” every 6 months or so. The only stipulation the government imposed on would be entrepreneurs was that they pay protection money to the government (both over and under the table).

Even the Chinese People’s Army dove in to the capitalist craze that hit China. They found it efficacious to contribute to certain Democratic presidential candidates in order to get access to technology that could, in a pinch, be used to destroy the very people who were selling the secrets. No doubt the generals who were growing fabulously rich selling stuff to their own government thought that this was a pretty good tradeoff. It’s not everyday you get to make money off your enemy’s foolhardiness.

Western capitalists swarmed the ancient cities with Euro-signs in their eyes. If we thought that a few thousand American and European businessmen bringing ideas like “Free Labor, Free Markets, Free Men” would change a civilization that was inventing block printing when Europeans were still living in dirt hovels, we had another thing coming. The magic of western capitalism and the obscenity of Mao’s socialism did not impress nor did it disturb the rhythms of life that had kept time for several milenia.

The people, having seen it all for 3,000 years shrugged and went back to using ox dung to fertilize their fields and wooden hoes to tend the crops. They’ve learned to use the tractor but last I heard, it still doubles as a still.

One would think that having failed in two of the most populous nations on earth that socialism would have died of natural causes - or been executed for crimes against common sense and humanity. Ah, but you underestimate its adherents. You see, it wasn’t socialism that failed. It was the people who tried to implement it! They are at fault, not the crazy quilt logic, the jaw dropping contradictions, the counterintuitive view of human nature, or the contrived diktats of bureaucrats who think a “market” is some place you go to stand in line for moldy beets.

That is why our friends across the pond in what we used to call western industrialized civilization - now not very western, less industrial, and an open question whether it is still “civilized” in any meaningful sense - decided to dip their toe into the socialist pool and see if they couldn’t make a go of it.

Listening to our own homegrown socialists here talking about how it is over there, you would think that the Europeans had discovered the secret to immortality or at least found the Fountain of Youth so gushy they are about how good the Euros have it. Cradle to grave care, a 36 hour workweek, nearly impossible to get fired, real nice trains, and a list of social services that would make an American’s head swim.

Of course, they also have high suicide, drug addiction, alcoholism, and divorce rates. They don’t have children either because they hate them or think them an impediment to their lifestyle. The vast majority of them live drab, colorless lives with little opportunity to better themselves. And who would want to considering that governments frown on anyone getting too far ahead of their neighbors. They import the colored peoples of the world to do their scut work and then do everything they can to prevent their assimilation by sticking them in immigrant ghettos where hate and resentment against their lovable hosts will almost certainly explode into uncontrollable violence one day.

Other than that - paradise.

The question being asked openly for the first time in my lifetime is can socialism work in America?

Answer: Yes we can!

I say we should ignore what socialism (or the faux variety of the disease that afflicts Europe) has done elsewhere and approach the Bush/Obama socialist takeover of our industries as Americans should - with hope, optimism, a “can-do” attitude, and the desire to make a buck off of it.

I mean, if we can hack a civilization out of a wilderness, defeat the largest army and most powerful military in the world at the time to win our independence, fight a gigantic, continent sized civil war, tame the Spanish, spank the Kaiser, roll over Hitler and Tojo, and make the Soviet Union a memory, we can make socialism work! Yes we can perfect it!

First of all, we have to do something about the inevitable lines that we will be forced to queue up for in order to get any goods or services. Socialism is all about lines, about the orderly distribution of scarcity. Now I don’t know about you but if there is one thing liable to get my dander up it is standing in line - at the grocery store, at the bank, at Madame Crystal’s Pool Hall and Massage Parlor - anywhere.

Why not get the geniuses at Microsoft to work on this problem right away? Put the guys who came up with Vista on it, that would do the trick. Better yet, this sounds more like a marketing challenge to me. We should get in touch with the Coca-Cola Company immediately and find the guys who signed off on the campaign for Coke Zero. Their judgment is exactly what we need to solve this little problem.

You see, it is my contention that by getting utter failures to work on solving our line problem, we can’t go wrong. They are bound to come up with the worst solution imaginable. Hence, by making matters 10 times worse, we realize the full potential of socialism to really screw up our lives.

Next up, planning the economy. For this problem, we must look long and hard for the perfect combination of corruption and ignorance. Congress is too busy so we’ll have to go to the private sector.

We could commute the sentences of those Enron guys. And maybe a few others like the fellows who did such a great job driving Worldcom into the ground. These are the sorts we need to do a really 1st class job of taking the most vibrant, creative, productive economy in the history of the human race and flushing it down the toilet.

The one other area we could perfect that is not necessarily native to socialism but no good socialistic country should be without is the stifling of dissent and the imposition of group-think that would kill independent thought.

Face it, we wouldn’t be very good at this. Americans are just too cranky, too much in love with contrariness, too admiring of the guy who marches to a different drummer that anyone we put in charge of of making this an unquestioning, obedient, robotic thinking society would have their hands full.

As in other nations that have tried this - Soviet Union and China come instantly to mind - it just wouldn’t do to put those who believe in antiquated and outmoded ideas like free markets in jail. They must be shown the error of their ways. They must be given a new vision of the brotherhood of man. They must be led to the idea that forced altruism, insipid do-gooderism, and hectoring moralistic clap trap is the best way to approach life.

They must be beaten over the head early and often in order to show them the error of their ways.

This cannot be done, obviously, in the middle of the street or even in what used to be the privacy of their homes (as you know, it wouldn’t be “their” home anymore, but everybody’s). All that screaming would be bad for socialist morale not to mention dirtying our streets with blood and stuff. Street cleaners are our brothers too and we should only ask them to do what each according to their abilities etc.

I think either Michael Moore or blogger John Avarosis would be good candidates for the top job in our Department of Ideological Reform. Glenn Greenwald would make a good deputy for either man. They all hate conservatives sufficiently that either would be able to adequately carry out the purge of such thought from our national consciousness.

One thing is for sure, we Americans are going to give it our best shot. Once we are resolved to completing a task be it defeating Hitler or perfecting the idiocy that is socialism, I am convinced that we cannot be stopped.

George Bush has made an excellent start and I’m sure Barack Obama is eager to see what he can do to bring about this change that will remake America. What have we got to lose? Let’s get behind our new president and make socialism as synonymous with America as baseball, apple pie, and corrupt Congressmen.

Remember the children…