One wonders if the major players on the Left or Right would remember Psych 101, they’d recall that the “Tit-For-Tat” method of “Prisoner’s Dilemma” called for the first move to always be to “Cooperate”, and that every move thereafter mirror their counterparts’ move[s] [see: http://www.gametheory.net/dictionary/TitforTat.html]. Yet the Left seems to never get out of “cooperate” mode, and the Right demonstrates an inability to even consider the possibility of making that move.
Re the Left, Iran provides the most important illustration. Ironically, this Administration’s new foreign policy seems to have worked too well, particularly the combination of the insistence on merely suggesting condition-free dialogue with Iran in combination with going to Cairo and publicly TL’ing International Islamism, among other reason to come to terms with the fact that that it was going to stick around, whether or not it deserved to. Instead, the pseudo-theofascist Persia has responded to his overtures by amping up their misbehaviors. Complicating the situation—and further diminishing any reason for cooperation on anyone’s part with the regime—is the Iranian populace’ reaction to the recent stolen election. Ironically, as statements issued from people involved with the “negotiations” indicate, the Administration realizes its “cooperate” move is empty, but the increasingly fear the consequences of a “defect” move, even thought the consequences of delaying such a move increase the cost of its execution [and the likelihood of an Israeli attack].
[Which, to be fair, I would lay the lion’s share of the blame at the feet of the previous Administration for invading the wrong country. As I’ve said here repeatedly, I would agree with everything Dick Cheney has said about our conduct of the War on Terror—IF we had invaded Iran instead of Iraq. Instead, the invasion and subsequent messes allowed for the possibility that the “game” could be reset to “start” long enough for the incoming Administration to at least present ab initio a salient case for “cooperation”.]
Re the right, events [thankfully] beyond their control may be shaping up in a way that start the political winds blowing at least mildly in their direction...IF they manage to quelch their penchant for dontopedalogy for five minutes. [As prominent examples—and for later discussion—Glenn Beck misreads history, Sarah Palin continues to proudly display that she doesn’t know history, and Rush Limbaugh is laughing all the way to the bank.] In addition to the Iran corner he has backed himself into, Obama has overreached spectacularly on health care to the point that his own party has forced him to abandon the “public option”, at least publicly. Yet the Right continues to assume that stoking its most reactionary and least savory elements will increase the chances of Democrats self-immolation; instead, it allows bankrupt progressive policy to appear at least somewhat credible. If the Republicans were smart, they’d realize that self-destruction is in Democratic DNA and will show up sooner or later.
Failing that, maybe they should give the Israelis a call.
Monday, September 28, 2009
Wednesday, September 2, 2009
Bill Maher, Ronald Dworkin, And The Real Health Care Debate
Bill Maher and Ronald Dworkin’s recent essays on Obamacare probably best illustrated where the real ideological positions are staked out: from the Left, Maher, whose main contention is that health care is a “service[/]institution[s] so vital to our nation” that it should be “exempt from market pressures” [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bill-maher/new-rule-not-everything-i_b_244050.html], and from the Right, Dworkin, whose counter-contention is that the resulting system of public medicine would be about as efficient as the public school system
[http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204683204574358281875211014.html].
Both are correct. And in this case, both are being equally hypocritical. To a certain point, each author’s respective thesis [at least, as I read them] serves to illustrate the point at which each one’s respective counterpart would be forced to think contradictory. {I’m sure they didn’t do this deliberately, but no matter.]
Maher’s point about removing the profit motive from health care exposes contradictions in the conservative arguments regarding lasseiz-faire, lessened governmental interference in personal affairs, and the concomitant “threat” of triage conducted by panels using progressive tenets as guidelines. Conservatives don’t want government interfering in their health care decisions? Sure; just ask Terri Schiavo or anyone with an unwanted pregnancy. Or, ask former Texas Gov. George W. Bush, who signed the 1999 Texas Futile Care Law, allowing health care workers to remove expensive life support for terminally ill patients if the patient or family is unable to pay the medical bills: a clear case of an economics-driven “death panel”.
Similarly, albeit from the opposite ideological direction, Dworkin’s public school analog is even more apt than he realizes, as it helps put the lie to the notion that health care, like the schools, will become a truly effectively administered public good if the profit motive is removed. Instead, it will be driven by various competing interest groups—particularly, unions—who will have a stake in ensuring the diversion of resources toward themselves and away from the people who need it: in the case of the schools, the children always come last; in the case of health care, the patients will. One system of “profiteering” will simply be replaced by another.
In the end, these two pundits clearly indicate that the health care imbroglio is really about anything but health care, per se; rather, it’s about how various pieces of the pie are to be distributed [or, re-distributed]. This is the main reason that, no matter how much effort Obama and the rest of the far left expends in “drag[ging] them to it” [Maher’s comment in another forum: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8lBgpI2S4I4], “it”—healthcare—will never become the moral issue the left wants it to become, namely with a moral gravitas comparable to the abolition and civil rights movements, when “dragging” was called for.
The health care “debate”, then, is just an old-fashioned feeding frenzy in…drag.
[http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204683204574358281875211014.html].
Both are correct. And in this case, both are being equally hypocritical. To a certain point, each author’s respective thesis [at least, as I read them] serves to illustrate the point at which each one’s respective counterpart would be forced to think contradictory. {I’m sure they didn’t do this deliberately, but no matter.]
Maher’s point about removing the profit motive from health care exposes contradictions in the conservative arguments regarding lasseiz-faire, lessened governmental interference in personal affairs, and the concomitant “threat” of triage conducted by panels using progressive tenets as guidelines. Conservatives don’t want government interfering in their health care decisions? Sure; just ask Terri Schiavo or anyone with an unwanted pregnancy. Or, ask former Texas Gov. George W. Bush, who signed the 1999 Texas Futile Care Law, allowing health care workers to remove expensive life support for terminally ill patients if the patient or family is unable to pay the medical bills: a clear case of an economics-driven “death panel”.
Similarly, albeit from the opposite ideological direction, Dworkin’s public school analog is even more apt than he realizes, as it helps put the lie to the notion that health care, like the schools, will become a truly effectively administered public good if the profit motive is removed. Instead, it will be driven by various competing interest groups—particularly, unions—who will have a stake in ensuring the diversion of resources toward themselves and away from the people who need it: in the case of the schools, the children always come last; in the case of health care, the patients will. One system of “profiteering” will simply be replaced by another.
In the end, these two pundits clearly indicate that the health care imbroglio is really about anything but health care, per se; rather, it’s about how various pieces of the pie are to be distributed [or, re-distributed]. This is the main reason that, no matter how much effort Obama and the rest of the far left expends in “drag[ging] them to it” [Maher’s comment in another forum: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8lBgpI2S4I4], “it”—healthcare—will never become the moral issue the left wants it to become, namely with a moral gravitas comparable to the abolition and civil rights movements, when “dragging” was called for.
The health care “debate”, then, is just an old-fashioned feeding frenzy in…drag.
Monday, August 31, 2009
More Republi-Karma: Dick Cheney vs Eric Holder
Usually I avoid employing overt religious references in these blog pages, mostly for reasons of [attempted] intellectual honesty, which would be well-nigh impossible owing to my admitted fierce Judeocentrism. I write another blog [“Yeshivas Ye-ush Mi-Da’as”] in which I constrain myself less in that regard.
Yet, when discussing the ongoing issue of the legality of “enhanced interrogations” that now threatens to become an all-out war between Justice and Intelligence [Panetta’s gonna protecting his territory--who woulda thunk it?] and viewing it from my perch as the paradigmatic self-hating conservative [where are the rest of ‘em?], I couldn’t resist using both Biblical and Talmudic references to [further] elucidate my position.
In fact, I don’t think I could have found a better way to explain it.
The verse that comes to mind is from II Kings 10:18: “And Jehu gathered the nation together, and said unto them, Ahab served Ba'al a little, but Yehu shall serve him much”.
The Babylonian Talmud [Tractate Pesachim folio 87b, for those who might actually want to look it up], based on a verse in Hosea [(1:3-4): “…for in a little while I will visit the blood of Jezreel upon the house of Yehu”] relates that, when Jehu’s descendants themselves proceeded to serve the Baal as Ahab had, Jehu’s slaughter of Ahab and his household was retroactively counted as murder, despite the fact that G-d himself had commanded Jehu to wipe out the house of Ahab—for the offense of Baal worship.
The lesson herein is that sometimes, to save a society at large, drastic action must be undertaken in which people will get hurt [or, in the parlance of Dirty Harry Callahan’s commanding officer, “get dead”, though doctrinaire pacifists usually are more perturbed by the infliction of pain rather than death, for unexplained reasons]; however, at the same time, the party inflicting the pain better be certain that they act on the side of the angels.
Dick Cheney may have been on the side of the angels in a case like this, even more than Abraham Lincoln was when he suspended habeas corpus in the months leading up to the Civil War: back then, Lincoln was fighting to preserve an ideal, and here Cheney was preventing apocalyptic mass murder. [And anyone who thinks that Islamic terrorism is anything but theologically-justified apocalyptic mass murder deserves to be their next victim.] That would have been the case—until the techniques were employed to further the prosecution of what was, for all intents and purposes, an economically-driven voluntary war. [If it was anything but that, a draft would have—or should have—been called.]
I have been open about favoring all sorts of “enhanced” methods of interrogation, and that the methods of eradicating piracy in the 18th and 19th centuries provide a much more salient analog for guidelines regarding the prosecution of “War on Terror” [or whatever its being called nowadays] that the Geneva Conventions, which in any case, certainly in their 1949 edition, serve as more of a “this is how we coulda/woulda/shoulda fought the last two world wars” than as a true legal mandate for militarily “playing nice”. I have been equally open about the need for some kind of legal repercussions for those employing the techniques described above—not because they shouldn’t be used when needed, but that they should absolutely not be used at any other time.
It’s doubtful that any legal action initiated by this Administration would be anything but politically motivated. However, Cheney and his ilk have no “kick”: when they applied these techniques to preserve their own political and material positions, they indicated they were playing the same game. You don’t get to be selective about the rules, particularly after you’ve been repeatedly called on it by the electorate.
Additionally, I don’t know if any conservatives—particularly those who believe G-d Himself is conservative—would appreciate the irony of one of their own sacred texts being used to teach them such a lesson. I would reckon they do—and don’t like it.
Yet, when discussing the ongoing issue of the legality of “enhanced interrogations” that now threatens to become an all-out war between Justice and Intelligence [Panetta’s gonna protecting his territory--who woulda thunk it?] and viewing it from my perch as the paradigmatic self-hating conservative [where are the rest of ‘em?], I couldn’t resist using both Biblical and Talmudic references to [further] elucidate my position.
In fact, I don’t think I could have found a better way to explain it.
The verse that comes to mind is from II Kings 10:18: “And Jehu gathered the nation together, and said unto them, Ahab served Ba'al a little, but Yehu shall serve him much”.
The Babylonian Talmud [Tractate Pesachim folio 87b, for those who might actually want to look it up], based on a verse in Hosea [(1:3-4): “…for in a little while I will visit the blood of Jezreel upon the house of Yehu”] relates that, when Jehu’s descendants themselves proceeded to serve the Baal as Ahab had, Jehu’s slaughter of Ahab and his household was retroactively counted as murder, despite the fact that G-d himself had commanded Jehu to wipe out the house of Ahab—for the offense of Baal worship.
The lesson herein is that sometimes, to save a society at large, drastic action must be undertaken in which people will get hurt [or, in the parlance of Dirty Harry Callahan’s commanding officer, “get dead”, though doctrinaire pacifists usually are more perturbed by the infliction of pain rather than death, for unexplained reasons]; however, at the same time, the party inflicting the pain better be certain that they act on the side of the angels.
Dick Cheney may have been on the side of the angels in a case like this, even more than Abraham Lincoln was when he suspended habeas corpus in the months leading up to the Civil War: back then, Lincoln was fighting to preserve an ideal, and here Cheney was preventing apocalyptic mass murder. [And anyone who thinks that Islamic terrorism is anything but theologically-justified apocalyptic mass murder deserves to be their next victim.] That would have been the case—until the techniques were employed to further the prosecution of what was, for all intents and purposes, an economically-driven voluntary war. [If it was anything but that, a draft would have—or should have—been called.]
I have been open about favoring all sorts of “enhanced” methods of interrogation, and that the methods of eradicating piracy in the 18th and 19th centuries provide a much more salient analog for guidelines regarding the prosecution of “War on Terror” [or whatever its being called nowadays] that the Geneva Conventions, which in any case, certainly in their 1949 edition, serve as more of a “this is how we coulda/woulda/shoulda fought the last two world wars” than as a true legal mandate for militarily “playing nice”. I have been equally open about the need for some kind of legal repercussions for those employing the techniques described above—not because they shouldn’t be used when needed, but that they should absolutely not be used at any other time.
It’s doubtful that any legal action initiated by this Administration would be anything but politically motivated. However, Cheney and his ilk have no “kick”: when they applied these techniques to preserve their own political and material positions, they indicated they were playing the same game. You don’t get to be selective about the rules, particularly after you’ve been repeatedly called on it by the electorate.
Additionally, I don’t know if any conservatives—particularly those who believe G-d Himself is conservative—would appreciate the irony of one of their own sacred texts being used to teach them such a lesson. I would reckon they do—and don’t like it.
Monday, August 17, 2009
Obamacare: Two-Strike Breaking Pitch
I’m 0-for-2. At least.
First, I was bamboozled by Sarah Palin and what she ostensibly represented…until I saw the Katie Couric interview and realized what she represented was the impossibility of her credibility as long as they were inexorably associated with such unadulterated brainlessness. Additionally, she also represented the inability of the GOP team to find good people to work for them, which would have portended another term of W.-like incompetence in a McCain administration; they wouldn’t have been able to execute, even if their principles were correct.
Then came Obama’s inaugural address, and I like everyone else except for the true doctrinaire right-wingers assumed from the combination of that speech and his Cabinet appointments of Rahm Emanuel, Larry Summers, Arne Duncan and their ilk that he planned to govern from the center, as opposed to adopting the ”socialist” and “pro-terrorist” policies the GOP tried to tag him with. Alas, the only one privy to the definition of said “Center” was the new President himself; more specifically, it seems as if he considers his policy regimen to be the true centrism.
While many on the right cried “socialism” with the stimulus package and the governmental net cast over the banking and automotive industry, even such free-market personages as Alan Greenspan had publically admitted that some intervention was needed, rendering that argument less than salient, so if the economic center had moved left, it had dome so on its own accord, if not a result of deregulatory-elicited messes. And, while certainly every foreign policy move Obama has made, from Gitmo to Cairo to Mary Robinson, belies any true centrist—even “realist”—mindset, and is a blatant attempt to centralize appeasement/”America First—In Guilt” policy, I would have been called on my politics being inexorably biased by my Judeocentrism. [Not that there’s anything wrong with that, or being Israel-centric; more that there are people who defend the state from Obama and his ilk better than I would, without necessarily preaching to the choir.]
That’s why Obamacare and its concomitant raising of the spectre of 1993 and 1994 theoretically had, at least initially, handed me—and other conservatives, self-hating and otherwise—a policy against which one could be truly opposed in principle. Never mind the nuances; this was going to involve an imposition of governmental control regarding issues of supply and demand where there was no real mandate for it. As Jon Meachem pointed in Newsweek, unlike social security or voting rights, universal health care doesn’t have the same sui generis moral imprimatur that would otherwise make it amenable to such a policy imposition; there was no reason that Obama wouldn’t fail as his attempt to become FDR and LBJ the way Bill Clinton did in 1994. Additionally, as David Gergen theorized in Rolling Stone, as Obamacare would be the one issue that could not be hung upon the previous administration with any degree of credibility, failure to implement it in at least some degree would lead to the Democrats being punished at the polls in 2010.
So, expecting a fastball down the middle [an Obamacare more or less analogous to Hillarycare], we get a breaking pitch way too close to take: Obama announces that the “public option” may be taken off the table.
Brilliant?
Not necessarily; it’s more that, people keep forgetting that Obama doesn’t feel like he owes anyone anything, so he can manipulate his policy to suit himself and his aim of keeping his [and liberals’] power. Those on the further left are angry, sure; but where else can they go? The conservative Democrats are more likely to support his legislation, and GOP’ers really now have lost possibly their most salient reason for continued intransigence [though one shouldn’t count against their propensity to continue as such.]
This guy will do anything to make sure he won’t lose, and he won’t even have to triangulate.
First, I was bamboozled by Sarah Palin and what she ostensibly represented…until I saw the Katie Couric interview and realized what she represented was the impossibility of her credibility as long as they were inexorably associated with such unadulterated brainlessness. Additionally, she also represented the inability of the GOP team to find good people to work for them, which would have portended another term of W.-like incompetence in a McCain administration; they wouldn’t have been able to execute, even if their principles were correct.
Then came Obama’s inaugural address, and I like everyone else except for the true doctrinaire right-wingers assumed from the combination of that speech and his Cabinet appointments of Rahm Emanuel, Larry Summers, Arne Duncan and their ilk that he planned to govern from the center, as opposed to adopting the ”socialist” and “pro-terrorist” policies the GOP tried to tag him with. Alas, the only one privy to the definition of said “Center” was the new President himself; more specifically, it seems as if he considers his policy regimen to be the true centrism.
While many on the right cried “socialism” with the stimulus package and the governmental net cast over the banking and automotive industry, even such free-market personages as Alan Greenspan had publically admitted that some intervention was needed, rendering that argument less than salient, so if the economic center had moved left, it had dome so on its own accord, if not a result of deregulatory-elicited messes. And, while certainly every foreign policy move Obama has made, from Gitmo to Cairo to Mary Robinson, belies any true centrist—even “realist”—mindset, and is a blatant attempt to centralize appeasement/”America First—In Guilt” policy, I would have been called on my politics being inexorably biased by my Judeocentrism. [Not that there’s anything wrong with that, or being Israel-centric; more that there are people who defend the state from Obama and his ilk better than I would, without necessarily preaching to the choir.]
That’s why Obamacare and its concomitant raising of the spectre of 1993 and 1994 theoretically had, at least initially, handed me—and other conservatives, self-hating and otherwise—a policy against which one could be truly opposed in principle. Never mind the nuances; this was going to involve an imposition of governmental control regarding issues of supply and demand where there was no real mandate for it. As Jon Meachem pointed in Newsweek, unlike social security or voting rights, universal health care doesn’t have the same sui generis moral imprimatur that would otherwise make it amenable to such a policy imposition; there was no reason that Obama wouldn’t fail as his attempt to become FDR and LBJ the way Bill Clinton did in 1994. Additionally, as David Gergen theorized in Rolling Stone, as Obamacare would be the one issue that could not be hung upon the previous administration with any degree of credibility, failure to implement it in at least some degree would lead to the Democrats being punished at the polls in 2010.
So, expecting a fastball down the middle [an Obamacare more or less analogous to Hillarycare], we get a breaking pitch way too close to take: Obama announces that the “public option” may be taken off the table.
Brilliant?
Not necessarily; it’s more that, people keep forgetting that Obama doesn’t feel like he owes anyone anything, so he can manipulate his policy to suit himself and his aim of keeping his [and liberals’] power. Those on the further left are angry, sure; but where else can they go? The conservative Democrats are more likely to support his legislation, and GOP’ers really now have lost possibly their most salient reason for continued intransigence [though one shouldn’t count against their propensity to continue as such.]
This guy will do anything to make sure he won’t lose, and he won’t even have to triangulate.
Sunday, August 2, 2009
I'm With Stupid. Gimme A Beer.
The incident at the home of Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. and the President’s series of responses have been designated as Obama’s first “racial crisis”, as the proof that this Administration has not quite reached the level of “post-racial”.
While that might be somewhat of an exaggeration, the theories regarding the incident as a symptom of Obama’s messianic dirigible having sprung more than a few leaks, as evidenced by his poll numbers’ entering their post-steroid era.
The sad thing is, in this case, he may actually have been right. The officer was certainly within his bounds to answer the break-in call and question Prof. Gates, but once it had been established that the residence was, in fact, Prof. Gates’, the matter should have been left at that, irrespective of what ever tirade Prof. Gates may or may not have launched, short of an outright assault. Additionally, one would think that it would behoove police departments to actually know who the more prominent citizens in their neighborhoods are, particularly if they are prominent and connected ethnic minorities…and the police are on said person’s property WITH said individual in question present. [Did ANYONE learn ANYTHING from the OJ case?]
Of course, its no accident the loudest protests nationwide have come from police departments and their conservative leaning law-and-order allies, complaining of a possible “slippery-slope”: is our black President going to find all arrests of blacks “stupid”, ipso facto? Especially when the arresting officer was white? While that may not have been as explicitly stated as Obama’s “stupid” comment, the implication was pretty clear.
A perusal of a number of high-profile cases should indicate that we are far from that, particularly cases where an offending party AND officers on the case were both minorities and the complaints of a “racist” police action were just as shrill [most specifically, the incidents involving Patrick Dorismond and Sean Bell]. And, when Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney punched a [white] Capitol police officer in 2006 after he stopped her for not carrying the requisite ID, it was McKinney who was forced to apologize.
Of course, Obama wasn’t in office yet. And, as far as we know, McKinney isn’t the friend [or fundraiser…or Vineyard neighbor…] that Gates is. And that’s the point. An Obama frustrated by the fact that all his “Yes We Can”’s are eliciting equal and opposite “No You Don’ts”’s [especially from within his own party] reacted on a personal level to a question where the answer, if not the descriptive term used, was going to be a foregone conclusion, as were the partisan reactions to whatever comment he was going to make.
Ironically, it seems that, having been invited to beer with the President, Prof. Gates and Officer Crowley may become drinking buddies [bloggers’ “evidence” that the two may be distant cousins notwithstanding] after all this.
[Officer, this beer is courtesy of that gentlemen over there surrounded by heavily armed well dressed men with earpieces and sunglasses….]
While that might be somewhat of an exaggeration, the theories regarding the incident as a symptom of Obama’s messianic dirigible having sprung more than a few leaks, as evidenced by his poll numbers’ entering their post-steroid era.
The sad thing is, in this case, he may actually have been right. The officer was certainly within his bounds to answer the break-in call and question Prof. Gates, but once it had been established that the residence was, in fact, Prof. Gates’, the matter should have been left at that, irrespective of what ever tirade Prof. Gates may or may not have launched, short of an outright assault. Additionally, one would think that it would behoove police departments to actually know who the more prominent citizens in their neighborhoods are, particularly if they are prominent and connected ethnic minorities…and the police are on said person’s property WITH said individual in question present. [Did ANYONE learn ANYTHING from the OJ case?]
Of course, its no accident the loudest protests nationwide have come from police departments and their conservative leaning law-and-order allies, complaining of a possible “slippery-slope”: is our black President going to find all arrests of blacks “stupid”, ipso facto? Especially when the arresting officer was white? While that may not have been as explicitly stated as Obama’s “stupid” comment, the implication was pretty clear.
A perusal of a number of high-profile cases should indicate that we are far from that, particularly cases where an offending party AND officers on the case were both minorities and the complaints of a “racist” police action were just as shrill [most specifically, the incidents involving Patrick Dorismond and Sean Bell]. And, when Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney punched a [white] Capitol police officer in 2006 after he stopped her for not carrying the requisite ID, it was McKinney who was forced to apologize.
Of course, Obama wasn’t in office yet. And, as far as we know, McKinney isn’t the friend [or fundraiser…or Vineyard neighbor…] that Gates is. And that’s the point. An Obama frustrated by the fact that all his “Yes We Can”’s are eliciting equal and opposite “No You Don’ts”’s [especially from within his own party] reacted on a personal level to a question where the answer, if not the descriptive term used, was going to be a foregone conclusion, as were the partisan reactions to whatever comment he was going to make.
Ironically, it seems that, having been invited to beer with the President, Prof. Gates and Officer Crowley may become drinking buddies [bloggers’ “evidence” that the two may be distant cousins notwithstanding] after all this.
[Officer, this beer is courtesy of that gentlemen over there surrounded by heavily armed well dressed men with earpieces and sunglasses….]
Wednesday, July 8, 2009
Republican Legacy Chain: Quayle….Dubya….Palin?
Soon-to-be-former Gov. Sarah Palin, quoting the Bible as she makes her ostensible exit, seems to have pulled off a neat trick: sticking to the script [the ultimate one, in this case] and, at the same time, departing from it [being unpredictable]. It’s highly likely that she doesn’t really appreciate the irony involved, but it doesn’t matter; what she has done is established that she will conduct the next phase of her political journey as a drama queen. This is the reverse of Nixon in ’62.
Obviously, the Republicans will need an electoral guinea pig in 2012. The choice Republicans face is whether an upcoming 2012 debacle will resemble Barry Goldwater’s 1964 loss to LBJ—which, for all intents and purposes, eventually became the starting locus for a four-decade conservative ascendancy—or, George McGovern’s 1972 trouncing at the hands of Richard Nixon, which did not do the same thing for the Democrats.
Neither the ’64 nor the ’72 scenario will deter Palin. This is likely because she’s self-delusive enough to think that she can win even with the current American political zeitgeist being what it is. However, she may vaguely senses that she has an opportunity to become a more salient historical figure, as opposed to the intellectually challenged cipher that sank John McCain.
There remain two other possible positive outcomes from Palin’s obvious early hat-toss, at least as far as conservatives are concerned. The first is that a debacle can be avoided if, like other chimerical early front-runners [see: Ted Kennedy in 1980, Gary Hart in 1987, Paul Tsongas/Jerry Brown in 1992, Howard Dean in 2004] she flames out soon enough for a more viable candidate to be presented, resulting in a more salient contest in 2012.
The second involves the aforementioned possibility of things getting so much worse than they are now [a cataclysmic economic collapse approaching 1930’s levels or a terror attack on American soil approaching the scale of 9/11] to the point that Obama’s administration is perceived to be even less competent than W.’s. If that happens, Palin might become the perfect candidate: any notion of conservative/Republican moderation will go right into the trashcan and we would be looking at an administration headed by a W.-Quayle hybrid.
And with Rush Limbaugh in the role of both Karl Rove and Dick Cheney.
Obviously, the Republicans will need an electoral guinea pig in 2012. The choice Republicans face is whether an upcoming 2012 debacle will resemble Barry Goldwater’s 1964 loss to LBJ—which, for all intents and purposes, eventually became the starting locus for a four-decade conservative ascendancy—or, George McGovern’s 1972 trouncing at the hands of Richard Nixon, which did not do the same thing for the Democrats.
Neither the ’64 nor the ’72 scenario will deter Palin. This is likely because she’s self-delusive enough to think that she can win even with the current American political zeitgeist being what it is. However, she may vaguely senses that she has an opportunity to become a more salient historical figure, as opposed to the intellectually challenged cipher that sank John McCain.
There remain two other possible positive outcomes from Palin’s obvious early hat-toss, at least as far as conservatives are concerned. The first is that a debacle can be avoided if, like other chimerical early front-runners [see: Ted Kennedy in 1980, Gary Hart in 1987, Paul Tsongas/Jerry Brown in 1992, Howard Dean in 2004] she flames out soon enough for a more viable candidate to be presented, resulting in a more salient contest in 2012.
The second involves the aforementioned possibility of things getting so much worse than they are now [a cataclysmic economic collapse approaching 1930’s levels or a terror attack on American soil approaching the scale of 9/11] to the point that Obama’s administration is perceived to be even less competent than W.’s. If that happens, Palin might become the perfect candidate: any notion of conservative/Republican moderation will go right into the trashcan and we would be looking at an administration headed by a W.-Quayle hybrid.
And with Rush Limbaugh in the role of both Karl Rove and Dick Cheney.
Wednesday, July 1, 2009
Sons Of Equivalences
[…because some equivalences are more equivalent than others, equivocally]
ITEM: GOV. SANFORD SAYS ARGENTINIAN MISTRESS HIS “SOUL MATE”
One has to admire Gov. Sanford’s non-repentant approach as almost refreshing in its chutzpah, particularly after the Clinton’s mess of denials and Spitzer’s wife-by-side mea culpa. One wonders [though certainly not too overly] how much of it can be directly attributed to his religious conservatism.
What it does further prove, however, is that conservative hypocrisy will always be more deserving of moral opprobrium than liberal hypocrisy. This is specifically because conservatives claim their principles are timeless and absolute, if not Divinely ordained, and therefore universally applicable; hence, betrayals are more trenchant. As much as liberals and progressives try to deify Marx, Hegel and their ilk, it will always be easier to chalk up a betrayal of said principles as a disagreement among men rather than a true “non serviam”.
ITEM: ANOTHER TRIUMPH OF SAIDISM
http://www.nypost.com/seven/06292009/postopinion/opedcolumnists/columbia_tenures_an_israel_basher_176594.htm
Much has been written about the case of Joseph Massad; it doesn’t surprise me that Columbia would resort to such under-the-table tactics to get his back on the faculty. However, this item really stands out:
In a recent work, "Desiring Arabs," Massad claimed to expose yet another plot against the Muslim world -- the "Gay International." He describes how a vast conspiracy of gay activists descended on Arab countries and endangered the lives of "practitioners of same-sex contact" by transforming them into "subjects who identify as 'homosexual' and 'gay.' " Nor is Massad fond of the women's rights movement, or "colonial feminism," as he calls it. He bristles at the attention paid to the Muslim practice of honor killings, which he likens to "crimes of passion," accusing women's groups of ignoring "rampant Western misogyny."
It just goes to show; you can be overtly homophobic and misogynist, but if you are an anti-Semitic non-Caucasian academic, all is forgiven. You can only expect so much. Somewhere in Hell, Edward Said must be smiling in between floggings.
ITEM: MADOFF GETS 150 YEARS
Consider that even if he lives to be 100, his sentence will be worth no more than 20% of what it originally was. Not quite the poetic justice anyone had in mind.
ITEM: JUSTICE THOMAS ONLY DISSENT IN STRIP SEARCH CASE
I hope no one is surprised; anyone remember what almost sank his nomination in the first place?
ITEM: GOV. SANFORD SAYS ARGENTINIAN MISTRESS HIS “SOUL MATE”
One has to admire Gov. Sanford’s non-repentant approach as almost refreshing in its chutzpah, particularly after the Clinton’s mess of denials and Spitzer’s wife-by-side mea culpa. One wonders [though certainly not too overly] how much of it can be directly attributed to his religious conservatism.
What it does further prove, however, is that conservative hypocrisy will always be more deserving of moral opprobrium than liberal hypocrisy. This is specifically because conservatives claim their principles are timeless and absolute, if not Divinely ordained, and therefore universally applicable; hence, betrayals are more trenchant. As much as liberals and progressives try to deify Marx, Hegel and their ilk, it will always be easier to chalk up a betrayal of said principles as a disagreement among men rather than a true “non serviam”.
ITEM: ANOTHER TRIUMPH OF SAIDISM
http://www.nypost.com/seven/06292009/postopinion/opedcolumnists/columbia_tenures_an_israel_basher_176594.htm
Much has been written about the case of Joseph Massad; it doesn’t surprise me that Columbia would resort to such under-the-table tactics to get his back on the faculty. However, this item really stands out:
In a recent work, "Desiring Arabs," Massad claimed to expose yet another plot against the Muslim world -- the "Gay International." He describes how a vast conspiracy of gay activists descended on Arab countries and endangered the lives of "practitioners of same-sex contact" by transforming them into "subjects who identify as 'homosexual' and 'gay.' " Nor is Massad fond of the women's rights movement, or "colonial feminism," as he calls it. He bristles at the attention paid to the Muslim practice of honor killings, which he likens to "crimes of passion," accusing women's groups of ignoring "rampant Western misogyny."
It just goes to show; you can be overtly homophobic and misogynist, but if you are an anti-Semitic non-Caucasian academic, all is forgiven. You can only expect so much. Somewhere in Hell, Edward Said must be smiling in between floggings.
ITEM: MADOFF GETS 150 YEARS
Consider that even if he lives to be 100, his sentence will be worth no more than 20% of what it originally was. Not quite the poetic justice anyone had in mind.
ITEM: JUSTICE THOMAS ONLY DISSENT IN STRIP SEARCH CASE
I hope no one is surprised; anyone remember what almost sank his nomination in the first place?
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