Category: Current Affairs

He’s in his "terrible two"’s now. (Of his second childhood.)

What a baby!

GET THE STORY.

(Credit: a reader who e-mailed me this.)

Back in the old days (meaning, before Ronald Reagan), the South was populated with many, many yellow dog Democrats–so named because they would vote for a yellow dog before they would vote for a Republican. For decades, they kept the South realibly (if not infallibly) voting for the Democratic Party.

BUT THE L.A. TIMES HAS DISCOVERED (LIKE EVERYONE ELSE) THAT THE YELLOW DOG DEMOCRAT SEEMS TO BE AN EXTINCT SPECIES IN THE REGION.

(Backup link in case that one goes bad.)

If the Dems do hope to ever rebuild themselves as a national party, their hopes in the South may lie in a new breed: the blue dog Democrats.

The title of the post is my (probably not entirely grammatical, Beng can correct me) prayer for the victims of the 9.0 earthquake of the coast of Sumatra, which is part of Indonesia and just next to the Malay peninsula.

Tidal waves killed thousands in Indonesia, Malaysia, India, Sri Lanka, and surrounding areas.

The prayer is meant to say, "God, please help the people in Indonesia and all nearby!"

I invite you to join me in praying for the victims of the earthquake.

God have mercy.

So Ah-nold was over in Berlin (which, some may be surprised to learn, is not the capital of his home country) and in a magazine interview he apparently dished out a little advice for the Republican party:

Schwarzenegger, a Republican, has taken an
unorthodox approach since winning office last year — standing by a
promise to toe a conservative line of fiscal matters while veering left
on social issues such as gay rights and the environment.

In an interview with Germany’s Sueddeutsche Zeitung daily,
Schwarzenegger said that "the Republican Party currently covers only
the spectrum from the right wing to the middle, and the Democratic
Party covers the spectrum from the left to the middle."

"I
would like the Republican Party to cross this line, move a little
further left and place more weight on the center," he was quoted as
saying. "This would immediately give the party 5% more votes without it
losing anything elsewhere" [SOURCE.]

No.

What Ah-nold is recommending is a return to the 1970s, when we had liberal Republicans in office like Gerald Ford and Nelson Rockefeller as party leaders. You know what that got us: Jimmy Carter! (Well, actually, anti-Nixon sentiment also had to do with giving us History’s Greatest Monster.)

What Ah-nold is recommending is "Let’s do the timewarp again." He may think that electoral success for Republicans is just a jump to the left, but if anything it is to be found a step to the right (Reagan country).

Now, we all know that after the political conventions, candidates of both parties try to soften their image and appeal to the mushy middle voters who haven’t yet made up their minds. During this time they say a lot of phony baloney stuff meant to appeal to people unable to figure out which side of the fence to fall off. That’s fine. The party faithful know that the candidates have to say this stuff, but they don’t really mean it. They may have to throw the mushy middle a few bones (which it could use, being mushy and all), but they still plan to govern in a way consistent with the party faithful’s core values.

For the party faithful of the Democrats, that means an anti-life governing policy.

For the party faithful of the Republicans (or at least an indispensible element in the Republican coalition), that means a pro-life governing policy.

It’s their intent to honor these values that is the reason the party faithful are voting for them in the first place. If they betray those values, the party faithful will stay home and the candidate will lose.

That’s what almost happened to Bush in 2000 when a previously unnoticed drunk driving record emerged in a classic, last minute dirty trick. Four million Evangelicals stayed home and Bush got into a squeaker that it took the Supremes to decide.

This illustrates the problem with what my governator is recommending: If the Republican party does more than make token gestures toward those who are liberal on social issues like gay marriage and abortion (e.g., letting Ah-nold and Rudy speak at the convention), if it allows its governing center to shift on these issues then pro-lifers will immediately desert the party.

It would be worth it to have four (or even eight) years of a pro-abort president to teach the Republicans that these issues are NON-NEGOTIABLE, because their understanding that is the only way these battles can ultimately be won. They may throw occasional bones to blue-leaning people, but they have to deliver red-meat to the redstaters.

Were the Republican party to permanently shift its governing center leftward it would permanently cease to be the majority party.

Sorry, Ah-nold. That kind of governating may work in blue states like California and New York, but not elsewhere.

Y’know all those bluestate Americans who were talking about moving to Canada after the election?

"NOT SO FAST," SAYS ONE BLUESTATER WHO’S ALREADY LIVING THERE.

Excerpts:

I moved to Canada after the 2000 election. Although I did it mainly for
career reasons — I got a job whose description read as though it had
been written precisely for my rather quirky background and interests —
at the time I found it gratifying to joke that I was leaving the United
States because of George W. Bush. It felt fine to think of myself as
someone who was actually going to make good on the standard
election-year threat to leave the country.

So I could certainly identify with the disappointed John Kerry
supporters who started fantasizing about moving to Canada after Nov. 2.
But after nearly four years as an American in the Great White North,
I’ve learned it’s not all beer and doughnuts. If you’re thinking about
coming to Canada, let me give you some advice: Don’t.

Although I enjoy my work and have made good friends in Toronto, I’ve
found life as an American expatriate in Canada difficult, frustrating
and even painful in ways that have surprised me.

In the wake of 9/11, after the initial shock wore off, it was common
to hear some Canadians voice the opinion that Americans had finally
gotten what they deserved. The attacks were just deserts for years of
interventionist U.S. foreign policy, the increasing inequality between
the world’s poorest nations and the wealthiest one on Earth, and a
generalized arrogance.

I heard similar views expressed after Nov. 2, when Americans were
perceived to have revealed their true selves and thus to "deserve" a
second Bush term.

Canadians often use metaphors to portray their relationship with the
United States. They describe Canada as "sleeping with an elephant."
Even when the elephant is at rest, they worry that it may suddenly roll
over. They liken Canada to a gawky teen-age girl with a hopeless crush
on the handsome and popular boy next door. You know, the one who
doesn’t even know she exists.

Part of what’s irksome about Canadian anti-Americanism and the
obsession with the United States is that it seems so corrosive to
Canada. Any country that defines itself through a negative ("Canada:
We’re not the United States") is doomed to an endless and repetitive
cycle of hand-wringing and angst. For example, Canadians often point to
their system of universal health care as the best example of what it
means to be Canadian (because the United States doesn’t provide it),
but this means that any effort to adjust or reform that system (which
is not perfect) precipitates a national identity crisis: To wit,
instituting co-payments or private MRI clinics will make Canada too
much like the United States.

The rush to make comparisons sometimes prevents meaningful
examination of the very real problems that Canada faces. As a Canadian
social advocate once told me, when her compatriots look at their own
societal problems, they are often satisfied once they can reassure
themselves that they’re better off than the United States. As long as
there’s still more homelessness, racism and income inequality to the
south, Canadians can continue to rest easy in their moral superiority.

(NOTE TO BILLYHW & OTHER CANADIAN READERS: Present company is obviously excepted!)

It’s fun and scary to speculate on the future and "what if" scenarios.

HERE’S A NIGHTMARE SCENARIO THAT DEPENDS ON ONE THING: THE U.S. DECIDING NOT TO BE GLOBAL COP ANY MORE.

I’d love to see this scenario played out in a movie. Hate to see it played out in real-life.

The author concludes that the (unnamed) intelligence insiders who spun out the scenario "also say there is no more important objective for the Bush administration than repairing transatlantic relations."

Seems to me that if the scenario shows anything, it shows just how much the world needs the U.S. and how urgent the need is for the Axis of Weasels to suck it up and get with the program. Things fare badly for the U.S. in the scenario, but not as badly as for the rest of the world.

Of course, the scenario won’t happen. Some elements of it are manifestly implausible (particularly where the scenario mentions bin Laden, who is dead the moment he emerges from his spider hole). But even "what if" scenarios can be informative.

No, Diana Ross ain’t getting together a new group. (Rats!)

I’m talking about who the next nominees to the Supreme Court will be.

HERE’S AN ARTICLE THAT GOES INTO THE SUBJECT IN-DEPTH.

As well as surveying the recent selection of Court members, which presidents did well in getting what they wanted, which did poorly, and how Bush seems to be imitating the habits of the former presidents rather than the latter.

There’s still cause for worry here. It’s not yet clear that Bush will pick folks willing to overturn The Most Horiffic Decision In Supreme Court History.

But the signs are much, much better than they would have been otherwise.

The story is particularly interesting for those who aren’t familiar with Supreme Court history, but even for veteran Court-watchers, it’s got an intriguing look at how recent presidents (including Bush) are going about the process of picking nominees.

GET THE STORY.

. . . which I’m not interested in as it has to do with saving the Democratic party and consists of something other than (a) flip on abortion, (b) stop dissing Christians, and (c) embrace traditional moral values.

But he does want to sound a wake-up call to the Democratic Party:

Since the beginning
of the Civil War and the election of the first Republican president,
Abraham Lincoln — with the exception of the sainted Franklin Delano
Roosevelt — only two Democratic presidents have won a majority of the
nation’s popular vote, Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964 and Jimmy Carter in
1976.

That’s right. Elected Democratic presidents Grover
Cleveland, Woodrow Wilson, Harry Truman, John F. Kennedy and Bill
Clinton all failed to win a majority of the popular vote. By contrast,
in the same span, Republican chief executives have 17 times been
elected with a majority of all votes cast. The GOP majority list:
Lincoln, Ulysses Grant (twice), William McKinley (twice), Teddy
Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, Warren Harding, Calvin Coolidge,
Herbert Hoover, Dwight Eisenhower (twice), Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan
(twice), George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush.

Bluntly put, Democrats are historically not the natural
majority party in the United States — Republicans are. That means the
most totally efficient get-out-the-vote campaign of all Democratic
voters won’t, by itself, ever be enough for the party of Jefferson to
recapture the White House.

Other than waiting for another Great Depression like that
which first elected FDR, or your opponents’ nominating an ideologically
unelectable candidate like Barry Goldwater, or a constitutional crisis
like Watergate when an un-elected Republican president pays a huge
political price for pardoning his resigned predecessor, or the good
fortune of a self-financed, third-party maverick challenger like Ross
Perot, whose strong support comes disproportionately from Republicans,
Democrats have no choice but to conclude that — in spite of their
obvious charm, intelligence and high-mindedness — they need to make
some changes.

SOURCE.

I’d have some questions about whether Shields is right about whether the Republicans were really were the majority party during all of this time (particularly in the early period), but concerning the present it appears that he’s right, and the Democratic Party need to be educated on the need for "change."

That’s what they’re big on, right?

You may not have heard, but in a fit of political correctness (and kowtowing to Islamofascists), the U.K.’s Labor (Labour?) Party is set to inflict on its populace a bill that will have a chilling effect on free speech by banning speech (and print) that could (even unintentionally) stir up religious (or anti-religious) hatred based on whether the targets of such speech feel they are being hated.

What a load of useless bloody loonies!

A lot of folks in the U.K.–from all parts of the religious and non-religious spectrums–seem not to be happy about this, which suggests that some sanity still resides in the Isles, but because of the way their parliamentary system works, it appears that the measure is set to become law.

A BLACK DAY FOR BRITAIN!

Yet that day seems to be coming unless the remaining sanies over there muster the courage to raise such a storm of protest that Mr. Blair’s government is forced to face the light of day.

Here’s a seemingly not-at-all religious commentator who points out:

There is a huge danger at the centre of the
thinking which grounds this measure. What counts as hateful depends
very much on the sensitivities and tolerances of the complainant. As we
never tire of reminding ourselves, you can get away with verbal
aggression towards Christianity which would be considered unacceptable
if directed towards Islam. It follows that the less tolerant any
religious group is of criticism or mockery, the greater the protection
the proposed new law will offer them. But these may be the very faiths
or sects which ought to be confronted — confronted and attacked for the
very intolerance and self-righteousness which, if this measure becomes
law, will be adduced as evidence of their “sensitivity”. In the 1970s
this used to be defined as “self-defined” oppression: the notion that
it is for you to say what oppresses you. It is a nonsense.

READ THE REST OF WHAT HE SAYS.

N.B. This guy quotes multiple examples of hatred-stirring speech, including some directed at Catholics, and his own views seem quite anti-religious, but he is right on the core principle: One cannot attempt to micromanage religious discourse in this way. Today’s marketplace of ideas needs free discussion and argument when it comes to religion, and that means tolerating (in the sense of not prosecuting) people when they get rude. You can’t ban rudeness without shutting down serious religious discussion and debate.

Makes me glad that over here we have a First Amendment that at least reigns in the excesses of politically correct censorship. The measure Mr. Blair’s government is intending to inflict on the British populace is sheer unadulterated lunacy.

Brits: Y’all urgently need to stop this law or, if it is enacted, get it unenacted as swiftly as possible. The survival of your few remaining freedoms depends on the defeat of laws such as this. If measures of this nature continue to be enacted, you will be living in the kind of 1984 society that George Orwell warned about before you can say "Jack Robinson." The lyrics of Rule Britannia to the contrary, Britons at present are perilously close to becoming slaves.

HERE’S A STORY QUOTING YUSHCHENKO’S CHIEF OF STAFF SAYING THAT ELEMENTS OF THE KGB MAY HAVE BEEN INVOLVED IN THE DIOXIN POISONING.

I would assume that the KGB (a) has access to all kinds of poisons that are far less detectable than dioxin and (b) knows how to actually use such poisons so as to guarantee the death of the victim.

Dioxin appears to be highly detectable (as indicated by the fact they were able to confirm it by testing a living, metabolizing subject long after the poisoning occurred). It also normally builds up over time before it becomes fatal. Nobody has really known till now, it seems, what it does in high, sudden doses. Thus it would be an unreliable way of killing someone and one that would make the fact that a poisoning occurred abundantly clear (leading to an investigation and public outrage).

This sounds more to me like it was the work of amateurs–local Ukranian politicos who had access to dioxin and decided to use it on Yushchenko without really having expertise in a wide range of poisons or how to use them.