One Had A Dream, The Other Had A Doughnut

Okay, I probably should have something to say about the SOTU, like how I slept through it, or how cracking it is that the wealthy may soon be able to afford health care, or even to ask what happened to the Mars mission, Laura Bush's war on gangs, or that adorable freedom-loving Iraqi woman who saved Pvt. Jessica or saw Iraqi soldiers using bassinets for target practice or something. Sorry. I missed it, and I feel personally responsible that regular readers of this blog will have no idea what Bush's major proposals are, the ones which will shape the Free World for possibly as long as the next 48 hour news cycle.

But dammit, that Dough E. Pantload column on Sacco and Vanzetti, the one I missed by about three weeks, is stuck in my head. And Mrs. King died, and it was especially his steaming load about the late Reverend that's been following me around:

To be sure, Martin Luther King Jr. deserves his place among American heroes. But it's worth noting that what makes him an American icon, as opposed to purely a liberal one, is his vision for a colorblind nation. And colorblindness is no longer a core tenet of the American left. President Kennedy was hardly the liberal of Oliver Stone's imagination. And his brother, Bobby, was more hostile to civil liberties than John Ashcroft, eagerly wiretapping Americans, including King.

Last point first. No one will ever accuse me of being a Kennedy idolator, and the extent to which I find Bobby inspirational it was his capacity for change and his lost promise, not his career as a Red baiter. But he didn't wiretap King. He signed off on the FBI doing so because John Edgar "Does This Dress Make Me Look Fat?" Hoover had the goods on brother Jack and a Russian woman. The Bureau took it from there, and its methods far exceeded what's covered by mere "wiretapping". Jack was assassinated shortly after the project began, and Agent Tolson's roommate declined to share any of the intel with the Department of Justice, though he did tip off LBJ. Hoover wasn't pleased when Johnson nevertheless developed a close personal relationship with King.

One is now tempted anytime Jonah states an opinion or displays a "fact" to ask him to name one book on the subject he's read. So it is here. I'd like to know just what grants Goldberg the right to expound on King's career, on the Civil Rights movement or the history of the US from 1954-1968. I think that "colorblind" is a dead giveaway he's just pooping the papers of his parrot's cage. Colorblind is the anti-"reverse discrimination" code word. Dr. King wasn't colorblind. He worked to free his People. He wasn't a racist, but that's a different thing. Events did eventually move him toward a greater concern with economic justice, something I doubt we'll ever hear the gang at the Corner sing his praises for. The idea that he and the guy who suggested New Orleanians "grow some gills" share a virtual vision of a 21st century America where black poverty is due entirely to African-Americans' insufficient contact with their own bootstraps is just odorous.

Which, I guess, is only to be expected. As I said somewhere, it's interesting that "colorblind" is a term of high praise for a black man in 1950s and 60s America, but the overt racism of The National Review of that era, like this editorial on the tenth anniversary of Brown, doesn't tarnish the idols of the Right:

"But whatever the exact net result in the restricted field of school desegregation, what a price we are paying for Brown! It would be ridiculous to hold the Supreme Court solely to blame for the ludicrously named 'civil rights movement' – that is, the Negro revolt . . . . But the Court carries its share of the blame. Its decrees, beginning with Brown , have on the one hand encouraged the least responsible of the Negro leaders in the course of extra-legal and illegal struggle that we now witness around us. . . .

"Brown , as National Review declared many years ago, was bad law and bad sociology. We are now tasting its bitter fruits. Race relations in the country are ten times worse than in 1954."

or, more to the point, Bill Buckley on Dr. King in 1979:

"When it was black men persecuting white or black men – in the Congo, for instance – he was strangely silent on the issue of human rights. The human rights of Chinese, or of Caucasians living behind the Iron Curtain never appeared to move him."

or for that matter, the unfettered racism in the Corner and elsewhere that followed Katrina like a levee breech.

Happy Birthday

Isaac Donald Everly: born February 1, 1937

(Ahem)

"In politics, looks matter."
-Ezra Klein

Help

Please check in with eRobin, the hardest-working blogger in Blogostan, today, and learn about the Fitzgerald Amendment, the Coalition for Voting Integrity, and what you can do to help. Because, difficult as it may be to believe, sometimes snark is just not enough.

Happy Birthday

John Joseph Lydon
born January 31, 1956

Burke and Hobbes and...

"Conservative" Philosophers in the News:

• Debbie Schlussel (link via TBogg; please do not click the first one if you suffer from heart disease, tender digestion, are pregnant or nursing or nursing a hangover, or have a mouthful of liquid and a monitor or keyboard nearby) gets tricked into reading a NY Times science feature because the phrase "Ear Wax" appears in the headline, and concludes that Europeans couldn't have stolen the Americas from Native Americans--whom she refers to as "Native" Americans--because they came from Asia.

I know, I know. The idea is so incredibly stupid it's practically impossible to convey it in words. Just for the hell of it I tried without success putting it in grunts, wacking it out on the seat of my chair with a yardstick, and finally ramming it directly into my skull via a brick wall. Nothing worked. This single post may wind up requiring us to scrap the totality of Post-War linguistic theory.

There's much humor, if you can stand it, to be gleaned from her repeated defense that saying:

So whom did THEY steal the land from? Somebody else, obviously.

doesn't mean she's claiming there was somebody else. But for me the real howler sorta got lost in the shuffle:

But the paper glosses over the most important finding. The study found that Europeans and Africans tend to have wet ear wax, sweat more, and have more under arm body odor than Asians, who have dry ear wax and don't sweat much. But the study also found that "Native" Americans have dry ear wax and body odor similar to Asians, proving they migrated here from Asia.

The paper glosses over the important point that this is further proof of what has been an accepted explanation for at least a century, except in parts of Utah! Meanwhile, Debs has sorta glossed over her own collision with Aristotelian logic (he rides on blithely, she suffers a massive head wound, which fortunately in her case is a trifling matter): the Asian/Native American ear wax connection doesn't prove anything whatever about settlement of the New World; the two could be unrelated, a point which is actually made in the article, though not overtly because, well, it was of necessity written for the literate.

And these are the people who want to tell us how to teach science.

• Dennis Prager explains that the Palestinian elections "reveal more about the left than about Palestine", because, you know, he always knew the Palestinians were bloodthirsty Muslims who won't rest until Israel is destroyed, but this business about the Left equivocating around the point caught him by surprise.

This is the spot where I'd normally lead into a quote roughly outlining Dennis' thesis, but there doesn't seem to be one. He seems actually to believe that the elections do reveal more about the Palestinians than about the Left. Hell, let's just cut to the cognitive dissonance:

So the Palestinian vote reveals the falsity of the worldwide Left's view of the Palestinians as committed to peace. It likewise reveals the falsity of the Left's belief that Palestinian terror is supported by a small minority of the Palestinian population.

That is one reason why the Bush doctrine -- we need to spread democracy everywhere possible, including, or even especially, in the Arab world -- is so valid. You cannot deal with any problem in life -- from the most personal to the most macro -- by engaging in wishful thinking and denying reality.

I gotta tell ya, when I got through that second paragraph I immediately went back and reread Schlussel just to bask in her superior reasoning skills for a moment.

It seems that Den's on the cutting edge of a new wingnut talking point regarding Hammas, namely that the elections prove the Bush doctrine is working; now, whenever there are democratic elections in the Middle East we'll know from the results whether we need to kill them all or not. But my real reason for bringing up the soon-to-be-available Mr. Prager was his handy-dandy guide to the beliefs of one Norbizness:

On just about every issue, the Left lives in a childlike fantasy realm. Their views are expressions of what they wish for, not what actually is.

Here is a small sample:

-- Support for terror represents a tiny sliver of the Muslim world.

-- All cultures are essentially morally equivalent.

-- The United Nations is a wonderful institution and the best hope of mankind.

-- Men and women are basically the same.

-- It makes no difference whether children are raised by a loving man and woman or by two loving parents of the same sex.

-- Violent criminals in our society are pushed into crime by socioeconomic circumstances, not because of their own flawed characters and values.

-- War is not the answer.

The list of leftist positions based on a rejection of reality is as long as a list of leftist positions.

War is the answer, Mr. Left. How many more missions do we have to accomplish before you just fucking admit it?

WaPoop

Jim VandeHei, "Blogs Attack From Left as Democrats Reach for Center"

Democrats are getting an early glimpse of an intraparty rift that could complicate efforts to win back the White House: fiery liberals raising their voices on Web sites and in interest groups vs. elected officials trying to appeal to a much broader audience.

Hey, Jim, I got an early glimpse of that intraparty rift, too. It was called the year 1951. What's up next for you, "Spring Training Crowds Suggest Some Fans Don't Like the Yankees"?

These activists -- spearheaded by battle-ready bloggers and making their influence felt through relentless e-mail campaigns -- have denounced what they regard as a flaccid Democratic response to the Supreme Court fight, President Bush's upcoming State of the Union address and the Iraq war. In every case, they have portrayed party leaders as gutless sellouts.

Imagine that.

First, liberal Web logs went after Democrats for selecting Virginia Gov. Timothy M. Kaine to deliver the response to Bush's speech next Tuesday. Kaine's political sins: He was too willing to drape his candidacy in references to religion and too unwilling to speak out aggressively against Bush on the Iraq war. Kaine has been lauded by party officials for finding a victory formula in Bush country by running on faith, values and fiscal discipline.

Because remember, Democrats, the Republicans have already shown the intraparty rift which will complicate efforts to retain control of the White House with that Harriet Meiers business. Or Schiavo. Sheesh, I thought VandeHei would never shut up about it, whichever one it was.

Really, now: why is this a story? Is there a prize out there somewhere for the One Millionth Rehash of the Lefties Obstruct Democratic Electoral Success story? 'Cause I'm not sure why anyone got lathered up over Tim Kaine, or who it was, for that matter, but I assume they were voicing their own opinions. As for Alito, I'd like to hear from someone who doesn't regard the Democratic response as flaccid, which by the way is pronounced "flak' sid", not "flassid". Sorry, pet peeve.

That leaves us with Iraq, where, if I understand correctly, moving to the right will not actually connect with some untouched central core of the poll-responding populace.

"The bloggers and online donors represent an important resource for the party, but they are not representative of the majority you need to win elections," said Steve Elmendorf, a Democratic lobbyist who advised Kerry's 2004 presidential campaign. "The trick will be to harness their energy and their money without looking like you are a captive of the activist left."

Man, that is what I love about the Democratic party. It's the real party of opportunity, the only one where a Kerry advisor can still lecture the country on what it takes to win elections.

The blogs-vs.-establishment fight represents the latest version of a familiar Democratic dispute. It boils down to how much national candidates should compromise on what are considered core Democratic values -- such as abortion rights, gun control and opposition to conservative judges -- to win national elections.

Either I need a shower or VandeHei just plopped an unrefrigerated week-old mackerel in the middle of page six. I've got no problem with calling "abortion rights" a core Democratic value, excepting that the battle is more properly over reproductive rights, which itself grows out of the actual core value of privacy, or placing personal liberty over state intrusion. But gun control? Is gun control properly a core Democratic value? And "opposition to conservative judges" just convinces me that VandeHei was typing so fast he'd forgotten how the sentence began.

[Blah blah, Web emerges as powerful political force, blah blah Howard Dean.]

The closest historic parallel would be the talk-radio phenomenon of the early 1980s, when conservatives -- like liberals now -- felt powerless and certain they did not have a way to voice their views because the mainstream media and many of their own leaders considered them out of touch. Through talk radio, often aired in rural parts of the country on the AM dial, conservatives pushed the party to the right on social issues and tax cuts

Or, The Sketch Book of Rip Van VandeHei. If you want to rewrite history it's generally best to choose a period the majority of your readers have no knowledge of. Ronald Reagan was president in the 80s, Jim; he's the guy they renamed one of your airports for. The Press was already behaving like a good lapdog, and the Moral Majority was all the rage. "Conservatives" didn't feel powerless; they played powerless on the radio, on teevee, and in the papers, something they'd been doing at least since Nixon's "Silent Majority" speech. And it's difficult to understand how one is out of touch on abortion rights, the war in Iraq, and, for that matter, gun control when one holds essentially the same positions as the majority of Americans. But I guess that's why I don't write analysis for the Post.

Mailbag

1) Name one battle we lost in the Vietnam war?

You mean after the major influx of US combat troops? Tan Canh.

It's something of a trick question, of course, one that ignores the reality of the conflict and treats war as a very deadly form of football decided by a scorekeeper. Vietnam was not the Eastern front of WWII. There weren't many pitched battles; the Viet Minh had no interest in conquering territory or slugging it out with a superior foe with absolute air superiority. War rarely if ever begins with a level playing field and equal objectives. Too bad we refuse to learn that lesson.

US forces fought extremely well in Vietnam. They were poorly commanded, and their mission was a huge mistake. If you intend to blame The Media for the US defeat then you first need to defend how three Administrations, and a succession of military commanders, mishandled the war for the sake of positive press.

2) Why did it take until 1975 for North Vietnam to conquer South Vietnam when the U.S. had pulled its troops in 1973?

One million ARVN troops, with modern equipment. They fell rather quickly, actually. The North invaded in March '75; Vietnam was officially unified on July 2.

3) Why are pictures of John Kerry and Jane Fonda hanging in Vietnamese war museums?

If you intend to come to this blog and slag off men who served honorably in Vietnam, you send us your verifiable service record first. For starters.


4) Why do records of the former USSR talk about paying agitators within the US peace movement?

Why did the FBI? Why do the Israelis spy on us? Let me clue you to something: anybody who took part in a large anti-war demonstration knew who those people were. There wasn't a massive Communist attack after the war ended. Your fellow citizens protested the war because they were against it, not because they were the dupes of some J. Edgar Hoover fantasy that didn't involve women's garments.

5) Why did the US media refer to battles such as the Tet Offensive as defeats when they were overwhelming US military victories?

Citation? Funny, I was fifteen years old, and I knew the outcome of Tet at the time.

But the "overwhelming victory" thing is another body-count canard. Tet clearly demonstrated that the continual drumbeat of light at the end of the tunnel was just the latest in a series of official lies about imminent victory dating to 1962, when Paul Harkins said it would be over in six months to a year. The Tet Offensive ended the so-called Viet Cong as an effective fighting force, but the ARVN was still plenty capable. It's the difference between "tactics" and "strategy", an effective understanding of which is required for discussion.

Happy Birthday

William Claude Dukenfield
January 29, 1880--December 25, 1946

My favorite Fields story is said to be apocryphal, but that doesn't stop us at BLTR. As Fields lay dying, fading in and out of consciousness, he opened his eyes and croaked to his gathered friends, "The little newsies...sole support of their mothers...working in all sorts of weather...I'd like to do something for them."

"That's very nice, Bill," replied one, and Fields closed his eyes and sank back into his pillow. All was quiet for a moment, til he opened his eyes again and said, "On second thought, fuck 'em."

What, That Old War Again?

Consider this the quick dump of a pilot before Sweeps Month starts Wednesday. I was struck with the idea that once I'd reached the fifth paragraph or 30 minute mark writing a reply on someone else's blog it may be time to post it on my own. And so it was as Daily Pepper covers the Joel Stein tsimmis.

In case you missed it, a quick rundown: Stein writes an opinion column in the LA Times in which he says he doesn't support the troops, because he's against the war; while he's got no problem with the war's supporters supporting the troops, for opponents it's "one of the wussiest positions the pacifists have ever taken..." Mount St. Malkins immediately erupts, assuming we can distinguish between activity and quiescence in that quarter. In a freak occurance, Al Franken and Atrios also take offense.

I happened to have read the thing the day it was published. It was strained, lazy, and to top it off, unfunny. As Pepper says, the VH-1 regular should stick to covering the Dancing With the Stars Master P controversy. Or I take her word for it, anyway, since I'm not quite sure what it is.

Still, Stein has a point. He mostly missed it himself, and he compounded the whiff by displaying his ignorance on a couple of levels. And I can't quite understand why Malkins would take offense rather than trumpet the thing, since Stein seems to be saying exactly what she/they imagine to be the case, but I leave that to her/them. Maybe there was some concern that newer readers thought she/they possess actual reading comprehension.

But as for Stein: "I support the troops but I don't support the war" is a fertile ground for some digging, but he just broadcasts a couple handfuls of seed in a strong breeze. In the first couple hundred words he's equated supporting the troops with bumperstickers and magnetic yellow ribbons, before equating opposition to the war with pacifism. Those are the sort of blasé mistakes that get you invited back to VH-1 for another round of ridiculing the crap commerical culture of your youth, and they might slide as a feature piece somewhere, assuming someone could have applied some genuine humor to the thing. But they shouldn't qualify as an Op-Ed piece in a major metropolitan daily, though god knows it hardly sinks below what else actually does these days.

There's no excuse for Stein not understanding he was shortchanging everyone he wrote about; this is the sorry state of editorial opinion writing in the heyday of Truthiness. Would that the Malkins take a lesson. But what's more interesting, I think, is the casual repetition of history as Dimly Remembered High School Filmstrip:

It's as if the one lesson they [the "pacifists"] took away from Vietnam wasn't to avoid foreign conflicts with no pressing national interest but to remember to throw a parade afterward.

or:

I'm not advocating that we spit on returning veterans like they did after the Vietnam War, but we shouldn't be celebrating people for doing something we don't think was a good idea.

The spitting thing is just pure laziness; that sorry wad of phlegm has been as thoroughly debunked as is theoretically possible. And just the tiniest amount of interest in what the actual troops think about Iraq--here's a hint, Joel: it's roughly as diverse as the general population back home--might have served to open his eyes and maybe even shut his mouth. But so help me, I'm never going to get over the sheer laziness of so many of Stein's contemporaries when it comes to Vietnam. From the "Why are we still talking about that after thirty years?" in blog comments to the idea that an evil cabal of smelly hippies and the Librul Media kept us from winning, the astonishing lack of concern with one's own history, the easy dismissal of the war as something as relevant today as bell-bottoms and rotary phones, the sheer self-indulgence of, not just willful ignorance, but gleefully willful ignorance is just jaw-dropping. What Stein seems to "know" about Vietnam is largely a product of how the war's defenders marketed our defeat a decade after the fact. Which hardly explains his ignorance, since he obviously knows the war was controversial. How is it you come to trust what you're told?

The reason many people opposing the war now see fit to acknowledge their support for the troops is precisely the sort of historical rewrite Stein can't distinguish from the truth. It's precisely because of that spitting story. It's precisely because so many people are so lazy about facts and so easily hoodwinked by urban legends and bullshit on the LA Times editorial pages. You know, there are several people still alive today who lived through Vietnam, Joel. Maybe you could ask them. I think you'd probably find there's a lot more pissed off about the treatment they and their buddies received from the government during and after their service than you'll find pissed off because they didn't get to march through Manhattan. The only guys I know who ever hewed to that line were gung-ho officers and careerist noncoms. Of course their arguments found your ear somehow, while the guys who handled the Agent Orange never got the chance.

And just one more question, Joel. If you think only the war's supporters should display their support for the troops, how is it you now blame the anti-war faction for the lack of parades back then?

This might bring us to the case of one Dough E. Pantload and his vast knowledge of what some other guy told him about Sacco and Vanzetti. But then we already know why Jonah trusts what he's been told.

God Help Us, The Indiana Legislature Used To Meet Only Every Other Year

Okay, the big legislative news in what is supposed to be Indiana's biennial short session, is Governor Mitch "Honorary CEO of Munchkinland" Daniels' headlong rush to gain the statutory right to sell off any piece of state property a private concern covets, under the guise of approving the really, really great deal he got by peddling our childrens' and grandchildrens' birthrights to the highest bidder for ten years worth of roadbuilding. (A Spanish-Australian consortium won the Double Secret bidding for a 75-year lease on the Indiana Toll Road for $3.8 billion, subject to legislative approval. But somehow that deal can't be struck without a bill handing the Guv the right to sell off anything related to transportation, including Indiana's two harbors and its airports, all without further legislative review.)

More about that next week, but I thought you might enjoy a taste of what Indiana's citizen legislators get up to when they're on a tight schedule:

DIGEST OF HB1172 (Updated January 26, 2006 1:51 pm - DI 14)

Information on pain and anesthetic for a fetus. Provides that informed consent to an abortion includes the requirement that a physician inform a pregnant woman that: (1) a fetus may feel pain; (2) an anesthetic or other painkilling medication may be provided during an abortion to a fetus with a probable gestational age of at least 20 weeks; and (3) insurance may or may not cover the service. Provides further that notice must be given in writing at least 18 hours before an abortion concerning the availability of adoptions, physical risks to the woman in having an abortion, and that human life begins when a human ovum is fertilized by a human sperm.

Yes, indeed, metaphysical certitude about When Life Begins from the gang that can't decide what time it is.

DIGEST OF HB 1247 (Updated January 26, 2006 1:46 pm - DI 14)

Wrongful death or injury of a child. Specifies that the law concerning the wrongful death or injury of a child applies to a fetus that has attained viability. Provides that a wrongful death action may not be maintained against a person for: (1) conduct relating to an abortion if the physician in good faith medical judgment believed that the consent of the woman was express or implied; or (2) a lawful medical treatment. Provides that a wrongful death action may not be maintained against a woman for behavior or conduct with respect to her fetus.

I haven't read the relevant statutes, but I'm pretty sure this means a woman who's five months pregnant can walk unbidden up my driveway with the intention of converting me to Jesus, trip over a tree branch her Savior caused to fall thirty seconds earlier, and sue me for the wrongful death of her "child" if she miscarries. And I suppose she could also do so to an amusement park operator after she willingly boards a roller coaster. But she couldn't be sued for downing a fifth of Jim Beam every night.

And yes, it also occurs to me (again, absent any actual knowledge) that she'd also be able to sue the water company if there's anything coming out the tap that might cause birth defects, or any of the pollution manufacturers in this state or whichever way the winds blows. That's not only cold comfort, I expect it's also a loophole that'll close faster'n a legislator's wallet when the per diem's been used up.

I will be erecting "No Access to Pregnant Women" signs on the edge of my property if the second one becomes law, but I'm mostly interested in the first. Despite our legislators' abiding concerns for the rights of Blastocyst-Americans, there's a curious refusal to make the law consistent. They're horrified that a fetus feels pain, for example, but where's the bill requiring anesthesia in infant surgeries, including circumcision (might get some religious objections to that one)? Or for that matter the sorely needed requirement that parents seek medical attention for minors regardless of the parents' religious beliefs (in Indiana, faith healing is an acceptable substitute for, say, going to a hospital when your child's temperature is 108º)? How about the one classifying all miscarriages as homicides? We can go on like this for hours. Hoosiers--trust me on this one--are intellectually overmatched by the concept of the Four Way Stop. T-bone a pregnant woman who runs a stop sign, find yourself up on vehicular manslaughter charges when she miscarries. Time to invest in a videotape system for the dashboard.

This is part and parcel of our having allowed, for thirty years, the anti-rights crowd to simply babble about their superior moral beliefs, rather than demanding answers to the tough questions. I was astonished last Sunday to come across a spokeswoman for National Right to Life rejecting the idea that the Court overturning Roe meant an end to safe and legal abortion. "It would return the issue to the states, where it belongs," she said. This, now that they're faced with the possibility of losing the issue as a national cash cow, is the new talking point. "Yes, my morally-superior belief is that abortion is murder, but I've always felt that's a matter to be decided along jurisdictional boundaries largely established in 18th century England." Y'know, it's one thing to be the party that opposes deficit spending until it's within your power to balance the budget, and you're more than welcome to equate criticism of military action with treason except when Bill Clinton is commander-in-chief, but when your moral values go on the auction block the minute it looks like you'll have to answer for them, that's something else again.

Happy Birthday

Charles Lutwidge Dodgson
January 27, 1832--January 14, 1898