Status obsession

What kind of person announces her obstetric intentions in a Washington Post op-ed?

My husband and I are getting ready to do what many couples in these brink-of-recessionary times would consider unthinkable. No, we're not buying a Martha's Vineyard retreat or planning a month in St. Bart's or eco-decorating our house.
We're planning to have a third child.

(OMG! Stop the world!)

What shocks people, when we tell them, isn't the thought of hauling three kids onto a place for a vacation, or even the idea of coming home every night to a houseful of runny noses and homework assignments. What gets them is the sheer financial audacity. Raising kids today costs a fortune. Last month, the Department of Agriculture estimated that each American child costs an average of $204,060 to house, clothe, educate and entertain until the age of 18.

("Sheer financial audacity"!)

What's worse, the desire to have another child opens one up to charges of elitism and status consciousness. In many major U.S. cities and their suburbs -- especially New York, where I live -- having three or more children has now come to seem like an ostentatious display of good fortune, akin to owning a pied-Ã -terre in Paris. The family of five has become "deluxe." Last year, novelist Molly Jong-Fast mused in the New York Observer, "Are people having four or five children just because they can? Because they feel that it shows their wealth and status? In a world where the young rich use their $13,000 Birkin bags as diaper bags, one has to wonder."

OK, lady, if the family of five is now "deluxe," then what adjective applies to a family of eight? Yes, I said "eight." My wife and I have six kids. No one has ever accused us of elitism or "ostentatious display." Drop by and visit sometime, we'll have macaroni and cheese.

'Congenital bolshevism'!

Greg Ransom writes:

There's a big mystery at the heart of Barack Obama's Dreams For My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance. What was Barack Obama doing seeking out Marxist professors in college? Why did Obama choose a Communist Party USA member as his socio- political counselor in high school? Why was he spending his time studying neocolonialism and the writings of Frantz Fanon, the pro-violence author of "the Communist Manifesto of neocolonialsm", in college? Why did he take time out from his studies at Columbia to attend socialist conferences at Cooper Union?

The answer, Ransom suggests, is that young Barack was falling in the radical footsteps of his father:

Barack Obama's father, a Harvard trained economist, attacked the economic proposals of pro-Western 'third way" leader Tom Mboya from the socialist left, siding with communist-allied leader Oginga Odinga, in a paper Barack Obama's father wrote for the East Africa Journal.

Well, that cuts it: "a Harvard trained economist"! You know who else studied at Harvard? George W. Bush, who got a Harvard MBA. Obviously, Obama is a dangerous man, unfit for office.

Allahpundit fails to see the menace:

I don’t even like holding people to what they wrote in their own college theses; now we have to worry about congenital bolshevism? There’s plenty of material to suggest Obama himself is hard left without weakening the argument by holding him responsible for his father’s views. What am I missing here?

Nits make lice.

'A gritty, kind of stand-up guy'.

No, not Charlton Heston. It's a GOP fundraiser's description of John McCain's appeal:

"There is a tremendous amount of respect for John McCain out there," says the fundraiser. "He's seen as a gritty, kind of stand-up guy. They're not familiar with the dark side of John McCain that folks inside the Beltway are."

Jonathan Martin opines:

McCain has considerable appeal to those Republicans and conservative-leaning Americans who are not hyper-engaged and consumed by an issue matrix. The more casual the voter, the more likely he or she is to like McCain. Why? Because . . . the information flow they have is largely confined to Vietnam vet, POW, straight talker and maybe maverick.

Martin does not say what's likely to happen after Labor Day, when the Democrat/MSM complex starts bombarding the public with a non-stop barrage of negative information about McCain. Nor does Martin suggest how voters will react when they see a 72-year-old, 5-foot-7, bald man notorious for his bad temper in a nationally-televised debate against young, tall, lanky, affable media darling Barack Obama.

At the risk of sounding like part of the "political elite," McCain's biggest problem as a candidate is that he doesn't look presidential. George W. Bush may be an idiot, but at least he's a tall idiot with hair. The last three bald candidates for president were Hubert Humphrey ('68), George McGovern ('72) and Gerald Ford ('76).

Galbraithian nonsense

NotoriousFamous idioteconomist John Kenneth Galbraith once wrote a strangely influential book called The Affluent Society in which he argued, among other things, that advertising caused people to buy things they didn't actually want. Consumer spending was wasteful, Galbraith argued, and therefore government should raise taxes and spend the money on things that people really needed.

Kerry Howley takes notice of a suspiciously similar argument in a new book by Pamela Paul claiming that the baby-products industry -- a/k/a "Big Baby" -- is forcing parents to buy too much stuff for their babies:

Pushed by a host of factors — the guilt and exhaustion of working parents, the dispersion of family networks that once passed knowledge from generation to generation, the pressure of admissions from preschool to college, and a culture that worships all things celebrity (including its offspring) — we are intimidated or bamboozled into buying all sorts of goods and services that we not only don’t need, but that may harm our children.

"Intimidated"? "bamboozled"? We're victims!

There are people who have more money than sense, and I suppose stupid people are easy marks for purveyors of worthless products. But what can be done? There's no point writing books about the subject, because stupid people don't read books. If they had enough brains to read a book, they probably wouldn't be buying that crap to begin with.

As a parent of six, I've seen my share of baby stuff, so here's some advice on what not to buy:

• Walkers -- These icons of White Trash Motherhood are actually bad for your child's development. If your child is not old enough to walk, the child should be down on the floor crawling. The experience of crawling is vital to developing motor skills. It's exercise that stimulates both brain and body. The ironically-named "walker" actually delays a child's progress toward walking. The only time a walker comes in handy is if you're mopping the floor, or you're outside and don't want your child crawling around in the dirt. But the White Trash Motherhood thing of leaving the child in a walker for hours at a time is to be strenously avoided.
• Talking "educational" toys -- Another classic icon of White Trash Motherhood, the toy that talks to your baby so you don't have to. Generally speaking, avoid any baby toy that requires batteries, but especially avoid any toy with batteries that claims to be educational. It's mind-boggling to see these "baby computers" and fancy "learn to read" gizmos at the store for $54.99. Hello? Go buy Dr. Seuss's ABC for $4.99 and read that to your kid.
• Electric kiddie cars -- Perhaps the ultimate icon of White Trash Motherhood, these overpriced toys can be found swarming over every trailer park in Alabama for a few days after Christmas. Then the kids get bored, the cars left in the yard during a rainstorm, and by spring are non-operational. The likelihood that a parent will buy their child one of these things is inversely proportional to the number of books in the home.

McCain campaign drain explained

John McCain raised $15 million in March -- which is about one-quarter of the combined March fundraising of Obama ($40 million) and Hillary ($20 million).

Sean Hackbarth is worried because only $4 million of McCain's cash came in via the Internet:

If anyone can wage a low-cost campaign to victory it’s John McCain. He won the nomination on a shoe-string budget. However, wouldn’t he have more room for error if he had the luxury of additional funds? By relying more on online fundraising McCain would have more time to do the townhall meetings he loves and talk with the press and webloggers. Getting more online donors means McCain would do what he does best: campaign.

Let me explain this for the benefit of anyone who doesn't understand it. McCain is not a grassroots candidate who can count on getting the majority of his campaign money in $50 and $100 contributions from online donors. He collects the bulk of his cash from elderly rich people and the big-money crowd on K Street.

As for the "shoe-string budget," McCain won the GOP nomination on the basis of (a) Democratic crossover votes in New Hampshire, (b) divided opposition, and (c) fawning media coverage. None of those factors will be in effect in the general election.

Hackbarth writes:

If you’re a Republican who wants to retain the White House in November you should be disappointed.

Right. I've been disappointed ever since McCain clinched the nomination. He's an albatross, a certain loser. McCain is not Reagan '80, he's Dole '96. I can't understand why some Republicans can't see that putting Crazy Cousin John at the top of the ticket guarantees a disaster in November -- probably the worst GOP wipeout since 1974.

Dept. of Unfortunate Headlines

Clinton Unveils Plan To Find Cure For Breast Cancer On The Ellen DeGeneres Show

It's like a reality show, see? Every Monday, Hillary will go on "Ellen" and do some cancer research . . . . I mean, how hard can it be?

Campaign headlines

There's just so much news out there, I despair of attempting to comment about even a fraction of it. So, via Memeorandum, here are the important headlines as of 5 p.m. Monday:

Advance copy of Gen. Petraeus' opening statement to Congress
("Get off my back, a--holes!")

Book claims John McCain called his wife an ugly word
(Hint: It wasn't "progressive.")

Obama suffers 'lingering damage' over racist pastor
(Good news for Hillary?)

Hillary adviser Mark Penn 'gelded'?
(More good news!)

Obama +9 over Hillary in Gallup Poll
(National numbers are irrelevant in primaries.)

Krugman: Food crisis!
("All the fearmongering that fits")

Clinton: 'Boycott China'?
(Those illegal donations must be lagging.)

Obama goes for gun vote?

I remember Charlton Heston. I admired Charlton Heston. And you, Senator Obama, are no Charlton Heston:

Barack Obama did not hunt or fish as a child. He lives in a big city. And as an Illinois state legislator and a U.S. senator, he consistently backed gun control legislation. But he is nevertheless making a play for pro-gun voters in rural Pennsylvania. By highlighting his background in constitutional law and downplaying his voting record, Obama is engaging in a quiet but targeted drive to win over an important constituency that on the surface might seem hostile to his views.

See-Dubya says:

You know, sometimes I start to suspect that liberals think we’re stupid.

Actually, liberals thinks Pennsylvania Democrats are stupid, and they have some pretty strong evidence on that: Gov. Ed Rendell.

(Via Memeorandum.)

Planet of the critics

Victor Morton, The Right-Wing Film Geek, weighs in:

[S]o many liberals felt a need to say, on this day of all days, that Heston was a bad actor (though I don’t believe Fire Dog Lake or the Yglesias commenters are doing anything but rationalizing their political judgments; you want to retch at stuff like this). Acting tastes differ and acting fashions change (more on that in a moment), but how narrow must a man’s moral sight be to waste neurons, silicon space, and perfectly good 1s and 0s ranting about what a bad actor a man (supposedly) is on the day of his death. Though political figures by definition have mixed legacies, and noting this in a respectful fashion is quite fair even in an obit, I devoutly believe in “de mortuis nil nisi bonum,” particularly about artists, and doubt the moral sanity and basic decency of those who do not — one reason I doubt that moral sanity and basic decency are widespread among liberals.

Definitely read the whole thing. The Latin phrase roughly translates to "speak no ill of the dead." I know Latin because I studied it in high school. Victor knows Latin because he's a latter-day Guy Fawkes.

Speaking of conspiratorial in-jokes, the fact that The Washington Times obituary by Jennifer Harper used the same quotes ("Soylent Green is people!" and "Take your stinking paws off me, you damned dirty ape!") as my American Spectator remembrance, is merely a coincidence, Victor assures us:

I swear to God that it is a coincidence that Stacy and Jennifer quoted almost the same two lines — they were such clear-cut choices for quotation. The first-named line was the one the AME in charge at the Times imitated when he and I were discussing Heston on Sunday — it’s a guttural cry of despair that a lesser voice could not make so memorable, even for parody’s sake (he also remembered an SNL sketch in which Heston parodies himself). As for the second line, it’s the first time that the apes have heard humans speak, and hearing them from the Charlton Heston voice, you better believe it shook them down to the bones as much as an ape talking to us today would.

Sure, it's just a coincidence -- like it's just a coincidence Karl Rove knows Republicans in Alabama. Ask Don Siegelman about that.

UPDATE: Michelle Malkin links what she calls a "most excellent and thorough tribute to Charlton Heston" by Stephen Hunter of The Washington Post. Except . . . it's not a tribute:

Was he a great actor? Many think not, and few would rank him with contemporaries like Brando, Dean, even Widmark or Wayne. . . .
His greatest film, 1958's "Touch of Evil," featured Heston as a Mexican narcotics detective, probably his biggest stretch and not really an outstanding performance. . . .
In his private life, he was given to follow that strange calling that is half public service and half self-aggrandizement with the distinction frequently blurred. . . .
Why . . . did he take the leadership of the NRA, never the most popular of lobbying outfits in Washington? One cynical explanation is that the old star was looking for an audience that would treat him as he had been treated in the late '50s and early '60s, almost as a god.

Hunter repeatedly damns Heston with faint praise. Would a "most excellent and thorough tribute" suggest that Heston was less able an actor than Richard Widmark or John Wayne?

Hello? If there is anything that is a solid consensus among film snobs, it's that John Wayne was a lousy actor. I'm not a film snob, and thus not part of that consensus, but when Hunter says "few would rank" Heston with Wayne, that's about as vicious a put-down as a Washington Post film snob can muster. And while Widmark worked steadily, he was never the kind of marquee name who could carry a picture all by himself. So by classifying Heston as inferior to both Wayne and Widmark, Hunter is double-damning him as barely better than a B-movie actor.

Even more astonishing is that Hunter, in the process of taking these oblique cheap shots at Heston, trashes Cecil B. DeMille:

Nobody ever accused . . . Cecil B. DeMille, of greatness; DeMille was more entrepreneur, logistics expert, visionary and carny barker than true artist. And [The Ten Commandments] remains a monument to kitsch. . . .

Great balls of fire! Technicolor spectaculars may not be your cup of tea (or my cup of tea), but to deny "greatness" to an Academy Award winner? DeMille was one of the few directors to succeed first in silent films, then in talkies and then in color. He was and remains one of the giant figures of motion picture history. What kind of twisted and embittered soul would diss DeMille as a "carny barker"?

And anyone who accuses Heston of overacting or playing a "type" should hesitate -- and perhaps halt -- before heaping praise on James Dean, who exemplified what might be called the Schizodramatic Style: 90% morose neurotic, 10% raging psychotic. To suggest that Dean's acting was "nuanced," in a way Heston's was not, is just balderdash.

PREVIOUSLY:

4/7: Barr on Heston

4/6: If you can't say something nice ...

4/6: Charlton Heston, RIP

Barr on Heston

Statement from Bob Barr released today:

I was deeply saddened to hear of Charlton’s passing and want his devoted wife Lydia and children Holly and Fraser to know that they are in my heart and prayers at this difficult time. He was a truly venerable figure off the screen as well as on. Like his friend Ronald Reagan, he showed true courage by turning his back on liberalism and publicly embracing principles of liberty at a time and in a place where it wasn’t just unpopular, it was a perilous career move. By the time I came to know him through his work with the NRA, he had become the Second Amendment’s very best advocate. I am honored that he campaigned for me in each of my Congressional races, and am privileged to have worked with him as a NRA Board Member during his tenure as President. We are better off and more secure in our freedoms thanks to him, so let us rejoice in his life even as we mourn this loss.

Campaign Trail '08

Cazart! It seems that Daniel McCarthy of The American Conservative is currently reading Hunter S. Thompson's Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail '72:

The Thompson cult is too hip for my tastes — and many a young writer has been ruined trying to emulate the godfather of gonzo — but I’m enjoying the book a great deal. George McGovern is the hero of the book, and since McGovern is also one of the good guys in Kauffman’s book (which I’ll eventually be reviewing, the fact that I’m quoted therein notwithstanding) means that I suppose Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail counts as research. My Ron Paul campaign colleague Jonathan Bydlak was the one who recommended the book to me — a good call.

The big mystery is why McCarthy didn't contact me, since I'm arguably the Right's foremost authority on all things Gonzo. In addition to having been a fan since 1979, I'm on friendly terms with Thompson's widow, which is something few right-wingers can say.

Certainly McCarthy's friend Bydlak made a good recommendation -- HST's '72 campaign book is arguably the most honest book of its kind ever written. (I wrote a feature about the book when it was re-released in 2006.) Thompson's hilariously blunt assessments of liberal phonies like Ed Muskie and Hubert Humphrey are worth the price of the book. He also provides some fascinating inner-circle glimpses of how the McGovern campaign fought it out during the Democratic primaries -- and then hopelessly bungled the general election campaign against Nixon.

What's important to understand about HST's journalism, as I explained last month in my "Notes on Gonzo" post, is that he did not plan to become a journalist. He planned to be a great novelist -- his heroes were Hemingway and Fitzgerald -- and stumbled into journalism as a way to pay the bills. As he writes in Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail '72 (pg. 478 of the latest paperback edition):

There was a time, about ten years ago, when I could write like Grantland Rice. Not necessarily because I believed all that sporty bulls---, but because sportswriting was the only thing I could do that anybody was willing to pay for.

Throughout his writing (including Hell's Angels and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas), HST persistently ridicules the self-important cluelessness of "serious," "objective" journalists. Thompson himself never claimed to be objective -- he had strong feelings about the stories he covered and never bothered to hide his feelings -- and engaged in wild antics (such as giving his press pass to a drifter who wreaked havoc on Muskie's campaign train) that injected chaotic mischief into the compulsory dullness of "serious" journalism.

McCarthy is correct that "many a young writer has been ruined trying to emulate the godfather of gonzo," as Thompson's widow herself said:

"A lot of young people are under the assumption that if you do a lot of cocaine and drink a lot of Wild Turkey, you, too, can write like Hunter S. Thompson," she told the audience that included Richard Cusick of High Times magazine and R. Keith Stroop, founder of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws.

Gonzo journalism is not about substance abuse, but about the writer's self-awareness -- and his awareness that much of what passes for journalism is no better than "hired bulls---," to quote Thompson. What he was trying to get at was something beneath the PR hype, something real and true, something honest and human.

I became a fan of HST three decades ago because his books made me laugh. Now, after more than 20 years in the news business, I still laugh, but HST also makes me think, and stand amazed that he was able to do what he did. That's why I get angry when John McCain's ditzy daughter compares her insipid blog to Thompson's campaign opus. That stupid brat hasn't paid enough dues, and never will pay enough dues, to compare herself to Thompson.

Oh, one more thing I meant to point out: McGovern is not the hero of Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail '72. McGovern is a nice guy, but he's also a loser. The real hero of the book is Thompson. He always is the hero of his books, which goes a long way toward explaining the "Thompson cult" among young writers who dream of being heroes themselves.

UPDATE: Linked by James Poulos, whose monstrous sideburns are proof that long-term ibogaine abuse can lead to the growth of bizarre facial hair.

It disturbs me, however, that Poulos calls me a "DC fixture." (A urinal is also a fixture.) What James means is that I show up once or twice a month at the same open-bar gatherings of right-wingers that he attends regularly. But while James lives in DC, I live 70 miles away on the far side of South Mountain in rural Maryland.

So how is that I have managed, via these periodic visits to DC, to create the impression that I am a ubiquitous "fixture" in the city? Poulos must be hallucinating, and it's probably not just the ibogaine. He must have gotten into the ether. And I remind you, there is still "nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible and depraved than a man in the depths of an ether binge."

Oh, great. Another crisis.

First it was global warming. Next came the Sovietization of Alabama. Then it was The Blog Crisis. Now, it's rice:

A global rice shortage that has seen prices of one of the world's most important staple foods increase by 50 per cent in the past two weeks alone is triggering an international crisis, with countries banning export and threatening serious punishment for hoarders.

Bans and punishment! Pretty soon, we'll see Coast Guard cutters chasing down rice smugglers and customs officials at foreign airports will be asking departing tourists, "Ma'am, do you have any rice in your luggage?"

An amusing naivete to this article:

The impact will be felt most keenly by the world's poorest populations, who have become increasingly dependent on the crop as the prices of other grains have become too costly.

Well, duh. Food is a commodity. It is sold for money. If prices go up, poor people are always hurt worse than rich people because -- big surprise -- rich people have lots of money.

Thurston Howell III may have to postpone the purchase of another yacht, but he ain't going to starve to death. On the other hand, the poor guy in the slums of Calcutta lives day-to-day with no money to spare, and an increase in prices means he might go hungry, or go even hungrier than he's already going.

Amazing thing about wealth and poverty: Whatever your problem, being rich makes it better, and being poor makes it worse. And that's true for nations as well as for individuals.

Rich countries have more resources to cope with their problems than do poor countries. A hurricane hits Florida, causes a few million dollars in damage, people evacuate and maybe one or two people die. But if the same hurricane hits Haiti, hundreds of people might be killed.

So whether you are a nation or an individual, it's better to be rich than to be poor, and most people understand this. That's why so many people watch those stupid TV informercials about "no-money-down" real estate deals -- they want to get rich. And it's why poor people in Mexico want to live in the United States: They'll still be poor, but it's better to be poor in a rich country than to be poor in a poor country.

All this is just common sense, but still the Guardian feels the need to state in the second paragraph that higher rice prices "will be felt most keenly by the world's poorest populations." This is an "international crisis," the reporter proclaims, as if Swedes will soon be starving in the streets and Canada is about to descend into anarchy.

In reality, the rice shortage is a crisis in the same poor Third World countries that are always in crisis, if by "crisis" you mean the persistent problems associated with widespread poverty. The higher price of rice will make things worse for a while, but apocalyptic famine is unlikely, except where governments try to "fix" the problem, for example:

Already China, India, Egypt, Vietnam and Cambodia have imposed tariffs or export bans, as it has become clear that world production of rice this year will decline in real terms by 3.5 per cent. . . .
In Bangladesh, government-run outlets that sell subsidised rice have been besieged by queues comprised largely of the country's middle classes, who will queue for hours to purchase five kilograms of rice sold at 30 per cent cheaper than on the open market.
In Thailand yesterday . . . Deputy Prime Minister Mingkwan Sangsuwan convened a meeting of key officials and traders yesterday to discuss imposing minimum export prices to control export volumes and measures to punish hoarders. The meeting follows moves by some larger supermarkets in Thailand to limit purchases of rice by customers.
In the Philippines, where the National Bureau of Investigation has been called in to
raid traders suspected of hoarding rice to push up the prices, activists have warned of the risk of food riots.

OK, so famine might strike the Philippines, Thailand, Bangladesh, etc., but not because of high rice prices. It's the governments' anti-market paranoia -- "Someone might be making a profit here!" -- that will lead to real shortages. Where trade is criminalized, prices go up and shortages become routine, as you may have discovered the last time you tried to score some Bolivian flake cocaine.

If you can't say something nice . . .

. . . you might be a liberal. News of Charlton Heston's death predictably caused the DailyKos crowd to spew bile. (Hat-tip: Sean Hackbarth.)

Attacks on Heston's politics are one thing, but politically-motivated attacks on his ability as an actor are absurd. Matthew Yglesias is dismissive, though he is at least civil. TBogg, on the other hand:

[I]t was from Charlton Heston . . . that I started to understand the concept of "acting" and "actors" and how really bad Heston was at this acting thing. . . . Heston was a star and nuance was not in his repertoire; he was a slab of heroic beef who forged ever onward to the final credits with grim determination, gritted teeth and a heroic mien. . . .
I'm not sure what it is about bad actors that causes right wingers to clutch them to their chicken-breasted bosoms. . . .

TBogg's rant, uh, forges ever onward from there, but you get the drift. It's the "heroic mien" that he rejects.

Yes, of course, if you despise the characteristics of the traditional hero -- the stoic resolve, the "grim determination" -- you must hate Heston. On the other hand, if you admire those qualities:

Dignity was the essence of Heston's onscreen appeal. He was barely 30 when DeMille cast him as Moses, but already possessed the mature dignity needed to play the mighty prophet, and Heston was as believable as the gray-bearded Hebrew lawgiver as he was as the young Egyptian prince.
The theme of human dignity runs like a thread through Heston's career, both on and off the screen. Heston was seemingly typecast as the voice who speaks for the dignity of downtrodden mankind, whether enslaved by Egyptians or Romans, oppressed by apes, or euthanized and ground up for food in Soylent Green. . . .

Read the whole thing, but only if you're in a mood to forge ever onward in fond remembrance of the late, great Charlton Heston.

Charlton Heston, R.I.P.

A great American is gone:

Charlton Heston, the Oscar-winning actor who achieved stardom playing larger-than-life figures including Moses, Michelangelo and Andrew Jackson in historical epics and went on to become a best-selling author, a contentious Hollywood labor leader, an unapologetic gun advocate and darling of conservative causes, has died. He was 84.
Heston died Saturday at his Beverly Hills home, his family said in a statement.

(Via Memeorandum.) While everyone remembers Heston in The Ten Commandments and Ben-Hur, I remember him most as a staunch Second Amendment advocate. During the height of the "assault weapon" hysteria of 1990s, Heston stood firm as a leader of the NRA and helped rally conservatives to defend gun-owner's rights.

Heston, who grew up hunting in Illinois, famously said they could take his gun "when they pry it from my cold dead hands." Courtesy of Macsmind, here's the video:

Such strong hands they were!

A personal remembrance by PJM's Roger Simon, and Sean Hackbarth has tons of video clips.

Wayne LaPierre of the NRA:

Today, my heart is heavy with the loss of Charlton Heston. America has lost a great patriot. The Second Amendment has lost a faithful friend. . . . .
My heart is heavy, but not without a sense of pride. Pride in a man who devoted his life to his profession with grace and dignity. Pride in an American who devoted himself to civil rights, to correcting injustices around him, and to standing up for what he knew was right. Pride in a friend who stood with me and stood with fellow NRA members to preserve our freedom for future generations. Pride in a patriot who believed with every fiber of his being that our Bill of Rights is the foundation of our freedom that makes Americans singular among the masses of nations.

Hysteria for profit

Matthew Vadum exposes how Al Gore's $300 million global-warming ad campaign could end up making Gore a much larger profit:

Does $300 million sound like a lot of money? It does, except when you consider how much more Gore stands to personally profit from the climate of mass hysteria he’s been been helping to create with a no-holds-barred campaign of misinformation aimed at marginalizing and ostracizing all those who dare to question his take on global warming. . . .
Gore himself is chairman and founder of a private equity firm called Generation Investment Management (GIM). According to Gore, the London-based firm invests money from institutions and wealthy investors in companiesthat are going green. . . .
If carbon emissions trading ever comes to the United States, Al Gore will be uniquely positioned to cash in. . . .
If Gore can keep up the pressure for carbon emissions restrictions, he could end up a very wealthy man. Given that, the $300 million doesn’t seem like a lot of money after all.

Hat-tip to Little Miss Atilla, who comments:

All I know is that Gore has a hammer -- of sorts -- and it looks like most of the most pressing problems in the country and on the globe are starting to resemble nails.

Something else to remember: Just because something is "non-profit" doesn't mean that people aren't getting paid. There are plenty of people making six-figure incomes -- to say nothing of tax-free perks like expense-paid travel to "conferences" held at resort locations -- on the payrolls of non-profit groups.

And that's just the legit stuff. Outright non-profit fraud is something else. As part of the Abramoff scandal, a former Tom DeLay aide set up a bogus "think tank" in a beach house in Rehoboth Beach, Del., hiring his buddies for no-show jobs.

The mere fact that someone has a non-profit 501(c) ostensibly devoted to some worthy cause does not for a minute convince me that they're on the up-and-up. Given that Al Gore is a Democrat, I naturally suspect he's running a scam of some sort.

The Chitlin Archipelago

No sooner does the New York Times expose the blogger gulag than the Huffington Post rips the lid off the Sovietization of Alabama:

When I lived behind the iron curtain, my parents taught me never to talk anyone about anything. This caveat was not restricted to the typical warning given by regular parents to their regular children about the regular concerns of every day life.
No, the lecture I got, as did so many others like me, was a sober lecture given by Soviet parents to their Soviet children, who had to begin schooling in big brother's tactics at an early age. One wrong word could send an entire family to a work camp or prison. . . .
[T]his was the reality of life under the Soviet regime, knowing that everything was watched, everyone was listening, no one could be trusted, and children were often he targets for inquiry into what their parents say behind closed doors. Friends were the next best thing, which may explain what we are about to hear out of the halls of the state legislature of Alabama.

(Via Memeorandum.) As with so many other disjoined rants at HuffPo, it's kind of hard to understand exactly what Larisa Alexandrovna is talking about, except that it has something to do with a federal investigation of Democrats in the Alabama legislature, possibly related to the case of former Gov. Don Siegelman, who was convicted of federal corruption charges.

Subpoenas were issued. Democrats got scared. Considering the notoriously corrupt history of the Democratic Party -- hey, you want to buy a book? -- it's hard to blame Democrats for being scared. But "Darkness at Noon," it ain't.

Seeking clues to the cause of Alexandrovna's outburst of hysterical hyperbole, I checked her biography:

Larisa Alexandrovna is a journalist, essayist and poet.

"... and poet." Bingo. She's a crackpot who guzzles gin, listens to Air America and lives in a tiny apartment with 14 cats.

Lest anyone fear that the Red Army has captured Opelika and established concentration camps in Phenix City, I have assurances that Alexandrovna's extravagant metaphor is bogus.

Friday night, I was able to establish communications with an operative near Huntsville who assured me that he was sitting on his front porch, smoking a cigarette and drinking a Guinness. No telltale clanking of T-72 treads was heard in the background.

UPDATE: OK, OK -- I have no idea how many cats Larisa Alexandrovna owns, or whether she listens to Air America. But when somebody lists "poet" in their biography, it automatically alerts my finely tuned crackpot-detection system. As for the gin-guzzling, that's almost certainly wrong. She probably guzzles vodka.

UPDATE II: Strangely enough, a fairly straightforward explanation from the New York Times:

The concern is a result of a long-running federal investigation into corruption within the state’s system of two-year colleges that has led to guilty pleas on bribery and corruption charges by one state lawmaker and the system’s former chancellor. The Birmingham News reported in 2006 that a quarter of the 140 members of the Legislature had financial ties to the college system, with most of the jobs or contracts going to lawmakers or their relatives. Recent reports indicate the number has grown to nearly a third of the Legislature.

Cronyism, nepotism, corruption -- maybe there's something to that Soviet Union analogy, after all. But if Larisa Alexandrovna meant to compare Alabama Democrats to Breshnev-era Politburo members, she should have made it clearer. More vodka!

Death by blogging

Hysterical (in both senses of the word):

Two weeks ago in North Lauderdale, Fla., funeral services were held for Russell Shaw, a prolific blogger on technology subjects who died at 60 of a heart attack. In December, another tech blogger, Marc Orchant, died at 50 of a massive coronary. A third, Om Malik, 41, survived a heart attack in December.
Other bloggers complain of weight loss or gain, sleep disorders, exhaustion and other maladies born of the nonstop strain of producing for a news and information cycle that is as always-on as the Internet.

Oh, the horrible stress of it all! Forget about global warming. Forget about famine in Africa. We must find a solution to . . . The Blog Crisis!

Leave it to the New York Times to find eeevvilll capitalist exploitation wherever people work for a living:

Blogging has been lucrative for some, but those on the lower rungs of the business can earn as little as $10 a post, and in some cases are paid on a sliding bonus scale that rewards success with a demand for even more work. . . .
Some write for fun, but thousands write for Web publishers — as employees or as contractors — or have started their own online media outlets with profit in mind.
Bloggers for such sites are often paid for each post, though some are paid based on how many people read their material. They build that audience through scoops or volume or both.
Some sites, like those owned by Gawker Media, give bloggers retainers and then bonuses for hitting benchmarks, like if the pages they write are viewed 100,000 times a month. Then the goal is raised, like a sales commission: write more, earn more.

Let's see, Wal-Mart is evil because it sells stuff cheap and isn't unionized, and Starbucks is evil because it sells expensive coffee and isn't unionized. The pattern of New York Times-disapproved capitalist exploitation is clear. Obviously, there can be only one solution to The Blog Crisis:

BLOGGERS of the WORLD UNITE!
You have nothing to lose
. . . but your pajamas!

This message paid for by the International Amalgamated Blogworkers Guild, Local 374.

UPDATE: See-Dubya guestslaveblogging for Malkin:

Actually, blogging is kind of therapeutic. . . . Some people do yoga; I pound the keyboard. The blood pressure goes down either way.

"Some people do yoga"? Right-wing homophobic code words, obviously. Once you understand his repressive theocratic agenda, you know that what See-Dubya really means is: "Pinko faggots who should be be deprived of their civil rights do yoga."

UPDATE II: James Joyner links, and notes the observation of Swaraaj Chauhan:

To me blogging is a pure joy. I have been a working journalist for most of my life but now find that the mainstream media has undergone a sea change, and those who learnt the professional nuances in the pre-1980 era have little opportunity to contribute. . . .
I had almost begun to feel left out three years ago in the absence of a platform to write. . . . So in this way blogs can get people out of stress and listlessness.

Two great points there:

• Blogging can be a stress-relieving outlet for people who feel a desire to share their views in writing.
• Compared to life in a newsroom, blogging is a walk in the park.

I disagree, however, with Chauhan's assertion that older journalists "have little opportunity to contribute." This is a misunderstanding of the actual situation: The print journalism industry is shrinking, and has been shrinking for 20 years, which makes upward mobility problematic. Older journalists can still work, but they're expected to work with the intensity and enthusiasm of 25-year-olds -- and for the same crappy pay that 25-year-olds get.

Speaking of which, an editor called me this morning with an assignment, one that requires real research and real writing. Oh, the horrible stress of it all . . .

UPDATE III: OK, I completed the first five paragraphs of my "real writing" assignment, so now it's time to goof off some more by reading Little Miss Atilla's suggestion to stressed-out, overweight bloggers:

Hint: have your readers send you gin, instead of snacks. That'll help.

Easy on the gin, sweetheart. We know what happens when you get into the gin. If only we had pictures . . .

Speaking of pictures, Fausta has pictures of stressed-out bloggers living it up at a blog conference in New Jersey. OK, maybe they weren't "living it up." It's New Jersey, after all.

Like that 'Hee-Haw' song

Gloom, despair and agony on me!
Deep, dark depression, excessive misery!
If it weren't for bad luck,
I'd have no luck at all!
Gloom, despair and agony on me!

That seems to have been Saturday's theme at The American Spectator Online, in response to Jeffrey Hart's piece at The American Conservative.

Christopher Orlet began by asking if " 'young conservative intellectuals' . . . are as gloomy about the movement's future as is the old guard?" J.P. Freire responded by noting Hart's surprisingly savage attack on Rush Limbaugh, and remarked:

"[I]t's curious that the older conservatives are gloomy. The ideas are still salient -- so who cares about political power? Us young folk got all the time in the world."

James Antle weighed in by naming Ann Coulter as an example of "cookie-cutter Republican cheerleaders"(!) and said:

I see leftward trends in American politics, an overidentification of conservatism with the electoral interests of the Republican Party, and so many conservatives seemingly resigned to government growth, it's hard not to feel a little gloomy.

Being neither young nor an intellectual, I suppose I'm imposing myself on the discussion, but what the heck?

• Antle is correct in seeing the current trends as hostile to conservatism. I would amend his first clause to read "leftward trends in American culture," because I believe culture dominates politics rather than the other way around.
• Friere is correct that young conservatives like himself -- he's about 25 years old -- are very optimistic. Anyone who thinks that the cause of conservatism is hopelessly lost should spend time around college conservatives, who tend to be gleefully combative.
• The post-9/11 security debate and the war in Iraq have highlighted the divisions in the conservative movement, while uniting liberals. Paleos and neos had been uneasy allies for years, but this internecine feud went spectacularly public after David Frum published his "Unpatriotic Conservatives" attack. (Did any paleo think of "Unconservative Patriots" as a title for a rejoinder to Frum?) It is possible for conservatives to hope that (a) the neos have learned a lesson from the disappointment of their more sanguine predictions for Iraq, and (b) the paleos have gained ground in the process, so that the postwar internecine feud might be somewhat more balanced.
• The Bush administration has been bad for conservatism. Almost from Inauguration Day, Dubya has done things that have gone 180 degrees against the sentiments of grassroots conservatives (e.g., No Child Left Behind). Many times I've found myself in arguments with liberals who would cite some specific Bush policy and taunt me, "How can you be in favor of that?" To which I'd answer, "But I'm not in favor of that. And neither is Phyllis Schlafly, or Pat Buchanan, or Paul Weyrich, or . . . ." Conservatives can therefore be grateful that the Bush years are near an end.

The causes of conservative gloom are easy enough to see, but despair is not warranted. Things are looking bad just now, but things were also looking bad in 1959, 1965, 1974, 1993, etc. There is every reason to hope for improvement. As a great man once said, "It is history that teaches us to hope."

Barr Campaign HQ

Reason magazine's David Weigel offers "four ways [Bob] Barr can avoid Ron Paul's mistakes," and you can click over to read for yourself.

The trend of political journalists offering unsolicited advice to politicians is nothing new. I've said before that I "dislike it when journalists do the armchair-strategist routine with campaigns," and criticized Jim Antle when he seemed to be "acting as an unpaid advisor to the McCain campaign." But since everybody with a press pass seems to be getting in on this game . . .

Top 5 Campaign Strategies

Rejected by Bob Barr

5. Pro-Skinny-Dipping -- An unnamed Barr adviser, eager to solicit the "youth vote" and emphasize that Barr has made a clean break with his Republican past, suggested that the congressman go skinny-dipping at Daytona Beach during Spring Break. Idea rejected after polling showed the "youth vote" was strongly opposed to seeing a 59-year-old man naked.
4. Barr Cigars -- Seeking to capitalize on Barr's role in the 1998 impeachment of Bill Clinton, a New York tobacco merchant suggested the idea of distributing "100% Lewinsky-free" cigars endorsed by Barr. Nixed because Kerry Howley complained of the gimmick's "misogynistic overtones."
3. "Campaign Shoot-Out" -- Highlighting the NRA board member's pro-Second Amendment stance, this projected reality show would have pitted Barr in a series of target-shooting matches against rival candidates, using a variety of firearms, including .50-caliber machine guns. Other campaigns inexplicably refused to participate. "No comment," said an Obama adviser. "Figure it out for yourself."
2. Karaoke Fund-Raiser Party -- Hoping to cash in on the "American Idol" craze, Libertarian strategists planned a $50-a-ticket "Karaoke Barr" night in Northern Virginia with Barr as the featurer performer. Event canceled after a campaign aide heard Barr practicing "The Surrey With The Fringe On Top."
1. Ulitimate Fighting Debate -- This was Barr's own idea -- a "No-Holds-Barr-ed" grudge match against Hillary Clinton. Advisers talked the candidate out of it by pointing out that (a) Hillary outweighs him by at least 20 pounds, and (b) Hillary might actually look better in spandex shorts.

Bob Barr IS runnning

UPDATE 4:55: Associated Press picks up the news, and Barr posts a video message:



Strong rhetoric, calling John McCain "part of the problem, part of the status quo, more of the same." He calls Obama "an empty suit" and says Hillary is "no leader."

The Hill's Walter Alarkon also has a news report.

UPDATE 3:58: Barr announces formation of his presidential exploratory committee, after quoting Dante on the perils of remaining neutral in "times of great moral crisis." The streaming video was kind of crappy. Will update momentarily with the press release.

UPDATE 4:25: Finally, the long-promised press release:

Barr Announces Presidential Exploratory Committee

Kansas City, MO – Addressing Midwestern activists at the Heartland Libertarian Conference today, former Congressman Bob Barr announced the launch of the Bob Barr 2008 Presidential Exploratory Committee (BobBarr2008.com).

In his speech, Barr noted that, "America today faces a grave moral and leadership crisis, and those of us who care about our country's future can no longer sit on the sidelines and remain neutral."
"As Dante Alighieri said many centuries ago,” Barr observed, "the hottest places in Hell are reserved for those who, in times of great moral crisis, maintain their neutrality." Continuing, Barr stated that, "some say it is not now expedient or politically pragmatic to do the right thing, for the right reason."
But, he then asked his audience, "When has there been a better time? When has the risk of inaction carried more serious consequences? When will it be appropriate to take extraordinary steps? What must happen to our Constitution before we set aside our complacency and expediency in favor of principle?"
Barr represented the 7th District of Georgia in the U. S. House of Representatives from 1995 to 2003, where he served as a senior member of the Judiciary Committee, as Vice-Chairman of the Government Reform Committee, and as a member of the Committee on Financial Services. Prior to his congressional career, Barr was appointed by President Reagan to serve as the United States Attorney for the Northern District of Georgia, and also served as an official with the CIA for nearly eight years.
Since leaving Congress, Barr has been practicing law and actively advocating American citizens' right to privacy and other civil liberties guaranteed in the Bill of Rights. He serves also as a board member for the National Rifle Association, and works with the American Conservative Union and other groups.
Barr's speech to the Heartland audience touched on the issues the candidates for the two major status quo parties have not addressed sufficiently, namely: the urgent need for truly cutting the size of the federal government, protecting our civil liberties, securing our borders, and fundamentally reforming our tax code.
"Removing 'earmarks' but not cutting the underlying spending is simply government as usual and is nothing more than a cynical shell game," Barr stated; adding, "and that's the high water mark in the debate thus far." Barr said this is not adequate, and that America’s voters deserve better than a choice between "the lesser of two evils."
The Libertarian Party, America's oldest and largest third party, formed in 1971, is on track to achieve ballot access in at least 48 states. Its nominee will be chosen at the Libertarian National Convention which will be held in Denver, CO May 22 through 26.

UPDATE 3:52: Barr is now speaking live in Kansas City.

UPDATE 3:45: Barr's presidential Web site just went live with this message:

Thank you for visiting the official web site of the Barr 2008 President Exploratory Committee!
Our staff is working tirelessly to establish a strong foundation of support for authentic Liberty in America, which has been too long absent from our Nation’s Capitol. We truly need the support of patriotic Americans who want to restore our government to its proper size and role.
To this end, I ask that you help me take our message of abundant freedom, true hope and government restraint to Washington with your most generous contribution.
Together, with your help, we will send the two-party system a message.

A member of the Barr entourage in Kansas City just promised me (again) I'd get the press release soon.

UPDATE 4:10 p.m.: Weigel links me and observes of the Barr Web site:

It looks a whole lot like Ron Paul's site. Liked "Hope for America?" Hey, try some "Liberty for America."

(Yeah, I know, my updates aren't in any time sequence. They are, however, in logical sequence.)

UPDATE 2:30 p.m. (and bumped): Reason magazine says the announcement will be streaming on live video 3:50 p.m. EDT. A source in Kansas City says that a press release will be e-mailed to me momentarily.

While awaiting the announcement, feel free to peruse my insightful analysis, "Bob Barr: Threat or Menace?"

UPDATE 2:50 p.m.: The Atlantic Monthly has a reflection on Bob Barr's candidacy by Reihan Salam, a contributor to America's Future Foundation's magazine Doublethink.

UPDATE 1:20 p.m.: Barr is scheduled to make his announcement speech in Kansas City at 3:30 p.m. Eastern (2:30 p.m. Central). More updates below.

* * * * *

Maybe Dave Weigel didn't make it clear enough in his Thursday post at Reason, but Bob Barr will be a candidate for the Libertarian Party presidential nomination.

Today (Saturday), the Barr campaign plans to announce the formation of an exploratory committee and Barr's people have alerted TV networks that his speech in Kansas City will be newsworthy.

It seems necessary to state this clearly because -- more than 24 hours after Weigel got the scoop -- I'm still reading tentative headlines like:

Bob Barr for president? Maybe
(Atlanta Journal-Constitution)

Ex-Congressman Weighs Presidential Bid
(Associated Press)

Bob Barr to enter presidential race?
(CBS News)

Suggestion to the MSM: Stop with all the question marks, and try contacting some Libertarian Party sources -- you know, what used to be called reporting. You might find out, for instance, that there has actually been a poll of Libertarian Party activists (including LP national convention delegates):

Barr received 29.7 percent of the vote, followed by Root with 21.7 percent. Ruwart trailed a little bit behind Root, with 17.1 percent. She was followed by Phillies at 8.6 percent. Kubby and Gravel tied at 4 percent. They were followed by Jingozian, Smith and then Hess.
In head-to-head matchups, Barr clearly outperformed both Root and Ruwart. Barr received 48 percent of the vote, defeating Root with 30.9 percent. Barr received 48 percent, defeating Ruwart with 37.7 percent of the vote.

Barr has not officially announced his plans, because he's saving that announcement until the time and place of his choosing (i.e., today in Kansas City), but he's definitely running. I expect to be e-mailed a press release in a few hours, but I don't need a press release to report the facts.

For the record, the first news article about efforts to draft Barr for the LP presidential race was published Feb. 11. I wrote that article three days after I got the first tip while walking along the 1300 block of F Street NW. Shoe-leather reporting, Old School, that's me.

UPDATE 3:20 p.m. 4/5: Daniel Larison at The American Conservative is worried:

The fear of “irrelevance” or playing a “spoiler” role may overwhelm the desire for real representation, but that fear needs to be resisted. The way to make the antiwar right irrelevant is if we back a candidate that is either pro-war or not on the right. . . .
[W]hat worries me is the perception and the spin of the outcome that will blame any McCain defeat on Barr rather than on the appalling policies of this administration and McCain’s embrace of them.

Fear and loathing is not an unfamiliar phenomenon in election years. The problem with Larison, and other political worrywarts, is that they take this stuff far too seriously. Politics is far more enjoyable if you simply focus on the spectacle of the campaign, the carnival aspect of elections. If you want to put this stuff in proper perspective, a bit of small-stakes gambling always helps. Stop worrying about the fate of humanity and start worrying about whether you'll lose $10 in the office pool.

PREVIOUSLY:
4/4: Bob Barr: Threat or menace?
4/3: 'Send 'em a message'?
4/3: Barr to announce?
3/27: Barr bandwagon rolling?
3/26: What about Bob?
2/11: Paulistas say, 'Why not Bob?'

MLK's 'awesome radicalism'?

Rick Perlstein wants to "push back against the conservatives' excrescent Santa Clausification of Martin Luther King," so he quotes from his own forthcoming Nixon book, describing the 1968 crisis in Memphis brought about by the sanitation workers strke. Perlstein ends by saying:

I'm so, so proud to be a historian today, and to be able to do my own little part to wrench Martin Luther King's awesome radicalism out of the the blood-crusted arms of grubby clowns like David Brooks who dare try to embrace him.

(Via Memeorandum.) Being no great admirer of Brooks, the prophet of "National Greatness," far be it from me to leap to his defense, but I think Perlstein's criticism of Brooks highlights the inherent tension over MLK's historic legacy.

If America is to celebrate MLK as a universal hero, the celebration will inevitably revolve around King's 1963 "I Have A Dream" speech, and its vision of a color-blind America. Since liberals today are advocates of racial quotas and identity politics, then MLK of 1963 is hard to reconcile with the current liberal agenda.

On the other hand, in the context of his own time, King was an extremely controversial figure, widely suspected of communist sympathies. It was not until 1963, under pressure from the Kennedy administration, that MLK purged his staff of Communist Party members, including Jack O'Dell, who was identified as the fifth-ranking member of CPUSA.

Furthermore, Perlstein is correct in saying that the MLK of 1968 represented a "radicalism" that most conservative would not embrace. After all, the Memphis sanitation workers strike was a labor dispute involving municipal employees (the kind of stuff AFSCME does today) and as such was characterized by the sort of leftistclass-warfare rhetoric one might expect in such a situation.

MLK's legacy is thus a complex thing, and Perlstein's complaint raises an obvious question: If conservatives who "dare to try to embrace" King without endorsing King's "radicalism" are to be excoriated as "grubby clowns" engaged in "Santa Clausification," then why is John McCain apologizing for voting against the federal MLK holiday?

(BTW, in the book excerpts Perlstein quotes, he doesn't seem to put much emphasis on the fact that Lyndon Baines Johnson, who was president in 1968, was a liberal Democrat. Just thought I'd point that out. Anti-war protesters used to chant: "Hey, hey, LBJ! How many kids did you kill today?")

UPDATE: Hillary is moved to tears:

"Like many of you here who are of a certain age, I will never forget where I was when I heard Dr. King had been killed. I was a junior in college and I remember hearing about it and just feeling such despair,” Clinton said, pausing, her voice quivering. “I walked into my dorm room and took my book bag and hurled it across the room. It felt like everything had been shattered, like we would never be able to put the pieces together again."

She threw a bookbag! What "awesome radicalism"!

I was only a third-grader in April 1968, so I don't know if I was one of those "of a certain age" that Hillary meant. I remember seeing the news on TV that afternoon, then going outside to tell a neighbor kid, who replied by using a crude slur to refer to King and saying it was "about time" somebody shot him.

The neighbor kid's reaction shocked me then, and jt still shocks me to remember. My parents were reasonably liberal, considering the time and place -- this was Douglas County, Ga., in the 1960s -- but I don't imagine they were big fans of "awesome radicalism." However, my parents never tolerated the use of racial slurs; such language was considered low-class and uncouth.

After hearing the neighbor say what he said, I realized that he must have heard that kind of talk from his parents. It was shocking, as I said.

UPDATE II: Donald Douglas notes that the Left has used the 40th anniversary of King's assassination to portray America as "as an unmitigated evil, an irredeemable enormity, the greatest stain on human progress in world history."

Douglas also points out that Perlstein is a journalist, not an "academic historian," but I certainly don't hold think that Perlstein suffers by that distinction. Some of the greatest historians of the 20th century -- including William Shirer, Bruce Catton and Cornelius Ryan --were journalists and not academics. In my experience, academic historians are good researchers, but bad writers. There is a tendency of academic historians to get bogged down in details or distracted by historical "themes."

News update

Quick hits on Web news:

Raid on polygamist compound

ELDORADO, Texas (AP) — Child welfare officials following up on an abuse complaint took custody of 18 girls Friday who lived at a secretive West Texas religious retreat built by polygamist leader Warren Jeffs.
A total of 52 girls, ages 6 months to 17 years, were bused away on Friday to be interviewed, but only 18 were immediately taken into state custody . . .

How do you interview a 6-month-old? And have these polygamists sunk so low that they're now marrying 6-month-old girls? What does a 6-month-old wear to her wedding, bridal Pampers?

Clintons earned $109 since 2000

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and former President Clinton made nearly $109 million since they left the White House, capitalizing on the world's interest in the former first couple and lucrative business ventures. . . .
According to a summary of the seven years provided by the campaign, the former president's speech income since he left the White House totals $51.85 million and his income from his two books — "My Life " and "Giving" — totals $29.6 million, including a $15 million advance for "My Life." Bill Clinton has traveled the world, giving paid speeches to multinational corporations, investment banks and motivational groups.

Executives around the world pay big money to attend Bill's most popular motivational seminar: "How to Get Oral Sex From 20-Year-Olds in Your Office -- And Get Away With It."

Maliki halts raids of Shi'ite militias

Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki sought to defuse recent tensions among Iraq’s Shiites on Friday by suspending raids by government forces on militias, less than 24 hours after he threatened further raids.
In softening his tone, Mr. Maliki said in a statement that he was suspending raids “in order to give a chance to those who have repented and want to lay down their weapons.”

In related news, police in Los Angeles announced they had stopped arresting Crips and Bloods, to give them a chance to lay down their 9mms.

Bob Barr: Threat or menace?

An interesting exchange at The American Spectator blog over whether a Bob Barr presidential run on the Libertarian ticket would hurt John McCain.

Philip Klein:

The more I think about it, Bob Barr's apparent decision to enter the presidential race may be the worst news John McCain has gotten all year. . . .
If Barr enters the race and captures the Libertarian Party nomination, he will bring a 98 lifetime ACU rating to the table; he has served as a National Rifle Association board member; he sponsored the Defense of Marriage Act; Numbers USA notes that he, "usually supports less immigration, less population growth, less foreign labor" and has been a strong opponent of chain migration; and as far as I can tell, he has a solid pro-life voting record.

James Antle:

Bob Barr certainly could be a threat to John McCain, but it's worth noting that third-party candidates on the right have not done well in previous elections. Pat Buchanan, who is better known than Barr and did much better in the Republican primaries than Ron Paul, got 0.42 percent of the vote as the Reform Party nominee in 2000. . . .
The Libertarians' best showing in history, with Ed Clark in 1980, similarly failed to put a dent into Ronald Reagan. Even if you go back to George Wallace's 13.5 percent and 46 electoral votes in 1968, Nixon still won the presidency.

In the complete post, James offers an extensive history lesson on third-party candidates, but the problem with citing precedent in politics is that every election is different, so no historical analogy is perfect.

That may be especially true in this unprecedented year, when the Democrats will nominate either a woman or a black man, and when there is neither an incumbent president nor vice-president in the race. It's what George Carlin once called "vuja de": The peculiar feeling that this has never happened before.

Simply by being the Republican standard-bearer, John McCain faces three major disadvantages in 2008:

• There's a war on. It's unpopular with Democrats, with independents, and with a minority of Republicans. (Ron Paul's best result was 14% in the Nevada caucuses.) John McCain is the pro-war candidate, and that puts him in a tough position from the start.
• In the final year of a two-term Republican administration, the economy is on life-support, being propped up by unprecedented interventions from the Fed. (You should have heard how the crowd in Greensburg, Pa., cheered Hillary's class-warfare applause lines last week.) McCain faces a huge challenge to escape the political fallout of the mortgage crisis and economic slump.
• The Democrats are hungry. Democrats have suffered a long streak of tough breaks, including the 2000 Florida recount, the 2002 midterm setback and Bush's re-election in 2004. Democrats' midterm victory in 2006 helped even the score, but the Dems still have an edge in what might be called emotional momentum. They're fired up; Republicans are not.

Regardless of who the GOP nominee is, this looks like a bad year for Republicans. But McCain has the additional disadvantage of having spent the past 10 years attacking the GOP's conservative base. He sponsored McCain-Feingold, he trashed religious conservatives as "agents of intolerance," he voted against tax cuts, he twice sponsored bills granting amnesty to illegals -- his ACU rating for 2006 was a meager 65, and his average ACU rating since 1998 was only 74.

McCain is clearly vulnerable to a challenger on his right, and the prospect that 2008 will be a bad year for Republicans only heightens his vulnerability. Here's why: If polls in October show McCain lagging substantially behind the Democratic candidate, many disgruntled conservatives will figure there's no hope for McCain anyway, so why not vote for Barr to show their dissatisfaction with the GOP?

If the October polls show a neck-and-neck race, conservatives who might not be huge John McCain fans will rally to his cause anyway, just to prevent the election of a Democrat. But if McCain is trailing badly, then a vote for Barr has no real consequence.

This was a big factor in what happened to Bob Dole in 1996. If the October polls had shown that Dole had a chance to defeat Clinton, Dole might have benefitted from the "rally effect." Instead, Clinton got 49%, Dole got 41% and third-party candidates (Ross Perot, Ralph Nader, Harry Browne, Howard Phillips, etc.) divvied up the other 10%.

In other words, a third-party challenge tends to hurt a major-party candidate mainly when the major-party candidate already looks like a loser. It's the opposite of a bandwagon effect (in which undecided voters trend toward the candidate who looks like a winner). There are many voters who wouldn't vote for any Democrat, but who also won't vote for a Republican who looks like a loser.

It is an ill omen for McCain that, having secured the GOP nomination while the Democrats are still badly divided, as of April 3 he is only polling even with Obama, and barely ahead of Hillary. His best hope is that the Democrats disintegrate in Denver, a la Chicago '68.

Speaking of 1968, Antle's analogy is misapplied. Humphrey was the candidate who represented the incumbent party and was defending the outgoing president's war. Nixon represented the party that hadn't had the White House in eight years and promised "change." Wallace's third-party challenge largely appealed to disgruntled Democrats.

If precedent is prediction, then, Nixon's election in '68 is actually evidence that Barr (appealing to the incumbent party's disgruntled voters) will hurt John McCain in November.

UPDATE: Leslie Carbone adds a pithy comment:

It's time for the GOP to get over the notion that it "owns" conservative votes, and that our voting for a third-party candidate constitutes giving away something that belongs to them.

I met Ms. Carbone at a memorial for John Berthoud.

Liberal mythology

E.J. Dionne says that the assassination of MLK marked the death of liberalism. Ed Morrisey argues that it was the Iran hostage crisis that did the trick.

Dionne's column is nothing but a rehash of a well-worn liberal myth: "Oh, those eeeevilll conservatives only succeed by appealing to the innate bigotry of the American people." The possibility that Dionne actually believes this is even more disturbing than the possibility that he's just another cynical and dishonest Democratic Party hack. After 10 years in Washington, I've become accustomed to cynicism and dishonesty; gross naivete is frightening. (He went to Harvard. You figure it out.)

The myth that Dionne is propagating (whether cynically or naively) is based on moral narcissism: The desire of liberals to believe that they are morally superior to ordinary people. Support for the liberal agenda -- from welfare to gay rights to "peace" -- is conflated with moral virtue, so that merely voting in favor of various programs and policies is to "do good."

Programmatic virtue, as we might call it, relieves the liberal of the burden of actually doing anything to help people. They don't have to give food to the poor or take care of their aging grandparents; they merely need to vote for politicians who promise to do such things. Whether or not the politicians accomplish these goals -- whether grandma gets the help she needs or not -- is irrelevant to the feeling of superiority experienced by the liberal voter. It's the (political) thought that counts, you see.

Helping people understand this psychological aspect of liberalism is why I so enthusiastically recommend Thomas Sowell's book, The Vision of the Anointed: Self-Congratulation as a Basis for Social Policy. Once you figure out that liberal policies don't work, the next logical question is why liberals support such policies. That's what Sowell explains.

Now, as to when liberalism reached its sell-by date, I would call attention to another book, Upstream: The Ascendance of American Conservatism, by Alfred S. Regnery. Regnery notes a key turning point in liberalism, namely the appointment of Earl Warren to the Supreme Court in 1953. This marked the beginning of the era of liberal judicial activism.

Under Wilson, FDR and Truman, liberalism had advanced via the political process. People voted to elect politicians who promised to enact liberal policies. The politicians debated and compromised and the policies were enacted. Even if the policies didn't work as planned (and they usually didn't), the process was still consistent with the American political tradition.

Beginning with the Warren Court, however, the federal judiciary began to make law outside the democratic process. It was this hijacking of the legislative function by the federal courts that was gave the vital spark to the grassroots resentment that fueled the conservative ascendancy.

Yes, as Ed Morrisey points out, liberal foreign policy (exemplified by the Iran hostage crisis) was utterly inept. But there is no reason why a rejection of the Carter administration should have necessarily led to a more thoroughgoing rejection of liberalism. What provided the broader base for the conservative movement -- and what fatally weakened liberalism -- was the anti-democratic nature of judicial activism that the Warren Court inaugurated.

Ordinary Americans began to feel as if policies were being "shoved down their throats" by imperious judges with lifetime sinecures. Liberals grew intellectually lazy, being accustomed to having the federal courts impose liberal policies without regard for public opinion. Conservatives, meanwhile, honed their arguments, organized opposition groups, and solicited support among those who resented the elitist oligarchy of the "nine old men" on the Supreme Court.

Liberalism's decline began many years before Dionne's 1968 myth would have you believe. Dionne doesn't want to acknowledge how Miranda v. Arizona or Murray v. Curlett -- the first empowering criminals, the second banning prayer in public schools -- enraged ordinary Americans and turned them against liberalism. It's easier (and much more flattering) for liberals like Dionne to look at the tens of millions who voted for Reagan and shout: "Bigots!"

UPDATE: Readers are invited to enjoy the eloquent logic offered by the first anonymous commenter on this post.

The wrong analogy

Matthew Yglesias on the Bob Barr candidacy:

In theory, at least, there's room for a sort of John Anderson figure and you could see Barr playing that role.

Eh? Anderson was a bland technocratic geek, a moderate Republican who appealed to voters who were sick of Carter but feared Reagan's Radical Right reputation.

Barr has impeccable conservative credentials. He served in the CIA when the agency was run by the elder Bush, and served as a U.S. attorney in the Reagan administration.

Barr's publicly-stated reason for leaving the GOP was the Bush administration's internal-security measures. Barr's Fourth Amendment critique of the USA-PATRIOT Act has been echoed by such stalwarts of the Right as Phyllis Schlafly and the John Birch Society.

What a Barr presidential candidacy represents -- and he has said this in nearly so many words -- is a conservative dissent against the drift of the Republican Party toward statism. Barr is trying to resurrect the "Spirit of '94," the anti-Beltway agenda on which he and the rest of the "Contract With America" Republicans were first elected to Congress.

The anti-statist flavor of Barr's conservatism is what made him simpatico with the Libertarian Party, although it remains to be seen whether the LP's convention delegates will be simpatico toward Barr as their presidential candidate. Some LP members are purists to the point of fanaticism and will oppose Barr on ideological grounds; some longtime LP members are likely to resent Barr as a newcomer.

But whatever Barr is, he's not John Anderson.

Philly phlop?

Even as Philadelphia pundits were starting to suggest Obama had a chance to win the Pennsylvania primary, Philly native Michelle Malkin says the Messiah has dissed the cheesesteak:

Obama out-dorked Kerry by completely passing up a cheesesteak at the Italian Market and instead sampling some fancy foreign ham.

Lest the Messiah's disciples accuse Malkin of distorting his deli record, here's the Philadelphia Daily News:

Sen. Barack Obama sampled $100 ham, but didn’t chow down on a cheesesteak during a visit to the Italian Market yesterday.
During a half-hour tour of the market, Obama sampled wares at Claudio Specialty Food and DiBruno Brothers -- where he noshed on a Spanish ham that retails for $99.99 a pound. . . .
In fact, neither Obama nor Sen. Hillary Clinton, his rival for the Democratic presidential nomination, has made the traditional stop at South Philly cheesesteak establishments Pat’s or Geno’s.
But Obama last night told a crowd of supporters gathered at the Pennsylvania Convention Center, “I’m going to get a cheesesteak the next time I come.”

The Messiah promises to return ... for a cheesesteak.

I know Hillary's short on cash, but you'd think she could at least afford a cheesesteak at this crucial juncture.

Pray for Zimbabwe

Robert Mugabe has violated property rights, trashed the rule of law, destroyed civil society and wrecked the economy in Zimbabwe. Now he declares war on the people:

The ebbing regime of Robert Mugabe began its fightback in earnest last night, launching raids against opposition offices and foreign journalists in what many feared was the start of a campaign of intimidation.
Paramilitary police raided opposition offices at a hotel in central Harare, ransacking rooms as riot police moved in to arrest foreign journalists at a guest house in the capital. George Sibotshiwe, spokesman of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), said that the party’s headquarters in the centre of Harare and offices in Meikles hotel in the capital had been raided. “They took nothing. They simply ransacked the place,” he said.
As many as four journalists were arrested, including a reporter from the New York Times, in a separate raid on Harare’s York Lodge hotel, where many correspondents were staying.

Naturally, the Mugabe regime wants to eliminate foreign witnesses to the anti-democratic bloodbath that's in store:

Leaders of the Movement for Democratic Change said the raids heralded a campaign of political repression to safeguard President Robert Mugabe, one of Africa’s longest-serving leaders. His party, known as ZANU-PF, has already lost control of the lower house of Parliament, according to official results from Saturday’s elections, a huge turnabout in a nation where Mr. Mugabe has long controlled virtually all levers of power.
But the government has still not released a tally of the presidential race, prompting international criticism of the delay and concern that attempts were under way to manipulate the count. The government has said the count has been slow because the election was the first one for all national offices at once.
The opposition says that tallies posted at each polling place show that its candidate, Morgan Tsvangirai, won 50.3 percent of the vote, barely enough to gain the majority needed to avert a runoff election against Mr. Mugabe.

Mugabe wants immunity from prosecution. Ed Morrisey says:

Clearly, Mugabe has no intention of putting himself in jeopardy of prosecution -- a tacit admission of his crimes as de facto dictator of Zimbabwe. After 28 year of disastrous rule as Prime Minister and then President, Mugabe has destroyed the national economy, rigged elections, abused his power to maintain his regime, and perhaps committed even worse crimes about which only his victims know.

The damage Mugabe has done to his nation's economy may be irreparable. By persecuting white farmers and forcing them off their farms, he turned Zimbabwe from the breadbasket of Africa into a basket case. Now, he is fighting to escape justice -- at the hands of his fellow Zimbabweans who've seen through his demagoguery.

In contemplating Mugabe's career, one is reminded of Friedrich Hayek's The Road to Serfdom and its chapter entitled "Why The Worst Get On Top."

Hillary's hanging on

Down, but not out, she manages to stay afloat:

A Clinton campaign source just confirmed to The Fix that the New York Senator collected $20 million in the month of March, roughly half the total amount collected by Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.) over the same time frame. . . .
The Clinton source pointed out that the $20 million haul in March represented Clinton's second best fundraising month in the campaign. While Clinton's numbers mean she will likely be at a cash disadvantage over the final two months of the nomination fight, the $20 million shows that rumors of her financial demise are somewhat overblown.

She's ahead in Pennsylvania, neck-and-neck in Indiana and holding close nationally in the Gallup Poll of Democrats. If she's financially viable, she might still win this thing somehow. As I wrote last week for The American Spectator:

While reporters, pundits, and bloggers are pronouncing doom for her campaign, however, Mrs. Clinton seems undaunted by the odds against her. . . .
Trailing badly in the fourth quarter of her campaign for the Democratic nomination, Hillary may yet lose, but she seems determined not to quit until the final whistle.

Of course, I'm like every conservative in hoping for a titanic death-struggle between Hillary and Obama that goes all the way to the convention floor in Denver. But not every conservative has been close enough to look Hillary in the eye. She's a feisty one, I tell ya . . .

Oh, no she didn't!

Trash-talking my girl? Air America host Randi Rhodes did it in San Francisco:

Rhodes repeatedly called Hillary a "big f***ing whore", to both cheers and jeers from the audience. The afternoon drive talker was there on behalf of Air America at an event sponsored by the local affiliate.
In addition, Rhodes referred to former Democrat vice presidential candidate Geraldine Ferraro as "David Duke in drag."

I've actually met David Duke. He's much prettier than Ferraro, and probably has better legs.

What I can't believe is that Randi Rhodes, who never complained once about Bill Clinton's lecherous ways, would use such language about Hillary -- whose legs are better than either Duke's or Ferraro's. Maybe Hillary's fundraising would be better if she'd get rid of the pantsuits and show off her legs.

UPDATE: Linked by Dr. James Joyner, who provides the unexpurgated video:

You know what's weird? Is that the audience actually laughs at those "jokes."

A trivial aside: So far as I know, Dr. Joyner and I are the only two Jacksonville (Ala.) State University alumni in the blogosphere. They should honor us at halftime of the next homecoming game, don't you agree?

Anti-Mitt VP ad

Several major social conservative leaders -- including Paul Weyrich, Ted Baehr, Janet Folger, Sandy Rios and Peter LaBarbera -- have signed an ad opposing Mitt Romney as the Republican vice presidential candidate.

Justin Hart says:

I could go on in an almost endless rant about why these guys have it wrong about Romney. . . .
Probably the saddest part of this was seeing Paul Weyrich’s name attached to the ad. Et tu Paul?

With McCain at the top of the ticket, it's going to be tough to get Christian conservatives excited about voting Republican, no matter who the running-mate is.

Exit question: If social conservatives say Mitt is unacceptable as VP, who will they accept? Rudy Giuliani? Ron Paul? Anybody with name recognition in a toss-up state?

UPDATE: Jeremy Lott makes the case for Oklahoma Sen. Tom Coburn, a solid all-around conservative. Dr. Tom's STD slide shows for Capitol Hill interns were always a shocker. Having Coburn on the ticket would boost the GOP's chances with both fiscal and social conservatives. The fact that he's from a deep-Red state means he wouldn't help in the geography department, but that's the only drawback.

UPDATE 4/4: Allahpundit weighs in:

The curious part is why any of this should be troubling to Paul Weyrich, who endorsed Romney for president as recently as four months ago, long after his positions on these issues had shaken out. . . .
After 18 months of Romney running for president, suddenly these guys have a problem with his record?

My old blog-buddy, Nancy French, now blogging at at Evangelicals for Mitt, writes:

Not supporting Gov. Romney because he didn't fight gay "marriage" enough is like not supporting Elvis because he wouldn't dance.

My hunch is that Weyrich & Co. have another favorite for the VP slot and that this attack on Romney is a sort of pre-emptive attack on a rival.

Refreshing honesty

Got to give Matthew Yglesias credit for this:

Desperately out of touch with the American mainstream, Yglesias was born and raised in Manhattan and studied philosophy at Harvard where he was editor in chief of The Harvard Independent, a campus alternative weekly.

I suppose that explains this, about which, the less said, the better.

The Manhattan/Harvard perspective is so underrepresented in the media, and it's nice that the populist journal Atlantic Monthy has finally given them a voice in the blogosphere.

He misspelled 'Jamie'

Some person calling himself "Jaime Sneider" at The Weekly Standard makes fun of chastity advocate Dawn Eden:

I have no doubt that a date with the author of The Thrill of the Chaste would be exhilarating--wait, actually, I do doubt it. Hence the conservative proverb, "Be right, live left."

(Hat-tip: Craig Henry.) If there is such a proverb, it's not conservative. Not everyone is virtuous -- I make no such claim for myself -- but it's very unconservative to scoff at virtue.

While I joined Ace in mocking the blogger girls in the John Hawkins survey, I didn't mock them for their virtue. And this alleged "Jaime Sneider" person doesn't link to Hawkins' site, and instead links a liberal site that ripped off Hawkins.

So I guess "Sneider" is conservative in the same sense that "National Greatness" is conservative, which is to say, he's not.

'Send 'em a message'?

Bob Barr on Sean Hannity's radio show just now repeatedly emphasized that his prospective presidential run on the Libertarian Party ticket would "get a message out there" to a Republican Party that has "completely lost its philosophical moorings."

UPDATE 4:30 p.m.: Liberals will surely howl about the resemblance between Barr's language and George Wallace's 1968 "Send 'em a message" slogan, but a message of dissatisfaction with the GOP status quo will surely resonate with many in Hannity's audience.

UPDATE 4:35: More from the Hannity interview: Barr said 2008 is a "very unusual year" and that "several things are coming together" to allow the Libertarian Party to have a "legitimate, positive impact" in November.

As to his own presidential hopes, Barr said he is "very, very seriously considering it," that he will make "a final decision shortly," and that he is getting "very strong support."

UPDATE 4:45: "Sooner or later, we have to put principle ahead of expediency," Barr said, responding to Hannity's complaint that "splitting the vote" would help elect a Democrat. He said he is "tired of hearing all the whining" from Republicans.

"If [Republican John] McCain is not able to pull enough votes to win outright, then shame on him," Barr said.

At the end of the interview, Hannity repeatedly played "gotcha," asking Barr about Libertarian stances on abortion and drugs, and also asking Barr about his work with the ACLU on privacy issues.

UPDATE 5 p.m.: Allahpundit scoffs at Barr's potential impact. But he scoffs at everything. I'm pretty sure he's contractually obligated as a professional scoffer.

UPDATE 8:40 p.m.: Barr spoke today in Rome, Ga.:

Former congressman Bob Barr told the Rotary Club of Rome Thursday he sees a disquieting trend of fear being the primary force driving public policy decisions in America today.
Quoting the 18th century philosopher Edmund Burke, Barr stated: “No passion so effectually robs the mind of all its powers of acting and reasoning as fear.”
Barr said he sees the trend increasing after 9/11 and that in discussions in Congress there is an attempt to “link (policy issues) to acts of terror or fear of acts of terrorism.”
“Fear does not lend itself well to rational thinking,” he said.

Meanwhile, Dave Weigel says Barr's going to make his announcement Saturday:

When former Rep. Bob Barr arrives in Kansas City on Saturday for the Heartland Libertarian Conference, organizers expect him to launch an exploratory committee for the Libertarian Party presidential nomination. Barr is meeting with his political team on Friday to firm up plans. Right now, he's expected to fly into the city at about noon Saturday and address the conference in the early afternoon.

Weigel notes that Barr and Ron Paul are both scheduled to appear at an April 15 "Take Back America" rally in D.C. Weigel also has Barr campaign's Web site -- the site's not up yet, but Barr's consulting firm has reserved the domain -- and reports that there will be a meeting of key staffers tomorrow (Friday) in Atlanta.

Stephen Gordon has a media wrapup here.

UPDATE 10:40 p.m.: Georgia blogger Jason Pye heard the Hannity interview:

The longer the interview got, the less friendly Hannity was (I know...big surprise there). Hannity implied that if Barr cost McCain the election that everything that happened after it would be on Bob Barr.
If you were listening in then you know that Barr sounded like a candidate. I thought he came off really well.

PREVIOUSLY:
4/3: Barr to announce?
3/27: Barr bandwagon rolling?
3/26: What about Bob?
2/11: Paulistas say, 'Why not Bob?'

Presidential smokers

Like a chaperone on a high-school field trip, Jake Tapper's sniffing around for the odor of tobacco:

I have an unusually keen sense of smell and immediately I smelled cigarette smoke on Obama. Frankly, he reeked of cigarettes.
Obama ran off before I could ask him if he'd just snuck a smoke, so I called his campaign. . . . I knew what I'd smelled and I asked his campaign to double-check and to ask him if he'd had a cigarette. . . .
Maybe I imagined the cigarette smoke. . . .
[L]ast night on MSNBC's Hardball, Obama admitted that his attempt to wean himself from the vile tobacco weed had not been entirely successful.
"I fell off the wagon a couple times during the course of it, and then was able to get back on," he said. "But it is a struggle like everything else."

Franklin Roosevelt and Dwight Eisenhower were both smokers. Reagan smoked for years, but quit in the '60s.

I don't know why people get so prudish about these things. Do they suppose Obama would set a bad example for kids by firing up a Marlboro in the middle of the State of the Union Address?

One politician who's not hypocritical about his taste for tobacco is Bob Barr, currently rumored as a Libertarian Party presidential candidate. Barr would no more deny his enjoyment of a good cigar than he'd disavow a fine single-malt whiskey. Here he is at CPAC in February, relaxing with both:

At the left in the photo is Stephen Gordon of Third Party Watch; Stephen's wife is trying to hide behind Barr; to the right are two College Republicans from California.

Gordo just passed along the word that Barr will appear at 4 o'clock today on Sean Hannity's radio show. That should be interesting . . . .

UPDATE: Allahpundit on Jake Tapper and Obama:

What right does a presidential candidate have to lie to a nosy reporter about something that’s totally irrelevant to the election and therefore none of his business?

Sarcasm: Breakfast of champions!

UPDATE II: Kelley Vlahos of The American Conservative:

I have a favorite t-shirt and it says simply, “Smoking is Healthier than Fascism.”

Very interesting: I didn't know TAC had a blog, and didn't know they'd hired Kelley Vlahos.

Reply to Pandagon

The liberal blogger Pandagon links my post about Obama's "punished with a baby" remark, and then says:

Sean Hannity, for one, describes unplanned pregnancies that result in babies as a punishment for sex he doesn’t approve of.

Here's the quote from Hannity that Pandagon uses:

We live in an age characterized by the maxim “If it feels good do it, regardless of the consequences.” It’s a sex-drenched culture -- from movies, music, and magazines to TV, radio and the Internet -- that glorifies premarital sex, promiscuous sex, extramarital sex, kinky sex, rough sex, and gay sex. You name it, you can find it, and without looking too hard.

Notice what's missing? The words "punishment" and "pregnancy."

Even if you disagree with Hannity's critique of cultural hedonism, it cannot be construed as describing "babies as punishment."

Pandagon highlights the word "consequences" in Hannity's quote and then says:

Right wingers who wish to deprive women of the right to choose abortion, of contraception access, and of sex education believe babies are a punishment for sex.

This has nothing to do with what Hannity wrote. He was asserting as a fact that contemporary culture promotes and encourages the pursuit of sexual gratification "regardless of consequences." That is to say, "Never mind the ultimate result of your actions. Never mind who gets hurt in the process."

Hedonism is anti-social and selfish. There are many possible consequences of our actions that a hedonistic culture urges us to ignore. Among those is the possibility that we will become so callous and hard-hearted that we'll describe babies as "punishment," analogous to a sexually-transmitted disease -- something Obama did, and Hannity did not.

More madness in Argentina

Having nearly caused a famine by raising taxes, now Argentina's President Christina Kirchner wants war:

Argentina's claim to the Falkland Islands, which remain in British hands after the 1982 war between the two countries, is "inalienable," President Cristina Kirchner said Wednesday.
"The sovereign claim to the Malvinas Islands is inalienable," she said in a speech marking the 26th anniversary of Argentina's ill-fated invasion of the islands, located 480 kilometers (300 miles) off shore.
The April 2, 1982 invasion prompted then British prime minister Margaret Thatcher to deploy naval forces to retake the Falklands, known as the Malvinas in Spanish.
The short, bloody conflict led to Argentina's surrender on June 14, 1982 after the death of 649 Argentines and 255 Britons. . . .
In her speech Kirchner called for Argentina to strengthen its representation in international bodies to denounce "this shameful colonial enclave in the 21st century."

Such bellicose rhetoric is transparent demagoguery, an attempt to rally a nation suffering under the effects of Kirchner's bungling policies. The British magazine Prospect opines:

Cristina Kirchner exemplifies a figure familiar in the northern hemisphere because of Hillary Clinton (and to a lesser degree Cherie Blair): the intelligent, educated wife of a leader with ambitions of her own.

No, I think Christina Kirchner exemplifies a different sort of familiar figure: The good-looking woman who, unfortunately, is crazy as a loon.

Barr to announce?

Former Rep. Bob Barr could announce his Libertarian Party presidential bid as early as this weekend, The Washington Times reports:

A source familiar with Mr. Barr's thinking says he likely will announce his bid this weekend, at the Heartland Libertarian Conference in Kansas City, Mo., where he is scheduled to speak.
Mr. Barr declined to say whether he would make an announcement, but told The Washington Times, "I will be there certainly, and will be addressing the convention."
He said he has detected "significantly deep dissatisfaction with particularly the Republican Party and the Republican likely nominee," and that leaves an opening for someone with his views. . . .
Mr. Barr said he could appeal particularly to voters in libertarian-minded places such as Vermont, New Hampshire and the Rocky Mountain states, and said he would have a broader appeal than Mr. Nader's candidacy -- partly because the Libertarian Party is already qualified for the ballot in 48 states, and partly because of the principles he would espouse. "The message that I would bring is definitely not a fringe or an extremist message, it's a basic, mainstream message that will have a very broad appeal," he said.

The interesting thing about this is how some conservatives Republicans are reacting:

[A] third-party candidate on the right who did well enough to tip the election to the Democrats wouldn't do much for his reputation among conservative Republicans.

Why should Bob Barr, who left the GOP and joined the LP three years ago, care about his reputation among Republicans? More importantly, why should conservatives support John McCain? Why is electing a liberal Republican better than electing a liberal Democrat?

UPDATE: The New Republic's Jamie Kirchick has Barr running not as a Libertarian but as an independent, provoking much mirth from my Libertarian friend Stephen Gordon. Jamie, trust me: Gordo knows what he's talking about.

UPDATE II: Barr's interview on Sean Hannity's show.

PREVIOUSLY:
3/27: Barr bandwagon rolling?
3/26: What about Bob?
2/11: Paulistas say, 'Why not Bob?'

Look on the bright side

"Saturday Night Live" comedian Chris Farley was 33 when he died over an overdose in 1997. His friend David Spade says:

"I got a lot of s - - - at the end about 'Why weren't you there for him?' But being that close, I dealt with it all the time. And in that situation, before the guy's dead, he's just kind of an a - -hole. Truth is, you get a junkie who's wasted all the time and moody and angry and trying to knock you around, you say, 'OK, you go do that, and I'll be over here.' "

The bright side of Farley's death? I get to congratulate myself that I've already outlived that junkie by 15 years. Also, I'm a father of six, whereas Farley was a Darwinian dead-end.

Just want to put that idea out there for the benefit of any young idiots who might think it's "glamorous" to be a junkie loser.

'A good deal of rumbling'

Al Regnery, author of Upstream, and publisher of The American Spectator, talks to The Wall Street Journal about John McCain:

"I hear a good deal of rumbling from conservatives," said Alfred Regnery, publisher of the conservative American Spectator magazine. Mr. Regnery said Sen. McCain is doing "some" courting but "probably not enough."

A judicious understatement, Mr. Regnery.

This whole WSJ article is premised on the false notion that there is something that Crazy Cousin John can say or do between now and November that will make conservatives vote for him. But the problem is what McCain has already done -- namely, his Senate record for about the past 10 years. No amount of campaign rhetoric over the next seven months can change that. McCain will never get my vote, and I'm sure there are many thousands of conservatives who share that view.

The best hope for the Republicans lies not in what McCain does, but in what the Democrats do. Say, for example, if they nominate a candidate extreme enough to be publicly endorsed by "Hanoi Jane" Fonda . . . But they wouldn't be that stupid, would they?

This is why I have no problem voting Libertarian in November. If the Democrats keep doing stupid crap like this, it won't be close enough for my vote to matter. Besides, I live in Maryland. Not like any Republican is ever going to win this state.

Wingnut to Moonbat: WTF?

Blog Rule #1: Never complain about bloggers who bash you, as long as they link you.

Blog Rule #2: Never complain, but never hesitate to bash 'em right back.

Here in its entirety, except for a little bit of free-speech-chilling censorship, is a post by the (appropriately named) Jabbering Stooge:

Robert Stacy McCain, lovingly linked by Stalkin' Malkin, asks this of Obama's comments that pregnancy shouldn't be used as punishment of uppity sluts who dare think themselves worthy of being more than ninth-class citizens:

Huh? Who thinks of babies as "punishment"?

You and all the other anti-choice, misogynist nutters who keep carping about "consequences" for women "not keeping their legs shut."
This has been Snappy Comebacks to Stupid Wingnut Questions.
Sidebar: You wouldn't believe how many times I saw some variation of the utterly inane “Well, if you didn't want to become pregnant you'd keep your slutty [vulgarity] shut, you [string of degrading vulgarities]!" during my time in various web forums. Quite frankly, it made me ashamed to have a Y chromosome.

Leaving aside his limited vocabulary, I am struck by the assumptions implicit in Stooge's rant:

• Pro-lifers are "anti-choice" -- Given the slim likelihood that Roe v. Wade will be overturned in my lifetime, and the even slimmer likelihood of a nationwide ban on abortion, I consider the contemporary debate less about "choice" per se, and more a matter of persuading people to choose life. Given my extensive familiarity with the pro-life community, I think my own perspective is widely shared among pro-lifers. Yes, there is a lot of legal and legislative activism, but the overwhelming majority of the activism is about education and advocacy.
• Pro-lifers are "misogynists" -- The Stooge expresses this in several ways, including putting slurs into the mouths of his "anti-choice" strawmen. This accusation is a non sequitur, unless you buy into Stooge's implicit assumption that women enjoy getting abortions. But even women who are politically pro-choice will tell you that having an abortion is a dreadful experience that they would rather avoid. Anybody who's ever been in an abortion clinic lobby knows that it's not a happy place -- certainly not as happy as the maternity wing of a hospital. I would further point out that most pro-life activists I know are women. Would the Stooge say these are "self-hating" women? Automisogynists?
• All consequences are punishment -- If action A leads to consequence B, is B automatically a "punishment" for A? The original object of my criticism was the harshly negative attitude toward babies suggested by Obama's word "punishment." Sex leads to pregnancy and pregnancy leads to childbirth; that much is basic biology. But why introduce the concept of "punishment" to this unremarkable chain of causality? This was the cause of my puzzled "huh"?

More argument (not ranting) to come, after I tuck our "punishments" into bed . . .

OK, now that the "punishments" have gone nighty-night, let me return to the subject of Obama and his defender, the Stooge.

I was listening to a talk radio program Tuesday afternoon and heard a caller who pointed out that Obama wasn't necessarily talking about abortion when he made the remark in question. He was talking about sex education and whether schools should be instruct young people in the use of contraceptives, condoms, etc.:

"Look, I got two daughters — 9 years old and 6 years old," he said. "I am going to teach them first about values and morals, but if they make a mistake, I don't want them punished with a baby. I don't want them punished with an STD at age 16, so it doesn't make sense to not give them information."

Along with many other bloggers, I got the issue of abortion got mixed up in there because the original item in the Politico had the word "abortion" in the headline and the article began by describing an exchange between Obama and a pro-life Pennsylvania woman. But a careful reading of the Politico item makes clear that the "punishment" quote came before the subject of abortion was raised.

Nevertheless, Obama did explicitly describe babies as "punishment." Reading the quote again, and understanding the context, this phrase is still disturbing. Notice:

• A baby and a sexually transmitted disease are both "punishment." Is a baby like herpes? Is a baby like syphilis? Obama made this analogy as if nothing was remarkable or offensive about it -- and no one in his Pennsylvania audience seemed to notice.
• To have sex is to "make a mistake." Oops! An accident! "Well, Dad, you see, I was sitting there talking to Suzy, and she asked for a piece of chewing gum. I meant to reach into my pocket and hand her a piece of sugar-free Trident, but instead I made a mistake and unzipped my pants and . . ." As a rule, sexual intercourse takes plenty of cooperative effort. The participants might later regret their actions, but the word "mistake" isn't really right.
• "Information" is the solution. This is my pet peeve with sex-ed advocates, who seem to assume that teenagers get pregnant or contract STDs because teenagers are ignorant of what used to be called The Facts of Life or "the birds and bees." Not only is that absurd -- given that "information" is now more widely available than ever -- but it is insulting to teenagers. Does Obama think his kids are too stupid to figure out how to use a condom? Has he ever Googled the topic? How about reading the instructions printed on the condom package -- does Obama think his daughters will be too stupid to do that when they're 16?
• "Safe sex" is 100% effective. This is the Big Lie of Sex Ed, and one that Obama apparently has never bothered to question. Try this mental exercise: You meet someone and decide to have sex with them. Then the person tells you that he or she is infected with herpes, chlamydia, syphilis, gonorrhea and AIDS. However, he or she offers to use a condom. Are you still going to have sex? No, because of your common-sense hunch that condoms are not 100% effective in disease prevention. It is only when there is no reason to suspect a prospective partner of being infected with any disease that most people are willing to trust a condom to protect their health. If they know someone is infected, it's a different story.

What is true of condoms is equally true of contraceptives. Suppose I told you that a given method of contraception was 99% effective. Sounds pretty safe, right? So you use it, and there is a 1-in-100 chance you'll get pregnant anyway. Use the same method again, and your cumulative chances are 1-in-50. Use the same method 20 times, and you're down to a 1-in-5 chance.

This is what is known as The Law of Large Numbers. In a nation of 300 million people, there are tens of millions of sexually active people of reproductive age. Many millions of those will use contraception to avoid pregnancy, and a certain percentage of those will become pregnant anyway.

These kinds of "mistakes," to use Obama's phrase, do a lot to help keep the abortion clinics in business. The woman in such a situation will often say: "Pregnant? How can I be pregnant? We used a contraceptive!" The guy will often cast the contraceptive burden on the woman: "Pregnant? But I thought you said you were safe?"

Pregnancy is the normal, natural and ordinary consequence of sexual intercourse. It should never surprise anyone when sex leads to pregnancy.

Contraception is an attempt to separate the cause (sex) from the consequence (pregnancy). The prevalence of contraception in our society, especially since the invention of the birth-control pill, has led many people to internalize a mental or emotional separation between cause and consequence.

When the psychological separation is proven false -- when the natural consequence overcomes the artificial barrier -- a sort of cognitive dissonance occurs, and the unexpectedly pregnant woman (or her partner) asks: "How could this happen?"

The answer is also a question: "How could you expect that it wouldn't happen?"

This is one reason why the really hard-core pro-lifers are critical of artificial contraceptives. They understand that, to some degree, contraceptives cause abortion.

I'm not advocating laws against contraceptives. But the contraceptive industry is not merely content with legal sales; they want the public schools to promote their products to children at taxpayer expense. (Big Condom and Big Pill have lobbyists, too, you know.) And the promotion of condoms and contraceptives is based on a false premise, namely that their products provide 100% prevention.

Honing the ax

John Solomon employs every possible euphemism to avoid using the words "layoffs" and "early retirements," but it's very clear what's coming at The Washington Times:

As we discussed in our private coffees a few weeks ago, reshaping the newsroom for the challenges of the 21st century and moving the entire company toward profitability were going to require many tough decisions. This is especially true in the current marketplace where traditional revenues are down across the industry. With the arrival of our new budget year, the first round of those tough decisions has arrived: we must determine the appropriate size of the newsroom for its new mission and current resources.

Hint, hint, hint. Solomon continues:

But we still need to find additional savings under our 2008 budget that takes effect today. And just as important, we need to inject new skill sets into the newsroom to ensure we can compete in the news marketplace of tomorrow.
Over the next few weeks, we will make a difficult journey. The effort will be expeditious and fair, even-handed and humane. It will require us to say goodbye to some colleagues we have known for many years and to celebrate their many accomplishments as they leave us. It will also allow us to welcome some new colleagues whose skills will improve our capabilities, particularly in the digital arena.

I've only met Solomon once, and have no real inside information about what he plans. But what he is saying, pretty clearly, is that he's going to ditch a lot of the current staff -- including people who've been there many years -- and replace them with a bunch of new people whom he's pretty much going to handpick himself.

If this is like what has happened at other publications (and the entire newspaper industry has been shrinking for more than a decade), then certain senior staffers -- those over a certain age, who've been there a certain number of years -- will be offered buyouts or early retirement packages. Certain junior staffers, who don't meet the minimums, will simply be laid off.

Again, based on what has happened at other papers, what Solomon will do is to attempt to replace high-salaried experienced staffers with new hires with less experience who will work for smaller salaries.

Special attention must be paid to Solomon's phrase "new colleagues whose skills will improve our capabilities, particularly in the digital arena."

Having spent 10 years at The Washington Times, I know exactly what he's talking about. Some older journalists simply refuse to learn anything about the Internet. Hell, some journalists have never even learned the most basic keyboard functions on a PC. They have thus allowed their technophobia (or sheer laziness) to render them effectively obsolete.

I feel sorry for any of my former colleagues who will suffer from the "restructuring" that Solomon's warning about, but some of them will be victims of their own indifference to changes in the newspaper industry.

Anybody in the newspaper business who's earning over $50,000 a year and has accumulated four weeks' annual vacation is a fat target for any publisher who's looking to cut costs. Ditto anybody with health issues that require lots of medical treatment. If, in addition to those deficits, you also don't bother to stay on top of the technology required to keep pace with your competition ... Hey, welcome to Layoff City, pal.

I left The Washington Times in January because I had a contract to research a book, and couldn't make that fit into my work schedule. (Not long ago, I saw where a New York Times columnist was listed as being "on book sabbatical." No such thing at small papers.)

However, the timing of my departure -- immediately after Solomon's hiring was announced -- was not purely accidental. I knew Solomon would come into the newsroom with a mission to cut staff, and I didn't relish the idea of going into the office every day wondering if I had a target on my back. Now, some of the people at work who told me I was crazy to quit can enjoy the piranha-pool paranoia of an office environment where downsizing has been announced, but the names haven't yet been named.

Look: I was under 50, earning over $50K, with seven dependents enrolled on the company health plan, four weeks' annual vacation, and tons of accumulated sick leave (since I probably took no more than 10 sick days in 10 years). Even without the additional burden of a right-wing reputation, I would have been an obvious target for any new editor looking to cut costs.

People under 50 don't get buyouts or early retirements, they just get laid off.

You can do some research and see how many people laid off in these recent newspaper downsizings ever work at another newspaper again. Other editors will interpret that layoff as a signal that you were relatively unproductive, and who wants to hire a relatively unproductive journalist?

In a downsizing industry, it's better to quit -- or even to be "fired for cause" -- than to be laid off. If they really want to keep you, they'll ask you to stay. And nobody asked me. I was born at night, but it wasn't last night.

If she wasn't LOTUS . . .

. . . I'd be angry that Lisa De Pasquale linked me in this blogger chainmail. But who can be angry at Lisa Of The United States? Therefore, I'll oblige:

1. Link back to the person who tagged you. [Check]
2. Post these rules on your blog. [Check]
3. Share six unimportant things about yourself.

• My favorite TV show is "America's Most Wanted."
• I always thought Monica Lewinsky was beautiful.
• I hate nearly all sweets except chocolate.
• In the mid-1980s, I was lead singer and rhythm guitarist in a rock band called Strange Talk.
• My favorite dictionary is a two-volume Thorndike-Barnhart (1967 edition).
• I was born and raised in Georgia, but always cheered for the University of Alabama, because my Dad graduated there.

4. Tag six random people at the end of your entry.

• James Joyner
• Sean Hackbarth
• Don Surber
• Mariel Leonard
• Ace of Spades
• Jimmie at Sundries Shack

Now that CPAC's over, Lisa's got waaaaay too much time on her hands.

UPDATE: My apologies to Toni Woods, a/k/a The Coultress, who also tagged me in her chain-blog response.

I most recently saw Miss Woods at George Washington University for Karl Rove's speech. She was onhand for the post-event celebration with GW's YAF chapter, and I was very impressed with how well Miss Woods acquitted herself in the conversation -- considering that she's still only in high school. Here was a high school senior, surrounded by politically aware juniors and seniors at a prestigious university, and Miss Woods was not at all out of place or over her head.

Warning to liberals: Be afraid. Be very afraid.

Blogwhoring 101

Mariel Leonard writes:

I've now made my way into the blogsphere. In the course of a Facebook debate about older men, gender roles and Karl Rove with the charming, funny, and always interesting Robert Stacy McCain, I linked my post about intellectuals. Stacy did me the kindness of taking me seriously, and replied via his blog. Of course, this linking back and forth is starting to resemble a fun-house mirror room, but if that's what it takes....

Learned well you have, my young paduan.

Every blogger needs "blog buddies," friends and allies you can count on to throw you an occasional link. This is true even of the big bloggers. Sure, Instapundit is so huge that it seems useless for a small blogger to throw him a hat-tip -- like he's going to notice, right? -- but I do it anyways. It's simple courtesy, it's reciprocity (since he has linked me in the past), and it actually does help Insty, since one of the reasons he's so huge is because everybody links him.

The Funhouse Mirror Principle of the blogsophere, to adapt Miss Leonard's phrase, is a puzzlement to many. But the main difference between a mere online diary and a true blog is that the true blog includes links to other blogs.

This blogs-linking-blogs aspect creates an inherent interdependence and encourages reciprocity among bloggers. Think about the "Barney" song:

I link you! You link me!
We're a happy family ...

Is Instapundit a Big Purple Dinosaur? No, but he really has exhibited a sort of Barney-like leadership among center-right bloggers, teaching them by example how to "play well with others." He doesn't seem to hold grudges or keep score and he'll link even the smallest blogger, if that blogger's got something worth linking.

The important thing for a small blogger, if you want to get linked, is to promote your stuff by e-mailing links to other bloggers. Try to find other bloggers with similar interests and beliefs, and pitch to their specialities. If I write something about terrorism, for example, I might e-mail it to Rusty Shackleford, who sort of specializes in that subject.

This business of asking other bloggers to link you is something I call "blogwhoring." When I was at The Washington Times, part of my job was to promote our news stories to the blogosophere -- and I was absolutely shameless about it. The way I figured it, if the blogs were going to link news coverage, they might as well link our news coverage.

So I was a shameless blogwhore, spamming bloggers far and wide with e-mails touting our news product. Did I get on some people's nerves? I'm sure I did. But a blogger can't link a story he doesn't know about, and it was my job to make sure they knew about our stories.

The other side of blogwhoring is linking other blogs in the hope that they'll appreciate the links and be encouraged to reciprocate -- and I did lots of that at The Washington Times, too. I routinely check SiteMeter and Technorati to see who's linking me, and try to reciprocate when I can. That is especially true when someone links me, quotes part of a post, and then elaborates in an interesting way on the same subject.

Something else I used to do, but haven't done much lately: The "round-up" post. Something big breaks in the news, and everybody's blogging on it, so just do a post that's mainly a link-and-quote sequence (and then trackback wherever possible).

A final point: In the blogosphere, there is no such thing as an unfair advantage. Traffic is traffic, and you get it any way you can. Use whatever influence is at your disposal.

I especially mention this to you, Miss Leonard, because I think you might get more traffic if you'd post a mug shot at your blog, so that your male readers had some idea that you are young, single and not half bad-looking. Guys seem to like that sort of thing.

I'm just trying to help . . .

Terrible Ted, Mouth of the South

Captain Outrageous strikes again:

Interviewed Tuesday for Charlie Rose's PBS show, CNN founder Ted Turner argued that inaction on global warming “will be catastrophic” and those who don't die “will be cannibals.” He also applied moral equivalence in describing Iraqi insurgents as “patriots” who simply “don't like us because we've invaded their country” and so “if the Iraqis were in Washington, D.C., we'd be doing the same thing.”

UPDATE: Video courtesy of Hot Air:

If there is anything predictable about Ted Turner, it's that whenever he speaks in public, he'll say something controversial. In 1999, I was the only reporter in the room when he spoke to a "reproductive health" group in Washington. The story's no longer online, but here's what I reported on Feb. 17, 1999:

. . . Though he fathered "five kids -- boom, boom, boom -- by the time I was 30," Mr.Turner said, he now believes overpopulation is a major problem and suggested people should "promise to have no more than two children."
Mr. Turner recalled a discussion many years ago with Stanford University biologist Paul Ehrlich, whose 1968 book "The Population Bomb" predicted that hundreds of millions of people would starve to death in the 1970s and '80s as a result of global overpopulation.
Mr. Turner said he asked Mr. Ehrlich and his wife, Anne, what the ideal world population would be.
"They told me about 2 billion," Mr. Turner said. World population is now 5.9 billion, but the world could reduce its population to that ideal, Mr. Turner suggested.
"We could do it in a very humane way," he said, "if everybody adopted a one-child policy for 100 years." . . .
Mr. Turner, whose net worth is more than $3.2 billion, got laughs with his responses during a question-and-answer session after his speech.
Asked about [House Majority Whip Tom] DeLay, Mr. Turner said of the Republican congressman: "Nobody that dumb could make it through law school."
Asked what he would say to Pope John Paul II, who opposes abortion and artificial contraception, Mr. Turner responded with an ethnic joke -- "Ever seen a Polish mine detector?" -- and then suggested the pope should "get with it. Welcome to the 20th century."

Turner's reference to the discredited Ehrlich is the key to understanding his ridiculous environmental doomsaying. People who buy into catastrophic theories of the future generally do so out of ignorance, and because such views give them a narcissistic ego-boost: They are wise and see the future, while you are a blind fool.

Someone should ask Turner to explain why all of Ehrlich's predictions have proven false, and what that says about such of Ehrlich's disciples as himself.

UPDATE: This story appears to be going viral, so let's do a quick roundup of blog reaction, beginning with Sundries Shack:

Let’s just say for the sake of argument that he’s right about the temperature change and in 30 or 40 years the entire globe will be warmer on average by eight degrees Celsius. That means that his home city of Atlanta, GA will go from an average temperature of about 61 degrees Fahrenheit to about 75 degrees Fahrenheit, which is the average yearly temperature of Miami, Florida where, last I checked, residents are not generally carving each other into steaks.

Q and O:

So we have [Al] Gore, Turner, Sharpton and Roberson pushing this meme now, do we? Beside the dubious science which now seems to be coming apart at the seams, if you didn't have any other reasons to blow this nonsense off, there are four great reasons to do so.

The big reason I've never bought into global-warming hysteria is that liberals are 100% wrong about everything. Whatever liberals tell me to do, I do the opposite. Liberals warned me about overpopulation, so I had six kids. And you know what they say about a man with big carbon footprint . . .

Grumpy Old Party

In a post about John McCain's "biography tour," Matthew Yglesias remarks:

Ed [Kilgore] notes the analogy to Bob Dole's 1996 campaign, the last time the GOP thought having an old man talk fondly about long-past suffering was a good way to win elections. Relatedly, I think it was Matt Stoller who pointed out recently that the candidate with the more impressive military record lost in 1992 and 1996 and 2000 and 2004 so there's reason to doubt that McCain's genuinely impressive military record will serve as an ace in the hole for his campaign.

One reason the GOP establishment's backing of Crazy Cousin John has been so exasperating to me is the deja vu factor.

The McCain '08 campaign is almost an exact replica of the Dole '96 campaign -- aged, ill-tempered war-hero senator whose voting record is starkly at odds with his claims to conservatism.

Win or lose, it's bad for the Republican Party to have such a candidate as its standard-bearer. It plays to the stereotype of the GOP as the party of boring old fuddy-duddies. McCain's candidacy is also bad for conservatism, insofar as the Average Joe nowadays tends to confute conservatism and Republicanism, so that whatever Republicans say and do is taken as an expression of the conservative credo.

Whenever you bring up the issue of McCain's advanced age, some Republican hack is sure to answer, "What about Reagan?" Three quick rebuttals:

• Reagan was tall. McCain's about 5-foot-7.
• Reagan had a full head of hair. McCain's bald.
• Reagan was a conservative. McCain's not.

McCain's nomination is the triumph of "National Greatness" nonsense, and thus a defeat for conservatives.

BTW, last night I was at a Reason magazine event about the national poker craze, which gave me the opportunity to play Texas Hold 'Em with Yglesias, Julian Sanchez of the Economist and John Tabin of The American Spectator, among others. Tabin is a canny player and won steadily, but I was really impressed with Sanchez, whom I never would have figured for a green-felt wizard. As for me, I stupidly let myself get bluffed out on an early hand by Jonathan Blanks of the Cato Institute, but subsequently recovered and walked away a winner.

UPDATE: I guess I should tell the story of how Blanks bluffed me out, because it's kind of funny. To start with, I hadn't really played poker in 20 years, and back then we mostly played seven-card stud. I'd only played Texas Hold 'Em maybe once for just a few hands, and watching poker on TV has never interested me. So I was both rusty and new to the game.

Still, I was doing the smart thing, playing conservative. If I wasn't dealt anything, I folded -- and the first two or three hands, I got zilch in the deal.

Then came a hand where I got dealt a pair of queens (spades and clubs) and now I was ready to play. I tried to be nonchalant about it, quietly matching whatever was bet, but never raising -- when you've got a pair in the hole, you don't want to bet anyone out of the game.

Well, the flop was no help -- low-number red cards -- and it was the same on fourth street. If somebody was trying to make a diamond flush or a low straight, I might be in trouble.

A couple of guys made small raises on fourth street, but nothing I couldn't handle, until Blanks comes in and makes a big raise. "A-ha!" I say to myself. "Our boy's just hit his straight." And so I folded.

Now the river card: Queen of diamonds. Doggone it.

Still, a straight beats three queens, so I'd made the smart decision by folding. Or so I thought. Blanks continued raising and after he'd been called, he laid down . . . nothing.

Blanks had been going for the low straight, just as I thought. And he actually thought he'd filled it. But he'd apparently misread the community cards, and thought that a three was a deuce, so he got beat by a guy with two pair.

If I'd have stayed in, I'd have won with three queens, but I was bluffed out . . . by a guy who didn't know he was bluffing.

Morning news

Headline of the Day

Passenger At Orlando Airport Had Bomb Materials, Literature In Bag

Plastic explosives and Chaucer?

Sid Vicious strikes again

Fresh out of rehab and on a book tour:

. . . According to Sidney Blumenthal, a senior adviser for former President Bill Clinton and current adviser to Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Hillary Clinton, at one point [Sen. John] McCain was going to leave the Republican Party and caucus with Senate Democrats.
“And although he doesn’t want to talk to reporters about it now, there was a time and I was privy to some of those who were involved, did conduct negotiations through third parties about whether or not he would leave the Republican Party and become an independent more or less aligned in the Senate with the Democrats,” said Blumenthal on April 1. Blumenthal did not say when those negotiations took place.
Blumenthal made the remarks before an audience at a Barnes & Noble bookstore to promote his book, “The Strange Death of Republican America: Chronicles of a Collapsing Party.” . . .

Background: Blumenthal has been predicting the death of the GOP for more than 20 years. He was a key White House aide during the Clinton administration, and published a memoir that was unreadable. The day before the New Hampshire primary he was busted in Nashua, N.H., for drunk driving, doing 70 mph in a 30 mph zone.

Smart-aleck kids . . .

Episcopal High School student Katelyn Halldorson gives some lip to alumnus John McCain:

“I think judging by the amount of press representatives here and also by the integration of your previous political endorsements in your earlier personal narrative, we can see that this isn’t completely absent – er political motivation isn’t completely absent,” she said. “Yet we were told that this isn’t a political event. So what exactly is your purpose in being here – not that I don’t appreciate the opportunity, but I’d just like some clarification.”
“I knew I should have cut this thing off. This meeting is over,” McCain joked, before launching into a long description of his biography tour…
McCain concluded the visit by saying, “I hope that attendance here was not compulsory…I apologize if you were unwillingly in attendance here.”
According to one EHS staff member, attendance was required.

Tuition at Episcopal High School is $38,200 a year. The common man will relate to that ...

Hillary who?

Obama in Pennsylvania:

In his town-hall session Tuesday, and in other campaign appearances in recent days, Obama has sought to frame the race as a general election matchup between him and McCain.
Of course, there's the little matter of a Pennsylvania primary on April 22, and Clinton's double-digit lead in recent state polls.

Campaigning in an uncontested primary?

The R-word

Jon Henke predicts the predictable:

Democrats - whether due to paranoia or calculation - are going to see racism under every rock, and they're going to exploit the hell out of it. This, as long as political points can be scored for it, will be our "conversation about race."
That won't exactly help heal, ease or erase racial problems, but that doesn't seem to be the goal of such accusations.
I hope I'm wrong, but I fear the paranoia is just too deep and the temptation just too much to avoid that sort of thing. There is, of course, real racism in America and it deserves our swift public scorn...but "racist" is not a term to be thrown about lightly and without substantial evidence. Its overuse can only exacerbate real racial problems.

The Democrats' leading candidate belongs to a church whose founding creed calls for "the destruction of the white enemy," but they're pointing fingers at Republicans?

Greenwald Mock-a-Thon

Glenn Greenwald has a new book called "Great American Hypocrites: Toppling the Big Myths of Republican Politics":

[Republicans] have cultivated the ability to manipulate media behavior, largely as a result of a media eager to help. But what they do not have is popular support for virtually anything they are doing. And yet they continue to win elections.
How and why that happens -- the deceitful electoral tactics and manipulative personality-based myths the Right has perfected and continuously deploys to win elections, and the ways in which our slothful, vapid and complicit establishment press propagates those myths -- is the principal subject of this book. And understanding and exposing that right-wing/media artnership is a necessary precondition for weakening it.

(Via Memeorandum.) An April Fool's Joke? Alas, it's apparently a real book. Dig the Publisher's Weekly review at Amazon:

The author begins his attack by targeting John Wayne, whom he sees as a template for right-wing notions of American courage and conservative manliness. Wayne's avoidance of military service and his string of divorces, both at odds with his public image, are emblematic in this account of a fundamental hypocrisy implicit in conservative mythologies. Greenwald goes on to argue that prominent Republicans from Ronald Reagan to Mitt Romney display the same hypocrisy in their public ideologies and personal lives.

Glenn Greenwald vs. John Wayne? My money's on the Duke, despite the fact he's been dead for nearly 30 years.

Are liberals so stupid they'd pay money for a book in which Greenwald, a transparently phony sock puppeteer, lectures them about hypocrisy?

Yeah, they probably are. So this book will be a bestseller, and Greenwald and his Brazilian boyfriend will be able to afford to install a new pool at their pad in Rio. I'm sure the Duke would be touched.

I wonder if the book contains any warnings about that notorious bigot, Glenn Reynolds?

'The dignity of living'

I call heaven and earth to record this day against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live.

-- Deuteronomy 30:19 (KJV)

Suppose that you or someone you know became pregnant.

Suppose further that, during routine prenatal examination, the doctor determined that there were serious problems with the fetus.

More tests are taken and it is determined that the fetus carries a rare genetic anomaly, a missing chromosone, a condition known as Turner Syndrome that occurs in 1 of 5,000 births. One reason such births are so rare is that doctors estimate that 98% of pregnancies with Turner Syndrome end in miscarriage.

Those born with Turner Syndrome are biologically female, but are sterile, with underdeveloped genitalia and breasts. Short stature (on average, about 4-foot-7 at maturity) and deformity of the face and hands are other common traits of Turner Syndrome. Many with Turner Syndrome suffer other serious health problems, including deformity of the aorta and kidneys.

What would you do, or what would you suggest, in such a situation? Would you carry the child to term or choose abortion?

Abortion? Then there is no Sarah Horowitz, teacher, journalist, poet and social justice activist, who was recently interviewed about her activism:

I was writing a lot of letters for Amnesty International, specifically on the death penalty. I got very good at giving the secular explanation of why we shouldn’t have the death penalty. But I started to realize that what I really wanted to say is that it’s bad for the soul of the nation. And there’s no real traditional political language for that, the collective soul. At some point, I read this amazing sermon by Martin Luther King; he wrote it right after the Montgomery bus boycott. Basically he said don’t get on the bus full of braggadocio, because you still have to live with these people. And I kind of realized that that was the sort of political action that I wanted to be a part of. I wanted to recognize the dignity of living.

Prenatal genetic testing wasn't a possibility when Sarah was born. And, in fact, Sarah's father is a Republican friend of mine and I know him to be pro-choice, at least from a political perspective. Since I never met Sarah, I have no idea what her stance on the abortion issue was, although she was obviously a liberal on most issues. Still, to read what Sarah had to say about "the dignity of living," I wonder if she ever pondered the miracle of her own life.

I write of Sarah in the past tense because she died last month at age 44. She was mourned by those who knew her, including comedian Kenny Altman:

Sarah battled health problems throughout her entire life but she refused to let them stop her from pursuing her dreams and her passions. To paraphrase my rabbi, Micah Hyman, "her spirit was stronger than her body." She was a pure soul, and an amazingly accomplished person -- among other things she was a poet, a Jewish scholar, a teacher of autistic children, and she made the best damn pumpkin Challah I have ever tasted in my life!

Of course, she was mourned deeply by her Republican father. He wrote poignantly about how his daughter, "who until this election was pretty much a member of the Green Party," flew to Iowa to campaign for Barack Obama.

If you want to read what Sarah's father wrote about his "sweet child," you can find it at FrontPageMagazine.com. Because Sarah's father -- my pro-choice Republican friend whose Green Party daughter spoke about "the dignity of life" and campaigned for Obama -- is none other than the famous conservative author David Horowitz.

How do you say 'pander' in Spanish?

I've asked this before, but is Obama trying to lose?

"As farmworkers and laborers across America continue to struggle for fair treatment and fair wages, we find strength in what Cesar Chavez accomplished so many years ago,'' Obama said in a statement from his campaign. "And we should honor him for what he's taught us about making America a stronger, more just, and more prosperous nation.
"That's why I support the call to make Cesar Chavez's birthday a national holiday. It's time to recognize the contributions of this American icon to the ongoing efforts to perfect our union."

This idiotic statement can only hurt Obama in his primary battle with Hillary.

• Q. What percentage of Democratic primary voters in Pennsylvania will be Hispanic?
• A. A lot smaller percentage than the non-Hispanic working class voters who are afraid of losing their jobs to cheap immigrant labor.

And, man, I can't wait to see how this Cesar Chavez crap plays in North Carolina ....