'Hanoi Jay' Rockefeller

Obama supporter Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV disses John McCain's Vietnam service:

He’s a fighter pilot. He flies at 35,000 feet and drops laser-guided bombs, missiles. He was long gone when they hit. What happened down there, he doesn’t know.

Don Surber says the statement is less insulting in context, although I don't see how. I've criticized Crazy Cousin John for lots of things, but his service in Vietnam is not one of them.

Speaking of insults, I was tempted to say something about the average intelligence level in a state like West Virginia that sends two clowns like Rockefeller and Byrd to the Senate. Then I remembered I live in Maryland, a state that sends Sarbannes and Mikulski to the Senate. Never mind . . .

UPDATE: Ed Morrisey:

Rockefeller also sounds an awful lot like Barack Obama, who claimed that the entire strategy in Afghanistan consisted of "just air raiding villages and killing civilians."

One of my pet peeves is anti-war idiots who suggest that U.S. forces routinely and purposefully engage in the wanton slaughter of civilians. No one who understands U.S. military doctrine would suggest such a thing. Even in the case of documented atrocities -- e.g. My Lai -- these were rogue acts that were punished harshly.

Fool 'em again, Barack

Barack Obama's rhetorical gesture toward supporting Second Amendment rights is transparently phony, as Robert VerBruggen explains:

Since entering the national scene, the Illinois senator has kept mum about his undeniably anti-gun voting record. Now he's actively courting firearm-rights supporters. . . .
The briefest glance at the road ahead reveals why Obama and Clinton have become gun-totin', NAFTA-hatin' small-town folks of late. . . .
The states that haven't voted yet? Pennsylvania, Indiana, North Carolina, West Virginia, Kentucky, Oregon, Montana, and South Dakota. . . .
It's not hard to see why a battle rages for the working-class white vote, and how a little gun love could pay off in the months ahead.

Remember: You can't spell "pander" without "PA"!

A paleo future?

Paul Gottfried is not exactly sanguine about hopes for a paleoconservative revival:

Their lack of resources in the face of a truly grim opposition is so great that I’ve no idea what arrangement of cards would work for them in the foreseeable future. Their aging, embittered leaders have spent so long fighting in the trenches that they’ve taken to turning on each other. The unending tirade against Protestants that some Catholic paleos now engage in is both silly and counterproductive.

I guess I've missed the Catholic-vs.-Protestant feud to which Gottfried refers, although I side with him in his defense of America's Calvinist tradition. At any rate, he continues:

Whatever the problems facing our side, however, it does not seem likely that the neoconservatives and their enablers will control “the American Right” forever. Like the paleos, but in a much more dramatic and successful way, the neocons are products of changing historical conditions, and as Carl Schmitt once wisely observed, “An historical truth is true only once.” There is no reason to assume that those particular circumstances that aided the neoconservatives in their rise to total control over the establishment Right will continue to prevail indefinitely.

This glimmer of paleo hope is too much for the more gloomy Daniel McCarthy:

I think Paul Gottfried is altogether too optimistic. . . . I’m not one to discount “changing historical conditions,” but I wouldn’t count on any changes in the cards in the near future to rid us of the neos. They’re nothing if not adaptable, after all. Gottfried is also more exuberant about “younger (thirty-something) writers and political activists” being “a counterforce to neoconservative dominance” than I think is warranted. . . . I’m not sure that a small cadre of journalists, bloggers, and political activists is much of a hook to hang a movement upon. But I don’t know who all Gottfried might have in mind when he writes of “younger (thirty-something) writers and political activists.” Maybe I’m overlooking someone in my own, more pessimistic analysis.

Definitions and delineations are, I think, the key to understanding what's going on here. We must ask the questions, "What is a paleocon? What is a neocon?"

Since 9/11, the definition of "neocon" seems to have been reduced to "supporters of the Bush administration's foreign policy" -- a definition that includes Sen. Joe Lieberman and, arguably, Sen. Hillary Clinton. Some paleos, meanwhile, have allied themselves with anyone who opposes the war in Iraq. I've been shocked to see essays at LewRockwell.com praising Noam Chomsky(!), while The American Conservative has published Glenn Greenwald (!!).

If the barometer of paleo success is opposition to the war, then paleos should be encouraged, since polls consistently show that doubts about Iraq are deep and widespread among voters. Even if there is an anti-war majority, however, the paleos still lose because:

• Most opponents of the war are not conservatives; and
• Most conservatives support the war.

This problem, however, may soon become moot. If the Democrats win the White House in November, the executive branch will pass into the hands of liberals. Whatever transpires in Iraq after that -- whether a hasty withdrawal or not -- would no longer bear the "conservative" label. At that point, with Republicans cast into electoral darkness and the Bush foreign policy no longer a bone over which to fight, paleos might be better positioned to increase their influence.

Furthermore, I think the gloomy view overlooks much that might encourage paleos, particularly on the immigration issue.

It will be recalled that in the mid-1990s, National Review tried to shut down the immigration debate that had been opened by Peter Brimelow's Alien Nation. But when Sen. John McCain and the open-borders lobby tried to shove through amnesty bills in 2006 and 2007, they were turned back by fierce opposition that included some of the most famous conservative media voices: Rush Limbaugh, Michelle Malkin, Glen Beck, Laura Ingraham, Mark Levin and Ann Coulter.

All of those voices supported Bush on the war in Iraq; all opposed McCain's amnesty. Given that the open-borders position is implicit in the neoconservative "prospositional nation" ideology, doesn't the anti-amnesty stance of Limbaugh, et al., reflect a fundamental rejection of neoconservatism?

Bush will soon be gone. If McCain wins in November, he will enter office facing the distrust of a long list of prominent conservative critics. If the Democrats win in November, the only war debate that will matter will be the debate among Democrats. Either way, there will be a shift in the political calculus, and I don't see how paleoconservatives will suffer by that shift.

Code Pink pests

Code Pink and other anti-war protesters repeatedly interrupted Gen. Petraeus' testimony today. Associated Press:

During the exchange with Levin, the hearing was briefly interrupted by one protester repeatedly shouting, "Bring them home!" The protester was removed from the hearing room by two members of the Capitol Police force. . . .
Inside the packed hearing room, members of the group Code Pink scoffed loudly at suggestions by Petraeus that Iran was aiding the insurgency in Iraq and a comment by Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., that detainee torture was a left-leaning delusion.

Maine News:

Some protesters from the anti-war group Code Pink showed up to the hearing in long black robes, hands painted red and face colored in silver. Capitol Police officers warned them several times to remain quiet and did not permit them to hold placards any higher than chest level. During McCain’s testimony, a man stood in the back of the room and screamed, “Bring them home!” The police escorted him out of the room.

Somebody needs to tell these clowns that congressional hearings are not an appopriate venue for performance art. More from CQ:

The session was interrupted three times by anti-war protesters in the gallery, including members of Code Pink, who chanted, “There is no military solution” and “Bring them home.”

"There is no military solution" doesn't exactly roll off the tongue. Iambic pentameter, it ain't. Michelle Malkin:

So this is the Democrat strategy for today: Heckle the general about Basra, allow outside hecklers to pile on.

Ed Morrisey:

About half-way through [Sen. John McCain's] nine-minute statement, demonstrators attempted to disrupt the hearing. As demonstrations go, it was a rather pathetic attempt and it lasted less than 30 seconds before the threat of arrest ended it.

What I can't understand is why these Code Pink types think their disruptive tactics accomplish anything for their "cause." Unless you're already part of the anti-war hard-core, the prostests are just annoying. It's like auditions for a political version of "American Idol" or something.

Another argument for home-schooling

* * * UPDATE * * *

BOGUS! Turns out the girl made it all up. Shame on her.

* * * PREVIOUSLY * * *

No Thug Left Behind! News from Texas:

It was an assignment for history class -- to make a protest sign for or against an issue, and Melanie said she chose illegal immigration. Her sign read, “If you love our nation, stop illegal immigration.” Somehow, Melanie said the sign got passed around lunch and angered a group of Latino students.
“I didn’t know any of these people,” she said. One young [student], she claimed, jumped on her back and he put her in a choke hold. “We have brick walls in the middle school and he slammed my face on the bricks.”
Melanie said a group of boys also threatened to rape and kill her. Eventually, the boys let her go and when she went for help, she was ordered back to class, and told she could not call her parents, she said.

"I don’t know why the hell a teacher is assigning 'political protest signs' as homework," Michelle Malkin says. Probably expected Code Pink anti-war slogans or something.

Politically-correct indoctrination in the classroom and gangs of vicious thugs roaming the hallways -- a typical public school today. The thugs know they won't be disciplined by the administrators, who are afraid of being sued for "discrimination."

Parents who would send their children to an American public school should seek psychiatric counseling.

UPDATE: Speaking of Michelle Malkin, check out her post about the new gay-themed Absolut vodka ads:

After watching the far Left politicization of liquor advertising play out, you do feel like you need a drink.

The advertising industry, like the magazine industry and the book industry, leans so far leftward because it's based in New York City. No one who wants a traditional life -- home, marriage, children -- would ever move to New York City, where people pay thousands a month for crappy little apartments in crime-ridden neighborhoods. Therefore, those industries are dominated by gays and singles, and their politics make Hollywood look conservative by comparison.

Cash crisis for McCain

Patrick Ruffini hits the panic button:

If anyone thinks McCain raising $15 million in March is good news — and crucially, just $4M of it from online and direct mail — then they’re probably part of the problem rather than part of the solution.
What stands out from the announcement is the sense that they’ve thrown in the towel when it comes to fundraising for John McCain 2008. . . .
This suggests that they not only expect to lose the fundraising race, but intend to go down without a fight. How? By relying on the same weakened high-dollar model that fell short for every Republican candidate in the primary. . . .

Why does it mean? Given that Ruffini is a former RNC operative and Web campaign consultant, I think it translates:

"Hey, buddies, how about throwing me a nice contract or two here, huh?"

That might just be my inner cynic talking. However, my inner cynic has a pretty good track record on this kind of stuff. The fact that Ruffini couches his argument in campaign-insider lingo -- his blog post reads like a consultant's report with phrases like "real-time fundraising transparency" -- suggests he's trying to speak directly to the financial-strategy wizards in the McCain campaign brain trust.

BTW, Bob Barr has raised $20,000 going online since Saturday. Not a landslide, but he's not gotten a lot of national media yet, either.

UPDATE: Linked at Memeorandum, which also links several other bloggers commenting on McCain's fundraising.

The news that McCain is lagging badly behind his Democratic rivals -- Obama raised $40 million and Hillary raised $20 million in March --is predictable.

Conservatives tried to warn Republicans against a McCain candidacy. Rush Limbaugh, Michelle Malkin, Laura Ingraham, Mark Levin, Ann Coulter -- all of them have been harshly critical of McCain. Now that McCain has gotten the nomination, Republicans act surprised to discover that conservatives aren't going to give money to a candidate they don't support.

Condi for VP?

You know people are getting bored with the campaign when they start speculating about running mates in April, as the Weekly Standard does here. (Via Memeorandum.)

The most obvious reason why Condoleezza Rice would be a bad choice as a running mate is that she's never been elected to any office. Nor has she ever indicated she wants to be elected to any office.

The Republicans promoting Rice as running mate are obviously thinking like this:

"Hmmm. The Democrats are going to nominate either a black man or a woman. So we can match them by putting a black woman on the ticket."

In other words, they're willing to push the GOP into a "me-too" position, a strategy of imitation. This is the same kind of thinking that led to Bush's Medicare drug-bill disaster. Besides which, John McCain needs a running mate who can, to some degree, mollify conservatives. Rice is not a conservative.

But as I said, it's only April, and this VP talk is just noise at this point. Running mates almost never make any difference in presidential elections. The last time there was a decisive VP effect was in 1972, when George McGovern bungled the Eagleton affair.

UPDATE: Commenter Section 9 appears to be defending the Medicare drug entitlement by saying "It's a very, very popular bill out in the country with rank and file voters." But the fact that something is popular is not an argument in its favor, at least not for conservatives. The bill is a fiscal disaster. A few more "very, very popular" bills like that and "rank and file voters" (i.e., old geezers who want free drugs) will bankrupt the country.

UPDATE II: James Poulos takes a cheap shot, saying that Condi "plays classical piano with a technical focus and mechanical proficiency that wholly disqualifies her from a professional career." I am not a serious aficionado of classical piano, but have seen Condi play on TV, and she seems to plays competently. By what authority or expertise does Poulos pass judgment?

U.N. vs. Israel

Richard Falk has accused Israel of instigating a "holocaust" of Palestinians. Naturally, the United Nations Human Rights Council has appointed Falk as its Special Investigator of Israeli Actions. The Israelis are furious. And now Falk defends his claims:

Speaking to the BBC, Professor Richard Falk said he believed that up to now Israel had been successful in avoiding the criticism that it was due. . . .
Professor Falk said he drew the comparison between the treatment of Palestinians with the Nazi record of collective atrocity, because of what he described as the massive Israeli punishment directed at the entire population of Gaza.
He said he understood that it was a provocative thing to say, but at the time, last summer, he had wanted to shake the American public from its torpor.

Ed Morrisey comments:

Joseph Stalin talked about the need for useful idiots, and he had people like Falk in mind.

It's at times like this that I remember Alger Hiss's role in the founding of the U.N., and think that was not incidental.

More bad news from Zimbabwe

Of course, it's never good news, it it?

ZANU PF is planning a countrywide witch-hunt of party members suspected of sabotaging President Robert Mugabe's bid to win a sixth term of office.
Party sources say the plan was hatched last week as it emerged Mugabe intended to cling to power, even after failing a first-round knockout with his long-time nemesis, MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai.
The Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC), is yet to announce the presidential poll results, but it is being publicly acknowledged that Mugabe lost. . . .
The sources said Mugabe, disillusioned with his Zanu PF heavyweight colleagues, wanted war veterans and Zanu PF youths to play a central role in "mobilising" the rural folk to come out in large numbers to vote for him.

Oh, the "war veterans" again. If you've followed the Mugabe-induced nightmare in Zimbabwe, you know that the decisive moment in the spiralling decline was when Mugabe sent "war veterans" to seize the farms of white landowners. (The war ended more than 20 years earlier, but many of the "war veterans" weren't even 30 years old. They're just Zanu-PF enforcers whom Mugabe calls "war veterans" to cloak their thuggery in nationalism.)

Meanwhile, Mugabe's arresting election workers:

Zimbabwean police have arrested at least five officials for allegedly under-counting votes cast for President Robert Mugabe in last month's election.
Police said the election officials have been charged with fraud and criminal abuse of duty, accused of taking nearly 5,000 votes away from Mr Mugabe.

Ed Morrisey notes Mugabe's Gore-like tactics.

Mugabe’s Zanu-PF has now demanded a recount. That seems odd, since the election commission hasn’t released results yet. How can they know they need a recount if the votes have not yet been counted fully the first time? They’re stalling for time — time enough to figure out how to steal an election they obviously lost too badly to spin.

This is an ominous situation. Zimbabwe will be lucky if this mess doesn't end in a civil war and/or a Cambodia-style genocide.

Dating, demographics & data

Lisa DePasquale says online dating services are using online data-mining to offer different ad pitches, based on whether the computer user is presumed to be male or female.

Male users over 30 get this:

Over 30 and single? Plenty of available succssful women at ThirtyPlusSingles.com . . .

Female users over 30 get this:

Over 30 and single? Hurry! You become old and alone much faster than you think. Meet someone now. . . .

Lisa is outraged. Clearly, this is unfair and insulting to women.

Being married, I don't have to worry about that dating stuff. Obviously, however, other online services are rigorously applying the science of demographic research, because whenever my wife logs on, she gets this pop up ad:

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.

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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.