The Dodgy Weaver

by Smitty (h/t American Glob)

Emphasis mine:

The Republican strategist who helped Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman prepare for a possible presidential run says the Republican party is in for a devastating defeat if its guiding lights are Sarah Palin, Rush Limbaugh and Dick Cheney. "If it's 2012 and our party is defined by Palin and Limbaugh and Cheney, then we're headed for a blowout," says strategist John Weaver, who advised Huntsman and was for years a close adviser to Sen. John McCain. "That's just the truth."

Dear John,
  Nominating Governor Palin was your former advisee's Denton moment. My opinion is that JSM realized his years of beltway confinement, listening to lefties in moderate clothing (of which ilk you may be an example) had rendered him ineffective to alter the socialist course of the country. So he sent the strongest possible signal.
  Why didn't you tell JSM to take a term off from the Senate after the 2000 election, and re-connect with a Constitutional, federalist, CONSERVATIVE view? His 2008 campaign might have appeared other than rudderless, in that case.

Huntsman, a favorite of GOP moderates

  LOL to ol' tool. John, understand that in the eyes of many, moderate==lefty. You are either interested in a Constitutional approach, or you're going to have grief heaped upon you from both the right and the left. Think of the the American political landscape as a valley, with moderates milling about in the middle, which is also a no-man's land, and the ridges on the left and right are populated by some deeply committed partisans. John, you have no friends, and you're likely to be more welcome on the left ridge than the right, with the rest of the lousy sell-outs. I'm guessing you have enough dodge/weave skills to survive. As for the right ridge: Tea Party.
  Cheers,
Chris

I guess Barney Frank is used to looking aft

by Smitty (h/t HuffPo)

I think that Barney Frank is as credible on ACORN as Nancy Pelosi is on waterboarding.
Lou Dobbs is the most credible voice in the dialogue. Michelle Bachman comes in second, and Frank could be replaced with a chamber pot.
Yes, money was given to ACORN during the Bush administration. Of what possible use is the repetitious charge that Bush gave ACORN money? Are we supposed to pretend that Congress had no oversight, and didn't know, dime for dime, what went where? Way to avoid an intelligent look at the present, where ACORN actively undermines confidence in the electoral system, Frank.
How the country will rejoice when people like Frank are no longer in office. The day cannot come soon enough.

Daniel Hannan Must Be Stopped!

by Smitty

That man cannot be allowed outbursts of sanity like this:

This is a hate crime against the holy narrative!

Steele's speech on GOP future

Allah is surprised by the excellence:

I remind you that this is Yet Another Invitation I Didn't Get.

Why He's Ace of Spades, No. 483

Genetic tests show Mia Washington's twin sons have different fathers. Cue the Ace:

Scientists believe the strange situation is best explained by the fact that Mia Washington is a dirty, dirty whore.

Not the nine of spades or the jack of spades. He's the freakin' Ace.

My high school history teacher

I'm not kidding, OK? John Siegel is a much-beloved history teacher at Lithia Springs (Ga.) High School, and why the alumni administrator of his Facebook fan group chose this photo for the profile, I'm not quite sure. The "Siegel = Sieg Heil" joke was already stale when we used it more than 30 years ago.

At any rate, Ginny at Obi's Sister lives in Lithia Springs, where her son is enrolled in Der Fuhrer's AP European history class -- final exam essay question: "Slavic untermenschen: Threat or menace?" -- and Ginny told me that Our Supreme Aryan Leader had this Facebook page.

Oh, just wait until the Southern Poverty Law Center finds out. "Links and ties," you know . . .

EXCLUSIVE: Young GOP girl naked!

My confidential sources report via Twitter that veteran GOP New Media strategist Jon Henke was seen yesterday with a naked underage girl . . . when he became the father of a newborn daughter, Jordan Shannon Henke, who was born Monday at 1:45 p.m.

Sources close to this controversial development report that the young beauty weighed in at a healthy 7 pounds, 10 ounces, when she was born naked. If these reports are true, the underage Republican girl is one day old as of this minute. We await release of the shocking photos.

Hearty congratulations to Jon and to Mrs. Henke who, sources say, did all the hard work in this sex scandal.

Scandal for Steele at RNC?

Ralph Z. Hallow reports today on accusations of favoritism in hiring at the Republican National Committee. At the American Spectator blog, I write:

This is potentially devastating. There are too many out-of-work Republican operatives for the RNC chief to be awarding six-figure salaries under circumstances that invite accusations of favoritism. I've been a Michael Steele fan for years, but he must keep in mind those 77 votes for Katon Dawson on the sixth ballot.

It's already a Memeorandum thread, and we can expect some pretty acrimonious reaction from Steele's Republican critics.

As with so many previous problems afflicting the GOP, take note that this is not about ideology, it's about the "jobs for the boys" mentality of Beltway operatives. You've got no idea how many ex-RNC employees and unemployed former Bush administration staffers one meets at D.C. cocktail parties nowadays. This Hallow story will not ease their pain, and Steele could be destroyed by a toxic sea of grassroots discontent fed by Republican political professionals.

UPDATE: Marc Ambinder is dismissive of Hallow's scoop, but talks of Steele's opposition inside RNC:

A good number of long-time members can't accept the fact that Steele controls the party. They don't like the people he's put in place, but they can't find any egregious internal missteps, aside from perhaps the faux pas of paying some of his aides a generous salary. Steele has opened up many RNC contracts to competitive bidding, even though he has been criticized for smaller financial decisions. (Emphasis added.)

I'm sorry, but paying $180,000 to an "outreach director" is a bit more than a faux pas, especially with so many GOP operatives out of work. My friend Tara Setmayer is communication director for Dana Rohrabacher for about $90,000 a year. Wanna bet Tara would have taken that "outreach director" job for $100,000?

UPDATE II: Saul Anuzis is live-Twittering Steele's lunchtime "future of the GOP" speech, Yet Another Invitation I Didn't Get. Longtime readers will note the pattern: The more important the event, the more likely it is to be Yet Another Invitation I Didn't Get.

Occasionally I do cover important events, not because I'm invited, but because somebody accidentally lets me find out about it so that I can B.S. my way past security. B.S.ing past security is a vital skill for The Least Important Journalist in Washington.

They Can Have My Gas Guzzler When They Pry It From My Cold Dead Fingers!

Not just no, but "hell no!"

Obama on Tuesday planned to announce the first-ever national emissions limits for cars and trucks, as well as require a 35.5 miles per gallon standard. Consumers should expect to pay an extra $1,300 per vehicle by the time the plan is complete in 2016, officials said.

Michelle Malkin: "It's a $1,300 car tax. On the working class. On the middle class."

UPDATE: Wall Street Journal:

Disclosure of the agreement is expected Tuesday, with executives from several large auto companies, including General Motors Corp. Chief Executive Frederick "Fritz" Henderson, as well as United Auto Workers President Ron Gettelfinger, expected to participate, people familiar with the matter said.

Right. Feds help UAW take over GM, now Gettelfinger Motors is stooging for Obama's greenshirt fascism.

Got up early this morning, so I'm running ahead of Memeorandum on this aggregation.

UPDATE II: Washington Post:

The measures are significant steps forward for the administration's energy agenda by cutting greenhouse-gas emissions that contribute to climate change and by easing U.S. dependence on oil, most of which is imported.

(Please note that flat assertion of antropogenic global warming as fact.)

The administration is embracing standards stringent enough to satisfy the state of California, which has been fighting for a waiver from federal law so that it could set its own guidelines, sources said. Govs. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R-Calif.) and Jennifer M. Granholm (D-Mich.) will be among a variety of state and industry officials who plan to attend an announcement today, according to sources close to the administration.

Of course, Arnold will support this. Him and all The Republicans Who Really Matter.

UPDATE III: Via Hot Air Headlines, a very timely New Republic feature:

Sometime after the release of An Inconvenient Truth in 2006, environmentalism crossed from political movement to cultural moment. Fortune 500 companies pledged to go carbon neutral. Seemingly every magazine in the country, including Sports Illustrated, released a special green issue. Paris dimmed the lights on the Eiffel Tower. Solar investments became hot, even for oil companies. Evangelical ministers preached the gospel of "creation care." Even archconservative Newt Gingrich published a book demanding action on global warming.

Which reminds me, BTW, of why I am such a staunch disbeliever in AGW (anthropogenic global warming). This trendy nonsense is so similar to, and is promoted by the same kind of "scientific consensus" argument, as the "Population Bomb" idiocy of 40 years ago. Idolators at the bloody altar of Science never seem to learn from their mistakes, do they?

UPDATE IV: Hyscience:

The costs to every American for having Barack Obama in the White House are adding up fast(and we haven't even gotten to his universal health care plan yet) - and not just for those making over $250K. The middle class and the poor are going to be the hardest hit.

Auto regulation always works this way. I lived in Maryland, which requires state vehicle safety inspection, compelling poor people to (a) pay for inspections, and (b) make costly repairs to older vehicles that are otherwise demonstrably road-worthy. State inspectors have been known to flag old junkers for body rust that has nothing to do with safety.

This kind of pre-emptive regulation -- that is to say, pushing people through an inspection process, rather than merely authorizing cops to ticket people for driving with a busted tail-light -- imposes no burden on the affluent, who can afford new cars. It is the poor guy, trying to get by driving a third-hand jalopy with 150,000 miles on the odometer, who is hurt by such regulatory mania.

UPDATE V: William Teach at Right Wing News:

When you go to the auto lot starting in 2012, expect your choices to be golf cart sized vehicles.

"RIP useful, roomy vehicles."

UPDATE VI: MSNBC's Mark Murray notes that Obama's doing Schwarzenegger a favor by sharing his aura of approval with Arnold, who's less popular than syphilis in California.

Murray wonders, "Is California ungovernable?" They wondered the same thing before Reagan was elected governor in 1966. What it takes is leadership with balls. Unfortunately, scientists say long-term steroid use leads to testicular atrophy, to say nothing of the inevitable side-effects of marrying Maria Shriver.

Michelle Malkin is no fan of the micro-testicled muscle-bound "Taxinator." Also see Ed Driscoll on the "Golden State Mobius Loop," and my thoughts on "California: Zimbabwe, U.S.A."

UPDATE VII: Cato's Dan Mitchell says Obama is "simultaneously destroying and subsidzing the auto industry," which reminds me of Ronald Reagan's description of liberal economic policy: "If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. If it stops moving, subsidize it."

As Carol Platt Liebau observes:

These are hidden taxes, but they are taxes all the same. The American people are smart to be suspicious -- as most of them are -- about the President's claims that he will cut their taxes.

We are on The Road to Weimar America.

MoDoGate: By God, Fire Somebody!

Slate's Jack Shafer tries to defend Maureen Dowd:

Many a plagiarist in the past has blamed his theft on over-work, a sick child at home, alcohol use, mental illness, workplace harassment, or a dying parent in the hospice. Others have blamed the sticky cut-and-paste function of their word processors or claimed the words that they copied weren't that unique, so what's the big deal? Or they've appealed for a get-out-of-pillory-free card because they didn't deliberately copy that passage.
Dowd isn't offering any of these cop-outs. I hope I'm not reading too much into her fragmentary responses, but she appears to understand that neither carelessness nor intent constitutes a plagiarism defense.

As a member of the zero-tolerance school, I'm certainly not prone to forgive Maureen Dowd for this, especially because:

• A. She lifted an entire freaking paragraph. You could perhaps cut her slack for a bit of parallel construction, a similarity of phrasing, but she just outright stole a 43-word sentence that she used as the penultimate paragraph of her column. Ben Domenech was publicly flayed for less.
• B. She is a columnist. Look, I spent many years in the newspaper business. A reporter rushing to beat a deadline on a hard-breaking story can be let off with a reprimand if caught carelessly omitting an attribution (e.g., "the Associated Press reported") on B-matter he cribbed from the wires. But Dowd is only required to file twice a week, and she is a senior staffer writing for the op-ed page. For her to be cutting-and-pasting from her IM window straight into her column is simply not acceptable.

Again, I make reference to the Domenech affair. What got Domenech canned at the WaPo was not anything he'd done at the WaPo, but rather the discovery that he had plagiarized in stuff he'd previously written elsewhere. And the damning thing, at least to me, was that Domenech had done this in film reviews and other feature-type stuff -- for example, his NRO take on Britney that transparently borrowed ("Lip Smackers . . . Catholic schoolgirl uniform . . . midriff") from a Salon article.

Most of Domenech's borrowing, however, was student writing and at least he had the excuse of youth, a mere lad of 18 at the time of his Britney article. This requires me to digress and reiterate my Grumpy Old Newspaper Guy complaint -- "I've got ties older than you, kid!" -- against the Wunderkind Syndrome in modern journalism.

Kids are being permitted to run before they have been taught to walk. It's all fine and good for student journalists to do ignorant opinion pieces and puerile features in campus papers. (I got my start doing rock-music reviews for the JSU Chanticleer, forgotten wretchedness I hope never again sees the light of day.) But when they get into real-world jobs, they ought not be indulged in their arrogant belief that they're the Second Coming of Lionel Trilling or Lester Bangs or H.L. Mencken.

The job of a beginning journalist's first editor is to pound some humility into the kid's soul. Make him pay his dues by reporting crappy little stories where it's all drudgery and no glory. Hand him a stack of press releases and have him compile the "community briefs" column that runs on Page B2. On the sports desk, the junior staffers are generally required to put together the round-up of box scores and league standings that run in agate type on Page C4, hence the phrase "agate maggot" for the low man on the sports-section totem pole.

Maureen Dowd was never an agate maggot, but you can't say she didn't pay her dues. She started with the old Washington Star, worked at Time magazine, did a stint on the metro beat for the New York Times and was a mature 33 before she became the paper's Washington correspondent. It took her nine years from there to get onto the op-ed page (where, as many victims of her A1 "reporting" insisted, she should have been assigned long before).

MoDo is no Ross Douthat -- the boy is twenty-freaking-nine! -- and therefore she should know better than to stick a paragraph of unknown provenance into her column. I said when this was first reported that the mysterious "friend" who gave her that paragraph was probably her editorial assistant. If my hunch is right, the assistant should be fired.

Whatever the backstory, somebody must be fired. My God, the brilliant Rick Bragg got fired from the New York Times merely for relying on a hired stringer to help him with a "toe-touch" byline. (Trust me, folks: If a "toe-touch" byline is a firing offense, we need to discuss how many White House correspondents ever filed a Bush-at-the-Texas-ranch story from Waco with a Crawford dateline, which is to say, all of them as far as I know.)

"Even reading and watching all the news, there is no way to know the truth -- except to be there."
-- Hunter S. Thompson,
Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail '72

More even than her plagiarism, this is really the indictment of Dowd, an indictment that could be extended to many others in the commentariat: They're not doing any original reporting.

I always recommend Robert Novak's The Prince Of Darkness to anyone who wants to understand how real reporters get their scoops. As Thompson said, you have to be there, or at least pick up the phone and talk to the people who were. For some reason, it seldom occurs to these op-ed divas to go out to the scene -- a congressional hearing on Gitmo detainees, for example -- and report what they actually see and hear themselves.

What? Sulzberger wouldn't pay MoDo's cab fare to Capitol Hill? Leon Panetta wouldn't return the call if his secretary handed him the message that Maureen Dowd of the New York Times had requested an interview?

By God, fire somebody!

UPDATE: What part of "fuck you, Steve Benen" is so hard to understand? Benen asserts without evidence that liberal blogs are better, citing liberal blogger Nate Silver for corroboration -- because that really proves it, you see?

Benen boast about readership, slagging Michelle Malkin (8 million visits per month) and Hot Air (17 million/mo.), when anybody can plainly see that Benen's own blog gets 1/10 the traffic of Hot Air. And yet Benen would have us believe that MSM journalists are more likely to read liberal blogs simply because liberal blogs are more popular.

Also note that, whereas Michelle Malkin comes from a journalism background, Benen has never been anything except a professional liberal/Democrat shill: Clinton White House speechwriter, Democratic direct mail writer, congressional campaign flack, spokesbot for Americans United for Separation of Church and State.

You're a damned two-faced liar, Benen, and no real journalist could ever possibly respect a two-bit political hack like you.

Lind: your article is a crock

by Smitty
Michael Lind has an article in Salon accusing the right of "scare tactics" on the topic of Social Security. If common sense is scare tactics, then I'm too ss-sshaaakey to type.

Let's ignore FDR's non-command of Article 5, and Amendment 10 when he decided to re-jigger the direction of the country with a shiny, new Bill of Lefty Rights. As ideas go, they're actually not bad. They even have the weight of decades of implementation to back them up. Just two problems:

• Even a casual glance at the Constitution doesn't support federal interference with individuals on this scale, modulo income tax, no thanks to Amendment 16.
• The empirical track record of FDR's ideas could be characterized as "craptacular".

Back to Lind, whose article seems to be about what bad, handwringers people on the right are. We're told:

Any number of relatively minor changes, from lifting the cap on the Social Security payroll tax to infusing general revenues, could preserve the program in its present form into the 22nd century without insolvency or harm to the U.S. economy.

Possibly you could help, Mr. Lind, by addressing some CBO figures as served up by Mr. Perot. Perot's whole site is dedicated to showing how your apparently rose-colored glasses are, rather, tinted brown. My personal un-favorite is this specimen,

An eyeball-regression will tell you that, like rust, the mandatory federal spending is creeping over the budget, and will make it seize up in, oh, a decade or two. And the bi-partisan budgetary gymnastics parade will do what? And the wisdom of the Framers didn't forsee these kind of shenanigans, and preclude them? Listen to you pooh-pooh the argument:

Another deficit hawk pressure group that has been campaigning for cuts in Social Security for years, the Concord Coalition, chaired by Pete Peterson, issued a press release that expressed predictable alarm at the results of the trustees' report.

Robert L. Bixby, executive director of the Concord Coalition, trotted out the bogus "intergenerational equity" argument that somehow today's retirees are robbing their children and grandchildren by burdening them with crippling debts to pay: "Today's report documents a failure of generational stewardship. We should not be content that Social Security and Medicare are affordable for today's beneficiaries when they are not sustainable for future generations." Note that Bixby, like many deficit hawks, lumps Social Security together with Medicare. Given the good shape that Social Security is in for generations to come, it is hard to raise alarms about it without treating it as part of a larger "entitlement" problem.

Hard to raise alarms?

But according to the trustees, even when the trust fund runs out (in 2037 or 2041 or whenever) and Social Security becomes a pure pay-as-you-go system, in which working-age Americans finance retirees, Social Security minus other changes would pay about three-quarters of what it owes.

So, you admit that it's unsustainable, that people are paying as they go anyway, so why should they run their retirement cash through the federal pyramid scheme? Listen, Pharaoh, if the system is broke, why not just release the Israelites? Keeping them seems a trifle peevish.

In other words, the contract between elderly Americans and the rest can be honored in half a century by slightly higher taxes that would fall chiefly on much richer Americans in a much richer America.

This is a sweet lie. I'd like a copy of this famous contract, which I have never signed, for possible use in performing bodily functions. This Country Exists to Support Individual Freedom, not Bind People to the Government in this Foul Manner. I'll honor my father and mother, and love my neighbor as myself for the proper reasons, not via government proxy, thank you.
P.S. If you think all this Socialist claptrap is permissible under the Necessary and Proper Clause, your attention is drawn to this podcast.

TMI, Smitty Edition

by Smitty (I was insufficiently favored to be tagged by S.Logan, but, what do you expect, I'm not exactly available)

1) I'm the son of a son of a sailor. Served on three ships out of San Dog.
2) Favorite verse of the Bible is the counter-intuitive "Consider the work of God: for who can make [that] straight, which he hath made crooked?--Eccl 7:13". In fact, that inspired a 4,000 word novella "Thorgun the Crooked" that I wrote as an undergrad. Historical-piece-cum-spleen-dump after being dumped my junior year in college. It was only mildly mysogynist.
3) Sports are not my thing at all, but I will crush anyone in a game of cribbage.
4) I can spell piobaireachd though my lips fail and my left hand goes to sleep trying to play the couple I've studied. However, I did move Mt. Fuji
5) My first date with my wife was Joe Satriani, on his Engines of Creation Tour. Here is a gorgeous groove off that. (Can't wait to hear him on Chickenfoot).
6) I used to collect comic books, but got bored. I used to drink, but got bored. I was just in Las Vegas, and the thought of gambling made me bored. Got my bumpers on at The Pinball Hall of Fame, though.
7) I completed the San Diego Marathon, once (2000). Highlight was giving a shout out to my classmate, The Toolbox.
8) Created my own poetic form, haiku sonnet. Art is better than I can do, for a given medium.

If this doesn't dispel the rumor that I'm some sock puppet of Stacy's (bonus facts: he's ten years and a day my senior, and I have a sister named Stacey) I don't know what will.

TMI, Paco

"Also around the age of six, for a brief while, I had this great desire to own a tea plantation. I had seen a movie featuring a plantation owner, and he was wearing a white linen suit and a pith helmet. . . . Learning that I had to go to India or some such place to be a tea grower extinguished the urge."
-- Paco

Yeah, I also got tagged in the "eight random things about yourself" blog-cootie game but . . . man, I've got too many enemies out there in need of punk-smacking to be playing around like that. I didn't even have time to notice the execrable James Wolcott today, and there's always Daniel Larison.

Besides which, I routinely reveal so many random things about myself that there's really nothing interesting left to tell. I mean, yeah, I once owned a pair of skin-tight, black, seamless, polyester bell-bottom disco pants and I drove a '72 Dodge Dart for a while, so what?

Paco the colonial grandee -- complete with pith helmet! -- man, there are some childhood dreams you should keep to yourself, bwana.

But then, damn, Brindle tagged me, too. So, eight random things:

1. My desk is always a mess. When I worked at The Washington Times, I was once ordered to clean up my desk after the Fire Marshal came through for an inspection. I am not joking.

2. In middle-school, my ambition was to be a criminal mastermind. For a while, I wanted to be a Godfather-style mobster, so I could wear those pin-striped suits and drive around in a '29 Packard. Then I saw "The Cross and the Switchblade" and decided it would also be cool to be a leather-jacket greaser and shoot guys with a zip gun. Then, later, I contemplated becoming a Manson-style cult leader with legions of lovestruck hippie girls to do my bidding.

3. My criminal ambitions were replaced by rock-star dreams. After bouncing around from garage band to talent-contest band to pool-party band, I finally led my own band called Strange Talk.

4. From 1986-97, I had a mullet. Not just any mullet, mind you, but the cool Patrick Swayze mullet, with (naturally curly) ringlets in the back. Chicks went crazy for that mullet.

5. I worked three seasons (1976, '78, '81) in food service at Six Flag Over Georgia. It was a really cool job, because after work and on your off-days, you could get in the park fre and ride the rides as much as you wanted. And pick up chicks.

6. My camera is pink. My friends dubbed it the "Barbie Cam." What happened was that I finally decided that digital cameras had become cheap enough for me to buy one. So I went to Wal-Mart with my family, went to the electronics department and pointed to the $99 Kodak on display, which was a metalic silver color. The clerk opened the case and handed me a box. We checked out, got in the car to drive home, and I told my twin teenage sons -- riding in the back seat -- to open the camera and set it up. (Teenage sons know how to handle all newfangled technological gizmos.) And then my sons started laughing: "Dad's got a pink camera!" Hell, I didn't even know the things came in different colors. But the Barbie Cam has done admirable service, and now I wouldn't trade it for anything.

7. I've never really cared for pro football. This is because I grew up in Atlanta when the Falcons sucked. To me, "football" always means college football, which means the University of Alabama Crimson Tide. My dad was Class of '50 at Tuscaloosa, and I was raised on the Tide.

8. I smoke cigarettes but am not brand-loyal. I used to smoke only Marlboro Lights, but by the '90s, had switched to either Doral or Basic ultra-lights. Nowadays I look for the 2-for-1 deals. Whatever's cheap. I figure, if the damned things are going to kill you, there's no sense paying premium prices.

Deconstructing Fatherhood

by Smitty

Change can be good. The Constitution as initially ratified had glaring flaws. These have been fixed, albeit at a price.
Change for its own sake, in contrast, lays waste to what is good and gives damn-all in return. The symbol "marriage" has been under siege. At least its defenders are living enough to cry foul, which is more than can be said for the victims in the abortion mills.
Recently making waves is Harry Knox, as reported by CNSNews:

A controversial member of President Barack Obama’s faith-based council said that part of the administration’s role in promoting responsible fatherhood should include moving beyond America’s “heteronormative view of fatherhood.”

Putting him in context, it's almost possible that he has a point:

“Responsible fatherhood offers us an immense opportunity to speak to a real need in the country,” said Knox, director of the faith and religion program at the Human Rights Campaign, a homosexual rights group, during the PBS interview broadcast on its Religion & Ethics Newsweekly show.
“It’ll be challenging to do that for instance in ways that are not dismissive of the tremendous gifts of single mothers; not to sort of hold a heteronormative view of fatherhood up as the only model,” said Knox.

I suppose it's the phrase "only model" that's the sticking point.
Really, Knox: an XY chromosomal makeup for the role is an invariant for fatherhood. You can't have that any other way, an more than you can have a marriage composed of other than a male and a female. I like to quote Abe Lincoln in reply to the attempt at implying an alternative Where None Exists:

"How many legs does a dog have if you call the tail a leg? Four. Calling a tail a leg doesn't make it a leg."

Knox nearly has a point, that we do not need to go around denigrating single mothers. My father was deployed for such a chunk of my childhood that she was a de facto single mom. God forbid the sad conditions of the Carter Administration return to afflict our military like that again. There are plenty of other women who've done admirable jobs when men decided to get their Springsteen on. However, the sin of sad, overgrown boys is beside the point of defending the crucial institution of fatherhood. Society sinks as spinally deficient males like Knox fail to keep the boat bailed amidst the flood of nonsense.
What is the reward for Knox-ian error? Dr. Helen provides an answer:

Mr. Lewis's account of becoming a father to his three children, begins promisingly. "At some point in the last few decades, the American male sat down at the negotiating table with the American female and -- let us be frank -- got fleeced," he writes.
The poor sucker agreed to take on responsibility for all sorts of menial tasks -- tasks that his own father was barely aware of -- and received nothing in return. If he was hoping for some gratitude, he was mistaken. According to Mr. Lewis: "Women may smile at a man pushing a baby stroller, but it is with the gentle condescension of a high officer of an army toward a village that surrendered without a fight."

Admittedly, I'm still not a father. There are some medical reasons, as well as hope for the future. One way or another, I'll join that elite group. And when I do, I'll gladly do my share of the menial tasks. It's a part of the experience. But I will do it in such a way as to underscore that the heteronormative view of fatherhood is the only model, Mr. Knox. If the daughters want Pride & Prejudice, you know me and the boys are chasing it with The Terminator. Lest they become wasted modern lickspittles instead of men.

Update: The Dead Hand has a more humorous take.

RINO-ism and the Demographics of Defeat

Maybe if "Not One Red Cent" can get the NRSC to pay attention, we can explain something about successful coalition-building, as opposed to the Republican elite's anti-grassroots strategy that yields headlines like this:

GOP Losses Span Nearly
All Demographic Groups

This is something that the Nutroots figured out in 2004: If the Democratic Party's liberal base were going to sit around passively while the out-of-touch party elite and the "expert" consultant class kept "reaching across the aisle" (and predictably losing) then they were on the superhighway to political irrelevance.

Nothing succeeds like success, and nothing fails like failure. A political party that is disloyal and disrespectful toward its core constituents, as the GOP was during the Bush/Mehlman era, will not attract new adherents. Who wants to sign up to be treated like a doormat?

The Bush-era GOP believed that its base would be satisfied with superficial gestures (e.g., the Terri Schiavo drama) and ignore the party leadership's pursuit of policies (e.g., McCain-Feingold, No Child Left Behind, Medicare Part D) which were directly at odds with the party's fundamental principles.

This perverse conception of one-way loyalty -- where the underlings are expected to show a loyalty toward the elite that the elite is never required to reciprocate -- is characteristic of any dysfunctional organization. "The beatings will continue until morale improves!"

It's bad enough when this sadistic mentality prevails in the workplace, but at least the demoralized workers have the incentive of a paycheck to keep them showing up to endure more abuse every day. It is impossible, however, to make this top-down, hierarchical, control-freak approach work in a voluntary association, such as a political organization.

The GOP Teke House
Success attracts, failure repulses. During the long ascendancy of the Republican Party (1980-2006), the reins of leadership gradually fell into the hands of people who were more interested in wielding power than in pursuing the limited-government principles that originally motivated the ascendancy.

So long as the GOP maintained the prestige of victory, it continually attracted new adherents eager to climb aboard the bandwagon, and the leadership could act like the officers of the most popular fraternity on campus: Admitting legacies, offering membership only to the most popular freshmen, playing favorites and remorselessly hazing the pledges, secure in the knowledge that aspiring members would suffer all manner of abuse to secure the privilege of boasting, "I am a Teke!"

This approach "worked" as long as (a) the general political landscape favored the GOP, and (b) Democrats were operating on the same basic plan. With the likes of Bob Shrum and Al From as the Democratic Party's "brain trust," Republicans could get away with all manner of tactical blunders and strategic blindness and still stand a reasonable chance of winning election. Rank-and-file Democrats became demoralized and began to accept their status as permanent losers. We now recall with an ironic smile how many liberals wet their pants at those 2004 "values voters" exit polls in Ohio.

But a few clever Democrats did not panic. They analyzed correctly the source of their woes -- the Establishment thinking that had insisted that John Kerry was a more viable presidential candidate than Howard Dean. If Dean had held on to win the 2004 nomination and then gotten beaten soundly, what happened afterwards might never have happened.

What happened was that the left-wing base installed Dean at the DNC and then set to work on a do-it-yourself grassroots approach to victory. The Nutroots recruited, vetted and funded their own candidates. They froze out the big-money consultants and tone-deaf D.C.-based "leaders" who had only led them to defeat after defeat.

Meanwhile, congressional Republicans were busy fumbling away Social Security reform, John McCain was pushing S.B. 2611., the Abramoff and Foley scandals were tainting Republicans and -- just for good measure -- "Heck of a job, Brownie!"

NRSC and Zarathustra
A sort of political Murphy's Law seemed to be in effect, so that naturally the Republican Party nominated as its 2008 standard-bearer the same "Maverick" who had done everything in his power to divide the GOP and alienate its grassroots. (Talk to some reporters who rode the 2000 "Straight Talk Express," if you want to understand the profound contempt John McCain has for the conservative rank-and-file.)

So when that little debacle had played out, and the GOP elite had finished blaming all its woes on conservatives, what happens next? In an open Senate primary in the key "swing" state of Florida, the NRSC endorses Charlie Crist over a promising young Hispanic candidate -- the exact sort of candidate who represents the kind of "outreach" the party elite have spent years telling us we should embrace.

Given this kind of "leadership," is it any wonder that a smart young man like Richard Spencer sees no hope, except to hope for the death of the GOP?

As Zarathustra teaches, that which is falling -- decaying, weakening, dying -- should also be pushed. Let's hope that one day, with its corruption, failure, and cowardice foaming up about its waist, the GOP will look up to the Ron Paul movement and shout "Save Us!" And the movement will look down and whisper "No."

Spencer is clean-cut in grooming and polite in manner, but as thoroughly radical as Abbie Hoffman parading "Pigasus" at the 1968 Democratic convention in Chicago. His Nietzschean radicalism might shock some people, but can you really say it is a less logical response to the current situation than the NRSC's pre-emptive endorsement of Crist? If the Crist endorsement is not "corruption, failure, and cowardice," exactly how do you define those terms?

The Republican Party will either mend its ways and return to its principles, or else go the way of the Whigs. If by some miracle the party can be saved from its current "leadership," not even Richard Spencer will be more surprised than the Democrats who are now gloating over this latest Gallup poll. A rejuvenated conservatism might deal the Obama cultists such a shocking defeat that it will be the Democrats who are forced to ponder the counsel of Zarathustra.

NOT ONE RED CENT!

'The Fourth Branch of Government . . '

"The kind of journalism that inhabits the New York Times, the Washington Post, the major broadcast-news organizations and CNN will not disappear. The government needs it too much, because national news is how the government does its PR. As the media business embarks on a bruising process of transformation, professional journalists will become a fourth branch of government in reality as well as in their own minds. Somehow, but inevitably, today’s mainstream news organizations will become government-sponsored entities funded with taxpayer dollars."

Girl Scouts promote lesbianismand sell delicious Thin Mints . . .

. . . but mainly promote lesbianism:

When many parents think of Girl Scouts, they imagine young girls in uniform selling Thin Mints and Tagalong cookies – not learning about stone labyrinths, world peace, global warming, yoga, avatars, smudging incense, Zen gardens and feminist, communist and lesbian role models.
But that's exactly what many of 2.7 million Girl Scouts will learn about with a new curriculum called "Journeys" released last year. . . .

Conservatives saw this one coming down the pike a few years ago, when the Boy Scouts got raked over the coals for prohibiting gay scoutmasters and the Girl Scouts were so quiet you could hear the crickets chirping.

Back in the day, Bill Buckley* postulated a law of organizational dynamics:

All institutions that are not explicitly conservative will eventually become liberal.

Fast-forward to 2009, and all institutions that do not explicitly prohibit homosexuality will eventually become pro-gay. So next time the Girl Scouts come knocking at your door selling cookies, try not to notice they're now wearing flannel shirts, butch haircuts and sensible shoes.

And if you're foolish enough to let your own child join the Girl Scouts, don't complain when they come back from their annual camporee spouting quotations from Mary Daley and Shulamith Firestone.

"Really, mom, what kind of self-hating homophobic collaborationist are you?"
"Homophobic? Why, I don't . . ."
"We're being oppressed by the patriarchy!"
"Oppressed? What are you . . ."
"It's dad! Don't you see? He's exploiting us!"

Future Femi-Nazis of America!

* -- A commenter suggests Robert Conquest as the originator of the maxim I've attributed to Buckley.

UPDATE II: Linked at the Creative Minority Report. When dealing with feminist dogma, it is important always to be as harsh as possible.

Feminist ideology is so self-evidently counterfactual that only a fool could believe it. Ergo, you should never address a feminist as if you were speaking to a person deserving solicitude, respect and deference, but rather comport yourself as if confronted by an unruly brat throwing a tantrum.

National Offend a Feminist Week was a rousing success. Some of us celebrate all year long.

UPDATE II: Linked at Stop the ACLU and Pirate's Cove. I'm hoping we get some more linkage so this shows up at Memeorandum. Then Amanda Marcotte and Jessica Valenti will denounce the patriarchal homophobia, and I'll ride the tsunami of hate to 10,000+ visits tomorrow. So link me now, you misogynistic right-wing bloggers, and we'll all catch a wave.

'Diversity Through Homogenization'and the Cowardice of the Elite

At Right of Course (FMJRA Site O' Th' Day at The Other McCain), Chance makes an important observation about Obama at Notre Dame:

The other problem with this whole 'open discussion' argument is the very people making it. These are the same people who see no problem at all with the near monopoly the left holds on the public and secondary education system. There is no open discussion on evolution or global warming, it is taught as absolute fact. I took several Sociology courses at two separate state universities (my college career was long and meandering). There were no opposing arguments offered regarding Karl Marx. I didn’t even hear about Friedrich Hayek (The Road to Serfdom) until after college. These are the same people who invite a man like Mahmoud Ahmadenijad to speak but protest Ann Coulter. These are the same people who attack Carrie Prejean for being against same sex marriage but for breast implants. Open discussion my ass.

Read the whole thing. Way back when, a friend of mine coined the term "diversity through homogenization" to describe the Left's philosophy of multiculturalism. Rather than democratic pluralism -- where different ideas and different people voluntarily cooperate through free institutions -- the progressive fanatic insists that all institutions must be equally diverse.

The problem, of course, is that this approach destroys genuine diversity at its very source. The Boy Scouts must be forced to accept gay scoutmasters, Georgia Tech must pander to the Muslim Students Association, Larry Summers cannot be allowed to question feminist dogma at Harvard, and a Catholic university must have "open discussion" on abortion.

Such mindless multiculturalism advances like a conquering army because anyone who questions it is automatically accused of mala fides (bad faith). This is the psychological terror that Perez Hilton sought to wield against Carrie Prejean or Steve Benen wishes to wield against Rush Limbaugh. And it succeeds because most people are either too mentally lazy to analyze the bogus argument or too cowardly to speak the truth:

• Mental laziness -- Most people are smart enough to get the visceral sense that there is something fundamentally wrong and dishonest about progressive dogma. But the Ordinary American has a real life to deal with and isn't accustomed to deconstructing abstract concepts like "homophobia" and "social justice." And it is easier for intellectuals ("second-hand dealers in ideas," as Hayek called them) to speak in widely-accepted categorical generalities than to examine the truth-claims hidden within those generalities. Without intellectual leadership, the opposition to fanatical multiculturalism suffers from a lack of prestige. When all the admirably articulate people haphazardly sling around terms like "income disparity" as if they were describing a manifest threat to civil society, why should Joe the Plumber question these categories?
• Moral cowardice -- The experience of Larry Summers at Harvard is the quintessential example of how the Left wins through intimidation. Summers was a liberal in good standing when he made the mistake of mildly questioning feminist dogma. Feminists believe with religious fervor that "underrepresentation" of women in any field can only be the product of sexist discrimination. This is merely the gynocentric variation of the basic argument of the Left that inequality always equals injustice, a transparent myth of the sort that inspired George Orwell to remark, "One has to belong to the intelligentsia to believe things like that: no ordinary man could be such a fool." Summers' error was to challenge dogma half-heartedly, then to cower defensively when the fanatics howled in rage, rather than speaking with the bold determination of a man convinced of truth. Final score: Feminists 1, Summers 0.

Elitists like Summers are naturally cowards because they are motivated by personal ambition and a desire for prestige. This is why you're never going to get heroic truth from the likes of David Brooks:

In your meteoric ascent through the ranks of the punditocracy, be sure to choose as your friends only those who are important enough to be helpful in your career. Take care never to stake yourself too clearly to any policy position that might be unfashionable with the producers of "Nightline," and avoid directly denouncing any Democrat named Kennedy.
This way, no matter which party is in power, you'll never be out of work and you'll always be invited to the White House Correspondents Dinner because, after all, you're so gosh-darn influential. In short, you will be one of The Republicans Who Really Matter.

What the influential elite count on is that none of their members will ever break ranks and call them out as the dishonest cowards they really are. They further assume that no Ordinary American is smart enough to analyze the elite's output and expose the fraudulence of their "smelly little orthodoxies" (Orwell again).

These assumptions were safe, so long as (a) the only people dealing in second-hand ideas were those who shared the elite's obsession with prestige; and (b) the elite exercised exclusive control over the means of intellectual production. But then the Fairness Doctrine was repealed, Al Gore invented the Internet, and there gradually emerged an Army of Davids -- a hitherto unimagined mass of intelligent people who had "no skin in the game" of elitist ambitions and thus spoke truth fearlessly. Really, why should Matt Drudge, Rush Limbaugh, or Michelle Malkin care what the editors of the New York Times think of them?

"Truth is great and will prevail if left to herself. She is the proper and sufficient antagonist to error, and has nothing to fear from the conflict, unless, by human interposition, disarmed of her natural weapons, free argument and debate; errors ceasing to be dangerous when it is permitted freely to contradict them."
-- Thomas Jefferson

Well, there I go again, quoting another right-wing extremist. The editors of Newsweek would never hire somebody who does something like that, so I guess I'm never going to be one of The Republicans Who Really Matter. Diversity through homogenization can never succeed, so long as Ordinary Americans do not discard the weapons of "free argument and debate" by succumbing to the cowardice of elite ambition.

Honest people love truth like they love liberty. Better to freeze in the snow of Valley Forge than to be a lickspittle fawning at the feet of tyrants. Better to die for the truth than live for a lie.

"You and I know and do not believe that life is so dear and peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery. If nothing in life is worth dying for, when did this begin -- just in the face of this enemy? Or should Moses have told the children of Israel to live in slavery under the pharaohs? Should Christ have refused the cross? Should the patriots at Concord Bridge have thrown down their guns and refused to fire the shot heard 'round the world? The martyrs of history were not fools, and our honored dead who gave their lives to stop the advance of the Nazis didn't die in vain."
-- Ronald Reagan, Oct. 27, 1964

Men with less hope of success have stood courageously in defiance of more powerful foes than we face today. One might hope that more Americans, desiring heroic reknown, would emulate the patriots at Concord Bridge.

Why, then, has ambition become the enemy of courage? Of the great many wise things Ronald Reagan said, he seldom spoke truer words than when he said, "You can accomplish much if you don't care who gets the credit."

It is the selfish craving for credit, the second-rater's lust for awards and honors and praise, that characterizes the cowardice of the elite. David Brooks couldn't stand to be left out of the Atlantic Monthly's weekly salmon-and-risotto affairs, because these are the rewards of elite membership, the validation of his prestige.

Such is the nature of this elite that only cowards ever apply for membership. No one expects honesty from the New York Times, because no honest man (or woman) would seek employment there. Yet this craven, selfish, dishonest path of ambition beckons the "best and brightest," who desire the elite's admiration so much that they learn to prefer smooth lies to rude truth.

So it is that Notre Dame embraces the lie of "open discussion" -- as if the Culture of Death actually believes in "open discussion" -- giving Obama a prestigious forum to proclaim the lie of "common ground," and anyone who dares to disagree will be denounced and ridiculed by the elite.

Question the authority of liberalism, and you will be adjudged guilty of "intolerance," "divisiveness," "incivility" and whatever other accusation of mala fides the elite finds convenient to hurl at you. And you will forever be excluded from the ranks of The Republicans Who Really Matter.

Newsweek: 'Counterintuitive'Is the New Stupid

The Washington Post's Howard Kurtz reports on the new "strategery" at sister publication Newsweek:

Jon Meacham admits it is hard to explain, even to his own people, why chopping Newsweek's circulation in half is a good thing.
"It's hugely counterintuitive," the magazine's editor says. "The staff doesn't understand it." . . .
Newsweek, owned by The Washington Post Co. . . . is bleeding red ink, losing nearly $20 million in the first quarter. Newsweek, whose circulation was as high as 3.1 million in recent years, plans to cut that to 1.5 million by the beginning of 2010, in part by discouraging renewals. The magazine will begin charging the average subscriber about 90 cents an issue, nearly double the current rate.
"If we can't convince a million and a half people we're worth less than a dollar a week, the market will have spoken," Meacham says. The newsstand price will also jump from $4.95 to $5.95, a buck more than Time.

(Hat-tip: Hot Air Headlines.) Raise the price and discourage subscriptions? Brilliant! And check out their "innovative" idea for revamping content:

Meacham, an admirer of the Economist, is fashioning a serious magazine for what he calls his base, with a heavy emphasis on politics and public policy.

Right. You're going to turn a mass-circulation news magazine into some sort of highbrow policy journal . . . weekly! And then watch the money roll in! If this isn't the stupidest business strategy in the history of journalism -- that's a pretty tough competition -- it's certainly in the Top Five.

Notice that Meacham's idea is to publish a magazine resembling a magazine that he likes to read. Call it the Narcissus Reflecting Pool Theory of journalism: If the top editor admires a certain publication, then trying to imitate that publication must be a good business strategy. What you are doing, therefore, is producing a publication for your own editors, rather than for the readers.

This is all very good if the editor is a visionary with a sense of what the reading public wants. But if your editor is a clueless dingbat like Jon Meacham, you're screwed.

My advice to Newsweek staffers: Update your resumes.

UPDATE: Welcome, fellow AOSHQ Morons! You might also enjoy my take on MoDoGate, and my most recent American Spectator column, "The Republicans Who Really Matter."

UPDATE II: Allahpundit loves me again!

It smells like they're trying to remake themselves into a lefty rag like the American Prospect albeit with a bit more populist appeal and investigative journalism. Not quite as highbrow as TNR, not quite as lowbrow as MSNBC, but extra "serious" and willing to charge a bit more for their new supposed prestige.

Now if I can just get him to front-page my Green Room post about the cowardice of the elite . . .

UPDATE III: Welcome NRO readers! Perhaps you'd like to sample some delicious lesbian cookies?

'Common ground'?

"President Obama called for 'common ground' on the issue of abortion. . . . So, exactly what 'common ground' can be found with someone who doesn't believe that a 'non-viable' infant born alive after an attempted late term abortion should receive medical care?"