Moderate opportunity?

Linking a study of the voting records of Hillary, Obama and McCain, Ed Morrisey says:

In 1968, McCain would have been on the right wing of the Republican Party, and both Obama and Clinton would have been significantly on the left side of the Democrats. By 1988, McCain exists squarely in the GOP’s mainstream, and both Obama and Clinton remain on the left wing of the Democrats. Now, McCain’s fixed 2008 position puts him on the moderate side of the party, while the mainstream of Democrats have just barely reached Obama and Clinton’s position. . . .
What does this mean? It shows that RINOs and DINOs exist largely as mythology. Congress has become a place where party-line votes prevail on an almost-exclusive basis. . . .
Much has been made of independent runs from Bob Barr, Ron Paul, and Ralph Nader, but this shows that they also miss the point. The opportunity for political traction doesn’t come from the extremes of the Left and Right, but from the center.

Ed's analysis is wrong, but I don't know that I have the time or energy right now to fully explain why he's wrong. Just briefly:

• Ed mistakes party-line voting for a real ideological divergence. To those of us who are conservatives, this ignores the fundamental question of the size, scope and expense of government. The conservative complaint is that, since 1997, congressional Republicans have abandoned any effort to shrink and limit the federal government. Where are the roll-call votes on abolishing the National Endowment for the Arts and zeroing out the Department of Education? These things don't show up in the charts Ed references, so he's scoring a game that's being played between the 40-yard lines.
• Ed ignores the fact that party leadership controls the legislative agenda. The leadership can pick fights or avoid fights. If enough House Republicans don't want to take a stand on a controversial issue, John Boehner & Co. can use the process to ensure that there is no roll-call vote that would put them on one side or the other of the issue. As a result, policy may drift uncharted by the metric employed by Ed's source.
• To advocate a middle-of-the-road strategy is to assume that Left and Right are morally equivalent, and that there is thus some virtue to steering between those two "extremes." Is there a defensible middle ground between truth and error? Can we compromise between good and evil? If conservatives believe our ideas are true and good, then we should advance those ideas fearlessly. To be compelled into legislative compromise on occasion is inevitable, but we should never confuse compromise with success.
• The "moderate opportunity" scenario ignores the actual history of our politics. Political change -- new initiatives that reshape the landscape -- always begins at the margins of acceptable discourse. In 1960, how many candidates would have run on a platform endorsing legalized abortion? Yet the militance of the pro-choice movement was such that by 1973, the Supreme Court struck down the abortion laws of 49 states, and opposition to this ruling was (at least in the immediate aftermath) weak and disorganized.

Many issues that we take for granted today as part of the public discourse were once "fringe" issues of interest only to "extremists." Less than 15 years ago, for example, Clinton was able to ram the so-called "assault weapons" ban through Congress, and only "gun nuts" spoke out. Yet the ban quietly expired in 2004, and not even hard-core liberal Democrats have shown any real interest in reviving it. The political landscape changes, and the force for change begins at the margins.

In general, I would say beware of liberal academics decrying "polarization" in politics. Liberals certainly do not advocate unilateral disarmament by liberals, so their criticism of "polarization" is actually a demand for the unconditional surrender by conservatives.

Like McAuliffe at Bastogne, I answer, "Nuts."

'Moderate Republican'

The judge who authored the California gay marriage decision:

In the days leading up to the California Supreme Court's historic same-sex marriage ruling Thursday, the decision "weighed most heavily" on Chief Justice Ronald M. George -- more so, he said, than any previous case in his nearly 17 years on the court. . . .
But as he read the legal arguments, the 68-year-old moderate Republican was drawn by memory to a long ago trip he made with his European immigrant parents through the American South. There, the signs warning "No Negro" or "No colored" left "quite an indelible impression on me," he recalled in a wide-ranging interview Friday.
"I think," he concluded, "there are times when doing the right thing means not playing it safe."
Yet he described his thinking on the constitutional status of state marriage laws as more of an evolution than an epiphany, the result of his reading and long discussions with staff lawyers.

What Justice George overlooks is the question of who makes the laws in a democratic polity. It is not up to judges to arbitrarily re-write the laws that the people have enacted through their freely elected representatives. If the people of California wished their state laws to recognize same-sex unions, they could petition their legislature to enact such laws.

The gay marriage issue has always advanced by legislative fiat, due to judges like George who engage in the sort of bizarre theoretical speculation that analogizes the husband-wife marriage to Jim Crow.

Once judges start chasing "the mirage of social justice," they inevitably leave common sense far behind. It's the David Souter Syndrome. Justice George is exactly the sort of fellow we could expect John McCain to appoint to the federal bench.

If we're going to have liberal judges on the bench, let Democrats appoint them.

Defining 'progress'

Via Instapundit, this discussion from Phil Bowermaster:

Hedges is right that we shouldn't view ourselves as the culmination of a process of advancement. We aren't the culmination; we're just the latest step. Nor should we view human nature or the human condition as perfectible. Rather, we should see them for what we have demonstrated them to be time and time again throughout our history -- vastly improvable.

I remain skeptical that we have seen any improvement in human nature. Techological advancement and increasing wealth result in improvement of the material condition of mankind -- lower incidence of infant mortality, cures for diseases, better nutrition and so forth. These material changes may shape personality and mores, since the more wealthy a society, the more specialized its economy, the greater the development of individuality and the greater its tolerance of difference.

Yet this does not fundamentally alter human nature, and cannot be confused with "moral progress." Honesty, diligence, thrift, sobriety, modesty, chastity, fidelity, courage -- I see no cause to think these basic moral virtues are today more common than they were in 1700, and much evidence suggests these virtues are in decline.

What we see, instead, is a tendency to redefine "morality" in such a way that we can congratulate ourselves on our moral superiority to our ancestors. Thus Bowermaster offers as evidence:

How many women voted (anywhere, for anything) 300 years ago? All around the world, how many vote now?

To which I answer: So freaking what? Democracy for the sake of democracy, voting for the sake of voting? Without arguing for the disenfranchisement of women, I see no reason to hail the passage of the 19th Amendment as the dividing line between moral benightedness and an enlightened age, nor does it seem a certain proposition that America has been better governed since 1920 than it was previously. Do you mean to argue that Jimmy Carter was a better president than James Madison, or that George Bush is better than George Washington?

A society where gender equality is a cherished value will congratulate itself on its triumph over sexism, but this self-congratulation does not constitute proof of moral superiority. Was ancient chivalry really so barbarous?

Skeptical I remain, and cite Burke in my defense:

We are not the converts of Rousseau; we are not the disciples of Voltaire; Helvetius has made no progress amongst us. Atheists are not our preachers; madmen are not our lawgivers. We know that we have made no discoveries, and we think that no discoveries are to be made in morality, nor many in the great principles of government, nor in the ideas of liberty, which were understood long before we were born, altogether as well as they will be after the grace has heaped its mold upon our presumption and the silent tomb shall have imposed its law on our pert loquacity.

If we applaud Burke for rejecting the idea that Rousseau and Voltaire had made "discoveries . . . in morality," then why should we grant that any new moral discoveries have been made since Burke's era?

Who is Lily Allen?

Why is she at Cannes? Why is she flipping people off? And why doesn't she wear panties?

The thing about celebrity blogging is you have to keep up with this stuff regularly, or else you end up blogging about half-dressed drunk women you never heard of before.

How is it that these idiots become celebrities without actually being famous? These bloggerazzi don't even tell us whether Lily Allen is a drunk movie star, a slutty pop singer or just some hanger-on floozy with a rock star boyfriend. If being drunk, rude and half-naked were the same as being famous, they could have the Cannes festival during Spring Break at Daytona and there'd be "celebrities" all over the place.

Electoral math

Democratic pollster Paul Maslin breaks down an Obama-McCain matchup state-by-state and sees a tough fight for Obama to reach the 270 Electoral College votes needed to win the White House.

Media & Obamessiah

Deb Cupples: "72% say the media should stop trying to anoint Obama." Which means 28% desperately want to touch the hem of his garment.

His shadow can cure cancer, you know.

And lo, verily, did he say unto his agent, "Go ye unto Simon & Shuster, and they will shew thee a contract. Forty thousand shalt they pay me, and a commission shall ye reap." She hastened to do all that he commanded her, and it was as he had prophesied.
Yet when it was time for the manuscript to be delivered, he tarried, and delivered it not.
Then his agent said unto him, "Forsooth, my master, the deadline have ye missed, wherein it was promised unto them, and I fear for the contract thou hast breached."
He assured her, speaking words of comfort: "Fear not, for another publisher shall ye find and bring to me. Forty thousand again shall I be paid, and a commission shall ye also reap."
Again, it was as he prophesied, and the agent was astonished, for her master was but eight and twenty years, and the payment was large.
But even as she marveled at this, a miracle was wrought, and the book became a thing wondrous, so that even the mighty scribes reviewed it.
Yet it did not sell straightway, for the master was yet obscure in the land and the people knew him not.
Then came the day when all were gathered, and the master made himself known throughout the land, and they clamored loudly for a new book.
And the master said unto his agent, "Thou has done well, my good and faithful servant. Therefore, thou shalt go under the bus. And to my grandmother, send this greeting." And then unto the agent in a strange tongue did he speak, saying, "Ciao!"

Mighty crowded under Obama's bus.

Hard-hitting campaign reporting

What you expect from The Washington Post:

EUGENE, Ore. -- With temperatures hitting the 90s here today, Sen. Barack Obama and his wife, Michelle, paused his campaign for an ice cream break. . . .
Obama, sleeves rolled up and collar open, immediately began surveying options that included Banana Brownie and Muddy River. He asked his aide, Reggie Love, what flavor he wanted. The former Duke basketball player said, "Bubble Gum."
"You're showing your age," Obama said with a smile, then asked for a taste of the Green Tea.
Michelle Obama didn't need to study the cases. She went with Chocolate. "I'm a purist," she said.
Obama settled on Mint Chip, "with a slice of Green Tea on the side."

Just got off the phone with the Pulitzer committee, and they agree with me. It's over. We've found our winner.

The blue helmets are coming!

No doubt, the U.N.will start by investigating those bitter, gun-clinging Hope-haters in West Virginia:

A special U.N. human rights investigator will visit the United States this month to probe racism, an issue that has forced its way into the race to secure the Democratic Party's presidential nomination.
The United Nations said Doudou Diene would meet federal and local officials, as well as lawmakers and judicial authorities during the May 19-June 6 visit.
"The special rapporteur will...gather first-hand information on issues related to racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance," a U.N. statement said on Friday.
His three-week visit, at U.S. government invitation, will cover eight cities -- Washington D.C., New York, Chicago, Omaha, Los Angeles, New Orleans, Miami and San Juan, Puerto Rico.

There must be a misprint on his schedule. Surely, Monsieur Diene will want to visit West Virginia, Kentucky, Pennsylvania and those other "key swing states" won by that notorious xenophobe, Hillary Clinton. Mais oui?

Michael Moore: 'A big mess'

At Cannes, asked about his next film:

"Regardless of who the president is come November, we have a big mess, a big, big mess to be cleaned up, and I don't know whether it can be cleaned up."

A big mess that may be impossible to clean up? A film autobiography, perhaps?

Cannes is supposed to be about starlets sunning themselves topless on the Cote d'Azure. What's with all the freaking politics?

Authors Against Obama

I call for the formation of Authors Against Obama, a group of professional writers who object to crap like this:

Mr. Obama’s story first surfaced publicly in February 1990, when he was elected as the first black president of The Harvard Law Review. An initial wire service report described him simply as a 28-year-old, second-year student from Hawaii who had "not ruled out a future in politics"; but in the days that followed, newspaper reporters grew interested and produced long, detailed profiles of Mr. Obama. The coverage prompted a call to him from Jane Dystel, a gravelly-voiced literary agent. . . . Ms. Dystel suggested Mr. Obama write a book proposal. Then she got him a contract with Poseidon Press, a now-defunct imprint of Simon & Schuster. When he missed his deadline, she got him another contract and a $40,000 advance from Times Books.
Mr. Obama’s original plan was to write a book about race relations. But, sitting down to write, he found his mind "pulled toward rockier shores." So the book became more personal — the record of an interior journey, as he put it in the introduction, "a boy's search for his father, and through that a search for a workable meaning for his life as a black American."

Writers of the world, UNITE! We are being oppressed, and it's people like Obama, his agent and his publishers who are oppressing us.

A 28-year-old law student gets written up in the newspapers, then gets a call from a literary agent? She calls him?

The agent then signs this 28-year-old nobody -- whose only credential as an author is student law journal stuff -- with Simon & Schuster. Hello? In what alternative universe does this happen?

He misses his deadline, but that's OK, because he then gets another big contract with a $40,000 advance. At this point, Obama's story is reminding me of another popular book, The Peter Principle.

But the real killer is how, having gotten a contract based on a proposal for a book about race relations, Obama pulls a bait-and-switch, and instead delivers ... a memoir.

A memoir! Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?? Unless you led the league in RBIs and helped the Yankees win the Series, how the hell does a 28-year-old get away with selling a memoir to a major publisher for $40,000?

By what accomplishment does a 28-year-old law student merit readership for a memoir? What can he possibly write that anyone would want to read? Nothing.

Mr. Obama, an inveterate journal writer who had published poems in a college literary magazine but had never attempted a book, struggled to finish. . . .
The book came out in the summer of 1995, shortly before Mr. Obama announced that he was running for the Illinois State Senate. At 57th Street Books, in Mr. Obama’s neighborhood in Chicago, a few dozen people turned out for a reading.
There were respectful reviews in newspapers including The New York Times and The Boston Globe. Times Books sold 8,000 to 9,000 copies.

First-time author. $40,000. Memoir. Reviewed in the New York Times.

All right, that's it. Forget about Jeremiah Wright. I don't care about Bill Ayers or Hamas or Obama's health care plans or anything else. When a 28-year-old student gets a $40,000 book contract based on a proposal to write about race relations, then instead turns in a memoir that gets favorably reviewed by The New York Times (!), he has committed an injustice against the profession of letters which no self-respecting author can endorse or condone.

Authors Against Obama! Who's with me?

UPDATE: I've created a Facebook group.

UPDATE II: Welcome, Instapundit readers. I don't know whether the link should be interpreted as an endorsement from Professor Reynolds. Somehow, though, I don't think any major publishers were offering him big bucks for a memoir when he was a second-year law student.

UPDATE III: In the comment field, Reliapundit notes his post from June 2005, recounting how Obama broke his contract with his first agent once he hit the big time, reportedly resulting in an out-of-court settlement. This only amplifies my argument that Obama has damaged longstanding traditions in the literary community. Agents usually screw over authors, rather than the other way around.

UPDATE IV: Hey, buy a book, OK? David Horowitz called it "irresistible."

UPDATE JULY 31: Welcome National Review Online readers. Wow, it's not every day a two-month-old post makes the Site Meter jump. Thanks, Jim Geraghty -- and I'll be sure to buy a copy of Voting to Kill just as soon as NR acknowledges the existence of Donkey Cons: Sex, Crime, and Corruption in the Democratic Party, which the magazine couldn't even be bothered to review in 2006. Ah, the injustice of it all! (Maybe if I'd had Obama's agent . . .) Have added an updated reaction.

Cosby's cause

"These are people going around stealing Coca-Cola. People getting shot in the back of the head over a piece of pound cake. Then we all run out and are outraged: 'The cops shouldn't have shot him.' What the hell was he doing with the pound cake in his hand? . . .
"Ladies and gentlemen, listen to these people. They are showing you what’s wrong. . . . What part of Africa did this come from? We are not Africans. Those people are not Africans. They don’t know a damned thing about Africa — with names like Shaniqua, Shaligua, Mohammed, and all that crap, and all of them are in jail."

--Bill Cosby, 2004

The so-called "poundcake speech" is recounted in a profile of Cosby in the May issue of The Atlantic Monthly. The writer, Ta-Nehesi Coates, begins the article thus:

Last summer, in Detroit’s St. Paul Church of God in Christ, I watched Bill Cosby summon his inner Malcolm X. . . .
Cosby had come to Detroit aiming to grab the city's black men by their collars and shake them out of the torpor that has left so many of them -- like so many of their peers across the country -- undereducated, over-incarcerated, and underrepresented in the ranks of active fathers. . . .
"Men, if you want to win, we can win," Cosby said. "We are not a pitiful race of people. We are a bright race, who can move with the best. But we are in a new time, where people are behaving in abnormal ways and calling it normal … When they used to come into our neighborhoods, we put the kids in the basement, grabbed a rifle, and said, 'By any means necessary.'
"I don't want to talk about hatred of these people," he continued. "I'm talking about a time when we protected our women and protected our children. Now I got people in wheelchairs, paralyzed. A little girl in Camden, jumping rope, shot through the mouth. Grandmother saw it out the window. And people are waiting around for Jesus to come, when Jesus is already within you." . . .
He was preaching from the book of black self-reliance, a gospel that he has spent the past four years carrying across the country in a series of events that he bills as "call-outs."
"My problem," Cosby told the audience, "is I'm tired of losing to white people. When I say I don't care about white people, I mean let them say what they want to say. What can they say to me that’s worse than what their grandfather said?"

Some people, I suppose, will read Cosby's words and suppose that his message has degenerated into outright black racism. I disagree.

Understand to whom Cosby was addressing these remarks, and what his purpose was. He was talking to young black men in Detroit, one of the most economically devastated inner cities in America. Many of these young men have already absorbed a large amount of Afrocentrism or some other variety of crackpot black racialist nonsense -- if from no other source, then from rap music.

Cosby wisely understands that, in order to connect with his audience -- in order to get his ideas into their heads in a way they'll take seriously -- he must play upon their racial sensibilities. He wishes to point them toward an achievement-based sense of ethnic dignity, and to point out how sloth, selfishness and criminality are contrary to that goal.

Yet Cosby cannot ignore the fact that many young black men have grown up listening to people tell them to blame all their problems on the white man. Cos at least has to give that idea a head-fake, before turning it around to get his young listeners to consider how their own bad attitudes and their own bad behaviors are a much more immediate problem for the black community than white malice or malfeasance.

Therefore, no, I am not in the least bothered or offended by Cosby summoning "his inner Malcolm X." As a matter of fact, years ago I read The Autobiography of Malcolm X and found that the late Nation of Islam leader had many true and useful ideas.

Malcolm X rightly excoriated the hypocrisy of white liberalism, which renders black people as objects of pity or charity, so that the liberal's conduct toward the black man is less about true fairness and justice, and more about the white liberal proving to himself what a morally superior being he is. This is the essential truth about liberalism that Thomas Sowell examines so brilliantly in his book The Vision of the Anointed, the subtitle of which pretty much says it all: Self-Congratulation as a Basis for Social Policy.

Conservative views are sometimes honestly misunderstood -- and have often been deliberately misconstrued by liberals -- as "racism," a word that has been overused to the point that it has lost any meaningful definition. The charge of "racism" involves the attempt to smuggle into the debate certain unexamined premises, i.e.:

• I know what you're thinking. The person who makes the accusation of racism is claiming to be a mind-reader, knowing the accuser's thoughts and intentions. It's a sort of psychiatric diagnosis.
• Moral superiority. By hurling the charge of racism, the accuser not only declares that he is innocent of any such sin, but that he is so pure-hearted, insightful and beneficent as to feel it his duty to go around detecting and uprooting racism in others.
• Goodwill is more important than good actions. Liberals generally reject the sound Christian doctrine of salvation by faith alone, yet their attitude about race often resembles a sort of secular twist on Calvinism. What is important to the liberal is to avow the correct beliefs about race, never mind what (if anything) they actually do about those beliefs -- and also never mind whether those beliefs are factual, or whether putting those beliefs into action would do any good for anyone.

In 1997, Bill Clinton announced that a "national dialogue" about race would be a major initiative of his second term. No such dialogue ever happened, because Clinton entrusted the initiative to political correctoids who instead conducted a boring monologue about the evils of white racism (as if America hadn't already been hearing that lecture for 30 years). Nothing that was said or done during Clinton's bogus "dialogue" accomplished anything useful or constructive, yet liberals credited Clinton with moral virtue merely for inaugurating it. (Which was exactly why he did it, of course. It was a PR gimmick.)

White liberals who run around declaring themselves amis du noirs are, as a rule, either con artists or lunatics. And black people who fall for that kind of liberal nonsense are like suckers in a game of three-card Monte.

Whatever else Cosby may tell his black audiences, at least he isn't repeating the politically correct shibboleths of liberalism. For that, he deserves praise.

Ted Kennedy has a seizure

According to CNN:

Sen. Edward Kennedy was rushed to a hospital in Massachusetts Saturday morning, his office confirmed. . . .
A well-informed Democratic source in Massachusetts said the 76-year-old senator had "symptoms of a stroke" at the Kennedy family compound in Hyannis Port.

If Kennedy were a Republican, and I were a liberal blogger, this is where I would say something tastelessly snarky, to the point of wishing he were dead.

Sorry to disappoint anyone, but I'm not going to do that. My prayers for the senator's speedy recovery, and comfort to his family.

UPDATE: Some DKos blogger linked this post as an example of "bloggers making underhanded nasty comments." Bizarre. I most pointedly did not make any such comment, except to observe that no ill can befall any Republican without the DUmmies and Kossacks chortling in glee. Nevertheless, thanks for the link. Call me a douchebag, misrepresent my comments -- I don't care, as long as you link me. I'm all about the traffic, baby.

UPDATE II: Apparently he's going to be fine:

In Reno, Nevada, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid told reporters that Kennedy "will be fine."
Reid spoke to Kennedy's wife, Vickie, who told Reid that Kennedy had a seizure, but "woke up fighting."
Kennedy had surgery at Mass General in October to clear a blockage in his cartoid[sic] artery in his neck.

Should be "carotid artery," a blockage of which is a very serious thing, but apparently Kennedy will make a full recovery.

I'm sure everyone in the conservative movement looks forward to Ted returning to good health, so we can make fun of him as usual. See, our prayers were sincere. Without Teddy alive and in the Senate, who else would the GOP use in those attack ads? "So-and-so is more liberal than Ted Kennedy . . ."

Get well soon, Senator!

Understatement of the Week

James Joyner:

Mein Kampf was, I suppose, pretty evil.

I suppose . . .

Celebrity update

Even for a political junkie, all politics all the time gets boring, so occasionally I click over to the celebrity-news aggregator We Smirch to see what new nadirs of decadence the bold-name glitterati are reaching. To summarize briefly:

• Britney Spears: Sex tape?
• Britney Spears: Not pregnant.
• Angelina Jolie: Pregnant.
• Angelina Jolie: Topless in France.
• Katie Price: Topless in France.
• Joss Stone: Lesbian kiss.
• Jennifer Aniston: Bikini.
• Shania Twain: Splitsville.
• Johnny Depp: Nickname.

I don't really care about any of these people. I don't even know who Katie Price is, let alone why she's also known as Jordan. But at least I'm honest enough not to pretend to care or know. If you're going to pander to starstruck curiosity, pander shamelessly.

Dear liberals . . .

One of the great things about the Obama-Clinton fight is that some of you liberals are learning a valuable lesson about how the Democratic Party operates:

With the clock running down on a long-fought primary, NARAL Pro-Choice America leaders sent state affiliates reeling this week by endorsing Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois. It was seen as a gratuitous slap in the face to a longtime ally, and it sparked a fear even closer to home: that the move will alienate donors loyal to Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York.
Many on this week's conference call were stunned on learning the news, making urgent pleas for the group to remain neutral until after the June 3 Democratic primaries. "It's created a firestorm," said NARAL Pro-Choice New York President Kelli Conlin, who was on the conference call. "Everyone was mystified ... saying, 'What is the upside for the organization? And, frankly, [there was] a lot of concern about the donor base. ... There was real concern there would be a backlash."
There was a backlash, and it was swift, starting with NARAL's own website. At last count, there were more than 3,300 comments in an electronic chat about the endorsement, the overwhelming majority of them negative. "Shame shame shame!" read one, with many correspondents threatening never to support NARAL financially again. "No more donations from me!!!" wrote another.

See? For years, NARAL has been collecting money from liberals who were under the impression that the organization was devoted to advancing the cause of "women's rights." In fact, NARAL is just a front group, a special interest lobby, a faction within the Democratic Party. NARAL's leaders and operatives are no different than the leaders and operatives of the AFL-CIO. Ed Morrisey's explanation:

NARAL wants to show some muscle in the party’s operations, and doesn’t mind throwing Hillary under the bus to do so.

Sorry, Ed. Not cynical enough. You should spend some time in Washington and learn how these things really work.

Howard Dean and the bigshots at the DNC are trying to finish up the job they've done on Hillary, so they called in some favors, worked some connections, made some promises or made some threats, and -- voila! -- NARAL endorses Obama.

What? You liberals don't believe me? You think I'm just a right-winger giving you spin from the "noise machine"? Look, here's an explanation from a couple of old-time liberals who know a thing or two about how these things work:

Two former members of Congress (and Clinton supporters) — Geraldine Ferraro and Pat Schroeder — jabbed at NARAL for endorsing before the general election. "Looks like some higher ups at NARAL are trying to get jobs in the new administration ... nothing else makes sense to us," they wrote in a joint letter.

Ferraro and Schroeder are old enough to know that things like this don't just happen by magic. The honchos at NARAL weren't motivated by idealism. Somebody got something in return for that endorsement.

Politics is a big-money business. Did you know that, in the month of February, the Obama campaign was spending at the rate of $1.5 million a day? Or that, by the end of March, the Obama campaign had more than $40 million cash on hand, while the DNC had $5.3 million cash on hand?

There is nothing in political life more certain than that an organized group of idealistic true believers will eventually attract the interest of greedy, self-serving power junkies. The true believers will get ripped off and screwed over, and the power junkies will walk away rich.

Did I say . . . rich?

Or did I say . . . rich?

The folks who run NARAL's DC headquarters aren't volunteers, they're career political operatives, which means that they're in it for the money. If the Obama/Dean/DNC axis wanted to buy an endorsement from NARAL, the only question was the price.

UPDATE: BDBlue at Corrente may be a liberal, but she's not completely naive:

I feel so much better knowing that they are so committed to supporting my rights that they essentially sold their endorsement to Obama. And it wasn’t just a chance to raise money, it was also a chance to tell long time supporters to go f--- themselves. . . .
NARAL does a lousy job defending choice, loses its donor base and then decides to remedy the situation by further p---ing off its donor base. . . .
[NARAL honcho Nancy Keenan] has hooked NARAL up to the Obama cash machine. Of course, I fully expect the Obama donors to get the same level of service (read: pathetic) the old donors got.

BDBlue, let me give you a hint: Beach house. Generally speaking, when people start throwing around big money in Washington, the smart folks end up with beach houses in Delaware or on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. Either that, or they buy McMansions out in horse country.

On the other hand, maybe Nancy Keenan is too stupid to work herself a deal like that.

UPDATE II: Feminist blogger: "Follow the money."

'White women for Obama'

Colorado State Democratic Convention:

Another Obama supporter was Janice Francis, who recounted her joy when she turned onto East Cheyenne Mountain Road earlier Friday and encountered dozens of Obama and Clinton signs and rows of cars with liberal bumper stickers.
"I never thought I'd see that in Colorado Springs, absolutely not, and I've lived here since high school," said Francis, 65. . . .
Francis and two of her friends, Elana Hanson and Pam Clausen, wore T-shirts they designed and sold that said "ColoradObama." Francis and Hanson are trying to get elected as delegates from the 5th District.
If they win, Clausen said she's going to go to Denver and share their hotel room with them.
"We're white women for Obama," Clausen said.
"Oprah's the one who got us turned on to him," Francis said.

Via Talk Left, where Jeralyn Merritt says, "It's embarrassing to see that these women . . . are from my home state."

Snyder ruins Six Flags

When I was in high school and college, I worked three summers at Six Flags Over Georgia. The company ran a tight ship and enforced high standards. The pay was low, but you were proud to work there.

The park was lavishly landscaped and immaculately clean, the employees were cheerful, courteous and well-groomed, and Six Flags regularly set records for attendance and what management called "per cap," which is the average amount spent inside the park by each guest. (They were always "guests," never "customers.")

Apparently, since Washington Redskins owner Dan Snyder led a hostile takeover of the Six Flags parent corporation in 2005, he's nearly ruined it. The Washington City Paper has the lowlights of Snyder's tenure, including my favorite:

Nov. 9, 2007: [The company's stock] closes at $1.88, representing a 70-percent drop since Oct. 24, 2005, when Snyder called for the removal of then-Chairman Kieran Burke in a letter to Six Flags shareholders. At the core of Snyder’s bid to get rid of Burke was this argument: “Stockholders would have been better off hiding their money under a mattress” than investing in the company under Burke, Snyder wrote. On the day that letter was registered with the SEC, a share of Six Flags stock was trading at $7.35. (Emphasis added.)

Can you beat that for absolute boneheadedness? Telling stockholders that the chairman's stewardship of the company has been so abysmal that they'd be "better off hiding their money under a mattress"?

Also, try this quote from a less-than-satisfied Six Flags guest: "I remember smoke and the smell of burning. I felt like I was going to die."

That's from a teenage girl whose feet were chopped off by a Six Flags ride. Yeah, and then there's the class-action lawsuits after more than 400 guests fell ill from a virus that causes "the sudden onset of nausea, vomiting and diarrhea."

The Snyder-owned Six Flags was named in November as one of the "worst managed companies in the United States" by analyst Scott Rothbort, whose prognosis was blunt: "The next stop ... is bankruptcy."

Attaboy, Dan!

(The first year after Snyder bought the 'Skins, the team went 10-6 and made the playoffs. In the eight seasons since then, the team has accumulated a regular-season record of 58-70 and has gotten two wild-card playoff slots, with a postseason record of 1-2. Along the way, Snyder has engaged in such classy moves as selling the naming rights to the stadium to FedEx. The 'Skins, who won three Super Bowls in the '80s and '90s, haven't made it as far as a conference championship game since winning Super Bowl XXVI in 1992.)

Clinton keeps fighting

It's over. It's over, right? Don't tell her it's over:

Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton said Friday she wasn't ceding Oregon — or the nomination — to opponent Barack Obama, who is heavily favored to collect another victory here next week as he comes closer to winning the Democratic nomination.
"I've been declared dead so many times, and luckily it's been premature, and I'm hoping it stays premature," Clinton said. "If I'd listened to people a month ago, three weeks ago, last week, you wouldn't be here trying to make up your minds about who you're going to vote for," she added.

She said that during an hour-long televised town hall event that he had all to herself because Obama refused to debate her. Think she's ready to quit? Uh-uh:

Proving she has no plans to leave the race just yet, Hillary Rodham Clinton is airing new messages in Kentucky and Oregon.

Here's an Oregon ad where she takes dead aim at the pundits who've been counting her out for the past two months:



The polls show she'll win by a landslide in Kentucky, while Obama's got a 15-point lead in Oregon. But after Hillary got a full hour of free TV in Oregon, surely it will be closer than that.

After Tuesday, there will be two weeks left until the last primaries June 3 in South Dakota and Montana. Only by getting additional superdelegates in his column could Obama clinch by then if 2,025 is the magic number. And Hillary keeps saying the number is 2,209, or else voters in Michigan and Florida will have been "disenfranchised."

Experts have been saying for two months that Hillary can't win, and who am I to argue with experts? But if she can't win, she doesn't seem to know it. She'll fight it out to the bitter end. Obama evidently thinks he's got the nomination so safely locked up he can ignore Oregon, let her have a whole hour of free TV and focus his attention on John McCain. That's an extraordinary level of confidence, one that ought to worry Obama's supporters.

UPDATE: I just looked at the RCP delegate count, and noticed how Hillary has nibbled away at Obama's pledged delegate lead since Pennsylvania (where she was net +12). Guam was a 2-2 tie, and Obama gained a net +13 from the May 6 primaries in North Carolina and Indiana, but then Hillary netted +12 in West Virginia.

So the pledged delegate gap has narrowed by 11 since April 22, and Obama's cumulative margin is now 153. There are 103 delegates at stake Tuesday. If Hillary gets the Kentucky landslide predicted by the polls, and Obama underperforms in Oregon, the gap should narrow further. Given that a Kentucky win would reinforce her swing-state "electability" argument, Clinton could go into the last two weeks with a strong argument why superdelegates (227 of whom have not yet declared for either candidate) should not jump too quickly to her opponent.

If between now and June 3 there were any serious scandal or gaffe on Obama's part . . . ah, but what am I saying? It's over. The experts told us so.

UPDATE II: The latest ARG poll for Oregon has it at Obama 50, Hillary 45. Of course, it's a mail-in primary and voting's been going on for a couple of weeks already, so it's hard to poll. But if Hillary holds Obama to a single-digit margin in Oregon and wins big in Kentucky, it will be interesting to hear what the pundits are saying on Wednesday. Meanwhile, Obama is "whining for votes."

'Painfully awkward video'

Mike Huckbee "jokes" about Obama and guns. Quote:

"That was Barack Obama, he just tripped off a chair, he's getting ready to speak. Somebody aimed a gun at him and he dove for the floor."

"Deafening silence," says Allahpundit. So much for the Huckster's vice-presidential aspirations.

UPDATE: Just randomly to deal with some bloggy stuff while I'm thinking about it, The Other McCain passed the 50,000-visitors mark yesterday, less than 90 days since I began blogging regularly in early March.

Averaging almost 800 visitors daily as of 8 p.m. today (Friday, May 16). That projects to more than 30,000 page-views per month, and more than 1/3 of the way to the 2,000 visitors-per-day threshold at which display advertising becomes feasible. If this kind of readership growth continues, the blog could be a remunerative enterprise within months.

Thanks to all the bloggers who've linked here, and thanks to the regular readers. Thanks even to left-wingers who link me. Call me a "douchebag" as often as you want, man, just keep linking me. If I'm going to be a douchebag, I want to be a successful douchebag.

Still 'extremely gloomy'

The death of journalism, continued:

The Internet is destroying journalism, according to Internet journalist Joshua Micah Marshall. . . . In a Friday speech at a Harvard conference on the future of the web, Marshall said traditional reporters are "terrorized" by economic and competitive challenges, living with a mix of "denial and fatalism" about the future of their craft -- and their livelihoods. When openings for entry-level jobs are posted at Marshall's site, for example, he said applications come in from senior investigate journalists struggling to find a job. The industry changes are bad for journalists, Marshall argued, but good for journalism.

Marshall is left about most things, but he's at least half-right about this. I've written before about the grim prospects for the future of journalism, although my take on the subject is somewhat different.

It's not the Internet that's killing journalism, it's illiteracy. The idea that the Internet is replacing print journalism as a news source is an illusion. There is no one-to-one exchange of people canceling newspaper subscriptions and people logging onto the Internet. There is, instead, a shrinking readership of news, period, regardless of whether the news is delivered by computer or by print.

What is the maximum daily readership of HuffingtonPost or the Drudge Report? Is that online readership smaller or larger than the combined readership decline of U.S. newspapers and newsmagazines in the past 10 years?

It's not just MSM. It's not just Old Media. It's not just "dead tree." We are witnessing the death of a mass market for news, regardless of the medium. The cyber-triumphalists of the blogosphere who cheer every report about layoffs and circulation declines at U.S. newspapers don't seem to realize that the bell also tolls for them.

Think about those surveys that tell us that under-30s get most of their political news from "The Daily Show" or Jay Leno's monologues. People who cannot read fluently -- that is, those who cannot process written information as effectively as they process the spoken word -- will never constitute a readership for serious news, whether that news is delivered via print or computer.

Evidence clearly indicates that reading fluency has declined steadily in recent decades. To read well -- to read complex material with both speed and comprehension -- requires reading often. A good reader is a habitual reader. Over the past 30 or 40 years, American schools and parents have failed to inculcate the reading habit in children, producing a generation of young adults in which a majority is incapable of reading and comprehending an article from Newsweek, let alone an essay from Commentary or the New Criterion.

Market forces are at work. The demand for news has been shrinking steadily for a couple of decades, and now the supply is dwindling. Twenty years ago, scores of American newspapers maintained bureaus in Washington. Most of those bureaus have been eliminated or stripped down to a bare minimum.

News industry executives have tried to explain away the problems of the business by citing the loss of ad revenue to Craigslist, Ebay, Fandango, etc. But while newspapers might have been able to compete with such online venues by reducing their ad rates, dwindling circulation tells a different story. People are reading less news, and this is especially true of young adults, the market most coveted by advertisers.

If the major target audience for feature films is the 18-34 demographic, why should a movie studio advertise its new releases in newspapers? When's the last time you saw someone under 35 actually reading a newspaper?

As older readers die off, they are not being replaced by young readers. The pet illusion of the cyber-triumphalists -- that readership is merely being transferred from print to online sources -- is only an illusion.

Even the most savvy news executives don't seem to grasp the dynamics of this. When I was at The Washington Times, some people in the newsroom labored under the delusion that the blogosphere is all about "kids," or that bloggers are a bunch of unshaven slackers who just rant. In fact, most bloggers are in their 30s, 40s or 50s, most of their readership is in the same age range and, in contrast to their image as ranting troglodytes, successful bloggers tend to have high levels of education.

As literacy declines and the mass market for news consequently dries up, the readership for news begins to resemble an elite. This has important ramifications. However, given that declining literacy travels in tandem with a dwindling attention span, I don't suppose there would be much of a readership for an extended discussion of those ramifications, so I will desist.

ADDENDUM: Josh Marshall is himself evidence of one my points about blogging. He's 39 years old (i.e., not a "kid") and is a Princeton alum with a Ph.D. from Brown. He is a member of the elite, writing for an elite readership, and his output is thus necessarily a reflection of elite sensibilities.

In 2000, 28 percent of freshmen at colleges and universities required remedial coursework. An 18-year-old incapable of reading at a college level is unlikely ever to become a frequent reader of political news and discussion. Civic discourse is limited to the literate few, excluding the interests and voices of the Ordinary American, who does not participate in this discourse. There are elites who claim to speak for the masses, but the masses themselves don't even read op-ed columns, much less write them.