Two Wars

Pat Buchannan's latest article is interesting in it's frankness on the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. Now he is essentially an isolationist, so this has to be taken with a grain of salt, but this is pretty striking.

A majority of Americans now believe the war is unwinnable or not worth the cost, and a growing minority in Congress wants out. Some NATO allies are departing. Others are setting deadlines for withdrawal.

As for the Afghans we leave behind, who committed themselves to America's war, they will, when we depart, suffer the fate of the "harkis" in Algeria, the South Vietnamese army and boat people, and the Cambodians we left behind to the tender mercies of the Khmer Rouge.

Have the politicians, journalists and think-tank geniuses who dreamed up these wars suffered ignominy and disgrace?

Not at all. They are debating and devising a new war -- with Iran.

That's pretty accurate. And pretty damning.

Scenes from the Trenches

Steve Chapman's latest article is about duelling protests that took place in Madison Wisconson. One was put on by the National Organization for Marriage, which, ironically, is mostly concerned in preventing certain kinds of marriage (in fairness, they believe that in doing so they are protecting the right kind of marriage). The other smaller protest was held by people who support Gay Marriage. Now here's where things get confusing.

Steve Chapman apparently thinks that the counter protest was more successful. He speculates that the NOM crowd wants to provoke a strong reaction in order to better portray themselves as a persecuted minority.

So why would NOM hold a rally where it is sure of being badly outnumbered by motivated and well-organized critics? Maybe because that's what it wanted. The Summer for Marriage Tour could have been called the Come Shout Us Down Tour.

The endeavor has managed to make opponents of gay marriage look like a brave, embattled minority, even though they constitute 53 percent of the public and have gotten their way in all but a few states.

Unfortunately for them, the counter-protesters don't look quite as scary as they should for this strategy to work. Instead they look like a bunch of passionate college students. Annoying, perhaps, but not fearsome.

The upshot is that the NOM crowd will continue to believe themselves persecuted and, all evidence and logic to the contrary, will point to this counter protest as proof that they are persecuted. And those in favor of legalizing Gay Marriage will continue to believe themselves persecuted as well (in fairness they actually are generally losing the elections so far, so they probably have a better claim to that position).

A Few Interesting Points

Continuing on with the Shirley Sherrod story, lets get some comments from Jeffrey Lord (quoted by Brian Beutler at Talking Points Memo), who has come down on Sherrod like a ton of bricks. Apparently a relative was beaten to death with a blackjack for racial reasons which she has described as a lynching. Jeffrey Lord doesn't agree.

Certainly the image in my head of a lynching is rope around the neck," Lord told me. "And when we really got into this, it was quite apparent to me that there was all sorts of other things. That there has to be a mob -- mob action. Well what is a mob? Is it two people? Is it three people?

This is an interesting tack to take. Basically because Sherrod described her relative being beaten to death for being black as a lynching she's a racist.

Beyond that, Lord doesn't understand that Southern Racists were conservatives and after integration they defected to the Republican Party en masse. Or to be more precise he probably does understand it but is pretending not to.

Daily Howler also has some important comments on the Sherrod situation; mostly asking how stupid we liberals are.

Blame Fox News for this whole affair, while underplaying the awkward fact that the Obama Administration and the NAACP reached the same damn-fool conclusion. Insist that this proves that Fox is racist, while failing to mention the gross bad judgment shown by the other two groups.

I wish he were wrong about this, but he's really not.

Fools Rush In

Not that I am calling Ben Shapiro a Fool, mind you. Just that it takes a certain amount of chutzpah to decided to get back into the Sherrod controversy, which Shapiro does in his latest article.

To be fair, Shapiro admits that the Brietbart tape was heavily and unfairly edited. Basically Shirly Sherrod isn't a racist based on that heavily edited tape. But the media and other sources are missing the larger context which is that Sherrod is a Marxist and kind of a racist.

But the context the media found was also out of context. The speech makes clear that Sherrod is a Marxist rather than a racist, but that she has racial tendencies nonetheless.

Apparently Sherrod has a history of standing up for black farmers. Horrors. And Obama apparently wanted to promote someone who stands up for black farmers. What an evil, evil man.

It's hard not to read this article as either making a mountain out of a molehill; Obama is a Democratic President; albeit a center of the roader. It's not surprising he would nominate at least a few liberals (and lets be clear, Marxist in the mouth of Shapiro means anybody more liberal than, say, Mitt Romney).

Life's Too Short

Dennis Prager's latest article is about how Liberals hate Conservatives and Conservatives don't hate Liberals. This is proved by the fact that a Liberal Reporter wished that Rush Limbaugh would die. Yep. That proves we are all full of hate.

Apparently liberals hate conservatives because we think they are evil, we have guilty consciences over failing to stand up to evil the way liberals do, and we are angry at Conservatives for keeping us from realizing our vision. Interesting argument.

But wait, don't Conservatives think that Liberals are evil? Aren't Conservatives upset that Liberals prevert the Conservative vision of America? Yes and yes. As for feeling guilty, I suppose some Conservatives might feel guilty at how they consistantly work against the interests of the American Working Class. But, then again, maybe not.

At the end of the day it's hard to believe that Prager writes this with a straight face; but I assume he does. He genuinely doesn't see the hatred expressed by media figures on his side of the fence. He's probably never heard this great quote from Limbaugh.

I tell people don’t kill all the liberals. Leave enough so we can have two on every campus – living fossils – so we will never forget what these people stood for.

Still Prager knows his audience; they love believing that all of the hateful things they say mean nothing while the slightest outrageous thing by a liberal is terribly relevent.

Holidays

Allen Hunt's latest article is a Muslim Menace article, which seem to be popping back up recently, with a bit more virulence.

We should treat the various Muslim holidays as we have the birthdays of American presidents with the singular Presidents' Day. My recommendation: we roll all the Muslim holidays into one National Muslim Day and celebrate it on September 11 each year. The New York schools can then follow suit along with the rest of the country.

Rather than working to educate us slow-learning Americans about the merits of holidays like Eid al-Fitr and the birthday of Mohammad, it seems most fitting that we celebrate the contributions and significance of Islam in America's history with one special day each September 11.

The implications are clear; the most significant thing that Islam has ever accomplished was murduring 3,000 Americans. American Muslims are not really Americans and don't merit the same protections and considerations that other religions do. American Muslims don't belong here, and we need to remember what Islam did to us and keep them in their place. We need a national day of Muslim hatred.

Pretty nasty.

Those who are Damned

I am not an atheist as long time readers know. Still Mike S. Adams latest article kind of makes me wish I were.

I guess I’m trying to say that I’m sick of hearing from the Dumb Atheist Moralist Not Engaging Debate. These people are otherwise known as my DAMNED readers.

Nice. Now of course he pretends he's only talking about atheists who misunderstand his articles; but a number of times he slips and just says atheists.

I think a lot of Christians are looking forward to leaning over the proverbial railing in Heaven and spitting on those who are damned. I also think having that attitude makes it unlikely that you will make it to that proverbial railing.

I'm not dead

I have had some minor medical stuff going on so probably low or non-existent posting for the next few days.

Also I called Elena Kagan Eliza Kagan. D'oh.

Wonder Woman and Eliza Kagan

Been focused elsewhere this week, as I had to travel yesterday, so haven't had time to look much at Supreme Court Nominee Elena Kagan. One of the key arguments against her is her lack of experience with the law (meaning, in this case, that she hasn't been serving as a judge). Andrew Pincus, over at Talking Points Memo, notes that historically many Supreme Court Justices haven't come from the lower courts, and then explains our recent history on this issue.

The argument seems to be that because federal judges "interpret the law and don't make it," judging is a technocratic exercise: the "right" answer can be found, if only the decisionmaker is sufficiently well-versed in the technical tools of statutory or constitutional interpretation to find it.

That overly simplistic view of the judge's role is plainly wrong. In many cases, and certainly most cases heard by the Supreme Court, there are good arguments on both sides. The language of the relevant statutory provision is not clear and the surrounding text and other aids to interpretation point in different directions; or the language and history of the constitutional provision can be interpreted either way.

Judging requires the exercise of judgment. (The similar roots of the two words is no accident.) The judge must weigh the different arguments and decide which is the most persuasive.

As I've noted before, the Conservative position on the law seems to be that there is a clear right answer to all legal issues, and that answer, convienently enough, happens to be the conservative opinion. Because there is such a clear answer, any justice who doesn't arrive at the clear and correct answer is an activist judge, legislating based on something other than the constitution or the law.

In other news, they have redesigned Wonder Woman's costume; I quite like it and predict that with such a strong and attractive design this new costume design will last at least 4 months and maybe as many as 6. That said Bleeding Cool has collected some comments from our friends on the right.

Might as well call her Obama Girl now. They should stick with the original costume. Who’s next? Captain America? How sad… :(

I don’t like the new costume. The new one has no appeal. Looks like something an anti-American might put together…

Yeah, I like that one.

Loving America

Brent Bozell's latest article shows his inability to honestly critique media. Which is a bit problematic since he tries to function as a Conservative Media Critic (fortunately for Bozell, all his readers want to hear is how bad and out of touch Hollywood is). His latest target is Oliver Stone.

Sadly, that [World Trade Center] was but a brief hiccup in Stone's career, a befuddling, out-of-character career move. In most of his movies, Oliver Stone is clearly not a fan of America, both her leaders and her policies. Think "Born on the Fourth of July," "Platoon," "JFK," "Nixon" and "W."

See Bozell doesn't undersand criticizing harshly something you love. H edoesn't understand how someone like Stone can love his country and wish it well, while also being discouraged at the choices it makes.

Which is odd because one presumes Bozell has no trouble understanding how a conservative could be disgusted with President Obama or with the sexual predillictions of some Americans while still loving America. But the thing about it is that Bozells image of America is tied up almost entirely with his conservative ideology; in his mind, to a great extent, to really be American is to be conservative. So criticizing libertines or progressives, even if they happen to be U.S. Citizens, isn't criticizing America because libertians and progressives aren't really Americans.