Category Archives: Political Commentary

Media Criticism, Political Commentary

Yes, There’s A Large Population In Each Of The Fifty-Seven States

16 Comments

I’m not sure which is more disturbing — that the president believes that the US is a Muslim nation at all (let alone one of the largest ones, and while denying that we are Judeo-Christian), or that the Times is so uncritical in reporting such a belief. Kuwait probably has more Muslims (over three million) than the US does, and it’s a tiny Muslim country. We know what would be the press response had George Bush made such an egregiously nonsensical and innumerate statement.

[Update a few minutes later]

Respecting the faithful versus respecting the faith. Yes, the two can, and should be separated. And it applies to all religions, not just Islam. We can respect the right to believe something without respecting the belief itself. I for one respect no religion, other than my own, but I will defend the right to believe in any of them, at least until acting on such beliefs violates my own natural rights.

[3 PM update]

More thoughts from the Belmont Club:

By choosing to give his speech in Egypt, an authoritarian Middle Eastern country, instead of a more moderate country like Indonesia, he runs the risk of accidentally conveying the sense that democracy is on the back burner. What message does President Obama wish to project when he says “Les Etats-Unis sont “l’un des plus grands pays musulmans de la planète”? Is it of Islam as the future of America or America as the future of Islam? The President’s speech seems innocent enough, but emphasis is important. Didn’t he say, “don’t tell me that words don’t matter?”

In the interview, President Obama says one of the goals his trip is to foster dialogue between the West and the Muslim world. Maybe some communications strategist or public diplomacy consultant has advised “rebranding America” as the sort of place Muslims can identify with. That way it will be an easy sell. What better way to do it than by saying, ‘America is one of the biggest Muslim countries on the planet’. Ich bin ein Mussulman, or however you say it. That won’t necessarily fly; it doesn’t seem to work too well for India, which has a genuinely huge Muslim population. But there’s a hidden danger. His audience can say right: just look at how advanced and rich America is, and it’s one of the largest Muslim countries on the planet. See nothing is broken in Islam. America is proof. There comes a point when rebranding may become misleading packaging.

But hey, “misleading packaging” is the man’s forte, after all.

Political Commentary

An Absurd Ruling

8 Comments

At least based on this quote: “Federalism is an older and more deeply rooted tradition than is a right to carry any particular kind of weapon.”

That seems nonsensical to me. The right to self defense is fundamental in English common law, and goes back much further than federalism. I’m as big a federalist as the next guy, and more than most, but how can the First Amendment be incorporated, but not the Second? This will be going to SCOTUS.

[Update a few minutes later]

Eugene Volokh, unsurprisingly, has some thoughts, here and here:

…it’s not implausible, I think, to treat the Court’s precedents as stare decisis on the question of incorporation via the Fourteenth Amendment generally, rather than solely of incorporation via the Privileges or Immunities Clause (though I’d probably be inclined to the other position). But it seems to me that the case is not nearly as clear as the Seventh Circuit’s analysis suggests, and that the opinion’s not discussing the difference between the two Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment is a significant weakness.

As I said, the SCOTUS will almost certainly get this. And having Sotomayor won’t make any difference, since Souter would likely rule the same way as she does. It will be interesting to see what the rest of the court does.

[Update]

A thought, based on some good comments in Eugene’s second post. When self defense is outlawed, only outlaws will defend themselves.

Business, Economics, Political Commentary

What A Bargain

27 Comments

Your tax dollars at work:

According to today’s Washington Post, the company currently employs 88,000 workers in the United States. (That seems low, but that’s what the paper says.) GM has gotten $19.4 billion in loans from the U.S. government and Obama promised another $30 billion yesterday.

$49.4 billion divided by 88,000 workers comes out to $561,363.63 per worker.

Can that possibly be right? That in an effort to avoid layoffs, Uncle Sam has pursued a course more expensive than handing each worker a check for a half a million dollars?

Well, the math is correct, but it’s not right, in any sense of the word. I see some very interesting campaign ads coming out of this in 2010.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary

Sauce For The Gander

3 Comments

The people complaining about Judge Sotomayor being called a racist, seem to have selective outrage.

[Afternoon update]

Here are more examples of Judge Sotomayor’s “misspeaking”:

In the lecture, she used a former colleague, Judge Miriam Cedarbaum, as a foil. Cedarbaum believes, according to Sotomayor, “that judges must transcend their personal sympathies and prejudices.” Sotomayor endorsed this view as an aspiration, but added, “I wonder whether achieving that goal is possible in all or even in most cases.” Darn! What she meant to say — if it hadn’t gotten so garbled — is that this aspiration can be achieved, certainly in most and perhaps in all cases.

In the next sentence, she mused, “I wonder whether by ignoring our differences as women or men of color we do a disservice both to the law and society.” Not again! This sentence was entirely misspoken and shouldn’t have been included in the text, since — as a straight-shooting, just-the-facts judge — Sotomayor naturally wondered no such thing.

In the very next sentence, she raised the possibility that people of different races “have basic differences in logic and reasoning.” Oh, no! In this passage, Sotomayor was badly victimized by misspeaking. An appeals-court judge flirting with the existence of Black Logic, or White Logic, or Latino Logic, is preposterous on its face. Again, in an innocent mishap, she must have poorly chosen her words by choosing to include them.

In a curious coincidence, she misspoke the same way later when she posited different judging by different races and genders might result from “inherent physiological” differences. #@$%&! Sotomayor clearly couldn’t catch a break, with her serial misspeaking obscuring her inspiring vision of a nation of laws that is no respecter of persons.

She’s just so misunderstood.

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary

The Book Stores Didn’t Get The Memo

44 Comments

Many on the left predicted (usually without even reading it) that Jonah Goldberg’s book would end up remaindered shortly after publication (I even had such idiotic prophecies in my own comments section here).

Well, the new edition, in paperback (with a new afterword on the Obama phenom), came out today, and it’s #32 at Amazon.

There’s an interview with the author on the new edition over at NRO:

One of the points of Liberal Fascism isn’t to simply say “I know you are but what am I?” to the Left (though that’s definitely in there), it’s to point out that because we’ve made fascism into this cartoon villain we’ve allowed truly fascistic (or if you prefer, statist or progressive) assumptions to suffuse modern life on both the right and the left. I don’t think all of this stuff is evil or even necessarily bad. Rather, I think it advances without us questioning it. I have a chapter in the book called “We’re All Fascists Now.” I wasn’t aiming that purely leftward, but inward. People need to understand that these movements didn’t arise out of a society-wide desire to be villains. It arose out of a desire, a yearning, for progress. I think that’s one of the most basic points I failed to communicate as clearly as I should have.

LOPEZ: Speaking of Liberal Fascism’s endurance, what do you make of events since the book came out, specifically the election of The One?

GOLDBERG: Well, first of all I think I have to thank Barack Obama. Here I wrote a book, working on the assumption that Hillary Clinton would be the nominee (hardly a harebrained assumption at the time), about how contemporary progressivism is a political religion with its roots in German state theory, sharing a close family resemblance to fascism. Among the anatomical and genetic similarities: cult of unity, sacralization of politics, philosophical pragmatism, corporatism, relativism, Romanticism, hero-worship, collectivism, and so on. And out of nowhere comes a guy who campaigns as a secular messiah, spouting deeply spiritualized political rhetoric, claims the Progressives as his inspiration, and proudly sees himself as carrying out FDR’s mission. I haven’t counted them, but I’d guess I’ve received a couple hundred e-mails from readers telling me how they thought the whole book was written with Obama in mind, even though I finished it before he was even ahead in the Democratic primaries.

It does seem prescient now.

[3 PM Eastern update]

The book has moved up to #30…

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary

It’s The Corporate Culture, Stupid

12 Comments

I don’t often agree with David Brooks, but he has a good diagnosis today of why Government Motors is doomed to fail:

First, the Obama plan will reduce the influence of commercial outsiders. The best place for fresh thinking could come from outside private investors. But the Obama plan rides roughshod over the current private investors and so discourages future investors. G.M. is now a pariah on Wall Street. Say farewell to a potentially powerful source of external commercial pressure.

Second, the Obama plan entrenches the ancien régime. The old C.E.O. is gone, but he’s been replaced by a veteran insider and similar executive coterie. Meanwhile, the U.A.W. has been given a bigger leadership role. This is the union that fought for job banks, where employees get paid for doing nothing. This is the organization that championed retirement with full benefits at around age 50. This is not an organization that represents fundamental cultural change.

Third, the Obama approach reduces the fear that impels change. The U.S. government will own most of G.M. It would be politically suicidal for the Democrats, or whoever is in power, to pull the plug on the company — now or ever. Therefore, the current managers can rest assured that they never need to fear liquidation again. There will always be federal subsidies for their own mediocrity.

As a taxpayer, I want to divest immediately.

[Update a few minutes later]

Related thoughts from Jim Manzi:

The US government is now the majority owner of the nation’s largest car company. The government has chosen GM’s CEO, Fritz Henderson, and will directly select numerous board members. It will be all but impossible for Congress and various regulatory agencies to avoid meddling with detailed operating decisions.

There is already enormous pressure on GM to abandon the vehicles that make it money — gas-guzzling SUVs and pick-ups — in order to focus on fuel-efficient cars that lose money. I doubt we’ll see many production facilities sent offshore, even if this would make economic sense for GM’s shareholders.

This is a terrible harbinger for the US economy, especially when combined with the Obama administration’s apparently heavy-handed negotiating tactics in favor of Chrysler’s unionized employees at the expense of bondholders.

We appear to be headed for European-style industrial policy circa 1975, with a complicated set of favors being traded between elected officials, government bureaucrats and corporate bureaucrats in semi-private companies.

Great.

[Update a couple minutes later]

Fannie Motors?

[Late morning update]

Obama is busy not running GM:

…while Obama is busy “not running GM” he still has time to make calls to the mayor of Detroit to assure him that GM’s headquarters won’t be moving to Warren, Mich., as it was offered to, but that it will be staying in Detroit.

You know, when the president says he doesn’t want to run GM? I don’t believe him.

[Update a couple minutes later]

Obama says that he has to destroy the village in order to save it:

After a while, the endless, “I have no intention to run GM” pledges begin to sound a bit like the guy insisting he means to eat healthier and cut back on the fatty foods… in a little while.

He actually used the line, “I’m not spending this amount because I want to spend taxpayers dollars; I’m doing this to protect taxpayers”, which I suspect will stir a combination of incredulousness and mockery. Most people who loudly pledge that they don’t want to do something don’t do it.

The wilful suspension of disbelief about this guy from the Dems and the media is astounding.

Business, Economics, Political Commentary

First Gun Buybacks

11 Comments

…and now extending the idiocy to cars:

Turn in old cars. It’s long been a talking point of liberals and environmentalists that cars older than a given age should be removed from the highways. The usual mantra goes “The government should buy all cars older than X and pay the owner $750. Then the owner could go out and buy a newer, cleaner, more efficient car.” The advocates for this position either fail or refuse to understand that the owners will not be able to find a car to buy with their $750. Basic economics.

At least the gun buybacks, stupid as they are, offer a reasonable amount of money for the hardware, particularly given that many of those turned in are non functional. I suspect that if the government implements such a program for cars, they’ll get a lot of undriveable clunkers, but very few useful automobiles.

Unless, of course, they make us an offer we can’t refuse. That would, after all, be the Chicago way.