The Theories Of Conspirators

Peeve Farm:

Is there really something fundamentally different between the "right" and "left" sides of the blogosphere?

I like to think there isn't—that people who disagree on these matters do so as a result of rational reflection, personal experience, and numerous atmospheric influences great and small. My gut feeling is that we all believe the things we do for reasons that seem perfectly good to us all individually, even if we admit they're not wholly rational—like backing the Giants instead of the Dodgers. Get two die-hard fans of opposite teams in the room with each other, and they can have a great old time being human beings together; just don't bring up baseball.

But then I read something like this, and my mind spins.

For years now I've heard people bleating about the "vast right-wing conspiracy" and the "Rovian marching orders" and "cogs in the machine" and so on, and I've sort of instinctively assumed that it was at least partially meant tongue-in-cheek, like the way people on the right side repeat the same terms mockingly. I mean, nobody can actually believe this stuff, can they? If people like Kos are getting taken seriously by Newsweek and the DNC, all this obvious hyperbole must just be a winking indulgence that they abandon once they sit down to actually think about strategy?

I mean, they do all have real ideas that they understand vividly enough in their own minds that they can articulate them on their own, right? That's how things are on this side of the blogosphere, see. I'm a pretty small bit player, but I don't think it's out of the ordinary that I don't get any "marching orders". I don't receive stipends from some shadowy pseudonymous figure with a redacted return address. My thoughts aren't consumed with political action committees and fundraising and back-room deals—I don't care. What matters to me are ideals and who's willing to adhere to them and to what degree. Nobody's ever pressured me to stay "on message" or to write about some subject and not another. About the closest thing that comes to it is when some of my regular readers send me links to interesting Apple news. Is that it? Is that what "marching orders" are?

I honestly am feeling a little bit creeped out here: if the implications of these developments are to be believed, the reason why the Left side of the blogosphere—or at least the part that gets all the press—talks so fervently about conspiracies and shadowy message machines controlling the Right side is that they—on the Left—are the ones with exactly that kind of power structure. And they apparently can't believe that the "other side" can possibly exist without something similar and analogous. I don't give a crap what Karl Rove thinks; but these guys sure seem to think highly of Joe Trippi.

They're projecting. They proudly talk about the "netroots" in their message-controlled missives from the top, while their opponents just write about what they read and how they feel about it. There is no conspiracy on this side of the aisle, not that they'd ever believe me saying so—but there is one on their side, and they know it, and they're proud of having figured out how it all works—and so I must be lying. I and every other "right-wing" blogger: we must be getting our marching orders from somewhere. We must be getting mysterious evil funding. We must be getting paid and ordered to say what we say, because obviously nobody would do so otherwise.

It seems to me that the definition of "netroots" (a term I'm not going to bother using, because it's functionally the same damn thing as "grassroots") is people individually and independently feeling moved to speak out on subjects that matter to them, whether they agree with anybody important or not—and a significant enough number of them happening to speak to the same themes as to constitute a spontaneous and self-motivated movement. It does not mean a "noise machine". A "grassroots" movement does not need direction or message control or organizers or superstars. Such things are antithetical to the very concept. You can't summon a cargo plane by building a bamboo control tower and clearing a dirt runway in the jungle. And you can't create a grassroots movement by command.

The "netroots" wouldn't know a real grassroots society if it bit them in the ass. Which it keeps doing.

A Leftist's Idea Of A Civilized Dialogue Is Calling Us Nazis, While Our Mouths Are Taped Shut

Don Feder has an excellent column about the Ann Coulter brouhaha, and how leftist crybabies can dish it out but can't take it.

excerpts:

When leftists start caterwauling about civility, it reminds me of when my kids were young.

When my daughter Anna was 5 and my son, Jonathan was 4, World War III broke out in our household at least once a day. Anna’s modus operandi, as she explained it to her grandfather, was: "I hit Jonathan. He hits me. Then I tell Mommy."

In essence, that’s the leftists’ civility scam: They hit us. We hit back. Then their media lap dogs begin howling about incivility and yapping about the decline of gentility in the political debate (which, if I’m not mistaken, started with the presidential election of 1800).

It comes on cue; Ann Coulter writes a book and liberals start spewing about mean-spiritedness.

In her latest foray (Godless: The Church of Liberalism), Coulter observed that the "Jersey Girls" – four 9/11 widows who turned themselves into tools of the hate-Bush establishment – reveled in their celebrity status. OK, she called them "harpies" too.

Low blow! the media referees of political pugilism cried. (These self-appointed refs always seem to be gazing off into space when left-wingers rabbit-punch conservatives, or deliver a debilitating kick to the groin.)

...

But Coulter’s comments about the Jersey Girls weren’t gratuitous. She devoted a chapter in her book to the way the left picks spokesmen whose suffering is supposed to immunize them from criticism -- Cindy Sheehan, Nick Berg’s father, Christopher Reeve, the Jersey Girls, etc. When we respond to their crackpot carping, we’re admonished for our stunning insensitivity.

Meanwhile, the left has perfected the gentle art of character assassination, while complaining about the politics of personal destruction. Their idea of a civilized dialogue is calling us really-mean Nazis, while our mouths are taped shut.

The quintessence of liberal civility is the thoughtful fashion in which the left expresses its disagreement with the policies of George W. Bush.

When a liberal writes a book about the 43rd. president of the United States, the words "lies," "liar," "stupid" or "evil" must appear in the title. The trifecta of liberal Bush-bashing would be a book titled "The Evil Lies of Stupid Bush" (or, "The Stupid Lies of Evil Bush").

Illustrative of the liar-liar-pants-on-fire school of liberal analysis, here are just a few of the titles offered on Amazon.com:

* The Lies of George Bush by David Corn
* Fraud: The Strategy Behind the Bush Lies and Why the Media Didn’t Tell You by Paul Waldman
* Big Bush Lies: The 20 Most Telling Lies of President George W. Bush by Jerry Politex
* The Five Biggest Lies Bush Told Us About Iraq by Christopher Scheer, Lakshmi Chaudhry, and Robert Scheer
* Bush Lies In State by Michael McCourt; and
* Aliens And Cowboys: Bush’s Legacy of Lies by Jefferson Lang.

Coming soon to a bookstore near you, Neener-Neener/ I-Know-You-Are-But-What-Am-I? -- The Intelligent Liberal’s Guide To Political Discourse by Franken Rodham Moore.

Or, consider the way leftists routinely demonize their opponents:

Evangelical Christians – Ignorant, superstitious, violence-prone fanatics intent on establishing a theocracy and putting homosexuals, abortionists, pornographers, feminists, Moslems, and Ron Howard in death camps.

Gun Owners – Homicidal maniacs who want to arm toddlers with howitzers and kill Bambi.

The U.S. Military – Stone-cold killers, Lt. Calley-clones programmed to indiscriminately murder women and children and torture detainees.

Pro-lifers – Religious fanatics, misogynists who want to turn women into breeding stock, violence-prone fetus-worshippers who care about life only in the womb.

Immigration Reform Advocates – Xenophobes who are betraying America’s nation-of-immigrants heritage and have an irrational fear of diversity as well as anyone named Juan or Jose.

Politicians Who Support the U.S. Presence in Iraq, but either A) Didn’t serve in the military, B) Served, but didn’t see combat or C) Served, saw combat, but failed to win the Medal of Honor – Chicken Hawks, nancy boys, hypocritical jingoists who’ll defend America to the last drop of the other guy’s blood.

The President Gets An Unexpected Big Hug

Details at The Anchoress. Be sure to see the slide show at the story she links.

Good Fisking

Freeman Hunt deconstructs the "I blame my abortion on Bush" piece that was in the WaPo a couple of weeks ago.

The Future Lies Ahead

Lileks:

ABC news has asked viewers to send in evidence of global warming. How is it affecting your life? ABC news wants to hear from you. This is like Life magazine asking readers in 1952 to describe the communists under their beds. Bald? Slavic? Ruddy? Drunken?

...

I am not susceptible to disaster scenarios. I do not believe we have ten years to prevent the inevitable collapse of civilization. As long as I can remember I have been fed end-times scenarios – death by ice, death by fire, death by famine, death by smothering from heaps of clambering humans scrabbling for purchase on an overpopulated world, death by full-scale nuclear exchange, death by unstoppable global AIDS, death by a two-degree rise in temperatures, death by radon, death by alar, death by inadvertent Audi acceleration, death by juju. Doesn’t mean we won’t die of juju. But somehow we survive. The only thing I take away is a vague wistful wonder what it would be like to live in an era when things were generally so bad that the futurists spent their time assuring us it would be better. Say what you will about the past, but at least they had a future. All I’ve ever had, according to the experts, is a grim narrow window of heedless ignorance bliss followed by a dystopian irradiated world characterized by scarcity, mutation, and quite possibly intelligent chimps. You have no future. Oh, and don’t smoke!

Bah.

Hotel CaliforniAOL

Amazing:

An incredible video from CNBC shows an AOL customer trying to cancel his account, but a phone rep won't let him do it. What customer Vincent Ferrari got when he tried to cancel his account was a lot of frustration.

It took him 15 minutes waiting on the phone just to reach a real, live person.

And, what happened next was recorded by Ferrari on audio and lasted about four minutes:

CLOCK READOUT - 00:00

AOL REPRESENTATIVE: Hi this is John at AOL... how may I help you today?

VINCENT FERRARI: I wanted to cancel my account.

AOL: Sorry to hear that. Let's pull your account up here real quick. Can I have your name please?

VINCENT: Vincent Ferrari.

CLOCK READOUT - 00:30

AOL: You've had this account for a long time.

VINCENT: Yup.

AOL: Use this quite a bit. What was the cause of wanting to turn this off today?

VINCENT: I just don't use it anymore.

AOL: Do you have a high speed connection, like the DSL or cable?

VINCENT: Yup.

AOL: How long have you had that...

VINCENT: Years...

AOL: ...the high speed?

VINCENT: ...years.

AOL: Well, actually I'm showing a lot of usage on this account.

VINCENT: Yeah, a long time, a long time ago, not recently...

CLOCK READOUT - 01:47

AOL: Okay, I mean is there a problem with the software itself?

VINCENT: No. I just don't use it, I don't need it, I don't want it. I just don't need it anymore.

AOL: Okay. So when you use this... I mean, use the computer, I'm saying, is that for business or for... for school?

VINCENT: Dude, what difference does it make. I don't want the AOL account anymore. Can we please cancel it?

CLOCK READOUT - 02:21

AOL: Last year was 545, last month was 545 hours of usage...

VINCENT: I don't know how to make this any clearer, so I'm just gonna say it one last time. Cancel the account.

AOL: Well explain to me what's, why...

VINCENT: I'm not explaining anything to you. Cancel the account.

AOL: Well, what's the matter man? We're just, I'm just trying to help here.

VINCENT: You're not helping me. You're helping me...

AOL: I am trying to help.

VINCENT: Helping... listen, I called to cancel the account. Helping me would be canceling the account. Please help me and cancel the account.

AOL: No, it wouldn't actually...

VINCENT: Cancel my account...

AOL: Turning off your account...

VINCENT: ...cancel the account...

AOL: ...would be the worst thing that...

VINCENT: ...cancel the account.

CLOCK READOUT - 03:02

AOL: Okay, cause I'm just trying to figure out...

VINCENT: Cancel the account. I don't know how to make this any clearer for you. Cancel the account. When I say cancel the account, I don't mean help me figure out how to keep it, I mean cancel the account.

AOL: Well, I'm sorry, I don't know what anybody's done to you Vincent because all I'm...

VINCENT: Will you please cancel the account.

CLOCK READOUT - 03:32

AOL: Alright, some day when you calmed down you're gonna realize that all I was trying to do was help you... and it was actually in your best interest to listen to me.

VINCENT: Wonderful, Okay.

CLOCK READOUT - 03:39

"I've never ever experienced anything like that," Ferrari told CNBC.

He recounts how the AOL representative - as a last resort even asked if his dad was home.

"I think I could've put up with everything, but at the point when he asked to speak to my father, I came very close to losing it at that point," said the 30-year-old Ferrari.

Ferrari then posted the call online, and the response was tremendous.

AOL sent him an apology and said the customer service rep was no longer with the company.

Brokeback Al Zarqawi

Movie trailer parody (written language advisory). H/T Ace Of Spades.

Good Question

Jay Nordlinger:

The other day, I was engaged in one of life’s most pleasurable activities: I was reading an article by Mark Steyn. He related a story about Bob Dole, and his attachment to the congressional world.

One day, the senator was visiting a school, and a little girl asked him about acid rain: What did he plan to do about it? Dole replied, “That bill’s in markup.”

But forget Bob Dole: That story got me to thinking, What happened to acid rain? I mean, it was on the cover of Time magazine about 100 times. It was the concern of the century, the environmental crime of the century. Schoolteachers everywhere told their kiddies that Ronald Reagan and the Republicans were climbing into the sky to create that rotten rain. At a minimum, they were indifferent to it.

And then . . . silence. No Time magazine cover. No Democratic talking point. The enviro crowd just moved on to something else (chiefly global warming, a successor to the coming ice age).

To repeat: What happened to acid rain? Or rather — to ask this differently — what does the Left say happened to acid rain? Did their crusade take care of the problem — or did they simply get bored, searching out different alarmist pastures?

(You will recall that, at the beginning of the George W. Bush administration, the Left and the media claimed that the Republicans were “putting arsenic back into the water” — that was before the administration began wiretapping Aunt Hazel’s phone, for no good reason.)

I don’t know what happened to acid rain. But I continue to be amazed at the rapid flickering out of the most burning issues in American life. Just wait a little while: Global warming will be the dangerous new ice age again. Environmentalist scaremongering is sort of like hemlines.

Say, Now That You Mention It, I Really Was Craving A Slurpee More Than Usual Today!

This is asinine:

Idiot Box Science

ABC News is looking for viewers' help in "reporting" on "global warming":

Witnessing the impact of global warming in your life?

ABC News wants to hear from you. We're currently producing a report on the increasing changes in our physical environment, and are looking for interesting examples of people coping with the differences in their daily lives. Has your life been directly affected by global warming?

We want to hear and see your stories. Have you noticed changes in your own backyard or hometown? The differences can be large or small--altered blooming schedules, unusual animals that have arrived in your community, higher water levels encroaching on your property.

Show us what you've seen.

Essentially ABC is asking viewers to send in their anecdotes of warm weather, which it will claim are evidence of a warming climate. Well, when Al Gore gave a "global warming" speech in New York a couple of years ago, the temperature was in the single digits. Does that prove the existence of "global cooling"? Only by ABC's standards.

There's Nothing Wrong With Divine Revelation That A Little Improving Couldn't Fix

Mark Shea:

With the ECUSA reduced to a smoking heap of rubble...

the PCUSA becomes the next to sell its birthright for a pot of message:

Presbyterians this June will be asked to ratify a new report on Trinitarian theology that describes the cornerstone doctrine in various metaphorical terms, including a controversial description of the triune God as "Mother, Child and Womb."

In other descriptions the report uses other biblical terms to name the Triune God.

"We may use words that speaks of the inner relations of the Godhead – Lover, Beloved, Love, and those that speak of the loving activity of the Three among us – Creator, Savior, Sanctifier, Rock, Redeemer, Friend, King of Glory, Prince of Peace, Spirit of Love."

Actually, those terms *don't* speak of the inner relations of the Godhead. The Name that *does* speak of those relations is--surprise!--the one revealed to us by the Second Person of the Godhead. "Father, Son, and Holy Spirit" (those hopelessly non-PC terms) describe better than anything else the inner relationship of the Trinity: who God is in Himself. The hopelessly banal and trendy titles the PCUSA is batting around have one thing in common: they are calculated to express, not who God is in himself, but who comfortable upscale suburbanites who have dabbled in feminism and multiculti crap would like him to be for the sake of their comfort.

I would like to invite readers to come up with more titles to please the comfortable suburban ear. Perhaps "Trainer, Stairmaster, and Steroid"? How about "Affirmer, Mirror, and Giver of Self-Esteem"? How about "Bank, Check, and Cash Flow"?

At the risk of being accused of blaspheming the Name, please understand, I am blaspheming nothing but the false god these Improvers are creating. All glory, honor and praise be to the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

Six Reasons

For liberal paranoia about global warming (Dennis Prager).

The column begins:

Observers of contemporary society will surely have noted that a liberal is far more likely to fear global warming than a conservative. Why is this?

After all, if the science is as conclusive as Al Gore, Time, Newsweek, The New York Times and virtually every other spokesman of the Left says it is, conservatives are just as likely to be scorched and drowned and otherwise done in by global warming as liberals will. So why aren't non-leftists nearly as exercised as leftists are?Do conservatives handle heat better? Are libertarians better swimmers? Do religious people love their children less?

The usual liberal responses -- to label a conservative position racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic or the like -- obviously don't apply here. So, liberals would have to fall back on the one remaining all-purpose liberal explanation: "big business." They might therefore explain the conservative-liberal divide over global warming thus: Conservatives don't care about global warming because they prefer corporate profits to saving the planet.

But such an explanation could not explain the vast majority of conservatives who are not in any way tied into the corporate world (like this writer, who has no stocks and who, moreover, regards big business as amoral as leftists do).

No, the usual liberal dismissals of conservatives and their positions just don't explain this particularly illuminating difference between liberals and conservatives.

Here are six more likely explanations:

* The Left is prone to hysteria. The belief that global warming will destroy the world is but one of many hysterical notions held on the Left. As noted in a previous column devoted to the Left and hysteria, many on the Left have been hysterical about the dangers of the PATRIOT Act and the NSA surveillance of phone numbers (incipient fascism); secondhand smoke (killing vast numbers of people); drilling in the remotest area of Alaska (major environmental despoliation); and opposition to same-sex marriage (imminent Christian theocracy).

* The Left believes that if The New York Times and other liberal news sources report something, it is true. If the cover of Time magazine says, "Global Warming: Be Worried, Very Worried," liberals get worried, very worried, about global warming.

It is noteworthy that liberals, one of whose mottos is "question authority," so rarely question the authority of the mainstream media. Now, of course, conservatives, too, often believe mainstream media. But conservatives have other sources of news that enable them to achieve the liberal ideal of questioning authority. Whereas few liberals ever read non-liberal sources of information or listen to conservative talk radio, the great majority of conservatives are regularly exposed to liberal news, liberal editorials and liberal films, and they have also received many years of liberal education.

* The Left believes in experts. Of course, every rational person, liberal or conservative, trusts the expertise of experts -- such as when experts in biology explain the workings of mitochondria, or when experts in astronomy describe the moons of Jupiter. But for liberals, "expert" has come to mean far more than greater knowledge in a given area. It now means two additional things: One is that non-experts should defer to experts not only on matters of knowledge, but on matters of policy, as well. The second is that experts possess greater wisdom about life, not merely greater knowledge in their area of expertise.

That is why liberals are far more likely to be impressed when a Nobel Prize winner in, let us say, physics signs an ad against war or against capital punishment. The liberal is bowled over by the title "Nobel laureate." The conservative is more likely to wonder why a Nobel laureate in physics has anything more meaningful to say about war than, let us say, a taxi driver...

Anti ANWR Drilling Propaganda

Great post by Brian Tiemann, who looks at the blatant propaganda appearing in National Geographic (good use of pictures in the post, too). As Brian says:

One thing I found out while riding the ferries through the Inside Passage with native Alaskans last summer was that such people are completely disgusted with nationwide coverage of this issue, which to them is about akin to Californians balking at further developing the Kern County oil fields because Yosemite is pretty.

They're Patriotic Because They Are Also Engaged In Heated Battles To Get The Bad Guys

Good Horowitz and Collier piece. Some highlights:

For the first time in American history, a major political party wants America to run from a war we are winning.

...

And the result of these attitudes can be seen in the way the Democrats and their media allies have conducted themselves throughout. For the Bush administration and the coalition troops in Iraq the battles have been for Baghdad, Fallujah, Mosul and Basra, all engagements with the enemy in the field. For the Democrats and their media allies it has been Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, Haditha and Niger, all behind-the-lines battles against our troops and their commander-in-chief. For the Bush administration the chief prize has been Zarqawi, the beheader himself. For the Democrats it has been Scooter Libby. The Bush administration barely missed getting Osama bin Laden; the Democrats barely missed getting Karl Rove. The Bush administration’s strategy is to defeat the forces of terror. The Democrats are conducting psychological warfare aimed at American morale – the decisive factor in war.

...

Whenever there is the possibility of the use of American power against an enemy that can fight back, it is always for the Democrats a quarter past Tet.

...

No convention in recent memory had been the scene of greater military fanfares. Kerry arrived with a “Band of Brothers,” fellow Swift Boat veterans who vouched for his heroism under fire in Vietnam, and Vietnam – a war fought thirty years before became the convention’s most emotional theme. But the Kerry campaign seemed not to appreciate that Vietnam had ended in America’s only lost war, and that the military career of Kerry had ended in promoting and celebrating that defeat.

Other Vietnam veterans did not share the views of Kerry’s retinue. Many despised a man whom they associated with Jane Fonda and other anti-war activists who had welcomed a Communist victory and America’s defeat. They remembered Kerry not for his military service, but for his widely televised claims that his comrades-in-arms were actually “war criminals” who deserved to be put on trial...

Perhaps Leftists In Congress Will Soon Make It Illegal To Not Charge As Much As The Traffic Will Bear

Opinion Journal has a good profile of Jim Buckmaster, frugal CEO of Craigslist, which is single-handedly destroying the newspaper business model, while declining to collect maybe $500M in potential profits, all while providing a very valuable service to its users for free, without bombarding them with annoying ads. Naturally, the leftists in Congress are bound to eventually find this to be a total outrage (pro: on the face of it, Craigslist is a leftist's dream, for all the reasons given. con: it is hurting leftist propaganda organs).

Here's what one of the reader responses had to say:

Look Out for the Newspaper Lobby
James Henry - Lanesville, Ind.

I believe Mr. Buckmaster can expect some attempt to legislate him out of business. I know, I know, he is violating none of the myriad laws that may apply to his activities. But careers, the existence of a still-powerful industry, and multiple millions of dollars are at stake. This industry will not go quietly into the night. Even Mr. Carney displayed nervousness at the prospect of continued sapping of newspaper revenues.

Consider what a politician, facing the prospect of no more free political support from the front page and editorial page, might produce in committee in the late hours when Congress is in haste to adjourn.

The ground could be cut out from under Mr. Buckmaster in a heartbeat. Consider what a punitive federal tax on his business activities would produce. There would be no sympathy for his plight expressed on the front pages of his competitors. Even The Wall Street Journal might swallow its philosophical support in preference to the bottom line. It will be interesting to see how this situation plays out.

This Should Be Interesting

Professor Mike Adams is going to be doing a little experiment:

Presently, many schools in the UNC system are engaging in racial discrimination in admissions in order to promote “diversity.” This has caused some degree of resentment among students who are not sufficiently diverse – in other words, white. The racial tensions created by the racist policies of the UNC system are nothing compared to the tensions that will erupt when I implement my new classroom civility policy in the fall of 2006.

Under my new policy, black students will be penalized for coming into class late. The one-point deduction will be given only to the person coming in late. The same approach will be followed when blacks bring a cell phone into my class. A one-point deduction will be given only to the black person with the cell phone in his possession. Finally, disruptions like going potty in class and passing class notes back and forth (to someone who skipped the previous lecture and fell behind) will be punished. A one-point deduction will go to the disruptive black student but no other black student will be punished.

The policy will be quite different, however, for white students. When a white student comes in late, brings a cell phone into a lecture, or otherwise disrupts my class I will apply a one-point deduction to the final average of every white person in the class. This may seem unfair at first but my new policy has solid support in existing policies within the UNC system.

For example, our affirmative action policies are clearly punishing white students seeking admission to most UNC schools by holding them to a higher standard than blacks. We penalize the individual white student even if he has never engaged in an act of racial discrimination. This is because other whites have done so in the past. So, in a sense, my new white civility policy is not very original. Like the admissions policies, it punishes the innocent white majority for the sins of the guilty white minority.

But the UNC system has a different view of the relationship between guilty and innocent blacks. We are reminded of that every time a black student commits a crime on campus. The practice of publishing a photo of a guilty black student – or merely attaching the word “black” to a suspect’s description in student newspapers - is met with scorn within the educational community. This is because we bend over backwards to avoid punishing innocent blacks for the sins of guilty blacks. This policy helps us to avoid negatively stereotyping black people although we exhibit no concern for unfairly stereotyping innocent whites. As one can easily see, my new black civility policy is not very original either.

...

I will refuse to retract my racist policies unless the UNC system retracts its own. It will be difficult for the UNC administration to fire a professor for adopting the system’s own racist philosophy...

The Absolute Personification Of Pure, Unadulterated Evil. Not.

Viewpoint blog:

Class Act

The president's detractors have much to apologize for but rarely do. Contrast that with the president himself:

President Bush, who often teases members of the White House press corps, apologized Wednesday after he poked fun at a reporter for wearing sunglasses without realizing they were needed for vision loss. The exchange occurred at a news conference in the Rose Garden.

Bush called on Los Angeles Times reporter Peter Wallsten and asked if he was going to ask his question with his "shades" on. "For the viewers, there's no sun," Bush said to the television cameras.

But even though the sun was behind the clouds, Wallsten still needs the sunglasses because he has Stargardt's disease, a form of macular degeneration that causes progressive vision loss. The condition causes Wallsten to be sensitive to glare and even on a cloudy day, can cause pain and increase the loss of sight.

Wallsten said Bush called his cell phone later in the day to apologize and tell him that he didn't know he had the disease. Wallsten said he interrupted and told the president that no apology was necessary and that he didn't feel offended since he hadn't told anyone at the White House about his condition.

"He said, `I needle you guys out of affection,"' Wallsten said. "I said, 'I understand that, but I don't want you to treat me any differently because of this."' Wallsten said the president said he would not treat him differently, so Wallsten encouraged him to "needle away."

"He said, `I will. Next time I'll just use a different needle,"' Wallsten said.

If only those of his opponents in the media and in Congress who have vitriolically accused President Bush of lying to the American people in order to cajole us into war, as well as numerous other impeachable offenses, could display just half as much class and grace as he does.

Denial And Paranoia

Dr. Sanity has an insightful post.

Tribute To Coulter

At Hot Air. BTW, I just finished reading Godless. It's a great book. Sure, Coulter is snarky, and occasionally over the top. But her targets richly deserve it. In her books, she doesn't bat 1,000 in her jokes (some of them I frankly can't decipher), but three out of four are darned funny. When she was on Leno (clips in the Hot Air tribute), Jay talked about the "catching more flies with honey" idea. The way I see it, if she were "nice" (as the "nice" liberals would have it), then she'd just be another niche conservative writer instead of a number one bestseller. It's more important to me that her highly intelligent writing and arguments (backed up with carefully researched facts) reach a wider audience. People could claim she's just preaching to the choir, which is an implicit statement that minds are incapable of being persuaded. I know for a fact that this just isn't true. It was reading humorous books by P.J. O'Rourke in the early nineties that got me out of my commie rut. And I remember distinctly that the leftist rags I used to read (Z Magazine, The Progressive, The Nation, etc) acted as if O'Rourke were some kind of vicious, hate spewing Nazi.

They were wrong. On the contrary, I found him to be witty, intelligent, and convincing. In short, much better than the crap I'd been reading. And thus, my political views changed. Imagine that.

It Shouldn't Be A Cat And Mouse Game

One of Hugh Hewitt's continuing interests is in getting MSM journalists to admit where they stand politically. An account of the latest attempt:

Here's the transcript and audio of the interview with the Washington Post's Joel Achenbach.

...

Nice fellow. Smart. Good writer. No doubt fun to have a beer with. Wants to discuss politics, but only on his own terms. Doesn't want you to know who he voted for. Wants to turn every question about Michael Moore into a question about Michael Moore and Ann Coulter.

A classic MSMer, in other words, and not very serious about the war though he does write about it on occasion. The war provides material. Everything is material. Got to be able to laugh, right, or at least smile?

I understand that humor and science writing is different from political commentary, but Joel really did not seem to understand my point that, upon leaving humor and science behind for politics and war, tone and approach ought to change.

And he definitely doesn't buy into my long standing belief that those whose bylines appear in big papers or who broadcast from big microphones owe their audience basic disclosures.

In no other field is secrecy as to personal belief and ideological investment so well regarded as journalism.

In the courts, jurors and witnesses must unburden themselves of their past relevant associations and positions before being allowed to participate.

In trading, insiders are under scrutiny, and the self-interested suspect.

In some areas of journalism, it is a sin to report on any entity with which the reporter has even a slight connection.

But political reporters and columnists recoil in horror at the prospect of a simple answer to the question: For whom did you vote.

Here's the reason: If you gathered up the ballots from the past four presidential elections from the 1,000 most influential MSMers in print and broadcast, I guess that more than 3,600 of the ballots would have Kerry, Gore or Clinton on them.

From such a pool an objective press cannot spring.

So upon being asked, they dissemble. But they also stumble.

HH: You've never voted for a Republican, have you?

JA: I'm sure I have.

And this:

HH: Okay, so what I'm getting at is why not tell people? Why not just honestly say here I am. I'm Joel Achenbach in the round. I'm not trying to fool anyone. I'm not trying to smuggle politics into my humor/science column. I'm just a guy who believes in this, this, and this, and correct for the lie of the green. Why not share that out?

JA: That's a good question. I don't know, I don't think that it necessarily helps if you know the political voting pattern of everyone who writes for the newspaper.

It doesn't help the credibility of the newspaper, for sure, if all of their writers are voting left decade in and decade out.

See the rest of the post for Achenbach's estimate of what proportion of generals serving in Iraq will consider the war to be an utter fiasco when they look back on it many years from now.

Beer Cannon Montage

This is just plain good stuff. Rousing classical music. Slow motion videography. The destruction of various objects by beer cans shot out of a cannon. There's something here for everyone.

First Papal Visit To Six Flags

This Onion piece amuses. Hat tip Mark Shea.

A Liberal Is Someone, Who, While Watching A 14-Year-Old Girl Perform A Live Sex Act On Stage, Worries Whether She's Being Paid The Minimum Wage

The saying in the title came to mind as I read this American Thinker post:

Zarqawi, Schiavo and liberal madness

As more details emerge, the media have begun to ask whether Zarqawi’s life could have been saved given that he was alive for almost an hour after the bombing. They have even floated the possibility that medical aid was purposefully denied to him. The media’s concern for Zarqawi contrasts glaringly with their attitude toward Terri Schiavo when they cheered those who denied her life-sustaining nourishment.

This behavior is yet another striking illustration of the moral madness that is liberalism. Only liberals could show concern for a murderous monster while gleefully watching a disabled woman starve to death. The odious ideology to which they adhere so corrodes their moral sensibilities that they almost completely lose their sense of compassion, proportion, justice and decency. Only thus can they campaign for the killing of babies and the disabled while fretting about the possible lack of medical attention to a head-chopping beast. Terrible is indeed the moral affliction from which these people suffer.

Nice Quote

Ace of Spades:

Bush's "Publicity Stunts" Knock Terrorists' and Media's Own Publicity Stunts Off Front Pages, And They're A Little Snippy About It

You know-- no one ever "questions the timing" of fake-sounding allegations of Marine massacres, or coordinated suicides by Gitmo prisoners who have sort of taken a vow of suicide anyway.

Right Wing News

Some good posts at RWN today. A funny, but probably inadvisable song by a marine in Iraq. How the leftist founder of Whole Foods became an ex-leftist after running a business. And some very good advice for women.

So, You See, What We've Got Going Here Is A Simple Shakedown. Now, You Can Work With Us On That, Can't You?

James Taranto item:

An Honest Accountant
In a letter to the New York Times, Marc J. Lewyn of Atlanta explains why he opposes repeal of the death tax:

As a financial adviser, I spend much of my time helping clients decide how to handle their estate tax liability. . . .

It's not that hard to structure an estate to avoid the tax. That's what the thousands of accountants, lawyers and financial planners do.

From my perspective, the estate tax is purely optional. So repeal is unnecessary except for the uninformed, the unfocused or those people who are unwilling to pay their financial planning team a little more to make the tax go away or be reduced.

People pay their professionals to avoid lots of income tax legally, and they do it every year. Why is it so hard for them to pay a little every few years to review the estate plan and avoid much or all of the estate tax?

In other words, without the estate tax, people who make a living off dying would be out of work.

Oy, The Croc's Got My Leg!

The Housing Bubble blog has excerpted an interesting investment column:

Several readers sent in this article for discussion. “All over the U.S. there are stories of a rise in real estate foreclosures. Many people who took those exotic mortgages are struggling to make their payments, and some aren’t making it. Also, a glut of new property supply, especially condominiums, is coming on line.”

“A friend of mine, a very seasoned real estate investor, says in San Diego County, once one of the hottest real estate markets in the country, thousands of new condominiums are getting ready to come to market, just as the market softens. He estimates that over 12,000 new units are coming on line, and the market, at the best of times, can only absorb about 1,000 condominiums a year. If he’s correct, that means 12 years of supply will be ready for market in the next year.”

“The people who are in the most trouble are flippers. Many were buying condominiums off the plans, which means the projects were yet to be built, in the hopes that when the homes were completed, they would sell for a tidy profit. The trouble is many of these flippers, lured into the market by stories of people making a huge killing earlier with a similar strategy, are now the ones to be slaughtered.”

“Now, they either lose their deposit or have to cough up the money for the purchase in the hopes there’s a greater fool than they were somewhere out there real estate. If you recall, the same thing happened around the year 2000 as amateurs jumped into the stock market.”

“In the coming months, I predict we’ll see an increase in people dumping real estate they can’t afford. They’ll be forced to sell because they’ll be eaten alive by a phenomenon known as negative cash flow. Investment properties that you have to feed money to every month are fondly known as alligators, if you can’t afford to feed the property every month, it eats you.”

“I know of one so-called real estate investor (and I prefer to call people like him speculators rather than investors) who has three homes he thought he could flip for a profit, but he priced them too high. Now, $7,500 comes out of his pocket every month to feed the negative-cash-flow alligators.”

“The problem is, he and his wife don’t earn that much a month. Their three alligators are literally eating them out of house and home, consuming the profits they made from other flips, and their savings.”

“To add more pain to the misery, they still have to pay the capital-gain taxes they made from their previous successful flips. They’re toast. The alligators are eating them alive. They can’t afford to feed them, and they can’t afford to sell them because the prices they paid for these alligators are more than they’re worth today. And this is only one story.”

“Now that the market is cooling down, sellers are a little bit more humble. You have more time and can do your due diligence carefully. You can negotiate better terms and make a better deal, especially if the seller has his leg inside an alligator’s jaws. But don’t be in too much of a hurry.”

“A year ago, I sent out a warning to investors, especially flippers, to cash out quickly. I received a lot of irate e-mails from people who thought I was turning on them. They thought I was spreading bad news. Little did they know that by forecasting a real estate downturn, I was spreading good news, good news for real investors and bad news for amateur alligator wrestlers.”

Unusual HuffPo Piece

Why he left the left. Nicely and reasonably presented by a guy who finally had it with the Democrats in 2004. The comments to the piece are exactly as you'd expect.

Astonishing Child Prodgy Artist

You've got to see this. Also, be sure to take a look at the gallery, with associated poetry.

Amusing Animation

Abused Macromedia Animator object fights back. H/T Peeve Farm. Sound required.

If It Had Been Me, I, Too, Would Have Passed Out. But Also Barfed.

Some pretty cool cockpit footage from a reporter's Blue Angel F-18 ride here.

No Rules In A Knife Fight

Lots to chew on in this American Digest essay.

excerpt:

The end state of war is victory and "victory" is a word not often heard from our leadership. Instead, one gets the distinct impression that, speeches to graduates of military institutions aside, the President and his core group would prefer it if Americans and the world began to think of the Iraq stage of the First Terrorist War as a kind of Tsunami relief effort with guns; a Katrina where, from time to time, under carefully vetted conditions, rioters with explosives and automatic weapons might, just might, get shot with rubber bullets. I submit that as a policy and tone this is a clueless condition that cannot be sustained for an indefinite period.

We need to snap out of our pastoral stripmalled stupor. We need to stop pretending. The goal of the Terrorist War must shift from the oft-trumpeted plan of "implanting democracy and bringing freedom" to one of unconditional victory over Islamic Totalitarianism. While "giving the gift of democracy" is a comforting and warm notion on which to run for re-election, it does nothing to achieve victory, since it denies that victory is a goal. Instead, according to the prevailing message being repeated ad nauseum from the administration, "democracy and freedom" are the goals of this war. This is sheer propaganda.

Democracy and freedom for others cannot be the goals of war. They can only be the fruits of something more primal -- victory. Absent the goal of victory, this will indeed become "The Forever War," and America cannot sustain such an effort. In historic terms, the American will to wage war suffers a serious fall-off after three years of fighting unless victory can be see as a clear end state, and only then if progress toward victory is repeatedly demonstrated on the ground. We are already beyond the three year limit, and it is unlikely that Americans can be made to care much longer, in the face of trickle-down casualty rates, whether or not Iraqis ever become free and democratic. Indeed, if most Americans were woken from a sound sleep in the middle of the night and asked the question, they would blurt out that they don't give a damn about the squabbling Iraqis.

Absent a plan for victory, the current state of a low-level, hunt-and-peck war in Iraq will cease to be supported. The conflict will soon become either a hunkered down, bunkered up Korean policing program, or it will fizzle and gutter out. To gutter out and retreat would be to court disastrous consequences for the United States in the short term and the entire world in the future; a future more costly to the planet in terms of life, liberty and treasure than anything currently being done in Iraq.

You think not? Imagine a second 9/11 on the same or a larger scale. That's what the Canada 17 were planning. Imagine the American response to such an attack. Do you know where our 18 ballistic missile submarines are? No? Neither do I, but if you know what they can do you know that the nuclear payload on any single one of them is the end of the Islamic world. I don't know about you, but I'd prefer if it all did not quite come to that. I'm sure the residents of Tehran, if they were free to speak, would agree.

...

Without the announcement of and an immediate and sustained move to obtain victory in Iraq, the whole momentum of the Terrorist War, always shaky, will slow as it has and, in time, reverse itself. At that point the administration will indeed find itself in the often-predicted quagmire, except that it will be on its own making. It is perfectly feasible that in concentrating too hard on winning the hearts and mind of the Iraqi people, we will lose the Iraq portion of the war. Once that occurs then all that is left is to wait for the second and more deadly path to open in the Terrorist War.

The tragedy is that the second path, the path of Total War in which extreme new rules of engagement come into play, requires the triggering event of a second catastrophic attack on American civilians on American soil. That event, should it be allowed to occur, will cost the lives of thousands if not tens of thousands of American men, women and, this time, children. This is not to say that the clear quest for victory in Iraq, a quest that requires the utter defeat of the enemy no matter how dearly bought, will insure that no such attack happens in America. It is to say that, should we retreat from and fail to secure victory in Iraq, such an event moves from a probability to a certainty.

As demonstrated above, the American response to such another lethal attack on the homeland is not hard to visualize. The only question will be whether or not the state of total war that erupts will include nuclear weapons as a first option, or whether America will be content to level and destroy large Middle-Eastern states and populations with conventional weapons, holding back nuclear weapons as a final persuader. In either case, the opening salvos placed onto the countries involved will be far more staggering than anything seen since the closing days of the air war in the European and Pacific theaters of World War II.

But an air war against Iran, Syria, portions of Iraq and other Middle Eastern nations would only be the opening salvos. Indeed, it is not hard to see an extended air campaign as merely buying time while the country at last moves onto a war footing.

Following the reinstitution of the draft in the United States and the conversion of its present economy of affluence to a war economy, an invasion and occupation of these areas of the world would follow. This time it would not be an occupation in search of a democracy, but one in search of vengeance and security for the United States. This situation would reshape the face of the Earth for generations and perhaps centuries to come. It would be a realignment of the political sphere at home and abroad not seen since Rome. And it will make Rome look like a mere off-hand study.

The specter of an America galvanized into a society that takes classic imperialism seriously is not something that the 21st century has any real preparation for, least of all the United States. But make no mistake, these changes would be the default state of the nation following any serious attack on its home soil. It would, within ten years, create a nation that does not resemble the United States of today. Exactly what it would be, I cannot say, but I would not like to find out. If you are one of those who presently has confused George Bush with Adolph Hitler and the NSA with Big Brother, you will like it much, much less. So much so that you will, at last prepare to move to Canada only to find that they will not let you in and what used to be America will not let you out. Sound familiar? It should.

Which is why, if we value real and enduring freedom in America, we need to now look very seriously at any policy which restrains our armed forces now in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere from pressing forward to victory. Fighting the terrorist with one hand behind our back, a "Have a nice day" attitude, and an overarching concern for civilian hearts and minds does not, in the long run, do anyone any favors. At home or abroad.

Yes. But we had to try. It still may well work. And if not? We'll be that much more able to do what needs doing, knowing that we did try. And the leftists be damned who did all in their power to make the attempt fail.

Cynicism, Served Up With Panache And Flair

Derbyshire is such a curmudgeon. But he writes well and provokes thought. From his latest:

Let’s start from the fact that the whole [Iraq war], taken in one piece—attack plus follow-up nation-building effort—has been a huge negative for the USA. Is there anyone, really, who is glad we did it? Most of my NR colleagues are still talking up the administration’s Iraq policy. It’s hard not to think, though, that if wired up to a polygraph and asked the question: “Supposing you could wind the movie back to early 2003, would you still attack Iraq?” any affirmative answers would have those old needles a-jumping and a-skipping all over the graph paper.

...

One reason I supported the initial attack, and the destruction of the Saddam regime, was that I hoped it would serve as an example, deliver a psychic shock to the whole region. It would have done, if we’d just rubbled the place then left. As it is, the shock value has all been frittered away. Far from being seen as a nation willing to act resolutely, a nation that knows how to punish our enemies, a nation that can smash one of those ramshackle Mideast despotisms with one blow from our mailed fist, a nation to be feared and respected, we are perceived as a soft and foolish nation, that squanders its victories and permits its mighty military power to be held to standoff by teenagers with homemade bombs—that lets crooks and bandits tie it down, Gulliver-like, with a thousand little threads of blackmail, trickery, lies, and petty violence.

Just ask yourself: Given that Iran is the real looming threat in that region, are we better placed now to deal with that threat than we would have been absent an Iraq war? If we could ask President Ahmadinejad whether he thinks we are better placed, what would his honest answer be?

We are not controlling events in Iraq. Events in Iraq are controlling us. We are the puppet; the street gangs of Baghdad and Basra are the puppet-masters, aided and abetted by an unsavory assortment of confidence men, bazaar traders, scheming clerics, ethnic front men, and Iranian agents. With all our wealth and power and idealism, we have submitted to become the plaything of a rabble, and a Middle Eastern rabble at that. Instead of rubbling, we have ourselves been rabbled. The lazy-minded evangelico-romanticism of George W. Bush, the bureaucratic will to power of Donald Rumsfeld, the avuncular condescension of Dick Cheney, and the reflexive military deference of Colin Powell combined to get us into a situation we never wanted to be in, a situation no self-respecting nation ought to be in, a situation we don’t know how to get out of. It’s not inconceivable that, with a run of sheer good luck, we might yet escape without too much egg on our faces, but it’s not likely. The place we are at is surely not a place anyone in 2003 wanted us to be at—not even Vic Davis Hanson.

...

It took me a while to figure out that the administration actually believed all the guff about “establishing democracy in the Middle East,” but once it had sunk in, and the party enthusiasms of the 2004 election season had subsided, I was calling for withdrawal. (The first time I gave over a column to it was, I think, in mid-September of 2004.) I wish I had done so earlier. And, yes, I’ll admit, I wish I hadn’t supported the invasion in the first place.

Why did I? For the reasons I declared on another website, just a year after the invasion:

[M]y attitude to the war is really just punitive, and Iraq was a target of opportunity. I am not a Wilsonian nation-builder. I don’t want to “bring democracy to Iraq.” I don’t, in fact, give a fig about the Iraqis. I am happy to leave barbarians alone to practice their unspeakable folkways, so long as they do not bother civilized peoples. When they do bother us, though, I want them smacked down with great ferocity. Saddam Hussein had been scoffing for years at the very concept of international order, in the belief that we would never pass from words to deeds. I wanted to see that belief confounded, and I am pleased that it has been. If the civilized world is never willing to back up its agreements, resolutions, and communiqués with force, then those fine documents are all worthless and civilization is impotent against its enemies. I am very glad to know that we have not yet reached that sorry pass.

I worry a lot that the civilized world, of which this nation is faute de mieux the leader, has sunk into an enervated lassitude, a condition in which it is unwilling to act against threatening, or just annoying, barbarians. Every time we defer to some United Nations resolution, every time we offer an olive branch to some thug ruler, every time we declare our willingness to sit around a table with some crazy demagogue, I think of the old League of Nations, which was mighty big on resolutions, olive branches, and sittings-around of tables. Of course, those things are the basic stuff of diplomacy, and we have to do a certain amount of them. There comes a point, though, where they don’t suffice, and a nation must act. Back in mid-2002 I feared that we had no will to attack Iraq, though I said I wanted us to. I really feared that we had no will, no guts, to chastise our enemies the way I wanted them chastised—not with U.N. resolutions, but with bombs, tanks, and artillery shells. When events proved me wrong, I was delighted. (I felt the same delight when Margaret Thatcher, Whom God Preserve, went to war over the Falkland Islands in 1982.) Now we must act, we really must act, against Iran; but we can’t, because of Iraq.

I’ve never been able to work up any guilt, either on my own behalf or the administration’s, about the WMD issue. So far as I am concerned, what did I know? Saddam’s behavior sure made it look as though he was hiding something nasty. As an ordinary citizen, getting my information from newspapers and the TV, I had every reason to suppose that the WMD claims were true. Just why Saddam was behaving like that is now a bit of a mystery. Possibly he was a secret fan of classic Chinese literature (or opera) attempting a sort of Empty Fort Strategy. As for the administration: Well, either they knew the intelligence was worthless, or they didn’t. If they knew, then their duty was to assume the worst, and present it to us as the worst. If they didn’t know, then they honestly believed the lousy intelligence. None of this excuses the CIA’s incompetence, of course; but even that incompetence serves the good conservative purpose of driving home to the populace the fact that the federal government sucks at pretty much everything.

There's much more in the complete article.

Not A Cynical Distraction

Jennifer Roback Morse:

Thanks EJ Dionne, for explaining to me that I’ve been used again. The entire week surrounding the vote on the Marriage Amendment, social conservatives were treated to liberal commentary like yours claiming that Republicans were cynically distracting the country from more important issues, like Social Security and repealing the estate tax. According to you and your liberal colleagues, I shouldn’t care about social conservative issues, like gay marriage or abortion. I should really care about George Bush selling me out for issues like “privatizing Social Security and cutting taxes on rich people.”

I’m sorry to have to tell you this, but we social conservatives know perfectly well what our interests are. We are capable of thinking beyond the next election cycle and of doing elementary arithmetic. We’ve known for some time that Social Security needs reform, and that Democrats have blocked every meaningful attempt at reform.

...

Let’s get something straight. We actually care about the issues you think are just “wedge issues.” I hear from ordinary Americans all the time, through e-mail, talk radio and the in-person talks I give. These working and middle class families are tired of the social experiments of the Life Style Left.

Let me introduce you to the working man whose wife left him under no-fault divorce rules. He is now paying to support her and her boyfriend. He seldom gets to see his kids. The reluctantly divorced, men and women alike, are completely off your radar screen.

...

Maybe you can relate to some of the unmarried women professionals who have joined our ranks. After all, they are well-educated, high-income people who don’t get dirty at work. But you might not realize how many of them are bitter at the lies of feminism. They thought they could postpone childbearing indefinitely. They may have had an abortion. Now their career satisfactions have peaked, and they are longing for a baby. But they have little prospect of finding a husband, and they’re running out of time. The pro-choice slogans of their youth sound hollow to them now.

Perhaps you’d like to meet some stay at home mothers, who for your information, are the backbone of the pro-life, pro-family movement. They are tired of their husbands’ income being taxed away to pay for child care tax credits for two-earner households. They would like some respect for their contributions, instead of being sneered at for not really “working.” They are appalled at what is on TV and at what is taught in government schools. And, by the way, after having a couple of kids of their own, they’re pretty sure that the “products of conception” are more than blobs of tissue.

What does this have to do with the marriage amendment? Same sex marriage is a massive social experiment, completely unprecedented in human history. American society has not recovered from the last round of social experimentation. These conservatives whom you think so little of and know so poorly, include many victims of the sexual revolution.

They may not be able to articulate why they feel so sure that kids need a mom and a dad. They have an intuition that there is something deeply wrong with making marriage a gender neutral institution, which is what same sex marriage will do. They may not be able to put their finger on everything wrong with the idea. But they are not ready to put themselves and their children on the chopping block again.

They get frustrated with the GOP leadership but they know they are completely invisible to the Democrats. If you want to woo us from the GOP, stop patronizing us and talk substantively about the issues that matter to us. Trust me: Social conservatives are not going to be talked out of supporting the Republican Party over the estate tax.

Roback Morse has another good piece here.

Investors, Investors, I Assure You, The Economy Is Completely Sound! As Long As It Is Not Destroyed By One .25% Hike Too Many!

Some good bits in this investment column:

Investors are now pairing Ben Bernanke with the market's recent weakness as if they are legitimate cause and effect. Don't blame Bernanke. Make no mistake – the recent pullback has little to do with the Federal Reserve except that it creates enough of an excuse for the inevitable to happen. Are we actually to believe that the economy is so precariously perched on pins and needles that one single quarter-point move too-many in the Fed Funds rate means the difference between a continued economic “boom” and an economy driven to its knees? And if the economy is in fact that vulnerable, shouldn't investors be selling stocks anyway based on the prospective risks?

...

As I've noted before, bear market psychology typically evolves something like this:

"This is my retirement money. I can't afford to be out of the market anymore!"

"I don't care about the price, just get me in!!"

"It's a healthy correction"

"See, it's already coming back, better buy more before the new highs"

"Alright, a retest. Add to the position - buy the dip"

"What a great move! Am I a genius or what?"

"Uh oh, another selloff. Well, we're probably close to a bottom"

"New low? What's going on?!!"

"Alright, it's too late to sell here, I'll get out on the next rally"

"Hey!! It's coming back. Glad that's over!"

"Another new low. But how much lower can it go?"

"No, really, how much lower can it go?"

"Sweet Mother of Joseph! How much lower can it go?!?"

"There's no way I'll ever make this back!"

"This is my retirement money. I can't afford to be in the market anymore!"

"I don't care about the price, just get me out!!"

The Interview

Jeff Goldstein interviews the deceased Zarqawi to hopefully get some kind of idea about what made him tick. You know? Like who Zarqawi really was. Why did he roll the way he did? The interview is surprisingly wide-ranging, given the circumstances. A good read.

Indomitable In Defeat

The Democrats try to put things in an optimistic light (Scrappleface satire):

Democrats Vow to Fight On After Zarqawi Loss
by Scott Ott

(2006-06-09) — As Blackberry devices and cell phones on Capitol Hill hummed with news of the death of terrorist leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi yesterday, Congressional Democrats vowed that despite the loss they would fight on in “the war on the war on terror.”

“Zarqawi will be missed because he put a human face on the futility of the illegal U.S. occupation of Iraq,” said one unnamed lawmaker, who assured a reporter that “Democrats are still optimistic. We’re still looking for the silver lining.”

Rep. John Murtha, D-PA, a former Marine and vocal critic of the military occupation of Iraq, immediately denounced “the Zarqawi massacre” and suggested that the F-16 pilot who dropped the bombs had snapped under pressure and murdered the al Qaeda leader “in cold blood.”

Sen. Arlen Specter, R-PA, demanded an explanation of the secret intelligence gathering techniques and surveillance used to find Mr. Zarqawi.

“I want to give the president an opportunity to explain the program to the Congress and to assure the American people that nobody’s civil rights were violated,” said Sen. Specter.

Meanwhile, Democrat National Committee Chairman Howard Dean and former presidential candidate Al Gore observed a moment of silence as they heard of the passing of Mr. Zarqawi, a fellow Internet pioneer.

Something Completely Different

Ran across this snippet from Charles Krauthammer, writing about the chess playing computer called Deep Blue:

"What is Deep Blue's secret? Grand master Yasser Seirawan put it most succinctly: `The machine has no fear.' He did not just mean the obvious, that silicon cannot quake. He meant something deeper: because of its fantastic capacity to see all possible combinations some distance into the future, the machine, once it determines that its own position is safe, can take the kind of attacking chances no human would. The omniscient have no fear. In Game 1, Blue took what grand master Robert Byrne called `crazy chances.' On-site expert commentators labeled one move `insane.' It wasn't. It was exactly right. Here's what happened. Late in the game, Blue's king was under savage attack by Kasparov. Any human player under such assault by a world champion would be staring at his own king trying to figure out how to get away. Instead, Blue ignored the threat and quite nonchalantly went hunting for lowly pawns at the other end of the board. In fact, at the point of maximum peril, Blue expended two moves-many have died giving Kasparov even one-to snap one pawn. It was as if, at Gettysburg, General Meade had sent his soldiers out for a bit of apple picking moments before Pickett's charge because he had calculated that they could get back to their positions with a half-second to spare. In humans, that is called sangfroid. And if you don't have any sang, you can be very froid. But then again if Meade had known absolutely-by calculating the precise trajectories of all the bullets and all the bayonets and all the cannons in Pickett's division-the time of arrival of the enemy, he could indeed, without fear, have ordered his men to pick apples. Which is exactly what Deep Blue did. It had calculated every possible combination of Kasparov's available moves and determined with absolute certainty that it could return from its pawn-picking expedition and destroy Kasparov exactly one move before Kasparov could destroy it. Which it did. It takes more than nerves of steel to do that. It takes a silicon brain. No human can achieve absolute certainty because no human can be sure to have seen everything. Deep Blue can. Now, it cannot see everything forever-just everything within its horizon, which for Deep Blue means everything that can happen within the next 10 or 15 moves or so."

Putting The Fear Of God Back Into Reckless "Investors"?

I can only hope so. I can only hope that Ben Bernanke is serious about undoing the wretched "we're the Fed and we're your FRIEND!" performance of Alan Greenspan, which has given us the distorted, bubble-ridden, false economy we have today. In an ideal world, investors should be afraid and worried about what the Fed might do. The Fed should be known to be responsible for either kicking ass or chewing gum, with no one exactly sure when it will be all outta gum. People need to be exceedingly prudent with these things they are calling "investments".

If your "investment" is going to tank (whether it be real estate, stocks, gold, or anything else) because the Fed is going to raise rates to the "extreme" (ha-ha) level of 5.5% or 6.0% or even 7.0%, then maybe there's something wrong with your investment.

Anyway, Stephen Roach:

After years of excess accommodation, the US central bank may be trying to reclaim the "tough-guy" image that a credible monetary authority needs.

It’s been a long time since I said something positive about the Fed. That saddens me. The Board -- as insiders call the Washington-based Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System -- was my first place of gainful employment after grad school. I spent seven wonderful years there in the 1970s, and there will always be a soft spot in my heart for this great institution. It has pained me no end to write of a Fed that lost its way in the bubble-infested waters of the past seven years. But now, for the first time in a long time, America seems about to get a meaningful dose of monetary discipline. Ironically, it could be tougher on the markets than on the economy. For investors, that’s a painful wake-up call, to be sure. But in the end, it’s absolutely essential in order to put an unbalanced, asset-dependent US economy on a sounder and more sustainable course. Three cheers for Ben Bernanke!

Of course, he hasn’t really done anything just yet. The Fed could disappoint -- and end up being all bluster and no action. Or there is always a chance it’s too late -- that America’s imbalances are so advanced, the only way out is the dreaded hard landing. But in my new role as the optimistic pessimist, I am willing to give Bernanke & Co. the benefit of the doubt. By talking tough in the context of only a fractional overshoot of inflation -- an overshoot that may be more statistical than real -- the Fed is sending an unmistakably clear message of a move to policy restraint. And by delivering that message in the context of down markets, the rhetoric of monetary discipline has an even stronger ring. If there’s ever been a time for America’s central bank to take on the markets, this must surely be it. Former Fed Chairman William McChesney Martin put it best in his legendary quip: "The job of the Federal Reserve is to take away the punchbowl just when the party is getting good." For years, the Fed has provided more than its share of refreshments at the biggest party of them all. Those days could now be drawing to an end.

[a couple of paragraphs which take bogus gov't inflation statistics at face value, in which Roach generously credits Bernanke with "striking early in the inflation game" rather than grotesquely late]

Maybe I’m reading too much into this, but I think there is an important implication of the Fed’s hair-trigger response to an arguable inflation scare: After years of excess accommodation, the US central bank may be trying to reclaim the "tough-guy" image that a credible monetary authority needs. And there is good reason to believe this sentiment is global in scope. Recent monetary tightenings by the ECB and by central banks in India, Korea, Turkey, South Africa, and even Iceland all speak to a similar disciplined mindset. And these actions all have comparable implications for the global liquidity cycle and world financial markets -- reducing the flow of high-octane fuel that has fed the multiple asset bubble syndrome of the past seven years. I am not saying that central banks are united in their views in targeting asset markets. But I do believe that a strict adherence to inflation targeting may have become a foil that now enables the authorities to turn their attention to other important issues -- namely, the increasingly dangerous excesses of a very powerful liquidity cycle.

This sudden outbreak of monetary discipline around the world very much fits the script of my newfound optimism on global rebalancing. The world’s biggest imbalance -- America’s current account deficit -- is a direct outgrowth of a property-bubble-induced shortfall of income-based saving. Lacking in domestic saving, the US must import surplus saving from abroad in order to grow -- and run massive current account and trade deficits in order to attract foreign capital. To the extent central banks have promoted asset-bubble-related global imbalances by overly accommodative monetary policies, an emerging bias toward monetary discipline is a very encouraging development on the road to global rebalancing. While it’s "tough love" for bruised investors, this may well end up being the requisite correction that clears the decks for the next upleg in the markets. Thank you, again, Ben Bernanke.

The Confusion Of The Peaceniks

Lileks imaginatively gets into the heads of Canadian lefties as they try to grok the foiling of the Toronto plot. Very good writing.

End Zone Spike

If it is wrong to celebrate the demise of a murderous psycho-scumbag like Zarqawi, then I don't want to be right! Good video remix of the strike footage over at Hot Air. Complete with kickin' Beastie Boys soundtrack.

Untrustworthy Weasels Are Not To Be Trusted

Peggy Noonan spells it out pretty clearly:

The American people right now are not in a mood to trust any political plan, proposal or policy that seems complicated--highly involved, technical, full of phased-in elements and glide paths and Part C's.

They are against complexity not because they don't think life is complex. They know it's complex. They know it because they live it every day. They assume public policy issues are also complicated. They know there are facts they don't know, which probably have to be factored in as policy is developed. But more and more they recoil from complicated, lengthy, abstruse proposals.

Why?

Because they think--they assume, at this point, reflexively--that slithery, slippery professional politicians are using and inventing complications to obfuscate and confuse. They think politicians are using complexity to create great clouds in which they can make their escape, like a cartoon character, like Road Runner.

They think modern politicians hide in complexity. They think politicians evade responsibility with it. We can't do the right thing, it's too complicated! Americans don't trust "comprehensive plans," because they don't trust the comprehensive planners.

This, I think, is the essential problem with Congress's immigration proposals. All the phased-in-partial-assimilation-glide-paths-to-guest-worker-status stuff seems like a big 500-page con. It's all too complicated to be understood by anyone who's not a tenured political science professor with a second degree in accounting.

What people will trust, and understand, is this: We will close the border tomorrow, and then figure it out from there.

People resist complicated proposals for realistic reasons.

First, they have a natural and healthy skepticism toward the political class. They think the Senate and House are in effect using public anxiety about our collapsed borders to sneak in--I use that term deliberately--their own party-favoring addendums and amendments. People sense Washington is using public concern as a plaything to get what will serve the political class.

Second, people know that while much of life is complicated, some of it is simple, such as what you can see with your eyes. They would believe a bill that closed the borders worked when they saw that it worked. They will know when the border has been closed. No one will be coming across it. It will be adequately patrolled. Those seeking illegal entry will be turned away.

No one, on the other hand, believes he will be able to know with certainty whether a phased-in guest-worker plan is working in the short term, or the long term either. They'll only know if it was a disaster after the disaster is done. And they will have to rely for some of their data on government figures--about which they will be dubious, for one of the great modern American understandings is that statistics don't lie but liars use statistics.

And the third reason is they know everyone in Washington is not trustworthy in terms of basic normal human commitment on the immigration issue. They're not reliable.

...

It has been said in politics that sincerity is everything, and once you can fake it you can do anything. But people can tell when you're faking sincerity--on immigration, on taxes, on our very safety as a nation. Faking it isn't working anymore.

Message to political leaders: You better mean it, or they'll never let you do your phased-in multitiered comprehensive plan anymore

Absent sincerity, the future is simplicity.

Pithy, And To The Point

James Taranto:

Whose Stereotype Would That Be?

"Because of his emphasis on compassion, [Sen. Sam] Brownback does not fit the stereotype of the angry Christian conservative."--Washington Post, June 7

We're From The Government And We're Here To Help You

John Stossel has a good column on the Americans With Disabilities Act and (who'd have guessed?) its perverse outcomes. The article contains an interview with the former head of the Clinton EEOC, who does not exactly cover himself in glory. It concludes thusly:

Complicated laws like the ADA eventually hurt the people they were meant to help. The ADA has led many employers to avoid the disabled. One poll found that since the ADA was passed, the percentage of disabled men who were employed dropped. "Once you hire them, you can never fire them. They are lawsuit bombs," one employer said. "So we just tell them the job has been filled."

This unintended consequence of the ADA shouldn't have been a surprise. If you give some workers extra power to sue, those workers become potential "bombs," and some employers avoid them.

Politicians bragged that the ADA "fixed the discrimination problem." But what really happened is that lawyers got richer, and the disabled got fewer opportunities.

If They Get Their Way Now, It May Well End Up Being The Last Time

Journalists are such short-sighted morons. They engage in a never ending quest to bring about American defeat in Iraq. What do these idiots think will happen should they succeed, thereby increasing the likelihood of a large-scale terrorist attack in the US? Do these simpering fools, these squalling infants, think they will be allowed to practice their "craft" in anything approaching freedom from strict censorship in the ensuing full-mobilization-to-war conditions? Jackasses.

Anyway, Tony Blankley has some choice words for the MSM and its rush to judgment to gleefully defame all of our soldiers based on isolated incidents before the evidence is in.

You Can't Handle The Truth!

I keep reading twaddle from the conservative side of the 'sphere that we have an economy that is just as good as the 90's but somehow the peasants are being hoodwinked by the MSM into thinking otherwise. Like hell.

Some excerpts from a post at an econ blog, starting with a bit of comedy:

The next movie on our list is a potentially exciting remake of "A Few Good Men". For reasons that will soon become apparent I will not be able to vote on this movie. Following are the script changes from the original as proposed by Snooky on Silicon Investor. Here goes:

Greenspan: You want answers?

mishedlo: I think I'm entitled to them.

Greenspan: You want answers?

mishedlo: I want the truth!

Greenspan: You can't handle the truth! Son, we live in a world that has markets. And those markets have to be guarded by men with dollars. Who's gonna do it? You? You, Patron? I have a greater responsibility than you can possibly fathom. You weep for Refco and you curse the Treasury. You have that luxury. You have the luxury of not knowing what I know: that Refco's death, while tragic, probably saved money. And my existence, while grotesque and incomprehensible to you, saves money...You don't want the truth. Because deep down, in places you don't talk about at parties, you want me in those markets. You need me in those markets.

We use words like honor, code, loyalty...we use these words as the backbone to a life spent defending something. You use 'em as a punchline.

I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to a man who rises and sleeps under the blanket of the very liquidity I provide, then questions the manner in which I provide it! I'd rather you just said thank you and went on your way. Otherwise, I suggest you pick up a dollar bill and stand a post. Either way, I don't give a damn what you think you're entitled to!

mishedlo: Did you order the coupon pass?

Greenspan: (quietly) I did the job you sent me to do.

mishedlo: Did you order the coupon pass?

Greenspan: You're goddamn right I did!!

...

The latest job numbers were nothing but a complete disaster. The numbers were so bad I hardly know where to begin. If this was a movie, it would be a horror story. Let's start with Birth/Death assumptions.

Birth Death Assumptions

For new readers Birth/Death refers to assumptions about estimated jobs created or lost at this point in a recovery due to the creation or loss of businesses as opposed to the birth or death rate of individuals. (Click on graph for an enhanced view)

[graph]

Once again according to the Birth/Death assumptions 211,000 jobs were presumed to have been created in May of 2006 even as the past two months figures were revised lower. How long the BLS can get away with this nonsense is anyone's guess, but eventually the public has to wonder if it would be more accurate if the L was dropped from BLS.

Arguably the most critical number is the number of Part-Time Employed For Economic Reasons. That number was up over 159,000. It is an enormous number that is roughly twice the level of the headline growth for all jobs. Let that sink in. 159,000 people wanted full time employment but could not find it for "economic reasons". They are not counted as unemployed nor are those who benefits have expired, nor are those who just simply gave up. Unemployment would be 10% and rising if we counted it the way it was counted 20 years ago.

Quite honestly it gets tiring refuting such nonsense month after month, year in and year out. Let's look at it another way.

Three Questions

1. Do you really think Bush's approval rating would be under 30% if jobs were plentiful, and wages were rising?

2. Do you think there would be a concern about kicking out illegal immigrants if jobs were plentiful?

3. Do you really think there would be a discussion about building a wall on the Mexican border if immigrants were not taking jobs US citizens wanted?

I try and avoid politics but it is not always possible. At some point, no matter what the propaganda is, the public will simply stop believing the lies they are told. Lies and distortions about the CPI, or jobs, or the cost of gasoline, or medical expenses, or education can be hidden only for so long. Everyone knows I dislike this administration. My personal opinion is irrelevant. Bush's approval ratings under 30% are another matter. From a moral point of view the public would probably not care a rat's ass how many innocent Iraqis we killed if it created jobs here. That is the simplistic as well as the sad but unfortunate state of affairs. The fact of the matter is the only real source of jobs during this recovery was (past tense) housing. Housing is stalling and the public is responding.

I would like to believe that Bush's numbers reflect his ineptitude in Iraq, but to believe that would only be fooling myself. Bush's numbers are low because the economy is sinking, no more no less. That is not a moral judgment (unfortunately) but an economic one and like it or not I see little reason for those numbers to turn around.

Given that Wall Street seems to like Bush, we could be in for a very rough ride if Democrats take control of the House or the Senate or both. You may agree or disagree with my obvious dislike of Bush, but from an economic standpoint his approval rating numbers are what they are, and those numbers are pathetic. I am but one vote out of millions, yet the undeniable fact is the general population has had enough. Whether or not you agree with my personal opinions or not, look at public sentiment towards this administration and ask yourself if you want to be long this market. This post is not about politics or movies or housing, it is about making money. On the other hand politics is money and the politics have changed.

The Very Definition Of Narcisism

Dennis Prager:

1. Virtually every news report about President George W. Bush's support for a constitutional amendment defining marriage as the union of a man and a woman describes it as "pandering" to the "far Right," the "radical Right" or, less pejoratively, "social conservatives" of the Republican Party.

2. Democrats regularly describe the amendment as enshrining "discrimination in the Constitution." In the words of Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., "A vote for the amendment is a vote for bigotry -- pure and simple."

3. Republicans are attacked for "diverting" attention from far more important issues, such as, according to every Democratic leader, Iraq and gas prices.

Regarding the news reporting: This is another example of how the news media present news. First, Democrats are rarely, if ever, described as "pandering" to the Left, let alone "radical Left." Why not? For one thing, the news media do not believe there is a "radical Left," only a "radical Right." Second, the Left regards positions held by Democrats to be sincere and noble, therefore, Democratic positions can never pander to anyone.

This is part of the larger left-wing view of Republicans and conservatives: They are not merely wrong; they are either phonies or bad. It is inconceivable to most leftists that a Republican politician can sincerely oppose redefining the most important social structure of society. And if that Republican's opposition to redefining marriage is deemed sincere, it is inconceivable to most left-wingers that the person is anything but a bigot.

That most leftists cannot understand conservatives' views about marriage as anything but bigotry and/or pandering is part of a narcissism that characterizes much of the Left. The very definition of narcissism is an inability to see the world through the eyes of another. Whatever conservatives' flaws, far more conservatives understand leftists' views on same-sex marriage. Most opponents of same-sex marriage appreciate that left-wingers feel bad about gays' inability to marry a person of the same sex. In fact, as a proponent of a marriage amendment, I not only understand the left-wing desire to enable people to marry someone of the same sex, I feel genuine compassion for gays on this matter.

But such empathy for ideological foes is all but absent from the narcissistic world of the Left. To virtually every liberal writer and spokesman, only leftists mean well, only they are sincere, only they are compassionate, and only they are intellectual, rational and tolerant.

Liberals' use of the word "radical" to describe opponents of same-sex marriage illustrates this self-aggrandizing mindset. To describe as "radical" those who wish to preserve the man-woman-based definition of marriage known to every civilization is to stand the word on its head. It is beyond intellectually dishonest -- it is mendacity -- to describe those who favor preserving the definition of marriage as "radical" rather than to so describe those who wish to change the gender-based definition of marriage for the first time in history. Even if you support same-sex marriage, you should at least have the honesty to admit that it is you who favors something radical.

...

As for the leftists' view that gas prices are more important than society's definition of marriage, it is so self-incriminating that no response is needed.

Mark Shea Is On A Roll

We have this:

Time Wrings its Hand About "Diversity Fatigue"

See, the thing is, you can only expect people to swallow stuff like "Your children *vill* be educated in the glories of gay sex and you will be punished if you protest or try to stop it" for so long. People can only stand soft-pedaled baloney like this:

The 17 suspects who were arrested Friday, men and youths alike, were allegedly “motivated by an ideology based on politics, hatred and terrorism, and not on faith,” Blair told a gathering of Muslim leaders and concerned community members.

for so long.

They can only witness so many displays of naked hostility to their own faith ("Hey! It's just a movie! Whatsamatta? You don't think Piss Christ is art? Hey! Check out the elephant dung on your precious Virgin") while being told to bend over and take it in the name of Tolerance for brutal savages who fully intended to build a bomb three times bigger than the OKC bomb.

Sooner or later, all the phony guilt manipulation simply stops working and people begin to swing (dangerously) to the opposite pole. They start muttering about "not taking it anymore". They start resenting even legitimate calls for tolerance and accomodation of diversity. They decide to go on a rage bender. They think they've earned it.

That's the way the fallen human animal works. Like a drunk, he falls off the horse on one side and then climbs back up and falls off on the other. Expecting him to moderate his response to the tyrannical overreach of the Diversity Police and the Compassion Gestapo is asking a helluva lot, particular since the only power that can restrain our usually drunken behavior is Grace, which the Compassion Gestapo has labored for years to limit access to.

When the collapse of civility happens and the great "F You!" is finally shouted by a mob of dangerous and unbalanced people who have given up on the idea of listening to the guilt mongers, don't expect it to be pretty.

and this:

The cardinal mistake of the postmodern world has been to believe that Truth is simply a mask on the face of power. The result of believing this is not to make us able to resist the tyranny of power, but to persuade everybody that whoever wins, it will be by the raw exercise of force, and not according to truth. Benedict is right, if there is no truth, then we have no freedom because only the truth makes us free. It is just as John Paul says: the defining mark of original sin is the loss of God as Father. That doesn't mean you are rid of God. It simply means that you blind yourself to the point where you can only relate to him as Master. And once that's your universe, the rest of your relations are predicated on a Master/slave basis too.

Not Antiwar, Just On The Other Side

Michelle Malkin's latest Hot Air Hot Air video blog looks at the MSM's "assumed guilty" Haditha coverage. Keith Olbermann hopes the incident will be the defining event of the war, for example. Now, please understand, I'm not questioning his lack of patriotism. Not at all.

A Veritable Rainbow

Jim Geraghty:

All over the blogosphere this weekend, bloggers mocked the press accounts suggesting the suspects covered a ‘broad strata’ of Canadian society. The names of the suspects that have been released: Fahim Ahmad, Zakaria Amara, Asad Ansari, Shareef Abdelhaleen, Qayyum Abdul Jamal, Mohammed Dirie, Yasim Abdi Mohamed, Amin Mohamed Durrani, Steven Vikash Chand alias Abdul Shakur, Ahmad Mustafa Ghany and Saad Khalid.

Well, that’s some diversity there. It’s a regular Benetton ad!

By the way, when the press insists upon saying that the suspects represent a “broad strata” when 4 out of the 11 of the released names have “abdul/abdel/abdi” in them, 2 Ahmads, 2 Saads, and 3 Mohammeds, it sends one of two messages to readers. The first is “we think you’re stupid and can’t figure out the common thread these suspects have in common”; the second is that “we in the media are stupid and can’t figure out the common thread these suspects have in common.”

Thank You Sir, May I Have Another?

Carrie Lukas went to her Harvard reunion, and noticed an irony:

No reunion would be complete without fundraising. During the dinner, for example, class officers encouraged us to donate to a scholarship program. Two current recipients took to the podium to thank the class and describe why they needed the support.

One student, an immigrant from Africa named Daniel, had been putting himself through school by renting out an apartment in Chicago. That plan collapsed when the renter stopped paying. Daniel went to court—four times—for an evection order but was shocked at the difficulty of removing the squatter. All the laws, he said, favored the tenant over the property owner. So far he’s out more than $20,000 in foregone rent, with thousands more for legal bills and plane tickets from Boston to Chicago. Yet the tenant still was living in his home, rent-free, with no penalty. Daniel told me he’s given up hope of recouping the lost income and now is focused simply on reclaiming his stolen property. If it weren’t for this scholarship, he would have had to drop out of school.

Daniel shouldn’t have had to thank the Harvard alum for his scholarship. It is the thoughtless liberalism inculcated at such “schools of government” that have created the very laws that made him financially needy in the first place. At dinner, my fellow graduates applauded Daniel and shook their heads in sympathy at his desperate situation. But if we were back in school (likely in a class named something like “Creating Equality Through Access to Affordable Housing”) they would readily have been cheerleaders for laws that favor the poor tenant—unable to afford the market rent—over the greedy property owner.

No one dug further into the true lessons of Daniel’s story or considered what it says about the liberal policies that universities like Harvard promote. The honored alum instead toasted their noble sacrifice to “public service,” patting themselves on the back for helping a victim that they helped create. A more fitting metaphor for government today I can’t imagine.