bustardblog

The Conservative Demise

It may look like an op-ed with the title "The Conservative Revival", but it's actually a admission of defeat.

The fantasy of a conservative revival is based on the GOP emulating an English Tory; one who recently said:

If we are to make Britain the most family-friendly country in the world, we have to live by the words of the African saying, "It Takes a Village to Raise a Child."

This, from the same neo-con movement that vilified Hillary's use of the exact same phrase.

For once I can recommend reading a David Brooks piece. Concession speeches can be fun, especially when other losers react as did Mark R. Levin, squealing like the stuck pigs they really are.

Previously Brooks' writing of a village's support dripped with a cruel arrogance:

Anybody who thinks it takes a village to raise a child has never sat near a crying baby in first class. In these circumstances, if it were up to the village, somebody would be stapling the brat's mouth shut and somebody else would be locking mom in the overhead storage compartment.

Today's was an admission of defeat - the Reagan revolution is as dead as the permanent Republican majority.

(memeorandum)

 

Read it and Weep

Read the Onion

(h/t Atrios, The Elite)

It's O.K. to Like Good Stuff

A peculiar self-loathing seem to overcome both Ezra Klein and Matthew Yglesias upon reading reviews by the N.Y. Times of chain restaurants.

First they both felt the need to establish their bona fides as charter members of foodies-elite. Klein wrote of  biking "back from the farmer's market today with a baguette and artisan cheese fastened to my rack." (Yes, he said he bought a "baguette.")  Yglesias is equally torn between asserting his membership credentials, and then denying them:

It "is made all the worse by the knowledge that the attitude of contempt is almost certainly fake. I was actually born and raised in Manhattan by fancy-pants parents who wouldn't dream of darkening the door of an Outback Steakhouse."

Atrios also condemns the sneering condescension he found in the reviews in the Times. This is the same Atrios who can dine for days on crustaceans in Barcelona.

Their desperate drive to avoid accusations of pretension, yet retain their membership in the elite, without looking down on anyone mind you, renders them incoherent. While Yglesias is calling the contempt "fake," Atrios entitles his post "Faux Elitist Sneering."  Is it a faux  sneer or a faux Elitist? A Faux Pas perhaps?

And in fact the Time reviews are not particularly contemptuous. Some of the comments in the article were:

At most of these places, there is indeed something for everyone - frequently with a side of good value.

True Confession: I had a great meal at the Cheesecake Factory.

The menu (with entrees $10 to $21) and flavors are more pan-Asian than Chinese; ingredients unfailingly taste fresh, and vegetables take their rightful place as co-stars to meat. We particularly enjoyed a dish of sugar-snap peas, stir-fried with garlic to peak spring-green sweetness and stir-fried eggplant that retained its shape and texture, as well as the wok-seared marinated lamb over iceberg lettuce.

the fish is just fine: handsomely charred outside, tender and moist inside, with plenty of spice and smoke. The fresh greens are augmented by grape tomatoes, sliced portobello mushrooms and a tangy, creamy vinaigrette

The tiramisù could hold its own anywhere

You want sneering? Here are some comments that the Times reviewer made about a distinctly non-chain restaurant; Alain Ducasse's newest, to which he gave three stars:

Should venison medallions be this bland? Shouldn’t the beef tenderloin with a brick of glazed rib meat be truer to its name?

The reviewer goes on to note that New York's tolerance for Gallic fussbudgets has been tapped "out."

Liberals who believe that elite means the best, and that the best is what we need in a President, should not let themselves get so bolloxed up by articles on steaks and outhouses.

(memeorandum)

Beyond Race.

Great posts by the likes of Sister Toldjah, Betsy's Page and Don Surber go a long way to proving just how crazy, how grossly unfair, is the Rev Wright's tendency to speak of race in his sermons.

They were posting about an Associated Press article by Tim Shipman in which Michelle Obama is portrayed as angered and exhausted by the campaign -with special emphasis on the Rev Wright "controversy."

Shipman collects some comments from around the political spectrum:

A white pastor from Boone is quoted:

I never make political  remarks from the pulpit. It's just not appropriate.

A Clinton spokesman said:

"We are surging"

Jon Violette called Obama's problems with Wright:

"A godsend...People are getting to know him. Hillary has the momentum."

And then:

"James Pickens is typical of those who have been inspired by the black senator from Illinois. A reformed crack cocaine dealer, he is now peddling Obama T-shirts.

Mr Pickens, 50, has served three prison terms totalling 13 years, but vowed to change his ways after hearing Mr Obama speak."

The three wing-nut posters listed above are so far beyond race that they apparently think this juxtaposition entirely appropriate..

(memeorandum)

 

Kori

Even Thompson's Gazelles pause in awe at the Kori Bustard,

(bbbustard Feb 2008, Ngorogo Conservation Area)

I.D.F. - Where the D is supposed to be for Defense

Is anybody surprised by this article?  (On Friday Israel announced more expansion in the occupied territories.)

Is continuous illegal occupation good for the Israeli people, for its army?

(memeorandum)

Israel Today

From today's Haaretz

"We are benefiting from one thing, and that is the attack on the Twin Towers and Pentagon, and the American struggle in Iraq," Ma'ariv quoted the former prime minister as saying.

The speaker was Bibi Netanyahu, the former prime minister for whom Feith, Perle and Wurmser wrote the report "A Clean Break", that advocated the toppling of Saddam Hussein in June of 1996.

Also from  Haaretz

Israel Air Force strikes in the central Gaza Strip Wednesday afternoon killed at least 15 Palestinians, among them at least five children, and wounded at least 10 people.

One who was killed was a cameraman who worked for Reuters, with the name of Shana:

Other cameramen who rushed to the scene said they saw the Reuters jeep on fire, and Shana's body lying next to the jeep, alongside other casualties. They said Shana's jeep was marked as press and that the cameraman was wearing an identifying flak jacket.

Israel: Grateful for the collapse of the World Trade Center, Casual about the lives of Palestinian civilians. This is not the country its founders hoped for.

(memeorandum)

Israel is the Issue

Looking at memeorandum today - one can't help but realize that the most important issue today, foreign or domestic, is Israel. Reading the blogs one can't help but see that we're doing a lousy job discussing it.

Some examples follow:
Krauthammer's piece in the WaPo argues for A Holocaust Declaration - that Bush announce that any attack on Israel will be treated as an attack on the U.S. He believes that this is the least that we can do for this valued ally. (An ally who spies on us, who has never fired a bullet to help the U.S., and whose vaunted intelligence help was clearly of no help in understanding Iraq.) His piece is dishonest in the extreme:

The problem is that Israel is a very small country with a small nuclear arsenal that is largely land-based. Land-based retaliatory forces can be destroyed in a first strike, which is precisely why, during the Cold War, both the United States and the Soviet Union created vast submarine fleets -- undetectable and thus invulnerable to first strikes -- that ensured a retaliatory strike and, thus, deterrence.

Israel has rarely admitted to the existence of its nuclear weapons program, although they have had one for close to 50 years, and helped South Africa develop it's own nukes as well. It's not such a small arsenal - larger than either India's or Pakistan's according to the Federation of American Scientists Estimate. And of course they do have submarines capable of firing nukes - much evidence suggests that they were tested in May 2000.

Ezra Klein notes Obama's apparent capitulation to the Israel Lobby, AIPAC, since the candidate from Chicago has started a blog in Israel - in Hebrew! YNet writes that:

All candidates are well aware of the fact that Israel – and by extension the Jewish vote – are an integral part of the US presidential election.

The Corner at the National Review is the most offensive by far. It refers to a study done by a totally partisan polling organization and triumphs the Protestantization of American Catholics, as supposed their support for Israel is almost as great as the Evangelicals'. He fears that Hispanic Catholics may be harder to fix:

It's not that Latin immigrants are uniquely anti-Semitic (I suspect they're more anti-Semitic than today's Asians or yesterday's Irish and Italians, but less so than Eastern European immigrants); rather, our ability to Protestantize them (in the sense I'm using it) has declined dramatically compared to a century ago.

The issue is Israel - and there has to be a more honest, objective way for us to discuss it.

Victor Davis Dumb and Dishonest.

The estimable Thers has written a couple of posts today about the work of one Victor Davis Hanson. He quotes a post by Mr. Hanson writing that:

Liberals, as are all Americans, are rightly angry over Tibet, but since a dictatorial communist China holds over $1 billion dollars in U,S. government backed bonds..."

I was dumbfounded. I'm no economist, but, like other commenters at the site, I knew the figure of 1 billion was absurdly low. Could Mr. Hanson really not know what a billion dollars is? Does he have no clue what the cost of the war in Iraq is? Does he understand nothing of the budget?

Because Mr. Hanson is off, by a factor of close to five hundred. The U.S.Treasury says that China holds about 495 Billion of such debt.  Does Mr Hanson not understand the difference between owing one dollar or owing 500 dollars?

So Mr Hanson is financially challenged. Instead of apologizing for his ignorance, he decided to hide it in a thoroughly dishonest fashion. He has changed the post to which Thers linked, with no indication of a correction. Instead of reading "over $ 1 Billion" the post now reads that "China holds a substantial investment."

It's hard to argue that 493 billion is a substantial investment. It's harder still to believe anything with the Victor Davis Hanson byline.

Captain Ed's Fecal Matter

Clearly, Captain Ed has been swallowed up by his move to Hot Air. Like the chicken and the egg, I don't know if he became lazier and more dishonest since his collaboration with Michelle Malkin grew deeper, or if she hired him because he had become sleazier. Someone with a stronger stomach than I could review his writings to probe for the answer.

Today, he writes:

Dan Calabrese’s new column on Hillary Clinton’s past may bring the curtain down on her political future. Calabrese interviewed Jerry Zeifman, the man who served as chief counsel to the House Judiciary Committee during the Watergate hearings, has tried to tell the story of his former staffer’s behavior during those proceedings for years. Zeifman claims he fired Hillary for unethical behavior and that she conspired to deny Richard Nixon counsel during the hearings:

Pure Crap.

First, it makes no sense on its face. Calabrese wrote:

When the investigation was over, Zeifman fired Hillary from the committee

That's right, after the investigation was over she was fired. When the investigation was over, the committee's work was over. To the extent that Clinton was "fired", Zeifman was also "fired."

Secondly, a quick google search on Zeifman leads you to a review of his book:

Zeifman's theory goes something like this: John Doar, Hillary Rodham, Bernard Nussbaum and other Kennedy loyalists investigating Nixon obstruct his impeachment "to cover up malfeasance in high office throughout the Cold War." The scheming starlets are abetted by Peter Rodino, a weak, corrupt chairman of the House Judiciary Committee who is afraid that Nixon might expose his own Mafia ties. Rounding out the list of conspirators is Burke Marshall, Robert Kennedy's assistant attorney general, who orchestrates the bogus investigation in the hopes of keeping Nixon in office, which will, he believes, help Ted Kennedy win the White House. Using a variety of dubious legal strategies -- still with me? -- Doar and his co-conspirators do everything they can to avoid putting the president on trial, a strategy, they hope, that will prevent Nixon's lawyers from revealing the "crimes of Camelot."

The lack of evidence makes this theory hard to swallow. Zeifman's most reliable source -- his diary -- contains few revelations and seems little more than a chronicle of his suspicions and speculations. (emphasis added)

Particularly touching is the Captain's sympathy for the poor Zeifman, valiantly trying to tell his story - in fact he wrote a book, it was published, it was reviewed by major outlets. To the extent that his story is unknown, he has only his own insanity to blame. According to Zeifman, Hillary lied and behaved unethically to prevent the impeachment of Richard Nixon.

Pure Crap.

(memeorandum)