A Second Hand Conjecture

You may have noticed there’s an ugly and unfortunate current developing in some of the protests against Proposition 8 in California. Namely white gays, blaming blacks for its passage. Even Andrew Sullivan, who has been blaming blacks for a couple of days now, has noticed that perhaps things are getting a little out of hand.

Altogether, as Mark Steyn puts it, this wasn’t quite the possibility for post-election civil discord people were anticipating:

The media were warning that if the election went the wrong way there’d be riots, but I didn’t realize they meant Klansmen in Abercrombie polos roaming West Hollywood itching for a rumble.
(NRO)

One of the most visible recurring problems here is the frustration many gay men and women are experiencing with the question of how blacks could “betray” the cause of universal civil rights, after such a long and noble struggle of their own to secure them. Confronting this matter directly in an opinion in the Los Angeles Times, Jasmyne Cannick raises several worthwhile points of explanation. Most notably, a misunderstanding on the part of white gays about both the origins and requirements of an appeal to the black community:

[T]he black civil rights movement was essentially born out of and driven by the black church; social justice and religion are inextricably intertwined in the black community. To many blacks, civil rights are grounded in Christianity — not something separate and apart from religion but synonymous with it. To the extent that the issue of gay marriage seemed to be pitted against the church, it was going to be a losing battle in my community.

[...]

Likewise, holding the occasional town-hall meeting in Leimert Park — the one part of the black community where they now feel safe thanks to gentrification — to tell black people how to vote on something gay isn’t effective outreach either.
(LAT)

In a consistent vein she adds on her site:

[G]ays are headed to Long Beach tonight to protest. I wonder though why they are moving from Westwood to Long Beach and skipping past Compton, Watts, and South L.A.?
(Jasmyne Cannick)

While fear and conceit are definitely in evidence, more pertinent is the matter of misdirection in the division between political friends and enemies. In ordinary times, the necessary accord for putting these two parties back into a grudging spiritual alignment would be to unify against the common enemy: the invidious conservative power structure.

Thus the real trouble is that simultaneous with the passage of Proposition 8, this conservative power structure and government has been quite visibly thrown down by the election of Barack Obama and the Democrats. The once titanic foe is now in pieces, scattered and preoccupied with internal reexamination and a painful reconsolidation project. It isn’t a party to this debate, it isn’t even a party with an agenda of any kind at the moment. So it is that without a Tito to oppose in common struggle, the Balkan coalition of Yugoslavian dissidents become Serbs, Croats, and Bosnians, almost eager to turn on each other. Head north to peaceful Slovenia says me. Call it Oregon.

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I tend to take a liberal attitude toward alternative lifestyles generally. Apart from the moral requirement to protect personal freedom, I like to think they do more to enliven the human experience for spectators, than they do to exert the kind of apocalyptic moral corrosion envisioned by the likes of Robert Bork, et al. But there are occasions I must confess, when the alternatives become so silly that even I must shake my head in dismay at the state of things. It happens that the practice of paraphilic infantilism tests my limits for liberal ataraxy quite well.

Thus meet Heidilynn, a fifty year old AB (adult baby) in California, who has intentionally undone his toilet training through a process of hypnosis. Heidilynn lives his life almost entirely as a female infant you see. But after having spent thousands of dollars on adult-sized high chairs, frilly onesies, and related paraphernalia, a moment of lucidity finally struck him: “This is ridiculous.”

(more…)

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Filipino writer Benjamin Pimentel is surprised to discover that his countrymen were among the very few foreign populations to prefer John McCain to Barack Obama in a Gallup international survey. A happy place for Republicans in a lonely world apparently, as in the Philippines the outgoing Bush administration enjoys a 66% approval (more than twice its abysmally low domestic support).

Pimentel then speculated somewhat interestingly that had the Philippines ever applied for US statehood or multi-statehood (the most recent proposals call for the country to be broken into three states: Luzón, Visayas, and Mindanao), McCain would handily win the general election. The Philippines 91 million plus population would easily dwarf the combined advantage of Democratic California and New York in the electoral college.

(more…)

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Michael F. Cannon at Cato blogs about a NYTimes article on the rife fraud found and covered up at Medicare. A confidential draft of a federal inspector general’s report claimed that the behavior they found at the Medicare Administration was rife with irregularities.

Medicare reported to Congress that, for the fiscal year of 2006, AdvanceMed’s investigations had found that only 7.5 percent of claims paid by Medicare were not supported by appropriate documentation. But the inspector general’s review indicated that the actual error rate was closer to 31.5 percent.

Law makers called it “tantamount to corruption”. Michael ends his piece with some great quotes:

[One] congressional watchdog had seen it all before:

“This report doesn’t surprise me,” said Representative Pete Stark, Democrat of California and a senior member of the Ways and Means Committee. He has pushed to cut improper Medicare spending. “To look better to the public, you cook the books,” he said. “This agency is incompetent.”

Of course, Pete Stark’s solution for Medicare’s incompetence is to force you to enroll:

There is a road map laid out for us…Medicare. Medicare has lower administrative costs than any private plan on the market…Medicare has shown us the power of simplicity; we need only expand its promise to the rest of our population.

Medifraud for all!

heh, indeed.

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Meet Shirley Golub, a feisty San Franciscan who is challenging Nancy Pelosi for the Democratic nomination in the 8th Congressional District of California, on the grounds that she’s just not anti-Bush enough. Shirley fears above all that if Bush isn’t impeached, he’ll invade Iran. Yes, you might say that Bush will not even be in office if Shirley were to be elected in place of Nancy. But Shirl says it’s just a symptom of “corporate brainwashing” to suggest it’s too late to impeach. You must understand Shirley is very anti-Bush. It wouldn’t be the first time that obsessive and excessive animosity toward this president bent reality a little bit, and sent people spinning off into pointless efforts.

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Buy a second house in Sacramento with no money down for 535k even as housing is going down in price. Run for congress. Need money for campaign, but can’t do that and make mortgage payments on a house losing value. Answer to this dilemma?

Let the house go into foreclosure, loan your campaign a bunch of money, neglect the property, win the seat and use contributions to pay yourself back. Uh, House becomes an eyesore and Washington Mutual looks stupid for making the loan.

I think this story pretty much sums up our political class, the stupidity of the mortgage lending market and why California’s housing market is in free fall.

Update: She claims the story is incorrect.

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No, not that. We’re talking Weed Beer. I’m talking about a beer made in the city of Weed, California. A local brewer there has named his beer after the small town. The Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms however, wasn’t too pleased with their slogan on their bottle cap, “Try Legal Weed”.

Bureau spokesman Art Resnick said Monday that the bottle caps tell consumers to support an illegal drug

Since it literally says “legal weed” on it, I’m not sure how they think it refers to illegal weed. The owner of the brew counters with the fact that Budweiser is known as “bud”

“They sell Bud — we sell Weed.”

Just add this to another casualty in this ridiculous war on drugs.

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source image: heartcores

I’m posting the news rather late because…well, because I’m writing from New Mexico. It should come as no surprise to the election observer, that the Land of Enchantment is once again rather late in declaring a winner in an election. This time it was the Democratic caucuses, and the winner was Hillary Clinton. New Mexico is always late because almost every election seems to break even in this politically divided swing state (and partly because alacrity just isn’t the state’s highest virtue).

In 2004 it took the state canvassing board three weeks to finally declare a winner in the presidential election. That year, California managed to get ten million ballots counted in a couple of hours, while New Mexico Secretary of State Rebecca Vigil-Giron, was busy complaining to the press about being overwhelmed with merely 7% as many. Incidentally, if you pronouce her name vee-hill-her-own, you could be a native.

But we should hope the occasion of the recount is just ordinary local narrowness, and not an unwelcome portent that the country hasn’t yet overcome her predilection for narrow national election results. On a raw and bitter level, I’d have trouble enduring another post-election experience full of recounts, recriminations, farcical conspiracy theories and obstinate resistance to obvious concessions. Remember this sort of thing?

Kerry won. Here’s the facts. Although the exit polls show that most voters in Ohio punched cards for Kerry-Edwards, thousands of these votes were simply not recorded. This was predictable and it was predicted….
(TomPaine)

The 2004 presidential contest between Democratic challenger Senator John Kerry and the Republican incumbent, President Bush Jr., amounted to another stolen election.
(CommonDreams)

Ominously enough, some people are already starting to say similarly strange and obdurate things:

To imply that the New Mexico gives Clinton a win amid a string of losses, is to imply a falsehood.
(Dakota Voice)

This time around I could be pleased with whomever won, if they could give me a Reagan ‘84, Nixon ‘72, or Johnson ‘64 style annihilation of their opponent. A year without another hand recount in New Mexico would be a good thing for this country.

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McCain vs. whoever wins California for the Dems. No in depth analysis, just my quick, from the hip guess. Feel free to tell me how I’m an idiot in the comments section.

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Here’s a truly incredible story from the college football recruiting trail. Kevin Hart, an unheralded OG from Fernly High in Nevada, held a press conference to announce that he had accepted a scholarship offer from Jeff Tedford to play for Cal. Local media turned out as well as half the school to see the announcement. One snag: Tedford had never spoken to Hart, nor was Cal interested. It seems that someone was impersonating him as well as Mike Sherman from Texas A&M and other coaches in phone calls. Police are investigating. Full story. H/T: BRB

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Arnold has to govern liberal California, Rudy had to govern liberal NYC and McCain…McCain is from Arizona. So what exactly is his excuse for his dramatic shift to the Left over time? Lest you think he has one, here’s a very good interview from Kudlow & Company with Arizona Senator Jon Kyl, who is championing the cause of slashing corporate taxes to induce growth, while his colleague McCain rants about the evils of big business. Just some info in case you’ve ever wondered if like Arnold and Rudy, McCain’s liberal positions are induced by electability concerns in demographically fluid Arizona. Kyl has managed to remain staunchly conservative for years while being easily reelected. On a media note, Kyl’s 2006 reelection is often described as “narrow” by the press. 53-43 isn’t narrow.

H/T: Larry Kudlow

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Actress Sharon Stone says she’s disgusted by feminized modern men, and thus has turned to masculine women: “Now men act like women and it is difficult to have a relationship because I like men in that old-fashioned way. I like masculinity and, in truth, only women do that now.” Hmm. Perhaps that makes better sense in California.

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Hillary has been modifying her voice lately. A new TV spot on the economy in California. Soooothing and feminine. Much improved .

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