A Second Hand Conjecture

The impending collapse of the anti-Bush merchandise market spells doom for the national economy: “We need to develop totally new products for marginally politically active liberals to throw their money away on.”

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Caroline Glick via Ace of Spades
Caroline Glick is an astute observer of our political situation. She is based in Jerusalem.
“McCain’s strategic grasp of the requirements for a successful
presidential race provide an important lesson for policy-makers and
political leaders.”

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The title is what Time Magazine labeled New Jersey’s Senator William Warren Barbour in 1940. The expression takes on a better curve for Sarah Palin, but it fits the occasion of a very partisan and frankly rather phenomenal speech tonight (transcript).

I suppose I’m surprised by the surprise in so many media reactions I’m seeing. Then again it’s a reminder that we on the pro-Palin political right have been following Sarah for over a year now, and this sort of thing is still very much an introduction for others.

Michael Crowley for instance calls Palin’s speech “alarmingly strong” and describes emails from liberal colleagues as “panicked.” I think that’s probably an ungenerous assessment. There is afterall a reason so many on the left have been trying to destroy her these past few days. You saw it this evening. Sarah does have a certain magic. Even when she fumbles in a long speech as she can, it tends to amplify her humanity. A characteristic interestingly shared with Barack Obama and almost totally alien to wizened veterans.

The amplitude of the attention and the stress of the experince is of course very new for Sarah, but you’d never know it from looking at her tonight. I realized I’d become a little emotionally invested in this candidate over the course of the week, with its grotesque slander and innuendo campaigns in the press. When the Republican party in assembly gave her a near endless welcoming ovation I kept saying “don’t cry, don’t cry,” which was slightly sexist for Sarah and slightly for my own sad benefit.

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The movement of “ethnic studies” curricula from colleges to public schools, is something that troubles many of us who have experienced such classes in modern times. Ethnic studies programs are often called “multiculturalist,” but since they tend to be monoethnic and extremely political rather than cultural, I prefer the term “ethnostatism.”

In defense of the migration, the claim is often made that improving student self-esteem by submerging them in intensely ideological and highly sectarian programs, benefits overall student academic performance. For opponents the claim is a non sequitur, similar to excusing the political dimension of education in a fascist country, by claiming the students there had good math scores. Ideological indoctrination isn’t validated as worthwhile, even if it did help students do trigonometry somehow.

(more…)

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(photo: Chris Dunn)

John Bolton argues that the future of Russian imperialism in Eurasia rides on the outcome of the US presidential election. Unsurprisingly, he pitches McCain: “First reactions, before the campaigns’ pollsters and consultants get involved are always the best indicators…McCain at once grasped the larger, geostrategic significance of Russia’s attack.”

That’s evidently a sentiment shared by the American electorate.

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There’s a certain problem in that the folks who protest most vociferously about the Bush administration’s violations of free speech rights, also tend to support the direct government regulation of political speech. A disturbing poll suggests they may have the wind at their back, with 47% (a plurality) supporting federal regulation of political content on television and radio, with 31% (a minority), supporting the same for blogs. Needless to say, this is an abhorrent finding.

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Russian units are on the move again in Georgian territory, apparently in violation of the truce agreement. One Russian soldier in a large convoy shouted an ominous flirtation to a press photographer outside Gori, hopefully in jest or lust:

“Come with us, beauty, we’re going to Tbilisi.”
(AP)

A week in a Caucasian foxhole will make any soldier promise a pretty girl the world, but it’s certainly likely elements of the Russian military leadership wouldn’t mind actualizing his advance.

(more…)

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Kind of an interesting little chart. Is it conceivable that most of our political narratives are nonreflective of economic reality? Don’t answer that.

(Investor’s Business Daily)

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(photo: Serguei Kovalev)

Christopher Hitchens once said that the trouble with biographers of Thomas Jefferson, is that there appears to be the collective assumption on their part that the great man was without a penis. I’m reminded of this truth in reading about the very hot water Mr. Al Franken –the all-but-certain Democratic nominee for US Senate in Minnesota– has gotten himself into, over a satirical and sexually explicit essay he wrote for Playboy magazine in 2000. Hot water originating not only from GOP women, but also from within the Democratic Party.

The piece is without doubt salacious, even enormously kinky (naughty NSFW excerpts available here). But one could be forgiven the crime of commonsense in expecting that a writer tasked with composing anything for such a magazine on contract, would tend to produce something somewhat sexually suggestive if he wished to be paid. One might even go so far as to posit that writing something entitled “Porn-o-Rama,” for an unabashedly pornographic publication, isn’t all that shocking. I mention the title because in defiance of reason we are told by Liza Porteus Viana that the title itself (and neither the publisher nor the substance of the essay), is what is most politically objectionable here.

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A clerical ally of Huckabee is in trouble with the IRS for turning his tax-exempt church into a political platform. Now that seems like a “fair tax” no?

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At some point along the way Obama became the pragmatist’s choice. Hillary used to own that territory when concerns turned to electability, but that’s all over with now. Perception is as PoliticalBuzz puts it, “Obama is someone who can rally a broad base.” Combining the leftist base with the moderate infrastructure is always difficult. But this time both may be able to consolidate behind Obama. See Judith Gayle for a representative example of the shift that’s going on among progressives. However, the bearded, bereted, wannabe Cuban guerrilla, perhaps isn’t the best image to preach the message of electability.
(HT: Ben Weyl)

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Steven Taylor takes a look at Paul Kane’s conclusion that it is now mathematically impossible for either Obama or Clinton to win the nomination with pledged delegates, and notes that a super-delegate decided nominee represents an enormous political problem for the Democrats:

The party that has a legitimate gripe about the 2000 election and the fact that Al Gore won the popular vote cannot find themselves in a situation in which the nominee with less popularly-selected delegates is given the nomination by delegates who were not elected via the primary/caucus process.
(PoliBlog)

Not only is this a problem of political perception and party unity, it could conceivably jeopardize the unification of the two candidates on a single ticket. The candidate perceptions themselves of whether or not they’ve been swindled out of the top slot on the ticket could be significant. Given the nature of this race, it has become almost imperative that the loser is named the vice presidential nominee. But when we are dealing with two candidates who no longer seem particularly fond of each other to begin with, trouble may lie ahead by adding the dimension of a potential backroom convention deal.

Supplementally, Dr. Taylor also adds:

Also, at the end of the day, the DNC may very much come to regret taking the Michigan and Florida delegates out of the pool.
(PoliBlog)

Further evidence that the politics of exclusion always ends up punishing you in democracy.

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Carla Bruni, Nicholas Sarkozy’s bride, is upsetting the “traditional morality” of France. I was somewhat surprised to learn there was such a thing, but apparently it goes like this: men are permitted to be promiscuous and women are permitted to…stay at home. Seems fair, right? Well, promiscuous Carla (who describes her voracious libido as “predatory“) is trying to change that ruling orthodoxy. But like all forms of social and political reform in France, it’s apparently political suicide.

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This was a post better suited for yesterday and Fred’s withdrawal, but I suppose I let myself get distracted without posting it. It should go without saying that while I was unsurprised by the event, it was nevertheless disappointing. But not so much because we are now bereft of any reasonable alternative in the Republican field, but because it seems to confirm that registered Republicans by a large margin, are using unwelcome criteria to evaluate candidates. In fairness, that impression has been with me throughout Fred’s campaign, since I’d found myself to be fond of Thompson because of the reasons he failed to appeal to almost everyone else.

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Earlier in the day, you might have been wondering how much of your assets might melt away, as markets around the world gyrated with perceived increasingly negative news. Later, on political blogs everywhere, reports that Fred Thompson was ending a run for his party’s nomination.

Then, news that a young and successful actor had died, most likely from a drug overdose.

Usually my evenings are a strange brew of real estate work, reading blogs, playing or watching bridge online, editing photographs, and so forth. In the background, talking heads on the various political shows fill me in on what has happened during the day – occasionally inducing some mental error while I compete!

Tonight, I thought that a majority of these shows would be devoted to discussing the future for Republicans now that Fred was dropping out.

Wrong!

Oh, yes; Thompson got some time. But – just as on the Internet (Fred; 174 hits; Heath Ledger, over 1,800) – almost all the focus was the death of Ledger.

Please do not misunderstand me. The death of a vibrant young person is a terrible tragedy. I myself have faced the illness of addiction in my own family, and words can barely express the pain and the awful outcomes that it can produce.

Still. On political cable channels, would one expect hour upon hour of focus about a movie star, rather than on the people who will soon lead our country? I would not – but – once again, I prove myself to be a poor prognosticator of what might occur.

Back to the politics. Fred wasn’t “my guy” (Rudy was and is). Yet, Thompson would have been “my guy” had he gotten the nomination. Smart, humble, straightforward, intelligent … I particularly loved when he stood up to that ridiculous interviewer in Iowa, who wanted him to state in one or two words what he thought about some of the most important issues facing us. He wouldn’t do it. If Fred couldn’t have the opportunity to really explain his viewpoint – at least 30 or 45 seconds! – well then, he would not play along.

I wish we had more like him.

And, as long as I am wishing, I wish that whoever does get the nod to be our next president might have some insight about addiction. The War on Drugs and “Just Say No” have been sad failures. I don’t know the answers. I only hope that others may have a glimmer of a solution.

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Michael Goldfarb thinks that the unexpected Hillary win in Nevada despite the Culinary Workers Union endorsement of Obama, could represent the beginning of a substantial diminution in union political power: “If they can’t even affect the votes of their members when those members must vote in public, in front of their colleagues, and under the watchful eye of management, what kind of premium are candidates likely to put on union endorsements in the future?”

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