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Jim Taranto makes the point that Frank Rich cannot be expected to know any better if his only source for news is the NY Times.
… Frank Rich is an opinion columnist, and as such he is entitled to express the tendentious view that this out-of-context quote “was all you needed to take away from last week’s festivities in Washington.” But it’s embarrassing to the Times that its news judgment is in line with the politics of one of its shrillest columnists.
John Fund on Barry Manilow and health care coercion.
What is it about liberals that makes them want to avoid debates about their views? Take Oscar-winner Al Gore, who refused to allow Danish statistician Bjorn Lomborg to appear with him on the Oprah Winfrey Show to discuss global warming. Earlier, Mr. Gore backed out of a previously agreed joint discussion with Mr. Lomborg hosted by Denmark’s leading newspaper. Nor would Mr. Gore even allow Mr. Lomborg to appear on the same panel when both were called to testify before Congress this year.
Now Barry Manilow, a major Democratic fundraiser who is currently God’s gift to the Las Vegas lounge act, has cancelled a scheduled appearance to promote his new album on “The View,” the daytime chat show hosted by Barbara Walters. It appears that Mr. Manilow views conservative co-host Elisabeth Hasselbeck, a fervent supporter of the Iraq War, as “dangerous” and “offensive.” …
Richard Cohen takes Hillary to task for not repudiating the BetrayUs ad.
If there is a phrase more closely associated with both Hillary and Bill Clinton than “the politics of personal destruction,” it does not come to mind. All the others — “It’s the economy, stupid,” for instance — belong to one or the other, but “the politics of personal destruction” is a phrase both Clintons have used repeatedly — so much so, it seems, that for Hillary it has lost all meaning. When, for instance, Gen. David Petraeus was slimed as “General Betray Us,” Hillary Clinton looked the other way. This was the politics of personal expediency.
The swipe at Petraeus was contained in a full-page ad the anti-war group MoveOn.org recently placed in The New York Times. It charged that Petraeus was “cooking the books” about conditions in Iraq and cited statements of his that have turned out to be either (1) not true, (2) no longer true, (3) possibly not true, or (4) like everything else in Iraq, impossible to tell. Whatever the case, using “betray” — a word associated with treason — recalls the ugly McCarthy era when, for too many Republicans, dissent corresponded with disloyalty. MoveOn.org and the late senator from Wisconsin share a certain fondness for the low blow.
Almost instantly, though, it got pretty hard to find a Democratic presidential candidate willing to dispute MoveOn.org. To his credit, Joe Biden did. “I don’t buy into that,” he said. “This is an honorable guy. He’s telling the truth.” But lonesome Joe, whose virtues have yet to come to the attention of the vast and apathetic electorate, was seconded only by Joe Lieberman, not a presidential candidate, and John Kerry, a man whose tomorrow is yesterday. When Clinton was asked about the ad, she avoided answering. …
Jonah Goldberg reacts to Cohen.
Mark Steyn, in the Western Standard, on cultures that refuse to protect themselves.
… I wonder how long these pieties can endure. A recent study of terrorist suspects arrested in Britain between 2001 and 2005 revealed that one in four of them was admitted to the country as an asylum seeker. They included, for example, Muktar Said Ibrahim, one of the four men who attempted unsuccessfully to self-detonate on the London Tube two weeks after the July 7th slaughter. In other words, young men taken in and given sanctuary by Britain thank their hosts by trying to kill them. Will any changes be made to immigration procedures? Or will the British simply accept that a one-in-four terrorist/refugee ratio is simply part of the privilege of being a progressive social-democratic society? Just as we accept that allowing parts of Toronto to, in effect, assimilate with Kingston, Jamaica is the price we pay for being able to congratulate ourselves on our boundless, boundless tolerance.
Thomas Sowell touts a book on Iraq.
In a world where the tragedy that is Iraq is usually discussed only in media sound bites and political slogans, it is especially gratifying to see an adult, intelligent, and insightful account of life inside Iraq by someone who lived there for nine months in the early days of the occupation in 2003 and 2004, and who saw the fundamental mistakes that would later plague the attempt to create a viable Iraqi government.
John Agresto, a career American academic and former college president who volunteered to go help create a better higher education system in Iraq, learned a lot about Iraqi society in general and about American attempts to create a better society there.
His recently published book is titled “Mugged by Reality” and is subtitled: “The Liberation of Iraq and the Failure of Good Intentions.”
What is refreshingly different about this book is that it does not take the Bush administration line, the Congressional Democrats’ line or anybody else’s line. …
Theodore Dalrymple says the marxism of our time is Islam.
… All this suggests that Islam is fast becoming the Marxism of our times. Had Fritz G. and Daniel S. grown up a generation earlier, they would have become members of the Baader-Meinhof Gang rather than Islamic extremists. The dictatorship of the proletariat, it seems, has given way before the establishment of the Caliphate as the transcendent answer to some German youths’ personal angst.
This is good news indeed for Islamists, but not so good for the rest of us.
Speaking of marxism, LA Times Op-Ed explains why Pete Seeger’s obedience to Moscow’s line is still important.
… Eventually everyone — the remnants of the communist left included — took to ritualistically denouncing Soviet communism before joining whatever argument was going on later. But at the same time, those victimized by McCarthyism — in particular the Hollywood Ten and the rest of the show-business blacklistees — were elevated to heroic status. In the years that followed the 1947 HUAC hearings that led to their dismissal from the movie industry (for a 1st Amendment absolutist like me, a very bad idea), they have been celebrated in an endless series of books and tributes. As if by magic, the unapologetic defenders of a deadly doctrine have been transformed into martyrs to liberal belief — which none of them embraced in their day.
This is a massive, apparently unresolvable disconnect — and communism’s one lasting American triumph. Frankly, it makes the anti-communist left crazy. Mountains of new documents — notably the Venona transcripts, records of the cable traffic between Soviet spies and Moscow — prove beyond doubt the conspiratorial nature of American communism. But still its apologists stand beaming on the heroic heights, untouched by inconvenient scholarship, mere “dissidents” who paid an awful and unfair price for expressing their opinions.
One of these expressions of opinion was an obituary tribute to Stalin when he died in 1953, signed by 300 American communist intellectuals. It said, in part: “Glory to Stalin. Forever will his name be honored and beloved in all lands.” I don’t really want to defend to the death anyone’s right to that kind of insanity. Maybe we can afford to leave poor old Pete Seeger in peace — but not, I think, his co-religionists.
Karl Rove does a health care op-ed for WSJ.
… In short, the best health reform proposals will be those that recognize and build on the virtues of our market-based medical system. Sick people around the world come here because they can’t get quality care in their home countries. Many health-care professionals come here to practice, leaving behind well-meaning health-care systems where government is in charge, bureaucrats make the decisions, and where the patient doesn’t have the choice he or she does in the U.S.
Mrs. Clinton may think Americans want to trade freedom and innovation for the illusory security of government regulation and surrender control of their health decisions to government bureaucrats. My bet is 2008 will teach us something different if Republicans make health care a centerpiece issue.
Power Line suggests we perform due diligence when we hear quotes from long ago speeches.
… So, I urge you to be careful. When someone quotes a president, go back and read the whole speech. You may find that the president’s words have been hijacked, and attached to thoughts the great man never intended.
Presidential speeches are on the internet. It’s not too much of a chore, and you’ll maintain your political purity.
Paul Greenberg on politicians and the economy.
… But it’s not a waste of ambitious politicians’ efforts. They get to posture before the cameras and demand ACTION! — even if it’s precisely the wrong kind.
The pols may be wrong again and again, year after year, but think of the advantages. They’re able to strike while public anger is at its zenith, appease their louder and less thoughtful constituents, and they never have to say they’re sorry by the time gas prices fall and the public’s interest in the subject has waned. (Somehow they never get around to demanding a probe when gas prices go down.)
That’s the way it is with wild accusations; the facts may never catch up. Or if they do, the story is relegated to the business section. Ho hum.
The price of gasoline may rise and fall and rise again, like that of any other commodity, but the market for demagoguery remains remarkably stable.
Dilbert comments on the guy suing God.
… I sure hope it goes to trial. Imagine how interesting that would be. First, how do you select a jury of God’s peers? Compared to the Almighty, even Buddha is just a guy who should use the stairs more often. …