Immigration Irrationalities - in Australia

Richard Fernandez (Wretchard) was an immigrant to Australia from the Philippines. The U.S. isn't the only country with an illegal immigrant problem:

‘Just how broken a bureaucracy is,’ someone told me once, ‘can be gauged from how quickly can they take a trivial problem and turn it into an intractable one.’ Walk up to an agency with a cure for cancer and they will throw every obstacle in your path because they don’t have enough bureaucrats trained to regulate the new technology. So when the Australian Labor government was criticized for letting in too many undesirable migrants from the Middle East the predictable result was the denial of asylum to two Egyptians seeking to avoid a fatwa for converting to Christianity. It all makes sense in a twisted kind of way.


. . . “Asylum seeking” is Australia’s equivalent of the Arizona border problem. It’s the Third Rail of Australian politics. Sixty four percent [1] of Australians want asylum seekers arriving by boat to be returned and made to apply through normal channels. Even ethnic leaders [2] want the maritime human trafficking problem stopped. . .

So, converts to Christianity in Egypt facing fatwas are "not persecuted enough" to enter Australia, but militant extremist gang members enter easily.

Read the whole thing.

The political elites in both countries need a steady supply of hyphenated populations to provide sinecures for an army of activists, special pleaders and assorted faddists. What would they do with normal people? Messy multiculturalism a vast outdoor system of relief for the country classes. Hanson writes:

Take away a half-million person influx of illegal aliens of the Hispanic underclass, or take away a permanent group of largely Spanish-speaking, largely poor, and largely undereducated Mexican nationals, and within 30 years the vast majority of Mexican-Americans will assimilate in the pattern of other contemporary minority groups — and, in terms of education and compensation, achieve rough parity. Unfortunately, that would also mean that the argument for a Chicano-Latino Studies program (rather than, say, an Irish Studies program), for the self-identified Chicano journalist, or for any activist who sees his Hispanic heritage as essential rather than as incidental to his persona simply disappears. (We do not have a National Council of Das Volk; nor a self-identified “wise Greek” on the Supreme Court.)


In short, without the arrival of the illegal alien in massive numbers without education, capital, legality and English, the Hispanic activists and cultural elite have no reason to be, since soon there would be no disparity that can be blamed on oppression or racism — and thus no need for self-appointed collective representation. La Raza would have no raza when a Hilda Lopez marries Larry Smith and their daughter Linda Lopez Smith marries Billy Otomo and so on.

The double affliction under which Maher El-Gohary labors is he can’t be admitted because the voters are angry at the people who fatwa’d him — and he’s too ordinary. He doesn’t need special multicultural agencies to pander to him, a special Islamic council to speak for him; a police task force to monitor him or ethnic politicians to run in his name. A hard working, law abiding immigrant is bad news all around. . . .

Democrats want to legalize intimidation by union goons

 By taking away the right of workers to vote by secret ballot on organizing unions.   They want power concentrated in union leadership rather than in the membership.

Totalitarianism is tempting. Especially when implemented for "compassionate" reasons.

Chelsea Clinton's Wedding and "Social Justice"

Glenn Reynolds:

THE PARTY OF THE LITTLE GUY: Chelsea Clinton’s $2M Wedding. “The rehearsal dinner is reportedly taking place at the nearby Grasmere, a 525-acre estate boasting a Federal-period manor house with formal gardens, stucco guest cottages and a large stone barn complex. Another area manse rumored to be serving the family over the weekend will be Glenburn, where the Clintons are said to be staying over the weekend. Glenburn is the Rhinebeck home of Eric and Andrea Colombel. Andrea Colombel is the daughter of billionaire financier and longtime Clinton supporter George Soros.”

Victor Davis Hanson:

One requisite to being a cultural elite, unfortunately, is a certain allegiance to untruth, to saying one thing and doing another. . .


In short, money, privilege, and status create in the cultural elite both a fear of mixing it up with others that might jeopardize position and placement, and yet guilt for that very sense of entitlement and exemption. All that, in turn, only heightens the shrill and sanctimonious rhetorical demands on less blessed others to prove their morality.

But then again, Chelsea DID look lovely in the dress, with her hair back. Happy Family.

History: Where Chelsea was married.

Mom is apparently out of money now.

Why kids are not taught the Declaration of Independence

There is now considerable hostility to teaching the Declaration of Independence in schools. We are losing our history. There are historical precedents for the ideological struggles over the nature of our government which are occurring today.

Scott Johnson:

Reading the scholarly work of Woodrow Wilson is an educational experience. It is shocking to read the expressions of his disaffection for the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States. As R.J. Pestritto has demonstrated, the intellectual roots of modern liberalism lie in an assault on the ideas of natural rights and limited government. . . .  

. . .  Obama perfectly reflected Wilson's views in his 2001 comments on the civil rights movement and the Supreme Court. In the course of the famous radio interview Obama gave to WBEZ in Chicago, Obama observed that the Warren Court had not broken "free from the essential constraints that were placed by the Founding Fathers in the Constitution, at least as it's been interpreted, and the Warren Court interpreted in the same way, that generally the Constitution is a charter of negative liberties." To achieve "redistributive change," the limitations of the Constitution would have to be overcome by the Court or by Congress.


Franklin Roosevelt touted welfare state liberalism in the "second Bill of Rights" . . .


Implicitly arguing that the teaching of the Declaration had become obsolete, Roosevelt asserted: "In our day these economic truths have become accepted as self-evident. . . .


Abraham Lincoln's argument with Stephen Douglas also came down to a disagreement over the Declaration of Independence. . .


The economic "rights" asserted by Roosevelt in his second Bill of Rights differ and conflict with the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. They are claims on the liberty of others. If I have a right to medical care, you must have a corresponding duty to supply it. If I have a right to a decent home, you must have a duty to provide it.


The argument for the welfare state belongs in the same family as "the arguments that kings have made for enslaving the people in all ages of the world. You will find that all the arguments in favor of king-craft were of this class; they always bestrode the necks of the people, not that they wanted to do it, but because the people were better off for being ridden." That's Lincoln again.


Lincoln memorably derided the underlying principle as "the same old serpent that says you work and I eat, you toil and I will enjoy the fruits of it."

Read the whole thing. Johnson also links further reading both pro and con concerning modern liberalism, or "progressivism", starting with George Will's excellent article on William Voegeli's new book.

Bill Whittle on helping the Declaration of Independence live again

Related:

The Timeless Magna Carta

Turning the liberalism of JFK on its head

Independence Day Oration by Frederick Douglass

Why American Liberty worked: Strong Women and Local Government

Censorship in France and America

Andrew Klavan talks about censorship of his new book in France, then comments:

The book’s French cancellation is, I realize, a rather small cultural event. Yet it gives specific color to the recent revelations on the Daily Caller website that left-wing journalists conspired to suppress scandals that might harm Barack Obama and to the brouhaha over Breitbart’s online release of a video that resulted in a government worker’s momentarily losing her job. In both stories, one thing leaps out at me: everywhere, the Left favors fewer voices and less information, and conservatives favor more. Everywhere, the Left seeks to disappear its opposition, whereas the Right is willing to meet them head-on.

Take the e-mails that the Daily Caller obtained from the now-defunct lefty Web service Journolist. Never mind the personal or psychological implications of a radio producer who lovingly imagines Rush Limbaugh’s death or a law professor who doesn’t know that the FCC has no power to deprive Fox News of a license or a reporter who wants to smear Fred Barnes and other right-wing commentators as racist in order to distract the public from the hateful radicalism of Jeremiah Wright, then Obama’s pastor. The point is not these people’s animus or ignorance or wickedness. The point is that what they desired was not victory in open debate but silence—the silence of censorship, intimidation, or the grave.

When has Rush Limbaugh ever wished a liberal’s mouth closed forever? Really, who can deny that Rush would happily argue a point with absolutely anyone anywhere? When has Fox News ever done anything to its rival cable stations but trounce them in a free competition for ratings? When has Fred Barnes ever tried to bully or intimidate someone into shutting up?

And what about Breitbart? Did he, like many a daily journalist before him, momentarily put speed over full context in releasing an NAACP video? Perhaps. But Breitbart is the grassroots nemesis of vast media conglomerates that continually and purposefully ignore, suppress, and distort information unfriendly to their ideology: release and disclosure are his reasons for being. Breitbart routinely breaks important stories that the mainstream media won’t touch. “I don’t even know about it,” chuckled ABC News’s Charlie Gibson well after Breitbart revealed corruption at the left-wing activist organization Acorn. “I just didn’t know about it,” said Bob Schieffer of CBS after Breitbart and others had been hammering at possible wrongdoing at the Justice Department in a botched case against New Black Panther thugs. And I guess the networks just didn’t know when Breitbart decisively disproved allegations that Tea Partiers hurled racist insults at lawmakers—because they continued to spread the discredited smear.

Old-media pooh-bahs like former ABC anchor Ted Koppel lament the “good old days,” when three government-licensed networks served as gatekeepers to what the public could and couldn’t know. Breitbart, meanwhile, exhorts crowds of citizens to shoot videos and gather information, telling them, “You are the media now!” Breitbart only wants more information, while the left-wing media too often operate through obscurantism and suppression.

Read the whole thing.

Presidential Priorities: Going on "The View"

Captain Ed presents a relevant cartoon by the great Michael Ramirez.

Shelby Steele sounds more and more perceptive all the time:

The president always knew that his greatest appeal was not as a leader but as a cultural symbol.

And

Well, suppose you were the first black president of the United States and, therefore, also the first black head-of-state in the entire history of Western Civilization. You represent a human first, something entirely new under the sun. There aren't even any myths that speak directly to your circumstance, no allegorical tales of ancient black kings who ruled over white kingdoms.


If anything, you may literally experience yourself as a myth in the making. . . .


Does this special burden explain Barack Obama's embrace of scale as vision (if I don't know what to do, I'll do big things)? I think it does to a degree. It means, for example, that a caretaker presidency is not an option for him. . . .

Which is why this music video parody resonates with people.  Even many on the Left.

And it's why people comment like this on Obama's vacations and golf outings.  If "scale as vision" is your mission, you need time to think.  Let other people worry about solving today's problems.

Unrealistic Expectations in Childhood

Dennis Prager frequently says that expectations, especially unrealistic expectations, are one of the greatest sources of unhappiness in our lives, John Rosemond gets specific about one unrealistic expectation which is now drummed into children by those who care about them:

My parents never told me I could be whatever I wanted to be. They told me what all parents should tell all children: I was blessed with a finite set of strengths. It was primarily my responsibility to discover what they were, develop them, and use them for the benefit of my fellow citizens. (I'd rather do this parenting thing than be King of England anyway.) . . .

Today, this "you can be anything you want to be" hooey has become ubiquitous. Enlightened parents seem to believe telling children fictions of this sort is one of the obligations of a truly caring parent. As a consequence of this lack of guidance and leadership, increasing numbers of young people in their late 20s still haven't discovered their Inner Wannabe.

I meet lots of young adults who seem to have no clue concerning what it takes to truly accomplish something of value in this life. . .

A friend recently told me of a young relative of hers who was, during her childhood, treated like "a really big fish in a little pond." She is now a "panicked, confused, college freshman."

This young woman has been told all along that she can do and be anything she wants to do and be. In college, without her parents helping her make straight A's, she is discovering that she isn't as capable a student as she's been led to believe. "She's devastated," writes my friend.

How sad, and sadder still for the fact that this young woman's devastation can be largely credited to parents who obviously never considered the old saying to the effect that good intentions pave the road to Perdition.

Some balance and honesty in encouraging children to strive for excellence, without expecting it, would help lots of kids to be happier.  And parents who expect kids to fulfill the dreams of the parent can be just as damaging as those who tell kids they can be anything they want.

Balance.

Why aren't Western Scholars interested in Soviet history? - Part III

Further to this post about the shocking lack of interest in documents from the Soviet era among Western scholars, and this one about an author who did tackle some of the Soviet archives, over opposition from the Western establishment:

A video concerning various murderous socialist systems. The murders in Ukraine started with Lenin, but got much worse during Stalin's reign. Gives you a terrible glimpse of the atrocities covered up by Walter Duranty, writing for the New York Times.   Due to his prestige, he was able to counter the true reports by other journalists.  And he received a Pulitzer Prize for his massive lies. The New York Times continues to refuse to relinquish the prize.

Observation from the video: Both the Soviet and Nazi ideologies and programs had as a goal the evolution of "the new man". Nazi ideology was based on false biology, Soviet ideology on false sociology.

An idea whose time has come: Victims of Communism Day

The Postmodern Cultural Elite

In a piece which echoes s few of the ideas here, VDH identifies what he thinks are characteristics of the "New Aristocracy" of our day:

This ad hoc meditation on cultural elitism was all prompted last week by listening to a poor white tree-trimmer lecture me on the various merits of his three different chain saws, while I was talking on the cell phone with a nasal-voiced, snotty Washington reporter — out here south of Fresno — but, in minutes, to be on the way to work at the antipode at Stanford. . .

The five characteristics he identified:

1) Truth

One requisite to being a cultural elite, unfortunately, is a certain allegiance to untruth, to saying one thing and doing another. . .

In short, money, privilege, and status create in the cultural elite both a fear of mixing it up with others that might jeopardize position and placement, and yet guilt for that very sense of entitlement and exemption. All that, in turn, only heightens the shrill and sanctimonious rhetorical demands on less blessed others to prove their morality.

Barack Obama was a genius in recognizing all this, and at a very early age no less. The subtext of Dreams from My Father, and indeed Obama’s life from 18 to 45, was to allay elite fears, guilt, and suspicions. . . .

2) Nature

The cultural elite class tends to romanticize nature, since it has little contact with it. Energy Secretary Steven Chu cheaply announces that California farms will dry up and blow away, with no clue how the tomatoes in his salad or the lamb chops on his plate are grown, cleaned, shipped — and land in his mouth. . . .

3) Muscularity

An elite is often characterized as staying fit entirely by the workout, the gym, the jog — never by chain sawing, digging, climbing, or hammering. Yet here too arises contradiction. The elite, being largely progressive, champion the muscular classes to the degree they can stay distant from them. . .

4) Gender

. . . Why can’t any of our actors talk like a Humphrey Bogart, Glenn Ford, Lee Marvin, Henry Fonda, James Stewart, Bill Holden, or Gregory Peck? I’m not asking for Jack Palance or Fess Parker, just a normal male mainstream voice. I know there are Al Pacinos and Robert De Niros, but they too seem to fade before the new wave of DiCaprios. Elites talk (and probably sound) like the freedmen in Petronius’s Satyricon

5) Logic There is little logic among the cultural elite, maybe because there is little omnipresent fear of job losses or the absence of money, and so arises a rather comfortable margin to indulge in nonsense. The idea that taxes cause scarcity, and subsidy abundance is a foreign concept. The notion that entitlements create dependency is considered Neanderthal. . . In other words, take a deep breath and imagine the opposite of everything you know by experience to be true, and you have mostly the worldview of the sheltered cultural elite, who navigate in rather protected channels and not in the open seas of the real world.

In the Grand Opera's Basement

Wretchard on the changing nature of the news media. The intrepid Michael Totten has joined Pajamas Media.

Wretchard again, on Journolist and the NAACP kerfuffle:

The public policy arena can be compared to a grand opera house, whose foundations were laid in turmoil, and which despite the magnificence of the Grand Staircase and Grand Foyer is reputed to contain numerous secret passages and dank cellars. Two of the chambers marked “do not enter” are the Hall of Race and the Chamber of Journalistic Collusion respectively. This week the patrons of the opera, unsettled by the changing times, have taken a turning into these dark chambers. Now they’re there what is going to happen next?

JournoList Race-Baiters Thread

When Breitbart warned the Media Matters folks on July 19 to get ready for July 20, I think he had been tipped off to the Daily Caller's story concerning JournoList and plans to squash news about Reverend Wright. Lots of scrambling for explanations is going on. I've started a thread to try to sort things out.

But to backtrack, revelations about the JournoList had already done some damage to the Left. June 25 - Dave Weigel: Someone on Journolist had apparently "outed" Dave Weigel, who had been hired by the Washington Post to cover the "conservative movement" as a hater of conservatives. He had once worked for the libertarian magazine, Reason, which the Post apparently thought would give him an "in" at conservative events. Editor of Daily Caller has questions for the Washington Post, others.

Weigel resigned from the Washington Post on July 24 and was hired by Slate, which is owned by the Washinton Post, on July 27. The next day he "confessed" in a guest-post on the conservative/libertarian Andrew Breitbart site, Big Government, concerning "the Washington Post, the D.C. Bubble and JournoList". Bonus Austin Powers "Dr. Evil" reference.   Question: Is "Snark" a specialty of "The Millenials"? "Starry-eyed they’re not."

JULY 22: An op-ed that appeared Wednesday at Investor’s Business Daily dubs the JournoList “The Smoking Gun For Media Bias:”

The point is, this is America’s “mainstream” media, supposedly. Except it’s not. It’s in fact a support wing for one party and one vision for America. And as with the rest of the progressive movement, it’s concerned not with the truth, but with power.

And that was written before this morning’s JournoList document drop du jour from Jonathan Strong of the Daily Caller, who writes, “When McCain picked Palin, liberal journalists coordinated the best line of attack:”

MORE: "Despite its name, membership in the liberal online community Journolist wasn’t limited to journalists. Present among the bloggers, reporters and editors were a number of professional political operatives, including top White House economic advisors, key Obama political appointees, and Democratic campaign veterans. Some left government to join Journolist. Others took the opposite route. A few contributed to Journolist from their perches in politics. At times, it became difficult to tell who was supposed to be covering policy and who was trying to make it."

. . . “Calling all Journos,” Bernstein wrote in a message relayed by Klein. “I thought we got too little love from progressive types re our tax changes targeted at businesses with overseas operations. We’re maybe going for another bite at the apple this Monday,” he wrote. Bernstein invited members of the list to join him on a conference call on the issue a few days later.

Not everyone was sold. A couple of members on the list, including Greg Anrig of the Century Foundation and Bloomberg’s Ryan Donmoyer, panned the administration’s plan to crack down on offshore tax havens as a misleading political stunt.

Dean Baker, at the time a blogger at the American Prospect, agreed the policy was dishonest, but defended it anyway. “Sure, some of the things they are saying are not true (the jobs story first and foremost),” he wrote, “but the industry groups have this town blanketed with lobbyists and own a large portion of Congress outright. … There has to be some counterforce to the industry groups and that is the populist rabble. It might not be pretty, but that’s Washington.” . . Yglesias took some pains to couch his advocacy in the language of journalism. Jeff Hauser, a professional political operative, didn’t bother. During key moments in the presidential campaign, Hauser dropped the pretense entirely, becoming nakedly political. . .

. . . Journolist’s greatest challenge is to make sure an actual win by Obama translates into winning the battle for political impact.

In the conversation that followed Hauser’s post, not one Journolister expressed surprise or disapproval. No one rebuked Hauser for telling journalists how to carry water for a politician. Despite the group’s supposedly “very strict” ban on political operatives and explicit partisan coordination, Hauser remained a member of Journolist for almost two more years.

Breitbart vs. NAACP thread

The NAACP got Andrew Breitbart's dander up with the way they smeared the Tea Party organization as racist. I have never seen as much misinformation over a short-term issue as I've seen on this one.  I've decided to start a thread so I can add information as the dust clears.

EARLY DEVELOPMENTS

July 22: Soros-funded Media Matters publishes a timeline which is picked up by Huffington Post, with the ridiculous claim that the timeline shows collusion between "right wing" bloggers and Fox News, rather than bloggers reading each other's posts. They accuse The Anchoress of participating in the "disturbing coordination" WHEN SHE EXPRESSES DISSATISFACTION WITH THE PLACE THE BREITBART VIDEO CLIP ENDED.  Maybe they were upset that she was the only popular blogger or media person to point this out before Sherrod was forced to resign. That's where I first saw the story mentioned, so maybe I'm part of the "disturbing coordination" too.  The "disturbing coordination" amounted to FOUR BLOGGERS picking up the story before CBS News, and FIVE BLOGGERS before Drudge. And this was after Breitbart had threatened to release evidence of racism at an NAACP event, which would be expected to clue bloggers and others in the media to be watching his site.  Pretty lame "coordination", if you ask me.   Especially compared to the irresponsible spread of the lies about Tea Party racisms  by the mainstream media back in March.    Read about the McClatchy timeline, immediately "amplified" by the New York Times and many others in the mainstream media, and watch the video.   Breitbart has since released additional videos countering the reports by the CBC members. He increased his reward for proof of racial epithets to $100,000 but has had no takers, despite all the recording devices at the scene.

 Note that the fake hate crimes were repeatedly reported as if they were true in the New York Times as late as FOUR MONTHS after initial reports had been contested with a reward for evidence supporting the story. And it was AUGUST before the Paper of Record published a lame, face-saving "correction" indicating that there was no evidence that epithets reported by members of the CBC came from members of the Tea Party.  In contrast, every "conspirator" named in the Media Matters timeline above, including Breitbart,  IMMEDIATELY issued corrections once the full Sherrod video was released, and several apologized to Ms. Sherrod.

Media Matters must really be feeling sensitive about the Journolist scandal, in which liberal journalists and "opinion leaders" were shown to have shared ideas about how to shape the news. For example, one journalists suggested that they could kill coverage of the Reverend Wright issue by picking a conservative - any conservative - and calling him a racist.

I think Media Matters also misrepresented the 1:40 notation concerning Fox Nation on their timeline, as later reports indicated that Sherrod's name had never been mentioned on air before she resigned. Additionally, early reports by Fox (including an internet post) stated that Fox was "seeking comment".  Which is more than the USDA and the White House did.

Interesting that the Breitbart report didn't hit the big-time breaker-of-news, Drudge, for FIVE FULL  HOURS. Breitbart used to work for Drudge. That story really spread "like wildfire", alright. The tape first aired on Fox News AFTER Sherrod resigned.  Seems to me that the USDA and White House were the ones who acted like Sherrod was "on fire".  I don't think they expected "push-back" from her.

BREITBART VS. NAACP ON TV

Chris Matthews defends Breitbart - then sends program down the memory hole. Fascinating. Chris Matthews Vs. Howard Dean.

Well, there you go. [Quoting Ms. Sherrod] “I opened my eyes. I realized it wasn’t about black and white. It was, but it was about other things, about poverty.” So, Joan, that part, that part in there about redemptive revelation was actually in the initial tape.

You can judge for yourself if Joan Walsh is misrepresenting the "scare tactics" she says the right are using. Breitbart's original post, before the full tape was located and released:

In the first video, Sherrod describes how she racially discriminates against a white farmer. She describes how she is torn over how much she will choose to help him. And, she admits that she doesn’t do everything she can for him, because he is white. Eventually, her basic humanity informs that this white man is poor and needs help. But she decides that he should get help from “one of his own kind”. She refers him to a white lawyer.

Sherrod’s racist tale is received by the NAACP audience with nodding approval and murmurs of recognition and agreement. Hardly the behavior of the group now holding itself up as the supreme judge of another groups’ racial tolerance.

August 3:  Breitbart decides to sue MSNBC.  Heh.

Speaking of Howard Dean, the liberal attack machine which pushed the story that Sherrod was fired because of Fox News coverage seems to have lead Dean into heaping false charges upon Fox News, and getting caught with his facts down.   So embarrassing.  Scroll down to watch the whole clip, in which he also jokingly compares Glenn Beck to the murderous regime in Iran.   (This is typical of HATERS on the Left. Have you ever heard a Republican official say anything this divisive about, say, Keith Olberman?)

But then again, maybe Dean wasn't misled in his comments about Fox. I say this because he repeated his mischaracterizations  after being corrected. He seems to be good at making charges of racism against people and organizations "out of context". Doesn't he have the responsibility to check his facts before making malicious claims like this?

Oveer at MSNBC, Rachel Maddow, who bears false witness on national TV against more people  than any woman I can think of, made news in Australia on July 22 for her paranoid belief that Fox News got Shirley Sherrod fired before mentioning her on air. Maddow used three clips of Fox News reports which aired AFTER SHERROD HAD BEEN FIRED to prove that Fox News was to blame for her firing. Because no such pieces had aired before she was fired.

By the way, Maddow also falsely suggests that there was nothing to the ACORN tapes shown on one of Breitbart's sites because James O'Keefe did not wear his grandmother's fur "pimp coat" into the ACORN offices (only in the introductory bits on his videos), and because the tapes were edited.  But there is no way he could have faked the efforts of the ACORN volunteers to help them set up a brothel, give advice on managing underage prostitutes from El Salvador, and evade taxes. Prosecutors couldn't find a cause for legal action against some of the workers, I guess.  But ACORN had been getting away with illegal activities FOR YEARS at taxpayer expense, because of their friends in government.  Embezzlement, voter fraud, etc.  And there was a black whistleblower within the organization, too.  ACORN lost much of its government funding as people started to look into its other activities as a result of the tapes.

Here, she helps David Letterman get even more facts wrong.  The typical arrogant bigotry of today's American Left is demonstrated by their belief that they know the motives of the people they are discussing.  And her agreement with Letterman's exaggerated, false summary is completely irresponsible for someone in her position, who reports the "news" during her program.

Watch him go on about getting the facts right, while getting them completely wrong. It isn't about facts at all with these people, it's about the narrative.

More on the decline of David Letterman:

Whatever was left of Dave’s edgy sense of irony died while engaging in a serious discussion about the ethics of journalism with… Rachel Maddow… of…. MSNBC…

Signs of change: Anderson Cooper Says He Was Wrong to Let Shirley Sherrod Smear of Andrew Breitbart Go Unchallenged.  "Well, at least his learned his lesson, as have many. It was a teachable moment on race, I guess, just like the President wanted. . . ." Follow the link from Instapundit above to learn more about Shirley Sherrod's appearances on CNN.

Now we go back to Fox and the sometimes-dramatic  and sometimes odd Glenn Beck, who stated that Sherrod had been treated unfairly after she was fired.  After Sherrod was offered her job back, Beck did a Howard Stern-type bit (minus the obscene language) on Keith Olberman's imcomparable dramatic comparison of Sherrod's ordeal to being imprisoned on Devil's Island. Olbermann:

”Shirley Sherrod has been to her own Devil’s Island thanks to the perpetual fraud machine that is FOX News and the scum that is the assassin Breitbart.”

As one commenter to another piece noted, Breitbart didn't get Shirley Sherrod fired. The hyper-vigilant atmosphere produced by unsupported charges of racism from the Left got Sherley Sherrod fired. Along with the actions of her employers, who, if they were in the private sector, would be facing a big lawsuit for the way they handled this.

July 31: Andrew Breitbart at Uni-Tea - speech presenting his story. Whole speech, PJTV. Part 1 - Need for unity vs. design to divide - "tainting the Tea Party as racist" as a political strategy. Part 2 - How watching the Clarence Thomas hearings changed his political views. Part 3 - Congressional Black Caucus makes false charges of racism. Part 4: Rebellion against the stifling of dissent and continued collusion of mainstream liberal media with politicians.

BLACK FARM WORKERS VS. CHARLES AND SHIRLEY SHERROD

Unexpected Black vs. Black fallout - Monday, Aug 2: Ron Wilkins, a former organizer in the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. In 1974, under an assumed name, hired-on at New Communities Inc. The Emergency Land Fund, an Atlanta-based black land retention organization, which shared oversight responsibility for NCI’s progress, wanted to know the basis for NCI’s continued poor performance. He reports that the Sherrods exploited and mistreated black workers, including children, at New Communities, Inc. He was fired after organizing a union action.

This would be an explosive accusation to make if it weren't true, especially since Shirley Sherrod has already promised to sue Breitbart for defamation. But there also seems to have been a lot of in-fighting in the leadership of these various black activist groups, so it's prudent to take that into consideration in weighing the veracity of this story.  August 3:  Glenn Reynolds notes that the quality of information in CounterPunch is "not especially reliable". Wretchard, July 21:

The public policy arena can be compared to a grand opera house, whose foundations were laid in turmoil, and which despite the magnificence of the Grand Staircase and Grand Foyer is reputed to contain numerous secret passages and dank cellars. Two of the chambers marked “do not enter” are the Hall of Race and the Chamber of Journalistic Collusion respectively. This week the patrons of the opera, unsettled by the changing times, have taken a turning into these dark chambers. Now they’re there, what is going to happen next?

August 5: Zombie finds an old union publication which confirms the story that the Sherrods exploited and mistreated blacks on the neo-Marxist commune they ran - land held in their names. So, why were the Sherrods the big winners in their Pigford lawsuit, instead of the people who made 67 cents an hour working for them?  Her participation in exploiting black people under slave-like conditions puts her charges that Andrew Breitbart wants to see blacks back in slavery and that those who protested the takeover of health care by the federal government are racists in a different light.

From the comments: 

As the well-known legal scholar, Friedrich Nietzsche once wrote, “And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.”

What happened to Obama the Uniter?

This speech prompted conservative commentator Mark Steyn to say, with reference to Mr. Obama's future,  that "the Republicans are in trouble".  Review this video from 12:50 to 14:20 for a taste of the rhetoric which really set Barak Obama's course toward the presidency.  What happened to THAT Barak Obama? Wasn't voting for Obama supposed to reduce the issues that divide us?

Stephen Green has some thoughts about Obama's current problems in his own party:

If you haven’t read today’s Wall Street Journal column by Senator James Webb (D-VA), you owe it to yourself. The key line is this one, where Webb argues that our “present-day diversity programs work against that notion, having expanded so far beyond their original purpose that they now favor anyone who does not happen to be white.”

What makes it key is: Why now? Why write this column today? What brought this particular issue out at this particular moment?

These questions are important, because Webb’s column is a virtual declaration of war on President Obama — at a time when Obama’s head must be already spinning after two weeks of racial strife from the NAACP and Andrew Breitbart. And a “recovery summer” that’s anything but. . .
. . . what Obama really ought to fear is losing his own party — because Webb’s column is just the most recent sign. . . 

And about the reasons for those problems:

Candidate Barack Obama ran as a moderate. He promised a “net spending cut.” Health reform was not, we were assured, intended to take over the insurance industry or feature an individual mandate. Taxes would go down for anyone making under $250,000 a year. “Too big to fail” was to be a thing of the past. Our nation was to become post-racial by the long-awaited election of a black man to the White House. And so it goes.

Instead, we got… more of everything. Taxes, spending, regulating, mandates, racial division — the entire liberal waterworks turned up to the max and pretty much all at once.

And moderate Democrats — genuinely moderate Democrats — like Messrs Bayh, Conrad, Nelson and Webb must be horrified. The candidate from 2008 who ran on the notion of returning us to Clinton-era surpluses has instead repudiated every policy and notion that made them possible. . .

Read the whole thing. Calling Candidate Obama  "moderate" may surprise some liberals who remember positions presented in venues dominated by the party faithful.  But the Barak Obama of the presidential debates DID present quite moderate positions which led to support even from some individuals in the conservative elite.

And remember that the current alarm over the "shock and awe statism" of this administration is not all the President's fault. He has turned a lot of policy decisions over to the Pelosi-Reid  Congress.  Other thoughts on the dissolution of the dream here.

And a new piece by Wretchard with some history concerning the Napoleonic Wars which may be relevant to the current tensions between congressional Democrats, conservatives, libertarians and President Obama.

"Think Progress" Presents Fraudulent "Tea Party Racists"

Well, Progressives are really desperate to portray the Tea Party movement as racist. Think Progress has prepared a video portraying several fraudulent examples of racism at Tea Party events. Bob Owens:

“A lie does not consist in the indirect position of words, but in the desire and intention, by false speaking, to deceive and injure your neighbour.”

--Jonathan Swift

The liar who prepared the video interned at the similarly untrustworthy Media Matters, one of the many Progressive organizations in America funded by George Soros.

I wonder why Progressives are not embarrassed to have their "message to America" delivered largely by a hedge fund high-roller who has, in the past, destroyed the currencies of Asian nations and the pensions of British widows?

Quote of the Day

P.J. O'Rourke:

Everybody wants to save the earth; nobody wants to help Mom do the dishes.

America's Ruling Class -- and the Perils of Revolution

Update: I typically highlight ideas I find valuable in this blog, more than I add a lot of original content. Sometimes I am reminded how pedestrian my writing here is. Like when I write about a piece I have read and then find that Wretchard has also written about it.

Janet Daley of the UK Telegraph and Angelo de Codavilla of Boston University, in what will be a landmark essay, argue that overt class struggle has come to America. Not the classic Marxist class struggle in which the wretched of the earth arise to break their chains. Rather the reverse, one in which the Masters of the Universe impose their unutterable vision upon the benighted masses. . .

Read the whole thing.

Here, Wretchard discusses some partial dissents and further thoughts from Codevilla's piece, by Ross Douthat and Jay Cost. Fascinating ideas.

Following are some ideas from Codevilla's piece which stood out to me:

"Never has there been so little diversity within America’s upper crust."

Follow the link to a rather deep piece which attempts to identify characteristics of America's "bipartisan" ruling class, gives a little history of how it came to be our ruling class, and how it differs from the ruling classes in other countries, like, say, France. It also attempts to explain much of the conflict now occurring in America.

This piece is fairly long and complex for a magazine article in 2010, when we're impatient with thoughts which require more than a soundbite. You may want to read it more than once before forming your own thoughts on the issues raised. It begins:

As over-leveraged investment houses began to fail in September 2008, the leaders of the Republican and Democratic parties, of major corporations, and opinion leaders stretching from the National Review magazine (and the Wall Street Journal) on the right to the Nation magazine on the left, agreed that spending some $700 billion to buy the investors' "toxic assets" was the only alternative to the U.S. economy's "systemic collapse." In this, President George W. Bush and his would-be Republican successor John McCain agreed with the Democratic candidate, Barack Obama. Many, if not most, people around them also agreed upon the eventual commitment of some 10 trillion nonexistent dollars in ways unprecedented in America. They explained neither the difference between the assets' nominal and real values, nor precisely why letting the market find the latter would collapse America. The public objected immediately, by margins of three or four to one.

When this majority discovered that virtually no one in a position of power in either party or with a national voice would take their objections seriously, that decisions about their money were being made in bipartisan backroom deals with interested parties, and that the laws on these matters were being voted by people who had not read them, the term "political class" came into use. . . .

The following topics are addressed. I've chosen some excerpts only a little longer than "soundbites" from them:

The Political Divide

The Ruling Class

The Faith

The Agenda: Power

Dependence Economics

Who Depends on Whom?

In Congressional Government (1885) Woodrow Wilson left no doubt: the U.S. Constitution prevents the government from meeting the country's needs by enumerating rights that the government may not infringe. ("Congress shall make no law..." says the First Amendment, typically.) Our electoral system, based on single member districts, empowers individual voters at the expense of "responsible parties." Hence the ruling class's perpetual agenda has been to diminish the role of the citizenry's elected representatives, enhancing that of party leaders as well as of groups willing to partner in the government's plans, and to craft a "living" Constitution in which restrictions on government give way to "positive rights" -- meaning charters of government power.

Consider representation. Following Wilson, American Progressives have always wanted to turn the U.S. Congress from the role defined by James Madison's Federalist #10, "refine and enlarge the public's view," to something like the British Parliament, which ratifies government actions. Although Britain's electoral system -- like ours, single members elected in historic districts by plurality vote -- had made members of Parliament responsive to their constituents in ancient times, by Wilson's time the growing importance of parties made MPs beholden to party leaders. Hence whoever controls the majority party controls both Parliament and the government.

Disaggregating and Dispiriting

The ruling class is keener to reform the American people's family and spiritual lives than their economic and civic ones.

Meddling and Apologies

America's best and brightest believe themselves qualified and duty bound to direct the lives not only of Americans but of foreigners as well. George W. Bush's 2005 inaugural statement that America cannot be free until the whole world is free and hence that America must push and prod mankind to freedom was but an extrapolation of the sentiments of America's Progressive class, first articulated by such as Princeton's Woodrow Wilson and Columbia's Nicholas Murray Butler. But while the early Progressives expected the rest of the world to follow peacefully, today's ruling class makes decisions about war and peace at least as much forcibly to tinker with the innards of foreign bodies politic as to protect America. . . .

former Soviet dictator Mikhail Gorbachev tells us that in 1987 then vice president George H. W. Bush distanced himself from his own administration by telling him, "Reagan is a conservative, an extreme conservative. All the dummies and blockheads are with him..." This is all about a class of Americans distinguishing itself from its inferiors. It recalls the Pharisee in the Temple: "Lord, I thank thee that I am not like other men..."

In sum, our ruling class does not like the rest of America. Most of all does it dislike that so many Americans think America is substantially different from the rest of the world and like it that way. For our ruling class, however, America is a work in progress, just like the rest the world, and they are the engineers.

The Country Class

Describing America's country class is problematic because it is so heterogeneous. It has no privileged podiums, and speaks with many voices, often inharmonious. It shares above all the desire to be rid of rulers it regards inept and haughty. . . . While the country class, like the ruling class, includes the professionally accomplished and the mediocre, geniuses and dolts, it is different because of its non-orientation to government and its members' yearning to rule themselves rather than be ruled by others.

Even when members of the country class happen to be government officials or officers of major corporations, their concerns are essentially private; in their view, government owes to its people equal treatment rather than action to correct what anyone perceives as imbalance or grievance. Hence they tend to oppose special treatment, whether for corporations or for social categories. . . . . Thus the Supreme Court's 2005 decision in Kelo, which allows the private property of some to be taken by others with better connections to government, reminded the country class that government is not its friend.

Congruent Agendas?

Not being at the table when government makes the rules about how you must run your business, knowing that you will be required to pay more, work harder, and show deference for the privilege of making less money, is the independent businessman's nightmare. But what to do about it? In our time the interpenetration of government and business -- the network of subsidies, preferences, and regulations -- is so thick and deep, the people "at the table" receive and recycle into politics so much money, that independent businesspeople cannot hope to undo any given regulation or grant of privilege. . . . . "The sum of good government," said Thomas Jefferson, is not taking "from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned." For government to advantage some at others' expense, said he, "is to violate arbitrarily the first principle of association." In our time, more and more independent businesspeople have come to think of their economic problems in moral terms. But few realize how revolutionary that is.

The Classes Clash

If self-governance means anything, it means that those who exercise government power must depend on elections. The shorter the electoral leash, the likelier an official to have his chain yanked by voters, the more truly republican the government is. Yet to subject the modern administrative state's agencies to electoral control would require ordinary citizens to take an interest in any number of technical matters. Law can require environmental regulators or insurance commissioners, or judges or auditors to be elected. But only citizens' discernment and vigilance could make these officials good. Only citizens' understanding of and commitment to law can possibly reverse the patent disregard for the Constitution and statutes that has permeated American life. Unfortunately, it is easier for anyone who dislikes a court's or an official's unlawful act to counter it with another unlawful one than to draw all parties back to the foundation of truth.

Glenn Reynolds has some ideas about what to do to reduce the ambitions of America's ruling class. Lots of ideas from Glenn, readers and others. Here's Glenn's final one:

Finally: Don’t act like a subject. Rulers like subjects. Don’t be one. As a famous man once said: Get in their face. Punch back twice as hard. Words for the coming decade?

NAACP Smears the Tea Party as Racist

The NAACP has been in the news a lot lately. Perhaps trying to maintain some relevance in today's America. At their National Convention, they went after the Tea Party. Deroy Murdock:

The NAACP’s original resolution sought to “repudiate the racism of the Tea Parties” and combat their supposed efforts to “push our country back to the pre-civil rights era.” This statement reportedly was toned down, although it was debated behind closed doors and will remain unseen until the NAACP’s board approves it in October.

The original resolution sort of reminds me of this ad, in which the former civil rights icon, Congressman John Lewis puts on his tinfoil hat with regard to the possibility of electing a moderate Republican, endorsed by a very liberal newspaper, to a county commission. Jaw-dropping.  But this vile, wildly inflammatory ad full of fantasies of hate and disaster was effective in the election. The Republican lost. And in the process, the importance of the entire civil rights movement in which Rep. Lewis had bravely participated many years ago was seriously reduced, at least in the rhetoric of the ad.   Rep. Lewis warned that the election of a moderate Republican, endorsed by a very liberal newspaper, to a county commission would lead to a situation more dangerous than fighting off dogs and water hoses.  And all gains of the entire Civil Rights movement would be lost if a moderate Republican won a county election.  "Your very life may depend on it".  Whew.

Congressman Lewis was also involved in the false claims by members of the Congressional Black Caucus that numerous racial epithets were shouted at them in the run-up to the vote on Obamacare (links below).  How the mighty have fallen.  The NAACP attempted to resurrect the discredited claims of the CBC members in its resolution against the Tea Party.   They pretended that the statements of Lewis and the others were unassailable.  But many in a younger generation (and some in the Boomer generation) do not seem to consider the veracity of these men to be beyond challenge just because of their history.

Scott at Powerline:

Mona Charen addresses the descent of the NAACP from a bona fide civil rights organization into a rump of the Democratic Party. The NAACP was of course back in the news this week on account of its having consigned the Tea Party movement to double secret probation. Mona calls out the NAACP on its ginned-up charge of racism against the Tea Party:

Charen gives a good, brief history of the organization's decline. It is the natural tendency of all ethical organizations to lose their original focus over time and to become distracted into actions which would have been unthinkable for the founders of the organization.  Only organizations with an extremely solid charter of some sort have a chance of consistently maintaining their original focus over time.  (Though some organizations undergo descent followed by reform).

Many of the once-venerable volunteer and professional organizations in America have become politicized and/or radicalized.  Part of this is due to the natural tendency of strong partisans or ideologues to seek out leadership positions in these organizations.  They derive their meaning in life from their activism, while people with more balanced outlooks find meaning in other parts of life.  The lives of people in the second category are already full without a leadership position in such an organization.  Such leadership becomes a source of anxiety and pain if they have to fight with determined partisans or ideologues when seeking or serving in such a position.  For such people, service in a community or professional organization is now largely a sacrifice,  without much honor -- because they often encounter some nasty opposition while  trying to hold onto principles which partisans or ideologues within the organization are agitating to cast aside in their zeal to reach their tactical goals.  For many partisans and ideologues, leadership in these organizations is viewed as a path to significance or even to a measure of glory.

In the case of the attempts to vilify the Tea Party movement, the NAACP is just following the lead of congressional Democrats and the mainstream media. They continue to do things like this because vilifying others provides them with influence and because such tactics have been effective in the past. But things are starting to change a little, perhaps due to push-back spearheaded by Andrew Breitbart's offer of $100,000 for evidence that the claims made by the Congressional Black Caucus were true.

Tne New York Times is still hanging onto the story about racial epithets against the CBC members.  And the paper is getting some push-back.    Note in the video at the link that the men at the front and back of the group of congressmen seem to be holding up cell phones to record what the crowd says.  And the crowd was filled with people carrying recording devices.  Mark Steyn points out that it's easy to capture epithets when they are actually flying.  So, why can't anybody claim Breitbart's $100,000 if it really happened?

And why didn't the four TV cameras at the event capture ANY of the 15 uses of the N-word claimed by one representative?  And why did the congressmen keep changing their stories when video evidence challenged their first reports?

The NAACP got a little push-back on its proposed resolution, too, and later claimed that their resolution DID NOT call the entire Tea Party movement racist.  Wonder if they were intimidated by Andrew Breitbart's promise to release racist video from an NAACP event?  Although they have not released the text of the resolution, they reportedly continue to insist that "leaders" of the Tea Party repudiate "racist elements", as if that were not already being done.  In other words, they try to present a false picture of the nature of the Tea Party movement and they still accuse it of condoning racism.

Unfortunately for the NAACP, people don't seem to consider the it to be as sacred and untouchable because of its important history anymore.  Joe Hicks, a formerly-liberal (radical, even) black man, presents some other issues upon which the NAACP might want to focus, then writes:

Here’s the bottom line. The NAACP is the nation’s oldest black civil rights organization. This once-proud institution took part in the strategic dismantling of Jim Crow laws and in-your-face white supremacy.

This is a group that has struggled – and failed – to maintain is bearings in modern times and now plays the sad role of an adjunct arm of Democratic Party politics. Seemingly the NAACP only exists now to promote the politics of Big Unions, Big Government and racial identity.

Would anybody really care, or notice, if it just folded its tent and slunk quietly away?

The Anchoress, a white woman, presents another perspective the NAACP could have offered:

“…while there is still work to be done in America, it is heartening to see that when racist behavior is exhibited it is quickly condemned by people of good will in all spheres of society; we work toward the day when racism will exist no more, and the fact that it cannot grab a foothold even among those whose concerns we do not share gives real hope too us, that the dream of Martin Luther King and of so many anonymous, tireless workers for social justice can and will be realized for all God’s children.”

That would be a statement everyone can get behind, because all reasonable people want that. If people really do want to see continuing progress made in converting distrustful hearts and minds, a positive statement like that would be much more effective than the one they’re using.

This country needs someone in authority, somewhere, to acknowledge something good about its people, and to mean it. Lacking that–and we are–such a statement from the NAACP would be something good. And it would have the added benefit of being true. . . .

Have people meant what they’ve been saying for the last 50 years, or has it all been just words?

I don’t believe it was all “just words.” I don’t believe that Martin Luther King, whose soaring rhetoric galvanized the nation and motivated all sorts of people to work for equality and justice, died for “just words.”

If it has all been “just words,” then how can we ever move forward?

Sometimes, I feel like a motherless child.

With musical accompaniment.

Wasn't this supposed to be a New Day, under a Post-Racial President?  Dennis Prager suggested on air that President Obama could do much to heal divisions in the nation if he handled this issue wisely.  Michael Medved puts similar thoughts in writing:

With the administration's most fervent critics accused of outright racism by the nation's most prestigious African-American organization, Obama ought to reach out to his political enemies on the right, publicly defend their good intentions and call a White House "summit meeting" between leaders of the tea party and the NAACP. 

If he did so, his generous actions would confound his critics, make headlines around the world and rekindle the flickering hope that Barack Obama could transcend the tired old politics of polarization. . . .  

Farrakhan demands reparations from the Jews

Turning history inside-out. Who were REALLY the primary groups of people who captured and sold slaves in the past, and who continues to hold black slaves, including Muslims, today, Mr. Farrakhan?

Of course, if they fail to bend to his wishes, Farrakhan “respectfully warns,” “in the Name of Allah (God) and His Messiah, The Honorable Elijah Muhammad, that the more you fight and oppose me rather than help me to lift my people from their degraded state, Allah (God) and His Messiah will bring you and your people to disgrace and ruin and destroy your power and influence here and throughout the world.”

If he's really concerned about lifting "Allah's People" from their "degraded state," why doesn't he help Jews like Charles Jacobs, co-founder of the American Anti-Slavery Group, free black slaves and work to stop genocide against blacks in Sudan?

“The most frightening aspect of the letter was the threat of ruin and destruction if we do not comply with his demands, which is why we, at the ZOA, have sent a letter to President Obama urging him to speak out against it…The President has spoken about healing divisions between Jews and the Black community, this is a great opportunity for him to do so.”

If the NAACP, now a surrogate for the Democratic Party, demands that Tea Party leaders specifically denounce each racist crackpot or liberal "Crash the Teaparty" agent provocateur who shows up at a Tea Party event, why shouldn't the President be expected to comment on this letter by a prominent black leader?  NAACP leaders say that blacks who do not support the liberal agenda are not "black enough" to deserve their support.  Do they also reject Mr. Farrakhan's followers?  Will they say so in public?  If not, why not?

"All Racism, Only Racism, 24 Hours a Day"

The reason for those bogus charges of Tea Party Racism?  Insufficient empathy and diversity among liberals!

Timothy Dalrymple:

It is essentially a failure of imagination. Liberals cannot imagine themselves into a way of thinking in which conservatives do what they do and believe what they believe for good reasons. And since they cannot believe that conservatives are motivated by rational beliefs and admirable motives, they must appeal to darker, more primitive impulses to explain their behavior. The racist motive presents itself as a natural and convenient explanation.

Case In Point

Chris Matthews focuses on race as the obvious explanation for the nomination of an Indian-American by the Republican Party in South Carolina. Sounds shockingly malicious, but then maybe it's just the "liberal failure of imagination" concerning the motives of conservatives.

In Hollywood, racism is all about politics. In Illinois, too.

"Think Progress" is so heavily invested in portraying the Tea Party as racist that they use liberal-produced "Crash the Tea Party" signs as evidence of Tea Party racism.

Now Al Queda is racist, too. There are lots of possible explanations for the President's new "racist AQ" theme. But perhaps partly because multi-culturalism dictates that all religions are morally equivalent, it is forbidden to mention Islamic extremism as a motive for terror in the Obama administration.   Racism falls under a different category in the liberal mind.

I Write Like . . .

Margaret Atwood?  Heh.    I used three paragraphs from my 2 posts on Confucius.  No quotes.

Try it yourself.  Just for fun.  Via Crooked Timber, a rather philosophical progressive site.

Willie Brown (!) on Out-of-Control Public Sector Unions

This issue is personal to us because we are part of the California public sector pension system. The current state of the pension system means that future benefits are no sure thing.  We are also painfully familiar, with the corruption and destruction which accompanies the conviction, on the part of many State workers, that extremely generous salaries and benefits are their iron-clad right, particularly if they have friends or relatives in the right places in State government.  This situation played a big part in California's current dramatic decline.

The guy who ruled the California legislature for years (term limits were voted in largely to end his reign) has become a champion of public sector pension reform. Willie Brown has now apologized for his role in dramatically increasing salaries and pension for public employees:

Earlier this year he wrote a widely-circulated column in the San Francisco Chronicle lamenting the "out of control" civil service: "The deal used to be that civil servants were paid less than private sector workers in exchange for an understanding that they had job security for life. But we politicians -- pushed by our friends in labor -- gradually expanded pay and benefits . . . while keeping the job protections and layering on incredibly generous retirement packages."

Reason's commentary:

Willie Brown has been fairly consistent: an extremely likeable political pragmatist with no particular attachment to principle or ideology. Which makes his new campaign worth listening to: It shows that facts on the ground are no longer possible to ignore.

Parts of the assessment of Brown were challenged in the comments.

Past over-spending is now causing serious anxiety for current State workers.  AGAIN.  William A. Jacobson:

The path of big government and the welfare state is the path to broken promises and inter-generational warfare. . . .

Those who feed the big government addiction are the cruel ones.

Is it time to go with the Irish solution? Tie government salaries (and pension payments?) to the deficit? This might be difficult for us, personally, but it could possibly help save the State of California from itself.

Or does Calfornia need someone like Chis Christie in order to avoid inter-generational warfare?   More on Christie, with a comparison to Winston Churchill.    Read the whole thing.   Could Willie Brown be effective in challenging public sector unions which are helping to destroy California?

The Federal Government faces similar challenges in the future.   Britain is further down the path of decline.

 For now, the pain in the U.S.  is being felt primarily in the private sector. “Oh, so that’s what John Edwards meant about the two Americas!”. Ironic that government workers, many dedicated to ideologies from the Left, have now inadvertently become oppressors of the working class, in a practical sense.

Update: NASA's Muslim outreach

Commentary on the current state of science in the Muslim world.   Also includes a link to an update on the status of the professor in India whose hand and part of his arm were hacked off due to a false perception that he had insulted The Prophet.   And an effective  cartoon reminder concerning this issue.   How soon we forget.   In related news: Another Fatwa against a cartoonist.

Might be time for another Obama charm offensive with the so-called Muslim world.

Commentary (even if not news) is starting to leak out in parts of the mainstream media. For example, Krauthammer includes it in a discussion of President Obama's selective modesty:

It's fine to recognize the achievements of others and be non-chauvinistic about one's country. But Obama's modesty is curiously selective. When it comes to himself, modesty is in short supply. . .

Mons Charen earlier expressed some thoughts along the same line - that the NASA Muslim self-esteem program indicated hubris on the part of a President who really believes that he that he has significant power to influence how Muslims he doesn't even know think and feel about themselves. (And that this power of his could counteract the influence of Saudi-funded madrassas.) Michael Ramirez lands on target again.

What happened to Awe?

We lose something when people misuse words. The example under consideration here is the transformation of the formerly meaningful word "Awesome" into a throw-away interjection or adjective.

Moments of real awe that overwhelm the soul are rare, but if you look closely at the miracle of creation in the macro or micro cosmos you can create such a moment almost at will. Real awe is front-loaded into the universe.

At the same time, those things of man that inspire awe diminish moment by moment under the unstoppable onslaught of the word "awesome" . . . .

I've had a few moments in my life where genuine awe shook me to the roots of my soul. Holding my daughter in my arms a moment after she was born comes to mind as does a time when I was very young, lying a field and looking up at the sky and the high cirrus glowing burnt orange in the fading rays of day. There were others as well, gifts given and grace notes. Common to all were an intake of breath and a feeling as if your heart had been grazed by a thought of God and forgot,  for that moment,  to beat. Matched up against all the torrent and cascade of moments though, this genuine awe was rare; it was one of the pearls beyond price, the shining instant of "Ah ha, so that's what it's all about."

Not so today. Today awe is as common as clay. Today all things of man possess the awe of someness.

Some of the language in the rest of the piece is quite strong. If you follow the first link, keep in mind that the author is an immigrant from the Netherlands who was once an executive in the "men's magazine" business, if I recall correctly. He doesn't mince words. And he's sort of hard on Aerosmith. But actually, he has a pretty good point. Famous for scarves hanging from the microphone stand? Seriously? Though I think it might take a  phrase or line from the ninth symphony rather than "one note" to crush their entire oeuvre.

Interesting that more people are starting to pay attention to this issue now.

Confucius: "morals and art will deteriorate"

Brought forward from an old post elsewhere.  Note that hyperbole concerning global warming has had even more negative consequences for proponents of these views than when the post was written in December of 2008.

“If language is not correct . . . . . . morals and art will deteriorate":

Many years ago I went through an art exhibition at a glitzy mall in Newport Beach. I remember two of the art exhibits. One was a model wearing one of those iconic French Maid outfits - the short black, form-fitting dress with the little white apron and cap. But the model (perhaps the artist) was a rather tall man who also wore black tights, some really ugly black and white gym shoes and a gas mask. The other memorable exhibit featured wall hangings which exploited the various textures and colors of lint removed from clothes dryers.

I think there was some sort of environmental message intended by both of these art pieces, but I'm not sure what it was.

There are at this moment in history a lot of "artists" on the Left delivering political messages through "art". Relatively few on the Right, most of them satirists pointing out rhetorical or other excesses on the Left. Moe Lane compares Australian Green protesters (dignified by American standards) to performance art. I can imagine myself in the audience. He says about the second photo in this post:

". . . it looks for all the world like a snapshot of a particularly boring and pretentious piece of performance art. You know the kind that I’m talking about; one featuring three or four people moving about and talking aimlessly while atonal, yet annoying, stringed instruments play in the background. You’re there because your S.O.’s friend is involved with the production, and you have been promised that the party afterward will not be dull - so you spend the time trying to decipher the program, which reads like it was translated from German to English via Academic Marxist, with a quick stopover at Martian. You suspect that it has gained in the translation; meanwhile, up on the stage someone has just waved a broomstick at a man wearing a cow suit, which apparently has something to do with the Falkland Islands War.

It is about that time that you grimly conclude that the party afterward will be dull."

Hyperbole on the part of Australian Greens has reduced the tendency of the general population to pay attention to the Global Warming Issue. Particularly since the Australian contribution to greenhouse gasses is so tiny compared to, say, China's growing emissions. But the Greens still have the attention of the news media - just like in America. This may be one reason why political "performance art" gets more and more extreme while serious, fact-based discussions of issues go unnoticed.