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Best of 2009: “Bipartisan? Whew!”

Posted by Ron Coleman on December 29, 2009

This was first posted on April 21, 2009.

Obama on show trials of CIA employees:

Mr. Obama, who has been saying that the nation should look ahead rather than focusing on the past, said he is “not suggesting” that a commission be established.

But in response to questions from reporters in the Oval Office, he said, “if and when there needs to be a further accounting,” he hoped that Congress would examine ways to obtain one “in a bipartisan fashion,” from people who are independent and therefore can build credibility with the public.

Regrets, we have a few.

Regrets, we have a few.

The horror.

I’d like to say this is fundamentally a dodge. It is a dodge — he wants to look ahead, not back, he’s not suggesting, he’s leaving doors open… it is a dodge, and frankly a contemptible one.

But fundamentally it is not a dodge. Fundamentally it is something much more horrible. It is the process by which the United States takes on a practice associated with tyrannies and, far from being an endorsement of the rule of law, elevates the assumption to power to the ability to punish the previous regime for “incorrect” — and hence “criminal” — policies.

It is no different from the argument about the supposedly inevitable impeachment of ex-President Bush, also based on supposed crimes arising from torture. As I wrote on a private list, made up mainly of attorneys, discussing that topic (adapted here), there is a tendency among certain people, and in particular those attracted to a certain pole in political debate, to regard their political choices or philosophical conclusions as the sole “moral” choice. In fact, (a) criminalization of political disagreement, (2) the use of penal power to punish players in the previous regime, and (3) the adaptation of legislative bodies as proxies to loose the necessary political “justice” when the traditional judicial organs refuse to comply, have historically been popular options for playing out this partisan outrage and sating the desire for “moral” vindication on the politically deviant.

Just not in this country. Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Best of the Blog, Lex scripta, Liberal punks, O Mores!, Oppression | Leave a Comment »

Party discipline maintained

Posted by Ron Coleman on December 10, 2009

Boy, could this guy pass!

Boy, could this guy pass!

Six Meat Buffet reassures us that, despite noises of panic among the insufficiently indoctrinated, at the New York Times the editorial side, at least, remains reassuringly on-message.

Posted in Liberal punks, Medialites | Leave a Comment »

First they came for Rush…

Posted by Ron Coleman on October 22, 2009

Listening to the contemporary American left’s views of the rest of us is increasingly like listening to a paranoid schizophrenic slip farther into delusions that they are surrounded by malevolent people. Just as we have to worry that the schizophrenic might act on their delusional beliefs and strike out violently against the evils they imagine, we have to be increasingly worried that leftists will strike out against the rest of us based on their delusional fantasies about what we non-leftists believe.

That’s the redoubtable Shannon Love over at Chicago Boyz.  Yes, you can be a little “scared.”  It is so beyond “truthiness” at this point…

Posted in Liberal punks, Medialites | 2 Comments »

Isn’t it Rich

Posted by Ron Coleman on October 4, 2009

Glenn Reynolds:

When you’ve lost Frank Rich, you’ve lost conventional-wisdom punditAmerica.

Not his smoothest phrase ever, but Glenn is right on.  This is a phenomenal departure by the one-time “Butcher of Broadway” from the party line, and an encouraging sign that even for some of the biggest Kool-Aid-guzzlers, there’s hope.

I don’t mean “hope” for major political change, or anything like that.  Come on!

Rather, it’s a sign there’s hope for something once again resembling a remotely honest, tell-it-like-it-is “Fourth Estate” — the very terminology of which makes me think that, in fact, something else is going on here, too:

Obama is toeing what turns out to be the third (or fourth) rail of American journalistic politics:  K Street.

It turns out that PunditAmerica’s jealousy of the ascent of the lobbyist class to the status of de facto branch of government — now more powerful than the mainstream media, whose own former privileges as “owners” of the official truth have been dashed beyond recognition — trumps its class loyalty to a President whose ability to bestow the MSM with specialness has eroded concomitantly.   And that is in all likelihood what is motivating Frank Rich, at least as much as political idealism, to nail his thesis to the cathedral door.

Still and all, good for you, Frank.  And it’s not even a year since Election Day.

Posted in Gelt, Liberal punks, Medialites | Leave a Comment »

Beyond politics

Posted by Ron Coleman on September 16, 2009

That’s what Jon Stewart is, at least — at least regarding ACORN.

My favorite line:  “Your pimp outfit appears to be a fur coat on top of your Andover uniform.”

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c
The Audacity of Hos
www.thedailyshow.com
http://media.mtvnservices.com/mgid:cms:item:comedycentral.com:248916
Daily Show
Full Episodes		 Political Humor Healthcare Protests

Even Stewart is mocking that idea that this mere right-wing agitprop. As Glenn Reynolds (who I now see has also embedded this video) says in another post:

And you have to love this: “Robert L. Borosage, co-director of the liberal Campaign for America’s Future, called the tactics used to go after Mr. Jones and Acorn ‘McCarthyite,’ and said the critics were harping on minor failings.”

Yeah, it’s exactly the same. Heck, compared to Joe McCarthy’s famous pimp disguise, this kid’s an amateur.  . . .

Posted in Gelt, Liberal punks, Medialites, Metropolis, O Mores!, Politics and Poker | 2 Comments »

Durbinothon!

Posted by Ron Coleman on August 5, 2009

At Six Meat Buffet. Dig in — to Dick Durbin’s brain!

Posted in Liberal punks | Leave a Comment »

House of cards

Posted by Ron Coleman on June 14, 2009

Le·gal In·sur·rec·tion:

Let me see if I have the logic straight. Harshly criticising someone makes one morally if not legally responsible for the violent actions of those who share similar beliefs, and who may have heard the criticism. So Krugman and Robinson must be liable for the lunatics referred to in [this] search:

kill-bush-search

Posted in Liberal punks, Medialites, Politics and Poker | 1 Comment »

Me, Senator Al Franken

Posted by Ron Coleman on May 11, 2009

Back when I was the new Yid in town, I knew great things, as well as awful things, might lay ahead.  But I never dreamed that the Al Franken Decade could actually occur.  And yet, it seems, that grisly reality begins now.

Senator Al Franken.  I preferred his earlier, funnier bits.  Ok… earlier.

Chicago Boy Mitch Townsend finds a silver lining, namely, that it could be worse:

Here is some encouraging news: “On April 29, 2008, Franken released a statement noting that he will pay about $70,000 in back income taxes in 17 states dating to 2003″ (link). Since Timothy Geithner had to pay only $34,000 in back taxes, Franken is about twice as qualified as Geithner to handle the fiscal affairs of our country.

Senate Appropriations Committee, here comes a fellow who knows which end of a calculator is up, if not much more. Maybe someone can teach him what those symbols on the buttons mean.

Stretching it, yes.  But one needs something to cling to in order to keep going on.

Posted in Americana, Faith and Works, Jocularity, Liberal punks, Medialites | Leave a Comment »

Bipartisan? Whew!

Posted by Ron Coleman on April 21, 2009

Obama on show trials of CIA employees:

Mr. Obama, who has been saying that the nation should look ahead rather than focusing on the past, said he is “not suggesting” that a commission be established.

But in response to questions from reporters in the Oval Office, he said, “if and when there needs to be a further accounting,” he hoped that Congress would examine ways to obtain one “in a bipartisan fashion,” from people who are independent and therefore can build credibility with the public.

Regrets, we have a few.

Regrets, we have a few.

The horror.

I’d like to say this is fundamentally a dodge.  It is a dodge — he wants to look ahead, not back, he’s not suggesting, he’s leaving doors open… it is a dodge, and frankly a contemptible one.

But fundamentally it is not a dodge.  Fundamentally it is something much more horrible.  It is the process by which the United States takes on a practice associated with tyrannies and, far from being an endorsement of the rule of law, elevates the assumption to power to the ability to punish the previous regime for “incorrect” — and hence “criminal” — policies.

It is no different from the argument about the supposedly inevitable impeachment of ex-President Bush, also based on supposed crimes arising from torture.  As I wrote on a private list, made up mainly of attorneys, discussing that topic (adapted here), there is a tendency among certain people, and in particular those attracted to a certain pole in political debate, to regard their political choices or philosophical conclusions as the sole “moral” choice.  In fact, (a) criminalization of political disagreement, (2) the use of penal power to punish players in the previous regime, and (3) the adaptation of legislative bodies as proxies to loose the necessary political “justice” when the traditional judicial organs refuse to comply, have historically been popular options for playing out this partisan outrage and sating the desire for “moral” vindication on the politically deviant.

Just not in this country. Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Lex scripta, Liberal punks, O Mores!, Oppression | 15 Comments »

The luxury of liberalism

Posted by Ron Coleman on March 21, 2009

Evan Sayet, per John Hawkins:

[W]hen you’re young and you’re on the college campuses and you don’t have a job, you’re not paying taxes. You’re not starting a business. You don’t have to worry about environmental policies that are ridiculous.

You’re living on these college campuses where no matter how much you binge drink, no matter how much you projectile vomit, no matter how much you go wild for the cameras in Cancun and strip naked, the next day you wake up on a campus with lush manicured lawns. You wake up in an ivory covered two room mansion. You wake up and somebody else has
bought your food, cooked your food, serves you your food, and when you’re finished, cleans your dishes for you. . . .

Then you have the other side that you mentioned, the celebrities who have been retarded at the age of the child by their fabulous wealth. These are people who never have to recognize right and wrong, better and worse. They don’t have to make decisions in which those have consequences. You know, of course, Bruce Springsteen doesn’t have to choose between putting money away for his retirement or spending it now.  He can spend it now and have hundreds of millions for retirement too.

Susan Sarandon doesn’t have to choose between not getting a new car this year because the rent may go up. She buys lots of houses and lots of new cars. But, []celebrities [are]  isolated from the consequences of their beliefs by their money. This goes to professors as well that are on the left at college campuses. They can’t get fired no matter how bad they are at their job. That isolates them from the need to be smart. It isolates from the need to be right. It isolates from the need to be good.

Well, I guess they have to have been good, or smart, at some point.  And I don’t know if Bruce is that rich.  But by and large I like his point.

Posted in Liberal punks, O Mores! | 2 Comments »

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