Politics

Thanks to the latest technological advance, you can enjoy the interactive satisfaction found at community meetings and legislative sessions right from your keyboard.

Try it!

George Will makes two vital points in one paragraph. The first I consider lost amid the chatter of popular rhetoric:

The creation of Israel did not involve the destruction of a Palestinian state, there having been no such state since the Romans arrived.

The Palestinian identity is a recent invention. Yes, there has been that patch of earth sometimes called Palestine (when it wasn’t called Judea or Israel). But the people who lived there were simply arabs, or Egyptians and Jordanians if they needed a political label.

There’s post at Chicago Boyz highlighting the contradictions between leftoid rhetoric and the details of leftoid policy. They say they want to tax the rich and protect the middle class, but can’t define who is in which group. Is a small business owner who shows $200K of revenue rich or middle class?

What really caught my eye were a couple of campaign-worthy slogans for Tea Partiers:

• Shouldn’t “tax cuts” be distributed to those who pay taxes?

• Let the tax rates go back to the Clinton administration rates but let’s also go back to the number of government employees of the Clinton period.

I’ve seen several posts about all the other things within 600 feet of the WTC site. Strip bars, fast food joints, and pretty much eveything a big city offers. The point of the posts, I think, is to counter the notion that the proposed Hamasque site is sacred ground. If there are so many vices so close, how sacred can that spot be?

The counter-counter fielded by the Hamasque opponents is that the building in question was struck by a piece of one the planes. That damage somehow anointed the structure with socio-cultural holiness.

I see merit in both points. But I am not persuaded. On one hand, we’ve got the beginnings of a “George Washington slept here” farce. And we open ourselves to phony relics from “the one True jetliner”. Yet, the surrounding vices only increase the importance of holding some places sacred. If we promised to Never Forget, we do have to be on guard against the encroachment of the mundane.

It seems fair to say that there is a commonly-held belief that the U.S. Government has an obligation to make Social Security payment to those who paid into the program for decades. The benefits are part of contract between workers and the Feds that help ensure nobody has to retire to live on dog food.

Further, there’s a commonly-held idea that there is a Trust Fund, where all those worker payments are being held so there will be money to pay retirees. The promise of a trust fund is probably less trusted by the public, but they still think that they’re owed something from whatever Congress hasn’t already lifted from the trust fund cookie jar.

Well, there is a trust fund, but the cookie jar is full of empty promises instead of genuine savings:

Commenter “The Den Mother” at Neo-neocon pens my next T-shirt idea:

When you lie to Congress, it’s perjury.

When Congress lies to you, it’s campaigning.

Har!

There are some Islamic clerics speaking against the construction of a mosque near the WTC site. Out of respect and a spirit of cooperation, healing and peace?

Nope.

Because it is part of a Jewish conspiracy:

Dr. Abd Al-Mu'ti Bayumi, a member of Al-Azhar's Islamic Research Academy, said that the mosque's construction could link Islam to 9/11, even though Islam is innocent of the deed. He also called the plan a "Zionist plot”.

Dialing back the crazy just a bit (maybe?), here’s another pronouncement from the same interview on the futility of interfaith dialog:

The great illusion of Progressivism is that the middle class can make the poor into the middle class.

Quoted from: Cobb’s Rules

In my time as neighborhood activist, I have supported and opposed many development ideas. The arguments—at least the public arguments—always revolved around the benefits, costs, and risks of a given proposal.

The near-WTC mosque supporters are not engaged in this sort of development and planning argument:

listen to the defenses being put up by the backers of the mosque. Boil it all down, and that is their argument in its entirety: "it's not illegal."

"We have the right to build our center here, or any place else."

"The Constitution guarantees our right to have our houses of worship."

"Those opposing us are bigots and prejudiced against Muslims."

The proposed mosque community center at near ground zero the World Trade Center site has many people agitated. To me, they all seem dirty.

The site is two blocks from the WTC. How much of Manhattan must we declare to be sacred ground? Sure, it is “in the shadow”, but the buildings were a thousand feet tall. They cast long shadows. Get over it.

But why does the mosque have to be exactly there, anyway? Wouldn’t the alleged “religion of peace” guide the faithful to find a less-confrontational site?

The non-Muslim pro-mosquers seem to be the dirtiest of all. What exactly is their goal? To make the bible-thumping flag-wavers mad? To get more revenge on George W. Bush? They can’t seem to make a distinction between arguing against this particular tasteless proposal and wanting to outlaw Islam entirely.

Republicans want black Americans to pursue happiness and the Democratic Party wants to provide happiness to black Americans.

Quoted from: Baldilocks

An observation by Steve Sailer, interesting even without its context:

Ironically, when I left the "Collapse" exhibit, with its warnings about overpopulation, at Los Angeles's Natural History museum, I turned out of the parking lot onto Martin Luther King Boulevard, where the billboards were in Spanish. In LA, the African Americans have been pushed off even MLK Blvd. by Latin American immigrants.

I read years back that South Central, the notorious crack-and-gang neighborhood in L.A., was rebranded as South Los Angeles. Not necessarily by some wishful-thinking community organizers, but as recognition that Latinos had moved in and improved the character of the place.

TJIC shows his best form ripping the current President and Big Media:

So why, exactly, is this being spun as an Obama victory?

Measured as a percentage of total economic output — the gauge that economists say is most meaningful — the deficit would be 10 percent of gross domestic product… well below the records set during World War II.

Fascinating!

The deficit was 25% when we assembled the largest armed forces in the history of human civilization, and conquered two continents at once.

…and with Obama’s socialist experiments, we’ve only run up a 10% deficit!

That is news – he’s doing a heck of ajob!

Just go read it.

I may need to work up a better-documented rant about this. But I have had enough of people proudly proclaiming their extended unemployment benefits. Getting laid off is not an invitation to twiddle around working on your novel. YOU NEED A JOB!

Twiddling on a novel is not a job. It will not lead to a job. You need to develop a new skill that someone will actually pay you to practice.

If people are afraid to take a job because it pays less than the job they lost and choose to spend another six months on the dole, they are parasites. GET OFF THE PUBLIC TEAT!

The Deepwater Horizon seems to have finally become background noise in the news cycle. The New Orleans Times-Picayune isn’t featuring a “day counter” on their website anymore. Up through about Day 78, it was at the top of the front page.

It‘s Day 84, and BP may be about to close the leak with a new cap. That’s no cause for panic or angst, so I guess it isn’t worth top-value pixels.

And after 84 days of wailing and hand-wringing, how many birds have actually died?

Less than 200:

MaxedOutMama writes:

Current policy makers seem stuck on the idea that if the government does a thing that is highly destructive when a private entity does it, the activity will somehow become economically functional due to the government interference. That defines "Stuck on Stupid".

My quibble is over calling out only current policy makers. For most of organized history, government has been seen as some sort of divine agency, above the laws of men. Only perhaps during the first century of the United States was government not seen as a special exception to the rules of morality and wisdom. The Founders explicitly overturned the Divine Right of Kings.

Sure, the Failed Obama Administration™ is expanding the assumption of state divinity into new territories in the U.S.A.

I find great truth in the maxim that righties think they have better ideas while lefties think they are better people. Ideas can be tested by logic and experiment. It can be difficult to judge a person’s character, and even harder to do so on the basis of bumpersticker slogans or blowhard talking points.

Leftism is much about identity and self-reassurance. This image lifted from the intertubes represents a whole class of self-congratulatory stickers, t-shirts, icons and other in-crowd swag.

Liberals are possessed of noble qualities, while conservative is a synonym for mean. And everybody knows Mean People Suck.

…Immortality is the recollection one leaves in the memory of man.

Quoted from: Napoleon Bonaparte

You'll never, ever hear Obama say "I want my life back!".

Quoted from: a comment on a photo of the current President playing golf on Father’s Day.

Today’s Rant of the Day makes the plainest case I’ve seen that Islam is a threat to everyone else:

Islam is not a religion, nor is it a cult. In its fullest form, it is a complete, total, 100% system of life.

Islam has religious, legal, political, economic, social, and military components. The religious component is a beard for all of the other components.

Islamization begins when there are sufficient Muslims in a country to agitate for their religious privileges.

When politically correct, tolerant, and culturally diverse societies agree to Muslim demands for their religious privileges, some of the other components tend to creep in as well.