Whiskey Fire

Escorted or Thwarted

The Cato Institute is confused. Let's see if we can help them out.

A Moment of Idiocy, of Real Idiocy       

The above title is the correct assessment of the new energy bill that President Bush just signed into law, less than 24 hrs after the House approved it by a 314–100 margin. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, speaking just prior to yesterday’s vote, gave the politicians’ assessment: “You are present at a moment of change, of real change.”

Of course, it’s not that much of a change for politicians to substitute their collective judgment for the private decisions of consumers who have strong incentives (stronger than politicians!) to make the most efficient choices. Still, the new energy bill — assuming Congress sticks to it — will make some changes:

• The incandescent light will be phased out of existence beginning in 2012.
• Average fuel economy for new vehicles will move from the current 25.0 MPG to 35.0 by 2020 — a standard that only the Toyota Prius and Honda Civic hybrids currently meet.
• New government mandates and subsidies will push the domestic ethanol industry to some 36 billion gallons in sales by 2020. (This will actually lessen fuel efficiency because ethanol gets considerably worse mileage than gasoline.)
• The move to more biofuels will continue to increase food prices as farmland is reallocated to the production of energy stocks.

All this leads to one question: Why are these mandates necessary? If the changes are as sensible as Congress and the White House claim, consumers would make them privately. Indeed, the data indicate that consumer preference for fuel-efficient cars is stronger than what the economics would justify.

So then, what is this energy bill really all about?

Hmm, that's a puzzler.

As a guess. Perhaps it's about making sure that consumers have the actual real-life capacity to make the fucking choices they've been demanding for years in the face of a retarded American corporate  structure that refuses to innovate to meet a demand that sane people saw coming 15 years ago?

It's called democracy, dumbass. It's amazing how the concept of the "will of the people" only has relevance for this shithead in the context of some hypothetical marketplace -- one which is in fact hypothetical and not real exactly because the "market" failed -- and not in terms of legislation passed by a majority of the people's elected representatives.

Not that I'm pleased with this bill, it clearly does not go nearly far enough, for exactly the reasons the Cato person is feebly snarking at. But, you know, we need more actual responsiveness to the will of the people, not less.

The reason I hate this Cato post quite a bit, though, is it shows how corrupting cynicism can be, and usually I'm a pretty big fan of cynicism.
 

Oh, Yuck

Gross.

Republican Fred Thompson says if he can be a presidential horse for conservatives to ride in the campaign, "All I've got to say is saddle me up."

Like so?

Chris Matthews needs some Kleenex, stat.

(Below: New lead for Equus? His teeth are shiny because he eats lots of carrots.)

Cut-Out Witch

by Molly Ivors

For a while now, as I've been trying to illustrate, Wednesdays and Sundays have been an opportunity to watch the bizarre psychodrama of Maureen Dowd unfold on the Op-Ed page of the NYTimes.  It's Hillary's fault, of course. Imagine a woman, without even the common decency of a cloud of crimson hair, who not only marries the smartest, best-looking boy (though of course it's not a perfect marriage), but also seems poised to, quite literally, rule the world! The gall!

(At right: Senator Clinton campaigns in Iowa, 2007.)

I thought she had scraped the bottom of the barrel when she quoted Caitlin Flanagan on how Hillary should rap with her girlfriends to be more appealing, but today, she beats that, quoting Rush Limbaugh largely without irony, to explain to us that Hillary has a "hag problem."

Whoo boy.

I'll allow Ariel herself to expand on this one:

And so the inevitable came to pass this week when Rush Limbaugh began riffing about an unflattering picture of Hillary in New Hampshire that Matt Drudge put up on his Web site with the caption, “The Toll of a Campaign.”

“So the question is this,” the radio personality said. “Will this country want to actually watch a woman get older before their eyes on a daily basis?”

..........

Limbaugh finished up with this: “Let me give you a picture, just to think about. ... The campaign is Mitt Romney vs. Hillary Clinton in our quest in this country for visual perfection, hmm?”

To be clear: at no point does MoDo note that this is unfair or a bad idea in any way. She goes back to the old Kennedy-Nixon setpiece which provides cover for an embarrassing number of her shallow forays into political commentary. She explains that Gore lost because he had bad makeup and "appeared condescending."  (Oh, well, that's okay then; sorry about all the dead people.) In MoDo's world, people are incapable of distinguishing between surface and reality, and that's just the way it is, so no point moaning about it.

Gee if there were only someone--perhaps even a whole industry--which might be able to consider candidates on the virtue of their positions and inform people what they need to know to make a responsible decision for the future. Oh, well.  That's just the way it is, so no point moaning about that either.

Senator Clinton has clearly made the case to the public that she's a competent public servant with a better than respectable grasp of the issues facing America. Plenty of people (myself included) disagree with some of her conclusions, but competence is not the issue. But here's a clue for you, Ariel: if Rush Fucking Limbaugh is where you go to get your memes, you're in poor company. He has made a career out of trashing Hillary Clinton. He's not, shall we say, a disinterested political commentator.

But let's look at the substance of the critique, such as it is. Limbaugh asserts, and MoDo willingly parrots, that no one (no man?) wants to watch a woman get older. That men, as they age, become more attractive and authoritative, but women become, in the words of the men she clams to know, "a hag or a nag or a witch or angry or hysterical." Now, MoDo notes, these are clearly gender-based abuses coming from sexists. But she still repeats them. Rush implies that, were President H. Clinton to move into the West Wing, she'd have "work" done to stay photogenic, because she would have to. (This despite that fact that it's the darling of the Christian Right, Mike Huckabee, who's the only one who seems to have had cosmetic surgery in this race.) How else is one supposed to parse the Limbaugh line: "There will be steps taken to reduce the appearance of aging"? Are we supposed to imagine a Donda West-like tragedy throwing the nation into chaos? Grow the fuck up.

Republicans have long believed that the mistake they made in 1960 was nominating Nixon to run against Kennedy, who they saw as a pretty boy. I was old enough to be genuinely offended in 1988 when Dan Quayle was brought on board because the ladies seemed to like him. Mitt Romney strikes me as another Quayle figure: An empty suit with a haircut and bleached teeth designed to distract those silly women voters from issues. I was pissed then and I'm pissed now at the idea that Romney, who should be laughed out of any decent country or at least have the word "Panderer" tatooed on his forehead, is a serious contender for the presidency. Romney's a whore, and it's my understanding they have to be good looking.  One more time, and slowly for the kids in the back: I. Don't. Care. What. My. President. Looks. Like. Help rebuild my country, respect its Constitution, and don't start stupid fucking wars. Is that too much to ask?

Is there a double-standard regarding aging in this culture? Sure. But as with most other things MoDo adopts as rallying cries, it's stupid and shallow and shouldn't be dignified on the Op-Ed page of the NYTimes.

What's worse is that she knows it. She completes this rumination by reflecting on the fact that Senator Clinton's campaign is still trying to humanize her: "It’s pretty pathetic, at this stage of her career, that she has to wage a major offensive, by helicopter and Web testimonials, to make herself appear warm-blooded." Pathetic indeed. It's a good thing no one's calling her a dominatrix cracking the whip over a (black) man or a queen bee who fantasizes about having male slaves, isn't it? Oh, wait. That was you, wasn't it?

Well I can see why any candidate would take your advice. My mistake.

Clearly, the nightmare of the last seven years  is as nothing when compared to the prospect of a president with saggy tits. And MoDo should know.

UPDATE: Can someone remind me why, exactly, MoDo has a place on the NYTimes Op-Ed page and Digby does not?

(Below: President Clinton  stumps in Iowa, January 2012.)

Ghost Pie

Just some general musing about this stuff.

As I think back about it, the moral instruction that had the most resonant political significance when I was growing up was derived most immediately from the American civil rights movement.

I went to public school in New York City in the 1970s. Lord knows the NYC school systems in the 1970s had their faults, but one thing they were not wrong in at least attempting to do was to teach that Racism is Bad. Northeastern Queens, you may be shocked to learn, contained quite a few racists in the 1970s -- I myself know it did, because many of them were my relatives. The rest were my neighbors. I had no clear sense of this as a kid, but yeah, there were racial tensions where I grew up. So as messed up and sloppy as it may have been, in my case at least, public schooling's firm insistence that RACISM IS BAD was influential. 

My parents of course did not teach otherwise. But it's a funny thing. Racial bigotry is easy to teach, racial tolerance takes work. Most of the instruction I got from my folks about how to relate to black people consisted of the following: "Don't listen to Grandpa!" See, it's not like they didn't have all the other stuff to teach, like "don't steal," how to tie my shoes, how to talk and poop, etc.

Shit. We just didn't have black people in the cupboard for me to practice not hating. No. Those black kids were provided by the government. I met black kids at my school and it was there that I learned black kids were as weird and unlikely as my own moony-pale cousins (at last count I have 329 first cousins -- whoops, 330!). And it was reinforced to me by every teacher I had, that we were not to hate each other because of race. And we didn't. We hated each other because of the brands of sneakers we wore, as is far more sensible.

Whatever. Even today many people in Northeast Queens remain racist assholes. So the indoctrination remains incomplete. But the point is, that my public school teachers in the 1970s helped me not be a racist today. Also, they convinced me that racial tolerance was a fundamental American value.

Oh, they fucked up in a lot of other ways. But I sure didn't get that message of tolerance from the Catholic priests of Sacred Heart. And my parents were not laserlike focused on tolerance as a value -- how could they be? Isn't that a matter of social consensus? And you know, shouldn't a government of the people, by the people, do right... by all the people? So good for you, New York City and New York State!

My ideological and moral inheritance does not derive from The Terror, motherfucker.

Shite AND Onions!

I wasn't going to comment on the decision, apparently rescinded, by the BBC to bleep, or whatever the fuck they do over there, the word "faggot" from The Pogues' "Fairytale of New York." Why? Because I'm busy, dammit.

I got sucked in, though. More on that in a bit.

Anyhow, the very existence of the controversy, such as it is, is a good thing. Why? Because it fucking should be "controversial" to say "faggot" in public, that's why. Everyone should think twice or maybe three times before using that word. "Dirty" words mark social boundaries, and I'm glad that a word commonly used to express hate creates problems. We're all growing up a bit, and casual bigotry against gays is no longer winked at. Good. 

That said. The use of the word in this particular song is not offensive. It's voiced by a character, a woman who is apparently an Irish immigrant to New York in the late 1950s early 1960s. She's not an especially nice person, nor are we meant to accept her moral pronouncements at face value. She's a junkie, for openers, and so is her boyfriend, whom she is calling both a "faggot" as well as a "maggot."

This is an ugly part of the song, in other words, and it's supposed to be. But this ugliness counterpoints the calculatedly schmaltzy, very Christmasy music -- as well as the deliberately sentimental bit in the chorus about the NYPD Choir singing "Galway Bay." What we should take from the song is that scraps of love and beauty can enter into even the harshest and tawdriest lives, and that Christmas is as good a time as any to remember this. The song says, hold off on the judgments, it's Christmas for fuck's sake, just be human for a bit, could we? In that regard it's a damn powerful pop song -- hence its obvious appeal.

But I don't know why the BBC should be faulted here. Seems to me like the system worked: the song provoked a debate, all sides were heard, and there you go. Knee-jerk condemnations of "PC!" are puerile: the BBC should be sensitive to homophobia. A defense of the  song was mounted, the argument took place and -- great! I mean, isn't this the whole point of having a democracy? The rights of homosexuals and of artists were at least given respect. I don't know that we can expect much better nowadays. It's not really all that long ago that Shane MacGowan could easily have gone to jail in Britain and the US for singing this Christmas song, you know. Nor all that long ago that homosexuality was a criminal offense. Progress, I'd say. Let's hear it for Liberal Fascism.

Given, though, that you can listen to the damn song online for free as much as you like, the whole affair looks rather quaint. Maybe someday we'll miss how Big Media flashpoints precisely these issues. Oh well! So much for Liberal Fascism! Wheeee! 

Oh, as to why I got sucked in. I accidentally clicked and read this shit. I like the last comment the best. But it's all good.

 

Rockets Through Molasses

Oh dear: Sadly No reprints a page of Goldberg's thoughts on the French Revolution. As Gavin notes, it's basically Edmund Burke, though extremely watered down. With flat Dr. Pepper and bongwater.

The American right and classical liberals look fondly on the American Revolution, which was essentially conservative, while shuddering at the horrors and follies of Jacobinism. But if the French Revolution was fascist, then its heirs would have to be seen as the fruit of this poisoned tree, and fascism itself would finally and correctly be placed where it belongs in the story of the left. This would cause seismic disorder in the leftist worldview; so instead leftists embrace cognitive dissonance and terminological sleight of hand.

That's pretty rich. If you accept the wildly absurd anachronism of calling the French Revolution "fascist," ignore the history of nationalism entirely, and accept for no good reason that 21st-century American female schoolteachers with Swarthmore degrees have some mysterious genealogical connection with The Terror... why then you're entirely innocent of "terminological sleight of hand"!

I also enjoy the italics up there on "correctly." Italics automatically make stuff true. It's magical.

Sigh. I thought ten thousand thousand farts must have leaped from their underpants, for Jonah Goldberg to have written a book that so insults the intelligence.

Tractor Rape Chain

by Molly Ivors

The first rule of life in Greater Wingnuttia is simple: it's all about the shifting the blame left, baby. To quote presidential aspirant Mike Huckabee, "Abortion, environmentalism, AIDS, pornography, drug abuse, and homosexual activism have fragmented and polarized our communities."

Allow me to translate Huckabee into English: "Abortion (Feminists! Sex!), environmentalism (Hippies! Free Love!), AIDS (Teh Gaii! Sex!), pornography (Sex!), drug abuse (Brown People! Probably having Sex!), and homosexual activism  (Teh Gaii!!! Sex!) have fragmented and polarized our communities."

Because there's nothing, really, that says "community" like trashing the planet, engaging in bigotry and sexism, worrying about other people's bedrooms, and how they spend their free time. (I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that Huckabee has never actually lived in a neighborhood in which AIDS was a serious problem.) But don't think it's just one redneck minister with nice china, a gastric bypass scar, and an aspiration to be America's Pastor--no, blaming the Left for the ills of the world is alive and well even among those who don't dress up like ice cream men for family photos.

Today's example is Anne Applebaum of the Washington Post, whose shared initials with another famous nutjob may be more than coincidental. After all, as I was recalling recently, my encounters with Miss Havisham began over an excellent post by my friend Echidne containing the classic line: "A feminist is needed in Aisle Eight to fix some spilled self-esteem."  And as the other AA whined at the time, it's feminist's fault that some men are pigs.

Well, according to her AA buddy, rape is feminists' fault, too.

Stay with me here. Applebaum claims that the misdirected energies of American feminists (date rape, continuing economic disparity between men and women, and reproductive rights) are directly responsible for the sentencing of a Saudi woman to prison and beating for the crime of riding in a car with an unrelated man and subsequently being raped. She predictably goes after NOW (with a little self-congratulatory giggle: "I hate to pick on that group, but it's so easy"--in other words, they asked for it) and says that while she's glad we can focus on the marginal here, it means leaving our sisters in the lurch over there.

The reigning feminist ideology doesn't help: The philosopher Christina Hoff Sommers has written, among other things, that some American feminists, self-focused and reluctant to criticize non-Western cultures, have convinced themselves that "sexual terror" in America (a phrase from a real women's studies textbook) is more dangerous than actual terrorism. But the deeper problem is the gradual marginalization of "women's issues" in domestic politics, which has made them subordinate to security issues, or racial issues, in foreign policy as well.

American delegates to international and U.N. women's organizations are mostly identified with arguments about reproductive rights (for or against, depending on the administration), not arguments about the fundamental rights of women in Saudi Arabia or the Muslim world.

Until this changes, it will be hard to mount a campaign, in the manner of the anti-apartheid movement, to enforce sanctions or codes of conduct for people doing business there. What we need as a model, in other words, is not the 1960s feminism we all remember but a globalized version of the 19th-century feminism we've nearly forgotten. Candidates for the role of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, anyone?

Senator Clinton would do a fine job. Of course, when I click through the Sommers link (in the execrable Weekly Standard), I get an anti-Clinton ad from the RNC, so maybe she's not the best choice. I hear Karen Hughes, Fran Townsend, and Harriet Meiers are just kicking back these days, maybe they can do it. Wasn't Hughes supposed to be in charge of Muslim outreach or something? And isn't there a woman in the State Department?

Clearly, this is NOW's fault.

I have no problem adding my voice to the cacophony of those calling the original Saudi ruling appalling. I also decry the treatment of gang-rape and corporate-imprisonment victim Jamie Leigh Jones, who Ace of Spades and Rusty Shackleford have called a liar whose story is "too perfect." (Wow, imagine if there had been inconsistencies! That would have convinced ol' Rusty!) NOW also does not mention her on their site, but I do not blame them for her rape and subsequent abuse by a system more interested in keeping Vice-President Meisterburger in fresh colostomy bags than meting out justice.

Of course the Saudis have backed away now from the original verdict, much to the chagrin of their own Aces and Rustys.  The Saudi bloggers blame the too-little, too-late actions of George Bush and his BFF Bandar for the shift. "Was this woman pardoned in accordance with Islamic law or as a result of foreign pressure?" Like our own wingnuts, they're batshit insane, looking for a religious excuse to pump up their tiny penises by abusing women. The functional difference between our religious right and mullahs who enforce shari'a is one of language and culture, not intent or willingness to punish sexuality. And anyone who would consider voting a conservative Christian minister into office should keep that in mind.

Attacking one of the few groups standing up to the bullshit double standard is pretty spectacularly unhelpful, AA. But I admit, it's probably easier to blame them than people who actually, you know, make policy.

After all, NOW was probably riding in a car with an unrelated man, so they deserved it. Hell, maybe it was even Bill Clinton!

(h/t attaturk)

Design the Dream

This Chris Dodd guy seems pretty cool. He should run for president. That would be awesome!

Never happen, though.

Only a Taste

Over at Sadly No there's been lots of amusement at Jonah Goldberg's book, Liberal Fascism: Please, Please Take This Comical Mess Seriously, Wah. But I would like to remind my fellow left-bloggers that while it is certainly legitimate to criticize, mock, or even chuckle merrily at Goldberg's work, it would be unjust--even intellectually irresponsible--to forget for a single moment that a lot of the funniest shit is going to be written not by Goldberg himself but by his wingnut defenders.

Why, hello there, Jimmie from the Sundries Shack. Looks like one of your commenters mentioned that the following sentence from the book is pretty stupid: "The quintessential liberal fascist isn’t an SS storm trooper; it is a female grade-school teacher with an education degree from Brown or Swarthmore."

And you replied:

Consider that a teacher, over the course of her career, can indoctrinate thousands of yong minds. An SS Stormtrooper influenced far fewer minds.

That. Is. The. Shit. I mean, that's the good stuff, batshit internetty wingnut lunacy, undiluted, straight from the still. 

Greatest Christmas present ever.   

(The other comments over there should not be missed; I particularly admire this one, that The Left doesn't "want people to remember that their elitist thoughts about who should do our manual labor was responsible for most of the impetus for the civil war - which cost America some 700,000 souls." Again, that is the shit.)

(Below: Benito Mussolini and John Dewey confer on the best means of handling the Ethiopian Menace)

Throwing Bones to the Drug-Sniffing Dogs

Now that Lieberman has endorsed McCain, the long odds of something I wondered about a while ago just got a bit shorter: a McCain/Lieberman independent presidential run. It's unlikely, but not impossible. It would be a revolting, hideous spectacle, to be sure, but don't think it hasn't crossed their little gimlet minds.

Or the minds of the Unity '08 idiots. Speaking of whom, I very much enjoy the graphic they chose to illustrate their Commitment to Exciting New Voter-Empowering Paradigms on their Choose the Candidates page ("The first-ever online convention means YOU choose the candidates. As a Unity08 member, you have the opportunity to support your favorite candidates or to draft your own, and then nominate them for the Unity08 Ticket in the online convention in June 2008. Imagine candidates you choose--not chosen for you--running for President and Vice President of the United States. Start thinking about who would be on your ideal Unity Ticket, and sign up to get started!"):

Sort of says it all, don't it?