Multiculturalism

The Wall Street Journal has published an editorial on immigration by Jason L. Riley, arguing for immigration and against multiculturalism. Despite his ostensibly taking the opposite view, part of his piece reminded me of Robert Samuelson's "I wish candidates would tell everybody else what I want to hear" editorial. My parodic expansion of Samuelson's thoughts,

"Now you're of course asking me, 'How are you going to keep those 'south of the border types' out'? I'm not. Oh, I might promise stepped up border patrols, fencing the entire U.S.-Mexican border, or other expensive forms of window-dressing, but at the end of the day I'm simply not the type of politician who is going to ask the agriculture industry to pay the type of wages that will draw citizens to pick our nation's fruits and vegetables, the hospitality or retail industry to pay that type of wage for maids and janitors, or the construction industry to pay that type of wage for workers.

Riley's explicit thoughts:

The problem isn't the immigrants. The problem is the militant multiculturalists who want to turn America into some loose federation of ethnic and racial groups. The political right should continue to push back against bilingual education advocates, anti-American Chicano Studies professors, Spanish-language ballots, ethnically gerrymandered voting districts, La Raza's big-government agenda and all the rest. But these problems weren't created by the women burping our babies and changing linen at our hotels, or by the men picking lettuce in Yuma and building homes in Iowa City.

I guess some pro-immigration, pro-assimiliation right-wingers are willing to be explicit - they see immigration exclusively as an "us against them" with Mexico, but are content with the idea of allowing "them" to work as maids and nannies, or pick vegetables, as long as they don't (dare I say) cling to their cultural heritage.

Which brings us to the glory of assimilation. Riley confabulates a powerful special interest group that opposes assimilation:

If American culture is under assault today, it's not from immigrants who aren't assimilating but from liberal elites who reject the concept of assimilation. For multiculturalists, and particularly those in the academy, assimilation is a dirty word. A values-neutral belief system is embraced by some to avoid having to judge one culture as superior or inferior to another. Others reject the assimilationist paradigm outright on the grounds that the U.S. hasn't always lived up to its ideals. America slaughtered Indians and enslaved blacks, goes the argument, and this wicked history means we have no right to impose a value system on others.

The fact that you would be hard pressed to name even one such person? I guess that only shows how insidious they are. But you know as well as I do, when people go to the polls and are looking for opinion leaders on these issues, the first place they turn is to "multiculturalists, and particularly those in the academy". Whether its anti-immigrant sentiments, anti-gay marriage laws and ballot initiatives, "English language only" laws, whatever, those darn fictional ivory tower elitists get in the way of right wing populism at every turn.

The political right should continue to push back against bilingual education advocates, anti-American Chicano Studies professors, Spanish-language ballots, ethnically gerrymandered voting districts, La Raza's big-government agenda and all the rest.

Ah, so there we go... the evil leftists unmasked.

• Bilingual education advocates - these, presumably, are the people who respect studies demonstrating that bilingual education is effective at keeping immigrant children at grade level as they learn English. These programs can even take the form of rapid immersion, with bilingual elements phased out over a relatively short period of time. The horror.
• Anti-American Chicano Studies professors - these must be the "multiculturalists ... particularly those in the academy" previously mentioned. How many "Chicano Studies professors" exist, and what subset of them is anti-American? That's beside the point.
• Spanish-language ballots - Letting citizen immigrants read ballots in their native language, so they can fully appreciate what they're voting for? Can't you see, the sky is falling!
• Ethnically gerrymandered voting districts - Darn those liberal, multiculturalist Republican gerrymanderers. Darn them to heck! Wait... other motives may be involved? Well, go figure.
• La Raza's big-government agenda - Who? These guys? I guess I'm in the wrong part of the country, because I'm not seeing them wield any influence in these parts. Anyway, as we previously covered, when we say "you guys should assimilate" we mean by "burping our babies and changing linen at our hotels, or ... picking lettuce ... and building homes", not by petitioning the government for redress of grievances. Stop your anti-American antics!

It's also interesting to note that people like Riley have a very narrow view of what it means to assimilate. You won't hear them crying in their milk over our nation's having "too many churches", and how we really need to assimilate into a single [Christian] religion. You won't hear them whining about Scottish heritage festivals, and how the nation would be significantly improved if only we banned the caber toss. You won't hear them lament that we're still referencing the Scots-Irish heritage of residents of West Virginia. You won't hear them calling for the shuttering of ethnic restaurants. You may hear them whine about the "decline" of American culture, and in particular about the evils of popular culture. When you do hear that complaint, it will typically be uttered with the same degree of contemptuousness - because the problem is not the origin of the culture, it's that the culture is alien to them and they don't like it. (A response we might get? "It's different this time, and I'll tell you why shortly, but right now I'm taking the family to Taco Bell as soon as I get my kid to turn off Dora The Explorer.")

You see, there's "good multiculturalism" and then there's "bad multiculturalism". "Bad multiculturalism" necessitates railing against the latest major immigrant group and declaring that they're somehow going to ruin America. "Good multiculturalism" involves celebrating the heritage of the group you once despised, while completely overlooking the fact that multiculturalism and assimilation can and do coexist, and contribute to what we now see as "American" culture. There are many examples in our society of groups that are regarded as 100% American, but who hold on to elements of their historic culture.

I don't want to unfairly brand Riley as myopic, so I'm fully prepared for somebody to send me his editorial, which certainly must exist, lamenting our nation's St. Patrick's Day Parades, or decrying the continued presence of "Chinatown" or "Little Italy" districts in many of our nation's major cities.

Our Village Has Two Idiots

One... Two... Three if you count this guy. How did we get so lucky.
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Update: As by now you know, McCain endorsed talking to Hamas as recently as two years ago. For McCain it's not about honesty, honor or good foreign policy. It's about getting elected. That's no different from most other politicians, you say? Exactly.

... After The Next Election

Apparently John McCain is not as eager as some believe to distinguish himself from Bush. Speaking about the Iraq war,

“By January 2013, America has welcomed home most of the servicemen and women who have sacrificed terribly so that America might be secure in her freedom,’’ Mr. McCain said at the Columbus Convention Center. “The Iraq War has been won. Iraq is a functioning democracy, although still suffering from the lingering effects of decades of tyranny and centuries of sectarian tension. Violence still occurs, but it is spasmodic and much reduced.’’

So we'll see great progress... after the next election. Okay, and how will this be achieved?

“I don’t think it has anything to do with fantasy, I think it has everything to do with setting goals and achieving.’’

Yes, candidate McCain, but how will this be achieved? No answer? Okay, let's try another question....

If your "flowers and candy in 2013" scenario doesn't actually pan out, and things continue to be as bad as they are now, how long will you keep U.S. forces in Iraq? Oh... no answer to that question, either. Wait a minute - isn't your giving a timetable something that can be taken by the enemy as a sign of surrender and a date they need only await? This is different, you say? Because you'll stay in Iraq until the job is done, even if it takes more than four-and-a-half years? But you still won't tell us how long?

Well, if you can't give us specifics, can you at least share a few more of your pipe dreams? You can? Great.

In Afghanistan, he said, an increase in actionable intelligence will have led to the capture or death of Osama bin Laden.....

And you're basing this assertion on... oh yes, sorry, I forgot. Pipe dreams. Got more?

On domestic policy, Mr. McCain projected that the United States will have experienced several years of “robust economic growth;’’ a reduction in the corporate tax rate; and the beginning of a phase out of the alternative minimum tax.

Because moon fairies will come down to the Earth and sprinkle the economy with magic fairy dust, and...

Oh, sorry. As you said, this has nothing to do with fantasy. How could I have forgotten. We're to assume that you have a rock-solid plan to get us out of the war in Vietnam, er, Iraq, fix the economy, and all that. But it's a secret.

Robert Samuelson On Truth Serum

Oh boy.... Robert Samuelson imagines a world where we put politicians on "truth serum" and suddenly everything the have to say coincides 100% with (you probably guessed it) Samuelson's personal political agenda. Let's supplement some of these remarks, such that they're actually truthful.

"What we can do is preserve an economic climate that favors long-term growth. That means holding down the tax burden to maintain incentives for work and investments. We're already running a $400 billion or so deficit; some broad-based tax increases may be needed. This will disappoint conservatives, who think no one should pay taxes, and liberals, who think only the rich should pay them. But we must also cut spending, because, unless we do, the future tax increases will be crushing.

"Taxes may need to be raised, but only broad-based taxes. Should we need to raise taxes, we need not concern ourselves with progressive taxation or the impact of higher taxes on working families. We should caricature both conservatives (in a somewhat flattering way) and liberals (in a somewhat nonsensical way).

"To cut to the chase - while taxes may need to be raised that's something to be avoided. What we must do is cut spending. And by cutting spending, of course, I mean programs that help the poor and (primarily) the middle class. I have no interest in examining other major expenses, such as the cost of the Iraq War, so don't even go there.

"Of necessity, spending cuts should focus on Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. These programs are projected to grow from about 45 percent of the present budget to 70 percent over a couple of decades. Paying for that exclusively with taxes would be devastating for the economy and our children. Paying exclusively by cutting other programs would gut vital government services. I admit that raising eligibility ages for baby boomers and cutting some benefits are unfair. People should have received more warning. But our politicians have so dawdled that there's no warning time left.

"Yes, I'm one of those politicians who happily advances the right-wing canard that because we "spent" the money we borrowed from Social Security, even though Social Security owns treasury notes that if repaid would carry it for decades, those taxes you paid to support your retirement are gone and now we need to cut your benefits. We won't pause to reflect on what this means for the oft-heard line, 'the poor and lower middle class don't pay income taxes,' as if we divert your Social Security taxes into the general fund what are they other than just another income tax.

"And no, don't ask me the financial specifics of the Social Security crisis, because the facts hurt my argument. I want you scared that if you don't give up some benefits now, even though we can afford them, the entire system will soon collapse. The truth about Social Security? Not so scary. We have some work to do, sure, but it's dishonest of me to suggest that the sky is falling.

"Now Medicare and Medicaid are a different story, and we do need to find a way to reign in costs. I'm going to start by ignoring how implementation of universal health care could affect this financial picture, because I'm busy pretending that nobody is addressing these issues. While universality of health insurance doesn't directly address the problems of Medicare and Medicaid, it could keep people off the Medicaid rolls who currently intentionally reduce their earnings and assets in order to qualify for benefits.

"My opponent sees a future where the working poor can hold jobs despite having chronic, costly illnesses and still have good health coverage. My vision involves keeping them poor and dependent - then cutting their Medicaid benefits. Let's face it - that's better for wealthy taxpayers like me. We can pay for our own health care - although our ability really isn't the issue, as most of us also have really good insurance and we don't need to worry about the consequences of Medicare and Medicaid cuts.

"Take for example candidate John McCain. His wife could open him his own private medical clinic, staffed with personal physicians and nurses to cater to his every need. She could afford this without even having to sell her private jet or mortgage one of her vacation homes - they have so much money, it wouldn't affect their lifestyle at all. But he and I still want to cut your medical benefits and your medical safety net, because let's face it. We're more important than you.

"And because we're more important to you, when I talk about cutting Social Security and the medical care safety net, I'm not talking about cutting retirement benefits for members of the Senate, or eliminating the generous health insurance packages available to Senators at taxpayer expense. You may notice that while I'm talking about surprising you with less income and more medical expenses in your retirement, I have no interest in sharing your pain. I would prefer it if you didn't notice that, but no matter how hard I wish it weren't the case, not all of you are stupid.

"We've also dawdled on energy. No one likes $125-a-barrel oil. Last year, we paid an average price of $64 a barrel for imports. Some blame the oil companies, but the truth is that we're all to blame. Americans like cheap gasoline and big vehicles. Nothing was done to dampen consumption. Meanwhile, Congress restricted new oil and gas exploration on environmental grounds. So, demand rose and supply fell. In 1985, we imported 4 million barrels of oil a day; now that's 12 million

"Now when I say 'nothing was done', I don't really mean that. I mean that once Ronald Reagan was elected President and energy self-sufficiency and conservation no longer seemed like pressing concerns, those quaint notions were quickly relegated to the status of exhibits at the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library. I'm also going to pretend that the only issue causing a rise in oil prices is our domestic inability to get more oil out of the ground right now. That it has nothing to do with increased demand for oil around the world, and perhaps especially in China and India.

"I'm also going to pretend that other oil-producing nations would not step down their production in response to any domestic increase, so as to maximize their own profits. I will happily ignore the fact that if we drained ANWR dry, odds are we will get at most a four year domestic supply of oil - then it's gone and we're back where we started. And I'll ignore the very concept of the word "reserves" - because I think it's better that we completely tap out domestic sources of oil sooner rather than later, so we can become even more dependent on foreign oil.

"As I said, I don't want you blaming the oil companies for any of this. It's not like they have intentionally limited refinery capacity so as to maximize gasoline prices in the summer. Well, actually it is like that, but I don't want you to remember that fact. Don't blame the auto industry either, because they made a lot of money off of selling SUV's, even as they ceded the technological advantage in fuel efficient technologies to the Japanese auto manufacturers. And I don't want you to bring up the environmental records of 'big oil' either, because, well, I don't think the environment is very important. And just so you know, if you disagree with me you're stupid.

" 'Energy independence' is a fraud. We simply use too much foreign oil. All we can do is limit our dependence by shifting to more-efficient vehicles and increasing domestic production. But these measures will take years and have only modest effects. The same is true of global warming. Without major technological breakthroughs, making big cuts in greenhouse gases will be impossible.

"And when I say 'Energy independence is a fraud', I mean I don't want to pay the political price of achieving it. I don't want to have to sell you on nuclear power, mass transportation, more energy-efficient living, and massive infrastructure investment - I don't even want to mention those things. I'm happy to pretend that if we get the average vehicle up to 30 or so MPG, everything will come up roses - and that we have no other ways to conserve energy. I'm going to pretend that only gasoline is made from a barrel of crude, and am not going to mention other gases or heating oil. I certainly don't want to ask businesses to ante up, and as you know I'm not going to raise taxes on the rich to pay for any of this.

"Similarly, when I say 'The same is true of global warming,' I'm again passing the buck. Obviously there are things we can do to reduce the emission of greenhouse gases. I'm not willing to increase taxes to pay for those things, and again I'm not interested in asking industry to bear the expense, so forget it. It's just not a priority to me. As far as I'm concerned, the whole "global warming" thing is overblown.

"By the way, did you notice that I didn't mention nuclear energy? It would take a courageous politician to bring up nuclear energy as a possible solution to some of our energy needs. Did you see the way I avoided mentioning coal, the environmental impact of coal mining and coal-burning power plants, and the greenhouse gases and environmental damage resulting from coal-burning plants? Because it would take a courageous politician to tackle those issues, and if you noticed that you're probably also noticing that I'm anything but courageous. You did notice? Drat.

"Finally, let's discuss poverty. Everyone's against it, but hardly anyone admits that most of the increase in the past 15 years reflects immigration -- new immigrants or children of recent immigrants. Unless we stop poor people from coming across our Southern border, legally and illegally, we won't reduce poverty. Period. That doesn't mean we should try to expel the 12 million illegal immigrants already here -- an impossible and morally dubious task. Many families have been here for years; many have American children. We need a pragmatic accommodation: assimilate most people now here; shift future immigration to the highly skilled.

"And here you'll note that I'm painting a picture of immigration and poverty that is so misleading that anybody who is conversant with the issues will think I'm lying. But I'm telling the truth, in a relative sort of way, by describing the world in a way that reflects my politics and personal prejudices.

"Now you're of course asking me, 'How are you going to keep those 'south of the border types' out'? I'm not. Oh, I might promise stepped up border patrols, fencing the entire U.S.-Mexican border, or other expensive forms of window-dressing, but at the end of the day I'm simply not the type of politician who is going to ask the agriculture industry to pay the type of wages that will draw citizens to pick our nation's fruits and vegetables, the hospitality or retail industry to pay that type of wage for maids and janitors, or the construction industry to pay that type of wage for workers.

"Heck - since I'm being honest, I'm not willing to pay that type of wage for the guy who mows my lawn and cleans my pool, or the woman who clean my house. So at most I'm talking about trying to shift them into a 'guest worker'-type system that maintains them as a steady supply of cheap labor. If I were to be honest about my hope, it would be that they come here to work they leave their children at home, and by 'home' I mean 'south of the border'.

"By pretending the poverty problem is driven by immigration, I also get to avoid addressing the more difficult aspects of poverty. If I admitted that immigrant populations assimilate, their children mostly speak English and hold jobs, and that their poverty is relatively transitory, you might turn around and ask me, 'What about those populations where poverty isn't a transitional stage? Where people or families are in poverty for years, or even generations? What can we do for them?' You might even argue, 'Can't we learn something from the successful assimilation of immigrants, even those with little or no education, that might help us learn how to move other populations out of poverty?' Truth be told, I don't care about people in poverty. My only solution for them is to cut their entitlements.

"Vote for me. I'll tell the truth."

"That is, the truth as I see it. Which may not be the truth. But that technicality aside, it's the truth."

Samuelson adds,

Of course, our hapless candidate would be dismissed as misinformed, offensive, possibly racist and, of course, unelectable.

No. A fair assessment would be that the hapless candidate is ill-informed, intentionally or unintentionally oversimplifies serious issues, responds to serious problems at best with clichéd non-solutions, and mostly offers no solution whatsoever to anything else he defines as a "critical" issue for the nation.

That isn't a good way to differentiate himself from the rest of the field.

All He Has To Do To Win....

In a column by Maureen Dowd that you'll be shocked to know, isn't really worth reading, she shares this insight:

Charlie Peters, the legendary former editor of the liberal Washington Monthly who ran Jack Kennedy’s campaign in Kanawha County, W. Va., said Obama should study how J.F.K. managed to win there despite raging anti-Catholicism.

* * *

“The point of West Virginia in 1960 is that you can change attitudes,” Peters, an Obama supporter, said on Tuesday evening. “But if you don’t act to change them, he could lose West Virginia and I think he could lose the country.

“He has to change those perceptions of the people who think he could actually agree with the Rev. Wright.

* * *

Peters says Obama needs imagination and a “tremendous effort” to dispel bias in West Virginia, and quickly, “because once it’s set in concrete, you’ll have a hell of a time.”

This, to me, is barely above saying, "If he wants to win, all he has to do is convince more than half of the people in each state to vote for him." It's not quite that bad, because Peters ties things back to Rev. Wright. But the problem with Obama's distancing himself from Rev. Wright, or from the whisper campaign that he's actually a Muslim, is that nothing he can say or do will convince people who believe such things otherwise. They aren't interested in looking at his record, and they don't believe his denials.

In this regard, I think it will take the strong effort of people who already have credibility with the doubters to make a clear case that in fact Obama is telling the truth. That, of course, would have to overcome a simultaneous GOP smear campaign intending to convince people otherwise. That smear campaign is underway, as highlighted by this absurdity from Kent County, Michigan. Daniel Larison (who, as if it needs to be said about an amconmag.com contributor, does not support Obama) reacts,

I don’t know what I find more depressing–that the GOP is so absolutely, unspeakably intellectually bankrupt that this is all it has to offer, or that this sort of tactic might very well win them the presidential election.

It's much easier to engage in this type of "see what sticks" mudslinging than it is to refute each new smear.

There are two sources of "bias" that Obama arguably needs to "overcome". One, racism, already is "set in stone". He's not going to budge more than a tiny number of the people who will not vote for him because of his race. How much effort should he direct at those people? None. The likely return on investment of time and resources is vanishingly small.

That's not to say that he can't shift perceptions of himself, such that he's more of a "Colin Powell" black man than a "Rev. Wright" black man.

Susan Dzimian, a Clinton supporter who owns residential properties, said outside a polling location in Kokomo that race was a factor in how she viewed Obama. "I think if it was somebody other than him, I'd accept it," she said of a black candidate. "If Colin Powell had run, I would be willing to accept him."

That's the kind of voter who had Peggy Noonan tied up in knots, before the Rev. Wright story emerged and enabled the political right to start painting Obama as a "scary black man".

As for the skeptics of Obama who are less concerned about race, but are concerned about issues like Rev. Wright, the whispered smears that Obama's secretly a muslim or is hostile to Israel, or the overt Republican attacks on Obama's patriotism, as I previously indicated, Obama's teaming up with credible people who will refute those charges could help him gain votes. For those who think an Obama-Clinton "unity ticket" is the thing? So far, Clinton has chosen to benefit from those concerns rather than trying to shift voters toward more accurate views. I don't see how she can credibly commence with a defense of Obama, let alone be a credible running mate at the bottom of the ticket, given that history. As for McCain, it's pretty clear that he intends to run a dirty campaign if that's what it takes to win, and he has lots of proxies (for example, the Kent County GOP) willing to roll around in the gutter on his behalf.

To put it mildly, in terms of making solid inroads with voters who are hostile to him, Obama and his allies have a lot of work to do.
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Update: Giving credit where credit is due, Hillary Clinton is coming out against McCain's "Hamas" smear.

Some "GOP Operatives" Are... Stupid

The proposed smear:

Privately, some Republicans say they also hope to raise doubts about Obama's patriotism. McCain's TV ads stress his five years as a prisoner of war in Vietnam. One GOP operative, speaking on condition of anonymity, said strategists have proposed an ad picturing a series of Democratic politicians, all but one - Obama - wearing a U.S. flag pin.

"Here's the tagline: What's he got against the American flag?" the operative said.

Right.... Because there's no way that could possibly backfire on McCain.

One wonders... is this idea coming from the same moron who sent Jack Kingston out to whinge about the flag pin issue? Because there, also, we apparently weren't supposed to notice that Jack Kingston doesn't wear a flag pin?

Shared Sacrifice

What a role model.

Because When You're Winning....

The smears keep coming. Daniel Larison takes on the latest round of "Obama hates Israel" smears.
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Update: And on it goes.

Evolving Right-Wing Smears Against Obama

I can barely keep track... One day, Obama's a secret Muslim reared in a radical Islamic madrassa, and is plotting to take over the country. The next day, he's a wild-eyed black man enthralled by a radical preacher whose teachings "aren't Biblical". Now it seems he's a Christian, which means the Muslim world wants him dead. Really, that's the argument of Edward N. Luttwack in today's New York Times, where he was granted space for an editorial despite what appears to be a complete lack of credentials on religious matters, let alone Islamic law. (Insight into the flaws in Luttwack's interpretation of Islam may be found here and here.)

One of the glories of writing an editorial, of course, is that you're not fact-checked, but that doesn't stop various right-wing hacks and haters from trying to suggest that Luttwack's position has somehow been endorsed by the Times. The smear piece relates this history:

Of course, as most Americans understand it, Senator Obama is not a Muslim. He chose to become a Christian, and indeed has written convincingly to explain how he arrived at his choice and how important his Christian faith is to him.

Perhaps "most Americans" understand that Obama is not a Muslim because he wasn't raised as a Muslim, has never been a Muslim, and... is a Christian. The phrasing here seems intended to suggest that Obama was once Muslim and converted to Christianity - that's consistent with a right-wing smear piece, but it's completely at odds with the facts. As for the "apostasy" claim, Luttwack claims,

With few exceptions, the jurists of all Sunni and Shiite schools prescribe execution for all adults who leave the faith not under duress; the recommended punishment is beheading at the hands of a cleric, although in recent years there have been both stonings and hangings.

For all adults? So in Luttwack's fevered imagination, when Obama was born and his parents chose not to raise him as a Muslim, the newborn baby Obama was an adult who chose not to be a Muslim? This is the best he can do to sustain his smear?

More broadly, most citizens of the Islamic world would be horrified by the fact of Senator Obama’s conversion to Christianity once it became widely known — as it would, no doubt, should he win the White House.

Because in Luttwack's mind, Muslims are really, really stupid and thus, despite international coverage of the campaign and the "Rev. Wright" pseudo-scandal, have no idea that Obama is a Christian.

This smear is bizarre. First and foremost, who cares what the Muslim world thinks of Obama? Isn't "being hated by the Muslim world" a bragging point for G.W.? Isn't the notion that Islamic extremists will "fear" him a cornerstone of John McCain's campaign? Second, if the test of who we want for President is "hope that [the President] would decisively improve relations with the world’s Muslims", assuming the worst of Luttwack's smear piece to be true, how does that distinguish Obama from McCain? As for the possibility that there might be Islamic radicals who would like to kill the President, again the difference between McCain and Obama would be... what?

Meanwhile, in his increasingly loathsome manner, Joe Lieberman is advancing a related smear against Obama, suggesting that Hamas will be happy if he wins. (Where was Luttwack during Lieberman's Presidential run, to "warn" us that the Islamic world may not be thrilled with the idea of a President who is also an Orthodox Jew?) Yes, this is the same Joe Lieberman who solicited Obama's endorsement against Lamont, after losing the Democratic primary for his Senate seat. Perhaps eventually these attacks will become coherent, as if you combine Lieberman's smear with Luttwack's you're left with the near-psychotic notion that Hamas is eager for an Obama victory so that they can condemn him, refuse to cooperate with him, and try to kill him.

If you took all the neurons in Luttwack's head and banged them against all the neurons in Lieberman's head, would you generate enough energy to create a spark? Meanwhile, considering the origins of this particular smear, one wonders why the Times thought it was "fit to print".

McCain's Campaign Strategy

Well, it beats "developing phrases". Here's a glimpse of the strategies Obama and McCain are expected to offer for the fall election.

Republicans will seek to portray Mr. Obama as out of touch with many voters on issues like abortion and gay rights. Some of Mr. McCain’s advisers said they also thought that Mr. Obama had displayed a number of vulnerabilities as a candidate that they would seek to exploit: they argued that he was prone to becoming irritated when tired or pressed on tough questions, that he had trouble connecting with voters in smaller settings and that he had run a campaign light on substance.

The first part is simply a run-of-the-mill pitch to single-issue voters. The rest? Let's see... because McCain always acts so calm in public? And McCain connects so well when he speaks to small groups of... well, has he spent any time with small groups of people who aren't his base? (How well did he handle this - a question about his language toward his wife - "There are people here who don't respect that type of language" - isn't that the point of the question?) And specifics? He has to be kidding....

Also, one wonders, will the health condition he is apparently trying to cover up clear up soon? Because when you compare his openness with his medical records eight years ago to his reluctance to disclose them today, that's the most obvious implication of his continuing refusal to disclose them.

In any event, it looks to be a standard smearfest campaign, so fasten your seat belts.

And The Point Is....

When I read something like Alan Abramowitz's column on Obama, In These Primary Numbers, Warnings for the Fall

Sen. Barack Obama is the all but certain Democratic nominee, but voting patterns in Indiana and North Carolina show that resistance to a black candidate among some white Democrats remains a serious threat to his chances in November....

I have to wonder what the point is. Are we back to "the country's not ready for an African American President (so you had better nominate the white guy gal)"? Abramowitz gives us this conclusion:

Democrats must hope that disapproval of Bush could lead working-class voters to begrudgingly approve of a black presidential candidate.

It's fair to say that we can assume a voting bloc that is simply too racist to ever vote for an African American. Democrats can "hope" that they don't bother to vote for McCain. But the idea that the rest of the nation's "working-class voters" will go to the polls and vote against their interests simply to keep an African American out of the White House? To the extent that "hope" is involved, Democrats should hope working class voters will assign that notion to the scrapheap of elitist claptrap, by voting in such a manner (even if for McCain) that it's obvious that they're motivated by the issues and not by race.

More Senior Moments

McCain's faulty memory strikes again.

McCain also has been critical of government's "revolving door," which allows former government officials to position themselves as influential lobbyists. Rogers said that McCain does not recall being lobbied by his former staff members on the land swap and that "no lobbyist influenced Senator McCain on this issue."

No, of course he doesn't.

Some Interesting Stuff....

Some interesting commentary from around the "blogosphere"....

• The Columbia Journalism Review takes on David Broder for falsely suggesting that Obama's campaign is short on specifics while ignoring McCain's substance-free lifestyle.
• Imagining George Bush in his underwear for "special marital occasions"? Daniel Larison warns us that David Gerson is (and confronts him on his latest anti-Obama smears).
• Why should Cindy McCain disclose her finances? Mark Nickolas delves into the history of her financial support for her husband's campaigns and her past dealings with Charles Keating.

No Sense Of History

Jackson Diehl compares the problems of the U.S. in Sadr City to the problems of Israel in Gaza:

For months now, Israel has been mired in an unwinnable war against Hamas and allied militias in Gaza, who fire missiles at civilians in Israel and then hide among their own women and children, ensuring that retaliatory fire will produce innocent victims for the Middle East's innumerable satellite television networks. A growing number of the militiamen have been to Iran for training, and some of the missiles they launch are Iranian-made. Their objective is obvious: to exhaust Israelis with an endless war of attrition while making it impossible for Israel's government to reach a political settlement with the more moderate Palestinian administration in the West Bank.

Now U.S. forces have been drawn into a similar morass in Sadr City, the Shiite neighborhood of 2 million ruled by Moqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army. As Iranian-made rockets rain down on the Green Zone and nearby neighborhoods, U.S. forces attempt, so far in vain, to stop the fire by attacking Shiite militants from the ground and the air. Hundreds of people have been killed, filling the satellite airwaves and handing a new argument to the "this war is lost" lobby in Washington.

The comparison is at one level reasonable (how do you deal with an enemy that melts into a civilian population) at at another level it's entirely specious. It also suggests that Diehl believes this is a new phenomenon, yet it echoes Israel's experiences with Hezbollah during its war with Lebanon.

So what part of Diehl's point is specious? His completely glossing over the goals of the militaries involved. Israel has given up any claim to Gaza. It has pulled out its settlers. It isn't trying to win hearts and minds, or create democracy. And it's in an ugly position - it knows that by the time its missiles strike the civilian neighborhoods where Hamas "militants" were launching rockets, the "militants" will almost certainly be gone. So they're striking civilian infrastructure (and perhaps civilians) because the alternatives are to either do nothing or send in ground forces, either of which probably worsens things for Israel and the latter of which generally kills and injures even greater numbers of civilians.

If the U.S. is following that model in an area where it is trying to win hearts and minds, and create democracy, it's foolish. Incompetent. But Diehl's piece seems largely designed to beat the war drums against Iran, so perhaps he's into foolish, incompetent military strategies.

Bush On The Mortgage Mess

Bush plans to veto the proposed "housing-relief bill", expressing,

The president on Wednesday repeated his opposition to a bill “that will reward speculators and lenders” who have suffered because of their own foolishness.

If that's truly the way he feels, he should be advocating for changes in bankruptcy law that would permit lenders and borrowers to share the cost of their folly through first mortgage cramdowns in bankruptcy court. But of course, he doesn't actually favor that - he seems to instead favor "solutions" which direct taxpayer money to lenders but not to borrowers.

The Rhetorical Gift That Keeps On Giving

Continuing the tradition of putting words into the mouths of people who probably don't exist, today, it's Novak on Obama.

The young orator who had seemed so fantastic, beginning with his 2007 Jefferson-Jackson dinner speech in Iowa, disappointed even his own advisers over the past two weeks

Name one?

and old party hands mourned that they were stuck with a flawed candidate.

Name one?

Didn't think so.

There's little substance to Novak's piece, but he does try to perpetuate some McCain mythology.

Democrats abhor bringing up what Obama calls Ayers's "detestable acts 40 years ago," but they will be brought into the public arena even if that is not McCain's style of politics.

But it is McCain's style. And it's not an isolated incident, either. Saying McCain isn't going to roll around in the gutter like this doesn't change the fact that he already is. It just makes the speaker look like Robert Novak ignorant, dishonest, or both.

Extending Unemployment Benefits

Robert Samuelson argues in favor of extending "unemployment insurance from the standard 26 weeks to 39 weeks."

The great danger of unemployment insurance is that people are paid to be jobless. Benefits that are too generous or that last too long can raise unemployment. This is a problem in Europe, where benefits are relatively lavish. But it's a smaller issue here; some academic studies find that extending unemployment benefits by 13 weeks might slightly slow the flow of workers back into jobs. People don't start looking so quickly or are more picky. But the effects aren't large, because the benefits are fairly stingy.

My anecdotal experience is consistent with those academic studies. But there's something you can do to minimize the effect - give the same average weekly benefit over the full 26 (or 29) weeks, but have more generous benefits at the outset and a reduced extended benefit. That gives a much-needed boost to people who unexpectedly lose their job and scramble to find a new one, but provides a periodic incentive to the less motivated to pound the pavement and send out the résumés.

I'm not unsympathetic to the fact that some people are actively searching for work throughout the entire period of their unemployment benefits, but for a variety of reasons keep running into brick walls. But I think on the whole a system that provides better short-term relief and adds an incentive to find a job quickly, without reducing total benefits, is an alternative that should be explored.

The Gerson War On Reality

Michael Gerson's in a tizzy because Hillary Clinton has accused the Republican Party of "conducting a 'war on science.'" He quickly names three civil servants, one of whom earned his position under Clinton and another of whom received his two most recent promotions under Carter (Chief of the Laboratory of Immunoregulation for the NIH) and Reagan (Director of NIAID), whom he claims to have stellar scientific records.

Um... wow? Way to defend (either) Bush?

And, because we haven't had enough of this type of mindlessness lately,

Any ethical question about the destruction of human embryos to harvest their cells is dismissed as "theological" and thus illegitimate.

Okay... by whom? Where and when? Should we hold our breath waiting for your answer?

Any practical concern about the content of government sex-education curricula is labeled "anti-science."

I didn't realize that it was "anti-science" to have practical concerns over the documented failure of "abstinence only" sex education, but there you go. Now if your concern is that there's scientific content in sex education, and you prefer to omit that science from sex education programs in favor of the discredited theory that "abstinence-only education" works? Now that would be anti-science.

That "abstinence only" agenda was anti-science even before "abstinence-only" education was discredited, as there was never any data to support "abstinence-only" education as a viable alternative. You want to talk scientific ethics? How about the Bush Administration's using our nation's schoolchildren as lab rats for that failed social science experiment? May I please at least see the "informed consent" forms?

Liberal views are "objective" while traditional moral convictions are "biased."

Surely even Gerson can construct a better straw man than that.

Public scrutiny of scientific practices is "politicizing" important decisions.

Oh... I guess not.

These arguments are seriously made, but they are not to be taken seriously.

An ambiguous reference. If he means, "The fake arguments I'm presently raising," for once he's right on the money.

And of course we devolve into this type of claptrap, popular with dishonest right-wingers:

Without a firm, morally grounded belief in equality, liberalism has been led down some dark paths. The old, progressive eugenics of the late 19th and early 20th centuries involved widespread sterilization of the mentally disabled as a form of social hygiene.

We can start by pointing out that just because a historic group called itself "progressive" and that's the new preferred term in a lot of circles for the term, "liberal", doesn't mean the two are one and the same. Further, if Gerson had any idea what he was talking about, he would understand that when eugenics movements were at their peak they were broadly embraced by society, even by people he would have to grudgingly concede were "conservatives".

Gerson argues that parents' decisions to abort Down syndrome babies

highlights a real conflict, a war within liberalism between the idea of unrestricted science in the cause of health and the principle that all men are created equal - between humanitarianism and egalitarianism.

Yet he doesn't explain how. Do you suppose he has evidence that parents who self-classify as conservatives don't choose abortion when they learn that they are expecting a Down syndrome child? Well, he says, "In America, the lives of about nine of 10 children with Down syndrome are ended before birth." So either Gerson has to admit that American conservatives are a big part of what he describes as the problem, or argue that significantly less than 10% of Americans are "conservative."

I guess there's one more possibility: He could be arguing that while liberals fret over the conflict between humanitarianism and egalitarianism, conservatives are skipping the debate and heading straight to Planned Parenthood.

Nazism largely discredited the old eugenics. But a new eugenics - the eugenics of genetic screening and abortion, the eugenics of genetic selection in the process of in vitro fertilization - is alive and well. Its advocates contend that the new eugenics is superior because it is voluntary instead of compulsory, and unrelated to race.

Posing some questions to Mr. Gerson:

Who are these "advocates"? Where can I find these statements you attribute to them? Do they truly compare "genetic selection in the process of in vitro fertilization" to Nazi-style eugenics? Oh, I know, hyperbole - nobody is really making such a comparison or statement. So let's ask a question that ignores your attempt to conflate genetic screening with Nazism. You're not claiming that these "advocates" are liberal - what are their politics? And the people paying for these services - people who are wealthy enough to afford cutting edge infertility treatment and genetic testing - what are their politics?

I'm also curious as to how you distinguish in vitro fertilization involving genetic testing from the traditional variety. Either way, a number of eggs are fertilized for implantation, but most of those fertilized eggs are discarded. The difference, then, is that with genetic screening certain birth defects are eliminated, which should significantly reduce the abortion rate.

After that rhetorical exercise, I am left with three obvious questions for Mr. Gerson:

• Are you opposed to all in vitro fertilization, given that with or without genetic testing the number of viable embryos that are not implanted are roughly equal?
• Are you stating that it's more "moral" to forego genetic screening and discard a healthy, viable embryo than it is to employ genetic screening and improve the chances of a genetically normal child? (That's a subject ripe for debate - I'm just trying to figure out if you're trying to engage us in that debate or, as seems to be the case, foreclose it by suggesting that anybody who would engage in genetic screening is tantamount to a Nazi eugenicist.)
• Leaving aside for the moment the psychological and medical toll on an expectant mother, do you believe that there's no difference between having an embryo expire without ever being implanted and having a fetus aborted in the first or second trimester - and if you do see a difference, unless you believe the former is worse, why are you suggesting that doctors who help avoid that second outcome are tantamount to Nazi eugenicists?

Gerson clarifies,

The point here is not to catch liberalism in an inconsistency.

Well, that's probably for the best. Because if that were the point, Gerson would look even more the fool.

Meanwhile, Gerson might benefit from brushing up on the non-scientific positions taken by the Bush Administration, even while he was hacking away as a speechwriter for G.W., on such topics as sex education, global warming, "intelligent design", misrepresentation of the viability of stem cell lines, etc. Because if he really wants to make the case that Republicans care about science, his former paymasters have a lot of explaining to do.

The Contract On America, Book II

Via Dan Larison, I learn that Newt Gingrich is back (again). Not that he really went away. And he has some really bad ideas.

Newt Gingrich is back to haunt us again, this time offering up nine panderific ideas that reek of the desperation of a party with no ideas–and he’s supposed to be one of the idea men of this gang! My favourite has to be this one:

Introduce a “more energy at lower cost with less environmental damage and greater national security bill” as a replacement for the Warner-Lieberman “tax and trade” bill…

This will also be known as the No Trade-Offs/Free Lunch Act of 2008. Gingrich forgot to mention introducing the bill to protect endangered unicorns.

When I read that (the quote he presented, not the quip that followed) my reaction was, "Okay, he's joking or he's giving us a sarcastic summary of Newt Gingrich's actual proposal. But no.... Newt's actually proposing "a 'more energy at lower cost with less environmental damage and greater national security bill'".

"Gas Tax Holiday" Pandering Is A "Big Deal"

Paul Krugman is right about this much: As compared to other economic issues, the "gas tax holiday" is small potatoes. But to the extent he is trying to minimize the significance of this particular pander, or to suggest that it's politically worse than Obama's use of certain right-wing talking points in criticizing health insurance mandates, I disagree.

If the test is, "Will a candidate embrace right wing talking points", how would this example give me faith in Hillary Clinton? The entiire idea of a gas tax holiday originated with the McCain campaign. When Obama took the grown-up path, rather than joining the irresponsible pandering of the other presidential candidates, what did Hillary Clinton do? She attacked him, directly and through her campaign, as elitist and out-of-touch with the needs of working people. When confronted with the economic realities of her proposal, what did she do? She made a statement dismissive of economists.

I don't like the Obama team's approach to mandates, both because I think mandates are better policy and because their arguments seem weak. (If arguably better than a blanket statement dismissive of economists, not much better.) There's an equivalence here - in both cases we're dealing with election year politics versus good public policy, with the defenders of the weaker policy engaging in attacks on their opponent that, to me, seem unfair, dishonest and opportunistic.

We could debate whether it says more about a candidate that they engage in this conduct over a major economic issue or a minor economic issue. We could debate what it means that one issue deals with a future, theoretical policy that has not been fully fleshed out, and the other proposes immediate action. I suppose somebody could try to introduce some nuance to suggest that somehow one candidate or the other's proposal is "better founded in economics" than the other. But that's a marginal defense, as what is really important is what these conflicts tell us about a candidate and their approach to responsible public policy. A candidate's dogmatically sticking to a weak or bad economic theory, making little to no effort to explain why theirs is the better theory, then resorting to attack mode and right-wing talking points when confronted on the weaknesses, does not impress me.

Class Warfare

A couple of days ago I took apart a really bad editorial by Gary MacDougal, but I think something more needs to be said. MacDougal writes,

Each year the federal government spends hundreds of billions of dollars - specifically, more than $10,000 per poor person for welfare, Medicaid, the earned-income tax credit, job training and food stamps. Put another way, taxpayers are doing their share.

From a wealthy guy writing a mass market editorial, what does this really mean? To me, it's a reminder to his readers that if we pay more money to help the poor, "It's coming out of your pockets."

With Bush slashing taxes for the rich, we often hear it explained that "it's only fair" that the rich got tax cuts - they pay most of the nation's income taxes, and "if everybody else is getting a cut" why shouldn't the people at the top get one as well? On a superficial level, it's a reasonable position to take. But if you look at the economic realities faced by the middle class, it's actually an argument that defies an increasingly ugly reality. Middle class people, particularly middle class families, are financially squeezed. No, of course middle class people don't want to pay more taxes, and it's not because of "greed" or "anti-tax" sentiment - they're tapped out.

So on top of their notion that it's "unfair" to give tax cuts based upon need rather than tax bracket, wealthy class warriors frame these issues as "any help to the poor will increase the tax burdens on working people." And that's before noting the misrepresentation and sleights of hand in the budgetary projections that supposedly justified the tax cuts, or the Bush Administration's dogmatic insistence (apparently now joined by McCain) that the proper response to every economic situation (a strong economy, a sluggish economy, a stagnant economy, a weak economy or a recession) is to cut taxes (particularly for the rich). What they seem to intend, and the Grover Norquist types explicitly advocate - is a collapse of the government's ability to pay for more than "basic" services - and if they're not personally driving over the bridge that's on the verge of collapse, repairing or replacing the nation's crumbling infrastructure simply doesn't interest them. The express line for first class passengers through airport security, on the other hand... That's a good use of your tax dollars.

Another "Pseudo-Expert Roundup" On Iraq

The Times has yet another presentation of various "experts" on Iraq, and "how to see this mission accomplished." Honestly, I've only read one of the comments, that of Danielle Pletka, because history indicates that her brand of "expertise" is usually good for a laugh.

No doubt both Al Qaeda and Iran overplayed their hands and alienated Iraqis. At the same time, the surge convinced both Sunni and Shiite rejectionists that United States forces would remain the strongest in Iraq for the time being. American leaders need to recognize, however, that power calculations, not principle, have driven these conversions.

Okay... she's stating the obvious, but there's nothing unreasonable in that.

No, we should not shun friends where we find them, even fair-weather friends.

Somebody suggested we should shun our friends? Who? Where? When? (If somebody advised caution on dealing with "fair weather friends", that's understandable and correct - is that what she means? It's certainly not what she said.)

Nor is it right, as some Democrats have suggested, that our Iraqi allies are merely mercenaries.

Must we go through this every day? Name the Democrats who have suggested "our Iraqi allies are merely mercenaries". Name just one. (Didn't think so.)

But Americans must understand that we will need to maintain an imposing presence in Iraq for a long time to come, ensuring that all sides have enough of a stake in the new order so that violence loses its appeal.

Now that's a weak excuse for a punch line, although it reflects a clownish sense of reality.

We must "maintain an imposing presence in Iraq" - how imposing?

We must be there for "a long time to come" - how long?

And what form of low-wattage thinking comes up with the fantasy that we can ensure that "all sides have enough of a stake in the new order so that violence loses its appeal"? (Oh yes... American Enterprise Institute-branded low-wattage thinking.) So, Ms. Pletka, give us one successful example of nation similar to Iraq, full of ethnic tensions and on the verge of civil war, where that was achieved. I'm cutting you a break here, by pretending Iraq isn't in a state of civil war - so it should be easy, right? Just one example, from all of human history.

You promise to get back to us with an answer, maybe, in the next round-up of the pseudo-experts?

We Knew He Was Unethical....

Now Tom DeLay's trying to redeem himself by establishing himself as an idiot.

Two years ago this week, Nancy Pelosi – as part of a concerted campaign of opportunistic mendacity – said she and her party had a “commonsense plan to help bring down skyrocketing gas prices.” Their "plan" conveniently came to fruition after Democrats voted against a comprehensive energy plan that would increase fuel production and open up untapped oil reserves.

Now, you ask yourself, what party controlled Congress during the preceding six year period, and what was their track record for opening up every inch of U.S. soil to oil exploration and drilling? But that's just standard DeLay-type politics - covering up for his own ineptitude and failures (by his own measure) by pointing the finger at others.

So why do I say he's trying to prove himself an idiot?

• He seems to think that exploration for oil involves sticking a straw into the ground and sucking it out. Even if we started exploring for oil in ANWR two years ago, it won't be until the next President is leaving office that there will be significant oil production. And yes, I'm assuming a two term President. Granted the picture would be a bit different if DeLay hadn't been such a complete failure (again, by his own measure) as a Congressional leader, but that only brings us to our second point of idiocy....
• Cars don't run on crude. Cars run on gasoline. Even if Congress found a way to magically teleport crude oil out of the ground, it wouldn't increase the amount of gasoline available during peak season because the refineries are already operating at maximum capacity.
• In what is probably the least idiotic of his idiotic assumptions, DeLay also assumes that other oil producing countries won't react to an increase in oil supply by reducing their own production in order to keep their profits up. Has he never heard of OPEC?

You know, George Bush and Dick Cheney engaged the energy industry in a series of secret meetings, and came up with a secret energy policy that... well, I'm not sure what it was supposed to do, but the only visible outcome was a huge increase in profits for the energy industry. To this day, we're still not allowed to know who Cheney met with while planning out this energy policy - the truth is that embarrassing. DeLay and his ilk went along for the ride.

So it sure is convincing to hear the disgraced Tom Delay squawk, "It's all the Democrats' fault."

Sometimes It's Better To Keep Your Mouth Shut....

The Washington Post ran an editorial by Gary MacDougal on race relations that gets off to a weak start:

It is easy to be outraged by the Rev. Jeremiah Wright's abhorrent remarks, whether accusing our country of willfully spreading AIDS or being deserving of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

Okay... so who's actually outraged by Jeremiah Wright's comments about AIDS? Did anybody thump their fist against the table, demanding to know, "How could he think such a thing?" Or did they have more or less the same reaction as to John McCain's woeful ignorance on vaccinations - which suggest that the government is knowingly spreading an "autism epidemic" and is covering up the facts. If you prefer, we can stick with AIDS - if you want to convince the world that your goal isn't to spread AIDS, perhaps you should do better than advancing abstinence education as the front-line AIDS prevention program for Africa, and supporting failed abstinence education policies in U.S. schools.

Q: “So no contraception, no counseling on contraception. Just abstinence. Do you think contraceptives help stop the spread of HIV?”

Mr. McCain: (Long pause) “You’ve stumped me.”

There are other Republicans who make McCain look informed on these subjects. If you listen to that type of claptrap and come away with the idea that the Republican Party doesn't care about the spread of AIDS, or is deliberately spreading misinformation that may contribute to the spread of AIDS, you're making the mistake of attributing to evil something that can be explained by stupidity. And yes, all of these statements - Wright's, McCain's and Senator Frist's, are outrageous, but Wright's AIDS comments seem peripheral to the outrage directed at him.

So what about "being deserving of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks"? Yes, there's been outrage over Wright's remarks. But fundamentally, they're no different from those of many white religious leaders - largely 'conservative'-branded religious leaders. Active voice versus passive voice.

Am I being unfair? MacDougal said, "It is easy to be outraged" - and it's always easy to be outraged. And if you're the sort who turns off your brain the moment you hear something that "outrages" you, perhaps you don't need to consider the comparably outrageous statements made by John McCain and the preachers he actively embraces in his bid for the White House.

But Wright has done more, and worse, than tarnish Obama's presidential campaign.

Consider the corrosive effect Wright and others like him have on their communities as they rob thousands of listeners of the American dream: hope that through their hard work they can have better lives.

While I have nothing against wearing your politics on your sleeve, two paragraphs into the editorial, is there any doubt remaining that the editorial was written by a rich white guy? The type of person who thinks that the entire African American community has some sort of hive mind, embracing victimhood based solely on the rhetoric of preachers? There's no sin in recognizing the corrosive effect of "race men". But when you elide the reasons why the words of the race men resonate, or suggest that but for words of negativity African Americans would realize "how good they really have it," well, you give yourself away.

Imagine getting up each morning to go to work in a society that doesn't want you, doesn't respect you and seeks to hold you back. Your spiritual leader has told you this, after all. With powerful rhetoric, Wright has asserted, for instance, that white America sees black women as useful only for their bodies. If this is the message you got from your mentor, would you expect that you could succeed? Would you try very hard, if at all?

Okay... so the reason that the "prominent black professionals" that attend Wright's church have achieved both educationally and professionally is... he's convinced them that there's no reason to go to work in the morning? Poor Barack Obama and Oprah Winfrey, totally stripped of ambition?

MacDougal also suggests that making statements about hurdles (real or imagined) imposed by society are the beginning and end of the story. I haven't delved into Wright's sermons, but I have heard about one of his more famous themes - "the audacity of hope". It's easy to caricature Wright based upon a few sound bites. But perhaps the reason so many successful African Americans attended Wright's services was because he inspired them to strive and succeed despite all obstacles.

Through my work with the Illinois governor's task force on human services reform and its efforts to reduce welfare dependency, I have encountered misguided community "leaders" like Wright who tell their followers, for example, that the job market is stacked against them and that the jobs that are available aren't good enough - that they are entitled to more. The underlying message: You can't win because of who you are, regardless of what you do.

Okay - my standard challenge: Name one. Just one. I won't hold my breath.

I have attended positively focused black church services, and I know that the Rev. Wright does not speak for a monolithic black church.

You figured that out all by yourself? You think that's something that needs to be explained?

But I also recall a conversation I had during a visit to the maximum-security prison in Joliet, Ill. As I sat in the library there, talking with three men about why they were incarcerated, one man said: "Look around this room - almost everybody here is black. This is white man's genocide. You put us in here to keep us down." Where would this 20-something black man, or other relatively uneducated young people, get such an idea? From the vitriol spewed by the Rev. Wrights of this world.

Good for MacDougal. He was in a prison, talking to a group of inmates, and didn't even notice that the prison population was largely African American until somebody pointed it out to him.

We're in Thomas Friedman "taxi driver" territory here - a dubious anecdote that is impossible to verify, that conveniently just happens to be 100% consistent with the author's argument. It's a safe bet that I've talked to a lot more African Americans tangled up in the criminal justice system than Mr. MacDougal, and I've not once heard a claim of "white man's genocide". Nor anything even slightly resembling a claim of "white man's genocide".

Now, that's not to say that I haven't heard claims that sentencing policies have had a disproportionate effect on the African American community, due to more severe sentencing for crack as compared to an equivalent quantity of powder cocaine. It's not to say that there isn't an argument that law enforcement is much more diligent about rounding up street dealers (who happen to be disproportionately African American) as opposed to drug dealers who work inside private parties or workplace settings, a population of drug dealers that is much more likely to be white. (The latter group is much harder to detect and catch, so this is a sensible use of limited manpower.) There's also an argument that law enforcement is not willing to put enough pressure on drug dealing in poor communities, often African American communities, to result in a shift of drug activity to other areas of the city. And there's the fact that the white guys from the suburbs who buy drugs are rarely picked up and prosecuted along with the street dealers. Should MacDougal ever find the time to engage these prisoners past the level of the sound bite, he will probably find a lot more nuance in their views than is convenient to his piece.

But really, "Where would ... relatively uneducated young people, get such an idea?" MacDougal thinks the problem is that they're spending too much time in church? It isn't possible that he looked around his own community, saw the violence, crime level, poverty, and de facto segregation, and drew a few inferences from that?

The black middle class has grown in recent decades, enabling more and more African Americans to move out of cities and into the suburbs. This exodus in pursuit of better schools and crime-free neighborhoods is understandable; in many areas, though, inner cities have been left with a shortage of middle-class role models and community leaders.

That's another argument that bothers me. That somehow, African Americans who succeed "owe it to their communities" to live in impoverished areas and serve as role models. You would think MacDougal was unaware that many successful African Americans have never lived in the inner city. Why is it only African American communities that have this dire need for "middle-class role models and community leaders"? I don't think MacDougal would have any great difficulty finding and moving into an impoverished white community to serve as a "role model" - when should I expect his "change of address" card?

In the old days, Chicago's South Side, called Bronzeville, was a vibrant community anchored by black doctors, lawyers and businesses. It produced entertainers such as Nat King Cole and Dinah Washington.

Ah, yes... The good old days. What could possibly have changed between "the old days" and the present that might have resulted in wealthy, successful African Americans moving out of de jure segregated communities and into the suburbs? Well, Dinah Washington died in 1963, and Nat King Cole died in 1965... so maybe, just maybe, something happened right around 1964 that affected where African Americans worked and lived.

Today, the South Side is a place where some Chicagoans refuse to venture at night. Productive employment is sorely lacking, and on many streets, drug dealing and loitering still abound.

So roll in a sufficient police presence to get that "drug dealing and loitering" off the street. Or is it that you don't actually want the drug dealing to move out of that community (and into another).

In cities across America, blacks have been left behind in dangerous neighborhoods with poor schools. Often, they must leave their neighborhoods to achieve economic self-sufficiency but face barriers to successful employment.

Okay, so after leaving their communities, African Americans "face barriers to successful employment"? MacDougal's response:

This challenge has not gone unnoticed. Each year the federal government spends hundreds of billions of dollars - specifically, more than $10,000 per poor person for welfare, Medicaid, the earned-income tax credit, job training and food stamps. Put another way, taxpayers are doing their share.

So the status quo is the solution? And if not for the rhetoric of certain African American preachers, everything would be coming up roses?

We need to work together to help people move from dependency to self-sufficiency.

But we should be clear that this "working together" thing won't involve the dedication of any additional financial resources?

I have encountered negative messages in many states. A community "leader" in Miami's Overtown neighborhood, for instance, told me that he counseled unemployed people not to work on nearby construction projects because racist employers abused them. Pressed for an example of such abuse, he cited an employer's failure to pay overtime for Saturday work.

We're up to a conspiracy of two? Reverend Wright and an unnamed "community 'leader'" who dares to suggest that African Americans should only work for employers who pay them what they earn? Is the message he hopes to send to the African American community, "Your only hope is to take any job you can get, even if your employer is cheating you"? Is that the message he carries to his children's school on "career day"?

Two blocks away, more than a dozen homeless men were camped out under a bridge. Yet a man who was supposed to be guiding people was counseling against working.

Color me skeptical. A "man" who was "supposed to be guiding people" - what's this person's job title? And this guidance session was taking place under a bridge, with Mr. MacDougal listening in?

Something that occurs to me, but perhaps is beneath MacDougal's attention, is the high correlation between homelessness and mental illness. While Mr. MacDougal's advice to the homeless apparently begins and ends with, "Get a job, any job, even if you're cheated on your wages," somebody who knows what he's talking about might recognize that a homeless, mentally ill person might lose Social Security disability benefits and jeopardize Medicaid eligibility by "getting a job" - even assuming a significant population of employers at all interested in employing the homeless, and a significant population of homeless people capable of holding those jobs.

Life isn't fair for people of any skin color.

Life isn't fair to anybody, but it's more fair to some people than it is to others. But why bring race into it? Ah, perhaps MacDougal is reminiscing about the times he was pulled over for "driving while white" through an affluent neighborhood. Or got passed over for a job interview because his name sounded too ethnic. Or showed up to tour an apartment and was told, "Sorry, we just rented the last one." Yup, take it from me, it's tough to be a white guy.

Positive thinking isn't going to solve America's race problems.

It took you long enough to admit that. So what will?

Oh... you're out of space? How unfortunate. Maybe next time....

"First We Stay As Long As It Takes To Win..."

"Then we can stay forever."

John McCain is pulling the crybaby act (again) over his "100 years in Iraq" statements.

For some reason, though, he still won't simply answer the question, "How long will you keep troops in Iraq if American blood continues to be shed?"

"Condescending" vs. "Not Condescending"

Following up on Michael Gerson's explanation of what's "condescending" to working class voters,

Lower-income whites, he argued, "feel their dreams slipping away," and so they turn to resentment against busing and affirmative action, "anger over welfare" and "fears of crime."

* * *

This is the same argument, expressed more bluntly at a San Francisco fundraiser, that Obama made about bitter, small-town Americans who cling to guns and religion. He does not even admit the possibility that these folks might have actual convictions on issues such as affirmative action, welfare, crime, gun ownership or the meaning of the universe.

Let's take a look at how the right-wing press treats working class voters. Speaking of Hillary Clinton, Quin Hillyer writes:

IN TERMS OF POLICIES, her actions and positions have been directly opposed to the interests of blue-collar workers who pay taxes. Take welfare reform, for instance.

Welfare reform? Didn't Gerson put that topic off-limits?

Perhaps the single most successful programmatic reform in the past 30 years, [welfare reform] saved taxpayers tens of billions of dollars, gave people incentives to find jobs, and quite arguably played a big role in a decade of improving statistics in areas ranging from drops in crime to drops in the teen birth rate and the divorce rate.

Oops - he mentioned crime. How condescending.

As for the "teen birth rate" dropping? Teen births (and teen pregnancy) are on the rise. But maybe he only wants to look at overall statistics, not trends, and suggest that "correlation is the same as causation". If he believes that he's not being condescending - just ignorant. If not... let's check Gerson's list of things elitists do.... Nothing's there about assuming your audience won't see through cheap subterfuge, so apparently it's not condescending to present misleading statistical claims.

This is the woman who tried to foist a massively bureaucratic health care plan onto the American people in 1993 and 1994, but when told that her plan would be devastating to the small mom-and-pop shops that provide most jobs in America, dismissed those concerns with these words: "I can't be responsible for every undercapitalized entrepreneur in America."

Well, according to census data, in 2004 small employers (business with employees, but with < 10 employees) employed 12.7 million people. Move that up to < 20 employees and they employed 21.2 million people. Move that up to < 100 employees, and it's 41.8 million people. Out of 115 million paid employees. There were also close to 20 million nonemployer firms, but those firms wouldn't have been affected by mandates to insure employees. Oh, let's include them anyway. We'll call every business with < 100 employees a "mom-and-pop shop" - assuming some joint operation by husbands and wives, now we're probably around 70 million jobs out of 145 million. So we're close to half.

Let me check Gerson's list.... Lying, lying, lying... nope, not on the list of condescending acts. So I guess Hillyer's okay.

This is also the woman who has spent an entire career supporting legal positions (and judges) that are contrary to the deeply held views of most white workers. Strong support for racial preferences? Check.

Oops. That suggests working class voters care about affirmative action.

Judges who rule against basic Christmas displays in the public square? Check.

Wow. A condescending depiction of judges who uphold the First Amendment as attacking Christianity. But it's not clear that Gerson would view this as suggesting that working class voters "cling to religion" in defiance of actual facts and issues as opposed to "having actual convictions on the meaning of the universe" (even if at odds with the Constitution), so it's hard to tell if Gerson would see this as condescending or not.

Fortunately, I'm sure that any day now Gerson will rip apart the condescension of the right-wing press toward working class Americans. Surely he'll devote column after column to the same issue, tirelessly demonstrating how elitist the right wing media, political leadership, and leading pundits are toward working class voters.

Any day now.....

"They're All Happy Campers"

Remember years ago, when Dan Quayle visited American Samoa?

You all look like happy campers to me. Happy campers you are, happy campers you have been, and, as far as I am concerned, happy campers you will always be.

Exceptionally patronizing and condescending, right? Well, maybe not. Because if you read the likes of Michael Gerson, it's "patronizing" to suggest that blocks of voters are anything but happy campers.

The roots of Gerson's thesis, of course, are the wishes of his Republican masters to expand upon Barack Obama's "bitter/cling" comments, and advance the idea that he is "elitist" for generalizing in any way, whatsoever, about any group of people. Well, no, scratch that - as far as his masters are concerned, it's fine to generalize about blocs of voters who lean Democratic. Not a one of them would criticize somebody for alluding to Democrats or liberals as part of a "Tax-Raising, Latte-Drinking, Sushi-Eating, Volvo-Driving, New York Times-reading, Body-Piercing, Hollywood-Loving, Left-Wing Freak Show". What's forbidden, apparently, is to generalize about voters who lean Republican or who are in the amorphous political "center". The only way to escape that trap, it seems, is to follow the Quayle model of treating them as "happy campers".

Moreover, you must plug your ears to political reality. The "happy campers" of this nation have no resentment of affirmative action. They have no fear of crime. They don't "feel their dreams slipping away". African-American "happy campers" who came of age in an era of Jim Crow and segregation (and here Gerson seems to be speaking both individually and collectively) cannot be said to have "bitterness and biases" resulting from their experiences with legal and institutionalized discrimination.

Gerson explains, "The only thing more insulting than being attacked is being explained." Except it's not "insulting" to be explained, unless the explanation is wrong or "the truth hurts". It's insulting to be "explained away", but that's very different from being "explained", and that expansion on Gerson's actual words doesn't fit Gerson's accusations against Obama. (Besides, Gerson's prior profession was speechwriter, so we shouldn't need to read extra words into his column to have it make sense.)

Gerson proceeds to exemplify how, despite his earlier claims, it's okay to generalize about "they don't vote for us, anyway" voter blocs. Gerson presents extreme elements of "Black theology" that he attributes to James Cone, then tells us that Rev. Wright was mentored by Cone (guilt by association) even though Gerson has apparently been unable to put Cone's words directly into Wright's mouth, then he implies that anybody who goes to a church that is in any way associated with "Black theology" (guilt by association by association) must either accept those views as basic beliefs of their pastor or have been "asleep in the pew".

Although not offered as an defense of his generalizations, Gerson writes, "Most people would rather be termed right or wrong than be dismissed." See? So Gerson wasn't being patronizing, condescending or dismissive when he generalized what he sees as the worst of "Black theology" to all churches that advance some aspect of "black liberation theology" (those are his terms and his capitalization, and it is he who uses the terms as synonyms), and in suggesting that those churches follow a philosophy that is "not Biblical." He was simply telling all of the ministers of those churches, and everybody in their congregations, "You are wrong." Don't go reading a James Baker-type attitude into that. (And don't you dare suggest that Gerson wouldn't dream of offering a similar analysis of a mainstream white Christian movement.)

What's perhaps most interesting about these continuing, relentless right-wing assaults on Obama, Reverend Wright, and his so-called "elitism" (the difference in that regard between Obama and the other candidates being principally one of image, not substance) is that it suggests that Obama remains the Republicans' most feared opponent for the fall campaign.

... And The Spin Machine Keeps On Spinning

Robert Novak is smarter than a lot of his fellow columnists. Unlike, for example, a Michael Gerson, who happily says the most stupid things to advance the Republican agenda, Novak puts those words into the mouths of others. Perhaps accurately, but let's just say I wouldn't recommend talking to him about a controversial subject lest you become his convenient foil.

Novak starts out by reminding us that it's important for Obama not to be seen as an angry black man.

Did [the latest speech] solve Obama's pastor problem? Leading Democrats certainly hope so, but they are not sure. His vulnerability transcends relations with a radical preacher. If Obama comes to be seen not as a presidential candidate who happens to be black but as a black candidate in the mold of Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, he will face a difficult struggle in the general election against John McCain even if he bests Hillary Clinton.

That's clever. Novak could have issued a straightforward acknowledgment of the fact that only "teh stupids" would conclude that Obama is "in the mold of Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton", and that nobody who is familiar with Obama's record would make such an obvious error. But candor is not consistent with Novak's goal, which (of course) is to keep the tarnish on Obama's image, not to clean it off.

So who is Novak's foil?

My friend Armstrong Williams, the African American conservative, told me, "It is not unusual to hear in many black churches the same language that Reverend Wright is being criticized for." I raised this with NPR reporter and Fox commentator Juan Williams (no relation to Armstrong). "Not at all," replied Williams, who also is African American. "It's ridiculous. I never have heard that in church."

Wright's demagoguery is so unusual in Juan Williams's view that it was necessary for Obama to separate himself from it two months ago. Instead of orating about race in America, Williams says, Obama should have repented as a "sinner" partaking of lies from the pulpit. It was a post-partisan, post-racial opportunity lost by the candidate.

From what I can see, Williams is Episcopalian. I can't say that I'm surprised that his church experiences would depart from... well, pretty much any church that doesn't offer staid, conservative services that follow centuries of church doctrine and tradition. It would seem, well, vapid to speak of a "white church" experience by comparing Episcopal services to the preaching style of John Hagee, Oral Roberts, Jimmy Swaggert, Rod Parsley, Jim Bakker.... "That's not a 'white church' experience - I've never heard anything like that in church." Well, duh.

"Partaking lies from the pulpit"? Williams was truly suggesting that Obama's immediate response to the Wright controversy should have been to condemn the entire church, all of its works, and everybody who attended services while Wright was leading the church? That, to Novak, would have been taking a "post-partisan, post-racial opportunity"? I think the laugh track on the Washington Post website must be broken, because at this point we should be hearing raucous laughter. (But at least at this point he's not (overtly) trying to put that suggestion into Williams' mouth.)

The "thrown under the bus" line should be retired, but of course Novak drags it out:

Nobody knows whether Obama's performance has damaged his candidacy permanently, but his supporters hope the issue is out of the news. The difficulty is that Jeremiah Wright, thrown under the bus by his former parishioner, can reemerge any time he wishes and renew discussion of the Democratic presidential front-runner's real identity.

And if Wright doesn't wish, he'll have partisans like Novak trying to bring the issue to the forefront at every opportunity.

But for Novak to suggest that Obama's statement threw Wright under the bus? After suggesting that the proper response to the initial scandal would have been to throw Wright, his entire church, and his entire conversation under a Mack truck and run over them fifty or sixty times? If you were ever in doubt that Novak is a man with no shame....