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A serving soldier of my acquaintance comments on President Obama's promise to close Gitmo even though he has no idea what to do with the 250-odd Islamofascist mass murderers who currently reside there: "Retarded."
Perhaps I could have said it better, but I don't really think so.
One of the chief distinguishing characteristics of contemporary progressivism is its inability to connect the dots. The instant some pet project lands on the progressive agenda, reason and logic go out the window.
A prime example of this reluctance to face reality is progressivism's attitude toward wind and solar power. Having convinced themselves that such power sources are both clean and free, progressives simply ignore all the obvious environmental and economic objections to wind and solar, e.g that they require enormous stretches of land, and that the power they generate is many times more expensive than power from coal, oil or nuclear sources.
The Austin (Texas) City Council just approved a $250 million solar power project requiring 300 acres of land for 177,000 solar panels that are expected to generate about 30 megawatts of power—on days when the sun is shining brightly, anyhow. Estimated cost of this power: 16.5¢ per kilowatt hour, versus 9.5¢ per kilowatt hour for power from conventional generating plants. Obviously, the Austin City Council is not controlled by conservative Republicans.
Well, well, will you look at that. It's David Frum, so-called conservative, schmoozing with none other than Chris Matthews on Hardball. Their subject: the notorious right-wing racist, Rush Limbaugh.
Frum had already made it very clear that he detests Rush Limbaugh—not just ideologically, but personally. The unpleasant personal tone of his comments about Limbaugh betray motives that have little to do with future of conservatism. Indeed, I would venture to suggest that anyone who goes after Limbaugh in this manner cannot possibly care much about the future of conservatism. For to attack Limbaugh is to risk alienating millions of people without whose support neither the conservative movement nor the Republican Party have much hope of revival.
Please note, by the way, that I said "attack," not "criticize." No one—neither Rush Limbaugh nor Sarah Palin nor even Frum himself—is or ought to be immune from criticism. But tossing out charges of racism, as Frum did against Limbaugh during his appearance on Hardball, isn't criticism. It's a false and lying attack, as any fair-minded person who has listened to more than five minutes of Limbaugh's show would conclude.
By venting his detestation of Rush Limbaugh in a liberal media forum, Frum has attracted accolades from such friends of conservatism as Chris "Leg Tingle" Matthews. How that's supposed to help him in his quest for a "new conservative majority" is, frankly, beyond me.
President Obama is speaking no more than the truth when he describes his proposed cap-and-trade carbon emissions scheme as a tax on polluters. For as the Wall Street Journal explains, this tax would fall ultimately on each one of us—and do we not, with every breath, expel carbon dioxide into the environment?
Do you ever recall the denizens of the lefty blogosphere saying anything nice about George W. Bush? Nothing is impossible, I suppose, and it may have happened—but all I ever found on my occasional visits to the virtual fever swamps of progressivism was the most viciously expressed hatred. Supposedly respectable commentators even wrote articles explaining why it was OK to hate the wicked Bush.
And conservatives are just as bad—aren't they? Well, no. One of the first things that caught my eye on NRO today was this post by Peter Wehner. It's worth reproducing in full:
In a New York Times interview, President Obama mildly rebukes Attorney General Eric Holder for his comments that on race we are “a nation of cowards.” When asked about Holder’s remarks, Obama said, “I think it’s fair to say that if I had been advising my Attorney General, we would have used different language.”
Good for the president for saying what he did. Now Obama could have rebuked Holder sooner and more forcefully than he did — but later is better than never, and a mild rebuke is better than none at all. President Obama added, “I’m not somebody who believes that constantly talking about race somehow solves racial tensions.”
Those words are Barack Obama at his best. For the most part, he has been responsible and fair-minded when talking about one of the most divisive and volatile issues in American public life. He can — by his words, tone, and leadership — do great good or great harm on this issue. Unlike his attorney general, Obama so far has been a constructive and unifying force. That’s something for which to be grateful.
Now, can you imagine anyone on the Left saying anything similarly fair-minded and gracious about Bush? Can you?
As mentioned once or twice in past posts, I have a visceral dislike of professional sports. This, as I well know, places me in the ranks of a despised minority. And as I've discovered over the years, it's practically impossible to explain my reasons for disliking professional sports without causing great offense to those who do like them. What a pleasure it was, therefore, to reacquaint myself with this essay by George Orwell. "The Sporting Spirit" was written in 1945, shortly after a crack Soviet football team, the Dynamos, completed a tour of Britain. An excerpt:
Nearly all the sports practised nowadays are competitive. You play to win, and the game has little meaning unless you do your utmost to win.… [A]s soon as the question of prestige arises, as soon as you feel that you and some larger unit will be disgraced if you lose, the most savage combative instincts are aroused. Anyone who has played even in a school football match knows this. At the international level sport is frankly mimic warfare. But the significant thing is not the behaviour of the players but the attitude of the spectators….
Now, I am quite willing to stipulate that neither I nor Orwell is being quite fair in our attitude toward sports. Probably there are discreditable psychological reasons why we both found it impossible to enter into the spirit of the thing. Still, I recommend that you read this essay—and recall it the next time you see fans rioting on the field at the end of a baseball game.
Say, have you heard the one about the Obama nominee who withdrew her nomination even though she'd payed her taxes? No? Then meet Annette Nazareth.
Unlike the typical Obama nominee, Ms. Nazareth didn't have tax problems. What she did have, apparently, was a lack of confidence in her prospective boss (who does have tax problems), Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner. Treasury Department sources are telling reporters that Nazareth bailed on her Treasury appointment after concluding that the hapless Geithner just doesn't pack the gear.
Oh, and another Treasury nominee, Caroline Atkinson, has backed out due to…tax problems. Is this a real-world Administration, or is it an Onion parody?
Commenting today on the Rush Limbaugh brouhaha, National Review's Rich Lowry made an excellent point. Of all the pre-election assessments of Barack Obama, Limbaugh's has turned out to be among the most prescient. At a time when many conservatives were entertaining the possibility that Obama would prove to be a pragmatic centrist, Limbaugh was calling him a radical leftie. And as events since Inauguration Day have shown, Rush was right.
Watching Barack Obama and his crack management team in action is like…well, it's like…watching the Carter Administration on fast forward…
That politics has little to do with common sense is obvious when you consider how easy it should be to demolish the pretensions of President Barack Obama. On every major issue, from foreign policy to healthcare, the Administration's policies are quite clearly wrongheaded—often ludicrously so. Yet large numbers of people have managed to persuade themselves that this time, policies with a perfect record of failure will somehow work out all right.
As it happens, there's an easy way to get a realistic assessment of Obama's plan for America: just take a look at California. Writing for National Review Online, Victor Davis Hanson hits the high notes:
California managed to achieve all at once the nation’s highest sales and income tax rates—and yet also the largest annual state deficit. So far under Republican governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s tenure, state spending grew by 34.9 percent, well beyond inflation— and of population, which increased by only 21.5 percent…
The budgets of Medi-Cal, the state-run health program for the poor, are out of control. Prison costs increased by about 50 percent in less than a decade, and now claim almost 10 percent of state spending—almost as much as higher education.
The state is in its third year of drought. Billions of dollars of agricultural production are threatened by water cut-offs. Yet California hasn’t build a major dam or canal in years.California has the worst credit rating in the nation. It has the fourth-highest unemployment rate and the second-highest home-foreclosure rate—thanks to enormously inflated prices due in part to complicated building regulations, high labor costs, and often Byzantine land-use restrictions. California’s net state-to-state migration loss is higher than that of any other state. Most reports suggest that those who are leaving the state are far more highly educated than those entering it.
And so it goes. California has always provided a vision of America's future. Today, that vision makes me wince. For the lame stupidity that ruined California is firmly embodied the policies of the Obama Administration.
