You’re government at work. You know, I don’t mind that much when governments waste weeks and weeks figuring out how to color in a map. It’s time they’re not spending figuring out how to gobble up our freedom.
All posts by Mike
Why Attorneys Matter
It’s hard to break the meme-lock of the Right on the attorneys scandal. They don’t or can’t admit that firing eight of your own appointees in your second term because they aren’t prosecuting your political opponents is different than the normal changeover of USA’s that starts any Presidential term. But maybe they can’t get worked up over what one of the new appointeesis doing.
What was done to Ed Rosenthal is a travesty — one, by the way, that started under the Clinton Administration.
Balko has been on fire lately. The Agitator is quickly becoming one of the best blogs on the internets.
Radley Reconsidered
A seven hour drive will give you time to think. And I thought about a point on Radley Balko’s take on the Duke affair.
I don’t think that race played that big a role here on the “law and order” Right wingers who jumped to these guys’ defense. Granted, they probably would not have been as vociferous if this had been a pretty white cheerleader accusing three illegal immigrants (althought they defended Kobe Bryant when he was accused). Granted, they reflexively defend Scooter Libby to the point of absurdity (although they didn’t defend Duke Cunningham or Jack Abramof).
But I think a bigger issue for them was the people advocating for the victim — Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton. The minute the Right heard these guys thought the Duke trio were guilty, they just KNEW they were innocent. And it’s kind of depressing that our political — and legal — landscape has been reduced to ateam sport. Those guys think one thing, so I must think the opposite. It applies to the Left, too — or perhaps you’ve missed the people reflexively opposing everything Bush does, including massive hikes in social spending. People decide their opinions based on whose side they want to be on.
I used to joke that my default stance on any political issue was to find out what Hilliary Clinton though and support the opposite. It’s distressing that this sort of thinking is becoming all too literal for a significant faction of the American political body.
PS – And is Nancy Grace a fricking coward, or what?
Soviet Style Security
Let’s see Bush’s supporters — his few remaining supporters — defend the year-long jailing of a Pulitzer Prize Winning journalist. Come on, Bushbots. I know you’re out there!
Imus, The Final Chapter
While driving up from New Braunfels, I had a moment of clarity on the Imus issue and was going to write a long brilliant post on it.
Unfortunately, by the time I got up here Radley Balko had said everything I wanted to say, only better. He has the best take on the comment:
Imus isn’t a racist. He’s a misanthrope. He hates people. All people. His show made broad, possibly offensive generalizations about everyone on a near-daily basis. We now learn that the Rutgers women’s basketball team was apparently hurt and offended by the comments. But were they really? I’d hazard to guess that not a single one of them was listening to the show that morning.
The Right:
Of course, the conservative reaction to all of this is pretty stupid, too. “Look at all the rap music! They call women ‘hos’ too!”
No, you idiots. How typical. The answer to politically incorrect censorship is not…more political incorrect censorship.. Not to mention that Imus’ comment was stupid, lame humor. Hip hop is art. Sharpton and Jackson actually are going after hip hop. And their efforts to take words away from rap artists are every bit as lame (lamer, actually) than their attempt to take words away from clueless, aging disc jockeys.
The Left:
Drudge also reported the other day that many activist groups were protesting Imus to the FTC, as well, a’la Brent Bozell. Note to my lefty friends: When you’re imitating Brent Bozell, you’re doing something wrong.
And what I think is the most important point, so much that I made a big deal out of it in my first post on the subject:
I guess my point is that it’d be nice if all the energy spent the last two weeks expressing self-righteous outrage over a mistaken comment from a harmless old fool were instead spent on, say, the racial sentencing disparities in the criminal justice system, or the fact that a substantially higher percentage of black men are in prison in America than were imprisoned in South Africa during apartheid.
Read it.
Yes!
Absolute brilliance from Radly Balko:
Yes, Nifong was rotten to the core. Yes, the liberals who convicted the lacrosse team in the press rushed to judgment, and were dead wrong. But listening to the right wing over the several months, you’d think this kind of thing only happens to white people, and only liberal, bleeding-heart prosecutors like Nifong are capable of unjust, overtly political, race-fueled witch hunts. The unique thing about this case is that everything happened in reverse. So it tested the principles and allegiances of everybody. The real credit I think goes to the handful of liberal who stood by the lacrosse team, bucking the civil rights groups and feminist groups on the other side.
…
The right-wingers who left their law-and-order perch to hustle to these players’ defense were no less politically motivated than the left-wingers who left their rights-of-the-accused perch to condemn them.
The right-wingers just happened to be right this time.
Read the whole thing
And Lee at Right Thinking has the proper take on the “War Czar”.
KV
He hasn’t written much lately, apart from broadsides at the Bush Administration, but the world has lost an important voice in Kurt Vonnegut. I’m looking at his slice of books on his shelf, Siren of Titan, Player Piano, Cat’s Cradle, Slaughterhouse Five, Breakfast of Champions, Timequake and Bluebeard, with several more on my Amazon.com wish list. All of them great, even though I am probably on the opposite side of the political fence from Vonnegut.
Maybe I’ll pull one down for the observing run.
Darfur
So let me get this straight. We should pull out of the middle of one civil war and thrust ourselves into another?
Right.
Imus Part II
Was listening to Rush today and he was very dimissive of the Boortz concern that the Imus fiasco is the beginning of a campaign to get rid of talk radio. As he said, they’ve been after him for 18.5 years.
Both Sully and, I can’t believe I’m typing this, Snoop have a good response to the Right’s “what about rap?” meme. There is a difference between a black man dissing black people and a white man dissing black people. It may not be fair, but that’s the way it is. It’s one thing to bash your own group, it’s quite another to bash somebody else’s.
Imus
I’m going to have to tread carefully here. I shouldn’t stick my foot in the racial waters surrounding Don Imus. But I think there are three points to make:
First, what Imus said was out of line and disgusting. He should be punished. And don’t come at me with free speech. You have a right to say what you want . . . and the responsibility to take the consequences. He has no Constitutional right to have a job. And I’m afraid I have to disagree with the first half of Boortz’s comments. I don’t think this is a liberal conspiracy to “get” right-wing talk show hosts. We heard that when Trent Lott was forced to step down, that this was just the beginning of getting Republican after Republican. It was garbage then and it’s garbage now. There was no equivalent outcry when Rush Limbaugh “jokingly” suggested that the media was being hard on Rex Grossman because he was white. People just ignored him. Boortz has been making inflammatory comments for years, including his famous “Boo Got Shot” routine. No one’s calling for his head.
Second, and it pains me to say this, but the Right has a point. Where is the concordant outrage over violent and misogynistic rap lyrics? This has a far greater potential for doing harm in the black community than some idiot on a radio show that no one listens to. And Boortz has one point — is there any equivalent outrage over the Duke Lacrosse incident, which was highly racially charged? Are any of these same agitators backing off of their comments about how Duke, men’s sports, North Carolina and the entire nation were a bunch of racist crackers who were reponsible for this? It does seem that Mike Nifong will be held accountable for his action, however.
Finally — here’s my most controversial statement — don’t Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson have something better to do with their time? While they are preening for the cameras over Imus’ words, black kids are dropping out of school, getting involved with drugs and crime, having kids out of wedlock and getting murdered. These are difficult but solvable problems.
OK, they’re politicans. Fine. How about advocating for letting non-violent drug offenders out of prison, then? How about doing something about the highway robbery that is our Social Security system? Why not advocate for fundamental education reform like school choice?
I’m reminded of 1991 when the Braves were in the World Series. There was some controversy over their logo and the Tomahawk Chop. I asked a genuine Native American, rather than a white agitator, what he thought. His response was something along the lines of, “When we’ve solved the problems of health, education, alcoholism, drug abuse, unemployment and poverty, then we can worry about offensive chants.”
Again, don’t they have something better to do? Imus’ words do not reflect some deep-seated racism in the industry or the country. He’s just a twerp on the radio. He’s now suspended and been pilloried. They’ve made their point. Move on to more pressing problems.
Soaked!
I should never go in to work. A root beer in my laptop bag decided to leak, soaking my cell phone, my powerbook cord — of which I need a perfect one since TSA decided to bash the side of my powerbook — netflix DVDs. Fortunately, it seems like my powerbook itself escaped the worst. But man, what a way to start my day. Hence, there will be light blogging for some time, until I pay Apple another seventy fucking dollars for about my 78th powerbook cord in the last three years.
Over
So now that the three Duke Lacrosse players have been vindicated, where do they go to get their reputations back?
Of course, expect crows of triumph from Coulter and the rest who smelled a rat from the start. But just because they were right doesn’t mean they were right. There’s a huge difference being right about something because you’re smart and perceptive and being right about something out of sheer dumb luck. If you opine enough and throw out enough opinions, you will occasionally be right about something — as sportscasters demonstrate every day. They were basing their defense of these men more on reflex (and the background of the accuser) than fact. It was a snap judgement — it just happened to be right.
The same, of course, goes for those who instantly pronounced these men guilty based on their gender, class, race and geography. They immediately bought that priveleged white men in the south would do such a dispicable thing — facts be damned.
No one in the political circles really cared about the facts of the case or the wheels of justice (or the woman, for that matter). They were far more interested in their partisan political take on it. Fortunately, someone in the DA’s office was being more concientious that either group of political cretins.
Two Numbers in the Dark
The Heritage Foundation has a completely bullshit study of how much illegal aliens are costing us. Supposedly, the are costing us $2.2 trillion. However
There’s another Number in the Dark out there — the supposed $400 billion tax hike the Democrats are giving us. First, this is over five years, so it’s actually an $80 billion tax hike. Second, they are not raising taxes, they are allowing the tax cuts to expire. And third, who was it who gave us expiring taxes in the first place? Who was it who, rather than give us a permanent tax cut, gave us a perpetual issue to bash Democrats with? Who was it who had a six year spending orgy?
Why, geewhillikers, that would be the Republicans!
They’ve been caught by their own cynical political ploy. Or rather, the America taxpayer has. Yes, the Democrats should extend the tax cuts for “the rich”. I’m getting that tax cut and I’m not rich. But the GOP have only themselves to blame. They empowered the Democrats, in every way imaginable. The Dems must be chuckling now. Thanks to the Republicans, they can raise taxes without a single vote.
Airlines
Read about this outrage in which United – who recently cancelled my frequent flier miles when I was just a few hundred shy of a free ticket, not that I’m bitter – abandoned 110 people in Wyoming. You haven’t heard much about this. Not nearly as much as you’ve heard about, oh, JetBlue.
There’s also been a lot of publicity recently about JetBlue having an industry-low on time rate. But as baseball expert Nate Silver notes, that has more to do with JetBlue’s routes, not their performance.
Now might the assault on JetBlue — and the relative kid gloves used on United — have something to do with United being unionized while JetBlue isn’t?
Naaaaaah. It’s not like they did that do Airtran. Oh, wait.
Bias aside, the airlines still need to clean up their act. As Silver notes in the linked article, they’ve improved. They put realistic arrival times on schedules and you no longer need to go Abu Ghraib on them to find out why your plane is late. And — this can not be overemphasized for someone who flies in white-knuckle fear — their safety record is outstanding. But there are still times when they don’t get it.