Quickies

A round-up of news items, articles, columns and blog posts that caught our attention from this past week.





David Harsanyi of the Denver Post: Hey, let's not get all freaked out about China.




Gawker TV has a round up of the 65 top videos of the week, here.

Included is what apparently what broad swaths of the East and Midwest are doing for entertainment and their high school physical science classes.







On the 50th anniversary of the event, E.J. Dionne fondly remembers JFK's inaugural speech:

And Kennedy advisers Harris Wofford and Louis Martin won the insertion of six words and helped change history.

In the original draft, Kennedy declared that the new generation for which he spoke was “unwilling to witness or permit the slow undoing of those human rights to which this nation has always been committed, and to which we are committed today.”

To which Wofford and Martin got Kennedy to add, “at home and around the world,” thus marrying the struggle for freedom abroad with the cause of domestic civil rights. There would be no turning back.

Perhaps I should acknowledge that I fell in love with this speech when I was young, purchasing a long-playing record of Kennedy addresses for 99 cents at the supermarket and listening to it over and over after Kennedy’s assassination.

You might say that I still hear its trumpet summoning us again. And when Kennedy said, “I do not believe that any of us would exchange places with any other people or any other generation,” I knew — millions of others felt this way too — that he was speaking for me.

David Brooks weighs in on the hot cultural topic du jour: Amy Chua is a wimp.

Her critics echoed the familiar themes. Her kids can’t possibly be happy or truly creative. They’ll grow up skilled and compliant but without the audacity to be great. She’s destroying their love for music. There’s a reason Asian-American women between the ages of 15 and 24 have such high suicide rates.

I have the opposite problem with Chua. I believe she’s coddling her children. She’s protecting them from the most intellectually demanding activities because she doesn’t understand what’s cognitively difficult and what isn’t.

Practicing a piece of music for four hours requires focused attention, but it is nowhere near as cognitively demanding as a sleepover with 14-year-old girls. Managing status rivalries, negotiating group dynamics, understanding social norms, navigating the distinction between self and group — these and other social tests impose cognitive demands that blow away any intense tutoring session or a class at Yale.

A little bit more on China: saw this article and the closing paragraph addressing human rights in China.

And China typically defines human rights in terms of improvements in quality of life such as higher incomes and better living conditions, rather than civil liberties such as freedom of speech that define such values in the West.

We don't think it's coincidence that the American and international left view human rights in a very similar fashion as China, though they more often refer to it as "social justice".





The Pardonater's shameful exit interview:

Arnold Schwarzenegger is pulling no punches in his first formal interview since leaving office, claiming that the highest office in the state left him “addicted” to its power.

In a recent sit-down the former governor granted to the Austrian newspaper Krone, Schwarzenegger estimates that his seven years as governor cost him about $200 million – $70 million of that in lost movie roles.

Schwarzenegger also laments the fact that Hollywood salaries have dropped since he left the business.

He said his abysmal popularity rankings were “just a snapshot” and that “they would have rocketed to the top” had he not been forced out of office by term limits.

Nowhere in the transcripts from the interview posted on the newspaper’s website did Schwarzenegger face any questions about alleged favoritism in his decision to grant clemency to the son of former Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez.

Too bad he wasn't addicted to competence as well. Pathetic.




We hesitated even providing a link to this guy's article as it was that atrocious but in the interest of, you know, fairness and context somebody named Joe Lambiet provided his take on the Tucson shooting with this particular insight with respect to the political leanings of Gabby Gifford's surgeon's parents:

Ironically: Among their favorites are some of the very people whose controversial rhetoric and campaigns are said to provide fertile ground for Jared Loughner who allegedly injured Giffords and killed six others in Tucson.

(italics, ours)

"... are said..."?

Nothing like a firm stand on journalistic integrity, huh?

Congratulations, Joe. It's still way early but you have established yourself as a front-runner in BwD's absolute worst column of the year contest.




B-Daddy has a nice round-up of what has been a very busy first two weeks for the 112th Congress, here.



And finally, the most e-mailed 'New York Times' article ever:

It’s a week before the biggest day of her life, and Anna Williams is multitasking. While waiting to hear back from the Ivy League colleges she’s hoping to attend, the seventeen-year-old senior at one of Manhattan’s most exclusive private schools is doing research for a paper about organic farming in the West Bank, whipping up a batch of vegan brownies, and, like an increasing number of American teenagers, teaching her dog to use an iPad.

That would be one way of looking at it

Last week, we blogged with considerable glee concerning the Democrats' apparent decision to campaign on President Obama's legislative record... you know, a record that includes overwhelmingly popular stuff like ObamaCare.

If that indeed is going to be the case, then the President's allies in the media are falling in line with a meme of yeah, the Prez is having a rough go of it of late but look at all the wonderful things he has accomplished!

Here's E.J. Dionne of the Washington Post:

Democrats should feel a lot better than they do. They enacted a health-care bill that had been their dream for more than 60 years. They pulled the country out of a terrifying economic spiral. They are on the verge of passing the biggest reform of Wall Street since the New Deal. The public has identified enemies that are typically seen as Republican allies: oil companies and big bankers. And given the Republicans' past policies, the Gulf of Mexico oil spill is at least as much their problem as Obama's.

That the Democrats should take heart that they passed legislation that the majority of Americans don't want is an odd way to look at things. If that's all you've got to go on, however, a suspension of reality doesn't seem so far-fetched.

(We'd like to note that Dionne in the same article can't resist taking a shot at the G.O.P. and what he perceives as a hard swerve to the right as it's being held hostage by the tea party. That a near-record 49% of Americans think the Democratic Party is too liberal vs. 41% thinking the Republican Party is too conservative is not a Dionne talking point.)



And here's Gail Collins writing in the New York Times:

As a political leader, Barack Obama seems to know what he’s doing. His unsatisfying call for a new energy policy sounded very much like the rhetoric on health care reform that used to drive Democrats nuts: open to all ideas, can’t afford inaction, if we can put a man on the moon. ... But at the end of that health care slog, he wound up with the groundbreaking law that had eluded his predecessors for decades. The process of wringing it out of Congress was so slow and oblique that even when it was over it was hard to appreciate what he’d won. But win he did.

(italics, ours)

Here's Merriam-Webster's definition of oblique:

1 a : neither perpendicular nor parallel : inclined b : having the axis not perpendicular to the base c : having no right angle

2 a : not straightforward : indirect; also : obscure b : devious, underhanded

(emphasis, ours)

By Collins' own definition, the crafting of ObamaCare was a shameful ordeal but when you are crafting the new paradigm by defending the indefensible, oblique takes on a curiously positive hue.

For taste-makers like Collins and Dionne, who, if they are being completely honest with themselves, realize Obama has only contributed to the hyper-partisan nature of Washington D.C. and whose HopenChange has meant only more business as usual, the circling of the wagons will strain credulity and their own credibility.

Its all fun and games until someone loses their Irony

We’re clearly late to the whole Obama “Bittergate” episode so any opinion we may have has probably been vented a dozen times over on radio, TV and internet, so... what’s a slacking little blog like ours to do except react to the reaction.

But first, in case any of you have been comatose for the past few days, here are the words spoken by Obama at a San Fran fundraiser that have got him into so much trouble:

“You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania, and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing’s replaced them (editor: go cry that tune to the buggy whip manufacturers, pal). And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. So it’s not surprising then that they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.”

A look at the Bittergate dust-up here by George Will who claims “Obama may be the fulfillment of modern liberalism”. With assistance from the indespensible pollster/demographer Michael Barone, Will traces a line from what we’ll call bread’n’butter FDR liberalism through the smug Adlai Stevenson to today’s Obamamania whose campaign’s spritual overtones combined with his desire for governmental hyper-activity recalls the quote from Socialist/Communist pioneer Moses Hess: “The Christian… imagines the better future of the human species…in the image of heavenly joy… We, on the other hand, will have this heaven on earth”.

And here is an interesting and ultimately bizarre piece from WaPo columnist E.J. Dionne. Dionne takes Obama to task for his choice of words but not necessarily its intent or purpose. He then goes after Clinton for parroting Republican talking points about Al Gore, John Kerry and Obama not really respecting values/faith voters. But then in the last few lines, he completely loses it:

“It has been sickening over the years to watch Republicans, who always rally to the aid of the country's wealthiest citizens, successfully cast themselves as pork-rind-eating, NASCAR-watching, gun-toting populists. To have the current White House occupant (Yale, Harvard Business School, son of a president) run as a good old boy should have been the final straw. But here are the two remaining Democratic candidates, Obama by speaking carelessly and Clinton by piling on shamelessly, doing all they can to make it easy for Republicans to pretend one more time that they are the salt of the earth.”

Look. In a two party system there is naturally going to be that inherent “big tent” membership whereby each party will attract people across the economic spectrum so to start claiming which party is for the big guy/little guy will start looking like an endless tennis volley. We do have our thoughts on the matter but its beside the point of this post.

And by no means is this meant to be any cheerleading for the Republican Party as their collective behavior over the past few years has us feeling like, ironically enough, RINOs ourselves... but how does Dionne square his disgust with reality?

This reality, of course, is a Party whose leadership has consistently fought tooth and nail against any sensible restrictions on abortion (parental notification and the gruesome practice of late-term abortion), has consistently voted against tax cuts, has consistently campaigned for more gun control laws, has consistently been in silent consent with those who want to wipe religion from the public square, has consistently opposed school choice/voucher programs, has consistently offered, at best, tepid support for the military when not deriding it obliquely or directly…. Issues all that could by varying degrees be considered under the big tent of “traditional values” for rank and file Democrats and Republicans, alike.

And Dionne has the unmitigated gall to feel disgusted and sickened that despite all the above, those wascalwy Wepublicans have somehow slithered their way to the mantle of Party of the common man?

Dionne is either being intellectually dishonest with his readers or he’s been asleep at the wheel for the last 30-40 years. Policy, planks, positions… throw’em all out the window. Dionne’s attitude is perfectly exemplary of the biggest electoral problem Democrats have had since the late 60s and why it is they are setting themselves up for their 8th presidential election defeat in the last 11: condescension.

In that statement and by conveniently neglecting the choices and the battles Democratic Party leadership has fought in charting a course for the Party, Dionne exhibits the EXACT same condescension he takes Obama to task for in his choice of words and the poor dolt, most likely, doesn’t even realize it.

They still don’t get it. Its amazing. You just can’t make up this stuff.