* * political doodle * *

Reporting Double Standards [John Ennis]

David Sanger has a "news analysis" in today's New York Times. His topic: the Democrat's "stimulus" plan. In paragraph 19, he gets around to Republican concerns that this plan is a massive waste of resources:

Republicans see a chance to do something they could do only quietly, and rarely, until former President George W. Bush flew out of the city 11 days ago: protest huge deficit spending. Now, they are freer to complain — as Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky did on Saturday in the Republican response to Mr. Obama’s address, when he argued that “permanent spending would be expanded by about $240 billion” in the House of Representatives, which would “lock in bigger and bigger deficits every year.”

(Mr. McConnell was less vocal in his opposition when President Bush declared that the combination of 9/11, a downturn and the expansion of the military budget required deficit spending.)

Mr. McConnell might have been less vocal regarding Bush's deficits, but if memory serves, certain Democrats had quite a bit to say at the time. However, don't expect Sanger to address their about face on deficit spending now that Bush is gone. After all, this is a Democratic paper masquerading as journalism.

However, what makes Sanger's bias truly glaring is the equivalence he's assumed without any hint of differentiation. Sanger assumes that all deficit spending is the same. Bush argued the nation "required deficit spending" while the Republicans never protested "huge deficit spending" under Bush, so their complaints about Obama's plan to increase the deficit are hypocritical.

Of course, deficits are not all the same, and there is a big difference between a $300 billion shortfall, and a $1.3 trillion one. Can't a politician draw a line without being accused of a double standard? When thought in those terms, the Democrats' criticism of their opponents' smaller deficits is the real about face. Alas, that didn't make it into Sanger's piece. We know why. 

Opposition Mounting [John Ennis]

Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight is a talented political analyst and his coverage of last year's election was excellent. However, I think he's missing the boat with this take on Republican opposition to Obama's trillion dollar stimulus plan:

As I have opined before, the Democratic message will essentially be one of two things in 2010:

1. Obama's accomplished X, Y and Z and showed the country the way forward, let's give him leaders in Congress who can continue to deliver for the middle class, or,

2. Obama accomplished X, but he couldn't accomplish Y and Z because the Republicans obstructed those measures to protect the special interests ... let's put partisanship behind us and elect leaders in Congress who can represent the common good.

How important will partisanship be in 2010 after a couple of years of Democratic control of both Congress and the Presidency? It's very difficult for the ruling party to make additional gains under those circumstances, so Republicans should have some momentum by default.

More importantly, there's a third option that Silver doesn't mention - one where Obama accomplishes X, and it's deemed a disaster. In that scenario, Republicans would be better served to have opposed X (Obama's misnamed stimulus plan, in this case). After all, Obama was elected in large part because he opposed the Iraq War from the beginning (which the public grew to view as a serious mistake).

Furthermore, there is growing indications that the public is seeing the wisdom of opposing the "stimulus plan". The latest Rasmussen poll shows 42 percent in favor, with 39 percent opposed. More interestingly, independent voters who supported the plan last week 37-36, are now opposed 50-27. Even though the mainstream media solidly supports the plan, opposition arguments are reaching voters (that, and when Pelosi has tried justifying the "stimulus" in the plan, it's been disastrous).

This plan is a major policy mistake. Republican opposition is not only justified as a matter of principle, there is less and less political downside, seeing as almost all public support for the plan now comes from registered Democrats.

 

The Pragmatist [John Ennis]

Now that we are entering a supposed era of pragmatism, not ideology, we can expect the media to play its role of spinning things the correct way. Hence, we have the double talk of the Boston Globe when Obama does something that might be considered controversial (emphasis added):

President Obama didn't do it symbolically on the 36th anniversary Thursday of the Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortion in the United States.

But yesterday, he quietly signed an executive order ending the ban on federal funds for international groups that promote or perform abortions. In contrast to his orders earlier this week, including banning torture, reporters were not invited to record the moment.

First, Roe didn't legalize abortion. It was legal in plenty of states before the decision. Roe made abortion a constitutional right. It barred the states from criminalizing abortion.

More importantly, another way of saying "ending the ban" is 'ordered the funding.' But, I can see why the Globe chose the more passive wording. Abortion, one of the most controversial issues of our time, is going to be subsidized internationally with taxpayer money. That sounds pretty controversial to me, but apparently not to the White House, who argue that the move helps end a divisive debate:

Last night, the White House issued a statement from Obama saying that the rule had "undermined efforts to promote safe and effective voluntary family planning in developing countries." "For too long, international family planning assistance has been used as a political wedge issue, the subject of a back and forth debate that has served only to divide us. I have no desire to continue this stale and fruitless debate," he said.

If abortion is a wedge issue, isn't forcing opponents of the procedure to pay for it with their tax dollars probably the most divisive thing one can do? Isn't that the reason the order was signed "quietly"?

Of course, none of this will stop the media from continuing to hail Obama as a pragmatic unifier.

LUCILLE: Another Terrorist Attack?

"Another terrorist attack is going to happen. We feel certain of that." - Ret. General James P. Cullen

That's what retired General James P. Cullen believes. He and about 40 retired military people have been meeting since 2004 to discuss policies directed by the civilian leadership in this country. This group of rear admirals, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs and four-star generals are not likely to be accused of being soft on terrorists. It includes Gen. Harry E Soyster, the former director of the Defense Intelligence Agency and Rear Adm. John D. Houston.

You'd be in good company if you thought this group has grave reservations about the new Obama presidency.

But you would be wrong.

According to Jim Dwyer in the New York Times, Gen. Cullen has spent the last four years trying to get the secret CIA prisons and the Guantanamo Bay detention camp closed and for the civilian leadership to ban the use of torture in "pursuit of intelligence."

What?

Back in early 2004, Cullen believed that the abuse in Iraq at Abu Ghraib was "the aberrant acts of a few twisted individuals, and a failure of their commanders." But he grew to believe that Dick Cheney's announcement that 9/11 would force the U.S to "work through, sort of the dark side, if you will" was the equivalent of a wink and a nod from the Administration to torture and humiliate at will.

""We knew this was not the military we left. . . people were in the services because they wanted. . . to better themselves and serve their country."

General Cullen and many of his fellow generals and admirals met with every candidate during the last election cycle, with a policy that they wouldn't make any endorsements or publicly support any candidate. Instead, they were determined to convince them that humane treatment of prisoners would not weaken our defense, "but strengthen it."  They know - as we would if the previous administration hadn't so blatantly lied to us - that a real terrorist in detention could quite easily mislead us with intentionally false information or, more likely, say anything under torture just to make it stop.

So, if Ret. General Cullen and his compatriots think another attack is inevitable, why are they against torture (and in favor of President Obama's ban)?

"Another terrorist attack is going to happen. We feel certain of that. It's not going to be because we ended torture. We will get better intelligence without it. And we keep our values."

Better intelligence. That's what we have to look forward to.

Amen to that.

If You Can't Find Some, Make It Up [John Ennis]

The Washington Post went fishing for sexism and put the catch on its front page:

Does a Glass Ceiling Persist in Politics?

Kennedy's Withdrawal Illustrates a Double Standard, Some Say

By Anne E. Kornblut

Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, January 23, 2009; Page A01

With her abrupt exit this week from consideration for the Senate, Caroline Kennedy added her name to a growing list: women who have sought the nation's highest offices only to face insurmountable hurdles.

Caroline Kennedy sought a seat that was previously occupied by a woman. The seat was vacant because the woman who held it had been appointed to a higher office. Instead of Kennedy, a different woman will replace the earlier occupant.

How can the "insurmountable hurdles" faced by Kennedy have anything to do with her gender? Not only is it inconceivable, an argument can be made that her gender actually helped her. (I suspect Governor Paterson was under pressure to fill Hillary Clinton's seat with a woman).

So, the thesis of the article is unsupportable. How did it make it onto the front page of a national paper? Is it because even the most spurious claim of discrimination will receive earnest attention from the mainstream media?

Ironically, when the Post publishes unsupportable charges, they undermine the cause of decreasing discrimination by adopting the role of the 'boy who cried wolf'. If the Post were to find actual discrimination, their credibility would be undermined by this piece.

Why would they unwittingly diminish their credibility on sexual discrimination issues? Is it because actual cases of discrimination are harder to find, so they're reduced to blowing the whistle on false claims? Does this piece, by using a ridiculous example to charge that there is a glass ceiling, inadvertently serve as evidence that actual sexual discrimination is almost non-existent?

LUCILLE: Yes, I Did!

  Tell me: where can you go where two million screaming, ecstatic people of all races, religions, ethnic groups and ages can inhabit a fairly constricted area without pushing, anger or unkindness? I'll tell you, because I was there - President Barack Obama's inauguration.

Here's what I saw and heard: people, incredibly happy to see George Bush leaving, to see America begin to return to the world. People were smiling, shaking hands. helping each other. They were raptly listening, anxious to not miss a word. They were even willing to let George Bush and Dick Cheney take the stage without giving them the old Bronx cheer. Instead, they cheered - glad to see you go, George! Nah nah nah nah, nah nah nah nah, hey hey hey,  goodbye.

And when our new President spoke, you could hear a pin drop. He spoke to everyone, Christian, Jew, Muslim, Hindu, non-believer, reminding us that this country is for all of us, not just followers of Christ. He repudiated Bush's policies - like torture and go-it-alone aggression - and promised that we would rejoin the community of countries. And he told us it wasn't only up to him - that we all had to accept responsibility for where this country will go. Ah! Yes, we were happy to be asked to share the sacrifice - isn't that what being part of America is all about? And, yes, we were all proud - more proud than we'd been in years - to be Americans. We waved our flags, we sang our songs.

And, even with 2 million people and a total of 40,000 troops and police, not one arrest happened.

I went to Washington and saw Barack Obama and the American people make history

Yes, I did.

   

 

 

     

Feminism v. Fox [John Ennis]

Fox has a new crime drama, "Lie to Me", debuting tonight. The New York Times review of it is an ode to political correctness. Here's the first graph:

During the past decade, Fox has rarely been the place to go looking for the lessons in collectivism manifest on series like “The Unit” and “Lost” and “Law & Order,” all of which pay tribute to collaborative problem-solving on networks not owned by Rupert Murdoch. Fox doesn’t smell like team spirit. It is a Randian territory of lone saviors (Jack Bauer, John Connor, Gregory House) bushwhacking through impending catastrophe with the weaponry of a singular genius.

Similarly, the review has only one name on the byline, suggesting it wasn't a collectivist effort either, but the work of a single genius (especially for sneaking in the verb "bushwhacking").

The program is about a Dr. Cal Lightman, who specializes in criminal lie detection. Considering the number of police procedurals on the air, the show changes things up by having Lightman work in the private sector, ruffling the reviewer's feathers:

The show further embeds the network’s individualist ideologies with a view that suggests private industry can always go the government suits one better. No line item for the Office of Management and Budget, Lightman operates under the auspices of his own consulting firm, the Washington-based Lightman Group, which the feds reluctantly seek out when they are tripped up, presumably by their own inexorable incompetence.

Presumably there are other industries the government can do a better job running. Are state-owned newspapers better than private ones like the Times?

But, there's a deeper problem than Lightman's for-profit motives, one that goes straight to the nature of the character himself. Lightman should be female:

Nancy Drew was pretty good at breaking down deception strategies, too. So was Reese Witherspoon in “Legally Blonde.” Throughout the history of modern popular culture we’ve gone in and out of defining female intelligence in terms of intuitive displays. I’m not sure what it means that television’s reigning intuitionists are now male (Lightman joins the strike force of Adrian Monk and “The Mentalist’s” Patrick Jane). And I’m not sure whether the regendering is a democratizing net positive for feminism or whether we should take offense that women’s intuition translates somewhere along the spectrum of cute while its male counterpart is meant to suggest the power of a mind brilliantly deducing.

Indeed. The culture is sick. But, is the latent misogyny and anti-collectivism tolerable if it's wrapped in what is still an entertaining show? Alas, the author has found questions, but not answers:

Against my better judgment, I suspect I’ll keep watching “Lie to Me” until I figure it out.

I guess modern feminists need to pick and choose their battles.

When Analogies Are Tested [John Ennis]

Former New York Governor Mario Cuomo has written a piece comparing Obama to Lincoln. This generated the most ridiculous headline I've seen in quite some time, courtesy of New York Newsday:

Abraham Lincoln may well have had it easier

At the time of Lincoln's inauguration, seven Southern states had already seceded. The first shots of the Civil War would be fired six weeks later. The War would be the costliest in our nation's history, leaving 600,000 Americans dead. Lincoln lost one of his son's while in office, and was assassinated at the start of his second term. Does anyone truly think Obama's term will be more difficult?

Here's my favorite graph from the analysis:

Lincoln knew, as Obama surely does, that we cannot end terror here, in the Middle East or anywhere in the world just by having the world's most powerful weapons and the best fighting force. We have to add to this force whatever is needed to provide the realistic hope for opportunity and dignity that quiets rage and produces peace here at home and across the globe.

Is that what Lincoln was thinking when he unleashed Sherman on the South? Or, was he thinking that after years of bloody conflict, it was the only way to finally crush the spirit of the rebellion? I'm not dismissing the vague concept of "whatever is needed to provide" hope that will produce world peace, I just don't know what it has to do with Lincoln.

Liberals Destroy The University And Blame Capitalists [John Ennis]

The New York Times' Stanley Fish is not the first to worry about the state of today's universities, but must his assignment of blame be so predictable? In this week's column, the professor is reviewing a former student's book on the decline of liberal arts education:

How has this happened? According to Donoghue, it’s been happening for a long time, at least since 1891, when Andrew Carnegie congratulated the graduates of the Pierce College of Business for being “ fully occupied in obtaining a knowledge of shorthand and typewriting” rather than wasting time “upon dead languages.”

Industrialist Richard Teller Crane was even more pointed in his 1911 dismissal of what humanists call the “life of the mind.” No one who has “a taste for literature has the right to be happy” because “the only men entitled to happiness . . . are those who are useful.”

[snip]

What is happening in traditional universities where the ethos of the liberal arts is still given lip service is the forthright policy of for-profit universities, which make no pretense of valuing what used to be called the “higher learning.” John Sperling, founder of the group that gave us Phoenix University, is refreshingly blunt: “Coming here is not a rite of passage. We are not trying to develop value systems or go in for that ‘expand their minds’” nonsense.

The for-profit university is the logical end of a shift from a model of education centered in an individual professor who delivers insight and inspiration to a model that begins and ends with the imperative to deliver the information and skills necessary to gain employment.

Don't you see: industrialists and capitalists are destroying the university! Of course, only capitalist societies have ever produced great universities, but we'll ignore that chicken/egg quandary for now. Fish continues:

Those ideas have now triumphed (Carnegie and Crane are victorious), and this means, Donoghue concludes, “that all fields deemed impractical, such as philosophy, art history, and literature, will henceforth face a constant danger of being deemed unnecessary.” And as a corollary “professors will come to be seen by everyone (not just those outside the academy) as unaffordable anomalies.”

Here's the problem with Fish & Donoghue's argument: rich societies are the only ones that can afford to focus on the fields they argue are evaporating. So, capitalism is essential for a healthy university system, for such affluence allows large swathes of the population to study fields that aren't directly engaged in wealth creation.

I can understand why Phoenix University is not the professor's cup of tea. But, does its rise signal the demise of all institutions? Far fewer students were enrolled in college 50 years ago, do all the additional students we now see choosing non-liberal arts courses necessarily mean those studies are dying? It's true that today's universities are more likely to have a focus on job training, but there are many more schools to begin with. The reasons are manifold, but it stands to reason that more varieties of educational experiences should allow the liberal arts to maintain a niche. The fact that liberal arts is now a small fish in a big pond rather than a big fish in a small pond, doesn't mean the fish is endangered.

But, there's a deeper problem with Fish's contentions. He makes no mention of the massive changes to the liberal arts themselves that have occurred since the upheavals of the 1960s. Fish focuses on a 'Great Books' approach to the liberal arts in his piece, but many aspects of that approach came under attack from liberal arts professors already in the university system (not from capitalist outsiders). The curriculum was questioned as too Eurocentric, sexist, imperialist and homophobic. New departments arose devoted to oppression studies and the like. Out of this came multiculturalism and political correctness.

Now is not the time for a lengthy explanation of the problems with multiculturalism and p.c., but, they make finding the truth very difficult, because the truth becomes subordinate to what is politically correct. Fish laments the devaluing of the liberal arts, but anything that ignores truth is bound to decline in stature.

Liberal arts wasn't diminished by capitalists, it was devalued by liberals.

Here's A First [John Ennis]

The fallout from California's passage of Proposition 8 continues to be felt. The New York Times reports:

SAN FRANCISCO — In many ways it is a typical map, showing states, highways, cities and streets.

But also dotting the online display are thousands of red arrows, marking spots from Bryn Mawr, Pa., to Jamacha, Calif., identifying the addresses of donors who supported Proposition 8, which outlawed same-sex marriage in California.

It is exactly those arrows that concern supporters of the measure, who say they have been regularly harassed since the election — with threatening e-mail messages and sometimes boycotts of their businesses.

“Some gay activists have organized Web sites to actively encourage people to go after supporters of Proposition 8,” said Frank Schubert, the campaign manager for Protect Marriage, the leading group behind the proposition. “And giving these people a map to your home or office leaves supporters of Proposition 8 feeling especially vulnerable. Really, it is chilling.”

So chilling, apparently, that supporters have filed suit in Federal District Court in Sacramento seeking a preliminary injunction of a state election law that requires donors of $100 or more to disclose their names, addresses, occupations and other personal information.

The piece goes on for another dozen paragraphs discussing the ins and outs of the suit and ends with this quote from Jennifer Pizer of Lamda Legal, a gay rights organization (emphasis added):

Opponents of Proposition 8 have condemned any attacks on supporters, but noted that those claiming harassment are already protected by laws. “Violence and vandalism are illegal, and those laws should be enforced,” Ms. Pizer said. “And sadly people on both sides of this issue have experienced some of that.”

Isn't that one of the key arguments opponents of hate crime legislation make? I never thought I'd hear it coming from a gay rights attorney.