Day: September 22, 2010
The Sound of Silence
Earlier this summer, when Helen Thomas said Jews should “get the hell out of Palestine” and return to Germany, among other places, The Washington Post’s Howard Kurtz appeared to share the widespread outrage. The nation’s most prominent media writer noted Thomas’s history of “spewing bias and bile,” and asked, “why wasn’t she reined in earlier?”
So you might have expected that Kurtz would again have been on the case when Martin Peretz, the editor in chief and long-time owner of The New Republic, blogged earlier this month that “Muslim life is cheap.” Peretz added: “I wonder whether I need honor these people and pretend that they are worthy of the privileges of the First Amendment which I have in my gut the sense that they will abuse.”
After all, with the country awash in ugly anti-Muslim sentiment, calling out this kind of bigotry is more important now than ever. And yesterday, Peretz, a former Harvard professor, was removed from the list of speakers at an upcoming university event. But, as far as we can tell, Kurtz hasn’t said a word about Peretz’s comments.
Do yourself a favor and click through.
Be Like Ike
Eisenhower, and I’d venture to say most of today’s liberals, don’t believe that we should have no guns, no police and no military force. Instead, they recognize that since WWII we’ve been building the largest, most advanced military complex in the history of the world and we’re not even slowing down. Yes, we need police. Yes, we need the military. Yes, we even need guns. What Eisenhower is pointing out, is that when he left office we had enough to last us the rest of his natural life and we haven’t even begun to slow down our production.
Please, please don’t take my word for it. I could never come close to Eisenhower in terms of experience, knowledge or rhetoric. Everything you need to know about our military industrial complex is laid out, plain for everyone to see (or hear) in his farewell address. If you haven’t heard or read it, I can’t recommend that you do enough.
Agreed. This quote in particular rings true, maybe even more so today than when he said it:
We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.
And I furthermore suspect that the vast majority of Americans today have absolutely no idea that this is (and was) the case:
Until the latest of our world conflicts, the United States had no armaments industry. American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well.
This unplanned and definitely not-voted-on change to a continuous war-footing post WWII, coupled with a nuclear-powered Presidency, in which the power to end the world was vested into that office (as opposed to, say, with Congress, or only as a part and parcel of a declared war, or defined and time-limited emergency powers, or any other way you could imagine we might have handled it) with essentially no real planning and little to no oversight has fundamentally changed our system of governance (almost all for the bad) in ways we haven’t even begun to deal with, much less even discuss. And may never start to deal with if current events and recent history are any guide.
At any rate: One of the great speeches by a President.
What is The Cha-Cha?
Sylvia Fay, “Goodfellas” Extras casting director: We’ll give you a part in the movie.
Johnny “Cha Cha” Ciarcia: Read my lips. I don’t give a shit about a part in the movie. At ten bucks a head [for the extras used in the Copa scene], I figure you owe me $4,000. Just give me the $4,000 and I’ll be happy. And a casting credit.
Sylvia Fay: I can’t give you a casting credit, I can’t give you the $4,000, but I could give you a part in the movie.
Johnny “Cha Cha” Ciarcia: I says “As long as it pays $4,000, we got a deal.” Two weeks later, I get my check in the mail. It was $1800. I called up Warner Bros., I said, “My deal was for $4000. If I don’t get the balance of my money, I’ll be on set tomorrow and I’ll break all the cameras.”
Warner Brothers: Mr. Cha Cha, we apologize. You’re right! Accounting made a mistake.
Squashed: Don’t worry about the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell vote
Today the Republican’s defeated a Democratic effort to bring a defense authorization bill to the floor that included a repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. Now both sides can use it as an election issue.
This did not remove the repeal from the defense authorization bill. […]
[It] is a critical bit of legislation. It will make it to the floor before the end of the year. Somebody will introduce an amendment to get the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell out of the bill. The amendment will fail. The bill will pass. Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell will be repealed.
It’s not so much about whether the package will squeak through (with DADT and DREAM intact), it’s about deflating the effect of said (inevitable) passage. Now it will pass post-midterms, and nobody but nobody will even know it happened.
This was never about the policy, it was about denying The Democrat a win, no matter how incremental, that might give the base even the least bit of wind in its sails. And, once again, rather than fight or force the GOP to eat a massive shit sandwich while winning the day (see: Troops, why does John McCain want them to die?), the GOP is handed this victory entirely without cost, while the democratic base sees yet more fecklessness and one more reason not to bother come November.
It is better to be strong and wrong than weak and right. This is why they fail.
Lemkin 