Suite: 15

Almost didn't post this year. (Still counts if I haven't slept, yah?)

This was the first time since That Tuesday that I've actually been in New York on 9/11. Went up alone this weekend to help out my mom, in my childhood home.

As I drove back to my present home tonight, on the Belt Parkway, I could see --for the first time with my own eyes-- those twin pillars of light, tracing their starward trajectories opposite those described by the Towers whose memories they evanescently embody each year.

Zero-Seven hushed from the speakers. Late-night traffic was sparse. The Moon serenely choreographed its silvery swarms on the estuary.

I was Sad.

Still am.

This has been a year replete with Losses: Bowie, Rickman, Wilder, Schandling, Marshall, Vigoda, Finkel, Baker, Formerly-Formerly-Known-As, etc., etc.

And other Losses, FAR more personal. Losses of the kind that BAMPF the marrow from your bones, suck the mitochondria out of each and every cell, leave you gasping for joy like a COPD sufferer on Everest's summit. One of them I associate inextricably with New York (I fear seriously for my equilibrium and my breath, when next I set foot in Lincoln Center...or in pretty much any Irish pub...).

So, awash in the howling winds of all those vortices (and yet VERY consciously Mindful of one I've thus far been spared [Kenahorah-Poo-Poo-Poo]), revisiting That Other One seemed a bit much.


So, I almost didn't post.

It was the lights, done me in.

Photons, fired from the very site of such ruin were striking mine own retinae at just under vacuum-C, in real-time. 

Whatthefrak was I supposed to do with that??

As I've said before, I watched those Towers go up. From my sixth to my thirty-fifth years, they lived....and then they died.

And they were anything but alone.

Alas, it made me think of the status of the zeitgeist that lurched its charnel-fanged maw to our throats on That Day.

And that did nothing for the Sadness.

The three --variously-quixotic-- contenders for the Oval Orifice do not inspire.

One, whose tenure as SecState offered up a dreary litany of squandered opportunities (Green Revolution, Al-Maliki's Electile Dysfunction, Ukraine incursions, Arab Spring, "'Reset' Buttons" [Staples irregulars?]...), and a prickly, imperious tone that frosted every interface. It was dismal to a degree that rivals even that of her sodden successor at Foggy Bottom.

And another: notoriously mercurial, viciously thin-skinned, exuberantly-unburdened by any discernible capacity for critical, strategic thought...nor much in the way of raw material for such thought.

And, of course, the Upstart: affable, experienced, idealistic, congruent (at times to the point of unprecedented --and very refreshing-- self-deprecation)....but possessing his party's characteristic Achilles...well...LEG of a breathtakingly naïve conception of geopolitical realities.


So....Yah. Not sanguine.

Neither volatile bellicosity, reptilian manipulation, nor ostrich imitations stand even a Truth's chance on social media of bending the orbit of such Malevolent Clarity by so much as an arc-millisecond.

"Spectacle" attacks like the one having its Quinzeañera today seem to have fallen out of vogue (cf. Yiddish utterance, above), having been succeeded by Lone (/Known) Wolf, and platoon-level soft-target wetwork.

Decisively draining the political, ideological, and economic feeder streams of such "democratized" mayhem would require a multifarious deployment of subtle, nimble, attuned, toothy (with baked-in face-saving compromises), FOCUSED foreign policy, a global Counterinsurgency approach whose likelihood of arising from the daily briefings of any of these Misfit Toys' tenures on Pennsylvania Avenue is....well...


Let's just say that, amid everything else, I was aware of being rather ignominiously discomfited at the fact that I was in New York today.




And that Pisses Me OFF.




Troofer-Dipshit Half-Wit Mental Gymnastics aside, it's plain to any reasonably-informed, rational thinker from the pic below that the Towers' structural support system was exceptionally well-conceived...save for a low-probability but devastatingly exploitable vulnerability.

Alas that the same might be said for the security of the Republic and of its citizenry.




Damned lights.

Obama Champion of Gay Rights? Look Again

Bethany Mandel, at Commentary offers some badly-needed thoughts on the meme that a Romney Presidency will constitute a massive step back for LGBT rights in our society. And yet, prior to the POTUS' "historic" endorsement of same-sex marriage equality, he could hardly be counted among the most staunch advocates of that equality...not till his hand was forced by his running-mate, and an election loomed:

As Obama’s actions both before and after his gay marriage flip-flop have shown, his commitment to gay rights appears to be merely one of convenience. Four years ago, it was politically expedient to be against gay marriage, thus President Obama made statements to that effect. In May, after Vice President Biden blurted out his previously unmentioned support of gay marriage, President Obama found it politically necessary to either repudiate his own vice president or change his stance, and chose to do the latter.

I have no doubt that Mr. Obama personally supports marriage rights for same-sex couples. That is not the point, really. The point is what he can be realistically counted on to do about those beliefs. Obama is a Statist (albeit not quite as radical a one as many of his Conservative critics like to shriek); he believes that the proper role of the Federal Government is to wade in and fix and do things. Given that belief, and the very strong advantage he enjoyed in both houses of Congress, prior to 2010, does his all-but absent posture on the issue really inspire that much more confidence than might accrue to a Federalist, who believes in the distribution of power away from the USGOV, even if he does not share the beliefs of gay advocates?

It is a question worth pondering, and a much-needed moderating salve on the perpetually-reopened wounds of this debate, among those who are invested in promulgating decidedly immoderate assertions on the matter.

Al Smith Dinner: 2012

As lively and bracing as this election has surely been, I've been looking forward to the traditional Al Smith dinner like even the most avid Football fan looks forward to the Superbowl commercials. I just love this thing, for reasons which I'm sure the tapioca between my ears at the moment will likely fail epically to articulate as satisfactorily as I managed during the last go-round.

Obama's comic chops continued to earn honest props. It's a thing to behold, the way he plays against his signature oratorical cadences, executing a really masterful Aikido twirl between what he knows to be perceived as vanity, and the humility of joining in with the mocking of it.






But what really, honestly surprised me was how readily Mittens was able to morph into a very decent comedic groove. His self-referential ribbing of the "Richy Rich: The Android Years" vibe was right in the pocket (and a deep one, at that....badum-CHING). His bit toward the end, about competing without disliking, and his praise of the President and his family were both gracious and conspicuously sincere.

Both candidates, in fact, ended on notes of elevated and edifying good-fellowship, even as the roasty bits before made clear that It was still On. That's what these things do: they sit between the crusty bread slices of the debates, like a nice schmear of Nutella.

Worth taking a bite; leaves a badly-needed good aftertaste.

My Path From Port To Starboard: It's Complicated

So, what business does an agnostic, non-affluent, socially-liberal, post-graduate-educated, Northeast city-born, suburban-dwelling bloke (technically a Minority, to boot) like myself have in calling himself any kind of "Conservative?"

This is a question to which regular readers of these pages (all three of them!) know I have bent my thoughts for a number of years now. After all, in the Summer of 2004, I still defined myself as someone who believed that it was the government's responsibility to engineer society such that the needs of its citizens could never go unmet. Further, I believed that the national nature of that project was a mere stepping-stone toward the time when Westphalian nation-state borders would all-but vanish, and a new World Government would create a seamless, just, and intelligently-designed global community. Even now, the ideas still have appeal.

It is understandable that some might perceive a deep irony in the fact that, having undergone such profound change, I should now subscribe to a domain of thought which is often dismissed as being merely the resistance to change. Further, it is just as understandable that a similar irony could be found in a non-theist aligning himself with a political philosophy which has become so enmeshed with hard theism. Finally, some may see a contradiction in the fact that, as someone who works in a helping profession (Clinical Psychology), I should have thrown in with those who are perceived as being all-too ready to throw the weak to the wolves.

As ever, the reconciliation of apparent paradoxes lies beyond the edges of the screens onto which they're projected.

Uncharacteristically cutting to the chase: I am a conservative because I am a Complex Systems thinker (link, by the way, is to a SPECTACULARLY useful site for the layman to get up to speed on these theories).

As a student of complex, non-linear, edge-of-chaos phenomena, I have learned to look with deep humility on our capacity to characterize --let alone control-- complex, open, evolving systems. From ecosystems to economies (but I repeat myself), nature finds a way to flow like water into spaces that are un-dreamed-of in our philosophies. Flocks of birds self-organize into fantastically elaborate patterns as they swirl through the sky. There is profound meaning to be found in the the fact that they do so without the aid of any rules more complicated than "keep a certain distance from adjoining birds, steer around obstacles, and travel along basically the same path as your fellow-flockers." The pattern is an emergent property of these simple, strictly local rule-sets.

This quality of emergence is apparent throughout nature. Traffic patterns arise from local interactions on the level of individual cars...yet they can achieve complex forms which span miles of roads, reacting to (and anticipating) assorted perturbations as though they were subject to some superordinate intelligence. But they're not. Molecules of oil in a shallow dish can align themselves into a regular lattice of hexagonal columns of fluid  (Bénard cells) when heated. It almost looks like these molecules are executing a pregiven program. But they're not.  Populations of cells act in concert to form and maintain the function of an organism, and those organisms arrange themselves into cooperating and competing biomes and ecosystems, all as though they were cogs in a fantastically-designed clockwork. But they're not.

These collective behaviors arise from the interactions of local agents, whose activities are regulated at a dynamic cascade of system levels...but with nary a Central Planning Authority to be found. Indeed, I have come to see that the most brittle, least adaptive systems are those which are organized around a strictly "top-down," hierarchical architecture of energy and information. A brain (a self-organizing system) can suffer grievous damage, and yet still  regain substantial portions of its previous function by routing around the damage...whereas a computer can grind to a catastrophic crash, owing to a misplaced comma in thousands of lines of code (usually the night before an important presentation is due!).

You see where this is going.

As I said (and meant), the ideas from my Transnational Progressive days still have much appeal. I like the idea that society can be designed in such a way that it can remain viable, yet responsive to the needs of all its citizens. I like the idea that smart people can apply those smarts to engineering a setting in which all people can be positioned --well-fed and educated and healthy-- to thrive and create and live well. What kind of person wouldn't?

The trouble is that those smart people would have to have access to the kind of comprehensive information which the universe simply does not provide, when it comes to the structure and function of complex systems. There is a hard complexity barrier between the unfolding of such systems, and the algorithms we might devise to describe and predict (again, let alone control) that unfolding. As such, all attempts at planning and administering a system as complex as a society and an economy will result in a GARGANTUAN bureaucracy, cobbling together policy after policy, growing and accruing more and more system energy (or, if you prefer, power) to manage the cascade of unintended consequences which it will spawn like metastases as it frantically strives to put even the very noblest of intentions into practice. It happened in the Soviet Union. It's happening in the Euro Zone. I have come (reluctantly!) to the position that it will happen wherever Central Planning is tried.

F. A.  Hayek --pre-dating Complexity Theory by decades-- wrote that it is the Smithian, "Invisible Hand" of myriad individual choice-making agents which enables an economy flexibly to assign value to goods and services, and to enable the most efficient flow of energy/capital through that economy. He wrote (during the days leading up to and closely following WW2, when many of these ideas stood in VERY high relief) that efforts to plan and manage the operation of an economy were subject to insuperable obstacles, owing to the invariably imperfect knowledge to which the Planners would have access. (and, since it seems I can't go a full month without linking to this bit of brilliance, here's another way to discuss this). It was his thesis that a mechanism which would assume such a level of control over what is essentially an evolving system will lead it to steal more and more energy from that system, till it becomes self-perpetuating and parasitical. He posited (again, not in a vacuum) that both economic dynamism and liberty would erode under such conditions.

Now, of course a "purely" non-interventionist government (if such a beast could ever be said to have existed on this planet) would not be a tolerable scenario. There are aspects of human welfare which simply must be placed behind a judiciously-applied set of firewalls, if a society is to be a just one. However, the Social-Darwinist view of free-market capitalism which is so often set up as a straw man by advocates of Planning is by no means a necessary correlate of the thing. The difference, if you will, is in viewing government as the control rod or the reactor core.

Thus, I choose to align myself, to as great a degree as is practicable within the Real World, with those who work to create an open, fair marketplace, within whose raucous, generative, evolving, and frequently messy parameters prosperity will arise. Since no pure form of such an approach can be found in our political landscape, in anything like a configuration which is tolerable to me (and which stands a snowball's chance on Venus of achieving the White House), I'm stuck with the GOP (and only then, because I live in a State with closed primaries, in which Independents cannot vote).

I recognize that this puts me in the company of folks who hardly see eye-to-eye with me on the position that, say, homosexuality is merely a normal (if relatively rare) variation in natural human pair-bonding (and that, thus, it is absurd to deny people access to a central human pair-bonding ritual and status, just because they so vary). I know that there is a (deeply paradoxical!) thread within the party of insinuating uncomfortably high levels of Christian theology into the laws of the land...which flies in the face of the ostensibly liberty-oriented approach to government's footprint in people's lives which is proper to the party's orientation. What can I tell you? We live in a universe where the Perfect is inevitably and irreducibly the enemy of the good, if we choose to hold out for it.

But the Democratic party has seemingly irretrievably aligned itself with the tradition of Progressives and other Planners. And, for whatever tactical gains it (admirably!) strives to bring about for its constituents, it does so at the price of strategic losses to our society's ability to sustain the benefits it promises. It simply does not fit within my frame of reference that this is a good idea (nor, in the end, particularly humane). So, I ride herd as much as possible on the more pernicious aspects of the GOP's posture (if, the gods forbid, Michele Bachmann, or Rick Santorum had gotten the nomination, I would have had a Very Difficult choice to make...see why I want to be able to vote in the primaries?), while advocating for those parts which move our society in what I judge to be the direction in which it remains most vibrant and viable (which, to paraphrase JFK [who all-but-certainly would have been Liebermanned into obscurity within today's Democratic party] would create the rising tide which lifts all boats).

Yes, conservatives would find a great many of my positions positively heretical (and, of course, the feeling would be mutual). But no complex system is without internal contradictions, even as its overall organization is coherent. Nature is not kind to Purists. So we choose among imperfect options, in as-educated-as-possible hope that the highest-viable good will emerge.

It's the worst possible system you could imagine....except for all the others.

Hubris and Fallen Columns

From the opinion pages of the WSJ  comes this withering synopsis of POTUS Obama's relentless (and ultimately self-defeating) pursuit of a Progressive Tranformation Of America (tm).  In short, it's turned out pretty much as you'd expect.

It really is extraordinary how opaque he was (and remains) to the practical and the political  implications of his actions, and thus how  utterly he has squandered what could have been a  most auspicious moment for him.

Oddly, my tear ducts register no activity at all.

Will on the Context of a Character

Via Powerline,  comes this highly-recommended George Will  interview with "political philosopher," Charles Kesler.

Will, via Kesler, dispenses with lurid conspiracy theories about foreign births and anti-colonialism, and executes a nice, close Occam's shave on the stubble of POTUS Obama's motivational set. Clear continuities are traced, not through some exotic/esoteric wetland of subterranean motives, but through the amply-documented trajectory of American Progressivism over the last 100 years (to the year, per the authors, since it was in 1912 that Woodrow Wilson, with chilling candor, proclaimed the objectives and perceived scope of action of the Progressive Project):

In 1912, Wilson said, “The history of liberty is the history of the limitation of governmental power.” But as Kesler notes, Wilson never said the future of liberty consisted of such limitation.Instead, he said, “every means . . . by which society may be perfected through the instrumentality of government” should be used so that “individual rights can be fitly adjusted and harmonized with public duties.”

I seem to recall some other noteworthy incident which occurred during that year...

It is important to realize that, for those whose priorities and values are thoroughly aligned with Progressivism's aims (fair equalization of outcomes), this sort of gargantuan, Government-powered, industrial-strength social engineering is simply the only way to achieve those aims within what they feel/define is a just and humane time-scale. Within that headspace, this is both fitting and laudable, and worth the (typically understated) risks to liberty. I Get it. Used to feel the same way, m'self.

But I have arrived at a position which looks back on these (my!) past models as more than a bit naive. There is, after all, an historical context to be considered here. Namely, with a very few exceptions (whose circumstances --e.g., small Scandinavian Social Democracies -- are sufficiently non-representative as to kinda prove the rule), centralized, hierarchical, Statist societies have become schlerotic with bureaucracy and with anemic (trending toward absent) economic dynamism. The ash heap of failed Communist/Socialist experiments is so high it affects regional weather patterns. Those which have found a way to encyst some selected pseudopods of market-driven, capitalist activity have been able to prolong their seemingly inexorable slide into that familiar senescence of evaporating Utopias. But make no mistake, this only buys time, even as behemoths like China lumber on, like a charging sauropod whose nervous system is so slow, its body doesn't even know it's dead yet.


I find it reassuring to not have to impute dastardly motives to the POTUS (if for no other reason than the fact that so many of my friends who support him would have to be knaves or dupes to do so...and I pick my friends with considerably more care than that!). It helps me a great deal to develop plausible, non-histrionic models to explain the data of Obama's actions and utterances, since I can test those against my own (try that in the hall of mirrors of competing conspiracy theories!). Thus do I arrive at the conclusion that the perils to the American project along that path FAR outweigh the (undeniable, though unsustainable) benefits enjoyed by individuals in the kind of Constitutionally-unmoored society which lies at its bitter end.

And thus will my sympathy be no less sincere than my relief, should Obama's own "one-term proposition" prediction prove to have been correct.

No spiking of the football here (that's the correct term, yes?).

NPR: Small Business Owners Really WANT to be Taxed, Of Course

Culled from the viscous surface of my Facebook feed comes this little nugget from NPR, which (shockiest of shocks) maintains (or, rather implies) that small business owners --the people whom the GOP is striving to protect by opposing the imposition of "Millionaire Surcharge" taxes as part of a deal to extend the payroll tax cuts-- have not spoken up in opposition to those surtaxes...because they just don't care about this stuff.

In typically tendentious NPR fashion, the point is made that no small business owners were willing to step out and oppose the redistributive tax ideology of this Administration. Does this mean that they were unwilling to expose themselves to the protests, boycotts, and organized smear campaigns (or worse!) of outraged Leftists, which are the near-inevitable fate of individuals and businesses that make themselves too conspicuous in their embrace of free-market principles? Can it be that they are trying to protect their profits by not so exposing themselves?

No. Of course this means that there is no support for restraining tax rates in the interest of promoting growth, and that the GOP is merely being the obstructionist meanie that it always is, ever vigilant for ways to make this Administration fail...leaving it for the ever-reliable NPR commenters to fill in the inevitable "RACIST" blank, among other tedious canards.

And no need to look too closely at the fact that the only business owners who spoke up for this editorial --in support of the Administration's would-be policies-- were on record as contributors to Democrats. Why, that's just a coincidence, you mouth-breathing Capitalist troglodytes.

SIGH Clearly, not enough people are thinking deeply enough on these matters. If only there were some more accessible medium for clarifying the terms of the debate....

Forget 9/11? Fuhgeddaboudit, Pal.

[by Mr.Hengist]

Now, me, I’m not big on anniversaries, not even my own birthday. Just not caring, is all. When I was a kid I looked forward to my birthday, sure – presents! – but as I got older, for a variety of reasons, I grew out of it. There’s no day I set aside for celebration or remembrance of anything anymore, and that’s just me. I’m not against this kind of thing but it doesn’t resonate with me.

That’s why the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks has come and gone these blogging years without comment from me, although 9/11 marked perhaps the darkest days in my life and set in motion changes in me which were, for me, profound. It’s in the days leading up to the 9/11 anniversary that people reflect on that day and how we move forward. E.J. Dionne Jr. has phoned it in with his September 7th, 2011 column, “Time to leave 9/11 behind”.

As the title promises, the first line delivers:

“After we honor the 10th anniversary of the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, we need to leave the day behind.”

It’s a familiar refrain, one I’ve read from Liberal pundits since, well, shortly after September 11, 2001. We shouldn’t use this as an excuse to make war, we’ve gone off-track, we need to understand that we were attacked because we’re hated, and with good reason, we need to make amends so the world will love us again and we’ll all live together in the world with harmony and respect for cultural diversity, and then unicorns will fart rainbows, blah blah blah, blah blah, blah.

Although the Liberal MSM never stopped airing the pictures and video of the planes hitting the towers (look, big explosion!), even in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 they wouldn't air the pictures or video of the jumpers. Those were the victims above the inferno in the towers who jumped to their certain death rather than stay and succumb to the smoke and flame. What hell that must have been for those office workers that the better option was to jump from the top floors of a skyscraper. Not a few, either; surviving rescue workers described having to be exceedingly cautious when entering or exiting the towers to avoid being crushed by a random person falling from the sky, and how unnerving it was to hear the bodies thumping on the sidewalk every couple of minutes. Why the media embargo? While not graphic, they were horrifying, and they angried up the blood. Americans were, by and large, ready to unleash our war machine, but already the imploring chorus of restraint was stirring from the anti-war left, who saw us as having gotten our just desserts - Blame America First.

It only took a half a year or so for the focus to shift, as the Lefties knew that this war business wasn't going to treat them well. Modern Liberal Democrats are not the leaders you want in charge in a time of war, and they knew it, so on the whole they thought this 9/11 thing was taking domestic and foreign policy in all kinds of wrong directions. Like hamsters running the wheel for hours on end, they get tired and rest for a spell but soon enough they're back at it. It's their hobby horse and they're not getting off it, because we can't change policy until you people get over the hurt. So, like, it's sad & all, but can't you just leave it in the past? Besides which, you deserved it.

“As a nation we have looked back for too long. We learned lessons from the attacks, but so many of them were wrong. The last decade was a detour that left our nation weaker, more divided and less certain of itself.”

I’ll refrain from rebutting the arguments that Dionne neglects to make himself, but suffice it to say, he’s wrong, wrong, wrong. We learned valuable lessons from 9/11, and perhaps not well enough, and our response has left us stronger, not weaker. Hey, if Dionne won’t make the case against, I’m don’t have to make the case for.

“Reflections on the meaning of the horror and the years that followed are inevitably inflected by our own political or philosophical leanings. It’s a critique that no doubt applies to my thoughts as well. We see what we choose to see and use the event as we want to use it.”

I suppose it would be unfair to point out that Dionne, perhaps tellingly, focuses on how we choose to “use the event as we want to use it”, because in essence, I agree with this paragraph. Let’s just say, for now, that E.J. Dionne and I disagree on all the particulars.

“This does nothing to honor those who died and those who sacrificed to prevent even more suffering. In the future, the anniversary will best be reserved as a simple day of remembrance in which all of us humbly offer our respect for the anguish and the heroism of those individuals and their families.”
“But if we continue to place 9/11 at the center of our national consciousness, we will keep making the same mistakes. Our nation’s future depended on far more than the outcome of a vaguely defined “war on terrorism,” and it still does. Al-Qaeda is a dangerous enemy. But our country and the world were never threatened by the caliphate of its mad fantasies.”

Long have the Liberal-Left fervently implored us not to take 9/11 so hard. Let me start hitting a couple of the specifics here:

First of all, it’s arguable whether we place 9/11 “at the center of our national consciousness”, but if that’s the case then it is so for reasons which are far beyond the ability of anyone to simply wish it away. 9/11 will gradually diminish in importance as time stretches the distance between the now and then, but what Dionne and his ilk have either never grasped or simply wanted to make not so, is that it was an event on the order of magnitude of Pearl Harbor. It is both tiresome and insulting to hear from Dionne et al that we should just get over it. Not happening, not anytime soon.

Then there’s the part where he acknowledges that “Al Qaeda is a dangerous enemy”, but “our country and the world were never threatened by the caliphate of its mad fantasies”. I don’t think it’s necessary to belabor the obvious contradiction here, as these two ideas are mutually exclusive. What Dionne means - but apparently lacks the skill to put clearly - is that Al Qaeda will never succeed in reestablishing a caliphate. It's either clumsiness or intentionally intimating that, in some sense, we are really threatened by Al Qaeda.

In the sense that Al Qaeda will never succeed in their mad fantasies of a worldwide caliphate, Dionne and I agree. I wouldn't be entirely sure of their chances for a regional caliphate, nor would I take off the table the possibility of various other states in the being absorbed into the orbit of this yet-to-be established caliphate. At any rate, I wouldn't want to establish odds, as I think they're pretty long on even the most modest of their goals.

This is an entirely separate question from whether Al Qaeda is an ongoing threat. They are. A diminished, less capable threat, not to be underestimated, but pursued to the ends of the Earth and exterminated wherever they are, no matter how long it takes. Further, Al Qaeda is but one organization of many that are like-minded and equally dastardly. The point I'm driving at is that what Dionne wants is for us to go back to 9/10, and I'm here to tell you this a mad fantasy of Liberal-Leftists. They've probably got a better chance of realizing their fantasy than Al Qaeda does for realizing theirs.

“We asked for great sacrifice over the past decade from the very small portion of our population who wear the country’s uniform, particularly the men and women of the Army and the Marine Corps. We should honor them, too. And, yes, we should pay tribute to those in the intelligence services, the FBI and our police forces who have done such painstaking work to thwart another attack.”

I presume Dionne is preferentially giving shout-outs to the Army and Marine Corps based on casualty figures, but really, all of our armed service members have borne an extraordinary burden. One of the lessons we should have learned from the military engagements of the last decade is that our military is inarguably too small to do this without having to resort to extended tours of combat duty. Whether you support the war(s) or not, the presumption that we have the ability to fight such wars can no longer be taken at face value - or be relied upon as a part of our defense posture. If the possibility of going to war to defend, say, Taiwan or South Korea, is off the table because it would outstrip our capacity to effectively prosecute that third front, then that’s an excellent argument for augmenting the size of our armed forces because weakness invites attack. That lesson was, alas, not learned.

Still, it’s worth noting that Dionne doesn’t go the route of infantilizing our armed forces by talking about them as if they were children forced to go to war, or as bloodthirsty killbot murderers leaving a wake of devastation and suffering. I wish more antiwar folks were as decent as Dionne is here.

Hey, I wish for a lot of things.

“It was often said that terrorism could not be dealt with through “police work,” as if the difficult and unheralded labor involved was not grand or bold enough to satisfy our longing for clarity in what was largely a struggle in the shadows.”

Here Dionne constructs a straw man but doesn’t even bother to knock it down. Let me set it on fire by pointing out that one of the problems with using law enforcement to prosecute a war is that law enforcement is, by varying degrees, reactive rather than proactive. Without probable cause, how to apprehend suspects? How to obtain sufficient evidence to obtain the issuance of arrest warrants, and under what standard of law do we operate – ours, or the laws of a foreign country? To what degree to we constrain and expose our law officers by working with a foreign government in the investigation? By way of example, let me point out that when it was determined that Osama bin Laden was in Afghanistan, the Bush Administration demanded he be turned over to us. The Taliban responded that, no, they would be doing no such thing, but they would consider extradition if we could present a case to an international court of law, and besides which, they had no idea where he was, although they would be happy to pass along any message we might wish to send him.

[Go back and read the rest of that last sentence now that you've stopped laughing at how the Taliban were demanding we persuade an international court of law.]

Further, law enforcement is subject to the legal constraints of a civil society rather than an effectively lawless badlands or an actual rootin’ tootin’ battlefield. In that kind of environment it is impractical to the point of being an impossibility to maintain the integrity of a chain of custody for physical evidence, and even the problematical nature of the reading of Miranda rights makes the notion of a legal battlespace, quite frankly, bizarre. Proverbially speaking, it’s bringing a knife to a gunfight, or in this case, an arrest warrant to a gunfight. OK, the FBI carries guns, but up against RPGs, AK-47s, IEDs and, well, you get the picture.

“Forgive me, but I find it hard to forget former president George W. Bush’s 2004 response to Sen. John Kerry’s comment that “the war on terror is less of a military operation and far more of an intelligence-gathering and law-enforcement operation.”
“Bush retorted: “I disagree — strongly disagree. . . . After the chaos and carnage of September the 11th, it is not enough to serve our enemies with legal papers. With those attacks, the terrorists and their supporters declared war on the United States of America, and war is what they got.” What The Washington Post called “an era of endless war” is what we got, too.”
“Bush, of course, understood the importance of “intelligence gathering” and “law enforcement.” His administration presided over a great deal of both, and his supporters spoke, with justice, of his success in staving off further acts of terror. Yet he could not resist the temptation to turn on Kerry’s statement of the obvious. Thus was an event that initially united the nation used, over and over, to aggravate our political disharmony. This is also why we must put it behind us.”

What is obvious to Dionne in Kerry’s statement is left unstated, and it deserves to be fleshed out. I won’t do his work for him, but I will point out that intelligence gathering and law enforcement operations do not preclude warfighting as a means of confronting enemy conspirators and combatants. For a couple hundred years now, the U.S. has used all of these tools in the prosecution of war.

The disconnect between these two ideas – those of Kerry and W – is that W was responding to the unstated premise in Kerry’s statement: that we can use intelligence gathering and law enforcement to mitigate the threat of Al Qaeda without waging war.

The political disharmony Dionne laments is a direct result of the disagreement between these two ideological camps over this question. What’s more, that disagreement was fueled by the political calculus of Democrats who parlayed an issue of national security in order to get more political power, which is simply unconscionable.

I’m sure Liberals will take exception to that statement, but let me preempt their howls by asking this question: how else do you explain the promises of candidate Obama, which were very much in alignment with the spirit of anti-war Liberals, to the actions of POTUS Obama? From the continuance of warrantless wiretaps, to the dramatic expansion of drone airstrikes, and the extension of the Patriot Act, to the Libyan war, and so on, it seems obvious that POTUS Obama has fallen far short of the standards he set for himself. I’m not trying to use these reversals as a cudgel against POTUS Obama, but rather, to point out that, in reality, as POTUS Obama either knew or learned, our country is not well-served by prosecuting a war as if it were a matter solely for intelligence gathering and law enforcement.

While I'm at it, let me also point out how disingenuous the Left has been over these past years. Yeah, yeah, when W was in office, the Constitution was shredded, he thought himself a king, the republic was doomed, and America as we knew it was being destroyed by the evil Republicans, damn those soulless ghouls. The Left marched by the tens of thousands, they did, to stop the wars and take back America! When they did take back America, or at least the government - which, surprisingly, still existed, and still somehow allowed free elections - Democrats won all three branches of government and those very same policies were met with... muted grumbling. Only the far left still seems to be waving their pitchforks, but mainstream Liberals have given their guy a pass.

“In the flood of anniversary commentary, notice how often the term “the lost decade” has been invoked. We know now, as we should have known all along, that American strength always depends first on our strength at home — on a vibrant, innovative and sensibly regulated economy, on levelheaded fiscal policies, on the ability of our citizens to find useful work, on the justice of our social arrangements.”

I’ll defer to Dionne that “the lost decade” is a phrase used with some frequency in Liberal circles, but that phrase has no currency on the Right. At any rate, American strength is not dependent on the false choice Dionne presents. Our economy must be strong in order to have a strong national defense, and our national defense can only be strong if our economy is strong. We can’t have one without the other, but regardless of economic circumstances in our national defense we must wage war on those who wage war against us. It always pays to destroy our enemies, even though it costs us.

“This is not “isolationism.” It is a common sense that was pushed aside by the talk of “glory” and “honor,” […]"

… aaaand let me stop Dionne right here and call out this BS. Glory and honor were never used by the Bush Administration to justify warmaking; this is a shameless manufacturing of a lie to serve Liberal dissent. We did not go to war in Afghanistan or Iraq for glory, period. We did not go to war against Afghanistan or Iraq for honor, either. We did not go to war against Afghanistan or Iraq for treasure either, but I digress. Dionne would like to portray hawks and neocons as warmongers seeking glory and honor, but Dionne forgets that these are the facile accusations of the Liberal-Left, now so ingrained as to be taken as self-evident truths. Recall what I said above, about how accusations against their political opposition are first taken as a possibility, then as probably true, and from there a certainty.

“[…] by utopian schemes to transform the world by abruptly reordering the Middle East — and by our fears.”

Here Dionne is alluding to the neocon ambition of upsetting the apple carts of the undemocratic Middle East dictatorships and facilitating the emergence of representative republics. It’s a shame that POTUS Bush largely gave up on that ambition in his second term, but it’s somewhat encouraging to see the possibility of that dream coming to fruition in some parts of the Middle East today as a part of what’s being called the Arab Spring. You might think that current events would have Dionne thinking twice about calling such a scheme utopian, but, well, apparently not.

“While we worried that we would be destroyed by terrorists, we ignored the larger danger of weakening ourselves by forgetting what made us great.”

And what made us great? Glory? Honor? I’d like to address this statement but as it stands I can’t make heads or tails of it and I’m not about to flesh out his argument that isn’t made so that I can rebut it.

“We have no alternative from now on but to look forward and not back.”

We can do both, unless you can’t walk and chew gum at the same time. Of course, Dionne has been arguing that we shouldn’t look back, not that we can’t, so this statement is simply empty rhetoric, and it’s just so very lame, but it does set up his final paragraph:

“This does not dishonor the fallen heroes, and Lincoln explained why at Gettysburg. “We can not dedicate — we can not consecrate — we can not hallow this ground,” he said. “The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract.” The best we could do, Lincoln declared, was to commit ourselves to “a new birth of freedom.” This is still our calling.”

It’s nice that Dionne concluded his piece with a quote from that venerated Republican Lincoln, whom we all hold dear to our hearts, but the conclusion of his piece ends up right where it began, with Dionne lazily waving his arms, chanting, “Forget, forget, forget.”

So let me sum up my fisking with this:

9/11: Never Forget.

On Walter Pincus and "Selective Recall"

[by Mr.Hengist]

VPOTUS Dick Cheney has a new book out, and Liberal poindexters are using their column space to take their shots. It would be instructive for Liberals to go back over the blogposts and newspaper columns from the W years, as the sheer volume of unsubstantiated allegations and demonizing insinuations is staggering (ah, for the good old days of civil discourse, patriotic dissent, and speaking truth to power...).

As a general rule, in my observations, Liberals go through several stages to arrive at their buy-in to a conspiracy theory or belief that a Republican has committed a high crime. First, the speculation that the crime may have been committed. Having accepted that, it naturally follows that the crime probably was committed, and from there it also follows that it was committed – nay, it must have been committed, and so the buy-in is complete – and, remarkably, this process seems to take virtually no time at all, and requires no additional evidence beyond sheer speculation. From Enron to war-for-oil to the Plame leak, Liberals seem always to be ready and eager to believe the worst of their political opposition based on nothing more than speculation. Dissuading a Liberal of these delusions is a difficult, sometimes impossible chore; Liberal bloggers, columnists, pundits, and occasionally politicians, are often eager to embrace these slanders but loathe to set the record straight when their targets are exonerated. A debunked meme that damages their opposition is merely an inconvenience, like an opportunity lost, which may yet be salvageable given a grace period - one long enough for memories to fade, whereupon the smear is resuscitated.

If nothing else, Cheney's book should prompt the fools to apologize to Bush Administration officials and their fellow citizens for the BS they've propagated. It's too much to hope for, of course, but it's also interesting to scrutinize pieces like these to note which memes they've abandoned, versus those to which they still desperately cling - or hope to revive.

Walter Pincus takes a stab at Cheney ("Cheney’s recall is selective with ‘In My Time’", WaPo, Sep 05, 2011), and I have some observations to make.

"Take the former vice president’s version of the controversial trip that former U.S. ambassador Joseph Wilson took to Niger at the request of the CIA in February 2002 to check on allegations that Iraq was trying to buy uranium from that country. It eventually grew into a major event involving disclosure of Wilson’s wife, Valerie Plame Wilson, as a covert CIA operative and the questioning of 16 words in President George W. Bush’s January 2003 State of the Union speech."
“I wrote about it all at the time. I also was caught up in the leak investigation into the disclosure of Plame’s identity and the perjury trial of Cheney’s then-chief of staff, I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, where I testified that he was not the one who told me of her CIA employment.”

Let me start out by giving some credit to Pincus: he does mention that he testified that Libby wasn’t the one who outed Valerie Plame as a CIA agent. What he doesn’t mention here, or throughout the piece, is that Plame’s CIA employment was disclosed to Novak by Richard Armitage, the right-hand man of Colin Powell, something that Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald learned at the very beginning of his investigation in December of 2003. Let me also note here that Fitzgerald nonetheless continued his investigation of the identity of the leaker, which he already knew, presumably as a fishing expedition to snag someone within the Bush Administration, presumably on some other charge. That's what Libby was prosecuted on - a charge of perjury, perjury committed during six hours of questioning, when he contradicted his prior testimony, during a deposition that should never have taken place. He wasn't the only one who perjured himself; several journalists did the same thing, but they weren't prosecuted - Libby was, because as an Administration staff member his scalp was the only one worth taking, after so many years of otherwise fruitless investigation. Also of note, and as an aside, Armitage only admitted to his disclosure after he was safe from prosecution and Novak had already made it public.

“In his book, Cheney wrote he began reading newspaper stories in late spring 2003 about an unnamed former U.S. ambassador who went to Africa in 2002 for the CIA to check on whether Iraq was buying, or trying to buy, uranium for its nuclear weapons program. The ambassador had returned, said the story was not true and thus appeared to contradict Bush’s speech when he said, “The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.”

Wilson’s lie appeared to contradict POTUS Bush’s 2003 SOTU 16 words? Prima facie it didn’t, did it? Joe Wilson could have reported back that he's found evidence directly refuting what British intelligence told us, but that wouldn't change the fact that British intelligence told us that Iraq was seeking uranium from Africa. That's because Wilson had only gone to Niger, and Niger isn't the only country in the continent of Africa that exports uranium (Hello, South Africa! Also, the Central African "Republic", the "Democratic Republic" of Congo, Gabon, and Zambia!), so nothing Wilson found in Niger would necessarily have bearing on the British intelligence report or the 16 words in POTUS Bush’s 2003 SOTU.

This is something that, even at the time, Liberals didn't quite seem to grasp. It's always been remarkable to me that this has been overlooked by Liberals since the beginning, and it's a matter of reading comprehension and simple logic. Joe Wilson did not refute the SOTU 16 words because he could not. I mean, really, how hard is this?

“One of the stories Cheney read — but did not note in the book — was a May 6, 2003, New York Times op-ed column by Nicholas Kristof, which said, “The vice president’s office asked for an investigation of the uranium deal, so a former U.S. ambassador to Africa was dispatched to Niger.” Kristof had learned in a background conversation with Wilson days earlier that the CIA had sent Wilson to Niger to follow up on questions posed by Cheney at a morning briefing. Wilson, who interviewed present and former Niger officials, said he reported back that the uranium story was not true.”

Well, yes, Joe Wilson did say that. His public account of his mission to Niger was varied - no, wait, strike that - Joe Wilson simply lied. A different account Wilson relates in his book: he met with ministers of Niger and asked about whether Iraq had sought to buy uranium from them. He was told that indeed, an Iraqi envoy had come to inquire about increasing trade with Niger, and that was told that international scrutiny was too great after 9/11 and that any such trade deals would have to wait until things had cooled down. What Wilson failed to note was that Niger has only negligible exports aside from uranium (none of which (coal, animal hides, cowpeas, etc.) were forbidden from importing under U.N. sanctions against Iraq), and, oh, by the way, this Iraqi guy turns out to have been the Iraqi public envoy for nuclear matters.

Fact is, Joe Wilson lied about almost every important thing he said in relation to his mission to Niger, and about subsequent related events. He was not, as he strongly and repeatedly insinuated, sent there by VPOTUS Cheney. He did not report back that Iraq had not sought uranium from Niger. He did not review the forged Nigerian document for the CIA and inform them that it was a fake. It was not Dick Cheney who revealed his wife to be a CIA employee.

“On the broader point of the 16 words in Bush’s State of the Union speech, Cheney’s book discusses discusses [sic] the internal White House debate after Wilson’s July 6, 2003, public statements over whether an apology should be made for including the British report that Hussein had been seeking uranium from Africa. Over Cheney’s objection, the apology was eventually made by national security adviser Condoleezza Rice.
“Cheney writes that a later British inquiry into their statement declared their claim was “well founded.” The British inquiry concluded that it had different sources reporting that “Iraqi officials visited Niger in 1999” where there were indications “this visit was for the purpose of acquiring uranium.”
"Left out of Cheney’s book is a CIA document — relevant to the 16 words — that was sent to his office in June 2003 but made public at Libby’s trial. It summarized previous reports, including one dated March 2002, that disclosed the information on the 1999 delegation came from a former Niger official who said only that he “believed Iraq was interested in discussing yellowcake [uranium].” But a later CIA report, dated Sept. 24, 2002, referred directly to the British information that was subsequently used in Bush’s speech. At that point, the CIA questioned the credibility of the British sources and said it had recommended the British withhold their report."

Yeah, the CIA says a lot of things. They often contradict themselves. They are large; they contain multitudes. In this case it seems churlish to selectively cite this doubt cast on their initial endorsement of the British report, as the subsequent British investigation into the matter has vindicated it. Pincus presents this to cast doubt on the wisdom of including the 16 words in the SOTU, but in hindsight, the British conclusion of the veracity of their own intelligence findings vindicates VPOTUS Cheney’s judgment in the matter.

"In 2004, Charles Duelfer, in his final report of the Iraq Survey Group which studied Hussein’s nuclear program after the U.S. invasion, said, “ISG has uncovered no information to support allegations of Iraqi pursuit of uranium from abroad in the post-Operation Desert Storm era,” meaning after 1991.
Perhaps Cheney has not read Duelfer’s report."

And again, whether the ISG found proof or not is irrelevant in light of the confirming evidence we've had since before the war began. In his piece Pincus is strongly implying that Iraq never sought uranium from Africa as was stated in the 2003 SOTU. Perhaps Pincus never read Wilson's book – or the Senate Intelligence Committee Report on Pre-War Intelligence.

The importance of whether Iraq was trying to buy uranium cannot be understated. Iraq, as led by the Hussein dictatorship, was a nation with an extensive history of manufacturing and using WMDs, and an equally extensive history of anti-American and anti-Western hatred. As a nation without any means of using uranium for peaceful uses, there could be only one reason for acquiring uranium: weapons manufacture. In a post-9/11 world where a fanatical terrorist group could get their hands on such a weapon, this provided a critical piece in the justification for war on Iraq.

This is what Joe Wilson undermined with his lies, and with it he undermined the President during a time of war. In his piece, Pincus reissues a credibility Joe Wilson never deserved - and he has the nerve to accuse VPOTUS Cheney of selective recall.

"Recovery From Unusual Attitudes"

This started out as a reply to Mr Hengist's most righteous fisking of WaPo's Eugene Robinson, but it really started to look like a post unto itself. So here we are.

Robinson's blatherings are, alas all-too characteristic of the desperate delirium tremens which beset the Left as the rivets are systematically popped from the wings of their world-view ('Hey, nothing happened when we lost the first few! Guess we can ditch a few more...Wait, what's that wobble?...'): 

The European Super-Nanny is making like the Black Knight from "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" ("'Tis but a flesh wound!!"). All the Keynesian stimulus spending here at home is having pretty much the effect you'd expect from applying a defibrillator to a patient slipping into a diabetic coma. The Tea Parties are maddeningly/bafflingly failing to go away, lose elections, or start lobbying en masse for racial purity or putting Jesus on Mt Rushmore.

I almost feel sorry for them...between attacks of chortles and guffaws.

The dynamic has been the same for so long, that any change can only be seen by Leftists as pathology: The hard Left has dragged the Democratic party further and further to port, while a squishy-center-Right GOP has had rather a flaccid foot on the starboard rudder pedal. What force there has been in that countervailing direction has been so confoundedly conflated with Social Con issues that it's been unable to gather as much traction with a population which was not sufficiently attentive to the fiscal/federalist issues to see past the clouds of brimstone. And so the ship of state has swept in a leftward spiral so comprehensive as to be undetectable to the vast majority of folks who don't pay really close attention to such things. It's a situation eerily akin to that which resulted in the death of JFK, Jr, as his small plane swept in a long descending curve --utterly unnoticed by the seat of his pants and his untrained middle ear-- toward the choppy seas off Martha's Vineyard (link is to a really interesting article, with more levels of meaning and relevance than I'd expected to find for purposes of illuminating this small point. Worth your time).

That has now changed. With the Tea Parties, the small-government, fiscal-restraint message has risen to the top, at just the time when the public was paying attention (and yes, reciprocal causation is surely in effect here). It has outshone (though by no means obliterated) the SoCon channel, and assumed a position of a firm, energized counterforce to the sinister slippage that's dragged us so far off-true.We begin to see evidence of the emergence of that dialectic I've been prattling on about for so long. And it's about time!

Are there excesses of ideological purity on the Right? Of course. "Go ahead and default! Make my day!" is not a tenable position (if for no other reason that it puts the decision of what obligations will be met squarely in the hands of a POTUS who can hardly be trusted not to make those spending decisions such that they'll deliver the maximum hurt to people who will be inclined to blame the GOP). But how different is this from the cacophony of Progressive fantacism from the other side ("Hey, what we really need is a bigger stimulus...and a Single-Payer healthcare system...and Big Cuts to the military...and to sign onto the Kyoto Protocol..."). The trouble, it seems, has been that the zealots on the Left have had a seat at the table, while those on the Right were mainly yelling from the foyer. 2010 changed that, with the predictable result that things have gotten...well...unpredictable.

It's this latter point which seems to have been at the heart of S&P's decision to downgrade the US' creditworthiness from "Superdoubleplus Excellent" to "Merely Superb." Of course there's going to be unpredictability as the American political trajectory realigns itself. You can't alter the course of such an immense vessel and not expect a fair bit cavitation and wake turbulence. What S&P did was to issue a traffic advisory for the vicinity of that vessel, and one can hardly blame them for it....that is, unless one's entire narrative is predicated on the notion that there has been no bias, and so no need for a course correction (except maybe [further] to the Left). For such folks, these Tea Party Freshmen are the Horsemen of the Apocalypse, gremlins with crowbars, grinning on the wings, or whatever other metaphor makes you twitchy enough. Just a bunch of troublemaking hooligans, holding the stately State hostage for...somethingorother.

Yes, things are like to get a mite messy for a while, and investors (and voters!) should take note, and take precautions. But messy is what freedom is supposed to be. This is especially true during periods of transition, which we are surely in. It is the apparent direction of that transition which has Leftists (at least those who are paying attention) so nervous. And so they are bound to make the agents of that change into villains, and to try and tar the messengers who see the writing on the wall as mere graffiti artists. All in the hopes of planting the memes deeply enough to escape notice, that Left is Straight, Center is Right, and Right is Down.

But, to the great (and deliciously Schadenfreudig) consternation of Eugene Robinson and his like, more and more folks appear to be learning to fly by their instruments.

Oh, and Put It On the Children's Tab

[by Mr.Hengist]

Republicans are a bunch of terrorist hostage-taking criminals for trying to impose their ideological insanity upon the nation, according to the excitable and apoplectic Left. In actuality they failed to bring fiscal sanity to our budget process - caved - and the can has once again been kicked down the road. Europe is circling the fiscal drain, America is trying to catch up with them, and Eugene Robinson is mad at the GOP. Oh, and the sun rises in the East, and - there! - I'm done with trite clichés for the time being.

Let’s have a look at the talking points Robinson has regurgitated for us this time:

“The so-called analysts at Standard & Poor’s may not be the most reliable bunch, but there was one very good reason for them to downgrade U.S. debt: Republicans in Congress made a credible threat to force a default on our obligations.”

Well, no, they didn’t; that power rests solely with the POTUS. In the event that the Federal Government does not have enough money to pay all its bills, the POTUS has the legal authority and obligation to allocate what monies are available on a discretionary basis. In that context, Robinson’s statement could be taken to mean that he believes the POTUS would not have prioritized our debt obligations, but that would be giving him too much credit.

“This isn’t the rationale that S&P gave, but it’s the only one that makes sense.”

Like most Liberals, when their opposition states something which doesn’t gibe with their worldview, they discard what they’ve been told and substitute their own fantasies. I believe him when he says that S&P’s rationale doesn’t make sense to him, but the problem lies with Robinson, not S&P.

"Like a lucky college student who partied the night before an exam, the ratings agency used flawed logic and faulty arithmetic to somehow come up with the right answer."

In short, Robinson likes the result, but the reasoning is in conflict with his worldview, so he's openly discarding it but keeping the conclusion. The right answer, for Robinson, is that America should be downgraded because of the intransigence of the GOP, so long as that downgrade can be pinned on them. To the extent that S&P was critical of anything that might make the Left look bad - well, that's just crazy talk!

Take a moment to review the actual document issued by S&P. S&P’s rationale for the downgrade is that the deal won’t stabilize our fiscal situation, and with an additional $2.4T increase in debt, that’s correct. They also say that the differences between the parties are “contentious and fitful” and that the debt ceiling has become a political bargaining chip, and that’s also correct. As far as bridging the chasm between revenues and spending, S&P notes simply that the two sides can’t agree on spending cuts and/or tax increases. S&P does not take sides in that debate.

“And no, I can’t join the `we’re all at fault' chorus. Absent the threat of willful default, a downgrade would be unjustified and absurd. And history will note that it was House Republicans who issued that threat.”

Not exactly true, since the decision to default would lie with the POTUS. At any rate, history will also note that the POTUS threatened to veto any bill which did not extend the debt limit sufficiently to get us past the next election. To get him past the next election - and the Left has no problem with that.

“There is no plausible scenario under which the United States would be unable to service its debt.”

That's true - in medium term. Not servicing the debt would be a choice, not a necessity, and that choice lies with the POTUS.

“If political gridlock were to persist, our government would be able to pay bondholders with a combination of tax revenue and funds raised by selling more Treasury bills.”

Tax revenue alone would cover our debt obligations and avert default, albeit without enough left over to meet other obligations. Treasury bills could not be sold, however, unless they came from the Social Security “Trust Fund” in which case every T-note sold would lower our debt by equal measure, allowing for us to borrow that much more.

“And in the final analysis, as Alan Greenspan noted Sunday on `Meet the Press,’ the United States `can pay any debt it has because we can always print money to do that.’ I know this kind of talk is horrifying to Ron Paul and others who believe we should be walking around with our pockets full of doubloons, but most of us find paper money more convenient.”

... aaaaand, just like that, there it is. No apology, no regret, no pleading for the possibility of considering the necessity of doing the unthinkable. That last-ditch seawater-on-the-reactor cut-off-your-leg-to-save-your-life nuclear bomb of fiat currency mismanagement is casually put on the table with snide contempt.

Sure, the Treasury could simply create as much money as we owe and pay it off that way, and if it really were no big deal, why isn't Robinson wondering why we haven't done it already? $14T in the hole? Clickety-Clack, the Treasury can create that amount. Heck, why stop there? Why not turn that minus sign into a plus sign! Why not fill our coffers with $140T and fix this deficit problem for the foreseeable future?

The answer is this: “printing” our way out of this would rightfully be considered a default, both by the rating agencies and the rest of the world. It would literally destroy our economy, and, by the way, we’d never be able to borrow again. The result looks like Zimbabwe, and here, Robinson floats the idea as a viable alternative.

Eugene Robinson: charitably speaking, you are an idiot.

“What happened this summer is that Republicans in the House, using the Tea Party freshmen as a battering ram, threatened to compel a default.”

Wrong, wrong, wrong. Aside from the repetition of the false assertion that the Congress could force a default, Robinson has the dynamics of this completely inverted. The Republicans did not “use” the Tea Party freshmen; the Tea Party freshmen held firm and forced the Republicans to get a better debt deal. He writes in the WaPo, but does he even read it?

“More accurately, they demanded big budget cuts as the price of raising the debt ceiling. If the Senate and President Obama did not comply, the Treasury’s access to capital through borrowing would have been cut off.”

Well, one could have simply said so, but what’s a Liberal opinion piece without throwing up partisan hyperbole?

“The government’s cash flow would have been slashed by 40 percent, leaving not nearly enough to fund essential operations, pay entitlements and also service the debt. Somebody was going to get stiffed. Paying interest to bondholders could have been given priority over competing obligations such as salaries for our people in military service and Social Security checks for retirees. But for how long?”

OK, so did the House Republicans threaten to default or was default always an option of the POTUS? As Robinson admits here, it was always an option. Social Security, on the other hand, was never threatened; as I described above, the “trust fund” – which has in excess of $2T – is guaranteed convertible into U.S. dollars and allows for an equal amount to be borrowed through the sale of regular Treasury bills. Sure, it exchanges one IOU for another, but the SS recipients would get paid. In fact, we could do that and not touch tax revenues at all, for a while.

That, by the way, is the answer to, “But for how long?” For a while, until we can get more tax revenue and/or cut our spending. A better question would be, "How, by Crom, did we get to the point that 40% of our spending has to come from borrowing?" There's a reason this keeps getting called "unsustainable." It might be a debate worth having whether we should increase taxes or not, but when our elected officials keep finding new entitlements to grant (as noted below), it's easily demonstrable that no amount of taxation will ever sustain the nanny state they envision.

“S&P, however, gave a host of largely bogus reasons for its action. Why am I not surprised? This is a firm that aided and abetted the subprime crisis — and the devastating financial meltdown that ensued — by giving no-risk ratings to dodgy securities based on mortgages that should never have been written. The firm’s credibility is spent, as is that of the other ratings agencies, Moody’s and Fitch.”

The reasons S&P gave for the downgrade were far from bogus, but Robinson is correct in that the ratings agencies were complicit in the financial meltdown. However, the assertion that S&P’s “credibility is spent” is contradicted by the ensuing drop in the market. Obviously not, then, eh?

“Initially, S&P pinned the downgrade on the sheer size and weight of the mounting federal debt. Treasury officials noticed that S&P had made an error in its calculations, overstating the debt burden by a whopping $2 trillion. This discovery negated the ratings firm’s rationale — so it simply invented another.”

Reading this, you might be led to believe that those numbers alone formed the basis of S&P's rationale for a downgrade. Not so; Robinson is outright lying here. I've already linked to the original S&P report and it's worth reading. What's really more compelling here is that this “mistake” appears to be anything but a mistake. Here’s what appears to have happened: S&P used actual budgeting numbers vs. the Administration’s having used CBO numbers – and the CBO uses assumptions dictated by the WH, and those assumptions are completely implausible (The WH numbers assume that baseline expenditures grow with a nominal GDP increases of 5%/yr while inflation sits at 2.5%.) This is what Liberals are calling a “math error.” S&P revised that part of the budget analysis as the Feds implicitly threatened to strongarm S&P by holding hearings.

“Instead of basing its argument on economics, S&P made an ill-advised foray into political analysis. In its `revised base case scenario,’ the firm assumed that all the Bush tax cuts will remain in place past their scheduled expiration at the end of next year — even for households making more than $250,000 a year. But Obama vows not to let this happen, and S&P apparently fails to understand that after the election he will be in the strongest possible position to stand firm.”

It's amusing to read Robinson chastise S&P for making "an ill-advised foray into political analysis" when his own political analysis is so deeply flawed, and then to see that he in turn has no qualms in blundering about on his own ill-advised forays into economic analysis. You’ll recall that, the last time around, Democrats wanted to keep $298B of the $366B in “Bush” tax cuts. The Dems also promised to eliminate the Doc Fix as a part of the “savings” of Obamacare, but then reneged on that in a matter of months. Really, when you consider all the things POTUS Obama said he’d do, or not do, and then ended up doing the opposite – well, one can hardly blame S&P for a lack of faith. Heck, even in the midst of this Mexican hatdance around the fundamental problem of unsustainable entitlements the Obama Administration created a brand new entitlement.

“Obama should have made clear from the start that if necessary he would take unilateral action, based on the 14th Amendment, to ensure there could never be a default.”

Actually invoking the 14th Amendment for this purpose would have precipitated a constitutional crisis and, if his own party didn’t have control of the Senate, would surely and rightly have led to his impeachment. What’s more, the validity of any T-bills issued under such circumstances would have been of dubious authenticity and would therefore have commanded a high premium for the risk of their turning out to be worthless. Another excellent plan, Robinson.

Progressive Standards of Civility - both of them

[by Mr.Hengist]

Last night I was mulling over something VPOTUS Biden said regarding the current budget dispute: "The Republicans this time are totally, and I don't mean this in a pejorative sense, are out of the closet." It's an interesting use of that phrase. Biden did of course mean this in the pejorative; they are "out of the closet" in terms of their public plans for the Federal budget, and pejorative in the sense that Biden thinks they intend to do wrong and wishes to debate against their nefarious plans. Nevertheless, what struck me was that he would use that turn of phrase at all - and that Liberals have let it slide. Progressives see themselves as gay rights advocates and the defenders of gay dignity, so how is it that one of their own can use this turn of phrase in this way - referring to Republicans revealing their true and (supposedly) harmful intent? If he had said, "the monster's out from under the bed" it would have been a different matter, but "out of the closet" is strictly associated with homosexuals revealing their orientation, and it's considered a good thing. Using it to describe what Liberals consider to be evil Republican goals is oddly inappropriate.

What, I wondered, would be the Progressive response if Republicans had used this "out of the closet" phrase in a similar way but aimed at Democrats? If, say, VPOTUS Cheney had remarked that we now see the Democrats "totally out of the closet" in regards to their intent to dramatically cut DOD funding? I imagined the response would be swift and strongly condemning. As luck would have it, today we are treated to a real-life example - and even better, it's not just used by Republicans but it's also aimed at Republicans.

A college Republican group called upon conservatives in the student body to "come out of the closet." University of Iowa professor Ellen Lewin's response, in an email back to the students: "F--- you, Republicans."

Vulgar and uncivil, certainly, and weren't Liberals decrying the "incivility" of the Right only a few of months ago after the Giffords shooting (by a non-right-wing madman, no less)? In a NYTimes blogpost just last week the Nobel laureate NYTimes columnist Dr. Paul Krugman's mask drops, falls to the floor, and explodes (to lift a phrase from Steven Hayward at Power Line) when he informed us that "Civility is the Last Refuge of Scoundrels." This would be the same Paul Krugman who joined the Right-bashing party by blaming the Right for the Giffords shooting (see here, and here). Note well the double-standards to which Liberals hold themselves vs. their political opposition; they demand civility from the Right as they continue to fling poo at them.

Call it another example of The Pretext of Principles. If it weren't for situational principles, what principles would they have left? This one: What we do is good, what they do is bad - always, even when it's the same thing.

Pawlenty Good Enough For Me

CNN reports that Governor Tim Pawlenty will be announcing the formation of a Presidential Exploratory Committee today. Not surprised, but pleased to see it happening. Unfortunately, Romney's stock has taken what appears to be a terminal hit from "Romneycare." I say "unfortunately" because, on balance, my understanding is that, in its original form (that is, before it accrued the myriad barnacles which the deep-blue MA legislature affixed to it before passage), it was not altogether objectionable. And besides, the State level is where experiments like that should be run in a Federalist system: NOT a top-down, heavy-handed Transformation air-dropped on the entire Nation from the banks of the Potomac. But I'm not sanguine about the Mittens' ability to close that sale. I wouldn't write him off entirely...but the cap's off the pen.

But I digress.

There is much chatter about T-Paw's "boring" personality, which really itches me. On the issues, he's pretty much five-by-five. And we already know the true market value of political rock stars...

I think T-Paw’s Midwest civility will be a net positive, despite all the “boring” blather. Despite being a train-wreck of a POTUS, Obama is still widely liked, personally (I know. Go figure.). Someone who savages him in debates may find it a Pyrrhic victory. By contrast, Pawlenty’s smart and right-headed enough to be relentlessly correct on the issues, systematically deconstructing the Won’s fables without getting all wild-eyed about it.

T-Paw’s squeaky-clean, non-demagogic, slow-’n-steady demeanor may be just what we need to snare the napping hare. His presence as an even-tempered, humble, affable, but principled administrator strikes just the right tone for what the Tea Parties are *really* about, which is a government that knows its place and does not presume to overstep its bounds.

And wouldn’t it be TEH AWESOME if he could find a VPOTUS named Good(e)?

Milestone

Apropos of nothing, I felt I would be remiss in failing to point out that today marks the point at which it will be exactly two years till the inauguration day of the next POTUS (as per the "Gone" counter in the sidebar, which shows 730 days, and counting...). As Dante began his journey through and out of the Underworld at the midpoint of his life ("Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita..."), so do we as a Nation find ourselves at the solstice of this Boschian Winter of an administration.

Here's hoping our own version of Vergil shows up ere long!

Glenn Greenwald Bites Into a Bitter Reality Sandwich

[by Mr.Hengist]

Glenn Greenwald put out a piece on January 18th, 2011 which must have been as difficult for him to write as it was amusing for me to read. With a title that, well, coming from Greenwald, makes one suspect we're in for a massive treat of sarcastic jibes, "The vindication of Dick Cheney" is instead a diatribe lambasting the Obama Administration for continuing and even strengthening Bush Administration GWOT policies.

I have... comments.

"In the early months of Obama's presidency, the American Right did to him what they do to every Democratic politician: they accused him of being soft on defense (specifically "soft on Terror") and leaving the nation weak and vulnerable to attack."

Well, yes, but historically, post-Kennedy Democrat Presidents have an abysmal track record on Defense. Democrats in general have a shameful history of cutting our Defense budget, undercutting our allies, making nice with our enemies, and belatedly authorizing only weak and ineffectual military actions when they do resort to force.

Besides which, Obama promised so many things that would hurt National Defense like cutting the Defense budget, pulling out of Iraq as fast as possible, killing the missile defense program, and so on, that it would be reasonable to conclude that, should he follow through, he would, well, hurt National Defense.

Only his promise to expand the war in Afghanistan seemed contrary to that, but we got fooled, didn't we? If Bob Woodward's "Obama's Wars" is to be believed, POTUS Obama had no intention of fulfilling that promise, but the Pentagon would not accommodate his wishes. The surge he authorized was about a third of what the Pentagon wanted, and the results speak for themselves.

"But that tactic quickly became untenable as everyone (other than his hardest-core followers) was forced to acknowledge that Obama was embracing and even expanding -- rather than reversing -- the core Bush/Cheney approach to Terrorism."

With the high degree of hyperbole so common to the Left, Greenwald ignores the many criticisms the Right has made of Obama's GWOT policies. From the dismal slog in Afghanistan to the attempts to close Gitmo and try the detainees in U.S. courts, the record has been less than stellar. His overblown point is, nevertheless, well-taken: the Obama Administration has continued and/or strengthened many Bush-era GWOT policies.

"As a result, leading right-wing figures began lavishing Obama with praise -- and claiming vindication -- based on Obama's switch from harsh critic of those policies (as a candidate) to their leading advocate (once in power)."

Again, note the over-the-top hyperbole, "lavishing Obama with praise." I'd like to pause here for a moment to note that, if you think about it, across-the-aisle praise basically comes from one direction. When have you read of Democrats or Liberals giving straightforward praise to their political opposition for doing something good? I'm reminded of an article I read a few years ago - didn't save the link, sorry - in which the author was talking about AIDS in Africa, and he actually did praise W for dramatically increasing U.S. expenditures in fighting it over there. It was tepid praise, but fairly straightforward, and so unusual that I found it a little surprising - you know, that it was there at all. Then, immediately after that praising of W, the author went on to list a half-dozen things that W had done which the Left just hated - you know: the Enron, the Iraq war, the tax cuts, the this, the that - completely non sequitur in an article on AIDS in Africa. It was there so that the author could both remind the readers of how much they should hate W, and to insulate the author from criticism for committing the Liberal faux pas of praising the Right. Remember the response when Bono praised W for this? So do I.

VPOTUS Cheney and other leading figures of the Right are now praising POTUS Obama. They will not be denounced, hounded, or even roundly criticized for it, either. The Right doesn't have a problem when one their own praises the Left, when they finally get it right. It's worth noting.

Well, anyway, Greenwald further states that POTUS Obama has been the "leading advocate" of Bush/Cheney GWOT policies. This is just absurd; most of the announcements of his continuation of Bush/Cheney GWOT policies have been made quietly and with little comment from the White House.

Greenwald fills much of the middle of the piece with a litany of woes, rife with the canon of Liberal attacks on those policies (illegal-this, power-grab-that), after which he gets to the red meat of the article.

"First, it creates the impression that Republicans were right all along in the Bush-era War on Terror debates and Democratic critics were wrong. The same theme is constantly sounded by conservatives who point out Obama's continuation of these policies: that he criticized those policies as a candidate out of ignorance and partisan advantage, but once he became President, he realized they were right as a result of accessing the relevant classified information and needing to keep the country safe from the Terrorist threat."

Why, yes, it certainly does leave that impression, doesn't it? I didn't need to quote all that, but it paring it down would diminish the gladdening of my heart. I'd also add that it adds merit to the warning of Right that Obama is a lightweight. So, was he pandering to Liberal fantasies or is he a lightweight who learned real-world realities only after having been sworn in? Probably both.

"Second, Obama has single-handedly eliminated virtually all mainstream debate over these War on Terror policies."

Well, no, POTUS Obama has done no such thing, and I find it amusing that Greenwald would choose to credit him with this ability. No, Liberals shut down the debate, quenched the rage, and dialed down their hysteria to a quiet, occasional grumble. They did that because they've been fundamentally dishonest in these debates. Their double-standards are on full display as they grudgingly accept their Democrat POTUS doing what made them made them scream, shout, and stamp their little feet when the Republican POTUS did the same thing. They marched by the tens, hundreds of thousands back then. Now, not so much. Was it naked partisanship that made the difference, or are they just so easily manipulated that, absent their opinion-leaders telling them what to think, they don't much care about these things anymore? The cognitive dissonance must be unbearable.

"Third, Obama's embrace of these policies has completely rehabilitated the reputations and standing of the Bush officials responsible for them.
[...] But Obama's impact in this area extends far beyond that. Dick Cheney is not only free of ignominy, but can run around claiming vindication from Obama's actions because he's right. The American Right constantly said during the Bush years that any President who knew what Bush knew and was faced with the duty of keeping the country safe would do the same thing. Obama has provided the best possible evidence imaginable to prove those claims true."

That's really shiny! So, Glenn, you're going to reconsider your positions from the last ten years, then? You've been given "the best possible evidence imaginable to prove those claims true" - that pretty much demands from you, if you consider yourself to be a fair and objective person of reason, that you revisit both your facts and arguments and those of your political opposition. I'd suggest you start with the opposition since I'm doubtful you've given much time to them firsthand. The archives of National Review, Power Line, and Instapundit will be most illuminating, I'm sure.

On the other hand, maybe it's still hard for me to tell where Greenwald's genuine beliefs end and his proclivity to rant hyperbole begin. Hyperbole is a safe bet, so I'll go with that.

"If Obama has indeed changed his mind over the last two years as a result of all the Secret Scary Things he's seen as President, then I genuinely believe that he and the Democratic Party owe a heartfelt, public apology to Bush, Cheney and the GOP for all the harsh insults they spewed about them for years based on policies that they are now themselves aggressively continuing."

If we ever get this - and I'm assuming only a witnessed and notarized statement signed by Obama in his own blood will suffice - then we'll get to see whether Greenwald can own up to his own divisive dishonesty during the W years. At any rate, it's good to see someone from the Left even float the idea that an apology might - just might - be in order.

In truth, my sincere hope has been that Liberals will revisit those policies and the debates of the last decade with fresh eyes and an open mind. There are policy issues of relevance to our present and future which should not be sacrificed on the altar of partisan political gain. I'm afraid this will fall to the next generation as they look back at history, decades late.

Failing that, I'd settle for a collective change in the collectivist mind. Perhaps Liberals will, having been given motive and permission to change their beliefs, will do so for partisan gain or to toe the new party line. In any case, I am glad they haven't taken to the streets in protest - again - or made much of an issue at all about this. It would be ideologically and logically consistent of them to do so but, more importantly, it would be harmful to the country. Again.

Civil Discourse in "The New Republic"

[by Mr.Hengist]

... aaaaand no sooner do I publish my previous blogpost (Their Uncivil Terms of Civil Discourse) than "The New Republic" comes out with this cover for their latest issue. Well, at least they didn't put in little soldiers firing artillery at the giant Republican elephants destroying D.C. So how's this for an example of the civil discourse of the Left, TNR-style:

Their Uncivil Terms of Civil Discourse

[by Mr.Hengist]

On January 8th, 2011 in Tucson, Arizona, nineteen people were shot, six fatally, others grievously, including Rep. Gabrielle Giffords. It was an awful, unprovoked tragedy perpetrated by a lunatic. What happened afterward was an ugly smear campaign perpetrated by the Left against the Right.

It's always wise to be cautious about drawing conclusions in the midst of a national crisis. Facts are few and sketchy, frequently subject to subsequent revision as the fog of uncertainty lifts in the days that follow. Early reports are reliably wrong.

We saw no such caution from the Left. Before anything was known about the shooter we saw the Left shoot from the hip, targeting the Right - the Tea Party, Rush Limbaugh, Sarah Palin, Sharon Angle, etc. In the days that followed, as facts began to emerge, we were told that it was the violent rhetoric and imagery of the Right which was to blame for inciting this act of violence.

Even as exculpatory facts entered the public sphere - friends saying the shooter was left-leaning, classmates and teachers concerned at his odd and disturbing behavior, etc. - the accusers did not recant, nor was the smear campaign tempered. We saw much the same thing play out last year when a guy flew his plane into an IRS building.

It's a deliberate and dishonest ploy by the Left delegitimize and silence the Right, just as when they've accused the Right of being a bunch of Nazis and racists, they've now added the charge of accessory to murder. We exclude violent extremists and haters from the discourse of politics, and the Left has been relentlessly trying to push the Right outside of that sphere.

After Sarah Palin put up a video addressing this on her Facebook page she was criticized for it, naturally. For making herself the center of attention. For using the term "blood libel." Really, for not admitting culpability.

On January 17th, 2011, the WaPo ran Eugene Robinson's column, "Palin's egocentric umbrage", which addresses these criticisms, and it deserves a fisking. I'm happy to do the honors. Let's begin!

"In the spirit of civil discourse, I'd like to humbly suggest that Sarah Palin please consider being quiet for a while. Perhaps a great while."

Just as I said: this is a ploy to silence the political opposition - "in the spirit of civil discourse", of course. Palin's video and statements have been nothing but civil; it's the content with which Robinson has a problem. She simply won't admit her guilt, and anything less is uncivil and warrants her preclusion from the public debate.

"At the risk of being bold, I might observe that her faux-presidential address [...]"

"Faux-presidential address"? Good grief. Sitting in front of a video camera with a neutral background, there she was, speaking quietly and earnestly. OK, you want to see what a "faux-presidential address" looks like? Have a look at then-candidate Barack Obama in his Invesco Field DNC acceptance speech, with the faux-columns and faux-presidential seal. That, Eugene, is faux-presidential, and I was really embarrassed for you guys back then. I suspect this swipe has more to do with Liberals speculating about a Palin presidential run next time around, although it's been hard to tell whether they're gleeful at the prospect the Republicans fielding her or worried about her chances of actually winning.

"[...] about the Tucson massacre seemed to fall somewhat flat, drawing comparisons to the least attractive public moments of such figures as Richard Nixon and Spiro Agnew."

So Liberals didn't like her video, and in other news, the sun rose in the East. Here's another general rule from the Liberal playbook: never praise your opposition. It's different on the Right; Obama's speech at the Tucson memorial received widespread praise, along with some minor criticisms, which surprised me not at all.

"I could go so far as to observe that Palin almost seemed to portray herself as a collateral victim. Surely a former governor of Alaska - who served the better part of an entire term - would never seek to give the impression that she views any conceivable event, no matter how distant or tragic, as being All About Sarah."

This so ludicrous as to be risible, and childish to boot. It was the Left which pounded on the Right for days, and specifically on her. Palin was made a target of insinuation through no action of her own, and now they're turning it around and pretending that she's inserting herself into the story, apropos of nothing? What's more, her speech was about America and our national debate, not herself. I can't help but wonder whether Robinson even watched the video or picked up his talking points from the HuffPo instead.

"Yet this is the unfortunate impression that Palin's videotaped peroration seems to have left. I am at a loss to recommend any course of corrective action other than an extended period of abstinence from Facebook, Twitter and other social networking sites."

In other words: Shut Up, Sarah. Shut up, shut up, shut up!

"Palin doubtless understands by now that characterizing her alleged persecution by journalists and commentators with the term "blood libel" was a semantic faux pas."

This seemed to be the other major criticism of her video from the Left: outraged indignation and/or derision at her use of the term "blood libel" to describe what the Left has been doing. I first became aware of the term during the Second Intifada, around 2000-2001, when it was used to describe a variety of contemporary violent libels against the Jews in present-day Israel. I remember thinking, "That's a marvelously descriptive term!" I've subsequently read it here and there, perhaps a dozen times, to describe violence-related libel of both Jews and others. Jim Geraghty of NRO has put up a brief list of some of these examples.

In the context of the Tucson massacre I first read it on Instapundit from Glen Reynolds. Indeed, Glen: blood libel is the perfect description of what the Left has been doing to the Right.

Of course, I don't know whether Sarah Palin was aware of the ancient historical roots of the term, or of its subsequent usage unrelated to that history, but I wouldn't be surprised if she was. Naturally, the Left would be very surprised if she was. Neither side has any evidence either way, but note how the Left has assumed that she was unaware. Naturally.

"One must question, however, not only the tone of her complaint but the content as well. Did she, indeed, have a legitimate grievance? I must be frank: The evidence suggests not."

Oh, yes, let's have it, Eugene.

"Days earlier, Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, a Democrat, had been shot while meeting with her constituents; six people were killed in the incident, including a federal judge, and more than a dozen others injured. It happens that Giffords' district, in southern Arizona, is passionately divided on just about every hot-button issue."

OK, so here's his first point: political passions run high in Arizona!

"It also turns out that before last November's election, Giffords gave a television interview expressing her concern about the bitterness and rancor of our political debate. In the interview, Giffords cited a graphic that Palin had posted on Facebook - a map identifying congressional districts being targeted for Republican gains. The districts, including that of Giffords, were highlighted with an unfortunate symbol: the cross hairs of a rifle scope."

Well, yes, but Rep. Giffords was hardly the first to voice that complaint. The Left has also been harrasing the Right for years on end about the tone of their political opposition. So here's his next point: Rep. Giffords was dismayed by the political rancor from the Right!

"One of Palin's aides must have been trying to lighten a dreary week with a bit of humor when she claimed that the cross hairs were actually those of a surveyor's scope."

Ah, no. I hotlinked his quote above as it was in his original column. Go ahead and clickthrough that link of his and you'll find that the Palin aide said they were surveyor's marks, as would appear on a map. The piece he links to even has a hotlink to a USGS website which has the very symbol in question.

"Perhaps the ruse would have been more effective if viewers of Palin's "reality" television show hadn't recently watched her use a high-powered rifle, not a theodolite, to fell a caribou."

... and your columns, Eugene, would greatly benefit if you actually read the things to which you link, assuming that your misrepresentation was due to sloppiness and not malice. Now, personally, when I first saw the those marks I thought they were target symbols. I still do, as the crosshairs of a scope are a more familiar symbol than the marks of a surveyor. Nevertheless, it's a far stretch that this is an incitement to murder, which is the implicit accusation that Robinson and the Left are making.

"Or, indeed, if Palin hadn't famously counseled fellow Republicans not to retreat but instead to "reload."

Well, let's take a look at that. The Republicans were not literally retreating. In order to reload, one has to have already discharged the loaded ammunition in a gun. Since neither applies in a literal sense, it is nonsensical to use this as an incitement to murder. The audience understood it as metaphor even as the Left pretended otherwise. Indeed, all of these military terms are understood as such in American politics, as evidence by the electorate. Right-wingers are neither taking up arms against the Left nor taking pot-shots at them, insofar as we can tell. There are the occasional gun-related incidents on the Left and the Right, but the assertion by the Left that this will incite the Right is provably wrong. What's more, military lingo and imagery have been used in conjunction with political campaigns since, well, forever. Further, one might reasonably expect the side which favors gun ownership to use gun-related imagery and words, which Republicans do; one would expect the opposite of the anti-gun Democrats, but their avoidance of these terms has been less than studious.

Of course, as the Left has long characterized the Right as a bunch of rootin' tootin' gun-totin' redneck yahoos, and have long since come to believe these catcalls and insults they've hurled, the incitement charge perhaps seems somewhat plausible to them. Well, no, not really. They know who to be genuinely afraid of: militant Islamic jihadists. If you piss off those guys they'll cut your head off, so Liberals don't dare provoke 'em. The Rightwing? Nah, not scary at all, which is why Liberals feel free to insult them.

"In her statement, Palin gave the impression of being appalled that journalists mentioned the cross-hairs graphic in the hours after the rampage in Tucson. She singled out reporters and pundits, not political activists who might bear partisan animus. Surely she must have anticipated that viewers who recall her course of collegiate study - journalism - would be baffled at this reaction."

Because reporters, as we all know, are strictly non-partisan and never, ever let their biases affect their reporting! Well, so they tell us. Reporters and editors of the dinosaur media by and large heavily lean Liberal/Left and often report in a dishonest, slanted way to either hurt their political opposition or help their side. Case in point: the Tucson shootings. Our national media, print and (so I'm told) video, have by-and-large jumped on the insinuation bandwagon, but only because that insinuation is directed at the Right. If they were unbiased then we should see them increasingly insinuate the culpability of the Left, as more evidence and indicators show that the Tucson shooter was left-leaning. Not happening, is it?

"In the days since, we have learned that the alleged gunman, Jared Lee Loughner, appears to be an unbalanced young man whose political views are confused and perhaps irrelevant. But at the time, nothing was known about the assailant or his motives."

Not so. MSNBC wasted no time in liking the shooting to the Tea Party and Sarah Palin on January 8th, the day of the shooting, even before we knew much of anything about the shooter (and, thus, before anyone could know anything about his politics or state of mind). The earliest reports on the shooter were that his political views were "confused."

Indeed, the state of mind of the shooter is of utmost importance. At the risk of committing libel myself, I think we can all agree that it appears the Loughner is certifiably crazy. Much like Sirhan Sirhan, who heard voices telling him to kill RFK, or Lee Harvey Oswald, who was a communist so bonkers that even the Soviet Union couldn't use him or keep him for propaganda when he defected to the USSR. To try to discern the politics of a lunatic is to try to superimpose a template of rational order on what is, by definition, disordered and irrational. We do not take seriously the political views of someone who believed that the government is using mind control on us through the use of grammar.

"I am confident that at least one of Palin's professors must have taught her that in reporting about a shooting, the fact that the principal target felt threatened is highly relevant information, as is the specific nature of that threat."

Actually, Eugene, you fool, it's completely irrelevant. Logic and law tell us that if the murderer is rational we need to establish a causal relationship between the alleged incitement and the act of murder, and if the perpetrator is irrational then it has little, if any, bearing. At this point the linkage appears nothing more than coincidental, at best, assuming that the alleged incitements could be interpreted as having an inciting effect, an assumption I have already challenged.

"It is also relevant that most of the violent political rhetoric that blights the public discourse is emanating from the far right - a constituency for which Palin speaks, often so colorfully."

Leaving aside the characterization of Sarah Palin as "far right" - objectively, like it or not, she is definitionally mainstream - this assertion is hogwashian balderdash. During the Bush years the worst sort of imagery and rhetoric came from the far Left, and was tolerated or applauded by Liberals. OK, one quick example: remember "Death of a President"? That British wish-fulfillment film about the assassination of then-sitting POTUS George W. Bush? How did the Liberal/Left react to that being shown nationwide in American movie theaters? With open arms. Such a thing was not, shall we say, out of bounds. Now, imagine the reaction if a similar film were to be released now about sitting POTUS Obama...

"In the 1960s and '70s, this was not the case; anti-government invective and unsettling talk of "revolution" came primarily from the far left."

In addition to openly advocating revolution and opposing the government in every form and in every way, they also carried out actual murders and bombings, but Robinson has whitewashed this from his accounting of Leftist sins past. Down the memory hole they go!

"Palin is perhaps too young to remember that era, but as a student of history she must have read about it - and must recognize the contrast between then and now."

I'm also too young to remember that, but even a cursory comparison between then and now shows the Leftists of that era to be utterly and completely beyond the bounds of civil discourse in ways which were unequivocally violent and treasonous. Nowadays the best the Left can muster is, "Hey, that map `targeting' Democrats has crosshairs on in - that means they want to kill Democrats!" and the like. By contrast, Leftists of the 60's and 70's openly advocated the violent overthrow of the United States, and occasionally acted on that threat in violent ways. They blew things up. They killed people.

"For her to take such umbrage, then, at the reporting of evident, pertinent and factual information deepened the impression that she is - and I must be frank - astoundingly thin-skinned and egocentric."

How dare the narcissistic bitch defend herself!

"[...] Palin portrayed herself as not only a popular champion but also a martyr [...]"

Oh, that's rich: she's made herself out to be a martyr. Get it? Those other people got shot, killed, and here Palin is making herself a martyr. Thing is, if you were to actually watch the video, she never speaks directly of the allegations made against her. Instead, she speaks in vague, third-person terms of a general nature, only alluding to the "target" map, for example.

"Or perhaps - solely in the interest of civil discourse - that there be no next address."

... because, in Liberal-land, the terms of "civil discourse" are that YOU WINGNUTS SHUT UP, got it?