Clash of Cultures (It's not what you think)

posted by Armadillo Joe

via Yglesias, proof that Obama Derangement Syndrome is not just a problem for the mouth-breathing knuckledraggers in wingnut comment threads over at LGF or Town Hall, but also at America’s Shittiest Website™ by one of Teh Right's premier "intellectuals".

My friends, this is a very real phenomenon:

"Perhaps people who are busy gushing over the Obama cult today might do well to stop and think about what it would mean for their granddaughters to live under sharia law."

Words fail me.

But It's Not About Racism (The National Review Cover Edition)

TPM: As part of a cover package called "The Wise Latina," the folks over at the conservative National Review--apparently flummoxed by the very idea of a "wise Latina"--have caricaturized the Puerto Rican-descended Sonia Sotomayor as an Asian Buddhist.

Good times.

Also featured on the cover in the current issue: "Jonah Goldberg On His Critics." That better be a long article.

(H/T TPM)

Forgive me, but...

posted by Armadillo Joe

I know B'way-C said no SUPERTRAINS!, but in this instance I have to break the rules and hope for the best because it sure is funny when conservatives say one thing and do another -- which is, naturally, all the time because they could never actually live by the words they profess (but that's another blog post for another time) -- and watching them get on the bandwagon while protesting the very same bandwagon is one more too-precious-not-to-mock entry in the hypocrisy file.

Because, it turns out, despite the fact that he belittled the whole idea mercilessly with lies about an L.A. to Vegas high-speed link, Eric Cantor remains true to the for-me-not-for-thee creed of the modern GOP when he actually expresses the idea that rail is a good for the car-loving folks of Vir-ginny (via Huffpost):

Asked about high-speed rail at a recent local event in Virginia, Cantor was all thumbs up. "If there is one thing that I think all of us here on both sides of the political aisle from all parts of the region agree with, it's that we need to do all we can to promote jobs here in the Richmond area,"

Of course, he is (as ever) disingenuously acting the part of the aggrieved party. If you read that passage closely, you realize that he is getting all upset because Obama's rail plan doesn't include a high-speed link between D.C. and Richmond. Why a high-speed link would even need to exist between D.C. and Richmond he doesn't say, but I chalk it up to regional chauvanism as everyone thinks their part of the puzzle is the most important. He's in the House, so I am unsurprised that he wants some of that steel wheeled "pork" for his district, too. One man's pork is another man's stimulus.

But yet another conservative, though, has had a revelation that "law-zee mercy" rail is a good, conservative thing that any self-respecting conservative should support because a car-oriented culture is destructive of families and communities, which are good conservative things that conservatives like (and no one else is allowed to like, fucking hippies) so conservatives should support such uplifting, conservative policies that promote rail travel.

OK, I make fun, because the author David Schaengold, actually very eloquently and persuasively makes some very salient arguments in favor of rail travel and against what I have called (stealing from James Kunstler) the Happy Motoring culture. He even sums up rather nicely the heretofore liberal/conservative split on rail travel (h/t Sully):

Sadly, American conservatives have come to be associated with support for transportation decisions that promote dependence on automobiles, while American liberals are more likely to be associated with public transportation, city life, and pro-pedestrian policies. This association can be traced to the ’70s, when cities became associated with social dysfunction and suburbs remained bastions of ‘normalcy.’ This dynamic was fueled by headlines mocking ill-conceived transit projects that conservatives loved to point out as examples of wasteful government spending. Of course, just because there is a historic explanation for why Democrats are “pro-transit” and Republicans are “pro-car” does not mean that these associations make any sense. Support for government-subsidized highway projects and contempt for efficient mass transit does not follow from any of the core principles of social conservatism.

It is amazing to me how the conservatives are always on the wrong side of everything. Now that we've seen what expensive gasoline can do to our economy and the whole idea of Peak Oil is gaining ground in the mainstream, the policies championed by conservatives for decades, policies that promoted car-centric sprawl and corporate big box stores and all the assorted accoutrement of the Happy Motoring suburban lifestyle (a lifestyle that tended to vote Republican, BTW -- hence the support) is now coming back over to the side of rail.

Anyone remember National Review's list of "Conservative Rock Songs"? It's kinda like that, in the "if I like it, it can't be liberal - thus it must be conservative" sort of way all conservatives everywhere are willing to make moral, economic, political, ethical and cultural exemptions for themselves from their much vaunted "values."

At any rate, though a conservative, Mr. Schaengold makes some very good arguments in favor of rail travel. Hell, he's so far off the GOP reservation that he not only manages to pay Hillary Clinton a compliment, he does so regarding one of the Hillary-bashing canards Reich-wingers have used relentlessly for over a decade to club the former First Lady: he agrees with her declaration that "It Takes A Village."

I'll wait for them to apologize for impeaching her husband, too.

Please read the whole thing. It is definitely worth it.

Douchebag of the Day: Greg Pollowitz

National Review's Greg Pollowitz has written a quick little item titled "While The Big Three Go Bankrupt..." with nothing other than three quoted paragraphs from an MSNBC article regarding Barack Obama's planned vacation for the holidays. He then adds his one line of commentary:

Let's see what the MSM's reaction is to the Obama vacation, but I bet it's slightly different than coverage of President Bush from 2005 and Katrina.

How many times are we going to go over this in the remaining six weeks before Inauguration Day? Considering that Barack Obama is the President-elect and is George W. Bush is still actually President, I think the MSM's "reaction" is going to be completely different in comparison to a sitting president who was clearing brush at his photo-op ranch while a U.S. city drowned. He then went ahead and had another photo-op with a certain Senator from Arizona before deciding to return to Washington.

The idea that Pollowitz would gripe about the media's treatment of Obama regarding vacation time is laughable at best and very sad at worst. Right now, the wingnuts are looking for anything to disparage the man for not doing something about our current economic crisis before taking office while the sitting Republican president actually had a complete day this week with nothing scheduled on his calendar. Nothing.

I will make a little wager with you, Mr. Pollowitz. I will bet you that from the time Obama actually takes office, he will spend less vacation time in his eight years (yes, I know I said eight years) than Bush took in his first two years.

National Review's Greg Pollowitz - Douchebag of the Day.

(H/T Bob Cesca)

Adding - As a New Year's resolution, I think I'll make "Douchebag of the Week" a recurring post.

David Frum Quits National Review

Ooooh, he's scared.

... David Frum, a prominent conservative writer who enmeshed himself in a minor dustup during the campaign by turning negative on Governor Palin, is leaving [the National Review]. In an interview, he said he planned to leave the magazine, where he writes a popular blog, to strike out on his own on the Web. ...

"I am really and truly frightened by the collapse of support for the Republican Party by the young and the educated," he said.

Maybe the very reason for the collapse in support is because of the education of the young. I, other other hand, am frightened of the prospects of a David Frum website.

(H/T HuffPo)

Andrew McCarthy on FISA Bill

This is just a laugh.

Steve Benen at C & L notes National Review's Andrew McCarthy and his latest editorial calling House Democrats out for playing partisan politics by not passing the horrible FISA bill with retroactive telecom immunity, which he admits is a bad bill, but what other choice do we have?

Here's another choice. No immunity. As Kevin Drum points out: , "...if it’s that important, there’s a simple answer: pass the bill without telecom immunity. Then come back and introduce immunity in a separate bill. If you’ve got the votes for it, fine. If not, too bad. I’m against immunity myself — though hardly hellbent on the subject — but whichever way the vote went, in the meantime we’d have the FISA extension and surveillance could continue normally."

Drum also notes that the "FISA extension" is shorthand for the Protect America Act, which passed last November and extended (i.e., changed) the then-current FISA legislation in various ways. PAA sunsets on Saturday if a new bill isn't passed, but the original FISA legislation will stay in place. It just doesn't magically disappear thereby materializing nasty Muslims on the streets who want to kill us for our freedoms.

As I said before, if it were truly a matter of life and death, why would the president effectively veto the bill by threatening to do as much without the immunity provision? Answer: Because there's no "there" there. The only reasons the administration wants immunity passed is so they can get away with the further erosion of the Constitution, protect corporations yet again while screwing its citizens and hide the crimes they have committed. Immunity equals no investigation.

So who's playing political football with national security? The Democrats who are trying to preserve Fourth Amendment rights for US citizens, or the Republicans who walk out of Congress, holding their breath til they get their way, crying "it's my ball and I'm going home"?

This false argument that we need to protect the telecoms from lawsuits or else they won't help us is complete bullshit. Case in point were the telecoms who stopped providing the information because the FBI failed to pay their phone bills! If they were really doing it "in good faith", then the information would have kept on flowing. So there goes that argument.

If the US government has a warrant, then the telecoms HAVE TO comply and no lawsuit would stand up in court. But the fact of the matter is that the US government doesn't want to pick and choose who they need to surveil on real facts and real leads. They just want to look like they're doing something so they record and read EVERYTHING from EVERYONE... how in hell can they effectively sort through all that data? It's the equivalent of the "no-fly"watch list being 800,000 people long (and including Senator Ted Kennedy). If everyone's on it, then it's absolutely useless.

I'll have more on this later because in skimming through McCarthy's editorial, it reads like your basic GOP talking points memo through and through, so I feel the need to stab a few holes in it when I have more time... much more time.

Johann Hari: Ship of Fools

Hate to the nth degree. I knew there are people like this out there, but this is staggering. This article is a must read for all of us.

EXCERPT:

The Iraq war has been an amazing success, global warming is just a myth – and as for Guantanamo Bay, it's practically a holiday camp... The annual cruise organised by the 'National Review', mouthpiece of right-wing America, is a parallel universe populated by straight-talking, gun-toting, God-fearing Republicans.

I am standing waist-deep in the Pacific Ocean, both chilling and burning, indulging in the polite chit-chat beloved by vacationing Americans. A sweet elderly lady from Los Angeles is sitting on the rocks nearby, telling me dreamily about her son. "Is he your only child?" I ask. "Yes," she says. "Do you have a child back in England?" she asks. No, I say. Her face darkens. "You'd better start," she says. "The Muslims are breeding. Soon, they'll have the whole of Europe."

It only gets better.