thenewswalk.com

On Capital Punishment

2009-09-18T03:51:00.003-04:00

The Vatican's position is that it opposes capital punishment. It's the normative Roman Catholic teaching, although as far as I know one can still be a Catholic in good standing if he or she still favors capital punishment.

Me, I think the arguments are stronger in favor of capital punishment, not about justice so much, but especially Dennis Prager's argument that murderers tend to kill again in prison, guards or fellow prisoners. Once you can bring yourself to kill a fellow human being, adding another to you list isn't a big deal.

So, Prager argues, if and when the murderer murders again, the moral responsibility lies with those who kept him from his deserved justice and fate.

I've tended to agree with that unassailable logic.

My best and perhaps only counterargument has been that executing a human being dehumanizes his executioners.

His name is Romell Broom. I could call him a convicted rapist and murderer---which he is---but I think we should call human beings by their names.

In Ohio a few days ago, the state sent Romell Broom to go meet his Maker. Mercifully, by lethal injection. In theory, you just go to sleep. Eternal sleep.

You can read about what happened here.

In short, they tried to find a usable vein to deliver the lethal injection but couldn't find one. They tried for hours. Hours. In fact, Romell Broom tried to help them find one. He pinched his arm, he rolled over onto his stomach.

No luck.

Finally, the warden called the governor and told him of the difficulties. The governor postponed Romell Broom's rendezvous with destiny for a week, the execution is scheduled for then.

"What Would Jesus Do" is an often-abused political question. But He wouldn't do this or be any part of it, and more importantly, He wouldn't ask his followers to do this, far lesser mortals than He.

He wouldn't put them through it, no way, no how. Vengeance is Mine, saith the Lord, and that means vengeance belongs to God, not man. "Vengeance" doesn't mean revenge, it means justice.

No to capital punishment. I guess I just made up my mind, finally. Wish I knew why it took me so long...

Obama Opponents are Racist

2009-09-16T18:59:00.003-04:00

Oh, it's on Page One of the Obama playbook. The NYT Magazine ran "The Mellowing of Bill Clinton" piece months ago:

And the man once called the “first black president” remains deeply wounded by allegations that he made racially insensitive remarks during the campaign, like dismissing Obama’s South Carolina win by comparing it with Jesse Jackson’s victories there in the 1980s.

“None of them ever really took seriously the race rap,” he told me. “They knew it was politics. I had one minister in Texas in the general election come up and put his arm around me.” This was an Obama supporter. “And he came up, threw his arm around me and said, ‘You’ve got to forgive us for that race deal.’ He said, ‘That was out of line.’ But he said, ‘You know, we wanted to win real bad.’ And I said, ‘I got no problem with that.’ I said it’s fine; it’s O.K. And we laughed about it and we went on.”

Well, Bill laughed, I guess, but it was Hillary who took it in the pantsuit.

I was a little surprised the elites and mainstream media didn't pick up on this, but the answer's obvious now---they intended to use the same slimy tactic again, this time at the real enemy, the right. If they pulled it on Bill Clinton, what chance do the rest of us have?

No doubt some people are serious in calling Obama's opponents racist, like that unfortunate puddinhead Jimmy Carter, but for the rest, it's just all part of the game.

2009-09-10T21:04:00.002-04:00

I share some of my colleague Davy Buck's enjoyment of Glenn Beck, mostly because we have a common enemy, the administration's and this Congress' affinity for statism. And Beck does dig where the mainstream media doesn't---into fellows like Van Jones [whom he got], and into the looming specter of "community organizing" on a national scale by ACORN [which he just took a nice bite out of].

But I would caution the righteous Right against putting too many eggs in Glenn Beck's basket. He's a showy populist, not a genuine and well-grounded thinker like a Krauthammer or a Beckwith. He's already said some stupid things that cross the line:

...that President Obama has "a deep-seated hatred of white people, or white culture, I don't know what it is..."

This simply won't do.

If the great Newton L. Gingrich, who's much less of a hot dog and a much better thinker than Beck, could screw up and hurt conservatism, that Glenn Beck will screw up and hurt it is a near certainty. And unlike Gingrich, Glenn Beck will never resign.

What Beck said in the above video is already enough to discredit him forever to cite him as a source in polite argument.

So, enjoy him while he lasts and scores a few lefty scalps, but keep in mind it's tick...tick...tick...

I'll defend Edmund Burke-style conservatism 'til the cows come home, but Beck's hero is Thomas Paine, and damned if I'm gonna be left holding the bag for either of 'em.

On "Death Panels"

2009-08-18T13:21:00.002-04:00

Well, the leftosphere is having great fun with whatever Sarah Palin wrote on Facebook about the new health bill's "death panels", but "IV," the mechanism for end-of-life counseling

[p.425]
"(IV) is guided by a coalition of stakeholders includes representatives from emergency medical services, emergency department physicians or nurses, state long-term care association, state medical association, state surveyors, agency responsible for senior services, state department of health, state hospital association, home health association, state bar association, and state hospice association."

...may not be a "death panel," but how such bureaucracies become "stakeholders" in another individual's life must have been an argument I missed.

The whole section is about DNRs and the like, employing the euphemism of "orders." Read it for yourself.

http://urbanlegends.about.com/b/2009/07/27/health-care-bill-page-425-the-truth.htm

Whether or not the term "death panels" strictly applies is not the heart of the matter. There is indeed something more going on here than Sarah Palin, and it's disingenuous to pretend there's not. These are bureaucratic panels advising on matters of life and death.

Bureaucracies are not "stakeholders" in human lives. At least not yet. But if and when they do become "stakeholders" in my life [and death], I shall find no reason to trust their advice.

In fact, any sane person would shun it.

Progressivism Never Changes

2009-02-23T03:14:00.002-05:00

(L to R) George Bernard Shaw, Hilaire Belloc, GK Chesterton, 1928.

What with all the "change" and "hope" we've just installed in Washington, the estimable GK Chesterton on George Bernard Shaw and "progressivism" seems appropriate:

“After belabouring a great many people for a great many years for being unprogressive, Mr. Shaw has discovered, with characteristic sense, that it is very doubtful whether any existing human being with two legs can be progressive at all. Having come to doubt whether humanity can be combined with progress, most people, easily pleased, would have elected to abandon progress and remain with humanity. Mr. Shaw, not being easily pleased, decides to throw over humanity with all its limitations and go in for progress for its own sake. If man, as we know him, is incapable of the philosophy of progress, Mr. Shaw asks, not for a new kind of philosophy, but for a new kind of man. It is rather as if a nurse had tried a rather bitter food for some years on a baby, and on discovering that it was not suitable, should not throw away the food and ask for a new food, but throw the baby out of window, and ask for a new baby.”

So if we're the change we've been waiting for, do we need to throw ourselves out and start all over?

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From a Caller on Talkradio:

2009-02-12T05:57:00.001-05:00

President Obama's gonna give me a pony!

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Two Terms I Could Live Without Hearing for Awhile...

2009-02-11T00:46:00.000-05:00

"Stimulus" and "lavender sachet..."

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Help Wanted Ad of the Year

2009-01-16T23:38:00.007-05:00

At least the year so far, but the economy being what it is, it's likely to get even stranger, even if this is from LA...

[sic]

Looking for Guitar player/vocalist..or bass player who can play guitar and has lead vocal and background vocal ability (good ear for harmonies) to be a member of the STILT ROCKERS. if you can walk on stilts of course that is a plus .....however if you are willing to learn how to walk on stilts that's OK too!
MUST have a really good knowledge of classic rock/pop and R&B tunes....ex; the Beatles, Aretha Franklin, Blondie, and other main stream classic artists. We have corp clients waiting on this trio to get promo together to book events in the very near future. serious players ONLY!

To respond to this ad, man, you'd have to be really serious. Like finding yourself sleeping on your ex-girlfriend's couch. That's really, really serious, although somewhat the norm for rock musicians.

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John Adams' Christianity

2009-01-16T17:27:00.008-05:00

At least for one day in 1810, it wasn't exactly what I thought...
by Tom Van Dyke

I find John Adams confusing at best---and make that confused---in his dabblings in theology, and I've previously called him a twit and a ninny when it comes to these things. An opinion I've not been led to change, mind you: I find his understanding shallow when it comes to his tourism of other religions, a fragment from the Greeks here, a page from the Hindus there, and he's not particularly incisive when it comes to the Christian religion, with which he was most familiar.

Neither do I think Adams' and Jefferson's letters [frequently to each other] after they left public life are particularly relevant to our studies, a) because these ex-presidents were out of the game and b) because their letters were private.

But I'd like to look at a letter I recently ran across from Adams to Dr. Benjamin Rush [who himself got Adams and Jefferson writing to each other again after a long estrangement]: first, because some folks think Adams' thoughts are important, and second because I think this letter might be typical of general attitudes toward Christianity back in those days, and probably our own days as well.

"Shallow" would be too pejorative, but what Jefferson called the "pillow of ignorance" in his younger and wiser days before he too decided to become a theological "expert" fits here: that most of us don't worry much about what can't be known about God or Jesus or whatever, although we have a dim awareness---seeing through a glass darkly, as an evangelist once put it---about answering the most immediate philosophical question, How Should Man Live?

JOHN ADAMS' LETTER TO BENJAMIN RUSH

JANUARY 21, 1810

"[Thomas Paine's] political writings, I am singular enough to believe, have done more harm than his irreligious ones. He understood neither government nor religion."

Oh, my. For John Adams to say Paine didn't understand religion, well, we might compare the color of their kettles, but let's move on. Paine, of course, was the author of The Age of Reason, which trashed the Bible and religion in general, and for which he got trashed by just about everyone in America in return.

"From a malignant heart he wrote virulent declamations, which the enthusiastic fury of the times intimidated all men, even Mr. Burke, from answering as he ought."

Wow. A "malignant heart," and one that could intimidate even the best of men like Edmund Burke. A sage observation, although perhaps Christian charity and the quality of mercy might have tempered what would have been Burke's just response.

"[Paine's] deism, as it appears to me, has promoted rather than retarded the cause of revolution in America, and indeed in Europe."

This would be 1810, not 1776. I don't think Adams means this as praise: Revolution would be a bad thing, and therefore deism, too, at least Paine's deism. By this time, Paine had made his way to revolutionary France, where he was thrown in prison as an agitator. President Washington let his "malignant heart" stew there. [And oh!, you should know about Thomas Paine, revolutionary France, and President George Washington. What a drama!] But back to the action:

His [Paine's] billingsgate, stolen from Blount's Oracles of Reason, from Bolingbroke., Voltaire, Berenger, &c.,

Paine's not even a visionary, he's a mere plagiarist in John Adams' eyes. Voltaire, of course is just the type of "Enlightenment" figure whose hostility to Christianity was ill-received in the new United States, as Adams ills that hostility:

"...will never discredit Christianity, which will hold its ground in some degree as long as human nature shall have any thing moral or intellectual left in it."

Ah. Christianity comports with human nature, then, or at least what is best in man. This is an important point, as "natural law" acknowledges human nature, and is also "the law written on man's heart," as the aforementioned evangelist [OK, OK---it was Paul, who wrote the Epistles in the Bible] also noted.

"The Christian religion, as I understand it, is the brightness of the glory and the express portrait of the character of the eternal, self-existent, independent, benevolent, all powerful and all merciful creator, preserver, and father of the universe, the first good, first perfect, and first fair. It will last as long as the world."

All John Adams is saying here is that Christian teaching [religion] reflects the true nature of God. That's nice, but as a tourist of other religions, Adams often says the same thing about them, too. So let's continue:

Neither savage nor civilized man, without a revelation, could ever have discovered or invented it.

Aha. Just one sentence later, our eureka moment! What is essentially Christian could only have come from God, and only by direct revelation!

I mean, why would "the law of nature" oblige you to "turn the other cheek?" That's crazy, man. Dogs that do that become bottom dog, not Top Dog, and that's only if he doesn't get eaten by his fellows.

This is where the "law of nature" as expressed by Thomas Hobbes comes in, the view that life is nasty, brutish and short and that man enters into the "social contract" of government mostly out of a fear of violent death. Or one might enter into the "social contract" to preserve his "right" of hedonism!

Adams is arguing anything but.

"Ask me not, then, whether I am a Catholic or Protestant, Calvinist or Arminian. As far as they are Christians, I wish to be a fellow-disciple with them all."

How ecumenical of John Adams here, but why not?

I think we find him at his most honest here, and probably pretty close to many of us in 2009---content to sleep on the "pillow of ignorance," but we still have to get up in the morning, look at ourselves in the mirror, then go face the world.

After reading so many of John Adams' letters expressing his theological doubts and explorations but still seeking a universality of religious truth, I was a bit surprised to run across this. But it jibes/vibes/chimes with all of his other writings. Just because a man doubts and inquires and explores beyond his self-drawn boundaries, that should never be taken that he abandoned his home.

"Test all things, and hold firmly that which is good," said that aforementioned evangelist. "Breathe," Paul might well have said to equal effect, because that's how man, armed with free will, seems to be wired.

My opinion of John Adams as theological dilettante and poseur has been moderated by looking at this letter. And if Thomas Paine could intimidate even the estimable Edmund Burke, we should not doubt that the vociferious skeptic Thomas Jefferson could intimidate John Adams, and we might read their correspondence with that in mind. After all, Jefferson had once cut off his correspondence with this same Benjamin Rush over just who Jesus was. [Rush was what we might call an "ecumenical" Christian himself, a little of this, a little of that, but still recognizably Christian.]

And so, Adams never wrote to Jefferson like he does here to Rush; Jefferson was quite clear that he considered Jesus a philosopher, perhaps the greatest moral philosopher of all time, but still just a philosopher. But at least on one day in 1810, Adams states the belief that Jesus' moral philosophy came from God, not man.

As we try to get a handle on the religious landscape of the Founding, this is not a small thing.

MARS FARTS!

2009-01-15T05:00:00.006-05:00

True story.

According to The Sun [UK], NASA will announce that

ALIEN microbes living just below the Martian soil are responsible for a haze of methane around the Red Planet, NASA scientists believe.

The gas, belched in vast quantities in our world by cows, was detected by orbiting spacecraft and from Earth using giant telescopes.

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Merry Christmas from the Moon

2008-12-24T08:22:00.000-05:00

(This was our blog's message for the past few years. Another year has passed, but do the important things ever change?

Remembering the important things, as these men did, seems longer ago and even farther away with each passing year, and to some, even more silly. But Merry Christmas and Happy Hanukkah to all those here gathered anyway, and may we smile today, give thanks, and be inspired in the coming year to perpetuate their silliness...)

It was on Christmas Eve 1968 that the astronauts of Apollo 8, Frank Borman, Jim Lovell, and Bill Anders, became the first of mankind to see an earthrise from the orbit of the moon, and looking back on us, they spoke these words:

Anders: "We are now approaching lunar sunrise. And, for all the people back on earth, the crew of Apollo 8 have a message that we would like to send to you...

"In the beginning, God created the Heaven and the Earth. And the Earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, Let there be light; and there was light. And God saw the light, that it was good; and God divided the light from the darkness."

Lovell: "And God called the light Day, and the darkness He called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day. And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters. And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament; and it was so. And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day."

Borman: "And God said, Let the waters under the Heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear; and it was so. And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters He called Seas: and God saw that it was good."

And from the crew of Apollo 8, we close with good night, good luck, a Merry Christmas, and God bless all of you, all of you on the good earth."

It is good. God bless us, every one.

A Word About Detroit Labor Costs

2008-11-18T19:18:00.003-05:00

Note that the widely-reported difference between hourly compensation costs at the "Big" Three and the nonunion U.S. auto plants understates the cost disadvantage of the former, as the work rules and other factors force GM, Ford, and Chrysler to use more manhours per vehicle than is the case for the others. Hence, the per-vehicle cost disadvantage is greater than the mere difference in hourly compensation. And this is quite apart from the adverse effect of the jobs bank and other legacy costs, which are not relevant on the margin per vehicle produced, but which must be paid and thus are relevant in terms of the ability of the Three to attract private capital. As they sang in the original "M.A.S.H.," suicide (i.e., bankruptcy) is painless, brings on many changes, etc. All for the better.

Starting Point

2008-11-17T20:54:00.004-05:00

I submit that any legitimate argument made by proponents of an auto industry bailout (especially those in Congress) must begin with this graph. Anything else is the work of a scoundrel.

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The Queen Mother Goes Off the Reservation

2008-11-14T02:10:00.007-05:00

Elton John, perhaps the world's best-known Gay Guy, is getting flack for his lack of outrage at California's Proposition 8 winning a majority of the vote:

"I don't want to be married. I'm very happy with a civil partnership. If gay people want to get married, or get together, they should have a civil partnership," John says. "The word 'marriage,' I think, puts a lot of people off.

"You get the same equal rights that we do when we have a civil partnership. Heterosexual people get married. We can have civil partnerships."

Elton seems OK with his legally secured equal rights without demanding further "equal rights." Interesting. I wonder if Judy Garland will stop buying his records.

The thing is, there's been very little resistance in America against the establishment of the concept of civil unions. This speaks well of the American people, I think. We aren't cementheads: we're a fair, just, reasonable and compassionate people. There's not a single American who doesn't know a gay-oriented person or doesn't have one [or more] in their family. It's abominably stupid to ban anyone from a hospital visit or from inheriting a house that he/she has lived in for most of their adult life. America has recognized this already.

On the other hand, using legal mechanisms, especially the courts, to take away freedom of conscience, freedom of thought, of reason, about what "marriage" means...well, that's not fair, just or compassionate either.

I think Mr. John got it about right here. Well done, Sir Elton.

Scratch That - Will $40 Bucks an Hour be Enough?

2008-11-08T17:09:00.006-05:00

Update: It seems that the Obama camp has updated their website, and so required volunteerism has been replaced by goals and plans. Of course, the abysmal policies of the last eight years under George W. Bush have left the volunteerism of our youth in such a state that it looks like a volunteerism stimulus package will be required.

The revised statement now reads:

...all college students who conduct 100 hours of community service receive a universal and fully refundable tax credit ensuring that the first $4,000 of their college education is completely free.

So we've now gone from, um, inspiring volunteerism to paying $40/hr to pick up trash at soccer fields. That's quite a change in 24 hours.

Who says the next generation are a bunch of slackers?

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Yes We Can! (And by that, we mostly mean you.)

2008-11-07T13:29:00.014-05:00

Apparently the Obama campaign was so inspired by the willingness of The Youth to support his candidacy, that he didn't think they'd mind being required to volunteer up to 5% of a typical 2,000 hour work year to community service.

This from Change.gov, the President-Elect's website:

The Obama Administration will call on Americans to serve in order to meet the nation’s challenges. President-Elect Obama will expand national service programs like AmeriCorps and Peace Corps and will create a new Classroom Corps to help teachers in underserved schools, as well as a new Health Corps, Clean Energy Corps, and Veterans Corps. Obama will call on citizens of all ages to serve America, by developing a plan to require 50 hours of community service in middle school and high school and 100 hours of community service in college every year. Obama will encourage retiring Americans to serve by improving programs available for individuals over age 55, while at the same time promoting youth programs such as Youth Build and Head Start.

What did you think Barack was going to do once elected, just let you lie around the frat house all day in your underwear?

You're not one of those Selfish types, are you?

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We Have a New President

2008-11-05T02:28:00.004-05:00

Congratulations to President-elect Barack Obama, his party, and everyone else who voted for him. I didn't, but he's going to be my president. Our president, the President of the United States.

Like many in his party when it came to President George W. Bush, and like many from my own party when it came to President Bill Clinton, I expect to be in the opposition.

But unlike them, I pledge to be a member of the loyal opposition. I resolve not to descend into the pettiness that marked the opposition to our last---two-term, BTW---presidents. That was unpatriotic.

I once wrote that if Senator Obama used the word "liberty" in a meaningful way between then and Election day, I'd vote for him myself.

To my knowledge, President-elect Obama never did, and so I didn't.

And so, in the meantime before President Obama's inauguration, I shall brush up on my Adam Smith, and on Edmund Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France, as we all should.

Just in case, y'know? The wisdom of the ages might come in handy, liberty and all that.

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Media Can't be Straight With Us

2008-10-30T12:38:00.001-04:00

Is this the most despicable distortion you have ever seen?

Read the article and then look at the headline.

ELECTION 2008 BULLETIN!

2008-10-22T03:53:00.007-04:00

Oh, we've let things go to hell around here at what used to be your favorite thoughtful blog, thenewswalk.com. All anybody wanted to talk about was the election, and it's done better everyday elsewhere. Everywhere.

But lookee here---I was talking at Mrs. TVD tonight, as married people do, with my one thought on this election we're all so thoroughly sick of:

TVD: Y'know, I always expect John McCain to come off as a bit of a cementhead. He's been busy. Combat pilot, prisoner of war, catting around after they finally let him go from North Vietnam. Then onto the Senate, where politics doesn't leave much time to actually learn much.

But Barack Obama---private school in Hawaii, two colleges, one of them Ivy League [Columbia], then Harvard Law School. Got elected editor of the Law Review, which goes to the brilliantest of the brilliant.

But Barack never wrote anything at the law review, didn't even leave a trace you could google. And the thing that bothers me most is that in two years running for president, he's never said a single damn thing that made me say, "Hey, that's brilliant. I never thought of that!" Instead, I hear the same ol', same ol' whatever.

Mrs. TVD: McCain's a jock. Obama's a hologram.

Mr. TVD has nothing to add, except that he married well.

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Camille-Oh! Appearance

2008-10-08T14:28:00.002-04:00

Who says atheist leftists are never honest? As in the old lawyer joke, it's the 99 percent dishonest ones giving the other 1 percent a bad name. Here is Camille Paglia, giving no quarter and taking no prisoners as usual.

Yes, both Todd and Sarah Palin, whom most people in the U.S. and abroad had never even heard of until six weeks ago, have emerged as powerful new symbols of a revived contemporary feminism. That the macho Todd, with his champion athleticism and working-class cred, can so amiably cradle babies and care for children is a huge step forward in American sexual symbolism.

Although nothing will sway my vote for Obama, I continue to enjoy Sarah Palin's performance on the national stage. During her vice-presidential debate last week with Joe Biden (whose conspiratorial smiles with moderator Gwen Ifill were outrageous and condescending toward his opponent), I laughed heartily at Palin's digs and slams and marveled at the way she slowly took over the entire event. I was sorry when it ended! But Biden wasn't -- judging by his Gore-like sighs and his slow sinking like a punctured blimp. Of course Biden won on points, but TV (a visual medium) never cares about that.

The mountain of rubbish poured out about Palin over the past month would rival Everest. What a disgrace for our jabbering army of liberal journalists and commentators, too many of whom behaved like snippy jackasses. The bourgeois conventionalism and rank snobbery of these alleged humanitarians stank up the place. As for Palin's brutally edited interviews with Charlie Gibson and that viper, Katie Couric, don't we all know that the best bits ended up on the cutting-room floor? Something has gone seriously wrong with Democratic ideology, which seems to have become a candied set of holier-than-thou bromides attached like tutti-frutti to a quivering green Jell-O mold of adolescent sentimentality.

And where is all that lurid sexual fantasy coming from? When I watch Sarah Palin, I don't think sex -- I think Amazon warrior! I admire her competitive spirit and her exuberant vitality, which borders on the supernormal. The question that keeps popping up for me is whether Palin, who was born in Idaho, could possibly be part Native American (as we know her husband is), which sometimes seems suggested by her strong facial contours. I have felt that same extraordinary energy and hyper-alertness billowing out from other women with Native American ancestry -- including two overpowering celebrity icons with whom I have worked.

One of the most idiotic allegations batting around out there among urban media insiders is that Palin is "dumb." Are they kidding? What level of stupidity is now par for the course in those musty circles? (The value of Ivy League degrees, like sub-prime mortgages, has certainly been plummeting. As a Yale Ph.D., I have a perfect right to my scorn.) People who can't see how smart Palin is are trapped in their own narrow parochialism -- the tedious, hackneyed forms of their upper-middle-class syntax and vocabulary.

As someone whose first seven years were spent among Italian-American immigrants (I never met an elderly person who spoke English until we moved from Endicott to rural Oxford, New York, when I was in first grade), I am very used to understanding meaning through what might seem to others to be outlandish or fractured variations on standard English. Furthermore, I have spent virtually my entire teaching career (nearly four decades) in arts colleges, where the expressiveness of highly talented students in dance, music and the visual arts takes a hundred different forms. Finally, as a lover of poetry (my last book was about that), I savor every kind of experimentation with standard English -- beginning with Shakespeare, who was the greatest improviser of them all at a time when there were no grammar rules.

Many others listening to Sarah Palin at her debate went into conniptions about what they assailed as her incoherence or incompetence. But I was never in doubt about what she intended at any given moment. On the contrary, I was admiring not only her always shapely and syncopated syllables but the innate structures of her discourse -- which did seem to fly by in fragments at times but are plainly ready to be filled with deeper policy knowledge, as she gains it (hopefully over the next eight years of the Obama presidencies). This is a tremendously talented politician whose moment has not yet come. That she holds views completely opposed to mine is irrelevant.

Even if she disappears from the scene forever after a McCain defeat, Palin will still have made an enormous and lasting contribution to feminism. As I said in my last column, Palin has made the biggest step forward in reshaping the persona of female authority since Madonna danced her dominatrix way through the shattered puritan barricades of the feminist establishment. In 1990, in a highly controversial New York Times op-ed that attacked old-guard feminist ideology, I declared that "Madonna is the future of feminism" -- a prophecy that was ridiculed at the time but that turned out to be quite true. Madonna put pro-sex feminism on the international map.

But it is now 18 years later -- the span of an entire generation. The instabilities and diminishments for young women raised in an increasingly shallow media environment have become all too obvious. I had grown up in a vibrant pop culture with glorious women stars of voluptuous sensuality -- above all Elizabeth Taylor, sewn into that silky white slip as the vixen Manhattan call girl of "Butterfield 8." In college, I feasted on foreign films starring sexual sophisticates like Jeanne Moreau, Anouk Aimée and Catherine Deneuve. Sex today, however, has become brittle and superficial. Except for the occasional diverting flash of Lindsay Lohan's borrowed bosom, I see nothing whatever that is worth a second glance. Pro-sex feminism has worked itself out and, like all movements, has degenerated into clichés. And even Madonna, with her skeletal megalomania, looks like a refugee from a horror movie.

The next phase of feminism must circle back and reappropriate the ancient persona of the mother -- without losing career ambition or power of assertion. Betty Friedan, who had first attacked the cult of postwar domesticity, had long warned second-wave feminists such as Gloria Steinem about the damaging exclusion of homemakers from their value system. The animus of liberal feminists toward religion must also end (I am speaking as an atheist). Feminism must reexamine all of its assumptions, including its death grip on abortion, if it wishes to survive.

The hysterical emotionalism and eruptions of amoral malice at the arrival of Sarah Palin exposed the weaknesses and limitations of current feminism. But I am convinced that Palin's bracing mix of male and female voices, as well as her grounding in frontier grit and audacity, will prove to be a galvanizing influence on aspiring Democratic women politicians too, from the municipal level on up. Palin has shown a brand-new way of defining female ambition -- without losing femininity, spontaneity or humor. She's no pre-programmed wonk of the backstage Hillary Clinton school; she's pugnacious and self-created, the product of no educational or political elite -- which is why her outsider style has been so hard for media lemmings to comprehend. And by the way, I think Tina Fey's witty impersonations of Palin have been fabulous. But while Fey has nailed Palin's cadences and charm, she can't capture the energy, which is a force of nature.

Out For a Dozen Counts

2008-10-04T21:33:00.003-04:00

Nobody likes pundits who claim that they predicted results but offer no documentary evidence to that effect.

Oh, Jay is not like that.
http://www.spectator.org/dsp_article.asp?art_id=12032

OBiden vs. McPalin

2008-10-03T04:53:00.007-04:00

Hey, I was watching the ballgames. My beloved Phils beat the Brewers and their best pitcher, CC Sabathia. And God still hates the Cubbies, 10-1.

Two quick takes, one of each:

---Sarah Palin pronounced it "NUC-u-lar," just like a well-derided, highly unpopular current president. I'd think that's enough to blow the whole thing.

---But Al Gore beat Dubya on debating points in 2000, but forgot that these debates ain't debates, they're campaign appearances. Gore acted like a creep, Dubya acted like an OK human being.

Tonight, Joe Biden addressed his debating points to moderator Gwen Ifill, looking down and to the side. Sarah Palin looked directly into the camera and spoke to the American people.

All I know is that you can't win the game until you know what the hell it is. Joe Biden, like Gore in 2000, brought a hockey stick to a baseball game. By all odds, the eminently experienced Sen. Biden should have enjoyed a laugher tonight over Gov. Palin, who isn't that long off the turnip truck.

But you can't hit a home run with a hockey stick, even if you're Babe Ruth.

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Congress Mortgaged our Markets

2008-09-23T22:45:00.001-04:00

The financial markets in this country are weathering a severe storm. My strategy in life, modeled for me by some great people, has always been to face rough times with humor. Right now, though, is no time for a belly laugh, not with a lot of very good people watching their net worth slip through the netting and down the drain. But a chuckle is still appropriate, even if it comes with a grim echo.

The funniest gag of all comes from Nancy Pelosi, blaming the Bush administration for the collapse of the nation’s mortgage base. This occurred, she says, because of a lack of regulation and oversight. For people living out here in the real world, that is a real thigh-slapping screamer. What brought so many mortgage banks down was a surfeit of regulation and oversight, but regulation designed for goals other than fiscal security.

Look, anyone who has bought or sold a house in the last twenty years is well aware of the situation. The real estate agent or mortgage broker whom you work with will certainly clue you in to the existence of FHA mortgages, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. You, as a middle-class person, will be told that you must put up 20 percent of the cost of the home you purchase. It is possible also to pay 10 percent in advance and borrow 90 percent, but then you will have to pay a monthly charge above the mortgage payment. That charge is to pay for mortgage insurance, where the bank gets some additional degree of protection from loss in case they foreclose and the house only sells for 80 percent of value.

But if you are poor, the agent or broker adds, then you are in good shape. Between Fannie and Freddie they can lend you up to 95, 97 and 100 percent of the price.

Now, I have been both buyer and seller of real estate over these two decades, and I have been shaking my head quietly over this situation. It was clear to me, as it should have been to any responsible person, that this system was a disaster waiting to happen. There is a reason why banks do not agree to lend more than 80 percent of the value of the property, more than one reason in fact. Values often go down twenty percent on their own, and the value of a home in foreclosure is also hurt by the process. There is also a reason to demand that a buyer put up some money, more than one reason here too. It is important that a person has some ability to manage funds well enough to accumulate some; it also bodes well for repayment when the purchaser has put some of his own capital on the line.

The idea of helping a poor person get a house is wonderful, but it flies against some of the harder edges of reality. It could work in many cases, or even in most cases, but it puts the lender in the position of having no margin for error. As long as the borrower can keep his job, with a salary increasing in proportion to inflation, without radical new expenditures caused by illness, and as long as the house keeps its value, the result will be a win-win. But if any one of those elements takes a hit, the whole house of cards will come tumbling down.

Clearly, then, the only way this system works is by eventually pushing the bad debt back to the government. Yet the government bureaucrats do not have their own money at stake. What they do have at risk is their job if they cannot show Congress that enough poor people are getting into homes. An unhealthy paradox evolves, where the government worries more about pushing loans than about collecting loans. Lenders and brokers get the message, so they run around recruiting new buyers among the barely-employed. How could this fail to fail?

Fail it has. After years of scratching my head, trying to figure out how this works, I have achieved perfect clarity. No mystery here after all. The answer is simple: it does not work! Never did, never could have.

As with any crisis, the only hope is if the villains are correctly identified and blame is reasonably apportioned. What are the chances that Congress will suddenly hit themselves in the collective forehead and yell, “Eureka, two plus two equals four”? Now there is a thought that has to make you chuckle.

No Gloating, Rethuglicans!

2008-09-11T21:41:00.007-04:00

Well, that's what the leftosphere calls you. Rethuglicans, fascists, Nazis, whatever.

Yes, John McCain's Hail Sarah pass worked. Definitely. He threw it, she caught it.

McCain and the GOP were headed for a November drubbing on the order of Goldwater or the 2006 congressional elections. And now, McCain/Palin is even or even ahead in the polls of the popular vote, although the Electoral College remains problematic.

So a wipeout looks unlikely.

Gov. Sarah Louise Hussein Palin [R-Caribou Country] came out of almost-nowhere and found herself thrust upon the world stage. She's handled herself with other-worldly dignity, grace, and aplomb, far surpassing Barack Obama's at this point. But Brother Barack had the same sangfroid at the start of his journey. It's only recently that his wheels have begun to wobble, and his cool meter is pegging on "overheated."

Me, I think Sen. Obama is reaching his Peter Principle Point, where we all excel until we reach our level of incompetence and then sit and die there. Barack Obama's PPP is getting nominated by his party for president: think Adlai Stevenson, Hubert Humphrey, Walter Mondale, Michael Dukakis, and Bob Dole before him---good men all. [Some notable omissions there, but let's move on...]

I could be proved wrong, of course, come November 5, 2008, although we all hope not sometime in December. Lord, can you please spare us that much? The Gore-ocrats are still whining about the year 2000!

John McCain himself will figure into this circus at some point, perhaps, being as he's the one running for president and all.

I think John McCain knows what he believes and who he is, and his opponent illustrates every day that he remains unsure of either one. Americans've had a radar for such distinctions for practically ever. We'll find out pretty soon if the American radar is still online.

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Sarah for Veep, and lest we forget, McCain for President

2008-09-07T22:47:00.011-04:00

Well, John McCain's selection of Gov. Sarah Louise Hussein Palin (R-Alaska) makes me 0-for-4 in my prognostications. But that's cool. This is my favorite wrong one.

New polls give McC/Sarah a 4-point general lead and a 10-point lead among "those most likely to vote." Astonishing.

"The Democrats are in trouble. Sarah Palin has totally changed the dynamics of this campaign."---Willie Brown

Now, Willie Brown is mebbe the most astute politician I've ever seen. He was king of the California Assembly for so many years that California put in term limits just for him. Still, when the GOP finally won a 39-39 standoff in the state house---something I expect them never to get close to again in this writer's lifetime---WB peeled off a couple of GOP turncoats, put them "in charge," got himself declared "speaker emeritus," and kept control. It was a beautiful thing.

The old white boys got taken fair and square.---WB

Hehe, they sure did. The old white boys got mad instead of appreciating and applauding Willie's mastery of their own game. Did 'em no good, though: in fact, they downright disappeared, like Whigs or mastodons.

[Republicans are still rumored to survive in California, either as changelings like Arnold Schwarzenegger or as sasquatches somewhere out by Fresno.]

Anywayz, if party man and consummate pol Willie Brown---when he needed a new gig, he easily scored the mayor's job in San Francisco even though he was an Oakland man---says that this Palin thing has turned the game completely on its head, I believe him more than any poll or pollster or pundit or analyst. Willie is the best.

If Sarah can make it through her upcoming media colonoscopy---or if the press finally gives Barack his, which is way way past due (there are surely more "investigative" reporters in Alaska right now than were ever dispatched to Sen. Obama's Chicago)---well, you see where I'm going with this:

Election night 2008 celebrations will consume far more Budweiser than soy products. That would be good for America, I think---if not its bodies, its soul.

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