Elie Wiesel was right about one thing

Around the internets we see self-congratulatory plaudits for "handing Iraq back to the Iraqis," ranging in tone from the celebratory to the conciliatory, but nonetheless conveying the distinct impression that something, anything, we've done to and in Iraq is classifiable as "good."

This is proof of exactly one thing: there is no god. For if there were, this nauseating indifference to death, destruction, and cruelty - wrought in ones own name! - would have already led to the cleansing of all human life from the area between Canada and Mexico.

As one considers this greusome back-patting, amidst calls for a repeat, three things should be kept in mind:

1) As a result of our actions, every day for several years, and into the foreseeable future, somewhere in a country the size of Texas dozens of people are exploded into little bits.

2) Iraq is as it is, whatever that is, because the United States of America facilitated the death of a number of human beings so large that the toll is unamenable to precise calculation and yet unquestionably belongs on this list.

3) The United States military has not, nor ever will, leave Iraq.

Best Recent Political Suicides

1. Mark Sanford.

5. Rod Blagojevich.

27. Larry Craig.



52. Elliot Spitzer.

77. John Edwards.

454. David Vitter. (attempted)

857. John Ensign. (attempted)

A prize

To anyone who can figure out what the hell VDH is babbling about. Setting aside the fact that he doesn't appear to know the difference between plain and plane or imply and infer, I can't decipher a single cogent point in that J'accuse!; let alone one that is not predicated on a laughably incorrect observation that what's happening in Iran is Democrats v. Theocrats, Royal Rumble VII: Represent or Die!

Let's call the whole thing off

Fresh off his declared opposition to policies that would equate light skinned and dark skinned people, for that reason, Roger Clegg has denounced the recent congressional resolution apologizing for slavery as an attempt "to keep white people on the hook."

Congressional resolutions are a dime a dozen, expecially as they relate to events decades and centuries past, but when you write for a magazine that explicitly opposed integration and your politics veer toward perpetuating a black underclass that was created by white people who no doubt funded and read said magazine, mebbe ya just let enough alone. Ya know?



Oh, and for goodness sakes read Andy McCarthy. Watching a man slowly lose his mind, in public no less, is fascinating.

On the beguiling inability of conservatives to recognize harm to anyone but people who very closely resemble themselves

Roger Clegg has taken to the austere digital pages of National Review Online to prevent the possible inconvenience of white people at some point in the future:

Conservatives have warned on these pages that the language used in proposed anti-racial-profiling legislation would drive the police to adopt racial quotas in their policies, because of its use of a “disparate impact” standard and the requirement that the police collect racial data on their stops. Well, here’s evidence from across the pond that we’re right. Lord Carlile, a “Liberal Democrat peer” and “independent reviewer of anti-terrorism laws,” has found that “`there is ample anecdotal evidence’” that the British police are “carrying out the[ir anti-terrorist] searches on people they had no basis for suspecting so they could avoid accusations of prejudice” by “`“balanc[ing]” the statistics.’”

So. Trying to prevent the unnecessary harrassment of minorities on the basis that the small subset of minorities that commit crimes is larger as a percentage of the minority population than the subset of whites that commit crimes as a percentage of the white population, is bad, because then police would also uneccessarily harrass white people in order to compensate for the continued unecessary harrassment of minorities, which we know because some white dude from another country speculated that police abuse their powers only out of a concern for racial sensitivity.

And conservatives honestly believe that minorities vote liberal because they like welfare.

Imperial Letters

Dear China,

If you want to maintain control of the population without ceding anything meaningful, Machivelli counsels that you allow a minimum amount of freedom. Something token, like, say, access to pornography. The last thing China needs is to force the installation of software that could cause millions of computers to crash. That would feed new resentment against a government already accused of gross incompetence after thousands of children died in the collapse of shoddily constructed schools in the 2008 earthquake. If there's any more resentment against the government, people will stop doing what they're told. Can't let them get uppity, ya know.

All the best,
America

USA:nyt

Tobacco is a plant

Now I'm certain that Congress's decision to give the FDA regulatory authority over tobacco will serve absolutely no purpose other than to increase the size of the federal government and make tobacco more expensive, but I think we can do better than pornstar cum Corner rep Tevi Troy:

"Tobacco, which would be regulated by the FDA under the bill, is neither food nor drug . . ."

I'd like to see an explanation of that one; from a guy who used to run HHS no less. He's an orthodox jew, so I assume swine is not a food, either.

[inside baseball: Tevi forgot/doesn't appreciate that words have meanings apart from their regulatory definitions]

Freudian Slips

The National Review is an endless source of material. I could read the Corner all day long. Just today we've got Andy McCarthy lamenting the fact that Sotomayor holds an opinion on impartiality that seems odd in a newspaper quote, but which is shared by just about everyone else in the world who has thought about it for a second; Iaiain Murray trying desperately to explain that people really love American health care and hate universal health care, when almost every metric points in exactly the opposite direction; and Krauthammer, by relay, giving bad legal analysis that any law student can infer was given to him over dinner by a friend who went to law school 40 years ago, but who doesn't currently practice or really remember much.

But today's winner is Jay Nordlinger:

In yesterday’s column, I had an item on a story involving that most beauteous of things: a clash of liberal pieties. I have collected such stories for years. In this particular case, the Governor General of Canada ate the heart of a seal.
(Not sure whether it was a baby seal.) Bad, bad, bad.

But she is a “woman of color.” And she was honoring an “Inuit” tradition. Good, good, good; good, good, good.

What’s a liberal to do?

A reader from Arizona wrote me to share a similar story, and dilemma: There is a Hopi ritual of smothering baby eagles. Hopis and Hopi rituals are good — very good. Smothering baby eagles — not so cool.

One presumes he is unaware of the implication that conservatives love to kill baby animals and hate minorities and their traditions.

If at first you don't succeed

Another bizarre hit-job on Sotomayor. Pay attention to the forced dichotomies and deliberately misleading characterizations - this is how false narratives are created, and why every conservative in the U.S. is certain that Al Gore once said he invented the internet.

That's "raciaLIST" to you, bub

Mark Krikorian of National Review rushes to the barricades, prepared to defend our shores from the culture-destroying onslaught of . . . calling non-anglophone people by their names.

The high-stepping logic and murky justifications put forth by people who got the memo that expressions of blatant racial bigotry are no longer acceptable in public discourse, but who nonetheless feel that there is a "us," who are not - and must not become! - the same as "them," is endlessly amusing.