Month: January 2009

That’s a good question. It’s also a silly one, since the odds of my being a Republican Congressman as a married man are nil (they only want you to have a stable family life if you’re straight). I’m not an economist and so it’s very hard for me to judge how big a stimulus we now need to avoid further meltdown. But the more I’ve looked at the Democratic proposal the more Christmas-tree-like and amorphous and slow it appears. I have no problems with some big infrastructure spending now; or the tax cuts in the bill; or even some of the things (like sodding the Mall) that the GOP have demagogued.

But I’d vote no to this bill nonetheless for reasons Megan explains more elegantly than I can. The vast expansion of social spending from 2010 on is more Bush-style welfarism than pragmatic recession-mitigation. I don’t have to be re-elected, of course, and I might feel differently if my constituents were feeling the kind of pain so many are now going through. But this strikes me as too much. Politically, the GOP’s gracelessness and indifference to their own recent record is very risky in some ways. But in other ways, it’s healthy.

I want the Republicans to rediscover fiscal responsibility. Someone has to. That this rediscovery happens in the middle of the worst downturn since the 1930s may make it politically suicidal in the short term. But in the long run, it’s part of the solution. Do it with a little less ugliness and sneering, and you could even begin to persuade some people in the middle.

Now: entitlements. That’s where the real money is.

Copy Ranter explains why PETA submitted an ad depicting women molesting vegetables:

Last year, they submitted zombie Colonel Sanders spots to FOX for rejection.This time, the animal rights organization says they sent this "Veggie Love" spot to NBC for approval to run during Sunday’s Super Bowl. This is of course complete cow manure. PETA submitted this spot for one reason—the disapproval publicity NBC’s rejection is generating (this post included). No, they’d sooner go on a fox hunt riding bulls with their bodies smeared in rabbit blood then waste $3 million on 30 seconds of TV ad time. But publicity costs nothing.

Very sad news:

Sometimes there are simple stories. Culture11’s is one of them. We raised a certain amount of money last year predicated on the assumption we would raise more money last year. Then the Fall’s fall occurred and we stretched money as long and far as we could without incurring any debts. With no new money in the door the board decided the most prudent thing to do was suspend business operations. That is a way too technical way of saying that there are now 14 people who worked very hard for this company who are looking for new jobs because theirs disappeared. These people do not deserve to be out of jobs and yet they are. The economy racks up more victims.

But the loss of Culture 11 is, in my view, far worse than 14 lost jobs. It represented, at its best, a new and honest start for a thinking young conservatism, forged by a new generation of writers who, for the most part, were unafraid to think freshly – and showed up their elders by their courage and curiosity. I have a feeling that Culture 11 will one be remembered in the same way that Seven Days, the briefly brilliant New York City magazine that Adam Moss edited in the late 80s, is now remembered. One day, a conservative journal will emerge that is able to break from the stifling, clammy orthodoxy of today’s post-Buckley National Review and the often unhinged neocon catechism of the Weekly Standard. When it does, its editors will be able to look back and say that Culture 11 opened up the frontier.

On a personal note, David Kuo has been a close and faithful friend in faith, Conor Friedersdorf an alum the Dish is very proud of, and Poulos and Suderman never failed to help jog a thought into place or cut an idea down to size. Respect.

"When I was a boy, the bestselling books were often the books that were on your piano teacher’s shelf. I mean, Steinbeck, Hemingway, some Faulkner. Faulkner actually had, considering how hard he is to read and how drastic the experiments are, quite a middle-class readership. But certainly someone like Steinbeck was a bestseller as well as a Nobel Prize-winning author of high intent. You don’t feel that now. I don’t feel that we have the merger of serious and pop — it’s gone, dissolving. Tastes have coarsened. People read less, they’re less comfortable with the written word. They’re less comfortable with novels. They don’t have a backward frame of reference that would enable them to appreciate things like irony and allusions. It’s sad. It’s momentarily uphill, I would say.

And who’s to blame? Well, everything’s to blame. Movies are to blame, for stealing a lot of the novel’s thunder. Why read a novel when in two hours you can just go passively sit and be dazzled and amazed and terrified? Television is to blame, especially because it’s come into the home. It’s brought the fascination of the flickering image right into the house; like turning on a faucet, you can have it whenever you want. I was a movie addict, but you could only see so many movies in the course of a week. I still had a lot of time to read, and so did other people. But I think television would take all your day if you let it. Now we have these cultural developments on the Internet, and online, and the computer offering itself as a cultural tool, as a tool of distributing not just information but arts — and who knows what inroads will be made there into the world of the book," – John Updike.

(Hat tip: Sunil)

Gallup has a new study out. Silver summarizes:

…just five states, collectively containing about 2 percent of the American population, have statistically significant pluralities of adults identifying themselves as Republicans. These are the "Mormon Belt" states of Utah, Idaho and Wyoming, plus Nebraska, plus Alaska. By contrast, 35 states are plurality Democratic, and 10 states are too close to call.

There’s a reason for Romney – and Mormonism, in its religious deification of America, is the natural theological basis for a theoconservative movement that sees an American empire as destiny. I hope Republicanism doesn’t go that route. But it may be too far gone to turn back now.

The era of bipartisanship ends. That was quick. There’s more to come, though:

Some moderate Republicans who opposed the bill left open the chance of supporting the final version if the White House and Senate address their concerns about spending. And Democrats remain hopeful of securing a more bipartisan result in the Senate, where committee action has driven up the cost as the amount of tax relief has increased, something Republicans have demanded before they will consider offering their support.

The GOP sure rewarded the president for coming to the Hill and talking it through with them for hours, didn’t they?

A squatter reacts to reporters from the roof of one of two Mayfair mansions, estimated to have a combined value of £23 million, that have been taken over on Park Lane on January 28, 2009 in London, England. A group of squatters who took over the two mansions in one of London’s most prestigious neighbourhoods are due to be evicted today after the owners were granted a court order by a central London County Court. By Dan Kitwood/Getty Images.

 

… so vote for medical marijuana! Sometimes, you just have to love Israeli democracy.

A reader writes:

Just so you know, according to the OED, the adverb "fair" in the sense of "equitably, honestly, impartially, justly; according to rule" has been around since 1300 and also occurs in Shakespeare, 1603. Wilson’s grasp of basic and easily checked linguistic facts leaves something to be desired.

Another adds:

In French, "juste" is perfectly right as an exact translation for "fair." True, "juste" also means "accurate," so you could argue that it’s not quite the same word, but then again the French "juste" does not also mean "light in color" and that added meaning doesn’t disqualify the English word from fully incorporating the concept of "fair" (as in equitable) as we understand it. (Although it does lend a creepy Aryan-master-race undercurrent to the term.)

It’s self-congratulatory Anglocentrism, of course, exactly like the canard about there being no Russian word for freedom.

A reader writes:

"Presider", so far as I know, has become wholly church language. Anciently (as in very early church anciently) the Church used the word "President" to connote "the one who presides at the Eucharist". Relying upon new scholarship that revealed that information, the draft committee of the 1979 Book of Common Prayer of the Episcopal Church USA came close to floating an early draft of that Prayer Book that included "President" instead of "Celebrant". That was in 1972.

Then Watergate happened. All references to "President" in the draft Prayer Book were removed and never saw the light of day. More recently, Episcopalians, other Anglicans, Lutherans, and perhaps some Roman Catholics now use "Presider" now precisely because the word connotes "the one who Presides" and not "President of the United States". Yes, Obama is doing something different, and I appreciate him, and I even appreciate your use of the word in the title of your article. But don’t get used to it, friend. The Church isn’t giving up her language that easily.

Another adds:

It seems to me that Obama is echoing Bush in one way: he’s using the role of president to establish a constitutional philosophy. Of course, he’s doing it in part to correct the Bush administration’s disregard of our founding document. But Obama’s first days in office, his executive orders… it’s all promoting a nation-wide constitutional philosophy. It’s like everything he does is based first on a legal interpretation (or pragmatic compromise), then explained to the people on an emotional level. This is the opposite of Clintonian.