A brutal and pretty accurate assessment from Tom DeLay. Especially on the total dearth of any leadership talent:
So who does DeLay see as the GOP's up-and-comers? "No one," he replied in exasperation. "It's all the same old guys who were in leadership with me, and those old guys aren't the leaders the party needs."
Here is a column that could have been written twenty years ago and that's based, as Barone explains, on an impression formed twenty years ago. The argument requires total amnesia of the Bush-Cheney years and the enormous damage they did to America's reputation for human rights, and basic competence. If the torture and pre-emptive war era are erased from one's memory, it makes some kind of sense. It's a useful ideological device and is common elsewhere on the amnesiac right. If you erase the memory of massive debt and growth in government under Bush, it also makes sense to blame the man who inherited it on top of a brutal recession for being a socialist.
Newt Gingrich, in an attempt to court conservative Hispanics, launches a bilingual news/opinion site. Benen reminds us:
It was [Gingrich] who, in giving a speech to a Republican group in 2007, described bilingual education as teaching "the language of living in a ghetto." He's also mocked the idea of printing government documents in anything but English, and promoted English-only measures. In 1995, Gingrich said bilingualism poses "long-term dangers to the fabric of our nation" and that "allowing bilingualism to continue to grow is very dangerous." And earlier this year, it was Gingrich who blasted Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor as a "racist" […] But now that Republicans are worried about losing the Latino vote for the indefinite future, Gingrich is going to help bring the GOP message to the Latino community? Good luck with that.
Just a heads up if you're up for a weekend on the Cape: the next few days in Provincetown will be dedicated to the Tennessee Williams festival. Aaron is in one of the short plays, and the full schedule is a theatrical feast. Check it out.
Kottke preps us for autumn:
Foliage map for New York and New England. You can register as a "Foliage Ambassador" on the site to report on the progress in your area.
(Map current as of last night.)
Coyne responds:
Humans do not have a unique capacity to “rise above suffering.” Every animal rises above suffering. It has to, if it is to live and leave offspring. It’s ADAPTIVE to be resilient! Any dog who hobbles along on three legs after an accident is rising above suffering. How are we humans different? We have big brains that can mentally come to terms with suffering, but that’s adaptive too. It’s certainly not evidence of “God’s love for us,” much less for a god itself. It’s better evidence for evolution, for those individuals who couldn’t rise above suffering left no offspring. Ergo we cope, both mentally and physically. Sullivan goes on to talk about the terrible diseases that afflicted his loved ones, and for that he has my deepest sympathy. But even atheists recover from such traumas.
One feels as if one is talking past someone.
Yes, resilience is obviously built into our genetics, but my point was the unique ability to transcend suffering, not just endure it. That requires a mind that renders humans uniquely self-conscious, which has led to inquiries into ultimate meaning that, so far as we can tell, no animal experiences in the same way. Many survive suffering – most, in fact. The question is whether it is overcome, rather than endured. For that, something beyond mere physical processes are necessary. Which is where religion has its place.
Plockton, Scotland, 5.10 pm
Dan Gilgoff tries to see what will happen to American politics if a quarter of Americans become unreligious.
Jim Geraghty notes:
[Will Ferrell] is by some accounts the highest paid star in Hollywood (Forbes said this year he was merely the 20th-highest-paid). On a similar note, I was stunned to learn that you have to pay money to watch Michael Moore's movie about the evils of capitalism.
Chris Good fact checks the claim that "80% of Americans support the public option."
The web is wonderful for many reasons but one of them is its capacity to generate new language. You can get fisked or becked; there are money quotes and hat tips; and then there are the private languages that can develop among regular commenters. Balloon Juice has now compiled a dictionary of its readers' best neologisms and acronyms. Check them out. My faves:
Glibertarian—a portmanteau of glib and libertarian, a person who affects libertarianism when it’s convenient. Used by those not ready to admit that all libertarian philosophy can be boiled down to “I got mine, fuck you”, or by those attempting to be polite to libertarians.
Magical Unity Pony (MUP): affectionate-mocking nickname for presidential candidate Barack Obama.
MUPpets: Especially during the 2008 campaign, individuals said to be unduly enamoured by then-candidate Barack Obama.
WATB – Whiny-Ass Titty Baby, or Babies. Originally appended to the ombudspersons of the Washington Post, possibly by Sadly, No! , for complaining that unpaid bloggers were making the ombudspersons’ highly-compensated jobs too hard.
Rebunk – to bring back a myth, lie, urban legend or totally discredited idea as though the evidence which reliably debunked the nonsense never existed. Almost always committed by Re-publicans.
And these from the comment section on the comment section:
IOKIYAR – It’s OK if you’re a republican. (var fm. IOKIYAAR)
Doughy Pantload: A derogatory nickname for LA Times columnist and former National Review Online Editor Jonah Goldberg, who inflicted a book-length violation of Godwin’s law upon an unsuspecting (and, among his readers, undiscerning) public. Frequently mocked for statement he made about his book, entitled “Liberal Fascism”, roughly a year prior to its publication, that it was a very serious, thoughtful, argument that has never been made in such detail or with such care.
Burkean Bells, n. An auditory hallucination experienced by people who consider themselves to be “authentic conservatives” who have been driven from the Republican Party by the wingnuts. Most often experienced by people who think Edmund Burke was the title character in an obscure 1960s television series.
Oakeshott, n. 1. mid-20th Century conservative philosopher, subject of Andrew Sullivan’s doctoral dissertation.
2. Three ounces of Maker’s Mark in a wooden cup.
Most self-proclaimed conservatives think 2 is the correct definition.
The Dish 