Category: Old Dish

The New Republic’s advice around this time in 1948. D’oh!

Do it the way it’s always been done: bribe him.

REPUBLICANS FOR NADER: They’re champing at the bit in Michigan.

Well, they used to live in a dictatorship fueled by propaganda. So they are perhaps better suited to see through Michael Moore’s vile techniques.

An astronishing yet unsurprising statistic unearthed by blogger David M. Of all Ivy League faculty donations to candidates, 92 percent went to Kerry. The highest rate of donations to Bush in any Ivy League University is 16 percent – at Princeton. Meanwhile, blogger Michael Petrelis has done some digging on mega-rich socialist, Katrina vanden Heuvel, editor of the Nation. She has donated around $145,000 over twenty years to various candidates and organizations.

ONLY IN AMERICA: Regular readers will know what I think of Robert Byrd – a bloviating, bigoted thief of other people’s money. But his family lineage nevertheless makes for fascinating reading. This is from his bio on his website:

He is married to the former Erma Ora James, his high school sweetheart and a coal miner’s daughter. They are the parents of two daughters, Mrs. Mohammad (Mona Byrd) Fatemi and Mrs. Jon (Marjorie Byrd) Moore. Senator and Mrs. Byrd have been blessed with six grandchildren — Erik, Darius, and Fredrik Fatemi; Michael (deceased), Mona, and Mary Anne Moore — and four great-granddaughters: Caroline Byrd Fatemi and Kathryn James Fatemi; Emma James Clarkson and Hannah Byrd Clarkson. In February 2004, Senator and Mrs. Byrd welcomed their first great-grandson, Michael Yoo Fatemi.

From a member of the KKK to Michael Yoo Fatemi in two generations. Not bad.

MORE DISHONEST SPIN: Once again, the anti-marriage forces have been spinning a little too heavily. Anti-gay senators Brownback and Cornyn have been claiming that the late Senator Moynihan would have opposed extending the responsibilities of civil marriage to gay couples. Not so fast, says his wife.

Curiouser and curiouser.

The Washington Blade has found a reference by the president to the word “gay.” He said the phrase “gay marriage” in Pennsylvania, referring to someone else’s question. He knows that gay people exist! Now if he could only apply to adjective to actual human beings. But it’s a start. And don’t give me the pablum abhout not treating people as members of a group. Today, at the Urban League, Bush asked: “Is it a good thing for the African-American community to be represented mainly by one political party? Have the traditional solutions of the Democrat Party truly served the African-American people?” That’s the difference between a group of people you respect and want to win over and a group of people you marginalize for political gain.

EMAIL OF THE DAY II: “Your blog links to an inaccurate statement in a Fox report which claims that wives should be subservient to their husbands, when the word Judge Holmes used was subordinate. Subservient implies obsequiousness or servility while subordinate implies submitting to the authority of another (which can arguably be considered a sign of strength). You use the incorrect word in your blog.” The strength to be subordinate! And this comes from a religious tradition that began with a man who defied almost every social convention of his time and treated women – even single women – as his equals; who never married and broke up the families and marriages of his disciples; who told his own parents as a teenager that they had no final control over him; and whose best friends were a single woman and a single man who is described in the Gospels as resting his head on Jesus’ breast in an act of profound intimacy. How you get the subordination of women and the persecution of homosexuals from all that is beyond me.

A reader makes the following point:

I am gay and conservative. I am disinterested in the gay marriage cause, both in the sense of bored and distanced. I am not opposed but I agree with my Senator, the earnest Santorum, marriage is for the protection of children.
In fact, consistent with his and Dr. Dobson’s position, I would wish to see its state mandated protections denied to all childless couples and reserved only for those who do breed or rear whether they are heterosexual or gay. I understand the desirability of queer ratification and I think state recognized contracts which enumerate a couple’s privileges and benefits could be the acceptable alternative for same sex pairings. However I do not think that the state should be obliged to afford life sustaining support benefits to such childless couples as are automatically granted to married couples (health insurance and social security for example) in the interest of preserving the viability of surviving family if the breadwinner dies.

That strikes me as a coherent position. If you believe, as Stanley Kurtz does, that it is critical to maintain the cultural link between marriage and parenting, we do have an obvious option: give all couples civil unions and let them be converted to marriage licenses if and when the couple has or adopts children. That would honor both the marriage-parenting link, and remove the indefensible heterosexual privilege that the law now upholds. But it won’t happen – because straight couples without children would be appalled at how it denigrates their relationships and makes them second-class citizens. Well, at least they would then know how it feels like to be gay.

The funniest guy on television (after Bill Maher) tackles the direst threat now facing America. No. It’s not al Qaeda.

EMAIL OF THE DAY: “I know that Congress has this power [to strip courts of jurisdiction], but I don’t think it should be used in this fashion even if it is not being used to disempower a particular group.
Why? Simply because I think it is dishonorable and somewhat cowardly and childish. The Constitution, to some extent, is a deal we make with ourselves. We create a government of limited powers and we give to the courts the power to determine whether our government is acting within those limitations. I don’t always agree with the way the federal courts decide these issues, but so what? I’m not entitled to have the courts decide issues just the way I want them to.
If I get sufficiently pissed off, I can vote for Presidents and Senators of a particular party in the hopes of getting a “better” judiciary. Yes, it takes awhile. But I don’t know how to distinguish between stripping federal courts of the power to decide on the constitutionality of DOMA, and stripping them of the power to decide the constitutionality of the 2013 Redistribute the Wealth Act – after all, the federal courts might not approve of Congress’ well-intentioned effort to authorize President Hillary Clinton to seize land from people who have too much of it, by misinterpreting the constitutional provisions requiring “just compensation”.
It’s just a bad practice, in my view, completely aside from the fact that it seems to be part of President Bush’s “Flags and Fags” campaign strategy.” – more feedback on the best Letters Page on the web.

Lawrence Kaplan worries about Kerry’s tendency to suck up to dictators. But he’s not too high on Bush’s incoherence either. Money quote:

Put another way, the administration has two Iran policies, and the result has been a mix of good and bad. Kerry, by contrast, boasts a single, coherent, and–to judge by the description of Teheran’s activities in yesterday’s report–utterly delusional Iran policy. Now, if only the Bush team could sort out its own, it might have an opportunity to draw a meaningful distinction.

I’m looking forward.

The WSJ has the best instant summary of the salient points. I’m haven’t read the report yet.