Category: The Dish

Now he tells us:

Pressing his attack, the vice president charged that congressional Democrats last month added billions of dollars to an emergency war spending bill "to cover items on their wish list – from fighting crickets to spinach subsidies." He added, "Even though it’s still early in the session, when it comes to the appetite for tax dollars, the new Congress has already earned a place in the big-spending hall of fame."

I’m not defending Democratic pork – any more than Republican pork. But, again, what’s staggering about these Republicans is their total shamelessness. No administration in recent history has presided over anything like the explosion of domestic discretionary spending and pork-barrel spending than Bush  and the Republicans in the past six years. And yet only three months into a new Democratic Congress, they expect to be taken seriously for attacking the other side for the same thing. Cheney is a smart man, and a deeply intellectually dishonest one. From the same poisonous speech, addressing war critics:

"Critics enjoy pointing out mistakes through the perceptive power of hindsight."

Actually, of course, many pointed out mistakes with the perceptive power of foresight. Powell warned of suspending Geneva; Shinseki warned of insufficient troop numbers; even clueless critics like me could see over three years ago the flaws in the occupation strategy. Only Cheney was dumb enough to run a war as badly as this one; and shameless enough to blame others for it.

I know I should leave the Corner alone, but the intellectual cowardice of much of the right with respect to this awful administration is just so glaring, and so much part of the problem, that it requires pointing out, however awkward it makes any sort of social life in DC. A reader piles on about NRO’s Full Metal Silence on a week of brutal bombing in Iraq and the latest damning evidence about the politicization of justice under Bush-Cheney:

If a Democratic administration was: asserting executive privilege on all conversations this side of what they said to the cleaning lady (oh wait, I think that’s covered too); and finally admitting to a long maintained parallel email and document destruction (oops – I mean retention) system run through the DNC; and confessing to how that system seems to have "misplaced" 5 million emails, including all those by the president’s political guru; and if this same Democratic administration had selected unqualified and incompetent, but politically loyal, lawyers to run many of the top jobs at the Justice Dept; and was protecting a democratic AG who lied to Congress and needed weeks to "practice" before testifying again, the Cornerites would be quiet too. Don’t ya think?

Not that some of them haven’t already tossed Gonzales overboard (because he isn’t a "true conservative") in the hopes that his removal will draw attention away from the real underlying problems with the administration, of which Gonzales is but a symptom.

The Democrats now have a staggering 30 point lead among those under 30. Rove is getting his realignment.

A vain attempt to reacquaint her with a sense of shame.

Minneapolis, Minnesota, 10.30 am.

So little time.

And I thought the dinosaur DNA was cool. Details here.

"The admission of need for something called a Bloggers Code of Conduct is about more than just the Web. The deeper import of what may be happening here should be evident in Mr. O’Reilly’s remark, which was the final sentence in a long New York Times article on the subject last Sunday: ‘Free speech is enhanced by civility.’ It is difficult for me to imagine a more revolutionary sentence. One might call it ‘subversive.’ ‘Free speech is enhanced by civility.’ The revolution comes at the end of that sentence. Free speech we know about. Civility we have forgotten. Ask Don Imus." – Daniel Henninger, WSJ.

They’re addicts too. Of course, Islamist countries are the worst.

A reader writes:

You make a very salient point about the changing culture of America. I work in the software industry. It is pretty common to have a young, more progressive (yet still predominantly white male)  engineering staff, with Imus-aged rich white guys running the company. I’ve had many discussions with the old guard who are very disturbed by the fact that racially charged words have different effects in different contexts. "How is it that a rapper can say the n-word but a white guys can’t?!!"

This always creeps me out. The world is full of double standards. Congratulations, you found another one. Now, why again is it that it pisses you off that you can’t say the n-word without being labeled a racist?