Reason Magazine - Staff > Michael C. Moynihan > Hit & Run Posts

Massacre in India

mmoynihan@reason.com (Michael C. Moynihan) — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 15:19:00 EST

Not many details at the moment, but we do know that gunmen opened fire at various sites in Bombay in what appears to be a coordinated terrorist attack. According to BBC News, unconfirmed reports say that 80 are dead, 250 injured, and an unknown number are being held hostage in a "luxury hotel."

On Wednesday, gunmen opened fire in at least seven sites, including a train station, two five-star hotels, a hospital and a restaurant popular with tourists.

At least two blasts, suspected to be grenade attacks, were reported alongside the shootings.

Police said the gunmen had fired indiscriminately.

At least 10 people were killed at the Chhatrapati Shivaji railway station, they said.
A man shows the wounds of another man injured in a gunbattle at Mumbai's Chatrapati Shivaji Terminus.

"The terrorists have used automatic weapons and in some places grenades have been lobbed," said AN Roy, police commissioner of Maharashtra state.

The Times (UK) reports that the terrorists were targeting foreigners.

UPDATE: The Hindustan Times provides a mercifully smaller death toll of 16.

Left Behind

mmoynihan@reason.com (Michael C. Moynihan) — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 15:32:00 EST

Perhaps President-elect Obama isn't the left-wing radical so feared by the green-inkers at Newsmax and Human Events. And this is distressing some of his most vocal supporters. We are a few months away from inauguration, but impatient progressives are already fuming that Slavoj Zizek hasn't been appointed to the National Security Council. Here is The Nation's Washington correspondent, Chris Hayes, on the coming Obama betrayal:

Not a single, solitary, actual dyed-in-the-wool progressive has, as far as I can tell, even been mentioned for a position in the new administration. Not one. Remember this is the movement that was right about Iraq, right about wage stagnation and inequality, right about financial deregulation, right about global warming and right about health care. And I don't just mean in that in a sectarian way. I mean to say that the emerging establishment consensus on all of these issues came from the left.

Hayes is being sectarian—and reductionist. God knows what it means to be "right" about health care, for instance, when The Nation's solution to America's problem (a single-payer model) hasn't been attempted. This magazine has addressed the problems of American health care at great length and has acknowledged that the current system is, in many respects, broken. Does that mean that libertarians have also been "right" about the issue, that we too should expect representation in the next administration's "team of rivals?" Does one only have to diagnose a problem to be "right," or must we also provide an effective prescription? It is amusing, though, to watch young folks like Hayes, who came of age during the George W. Bush presidency, discover that Obama will not simply ascend to the presidency, pull out of Iraq and Afghanistan, close Guantanamo, disassemble the NSA spying program, and create a Department of Peace, headed by Ramsey Clark. There is a reason that Obama's first term is starting to look like a third term for Bill Clinton.

Update: My indefatigable colleague Damon Root blogged Hayes earlier today. Check it out (and the hundred plus comments) here.

Secretary Clinton

mmoynihan@reason.com (Michael C. Moynihan) — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 15:48:00 EST

Politico confirms what we all already knew: Sen. Clinton will be America's next secretary of state.

Breaking: President-elect Obama is expected to name New York Federal Reserve President Timothy Geithner as Treasury Secretary on Monday or earlier. Obama is also expected to announce other members of his economic team, sources say.

Meanwhile, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) plans to accept an offer of secretary of State and resign from the Senate, a top Clinton adviser said. An announcement is expected shortly after Thanksgiving, officials said. "She knew this was the right thing to do but just needed to sit with it for a bit to make sure," the adviser said.

Geithner was Under Secretary of the Treasury for International Affairs under Robert Rubin during Bill Clinton's second term. More change we can believe in.

Reductio ad Hitlerum: It Never Goes Out of Style

mmoynihan@reason.com (Michael C. Moynihan) — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 17:50:00 EST

Now that Naomi Wolf's breathless tale of America's collapse into fascism has been further repudiated (unless, that is, Hitlerian countries routinely elect people like Barack Obama), perhaps it's time for the hysterics on the right to tremble in fear at the forthcoming machtergreifung. First, the psychopathic radio host and "world famous herbal expert" Michael Savage hosts former Hitler Youth member Hilmar von Campe "to discuss similarities between President-elect Obama and the rise of totalitarianism under Hitler." Not much you can say to that, except to point out that beyond the big, excited crowds, there are absolutely no similarities. And then we have 1990s relic Newt Gingrich bemoaning what he views as the thuggish behavior of those opposed to California's Prop. 8: "Look, I think there is a gay and secular fascism in this country that wants to impose its will on the rest of us, is prepared to use violence, to use harassment." Gay fascism in America? Perhaps he's thinking of Austria.

After eight years of Bush, remember, it was deeply serious people like the New Yorker's Steve Coll and New York Times columnist Frank Rich that, in the final months of the 2008 election, eluded to a Weimar-like atmosphere at John McCain rallies. But their guy won. And fascism is over, if you want it. No liberal Von Hindenburg will cede power to the forces of darkness! It is early yet, though, and expect much more of this nonsense of the fringes of the right this time around.

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Estonian Spy

mmoynihan@reason.com (Michael C. Moynihan) — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 16:20:00 EST

According to the Times of London, the Russian government received classified data on American missile defense from an Estonian defense ministry official in "what is being seen as the most serious case of espionage against Nato since the end of the Cold War." The case has rocked the former Soviet colony, which has long had (and here is the understatement of the year) a strained relationship with its neighbor to the East. It's not a particularly surprising development—Moscow's intelligence services barely skipped a beat after 1991, and are almost as aggressive now as they were in the days of Felix Dzerzhinsky—but this sentence particularly caught my eye, underlining the contiguous relationship between the KGB and its predecessor, the FSB: "[Accused spy Herman Simm] was recruited by the Russians in the late 1980s and has been charged in Estonia with supplying information to a foreign power." Further details from the Times:

"The longer they work on the case, the more obvious it becomes how big the impact of the suspected treachery really is," according to Der Spiegel magazine. A German official described the Russian penetration of Nato as a "catastrophe".

Comparisons are being drawn with the case of Aldrich Ames, the former head of the CIA counter-intelligence department who was in effect Russia's top agent in the US.

"Simm became a proper agent for the Russian government in the mid-1990s," says the Estonian deputy Jaanus Rahumaegi who heads the country's parliamentary control commission for the security services.

On the face of it, the Simm case resembles the old-fashioned Cold War spy story. He used a converted radio transmitter to set up meetings with his contact, apparently someone posing as a Spanish businessman

Full story.

Making Dearborn Independent

mmoynihan@reason.com (Michael C. Moynihan) — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 13:11:00 EST

Writing in the New York Times, Daniel Sperling and Deborah Gordon, authors of the forthcoming book Two Billion Cars: Driving Toward Sustainability, advocate saving the Detroit auto industry by further taxing those who buy their (already overpriced) products:

One way to [fund the bailout] would be to establish a price floor of $3.50 per gallon on gasoline. If the price drops below that, as it recently has, the federal government would impose a variable tax to bring the price up to $3.50. If the price goes above $3.50, then the tax disappears. The money raised by the variable tax would be used, at least in the short term, to provide loan guarantees to the auto companies. (To ease the burden of higher gasoline prices on low-income taxpayers, some of the revenue would be provided to them as tax credits or vouchers.)

Of course higher gasoline prices would burden low-income Americans in other ways too, by increasing the cost of most consumer goods. And good luck convincing those who have recently purchased a Ford or a Chrysler (there must be someone buying American cars) that an artificial price for gasoline is required, in order to give even more of your money to the selfless members of the United Auto Workers union.

Via Cato, Mark Perry, professor of economics at the Flint campus of the University of Michigan, argues that "Maybe the country would be better off in the long run if we let the Big Three fail, and in the process break the UAW labor monopoly, and then let Toyota, Honda and Volkswagen take over the U.S. auto industry, and restore realistic, competitive, market wages to the industry." He provides this helpful chart (which is further explained here; headline reference explained here):

"Hang Him By the Balls"

mmoynihan@reason.com (Michael C. Moynihan) — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 10:42:00 EST

Who knows if this is true—and there is plenty of reason to doubt it. After all, it was leaked by Élysée and it strongly implies that Sarko the Super Diplomat single-handedly prevented Russian troops from overrunning Tblisi. Regardless, the portrait of Vladimir Putin rings true:

With Russian tanks only 30 miles from Tbilisi on August 12, Mr Sarkozy told Mr Putin that the world would not accept the overthrow of Georgia's Government. According to Mr Levitte, the Russian seemed unconcerned by international reaction. "I am going to hang Saakashvili by the balls," Mr Putin declared.
Mr Sarkozy thought he had misheard. "Hang him?" - he asked. "Why not?" Mr Putin replied. "The Americans hanged Saddam Hussein." Mr Sarkozy, using the familiar tu, tried to reason with him: "Yes but do you want to end up like [President] Bush?" Mr Putin was briefly lost for words, then said: "Ah - you have scored a point there."

Full story from the (London) Times.

I discussed the Russian invasion of Georgia with author Andrew Meier here.

Still Not Ready for Prime Time

mmoynihan@reason.com (Michael C. Moynihan) — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 00:29:00 EST

Via the indispensable Jake Tapper, a wonderfully incoherent distillation of what's ailing the GOP from the winkin' maverick, Gov. Sarah Palin. From an interview with CNN's Wolf Blitzer:

"Sitting here in these chairs that I'm going to be proposing but in working with these governors who again on the front lines are forced to and it's our privileged obligation to find solutions to the challenges facing our own states every day being held accountable, not being just one of many just casting votes or voting present every once in a while, we don't get away with that. We have to balance budgets and we're dealing with multibillion dollar budgets and tens of thousands of employees in our organizations."

But you simply must meet her. Only then will you coastal elites understand her deep intelligence and political acumen.

Ayers Emerges from the Underground, Calls the Pigs

mmoynihan@reason.com (Michael C. Moynihan) — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 18:00:00 EST

Many of those who viewed the introduction of Bill Ayers into the presidential campaign as a low, dishonest campaign tactic have now taken to the idea that the former Weather Underground leader and pretend revolutionary was himself somehow mistreated by the media. The most egregious example is perhaps New Yorker editor David Remnick, as pointed out and deconstructed by ex-New Lefty Ron Radosh. As a confirmed Ayers-hater (I actually read Fugitive Days way back when), I refrained from commenting on Ayers during the campaign not only because I thought it not only a strategically silly line of attack—a position the election results seems to have vindicated—but the McCain campaign never got around to proving that Ayers and Obama were indeed "palling around." Nevertheless, I have to agree with New Republic's Leon Wieseltier that "I would not shake the man's dirty hand."

And now Ayers is attempting to defend himself—albeit unpersuasively. Writing in In These Times, Ayers talks about all the threatening emails he received in the past few months, which forced him to contact the hated Chicago pigs (an inverse of the "Days of Rage," I suppose), and "the serial assassinations of black leaders [that] disrupted our utopian dreams" in the 1960s (he's talking about Fred Hampton, not MLK). Read the whole piece here. There is plenty of stupidity on display, but I particularly like this line, coming as it does from a supporter of the Cuban dictatorship: "In a robust and sophisticated democracy, political leaders—and all of us—ought to seek ways to talk with many people who hold dissenting, or even radical, ideas."

A Chavista at the EPA?

mmoynihan@reason.com (Michael C. Moynihan) — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 17:20:00 EST

According to the Washington Post, Barack Obama is "looking at possibly appointing Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to head the Environmental Protection Agency, according to sources familiar with the process, though he is eying several other prominent environmentalists as well." Kennedy is a well-know 2004 election conspiracy theorist who is under the impression that we are all being held hostage in fascist America. Ho-hum. So would you be surprised to learn that RFK II is also a Chavista? Of course not!

Check out the video below to watch the Kook of Camelot argue in favor of the nationalization of oil companies and argue that Chavez is the "kind of leader my father and President Kennedy were looking for" in Latin America. Yes, Bobby Kennedy, former Tailgunner Joe McCarthy staffer, and Jack Kennedy, who oversaw the invasion of Cuba, would have surely loved Hugo Chavez.

Kennedy rambles through a litany of American sins in Latin America, both real and imagined (School of the Americas, the Oligarchs, United Fruit, Chiquita banana, etc), and engages in the logical fallacy that if one side has done some horrid things—and who could deny that, for example, the United States overthrew Jacobo Árbenz—the other guys must be battling for a more democratic future.

Kennedy says that Chavez has built thousands of top-notch clinics (see here and here for a more realistic view of his health "missions"), increased literacy by one million (false: see here and here), is "helping indigenous people by giving them rights for the first time in their history" (false), is "doing real land reform" by "redistribut[ing] land that is not used" (Really?), and has overseen countless "free and fair elections," despite his coup-monger past (Has he never heard of the Tascon list? Or Henrique Capriles Radonski?) Oh, and of course the United States "engineered the coup" and "kidnapped" Chavez in 2002.

Watch the whole nutty rant below:

UPDATE: Video won't embed. You can view it here.

Gore Vidal Escapes From Home, Appears on BBC

mmoynihan@reason.com (Michael C. Moynihan) — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 18:10:00 EST

The BBC has a deep fondness for Gore Vidal, the Castro-loving octogenarian crackpot who, I am told, once wrote a few decent novels. I once appeared on a BBC World Service program with Vidal, who muttered some scripted provocations about pederasty; stuff that would have likely shocked a radio audience in the 1950s, though a routine that hadn't aged particularly well. Listeners were supposed to be shocked and impressed by this bit of theater; a rude, semi-coherent old coot says dirty things, making the Bill Grundy-like host uncomfortable.

And yet again, it appears that one of his attendants left the gate unlocked, and Vidal wondered into a BBC satellite studio to offer his analysis of the presidential election. Mercifully, the host cuts him off and, one imagines, calls the LAPD:

Obama and the Surge

mmoynihan@reason.com (Michael C. Moynihan) — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 17:48:00 EST

Does Europe love us again? Are America's deep cultural and racial divisions healed yet? Would there be, as the Los Angeles Times headlined, "an Obama surge on Wall Street, and beyond?" A few economic stories that caught my eye, arguing that an Obama victory might spark a rally in the stock market:

Toronto Globe & Mail:

So, if investors have woken up this morning to find Mr. Obama is president-elect, good for investors; history suggests it's a sign that things are looking up. Then again, they were probably bound to get better anyway.

The Washington Post:

Stocks staged the largest Election Day rally in history yesterday, bucking tradition and casting aside growing evidence that the country is slipping into a recession.

The end of the presidential contest between Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) eliminates some uncertainty at a time when traders are searching for an end to the recent market volatility and trying to grasp the breadth of a recession that many assume has already begun, analysts said.

CNN/Money predicted a market surge today, writing that "analysts" were confident that "stocks will likely get a boost regardless of who wins..." Andrew Young predicted that "There would be a boost of 1,000 points on the stock market the first week after he's elected." The Telegraph wondered if a "Barack Obama victory [will] boost shares."

But the Dow took a dive today, dropping 5 percent—almost 500 points—by close. The Guardian was surprised that the "historic election win failed to spark a worldwide stockmarket rally today." The Daily Mail was puzzled that the "Obama Bounce prove[d] elusive." The market slide can most assuredly not be attributed solely to the election of Barack Obama (though the Hannitys of the world will doubtless try). After all, we have been seeing this sort of market schizophrenia for the past few months. But to all of those who saw in Obama's victory some sort of economic panacea—and believe me, I have spoken to plenty of people who, like Andrew Young, believed an immediate market recovery would follow the rejection of the Republican Party—I'm here to remind you that it ain't going to be that easy.

Will We Wake Up in 1933?

mmoynihan@reason.com (Michael C. Moynihan) — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 16:52:00 EST

Obama's "restraint," says this blogger, is to be admired. He is in possession of "both a first-class intellect and a first-class temperament," said conservative Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer, paraphrasing Oliver Wendell Holmes's judgment of FDR. Christopher Buckley cribbed the same line, declaring that Obama "has exhibited throughout a 'first-class temperament.'" I can't disagree with any of these assessments, and I'm all for leaders with a Rooseveltian temperament. But shouldn't we be slightly more skeptical of those in possession of a Rooseveltian vision of domestic policy? And with the McCain issue will likely off the table by tomorrow morning, with the curtain soon to be drawn on the era of Bush's big government conservatism, with no dreaded Republican to do battle with, are we ready for a president with an expansive view of government intervention into the economy? (And yes, Bush was the worst of the worst on spending, but we soon won't have Mr. Bush to kick around anmore.) Will Obama, in this time of crisis, heed the advice of those members of the liberal commentariat agitating for radical economic change; will he push for some kind of New New Deal? According to this John Heilemann story in New York magazine, some of Obama's adviser's are already looking to the ghost of FDR to guide them:

"A lot of people around Barack are reading books about FDR's first hundred days," says a member of Obama's kitchen cabinet. "It's a sign of the shift that's going on emotionally: from being on this improbable mission to believing, Hey, we're going to win."

Obama might show "restraint" (whatever that means) and be an astoundingly clever guy, but perhaps it is time for the Obamacons and the Obamatarians to face the prospect of four years of big government liberalism, to accept that American foreign policy probably won't be any less interventionist (just fronted by people lacking that Rumsfeldian bombast). Perhaps we should start thinking about a big, messy healthcare bureaucracy, the victory of card check, an attempt to reintroduce the fairness doctrine, or the establishment of a "fair" (read: protectionist) trade policy.

Oh, and be prepared for more stuff like this bizarre rant from half-witted actor John Cusack, star of the Hitler buddy pic Max ("C'mon Hitler, I'll buy you a glass of lemonade"), who declares in the Huffington Post that "the modern free market system is false but a new revelation shall come." Deep, man. After all, sayth Cusack, we have reached "the end of Milton Friedman, Reaganomics and supply-side theory" and we, as conscripted members of the new CCC, must "help Obama try to implement another New Deal..."

To Siberia, Applebaum!

mmoynihan@reason.com (Michael C. Moynihan) — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 17:06:00 EDT

Whether or not you agree with him (generally, or in his staunch opposition to the Palin choice), David Frum has been a great read these past few months, and this broadside is no exception. For the sin of backing Barack Obama—in a rather unconvincing semi-endorsement—Anne Applebaum, author of the terrific Pulitzer Prize-winning book Gulag, is attacked by National Review blogger Kevin Williamson for being some sort of Euro-sympathetic elitist, faux conservative. Here is Williamson:

And I find it difficult to believe for a moment that this was some sort of wrenching, soul-searching exercise for the one DC-born/Sidwell Friends-and-Yale alumnus/Europe-dwelling member of the Washington Post editorial board who was seriously thinking about going Republican this year. Spare us the opera; you're an Obama voter. Big deal.

Well, now. This is an absurd criticism on many levels, but as someone who lived in Europe for reasons similar to Applebaum—my wife is Swedish, her husband is Polish—let me remind Williamson that, rather than relaxing on the Left Bank in Paris, reading Sartre and smoking Gitanes, she is married to Radek Sikorski, the very pro-American former Polish Minister of Defense (and current Minister of Foreign Affairs). It should also be mentioned that her elitist European (boo!) husband has also contributed to National Review countless times over the years. Frum's rebuke to Williamson is here, and includes the following question: "What has happened at NR when this generation's greatest living expert on the crimes of communism can be dismissed as an unserious and dishonorable person?" Indeed.

Michael Weiss has an interesting response here, slamming those Stalinist conservatives who have tried to paint Frum as "a dandy arriviste more fond of attending D.C. cocktail parties than blindly supporting any old candidate the Republicans toss up this year," guilty of the unforgivable sin of deviationism.

Frum's latest adult intervention into the playpen that is NRO's Corner blog is to defend the excellent Ann Applebaum. A Thatcherite conservative with an independent cast of mind, Applebaum wrote a column for Slate in which she explained why she couldn't in good conscience vote for John McCain this year. She did not technically endorse Barack Obama, but just being anti-McCain was enough to tweak the epigones of William F. Buckley, some of whom were even more strongly anti-McCain when Mitt Romney was still a nationally saleable dreamboat.
[...]
Has the tradition of Burke and Chambers really degenerated into such hands? Buckley, of whom I'm a lesser admirer than most of the so-called "Obamacons," could at least keep lifelong friendships with liberals such as Murray Kempton and John Kenneth Galbraith. And Robert Conquest, I have it on excellent authority, was quite the gentleman to Susan Sontag when they were first introduced. (The author of The Great Terror, who fired a rifle on behalf of the Anarchists in the Spanish Civil War, once lived in Europe, too.)
I'm under no illusion that an Obama administration will usher in a period of American "healing." The politics of polarization has always been with us, and it's in no danger of expiring in the Age of Blogorrhea. But how sad that those paid to do the hard thinking about the future of conservatism should all rush to prove that they've got the intellects of four-year-olds, and the temperaments of Comintern agents.

Williamson responds here.

Weiss's reason piece on cyberwar in Estonia is here.

Obama to Promise Free Gas, Free Houses

mmoynihan@reason.com (Michael C. Moynihan) — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 10:42:00 EDT

Or so supporter Peggy Joseph seems to think (via Instapundit):

Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Encore

mmoynihan@reason.com (Michael C. Moynihan) — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 17:10:00 EDT

Though people of my regional (New England) and ethnic (Irish/Italian) background are usually inclined towards Papism, I have, but for a brief moment, never been a 'believer.' Nor do I come from a family of pious, church-going Irish Catholics. And while greatly enjoying Christopher Hitchens' philippic God is Not Great, I've found most of the recent crop of hectoring anti-deist (and anti-fideist!) books to be either boring or needlessly sanctimonious. So after disproving the existence of god, and selling a trillion books in the process, what does one do for an encore? Richard Dawkins, author of the best-selling The God Delusion, tells the Daily Mail that it is time to investigate the potentially pernicious effects of wizardry:

The 67-year-old, who recently resigned from his position at Oxford University, says he intends to look at the effects of "bringing children up to believe in spells and wizards".

'I think it is anti-scientific - whether that has a pernicious effect, I don't know,' he told More4 News.

'Looking back to my own childhood, the fact that so many of the stories I read allowed the possibility of frogs turning into princes, whether that has a sort of insidious affect on rationality, I'm not sure. Perhaps it's something for research.'

However, the outspoken atheist said he hadn't even read Harry Potter and admitted he "didn't know what to think about magic and fairytales".

(via Peter Suderman)

The Disapproval Matrix

mmoynihan@reason.com (Michael C. Moynihan) — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 16:55:00 EDT

In this week's issue of New York magazine, the always enjoyable "Approval Matrix" places the following item in the top left corner of its axis of cool and uncool (the "Highbrow/Despicable" region): "Political repression by Hugo Chavez, as detailed in the New York Review of Books." Political repression in Chavez's Venezuela is well-documented, and goes back to his earliest days as the country's president. I'm not entirely sure if New York thinks this is a new story, but the NYRB piece, written by two members of Human Rights Watch, is indeed worth reading. A sample:

On September 18, we released a report in Caracas that shows how President Hugo Chávez has undermined human rights guarantees in Venezuela. That night, we returned to our hotel and found around twenty Venezuelan security agents, some armed and in military uniform, awaiting us outside our rooms. They were accompanied by a man who announced-with no apparent sense of irony-that he was a government "human rights" official and that we were being expelled from the country.
With government cameramen filming over his shoulder, the official did his best to act as if he were merely upholding the law. When we said we needed to gather our belongings, he calmly told us not to worry, his men had already entered our rooms and "packed" our bags.

In other Bolivarian news, Chavez has threatened to arrest opposition leader Manuel Rosales, who is running for mayor Maracaibo, in the province of Zulia:

"I am determined to put Manuel Rosales behind bars. A swine like that has to be in prison," Chavez said.
Chavez railed against Rosales at a gathering of businessmen in Zulia, urging the audience to vote against his rival for allegedly plotting to assassinate him, running crime gangs and illegally acquiring cattle ranches.
Chavez provided no specific evidence for the charges against the main leader of a fragmented opposition who has solid support in the oil-producing west of the OPEC nation.

More reason on Hugo Chavez here.

Hand Puppetry of the Penis

mmoynihan@reason.com (Michael C. Moynihan) — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 16:46:00 EDT

The Company You Keep

mmoynihan@reason.com (Michael C. Moynihan) — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 15:21:00 EDT

Over at The Corner, anti-immigration campaigner (both legal and illegal, according to the subtitle of his book) Mark Krikorian is horrified to learn that Sarah Palin isn't sufficiently hostile to the idea of "amnesty." Nothing surprising there. What's interesting, though, is that Krikorian apparently gleaned this information while reading the website of one Lawrence Auster, to whom he approvingly links and "hat tips." And who, exactly, is Lawrence Auster? Put it this way: this is a guy whose conservatism was too extreme for David Horowitz and Frontpagemag.com; the site cut ties with Auster after the Huffington Post published a piece detailing his history of, umm, racial insensitivity.

A few bons mots from Auster, who has published in the racist magazines The Occidental Quarterly and American Renaissance: "What really convinced me of an inherent, dangerous weakness in black ways of thought, however, was their widespread belief in Afrocentrism and the notion that whites were committing ‘genocide' against blacks." Blacks "seem to have much less interest in knowledge or beauty for its own sake" and they "are in fact less endowed with the qualities that make civilization possible, particularly Western civilization." Or how about this fascinating explication of whether or not women should be allowed to vote (Auster says they shouldn't, because while "Women are the natural care-givers and are naturally focused on the home and the family and its protection. But those same priorities, when expressed through the political sphere as distinct from the private sphere, inevitably lead a society in the direction of socialism.")

So a tip to Krikorian: If you don't want people to think that you support immigration restrictions because of some sort of animus towards Mexicans, you should probably avoid linking to the websites of white nationalists like Auster. (And for the record, as far as I can tell, Krikorian has never written about phrenology, eugenics, and bell curves before, though it is troubling that he seems to be a reader of Auster's site. In fairness, I peruse quite a few crackpot websites too—for the purposes of seeing what the mad fringes are reading, I promise—though I wouldn't think of "hat tipping" such nonsense, especially without adding a strenuous caveat.)

For those of you who suggest that immigrants simply "get in line," perhaps it's time to go over reason's helpful immigration flow chart. And don't miss Reason Foundation's Shikha Dalmia in combat with Krikorian on Bloggingheads.

UPDATE: I missed this post. After reading Krikorian's attempt to blame the collapse of WaMu on the company's affirmative action policies, Professor Bainbridge confessed that such nonsense makes him "embarrassed to be a conservative."

UPDATE II: Krikorian mails to say that I missed this post too.

The Dear Leader Gives the Children Candy!

mmoynihan@reason.com (Michael C. Moynihan) — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 16:15:00 EDT

Via Tina Brown's Daily Beast, an apparently irony-free video featuring a variety of pro-Obama pumpkins, courtesy of the website Yes We Carve. For some reason, I find this video even creepier than the one with those singing robot kids.

BoJo for Barack O

mmoynihan@reason.com (Michael C. Moynihan) — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 17:08:00 EDT

Lord Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, stalwart booster of the classic English game whiff-whaff and inveterate offender of the Papuans, has thrown his support behind Sen. Barack Obama. A big reason, Johnson says, is Obama's race, which, he figures, would have a profound effect on all of those white racists he's read about in The Guardian. A sample:

And then there is the final, additional reason, the glaring reason, and that is race. Huge numbers of voters, whether they admit it to themselves or not, will hesitate to choose Barack Obama for President because he is black. And then there are millions of white Americans who will undoubtedly vote Obama precisely because he is black, and because he stands for the change and the progress they want to see in their society.
After centuries of friction, prejudice, tension, hatred - you name it, they've had it - America is teetering on the brink of a triumph. If Obama wins, then the United States will have at last come a huge and maybe decisive step closer to achieving the dream of Martin Luther King, of a land where people are judged not on the colour of their skin but by the content of their character.

I note that only one person has been shot by racist hooligans for wearing pro-Obama gear—and it was in the city Boris Johnson governs, not in the hillbilly USA. For a writer as consistently entertaining as Johnson, this is surprisingly weak, we-are-the-world stuff. (Also note BoJo's upbraiding of McCain for his impromptu "bomb Iran" song, which he acknowledges was a lame joke, but suspects would make the Iranians want a nuke even more if the Republicans win. Coming from Boris, whose gaffe tally is notoriously high, it's not a very convincing bit of criticism). Johnson's colleague at the Telegraph, America correspondent Toby Harden, thinks so too, arguing that the race bit is especially thin gruel.

With a seemingly straight face, Boris argues that race is a "reason" for wanting Obama to be elected, blithely stating that many white racists will vote against him because he's black while many blacks will back him because of he's one of their own. And yet - get this - an Obama victory will show that in modern America "people are judged not on the colour of their skin but by the content of their character". Talk about trying to have it both ways.
Boris concludes, with a customary flourish, that Obama being elected would mean that being black would be as relevant "as being left-handed or ginger-haired". Yeah, right. Somehow I doubt we'll be reading Boris columns about the need for ginger-haired American presidents to inspire persecuted carrot tops everywhere.
If Obama wins, Old Etonian born-to-rule Boris pronounces, "black people the world over will be able to see how a gifted man has been able to smash through the ultimate glass ceiling".
Well how about a black politician being judged on his economic and foreign policies rather than his value as an inspiration to other blacks?

I have a piece on Obama and race in the current print edition of reason, to which you should really subscribe if you haven't done so already.

Black Rage

mmoynihan@reason.com (Michael C. Moynihan) — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 10:44:00 EDT

In response to an audience member question, unfunny comedian Lewis Black sputters that government is awesome and Amtrak is terrific because his father worked in D.C. and his father was a good guy; because Enron collapsed and was, after all, a private company; and he growls something about "it" not being "Clinton's fault that he picked a schmuck." Or something. It's incoherent and joke-free, but the Upper West Side audience laps it up as the questioner—the only moron sitting in the TimeWarner Center at Columbus Circle who believes in free markets!—is put in his place. Here's the video (via Breitbart):

When asked about his political affiliation, Black told this website that "I'm a socialist, so that puts me totally outside any concept ... the Canadians get it. But seriously, most people don't get it. The idea of capping people's income just scares people." Of course, I expect that Comrade Black is donating a Canadian portion of his millions to the government, so as to set a good example to the rest of the comedic bourgeoisie.

Odds and Sods

mmoynihan@reason.com (Michael C. Moynihan) — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 13:09:00 EDT

- The Telegraph reports something that Venezuela specialists have been pointing out for a long time now: While oil revenue is way up—as one would expect, with prices ten times what they were when Hugo Chavez was first elected—Venezuelan oil production is way down. In 1998, the country produced 3.2 million barrels a day. Today, OPEC says the nationalized oil industry (remember, Chavez fired 19,000 strking PDVSA employees in 2002, replacing them with party loyalists like Gaston Luis Parra Luzardo, the Marxist economist who took over the company) is producing 2.4 million barrels. And as The Telegraph points out, it is only the United States that is paying full price for Venezuelan crude, with most of Chavez's allies receiving oil shipments at a deep discount. Also worrying Venezuelan economists—and almost certainly worrying the Miraflores gang—is the possibility of oil prices falling even further. According to this report in the Caracas daily El Universal, the government would need the price of oil to remain at around $90 a barrel to sustain its current rate of spending.

- Citing an investigative piece in El Nuevo Herald, UPI reports that "The Venezuelan government is operating a secret paramilitary training camp with the help of Cuban military advisers and leftist Colombian guerrillas." A paranoid, Claire Sterling-like conspiracy theory? Hardly. As UPI notes, the government has neither confirmed nor denied the allegations, "but local officials have acknowledged its existence and the presence of Cubans."

- A jarring helmet-cam video obtained by Salon suggests that a 2006 insurgent attack that killed two American soldiers in Ramadi was, in fact, a friendly-fire incident. One cannot help be moved by both the awful tragedy on display and the professionalism of the soldiers responding. That is until, at the very end of the video, when the squad leader orders his soldiers to report that they were hit by enemy mortars and not a U.S. Army tank shell.

- According to the state-funded Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes in Prague, Milan Kundera, author of The Unbearable Lightness of Being, ratted out an anti-communist spy working against the Soviet-backed government in Czechoslovakia. As the New York Times reports, the agent was arrested, "narrowly escaped the death penalty, a common punishment for espionage, and eventually served a 14-year sentence, including hard labor in a uranium mine."Kundera denied the charges. (Perhaps, in light of these charges, it is worth revisiting Kundera's 1969 debate with Vaclav Havel, in which he accuses the playwrite and dissident of "moral exhibitionism.")

- One final commie related story—and one largely ignored by our horse race-obsessed comrades in the D.C. media. A player from the Cuban national soccer team, Reinier Alcantara, on a visit to our nation's capital, waits for his minders to be distracted by the brilliant capitalist gifts on display at the Doubletree giftshop—mini-spoons with a picture of Lincoln glued to the top, a half-sleeve of barabcue Pringles, US Weekly instead of Juventud Rebelde—and bolts out of a hotel service door. The Miami Herald has details:

"The phone lines in the players' rooms at the Doubletree Hotel were disconnected, their passports and visas were collected by a team official upon arrival in the nation's capital, and coaches watched their every move."

[...]
He ran, and ran, and ran. Six to eight blocks. At full speed, looking over his shoulder the whole way, worried that someone would snag him and deliver him back to the Cuban delegation. Finally, when he realized nobody was chasing him, Alcantara stopped at a corner, caught his breath, and flagged down a taxi.
He speaks very little English, but he used what he knew when he got into the taxi cab. ''Drive me far,'' he told the driver, motioning with his hand. ``Go far, far, far.'' They drove for nearly half an hour and Alcantara, a 26-year-old forward, got off at a McDonald's. He asked the cabbie if he could borrow his cellphone to make a call. He called a friend in New Jersey, told him where he was, and the friend drove down to meet him.

Welcome to America, Mr. Alcantara.

You Don't Need a Conservative Pundit to Know Which Way the Wind Blows

mmoynihan@reason.com (Michael C. Moynihan) — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 15:24:00 EDT

A bit of conservative blowback on the McCain campaign's impotent strategy of making the final weeks of the election about Barack Obama's association with former Weather Underground leader Bill Ayers. First up, George Will:

This, McCain and his female Sancho Panza say, is demonstrated by bad associations Obama had in Chicago, such as with William Ayers, the unrepentant terrorist. But the McCain-Palin charges have come just as the Obama campaign is benefiting from a mass mailing it is not paying for. Many millions of American households are gingerly opening envelopes containing reports of the third-quarter losses in their 401(k) and other retirement accounts -- telling each household its portion of the nearly $2 trillion that Americans' accounts have recently shed. In this context, the McCain-Palin campaign's attempt to get Americans to focus on Obama's Chicago associations seems surreal -- or, as a British politician once said about criticism he was receiving, "like being savaged by a dead sheep."

David Frum, who has been scathing in his criticism of the Sarah Palin choice, is similarly baffled by the "chummy with terrorists" line of attack. At his National Review blog, Frum unloads on Team McCain (after assuring readers that he will indeed vote for him):

American voters are staggering under the worst financial crisis since at least 1982. Asset values are tumbling, consumer spending is contracting, and a recession is visibly on the way. This crisis follows upon seven years in which middle-class incomes have stagnated and Republican economic management has been badly tarnished. Anybody who imagines that an election can be won under these circumstances by banging on about William Ayers and Jeremiah Wright is ... to put it mildly ... severely under-estimating the electoral importance of pocketbook issues.
We conservatives are sending a powerful, inadvertent message with this negative campaign against Barack Obama's associations and former associations: that we lack a positive agenda of our own and that we don't care about the economic issues that are worrying American voters.

Horace's Ars America

mmoynihan@reason.com (Michael C. Moynihan) — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 19:15:00 EDT

A brief break from the economic meltdown and the election, if I may, to turn attention to the 2008 Nobel Prize for Literature, the winner of which will be announced tomorrow in Stockholm. In an interview with the AP last week, the permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy, Horace Engdahl, grumbled that American literature is substandard; that American writers are "too sensitive to trends in their own mass culture"; that "The U.S. is too isolated, too insular"; and, of course, our writers are "ignorant." According to Engdahl, Americans "don't translate enough and don't really participate in the big dialogue of literature."

It's an ill-informed little rant, but not entirely surprising coming from a blowhard like Engdahl. It is probably worth noting that none of Engdahl's books have been translated into English—who would know his name, who would listen to his cluelessness, if it not for the Nobel committee? A handful of Derrida-obsessed Swedes, I suppose. And yes, this is the very same Horace Engdahl who presided over the Swedish Academy's selection of overrated party hacks like Elfriede Jelinek, Harold Pinter, and Dario Fo.

American critics haven't taken the slight lying down. New Yorker editor David Remnick told the AP: "You would think that the permanent secretary of an academy that pretends to wisdom but has historically overlooked Proust, Joyce, and Nabokov, to name just a few non-Nobelists, would spare us the categorical lectures. And if he looked harder at the American scene that he dwells on, he would see the vitality in the generation of Roth, Updike, and DeLillo, as well as in many younger writers, some of them sons and daughters of immigrants writing in their adopted English. None of these poor souls, old or young, seem ravaged by the horrors of Coca-Cola."

And, for reasons of party loyalty, they rather famously overlooked Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges. According to socialist academic and former Academy member Arthur Lundkvist, Borges was blocked from the prize because of his association with Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet. Such associations were considered unbecoming a Nobel laureate. In 1971, however, Lundkvist and his fellow arbiters of literary (and political) merit bequeathed the prize to Pablo Neruda, a self-identified Stalinist. Favorite bit of Neruda verse? How about this bit of agit-schlock, from 1953:

We must learn from Stalin / his sincere intensity / his concrete clarity / Stalin is the noon / the maturity of man and the peoples / Stalinists, Let us bear this title with pride!

Writing in Slate, critic Adam Kirsch argued that "the real scandal of Engdahl's comments is not that they revealed a secret bias on the part of the Swedish Academy . It is that Engdahl made official what has long been obvious to anyone paying attention: The Nobel committee has no clue about American literature."

Incidentally, the Swedish media is guessing that the prize will be given to Philip Roth, Joyce Carol Oates, John Updike, or Don DeLillo—Americans all.