Sadly, No!

Scott Lemieux sez:

Most of us can agree that the current Democratic Party is suboptimal in many respects; the question is about how to change it. Social movements that alter public opinion, mobilize voters, and create different incentives for parties are a good strategy. Third parties (at least those that don’t cross-cut existing, or represent dying, coalitions a la Perot or Wallace) are not, because 1)the incentives they provide are trivial, and 2)they carry massive disadvantages (most notably ending up in the worst option being elected.)

Then he quotes Mike Tomasky:

First, if it was the intention of Nader voters in New York or Massachusetts (or any state Al Gore was certain to win in 2000) to send a message to the Democrats, that’s an understandable and respectable intention. But as the Christian Coalition model shows, such messages are far more effectively sent inside the party than outside it — the Greens really influence almost nothing in this country, whereas the Christian Coalition, with its power in the GOP, influences almost everything. I’d have actual respect for the Greens if they were working within the Democratic Party to take it over. You can say that’s impossible, but it seemed impossible in 1958 that archconservatives could take over a Republican Party that was very accommodating to both New Deal and internationalist priorities. Within six years, though, they’d gained control of the party to the point that their guy, Barry Goldwater, became its presidential nominee. Real success took another 16 years, but to good dialecticians, there should be no hurry.

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I don’t have time to do a full write-up now, but Coach Dave has returned with a spiffy new column that I PROMISE to review later tonight!!!

Quick baseball post below the fold…

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Ok, so there’s a discussion about how blogging might have a negative impact on one’s career (in Academe). Context is Juan Cole’s not being hired by Yale University.

So far so sad. Then it gets worse. Ann Althouse and Professor Corncob are invited to contribute. I don’t really care about Althouse, who’s a garden-variety wingnut and philistine. But I am interested in the oleaginous, passive-aggressive bullshit Instayokel offers, if you understand that by ‘interested’, I mean ‘once again disgusted by’.

Was Cole given a raw deal? Instayokel doesn’t really say; he offers, in characteristic bad faith, that political prejudice on the part of hirers isn’t all bad — an actual Neo-Nazi and a theoretical KKK member lose in such scenarios. But since he asserts that Academe is biased against conservatives, and then says that he doesn’t like it when blogged comments are held against potential hires, his true agenda is plain; all in all a real masterwank of sophistry on Reynolds’s part considering the subject of the whole gig here is that Cole, a liberal, was screwed out of a job by wingnuts because of his blog.

Nevertheless, I agree with Reynolds somewhat. Garden-variety political opinions blogged on the web shouldn’t keep anyone from being hired. It’s web evidence of extremist insanity that should put up a red flag. And what could be even more extreme and insane than, say, KKK membership? If any sort of blogged opinion could cost an employed academic their job, or keep one from being hired by a university (and I’m not saying it should), what might it be?

Advocating genocide might probably be first on the list.

But then as the legacy tenured Glenn Reynolds would no doubt attest, it’s difficult to sack affirmative action hires.

The sky is blue, dogs have four legs, and our government is a corrupt disaster:

Lawmakers say that since the Homeland Security Department’s formation in 2003, an explosion of no-bid deals and a critical shortage of trained government contract managers have created a system prone to abuse.

Hmmmm, cronyism and a lack of accountability? In this one-party government? Nooooo, I don’t believe it. I’m going back to reading Glenn Reynolds.

Based on a comprehensive survey of hundreds of government audits, 32 Homeland Security Department contracts worth a total of $34 billion have “experienced significant overcharges, wasteful spending, or mismanagement,” according to the report, which is slated for release today and was obtained in advance by The Washington Post.

“Obtained in advance?” That sounds like an unauthorized leak! TREASON, TREASON!!

The value of contracts awarded without full competition increased 739 percent from 2003 to 2005, to $5.5 billion, more than half the $10 billion awarded by the department that year… Among the contracts that went awry were deals for hiring airport screeners, inspecting airport luggage, detecting radiation at the nation’s ports, securing the borders and housing Hurricane Katrina evacuees.

Man, I’m glad the Republicans are the party of national security. I’d hate to see what’d happen if our government wasn’t serious about protecting its citizens…

(Yeah, I know I’m late with this, but…)

‘Great Men’ Have Grating Effect On Mideast:

Fuck diplomacy; what we really need to do is be more like the Iranians!

Bonus wankery:

During all the time the Great Men were shuttling back and forth, a kind of toxic globalization occurred: The Palestinian “movement” (insofar as there ever was a genuine nationalist movement) became infected and eventually annexed by hard-core Islamism and the Palestinians’ most depraved terror techniques were exported to every corner of the world. You can build a “security fence” in the region, but what we might call Palestinianism has leapt the psychological fence and incubated in radicalized Muslim communities worldwide[…]

Awesome! So next time some fascistic police force shoots kids who throw rocks, can we all call it “Israelism”? No? It’s different somehow?

Also note Steyn’s smear laying doubt on any legitimate Palistinian urges to nationalism — see, for Steyn, they don’t really want a nation, they just like to murder Jews. Which is funny in the general projection sense, because in rejecting diplomacy tout court and urging that the U.S. emulate Iran, Steyn is basically saying that he agrees with Iranian tactics that elsewhere he has described as being of genocidal intent. So, actually, it’s Steyn, like so many other wingnuts, who just likes the idea of mass-murder (but then of course it’s not the same because the victims, Muslims, are subhuman while Christians and Jews are good people!!!) for its own sweet sake.

At least he’s consistent: it’s always been Steyn’s schtick to basically take every anti-semitic blood libel on earth, change the ‘Jews’ part to ‘Muslims’, and call it a day. This is why I keep saying that wingnuts and the real ‘islamofascists’ like al-qaeda and the Taliban deserve each other. They are conjoined twins forever gnawing at each others necks.

As for his categorical dismissal of diplomacy by ‘Great Men’, it’s old hat for him, too. A.J.P. Taylor sneered at power-worshipping historians with this righteous bon mot: “when you say a ‘great man’, you only mean that he is quicker on the trigger.” For Steyn, they are never quick enough.

In a perfect world where everyone is equal, I’d still own the film rights and be working on the sequel.

Shorter Michael Medved: Does Israel have the right to exist? Based on my reading of Judeo-Christian and Western texts, the answer is yes.

Shorter Ben Shapiro: Being Jewish is no defense against charges of anti-Semitism.

Shorter Walter Williams: There is absolutely no constitutional authority for this disgusting abuse of federal power. But most Americans, who – Do what now? Signing statements? Warrantless wiretaps? FISA who? Calm down, my good man, I was talking about Internet gambling.

Shorter Jay Sekulow: Now is no time to let the UN ambassador position go unfilled. That is why the Senate must immediately confirm John Bolton.

Shorter Paul Weyrich: Will New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg run for president? You never know!

Shorter Donald Lambro: I urge Democrats to pander to their pro-war minority or risk alienating some voters with a political debate.

Shorter Jacob Sullum: As a libertarian, I wonder if Chinese and Iranian dissidents worry that Americans have given away too easily our right to smoke pot and gamble online.

Shorter Michelle Malkin: Based on some available evidence, the anti-war left wishes to assassinate the president, put teenagers into comas and beat up Jews in the park. (Would that they’d do the same to our Muslim foes.)

Shorter John Stossel: What’s a sample size?

Shorter Bill Bennett: The United States will allow fledgling Middle Eastern democracies to rule themselves once they start turning in results we like.

Shorter Linda Chavez: It’ll be pretty hard to run the public school system if all the teachers get fired for being incompetent.

Shorter Terence Jeffrey: Congress should set about stripping the Supreme Court of its jurisdiction, issue by issue.

Shorter Tony Blankley: The war on terror has been insufficiently advertised; it is, after all, a war against Islam.

Shorter Roger Schlesinger: I used to think earnings determined pricing for a mortgage loan. Boy has things changed!

Shorter Paul Greenberg: The former lieutenant governor of Arkansas, Win Rockefeller, has died. Heckuva guy, heckuva guy.

Shorter William F. Buckley: I just might abandon my independent status, register as a Democrat and vote for Joe Lieberman – who certainly is no friend to the Republican Party. After all, he asked Bill Clinton to campaign for him. And Clinton did it!

Shorter Maggie Gallagher: The world’s a mess, and Democrats are running around discussing plans to fix it. As if!

Shorter John McCaslin: Perhaps you might find these news items of some interest.

Shorter Mike S. Adams: For most of history, the Bible was the most advanced scientific text in existence. Take that, scientists!

If you’ve ever been to Chicago, where all those sausage-devouring scum-of-the-Earth Cubbies fans dwell, then you know whom this story is referring to:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – More and more obese people are unable to get full medical care because they are either too big to fit into scanners, or their fat is too dense for X-rays or sound waves to penetrate, radiologists reported on Tuesday.

“My God! This man’s liver is 45% cheese sauce!”

With 64 percent of the U.S. population either overweight or obese, the problem is worsening, but it represents a business opportunity for equipment makers and hospitals, said Dr. Raul Uppot, a radiologist at Massachusetts General Hospital.

“We noticed over the past couple of years that obesity was playing a role in our ability to see these images clearly,” Uppot said in a telephone interview.

“Looks like there’s a whole leg of ham blocking that pancreas…”

Radiologists have their own term for it when writing up reports: “These images are limited due to body habitus.”

I was hoping they’d write something more imaginative, like “HA HA HA! THE MELTY CREATURE IS TO MUCH OF A FATTY FOR RADIOLOGY! ‘I AM A CREATURE AND MADE OF BUTTER!’ SAYS THE FATTY!”

Anyway, now that I’ve offended the morbidly obese, I might as well take it a step further and disrespect my (very very very very) elders as well. Ladies and gentlemen, here’s Carey Roberts, who has written yet another column on how he’s only 35 years old, but looks 168 because feminists have sapped and impurified all his precious bodily fluids:

Women good, men bad?

Carey Roberts
July 25, 2006

It’s about time that we probe an assumption that has insidiously worked its way into our culture — the notion that women are the guardians of goodness and grace, while all those male neanderthals are emissaries from the dark side.

Am I the only one who gets nervous when Carey starts talking about “probing” things?

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Hate has its uses. To be “neocon” about it, “I believe that [hate] can be a force for good in the world.”*

So another quick survey: Who or what, of and in America, do you really hate?

I’m looking for entities or people here, not events or objects.

There’s only one rule and it is important: You can’t be hatin’ on anyone for a condition they can’t help. Which means no hatin’ based on race, sex, ethnicity, age, national origin, or sexual orientation. (Religion, as Auden so wisely noted, is not included because it is a choice.)

I’ll offer my shit list first:

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Cause and effect, people.

Last week Richard Cohen had an article in the Post that was explicitly pro-Israel, but at least had the merits (a cringing compliment to the horrible Niall Ferguson aside) of some even-handed rhetoric.

This, of course, for some people was evidence of Cohen’s anti-semitism or something. By ‘some people,’ I mean these nitwits:

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